Douglas Purdy

I have been reading John Dvorak for a long time.

I am drawn to his writing in the same way that I am compelled to the read the cover of the celebrity magazines at the checkout stand.

I just can’t stop myself.

He wrote something not too long ago that has been sticking with me.

What’s interesting is that these two companies are about the same age, but Apple still has the pizzazz. I’m also considering that this entire situation was inevitable based on the respective localities of the companies. Microsoft is up in the often gloomy and downbeat Pacific Northwest, and Apple is smack in the middle of warm and up-tempo Silicon Valley. In Silicon Valley, everywhere you go there are people talking about start-ups and wild new ideas. In the Pacific Northwest they are talking about hiking or bike trails [bold mine].

I don’t agree with anything else in the article (I for one try to lose my job all the time — Microsoft actually is a wonderful place for a risktaker, really), but I do think the Pacific Northwest is a tough place to be positive all the time.

I have literally thought about picking my whole team up and moving to NorCal.

After all my favorite Starbucks in the whole world is there and the increase sunlight could shake me of my grunge obsession (Vitamin D production apparently does that — I think it kills vampires too).

I have started to teach my kids to program.  They are 5, turning 6.  Since I started programming at age 12 and they are roughly 2x smarter than me (nature: their mother’s genes.  nurture: they haven’t discovered keg stands yet) this seems like the right time. 

One observation about the computer in general, before I talk about software specific experiences.

The mouse is evil.  The trackpad/touch interface, especially one with one button or even better no physical buttons, is the future, even for ‘desktops’.  My children have taught me this obvious lesson.  One more reason for you to buy a MacBook (especially since they released the trackpad fix).

My first attempt utilized eToys, the Smalltalk-based (Squeak, of course) visual programming and educational tool championed by Alan Kay and others.  BTW: If you are in the computer profession, do yourself (and the rest of the world) a favor and read The Real Computer Revolution Hasn’t Happened Yet.

This attempt didn’t go so well.  Lana, my oldest (by 15 minutes), told me she was completely bored and called into question my parenting skills.  Lauren, my youngest (by 15 minutes), decided that she would rather hone her abstract expressionism skills using the painting mode than write a script (I think she could be a budding Pollack, but since I want to live vicariously through her as a female Alan Cox, I need to squash that now).

My second attempt utilized Scratch, the Smalltalk-based (Squeak, of course)  visual programming tool developed by the folks at Lifelong Kindergarden at MIT Media Lab.  We are still in the midst of this experiment, but so far it is going well.  We have a simple script that controls two “sprites” wearing the most wonderful abstract expressionist costumes.  Both of the girls are very engaged in the process.  How do I know this?  They started fighting over the keyboard.  Nothing says engagement like warfare.

Before Super Ninja emails me asking why I didn’t use SmallBasic, I have to confess that I only own Apple personal computers at home, so his wonderful learning environment is out of the question for my kids (but that shouldn’t stop the ~90% of you John Hodgman’s from checking it out).

So far I am encouraged by the girl’s progress and look forward to continuing tomorrow, but I want to add something that really frustrates me.  It is simply unbelievable that neither Windows or Mac OS X ships with a programming environment that everyone can use (I am not counting Automator here, but maybe I should).  My experience and career was shaped by Applesoft BASIC which was provided on every Apple // since the //+.  BASIC was like air in all the computer systems of that generation.  Where is today’s BASIC?

If Ninja managed to get SmallBasic into Windows (which I would support in a nanosecond), I may actually need to buy a PC.

I am doing some Javascript development over the weekend — not for a Web site, but a library.

My current toolchain is Coda and Drosera — which seems to be working out fine so far.

Anyone else have suggestions on a better toolchain for this sort of thing?

I used to love the Powerbook Duo — especially the Dock.

I want now want a Duo Dock for my iPhone.

Context…

I am trying desperately not to bring my laptop to meetings any longer.

In the role I am in now working on code or whatever during a meeting will send the wrong message to the people presenting.

In addition, and more importantly, I can’t afford to miss anything because my wacky code failed.

I tried not bring my laptop to several meetings this week.

Three observations from that exercise…

1. Paying attention (not continuous partial attention) does matter (and I call myself a Buddhist)
2. I am way behind on work.
3. My iPhone is more important than ever (I will glance at it through the meeting — but at least there is no VS on it).

Once I get back to my office at the end of the day, I really just want a bigger screen and keyboard for my iPhone — thus my ask.

Of course, I still need a dev box, but I can just TS (VNC) into a desktop.

Actually, now that I think about it, what about a Duo Dock that was just in a laptop form factor with a keyboard, 13.3 screen and a port for the iPhone to slide into.

Could be something like the Foleo, but not have any onboard OS, etc — just a screen, keyboard and ports (maybe a SSD?).

As a Microsoft shareholder,  I wish we developed something like this first that has Windows Mobile on it — I would have to give up my iPhone for that — oh, of course, I would need to have the Zune player software on it.

BTW: One of the things I will say about the Zune — the desktop player rocks — especially when coupled with the Zune Pass (an all you can eat music download service).  I often hear new music on the Zune Marketplace and then buy it on ITunes.

[Updated:  Just saw a link for http://olo-computer.com/  -- that is hot -- but I think I want the Duo Dock for my office too.] 

I am writing this on my iPhone using the Wordpress application.

That fact is one of the most powerful features of this new platform.

That said, after more than one month of usage, there is much to be desired.

This is not the holy grail of a single device across my consumer and enterprise selves.

It is the closest thing yet, but not there yet..

I don’t understand why FrontRow on the Mac isn’t the full Apple TV experience.

I really don’t like using the iTunes interface on my Macs at all, but if I want to buy or rent something from the iTunes store in OS X, that is the only game in town.

FFSync v0.5 is available for download.

Three new features, available via the new iTunes tab:

The first feature is the ability to require “Song Linking”.  What this means is that FFSync will try to find the current song on Rhapsody.  If it can find it, it syncs with FF with a linked item.  If it cannot find it, it does not sync.

The second feature is the “Minimum Song Rating”.  This allows you to determine what the iTunes rating needs to be for the current song to be sync’d with FF.

The third feature is the addition of the song’s rating in the FF item.

Below is a screenshot of these features in action:

It turns out I was wrong (it will not be the last time) about the four apps I pegged as possibly using GC in 10.5 here.

Mark Rowe (engineer at Apple) posted a comment to my original post with what appears to be the definitive mechanism to determine if an app is using GC.

I spent some time digging around in otool before moving on to my (incorrect) heuristic of looking for certain imported symbols via nm.

I am happy to stand corrected.  Thanks Mark.

Yesterday I was having a discussion about which Apple apps use the new garbage collection feature of Objective-C 2.0 (the fobjc-gc switch).

One of the reasons this topic comes up in Microsoft circles is the fact that so few Microsoft desktop applications use the CLR. As you may be aware, there is a performance cost associated with running code in the CLR and garbage collection often gets painted as the chief offender.

I had heard that several Apple apps in 10.5 used this feature, but I had never followed up to know for sure. Yesterday I decided to take a look. Since I am a complete hacker, I decided not to ping the Apple lists and just see if there was a way to figure this out myself.

Based on my digging around (nm is your friend), I believe the following apps (of the subset I looked at in 10.5) use GC:

• Mail
• iChat
• Preview
• PhotoBooth

I looked at the iLife apps too, but none of them had the signs of GC. However, GC is a feature of 10.5 and iLife supports 10.4 — so that likely explains it.

I have to tell you and I have said this before at Microsoft, Apple did a very cool thing here. They had most apps on the same “unmanaged” memory allocator/scheme (ref count with autorelease) and then they shimmed in GC as an optional feature. Even more important (and far cooler in this world of a new framework every 10 minutes), is that Objective-C/NeXTStep/OpenStep/Cocoa has been around since the late 1980s and just getting better with age…

[Updated: The above list of apps is wrong. See http://www.douglaspurdy.com/2008/06/14/objective-c-20-garbage-collection-part-ii/.]

I am really considering going to WWDC this year.

I am such a huge fan of Cocoa and Objective-C (go Smalltalk).

I have been playing around with the iPhone SDK and I have to tell you that I am so impressed with what Apple is doing with Cocoa Touch.

When I think about the future client platform for the “Programmable Web”, I think a lot about the iPhone and iPod Touch.

If you have been to WWDC before, I would love to know if it is worth the money (comments, email or tweets welcomed).