Slowly abandoning Apple?

There was a time when I used to say most software I use was Cocoa. Consequently, I did not use cross-platform software (a part from CLI stuff). I preferred the OS X only, non portable solution to cross-platform solutions every time the OS X provided a niftier integration with the system.

I was rather shocked considering that it is no longer true. First: I mostly work with non Apple systems (that is to say Windows and Linux). This is not really an issue: I was aware that my job could be done without a Mac. Being mostly a developer, I just need the development tools: compilers, open source interpreters, Eclipse, WingIDE, IntelliJ. All this stuff is cross platform. I also use latex (which is also cross platform). Unfortunately I use Word and the wonderful MathType quite often. Well... once I was very skeptical about the pair, long time ago. I changed my mind, of course. Still don't like word, but MathType is wonderful. JEdit and gvim more than TextMate or BBEdit.

I still use OmniGraffle, and I find it wonderful. However, I think that it sucks not being able to use it on my netbook (my apple laptop has a broken hard drive and I haven't fixed it yet). I mostly dropped Papers for Mendeley (cross-platform and I think more useful). My synchronization needs have increased: I use gmail more often than Mail; Dropbox beats the crap out of MobileMe (which I'm not going to renew).

Etc etc etc. In fact the last bundles of Mac software are not interesting from my point of view. I bought some sw some time ago, and I did not use it. Not that the MacOS is not great, beware. Just I feel like I have to be able to leave the platform with no hassle should the need arise. My MacPro is going to last, so is my laptop. But not forever; and then? I even find some things are better outside the mac (e.g., key shortcuts of IDEs... they are not standardized like on the mac, of course, but the ides just don't work at 100% on the mac... perhaps the new versions are improving).

Just happy I bought 1Password for Windows. Now I just have to leave Yojimbo. Still, no time to export the notes... and the serial numbers. I don't even want to think how much I money I threw away. :(

Yeah... of course, if I had more time to play things would be different. I just love Logic (Express) and doing audio on the Mac. Though, I have not enough time.

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Mac, Apple, Leaving Apple, OmniGraffle, MathType

Java and OS X (good news, afterall)

It looks like my concerns were unjustified. OS X and Oracle (well, mostly the open jdk community) are going to collaborate to provide future versions of Java for OS X.

Apple is basically gives its current Java machine to the OpenJDK project. Oracle (and OpenJDK guys) will provide future versions, as it is desirable. Perhaps we will not have JVM lagging behind anymore. Or perhaps we will, but the lag will be shorter.

Java, MacOS X, Apple Support, Java Support, Java on OS X

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What about Apple quality (ipad, iphoto, camera connection kit)?

The beginning

I quit using Apple products in the late nineties as I felt that directly and solely using Linux was far a better choice to my needs. As a consequence, I stopped doing many things I use to (such as recording and producing music) and that was it. Some years later, I bought a 12" powerbook and I think it is one of the best notebooks I ever had. Jaguar was crap compared to the systems we have today.

Integration with open source stuff was mostly left to the users (and that way I learnt lots of things I had for granted in Linux). On the other hand, I had lots of beautiful applications and a unix system which worked flawlessly on my laptop, which, at the time, was not common at all. Since then I have been quite enthusiastic about apple products. I bought many more Macs and used them as my main development platform. I bought mac software. I have an iPad and an iPhone.

I was very satisfied with the general quality of the products. Few bugs, few problems. On the other hand, I'm now starting to seriously question Apple strategy. I have already expressed my concerns about the mac store. Though I'm starting to believe things are worse.

The tragedy

For example, this fall I went to Cornwall on holiday. I brought my camera and my ipad. The idea was that I could store the pictures on my iPad (I bought also the camera connection kit).

I was pleasantly surprised that the kit stored the pictures in raw format and consequently I had no loss of quality. On the other hand, this detail was not clear at all (I had to sent myself an email containing one picture to find out that it still was a NEF file). I think that this information is irrelevant for most amateurs (as most digital compact cameras save in JPEG); however, it is critical for a professional. And it may be critical for some amateurs as well, the ones with digital reflex cameras.

So as soon as my memory card was full, I connected it to the ipad and started downloading the pictures. Apparently, everything went well; I simply felt that the process was quite too slow (but I may be biased as I wanted to use the ipad at the same time to check the email and I did not want to interrupt the transfer). So I decided that I could afford buying another memory card. With that one and the now emptied old one, I could manage to take pictures without another transfer.

Went I came back, I connected the ipad to the mac pro and started downloading the pictures. The process hanged after importing a hundred pictures or so. Since I connected it to my monitor (which has an USB hub), I initially blamed the monitor. However, I should have suspects on iphoto since the "cancel" button did not work and I had to manually force quit the application. Then I tried another hub (which was more tested); same results. And then I directly connected the ipad to the Mac and once again the transfer hanged. My guess, at this point, was that the ipad had issues. In fact, I transferred greater quantities of pictures (but I forgot I did not use iphoto, but Nikon Transfer).

As a side note, I stopped using Nikon Transfer because I lost some pictures due to unclear options related to "deleting pictures after transfer". For NT it meant delete all the pictures after the transfer, both the ones you transferred and the ones you did not, while I thought that it conservatively meant "delete the pictures that you just transferred". Luckily enough CardRaider saved the day.

Well, iPhoto was not very clear on what they meant with "Keep pictures" "Delete pictures" either, so I decided to "keep" and manually delete. I think that Apple could have been more precise.

Anyway, at this point I was quite desperate: I found no options in ipad-iPhoto to mass put all the pictures somewhere where I could access them. Luckily, I remembered that Preview is able to import pictures from cameras. And it is able to import pictures from the ipad as well. The program is faster than iphoto. It is faster to start, faster to transfer. The image selection interface is also far clearer: moreover, failed or interrupted downloads showed clearly the already imported images, so starting from the point where I left was easier.

In fact, the first time I got the same transfer error I had with iphoto. However, plug and unplug + quit & reopen fixed the issue and now I have all the pictures safely on my hard drive.

Conclusion

I never really trusted iphoto: I kept my files outside the library in order to more easily access them. I trust the program even less: I won't use it to import pictures, just to present them. The "find faces" functionality is just a curiosity: I still haven't found any use for it. Moreover, much of the imported pictures are not processed by that functionality. I don't know why.

As a consequence, I would like to get rid of iphoto. I want to stop subscribing to mobile me as well (e.g., out of the blue, iWeb is not able to update my website anymore). Now I just have to find a substitute; something which has similar features and that possibly retains the association between the raw pictures and the modified one. Still iPhoto was not that bad: I could have used it. I just think it is not refined and a bit left on its own.

And now there is the new version. And I am not very motivated in buying that software. On the other hand abandoning most apple ties is quite hard and since all the stuff is very well integrated, it is somehow required to stop using all that crap together, otherwise problems arise.

Some pictures

 

 

Technorati Tags: Apple, Mac, Rant, iPad, iPad Camera Connection Kit, iPhoto, Nikon, Pictures, Bugs, Picture Recovery Tool, Preview

Mac App Store Review Guidelines

Lately, it seems to me that at Apple is doing everything they can to completely annoy developers and geeks. Which is, of course, a very bad premise for a post; as far as I have seen Apple proved to be right against all the odds most of the times. People continuously complain on Apple (and I have never seen a company with so many haters, with the possible exception of Microsoft), though sells grow and the products improve.

In fact Snow Leopard is the best OS they did (and perhaps the best I ever tried). The machines they build are sturdy and elegant at the same time. And the ipad is a wonderful tool .

There are many things that I don't like, though. Perhaps one day I will elaborate on this. At the present, however, I would like to point out the conditions to have an app accepted at the Apple store.

Some are worried that they will become the sole way to distribute software. I am confident it will not. First, the EU already questioned whether it was acceptable to do that on the iphone/ipad. I am sure that they will seriously avoid having Apple doing that on a PC. Moreover, Apple would lose developers and applications (thinking Adobe and Microsoft and many other commercial companies will comply with those lines is pure madness)... And I even think that it is good to create such an OS.

It means slowly going towards some Raskin's ideas (he also opposed the very idea of third party applications). Though, it would be an OS completely useless to me. If they do it and they do it right, perhaps it is a good thing. But they won't get my money. Windows 7 is a solid system and Ubuntu gets better with every release: I'm not even sure that they would catch up without Apple going so experimental (they just lack some software).

Back to the rules...

2.1Apps that crash will be rejected

2.2Apps that exhibit bugs will be rejected

Am I reading this for real? Every developer knows that every non trivial piece of software has bugs. We strive to put in fewer bugs and for having the severity of the bugs reduced. But no bugs? Madness. An uncaught exception means that the application is going to crash. As far as I can see, those rules are basically reducing the set of acceptable apps to applications so small that they can be manually proved correct (unfortunately, this basically excludes GUI and concurrent applications).

So I think that those rules are fakes. They don't mean a thing. If they do, I am going to buy some Apple software from the store and ask them to remove it from the store as soon as it manifests a bug. And it will... ah, it will! Apple software is far from perfect: it just has a very careful UI design... ;)

2.7Apps that duplicate apps already in the App Store may be rejected, particularly if there are many of them

Oh, really? So you've got to be fast! Perhaps if the developers publish a bunch of word processors (which, with Cocoa API is quite simple) then Microsoft Office will be rejected. I don't really believe this, but it would be funny. In fact, I'm not even sure that MS is going to put anything on the store.

2.8Apps that are not very useful or do not provide any lasting entertainment value may be rejected

 

What the fuck does it mean? Office does not provide any entertainment value: its a tool. I am not entertained when I work with Word or with Keynote. Dear sirs at Apple... there is people working with your bloody macintosh computers. We are not to be entertained: we don't want to have a funny dog advisor to make the software entertaining.

2.16Apps that download or install additional code or resources to add functionality or change their primary purpose will be rejected

 

At last, they rephrased the sentence on the ipad guidelines. The way it was before basically would rule out a web browser.

2.19Apps that require license keys or implement their own copy protection will be rejected

2.20Apps that present a license screen at launch will be rejected

 

I love those two. I hate developers spending effort on protections. If I like the app, I am going to pay for it. If I don't like it, I'm not gonna use it. There are developers who put on the protections before writing useful functionalities (and sometimes they do sell the betas as well... luckily, the MacStore will at least make this behavior unrealizable).

2.18Apps that install kexts will be rejected

2.23Apps that spawn processes that continue to run after a user has quit the app without user consent will be rejected

7.4Apps containing "rental" content or services that expire after a limited time will be rejected

Ok... here it is obvious other means for installation will remain

2.24Apps that use deprecated or optionally installed technologies (e.g., Java, Rosetta) will be rejected

No Eclipse on the Mac Store... It seems that Python apps will be ok, as Python ships with every mac. At least nowadays.

2.25Apps that do not run on the currently shipping OS will be rejected

 

Oh... so developers... you always have to keep up with the last Apple OS!

 

3.1Apps with metadata that mentions the name of any other computer platform will be rejected

 

Don't know... CommodorEmulator seems to violate the rule.

6.1Apps must comply with all terms and conditions explained in the Apple Macintosh Human

Interface Guidelines

6.4Apple and our customers place a high value on simple, refined, creative, well thought through interfaces. They take more work but are worth it. Apple sets a high bar. If your user interface is complex or less than very good it may be rejected

Ok. Reasonable. Perhaps even possible. A certification "(Good UI)" would be very good: a prohibition to sell is bad.

6.2Apps that look similar to Apple Products or apps bundled on the Mac, including the Finder, iChat, iTunes, and Dashboard, will be rejected

How is this called in english? Abuse of a dominant position? Yeah. If this mac store is ever going to be successful, then Apple will got into troubles. And rightly so.

 

7.6In general, the more expensive your app, the more thoroughly we will review it

LOL. ROTFL. Makes sense, though.

8.3Apps that are simply web clippings, content aggregators, or a collection of links, may be rejected

Actually, no wikipedia app.

9.1Apps that encourage users to use an Apple product in a way that may cause damage to the

device will be rejected

 

LOL.

9.2Apps that rapidly drain a products battery or generate excessive heat will be rejected

So, no scientific computation tools allowed.

11.1Apps portraying realistic images of people or animals being killed or maimed, shot, stabbed, tortured or injured will be rejected

11.3"Enemies" within the context of a game cannot solely target a specific race, culture, a real government or corporation, or any other real entity

Looks like some games will be rejected. E.g., in 2nd war games, it seems you will have to be able to play both sides.

Technorati Tags: Mac, Mac Store, Rant, Apple

No more Java for OS X?

As of the release of Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 3, the version of Java that is ported by Apple, and that ships with Mac OS X, is deprecated.

This means that the Apple-produced runtime will not be maintained at the same level, and may be removed from future versions of Mac OS X. The Java runtime shipping in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, will continue to be supported and maintained through the standard support cycles of those products.

Link

Don't really know how to interpret this one.



At the moment Oracle does not offer an OS X Java implementation. What is going to happen?

Technorati Tags:
Apple, Mac, Java

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The power of the power of the power...

Though I really don’t particularly like writing about hardware in my blog, I provide some updates on my current hardware situation. Some years ago, I wrote a short series of blog posts about my iMac. That was a first series machine and I criticized lack of support for scientific software. This is partly related to GMP not being too much collaborative (as it appears they did not have intel macs, bac in the day).

Of course those problems have been entirely solved quite soon. I suppose that by the end of the year they were no more and the faster intel chips were just the right choice for everyone. A couple of years after those events I bought a MacBook Pro 15” laptop and that became my main work machine. Among the things I really liked best about the intel processor (and all the lovely virtualization software packets out there) was that I could run Linux in a virtual machine. Since I did not stop working on a certain “almost-linux-only” project, that was really good (and saved me from ugly partitioning). Although I had a Parallels license (which I used on the iMac), I preferred to use the simpler VirtualBox. Back in the day, Parallels did not support Linux exceptionally well and I could just live with the free VB. And that is the machine I used (along with the iMac) for my M.Sc. dissertation.

4 years after i first turned it on, my iMac blew off. Well, not literally. I suppose I can fix it, however, I chose to buy a new Mac. This time it is a MacPro. Essentially, I hated that if I thrashed my iMac (because of other damages) I could not save the monitor. So I chose a monitor-less computer. Essentially the thing is powerful. It is extremely evident when encoding my CDs into mp3’s. I don’t do much video editing.

Nonetheless, Parallels is completely capable of sucking all the resources. I had to stop using it, since the MP became useless. I suppose it may be related to having only 3 GB, even though the iMac had only 2. If I will need a virtualization software, I suppose I’ll go with VMWare or VirtualBox. But… that is not the last machine I bought.

Emacs, Carbon Emacs and color-theme

I don’t like very much standard emacs theme, especially when in “GUI” mode (that is to say Carbon Emacs/Aquamacs if you are on the mac).
Luckily color-theme module does an excellent job. I have a long list of themes ready to be selected. In fact, for nostalgic reasons I like the “Classic” theme.
I wanted this theme to be automatically loaded when I start Emacs. Unfortunately default OS X Emacs does not have color-theme installed (and I don’t mind the way it looks by default in the terminal). So it was only a matter of conditionally branching between GUI emacs and terminal Emacs.
Moreover, I could not use (require ‘color-theme), for this would give error when run in the terminal version. This is my solution:

(defun my-color ()
 (load-library "color-theme")
 (color-theme-initialize)
 (color-theme-classic))
    (if window-system
     (my-color))

New tab in current directory (Terminal.app)

One of the most annoying things is when you have to open a new tab
in the current position. Say the shell in the current tab has x
as the current working directory and you want another shell already
in that directory. 
It seems there is no way to tell Terminal.app "open new tab"
from apple script. Mixing solutions found on the web, I came up with:

tell application "Terminal"
    set oldMem to (do shell script "pbpaste")
    set theTab to selected tab of the front window
    (do script "pwd | pbcopy" in theTab)
    set theText to (do shell script "pbpaste")
    tell application "System Events" ¬
        to tell process "Terminal" ¬
            to keystroke "t" using command down
    do script with command ¬
        "cd "& theText & ";clear "¬
        in selected tab of the front window

    do shell script "echo \""& oldMem & "\" | pbcopy"
end tell

Ugly, but works.

Terminal.app ANSI Colors

Since Leopard, I did not have a good application able to change ANSI colours in Terminal.app.
Even though it does not seem a particularly pressing issue, the defaults are quite bad: the standard blue is quite too dark to be used on a dark background, so you have to use a light one. Unfortunately enough, some applications assume a dark background (for example, ipython). Of course, these applications can be personalized, but using a dark background can also be just a matter of taste.
Luckily enough, today I found TerminalColoreopard. It works well, it is easy to use, and solved my problem.

iCab

Today iCab is discounted on mupromo (50%).

Here it is the wikipedia article and here the website of the author.

iCab is a browser for the Mac. It is much more: it is a piece of WWW and Mac history. For a long time it has been the only relatively functional browser for MacOS Classic (after Moz dropped support for the platform).

It's a one man affair and once it used to have its custom rendering engine (until version 3). Now it's a nifty commercial browser with some nice features. Of course WebKit is great and means good support, but I kind of regret it does not use its own engine anymore. Diversity is good...

What has iCab that Firefox hasn't? Nothing. It has a great affective value. Of course, if you've got a MacOS 9, 8 or 7.5 system, it is also the only browser (version 3 from MacOS 8.1 and version 2.x from MacOS 7.5).

Still, its a good tool. It has some nice features, for example the smiley which signals when a website (or CSS) is not standard and opens a windows with the errors.

It has got some relics of when browsing was costly and slow: an offline mode and an acoustic signal triggered when it finishes to load a page.

And it's the only tabbed browser for older macs (but this isn't technical, is it?).

It's quite fast, indeed. And it has a very good filter system. Filters are quite general personalization tools: for example they can be used to add a "download" link to YouTube videos or create an AdFilter. iCab has a very good session management, too.

And that's it: it's not rocket science. It's a little old browser. But at $12.5 it's a bargain!

A quite interesting MacOS X maintenance page.

Although some tips are clearly wrong (e.g. having wrong permissions causes problems, it may even prevent some applications from working, but clearly has no impact on performance), most of them are useful and interesting.

Link

TextMate easter egg

Very nice Halloween icon...

Texniscope Intel

I have just compiled a Texniscope version for Intel.

It works for me, tell me if it works for you too.

Download

[BROKEN LINK!] If you really need this, email me, I will search it on my hard drive.

Look, I'm Universal!

A PPC Application

A Universal App

I have not yet found an Intel only Mac application.

Now we show some unix executables. The first one is a script.

This one is universal

and this is Intel Only

Of course you can build universal unix executables, as you've seen.

YASP (Yea Another Stupid Post)

I have to admit that this

makes me quite proud... I've never had a biproc machine (and this is dual core, but that does not change the point).
I'm looking forward to have some time to install Linux. Non because of Linux itself but because of the twin penguins that should appear when booting. Well.. they should have appeared once. Now distros tend to favour another boot style...

Darwin Ports vs. Fink

Well... on my PB I recently installed Fink. It run smoothly. Fine. Here on my MacIntel I installed Darwin ports, since Fink is alpha on MacIntel.

DP is amazing. Works with no hassle and all. It's main disadvantage is that it compiles everything (and that is not quite a problem, since I have a 2 GHz DC processor). Well, I have always been a DP fan (being a BSD fan)... and I have to say they have improved.

Of course (as soon and it becomes more mature) some may prefer to use fink. Not having to deal with compiling issues (that are really rare on DP indeed) can be an advantage (or at least a speed up). Moreover DP lacks a decent UI.

For a cl geek like me this is not an issue (I tended to use fink that way too). But if yoou are used to sparkling icons, it may not be for you.

MacIntel

Until now I almost never spoke about Intel Macs here. My feelings were twofold. The long time Mac user in me told me that using Intel processors was no good. The unix geek told me that many benefits could come.

Of course we know that IBM was not going to invest on G5 anymore. Apple had to switch. And I bought my first MacIntel. Good.

Fast is fast. The perceived speed against my Powebook G4 is astonishing. Applications load instantaneously: compilation is much faster (unfortunately I can't compare this against a G5 iMac, so this is pointless).

Rosetta is fast enought to run Neverwinter Nights smoothly. Of course the game is quite old, but it's a full 3d game. In fact I didn't expect this to work. Moreover it means that NWN wasn't G4 optimized...

Still I miss some utilities. I'm lost without WindowShade X. About the rest this is a wonderful machine. Go on with more tests.

Developing on Mac, Win, Linux (Editors - pt. 1)

I kind have to tell something about me, since it better helps understanding my position.

I chose MacOS X as my main developing platform. Of course it happens to write software meant to run on GNU/Linux (or other *nix flavours) or even on Win. Usually when this happens I'm using a cross platoform technology. I never wrote something longer than 100 lines with the WinAPI, for example.

Before I used GNU/Linux, fBSD and even before other unices (OSF1) and MacOS "Classic". This is my background. I never quite got exposed to windows. So my point is unusual: most people come from windows to other platforms. To me is quite the contrary (a part that I don't "go" to windows, I just happen to use it from time to time).

About programming environments, I've done (and do) lots of things. I like high level languages, such as Python or Ruby. I like ObjectiveC and Cocoa (of course this won't be in our comparison...). But also do a lot of low level C coding with the POSIX api (well I did... right now I prefer to do it in Python), develope some software in C++, I'm going to graduate with a project in Prolog. I quite like XML and CSS and I also have to use some Java and some calculus (both Matlab and C -- no, I don't quite master Fortran)

So my skills are not particulary vertical (for example someone who does all his job in the XML processing fields, or numeric calculus). They range in many different fields (this does not mean I'm really "guru" in each of them, on the contrary I've got much to learn).

Editors

Basically those who work in the Linux community used to share in equal parts between Emacs and vim. There used to be some other editors (nedit), but that was the story. Recently I've seen a lot interest around IDEs (kdevelop, anjuta) and some "lesser" editors have reached the status of full programmer's editors. Among these Scite and Kate, for example. Moreover HTML/web centric editors have also increased their popularity.

On the other side the Windows community has always been more IDE oriented. There were the Borland products, Microsoft Visual Studio, Wacom. The most used web environments were Dreameaver and Homesite (now builtin in dw).

Of course there were also a bunch of editors.

Linux pt. 1

If I have to work on Linux, I've got no problems of any sort. I'm average skilled both in vim and in Emacs and I can make it. I do use Aquamacs (an Emacs version) even on the MacOS: once I preferred vim, but right now I need some things Emacs has and vi hasn't (a decent Prolog mode, for example).

Windows

About an year and an half/two years ago I had to develop an application with Twisted. For a 0-based array of reasons I used Windows as my main developement environment. I installed entought python (and in those times there was no Python 2.4, so no problem), I put Twisted 1.3 on the top of it and chose gvim. Gvim is beautifully integrated with windows. Of course it acts quite much like vim does (i don't like the evim variant). I did it. Still I wasn't using windows. I cloned my linux environment on Windows. And it is what I made when I had to code some C++ with mingw and so on.

I chose to use gvim not because I really wanted to, but because other editors were really priced or poor. Yes I tried scintilla too. Not particulary poor, of course not priced... but in fact too simple.

Windows and MacOS

If you compare the situation with the MacOS it's tragic. MacOS has many "simple" editors that I do not really like (but some love SubEthaEdit or Smultron), but it has also BBEdit (the best web editing environment I've seen, much better than dreamweaver and priced 199$ - 129$ for TextWrangler users -- TW is a free editor everybody can download and use ). And it has TextMate: the best general programmer editor a part from Emacs.

UltraEdit (Windows)

Recently I had to do some more work: I tried UltraEdit, priced 39 $. The same as TextMate. A couple of users said it is a wonderful editor and I gave it a try. Out of the box it did not support nor Python nor Ruby. Quite annoying in fact.

I googled the solution and I find I had to copy some strings in a file. The format is awful. Where TM has a lot of small bundles, BBEdit has plugins, UltraEdit has only this big flatfile. Ok. What matters is functionality.

But functionality is missing. For example Python or Ruby indenting is really disappointing. TextMate indents code back and forth to match the syntax of the code. It takes less time to try than to read. If you haven't a Mac, Emacs does it.

TextMate also has lots of ways (and easy one) for saving me from typing lots of code. Snippets are poweful, and I also have commands (snippets are short words or commands that are expandend to full constructs with placeholders to fill in).

I find nothing like this (nothing that simple) in UltraEdit or in Scintilla. Not that Scintilla is not a bad editor. It correctly deals with a lot of languages, the syntax theme is clear and easily readable (I think I should do a "Scintilla Theme" for TextMate one day). With Python/Ruby it lets you run or check syntax directly from editor.

And UltraEdit (in the Studio Version) is a very good "tiny ide"-"enhanced editor" for Java, for example (but we are at 99$). Much better than BBEdit or TextMate in Java editing. It's fast and has some useful basical functions. Of course Eclipse or NetBeans do a lot more stuff, but UltraEdit Studio takes a couple on microseconds to load.

I've not tried it with PHP and HTML (have I already said I don't use PHP?), but it appears to be really good. I just can't stand feature bloated IDEs like DreamWeaver. They tend to make the programmer not to think... but that's another story.

The many windows editors

It could be a matter of taste. Another friend of mine who did a lot of coding in Windows suggested another text editor (I don't even remember the name of the editor -- I still remember my friend's name of course). Probably among all editors out there (more or less shareware) there is the one that suits my taste (a part from the Emacs/gvim variants). Still everybody knows a good way to fuck up a windows installation is to install and try software (I know ghost, but it looks like I've no time to waste to play with software).

GNU/Linux pt. 2

Again... GNU/Linux is quite convenient in this sense. Emacs and vim are wonderful editors (and they are both free and free). They can be extended to do almost everything (think about Emacs mode to make it a Java IDE or the Auctex package).

They are both available for Windows and Mac, but additional packages are not as easy to install (on Debian is a matter of aptgetting...)

About the IDEs... well, KDevelop is told to be really good. Probably For sure it outperforms XCode, but should be not as good as MS Vistal Studio, even if it should support more languages (so if you need one of those...). So depends on what you have to do... anyway it's a really good IDE, nothing to say... but :)

Windows pt 2

I tried some more editors. Notepad++ is nice (but not really suited for Python or Ruby: in this sense Scite is much better).

I tried Komodo, and it's wonderful (and also cross-platform). The best thing it does are easy debugging and intellisense like for dynamic languages (tried with python and ruby, it should work with PHP and Perl too). Unfortunately the full version costs almost 300 bucks. If you don't develop professionally you can buy the "personal or educational" version, that at 29$ is quite affordable.

Anyway some things in Komodo to me look quite akward, while TextMate is as easy as poweful. Of course comparing Komodo to TM in Rails editing is playing dirty. TM is the editor of choice of Rails developers. And Komode has that intellisense... well, I think it should be great (even if I didn't really use it, so I think I'm not really gonna miss it).

I've seen there are a lot of targetted small IDEs that are worth trying, but I'm not gonna spend all my time this way.

Next time I'm gonna talk about databases

Window Shade X

Credo di non avere mai decantato pubblicamente questo piccolo software. Lo registrai per la modica cifra di 10 $ (molto moderate. Quando un programma è buono e mi piace, lo compro, anche se è commerciale [ posto che me lo possa permettere ]. Questo è ancora più valido se si tratta di software di piccole case o singoli sviluppatori che mettono passione nel loro lavoro.

È il caso di TextMate di Allan Odgaard e di BBEdit (questa per esempio è una media software house che si dedica da anni a sviluppare ottimo software per Mac). È il caso di Yojimbo, sempre di BareBones (questo lo sto ancora valutando nei 30 giorni di prova). È il caso di GraphicConverter, che ho usato a sorti alterne credo fin dalla versione 1 sui miei vecchissimi Mac (e adesso uso in quanto la licenza viene pagata da Apple se acquisto un Mac di fascia "pro"). È il caso di MacSOUP (anche se ultimamente mi sto stancando di quanto poco sia "aquoso", d'altra parte è uno di quei programmi che la licenza la paghi una volta e poi lo usi sempre).

Beh... fra questi ottimi software ci sono anche un paio di utility di Unsanity. Mi riferisco in particolar modo a FruitMenu e a WindowShade X. Dei due quello che uso più di frequente è senza dubbio il secondo. Altre utility interessanti di Unsanity sono ShapeShifter per cambiare il tema al MacOS e MenuMaster che sto valutando.

Window Shade X

Una delle cose che meno tollero di MacOS X è il dock. Lo trovo una brillante idea terribilmente sprecata. Al di la di ovvi problemi di coerenza di interfaccia (ad esempio al di la del separatore ci stanno finestre minimizzate, documenti, cartelle e cestino, mentre a mio avviso almeno le finestre dovrebbero essere da un'altra parte). Dicevo, le finestre da un'altra parte anche per ragioni di spazio.

Se si minimizzano molte finestre il dock si allunga e diviene quasi ingestibile. Questo problema viene risolto brillantemente da WindowShade X. Infatti permette di "minimizzare le finestre sul desktop: cosa intendo? Guardate l'immagine.

In questo modo posso facilmente minimizzare le finestre (posso anche spostarle sul desktop come fossero icone). Per esempio posso "rebindare" il pulsantino giallo per fare questo e continuare a minimizzare sul dock con Mela-M.

Per chi se lo stesse chiedendo... si, la minimizzazione sul desktop è simile a quello che fanno alcuni window manger sotto X11, per esempio twm [ ovviamente in modo oltremodo più raffinato, come si può vedere dall'immagine ] oppure il mio amatissimo WindowMaker. Triste che oggi ci si sia tutti o quasi omologati su sistemi molto più pesanti anche su GNU/Linux (senza nulla togliere a GNOME e KDE, solo meno  "originali", per come la vedo io).

Un'altra funzione davvero comoda (la maggior parte delle volte uso questa) è minimizzare una finestra alla sua barra del titolo facendo doppioclick sulla stessa. Questo c'era in MacOS 9 e Apple lo ha (stupidamente?) tolto in MacOS X. È qualcosa presente anche su molti wmanager per X11, metacity per citarne uno.

Il tutto coopera perfettamente con Exposè e rende lavorare con molte finestre davvero comodo.

Altre funzioni sono quelle di fare diventare trasparente una finestra oppure di renderla "floating" sopra tutto il resto (per esempio una chat, un player audio minimizzato, boh). Insomma... davvero geniale WindowShade X.

Stattoo

Stattoo è una piccola utility fatta da Panic. Uno dei più celebri prodotti di Panic è Transmit, a detta di molti il miglior client FTP per Mac (io personalmente sono affezionato a Fetch, che come studente posso avere in licenza gratuita e che ho usato fin dalla versione 1.x nei primi anni '90, ma i meriti di Transmit sono indubbi).
Un'altra applicazione di Panic è Unison, ottimo newsreader per gruppi binari (per i le discussioni francamente lo trovo abbastanza povero, ma si stanno attrezzando). Ad ogni modo, ora è il turno di "Stattoo". Il prezzo è 12.9 $. L'applicativo stampa sul desktop alcune informazioni con una bella veste grafica.

Per ora sono disponibili:

1. Ora
2. Data
3. Appuntamenti di iCal
4. Ultime Mail di Mail o di un qualunque account pop/imap anche non specificato in Mail
5. Lo stato di iTunes
6. Lista degli ultimi software arrivati su VersionTracker
7. Spazio occupato sui vari dischi
8. Temperatura locale
9. Stato della batteria

La maggior parte di queste features sono ottenibili in altro modo. Spesso con dei widget o dei programmi. Tuttavia Stattoo è molto più veloce di Dashboard e cerco di tenerci quanta più roba possibile.
Varrebbe la pena di comprarlo anche solo per i punti 3 e 4. E anche la batteria è comodissima. Inoltre si può "sollevare" Statoo in trasparenza sopra le altre finestre schiacciando un tasto.

La cosa che però mi ha fatto decidere definitivamente per l'acquisto è stata la professionalità. Ho inviato una email facendo presente che per la mia città (Parma) non era disponibile un codice areoportuale ICAO (per le città non-USA viene usato questo per identificarle) e quindi non potevo usare il modulo "Weather".
In effetti non è che la mia città non avesse un codice ICAO, solo il sito da Panic consigliato per scoprire tali codici presentava solo il codice IATA (un'altra sigla, poco importa cosa siano effettivamente). Ho mandato una email per chiedere consigli, dicevo.
Un gentilissimo dipendente (o forse proprietario o programmatore) mi ha risposto dicendomi il codice ICAO della mia città. Ovviamente funziona tutto. Immagino che in caso di problemi (all'epoca non ero ancora registrato) siano altrettanto celeri. E questo deve essere il valore aggiunto delle piccole case software: idee, ben realizzate e rapporto "umano" con il cliente.