Pass over the Microsoft marketer’s crack about Macs being “washed with unicorn tears” pass by, because, really, that just makes him look like a dick. Move on to Lyons’ observation that Apple is declining to build cheap netbooks and instead, “in January … rolled out that 17-inch laptop with a $2,800 price tag. Talk about tone-deaf.”

Yes, how terribly tone-deaf to introduce a long awaited upgrade to a machine in high demand among Apple’s customer base, on which Apple can continue to make a comfortable profit margin in a difficult economic environment by selling customers with ready money just the machine they want. What could they have possibly been thinking?

Meanwhile, PC manufacturers race to the bottom and wring the last bits of profit from cheaper and cheaper machines. But that’s no skin off Microsoft’s nose, because they (presumably) get the same profit putting Windows on netbooks as they do on high-end workstations.

In fact, Microsoft probably makes more off netbooks, because they typically ship with Windows XP, for which the bulk of Microsoft’s R&D costs have long since been paid.) No wonder they’re “turning the corner.”

Meanwhile, Apple has consistently declined to compete in the low-end market, and yet has continued to flourish financially, to the bewilderment of analysts everywhere. Presumably, unlike doctors, financial analysts are not taught about Willie Sutton.

As for me, I’m looking towards Apple’s next set of financial results, due out on the 22nd of April. I’m also (speculatively) waiting for the day when Apple announces its next low-cost portable computing device, which I predict will (a) not be a “netbook” as we think of one today, (b) cost significantly more than $300, and (c) sell like hotcakes.

I’ll come back to Dan Lyons’ “commentary” then.

(Tip of the hat to Daring Fireball.)

Nevertheless, there is necessarily an impedance mismatch between the runtime models — when passing objects to Cocoa, the bridge must convert the object from the dynamic language’s runtime to an Objective-C object derived from NSObject, and vice versa. This introduces a certain amount of inefficiency, which is not normally a big problem, but it would be desirable to avoid it.

Now, over the last few months, I’ve seen a variety of projects to do this by using the Objective-C 2.0 runtime to implement the object model for the dynamic language. In other words, objects in the dynamic language are subclasses of NSObject and no conversion is necessary.

These range from the venerable F-Script, which is even closer to Smalltalk than Objective-C, to Tim Burks’ original language Nu, which uses a Lisp-like syntax. I believe I’ve seen a reference to a JavaScript implementation as well, but I can’t seem to find it now.

The project that seems to be getting the most buzz in the Mac community right now is MacRuby, a port of Ruby 1.9 done by the developer of RubyCocoa (who is also an Apple employee). There was even a article about it featured on the Apple developer site recently.

Conspicuous by its absence from this list is my preferred dynamic language Python. I would love to see an implementation of Python hosted on the Objective-C runtime. I’ve always felt Python’s language model was a good match for Cocoa (of course, PyObjC not only predates BridgeSupport but even Cocoa itself, going back to the days of NextStep), and I’m personally more familiar with it than Ruby or other dynamic languages. So it seems like a logical step to take.

This project couldn’t be called MacPython, because that name has already been used to denote the Mac port of Python. For now I’m calling it “OCPython”, but I’m certainly open to a cleverer name (especially if there’s one that can riff on IronPython; unfortunately the element most associated with Mac OS X is Carbon, which is entirely wrong for this project).

I’ve been thinking about which version of Python to use as a jumping-off point; originally I was leaning towards 2.5 because it’s the version shipped with Leopard, but now I’m persuaded by Bill Bumgarner’s comment to use 3.0 and take advantage of the revised, less crufty implementation. (This is based on the stated goal of the 3.0 development project; I haven’t actually looked at the source code yet.)

I wish I could say I’m prepared to get the project off the ground myself, but right now I’m between jobs, as they say, and given the current financial situation I’m actively looking for full-time employment and can’t dedicate much time to something that won’t bring in any revenue. (Of course, if anyone out there would like to fund development of OCPython, contact me immediately.)

WWDC does not seem to have a big reputation for being well-run. I can’t speak to this personally with any great authority; I’ve only attended one previous conference, in 2006. I didn’t really know what to expect, and I was excited just to be there, but even still there were a few issues I noticed. That year the sessions on the newly-announced Objective-C 2.0 and garbage collection were scheduled in a room that clearly was too small for the amount of interest. I saw there was a problem and decided to bypass the sessions, even though I was interested, figuring I could read up on the material later.

Meanwhile, the session on application code signing had been put in Presidio, the largest room — which I interpreted as a sign of the importance of the topic to Apple — but there were well fewer than a hundred people there. So Apple’s track record on predicting attendance is suspect at best.

Now this year they’ve sold out the conference, so we know it’s going to be crowded, and we know many if not most of those people are there for the iPhone. Apple seems to have booked Presidio exclusively with the key iPhone sessions, which is wise, but I fear it won’t be enough. I imagine four or five hundred people lining up early Tuesday morning, parking themselves in Presidio, and staying there for three and a half days. People who try to come for a later session are going to be annoyed if they can’t get in — but if Apple tries to clear the room after each session, people will get really angry.

[In 2006 they apparently ended up "repeating" a few of the overcrowded sessions by replaying them on a video projector one evening. I didn't go; if I remember correctly, that was Wednesday, the night of the Apple Design Awards and Stump the Experts, and I didn't want to miss those. This time around I'd probably pass them up, though. For one thing, the former DTS engineer with whom I saw Stump the Experts, and who made it twice as much fun by filling in the back story for me, is probably not attending this year.]

As a would-be independent developer with interests in both desktop and iPhone software, I’m anxious about the scheduling. On the one hand, if the iPhone session fill up I can usually find other sessions of interest to me. On the other hand, the trip out to San Francisco from the East Coast is a big deal in both time and money, and it’s not clear when I’ll be able to do it again, so I’d like to take advantage of the iPhone sessions as much as possible, since they’re clearly of more immediate value. (After all, I’ve got my Hillegas third edition right here already.)

At least if I keep myself on Eastern Time I can show up early every morning and get in line. I’ll miss the evening socializing, but I’m pretty introverted and don’t know anyone in SF, so that’s not much of a loss for me.

I sure hope this works out…

If I understand this post correctly, he believes that Apple’s engineers are spending so much time reading his misanthropic ravings that they’re neglecting their more important work, namely fixing all the bugs in Leopard. To this end, he’s actually blocked access to his website from Apple (the entire 17/8 network — yes, Apple has a Class A network block).

Well, that will certainly help. Now they can spend their time instead reviewing all the bug reports that Rick has faithfully filed… oh, wait, Rick gave up filing bug reports because Apple’s engineers ignore them.

But Rick, if they can’t read your site, how will they find out what the bugs are?

Oh, well, no matter — it wouldn’t do any good anyway; clearly none of the engineers at Apple are anywhere near as smart as Rick (as a quick perusal of Rick’s site will make clear). Might as well give up and switch to Linux or Windows, eh, Rick? No? They’re worse? Really? Hard to believe, the way you talk. (By the way, you kiss your mother with that mouth?)

Well, I suppose I’ve wasted enough time reading Rick’s site, too. Time to block it myself so I don’t accidentally learn how to be a better programmer, or something.

(What a Rick.)

The first issue affects both their products; the report here is for AddressX:

AddressX won’t startup on 10.5.0/Leopard running on an Intel-powered Mac (a log indicates “… Reason: no suitable image found. Did find: /usr/lib/libcrypto.0.9.dylib: mach-o, but wrong architecture. …”).

When we looked at the 10.5 pre-release, we encountered an OS X library issue — it installs a non-universal/PPC-only version of a library that’s critical to our applications (and, of course, all our developer systems are Intel-powered). ‘Though we filed a bug report early in October (original Problem ID: 5520955 and have now re-filed it), believe it or not, it’s still a problem with the released/commercial version of 10.5.0 (even without the bug report, you’d think that a check to ensure all binaries are universal would actually be a basic QA step — it’s one that’s easily automated!).

After corresponding with someone named Bryan D. at Snerdware and doing a little more research, I’ve learned the following things which make me more sympathetic to their problem than I originally was:

• Apple includes two versions of libcrypto: one called libcrypto.0.9.dylib, and one called libcrypto.0.9.7.dylib, and a symbolic link libcrypto.dylib that points to the newer library.
• In Leopard, the newer library is indeed a four-way universal binary, but the older library is PowerPC only. I originally assumed this was because only pre-Intel applications would require it, since libcrypto.0.9.7.dylib has been available in Mac OS X at least as far back as 10.3.9; and so Snerdware was making a mistake by linking to the older library and then complaining that it wasn’t universal.
• But it turns out that Snerdware relies on features that are present in the older library (which corresponds to libcrypto version 0.9.6l), but have been removed for some reason from the newer library.
• More strangely, Apple did include a universal binary of libcrypto.0.9.dylib in the Intel versions of Tiger, but strangely left it PowerPC-only in Leopard. Huh?
• Snerdware originally considered compiling the older library into their program, but since it’s crypto there are all kind of export regulations that come into play (and believe me, I know about this; I had to research exactly this topic at a previous job).

Hopefully this was indeed an oversight that can be fixed in a future update; otherwise, Snerdware has a problem with no easy solution, and some portion of the blame lies with Apple.

The second issue is a more fundamental problem, and one that affects nearly all Mac developers — Apple has a history of making significant changes to core system services between OS versions. I presume that Apple doesn’t do this maliciously, but there are plenty of developers who will tell you they’ve been burned by Apple changing or dropping technologies. Apparently Snerdware is once burned and twice shy:

Since we’ve previously been seriously “bitten” by Apple’s last-minute major changes to developer pre-releases, we can’t afford to take pre-releases seriously until they are near release. [...]

With the imminent release of 10.5.0, we [...] discovered that, even ‘though OS X’s Sync Services has the same interfaces and we’ve seen no documentation/release notes that document subtle but significant changes in behavior, we see that the behavior has changed in a way that will cause us to make very major changes to Groupcal … Given that Groupcal was working very well with 10.4, this is more than annoying for us, as well. Be angry with Apple, not with us.

[...] It’s things like this that make it much more difficult for an OS X product to be a viable business proposition.

Here I have a harder time finding sympathy. By their own admission they waited until the last minute to check whether the behavior of Sync Services had changed, and now they report to their users that their flagship product won’t be compatible until the first quarter of 2008, and point the finger at Apple?

(Luckily their target market appears to be corporate workgroups running Exchange servers, and those folks are less likely to be rushing out and upgrading to Leopard, so Snerdware may have some time there.)

If my livelihood depended on my product operating correctly with Sync Services, I wouldn’t rely on Apple keeping its behavior unchanged from release to release; I’d be booting up each Leopard seed on a non-critical system and checking things out. Perhaps I’d muster up the resources to send a developer to WWDC, where Apple encourages you to bring your code, try it out on the current seed, and discuss problems with the Apple engineers who have come up from Cupertino for the week for just this reason.

(To be fair, I don’t know that Snerdware didn’t do this; but with the “can’t afford to take pre-releases seriously” comment above, I somehow doubt it.)

And then — well, maybe Sync Services does change in the September seed and I still have a lot of work to do — but wouldn’t I’d be five weeks further along?

If you choose to dance with an elephant, you can approach it one of two ways — you can wait for the dust to settle, and then see what the lay of the land is; or you can try to be more nimble and maneuver around the elephant. We independent developers are supposed to be more nimble… aren’t we?

[But sometimes, even if you're nimble, you can get still stepped on...]

Greenpeace, as I live and breathe, by Grabthar’s hammer, by the sons of Warvan, I shall see your offices and ships destroyed. I shall see you crushed and driven before me. I shall hear the cries and lamentations of your women.

Would it be completely absurd to purchase a refurbished iPhone for only $50 more than the “equivalent” 8GB iPod touch, and thereby get all the extra applications? Not just full-featured calendar, but weather, stock quotes, Google maps, etc. (Plus emergency 911!)

Is that worth $50? Maybe… I’d have to activate it and then cancel the AT&T service, but that seems pretty well documented. Many commenters mocked people who wanted to do this with their $600 iPhone, but for $349 it seems more reasonable. (Plus I’d have something to develop applications for… yeah, right. That’s what I said about the last three Palms I bought, too.)

Bonus notes from perusing the online features guide:

• “[To] quickly type a period and space: Double-tap the space bar.” Cool! Does the iPhone do this too?

• “[To] enter a pause in a [phone] number: Tap [some symbol], then tap Pause.

<

p> Pauses are sometimes required by phone systems—before an extension or password, for example. Each pause lasts 2 seconds. You may need to enter more than one.”

<

p> They took editable contacts out of the iPod touch, and left this in? Hello, McFly?

iPhone Users Find Texting is 2x Slower Than on QWERTY Phones

but which turns out in fact to be more like the “write an egregiously misleading headline and get attention” technique.

Clicking through to the actual release reveals that if you take some frequent text messagers accustomed to physical numeric or QWERTY keypads and have them send six — six! — text messages on the iPhone — well, gosh, it takes them twice as long to do that as on their own phones … which they’re already used to.

(Apparently rubbing the iPhone on your head doesn’t cure baldness in half an hour, either.)

To their credit, they acknowledge this issue, sort of:

We were aware that participants’ prior familiarity with their own phones meant that there would likely be a learning curve associated with text messaging on the iPhone … Although participants were given one minute to familiarize themselves with the iPhone’s touch keyboard, their texting abilities on the iPhone were still at the novice level. [Emphasis supplied.]

So, apparently, they didn’t give the users any kind of advice on how to adapt themselves to the iPhone — the sort of thing any reasonably intelligent new user might do. Such as, oh, I don’t know, watch a video showing how it works?

Nor did they do the obvious followup and see how the users did after a couple of days using the iPhone — since it’s been widely reported that performance improves once the user adapts to the iPhone’s predictive key entry. Wouldn’t a usability research firm be interested in that information as well? Or would it just be satisfied to get a quick result likely to draw attention to itself, and send out a press release?

No, it couldn’t be that. What was I thinking?

• The name itself is significant: not “Switch” but “Get a Mac” — i.e. you can have both.
• The TV ads are funny and make their points without being smug. (I particularly like “Network”, the one with the “new digital camera from Japan”.) But then I’m closer to the fanboi end of the spectrum to start with.
• I’m not so sure about the Mac being a scruffy twenty-something — I guess they’re going for street cred, or whatever the kids say today. Perhaps they’re going for the all-important “Ed” demographic (of which my wife would be a key member) as the actor is the one who played the geek wanna-not-be Warren Cheswick.
• I’m sure people are worried about challenging the bad guys by claiming superiority on the virus front. So far they seem to be walking a careful line and not claiming Macs are virus-free or “bulletproof”. (Oh, and this line: “In order for software to significantly modify Mac OS X, you have to type in your password. You’re the decider.” Priceless.)
• #1 on the list of reasons to get a Mac: “It just works.” Amen. (I wish “design” weren’t quite so high, though.)
• I also like the list refuting reasons not to buy a Mac. One notable omission: “Macs aren’t more expensive” (for what you get); it would be tough to make this case in a few sentences (and tougher still with Dell desperately slashing prices…).

On the whole, it’s good to see Apple making some noise. Now if they can just get the new Intel-based iBook replacements out (before the education buying season)…