iPhone consumer polling app - interesting

Vote for your preferred iPhone fix: Most wanted ever | Please fix the iPhone.

Don't forget:

1. Cut, copy, paste.
2. Search.
3. Sync with Google Calendar and Contacts.
4. External keyboard.

However, do note that many of top requests are silly. (In that they require new technology or address things that the App Store could provide if we had push notification.)

Safari - still a 2nd class client in Google land

Firefox 3 isn't bad on my MacBook, but it still pegs the CPU on my G5 iMac (PPC). The Mozilla team broke PPC support with FF 3, and I guess they're not going to fix it.

So I'd like to make more use of Safari. Problem is, Safari is still a 2nd class client in Google-Land.

Today I tried using Safari with Blogger in Draft. The results looked ok and first, but on review line feeds are missing. An old problem, still there.

Google has a lot of work to do before Safari is a good alternative to FF. Of course even their own Chrome browser failed when I tried it with Google Docs and Spreadsheets, so Safari's not entirely alone.

Google Lab for Google Apps and the Google Solutions Marketplace

Rumor of a "TinyURL like" service for Google Apps gradually led me to the "Google Labs" zone in the Google Solutions Marketplace:

Google Solutions Marketplace - Vendor Profile: Google Labs:

... Google is making it easier for business customers and schools using Google Apps to also take advantage of our innovations and ideas that aren't quite ready for prime time. We encourage your organization to experiment with the Google Labs features listed below to improve how you communicate and collaborate.

These features all are built by Googlers, hosted on Google App Engine, and domain administrators can install them into their Google Apps account by clicking 'Add it now'...

I tried out the "Short Links" Lab service on our family Google Apps domain.

You begin by defining a subdomain, like "sl" as in "sl.mycustomdomain.com". I clicked "activate" and waited ... and waited ...

Just as I was about to give up the Short Links service appeared on my service setting list.

It's not a TinyURL like service at all! It just lets you create redirects. So, for kateva.org for example, I could redirect "sl.kateva.org/news" to www.faughnan.com/news.html.

Well, that's nice, but not a terribly big deal if you own a domain.

So what else is in the Google Solutions marketplace? Mostly consulting services, but the list of migration and sync solutions is interesting. It includes Spanning Sync, which I use (five star rating there, it really is pretty good).

As of today there are 16 Solution Marketplace entries that reference the iPhone, though most of them have little to do with the iPhone. Not so interesting there ...

The curious story of AAC support - why not?

My SONY car stereo plays non-DRMd AAC tunes, as does my wife's BlackBerry and, I think, my old Nokia.

Why not? AAC is a non-Apple music format, as "standard" as MP3.

So here's the mystery. Why don't the iPod's competitors (not least the Zune) support AAC? I don't think it's that costly to license.

At the Target store, for example, I found a Creative Zen player with AAC support. On their web site however there new "ZEN Mosaic" lacks AAC support. You have to dig down to learn that the ZEN X-Fi and ZEM do have AAC support.

Sandisk has no AAC support in any model.

We have very little DRMd music, but a lot of AAC encoded media. I'd consider a ZEN player for my daughter if it were half the cost of a Nano.

So why so little AAC?

iPhone tips: reboot after updates and Starbucks access

Via Gruber, I learn that AT&T hotspots (including Starbucks) have finally launched their long promised iPhone access service with a tedious connection process:

Accessing AT&T Wi-Fi | Wireless from AT&T, formerly Cingular

1. Select 'attwifi' from the list of available networks
2. Enter your 10-digit mobile number and check the box to agree to the Acceptable Use Policy. Tap 'continue'
3. You will receive a text message from AT&T with a secure link to the AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot. You will not be charged for the text message. The SMS link will only be valid for 24 hours at the location it was requested. Another request must be submitted when using another hotspot location.
4. Open the text message and tap on the link for 24-hour access to the AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot

It's of greater interest to iTouch users and users without 3G access.

On an unrelated topic I've come across vendor recommendations to reboot the iPhone after every app update - esp. for users with several App Store products. Based on personal experience I think that's excellent advice.

The Brother MFC-7820N and Mac Leopard 10.5

When upgrading OS X , the cost of the OS is the least of your expenses. There's often software to be replaced [1], an immense amount of time lost to debugging , and the risk that hardware will need to be replaced.

I figured my 3 yo multi-function Brother MFC-7820N was at particular risk. Of course the paper feed has been having trouble, so maybe it's near the end of its lifespan anyway (versus the LaserWriter 360 that preceded it and would have worked for another 20 years if I'd been able to find toner).

In fact the printing worked out of the box with native drivers. There are supposedly native drivers for OS X fax send as well, but I haven't tested that.

After the 10.5.5 update Image Capture even found the device and could drive a scan, but that might have been a residual effect of the 10.4 install. I don't know if that would always work.

The 10.5 update deactivated the Brother "control center" that enables the push-button scan to server feature [2]. Happily, there's a great article on how to restore this functionality in 10.5.5: Inspired by I-57- Brother MFC-7820N and Mac Leopard 10.5 .

Briefly, you download the latest drives from Brother's MFC download site, install, then use "DeviceSelector" to point to your network device. See the Inspired article for details.

I also did a firmware update using Brother's Java updater. I had to reset the printer but power cycling it, but then the update worked well. Remove the phone line (!!) to prevent dangerous interruptions, don't pull the power line, don't mess with your Mac during the update. I'll see if this helps with some printer quirks (such as having to power cycle after scanning to restore printing!).

Credit to Brother for continuing to provide drivers for the scanning button. I don't care for how the software works (basically running an obscure server on the desktop, doubtless a big security hole), but it is a very nice feature [2, again].

[1] Actually most of my old software worked fine with 10.5.5, even s/w that didn't work with 10.5.1.
[2] Why doesn't anyone sell a scanner with embedded Linux that would scan a PDF to a thumb drive?

How to use OS X iCal to sell Microsoft Vista

A few people have complained that Vista is slow.

Personally, I've never touched Vista. I'm willing to bet though, that nothing on Vista could be anywhere near as slow as OS X Leopard's iCal calendaring application. Calendars that were speedy and responsive on Windows 98 can crush a modern OS X 10.5 desktop.

Here's how to sell a Vista solution using OS X:

1. Start with a set of calendars that hav a few thousand events distributed across multiple calendars and iCal subscriptions [1]. (What, your life isn't that busy? Imagine what Obama's calendar looks like.)
2. Use the "period" hack to give Leopard iCal a "list" or "agenda" view of events.
3. Select a set of, say, 50, events from the list view. Using the context menu, move them to a large calendar with a thousand or so events.
4. Go to bed. If you're luck the fifty events will be moved by morning.
   

I remember how awed I was when the hospital I was studying at bought an 80386. Did they really need that much computing power?

That 80386 could have chewed through a few thousand calendar events in no time. Twenty years later a computer with roughly 400 times the power takes over 50 times longer to complete a similar task.

A 20,000 fold decrease in software efficiency is quite an achievement.

Maybe we don't need to worry about the Singularity after all. At the rate we're going the hardware of 2028 will struggle to add single digit numbers.

So what's wrong with OS X and iCal?

There's no easy answer. Apple follows their own set of priorities, and as long as their share price is relatively strong that won't change. In this case I suspect Apple chose a data store architecture that was consistent with Spotlight searches and their own internal aesthetics, rather than a data store that ... you know ... could actually ... perform. Beyond that there must be some nasty OS design constraints and bugs; even the slowest possible data store should be faster than this.

As an Apple customer I'm hoping for great sales of Windows 7 (aka Vista 2.0). Apple needs more fear.

Update 11/2/2008: Bento is just as slow as iCal. I think the data architecture must be the performance killer.

[1] This would be typical of someone migrating from a Palm or Outlook environment. iCal doesn't have the concept of tags or categories, so Palm categories become iCal calendards.