Cocoa Crusty

Guess what I got a week ago today?!

That’s right, kids, an Apple iPhone! I got an advance on an already existing technology loan at my place of employment (0% for 18 months?! You can’t beat that!) and purchased it last Tuesday evening after work. I wanted to have a good week of experience with the device before I made my announcement and shared my initial thoughts on the phone.

Well, I’ll go ahead and give you my final thoughts on the phone first. This is one impressive piece of hardware paired with an extremely intuitive and beautiful piece of software. The iPhone has met or exceeded every one of my expectations, and for the price, I am grateful! Thanks, Apple, for an impressive Web enabled phone!

The Good:

I’ll start off with the good of the phone, like any respectable reviewer would. Again, let me say that this device is beautiful and it all starts with the design of the hardware. In keeping with the beautiful design of the iPod, the Apple iPhone has a sleek, slim design that has super sexy curves. The phone is not too big to hold up to your dome and using it as a phone or as a “PDA“.

The touchscreen works flawlessly. The screens scroll so smoothly that it makes you want to cry. The soft-keyboard is extremely easy to type on once you realize you can’t use the side of your thumbs like you can on a physical QWERTY keyboard like most smartphones have. You have to use the tips of your thumbs to type, but with the visual response you get when pressing a key, it becomes a natural movement.

The version of OS X that runs on the phone has the same sexy look that you would expect from a Macintosh machine. The icons, backgrounds, menus, etc. all look very “Apple’ish” and are extremely easy to use and understand. The applications that are installed by default on the iPhone are impressive as well. The iPhone version of Google Maps is very nice. It allows you to interface your contacts locations with the map as well as get driving directions to and from locations. The other applications are impressive as well with their Dashboard Widgets look and feel.

And, the big kicker for me is the Safari Web browser that ships on the phone. A majority of the applications on the iPhone are powered by the Safari rendering engine using AJAX. They flow so smoothly and work the way you would expect a Web application to, except you use your finger to maneuver around instead of a mouse. The way you increase and decrease the browser window with two fingers is extremely cool. And, of course, all third-party applications for the iPhone use Safari and an Internet connection so you will spend a majority of your time in Safari when using the iPhone.

So, to wrap up “The Good” in one phrase, “It Flows”. From the main menu screen to the contacts, phone, settings, and basically every screen, the experience just flows seamlessly from one experience to another. Over all, this is the best cell phone I have every used and I am very happy that I finally made the purchase.

The Disappointing:

I wouldn’t say there is anything “bad” about the iPhone, but there are some disappointing aspects. First of all, there is no support or development kit for native third-party applications. This means that all third-party software has to be accessed via the Safari Web browser and the Internet. This in itself is not such a bad thing since the Web browser and Internet capabilities of the phone are better than other cell phones and smartphones on the market today. However, it would be nice to be able to compile and install some native applications on the iPhone, whatever they may be.

There isn’t support for Adobe Flash on the device, as a standalone application, or within Safari. This kind of limits your multimedia experience on the iPhone to movies from your iTunes library or the limited YouTube library available through a preinstalled application on the phone.

You can’t sync the phone with your machine/laptop via Bluetooth. All syncing of music, movies, photos, contacts, and calendar is done through the iTunes software installed on your PC or Mac. This is kind of frustrating because I don’t want to plug my phone up to my machine every time I want to sync. Also, this limits your ability to sync your phone via proximity detection like I used to do with my Nokia E61 (Yeah, she was a good phone…).

Another thing I would have liked to see on the iPhone is a terminal application for SSH’ing into remote *NIX servers or an RDP client for accessing into remote Windows machines or servers. I am sure there are a number of other applications I would like to see on the iPhone, but these two would really get the “I’m an administrator” parts off to a good start.

Conclusion:

I have done a lot of research on the iPhone. Everything in the “disappointing” category I knew about prior to buying the device. I could go on and on about the device, it’s capabilities and it’s limitations, but I feel this is a good stopping point for my public “I have an iPhone” announcement and review. I will be posting some more on this device in the days and weeks ahead, and hope to develop a Web application geared towards the iPhone in the coming months. I’ll keep you posted on my progress with the phone and any newsworthy items I find on the Internet related to the iPhone. Final words: I love my iPhone!

Until next time…

I have been a long time Firefox fan and have thoroughly enjoyed my experiences with it and the many extensions available to extend its uses. I started using Firefox back in the early days, maybe even prior to the 1.x release, on the Windows platform. I then used Firefox on FreeBSD, different Linux distributions, and now on my current favorite OS, Mac OS X. Again, I have been very happy with my Firefox experience, but now a new contender has entered the ring.

I have been doing a lot of Web development these days and have been testing my designs and applications in multiple Web browsers on multiple platforms. During this testing phase (QA), I have been using the most stable release of Apple’s Safari Web browser on Mac OS X. I have got to say that Safari is fast to load (firing up the application) and extremely quick at rendering Web related content. Needless to say, I have been very impressed with Safari in the little amount of time I have been using it on OS X.

A week or so ago (maybe it was longer), I noticed that Apple had released a public beta of its Safari web browser, version 3.0. This release was for both Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. That’s pretty impressive! Today, I finally got around to downloading the public beta of Safari for Windows and have been test driving it. So far, I’ve had some issues… Here’s the scoop.

On my box at work, I was able to install Safari but I was unable to launch it as an unprivileged user. Even if I used an administrator account to set the security permissions for the C:\Program Files\Safari\ folder, the application would still not launch. It would immediately throw up an error report for me to sen to Microsoft. I was able to launch it as an administrator, but not as an under privileged user. I assume there are some Registry Keys that need some sort of permissions changed for a normal user…

On my Windows box at home, I was able to install the browser and run it fine… Yes, I run as a local admin on my home Windows box. Bad in practice, I know, but I do it. I currently use the box all of about once a week.

But, here’s my gripe with Safari and my home box. I can run the application without a problem. I use dual monitors on my Windows box and from time to time choose to browse on the secondary monitor while something else is running on the primary. Guess what?! This works fine as long as I don’t maximize the Safari window on the secondary monitor. When I do maximize the window, the browser window disappears and I am only left with the remnants in my Windows Task Bar. I have to kill Safari and start over to get the browser window back. Strange, I know.

But, I’m not giving up. I am very impressed with the speed of Safari on my Mac, and will continue testing and working with Safari on Windows. If Safari has, or will have, community/vendor provided add-ons, similar to Mozilla applications, I may have just found myself another, faster web browser. I still have a lot of research and playing to do. I’ll keep you updated.

Until next time..

While I was at home working last week, I needed to make a phone call to a business that I have listed in my ever so handy Address Book on my laptop. While I was looking at the business’ contact information, I right (ok, Command-clicked) clicked on the phone number and saw an option to dial the number with Skype. Guess what?! That’s what I did!

I know I will get slammed for this, but I like Skype. I have used it a number of times while out and about to make calls that would otherwise cost me cell minutes. Outbound calls for me are free due to my annual subscription. I use my Bluetooth® headset with my laptop to make Skype calls so it is really no different than talking over a cellular network… Except that your calls are encrypted and bouncing along a peer-to-peer network via a proprietary protocol.

Anyway, I was impressed that I could right click contacts in my Address Book and make the call from right there. No dialing numbers, no opening Skype and then dialing the number, just a simple right-click (or Command-click if you will). If you use Skype on your Mac and also take advantage of Apple’s Address Book contact management application, give a contact a right-click (I know, I know, Command-click) and let the dialing begin!

Until next time…

I have been doing a lot more design and development lately. It’s awesome working on my 13-inch MacBook along side my 24-inch Gateway LCD Display (model FPD2485W). This is an extremely nice setup and very comfortable, mostly due to the Apple Bluetooth® Mighty Mouse, Apple Wireless Keyboard, and my Griffin Elevator.

But, since I am doing more design these days, and I want all of my images and photos to have somewhat consistent color across multiple monitors, I decided that display calibration was in order. I looked around at some devices for performing display calibration and they all seemed a little more expensive than what I was willing to pay.

So, as I was walking through Office Depot a month or so ago, I spotted a little gadget over in the software section of the store. The device is called huey™ by Pantone® and retails for $89.99.

When I got my huey™ device home and started calibrating my laptop’s display, I was pumped. Then I wanted to calibrate my gateway display. Well, out of the box the huey™ will only calibrate one display. I did some research on the Pantone® web site and found out that they have a software upgrade that will allow you to calibrate multiple displays with the same huey™ device. The software, huey™ PRO is available as a download on the Pantone® web site for $39.99.

The device is cool in that it constantly monitors the room’s light and automatically adjusts the color settings of your displays to the appropriate levels to keep the colors where they need to be. It also prompts you to calibrate your displays periodically when it believes the previous calibration has expired. The calibration process is quick and easy and well worth the few minutes it takes to keep your colors looking fresh and your details popping!

With the upgraded software and the huey™ device I bought from Office Depot, I can now calibrate both of my displays and keep my colors consistent across both of my monitors. If you’re looking for an entry level calibration device for your monitors or displays, give huey/huey™ PRO a try and see what your colors are actually supposed to look like.

Until next time…

I have been a long time Zend Studio user for developing web sites and PHP applications. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am a huge fan of the Zend development environment. It is a multi-platform application (thanks to Java), has excellent code completion and highlighting capabilities, and is overall a well designed IDE. But, some of its turn-ons are also turn-offs.

Java is extremely bulky. I have never been a fan of Java applications. Now, there’s nothing wrong with Java or Java based applications, but I just haven’t ever particularly liked Java apps. I prefer an application that is native to the operating system I am running, which these days is Mac OS X on an Apple MacBook. When I used to run FreeBSD exclusively, I preferred applications that would run natively on FreeBSD. But, I was able to run Zend Studio on FreeBSD due to the fact that it runs in a Java Environment. See what I mean?! The turn-ons are turn-offs and vice versa… It’s like a catch 22.

Zend Studio also has a ton of useful features for developing web sites. Utilities related to SQL and debugging, etc. Basically, a lot of features I never used. I only used the development portions of the environment so I really don’t know how good the other utilities in the Zend Studio are for development.

So, what if you could have an application with an excellent development interface with code highlighting and completion, built-in previewing of your applications, a graphical CSS editor, a built-in SSH client for connections to a remote server or a local shell, a PHP manual/language reference, and books. That’s right… books! And, what if this development environment was developed to run natively on Mac OS X?! Sound good (to you Mac users, anyway)?!

Well, now is your chance. This software may not be new to you, or the general public as a whole, but it is to me. The application is called Coda (cool web site, eh?!), developed and distributed by Panic, Inc. Imagine everything you love about Zend and runs natively on your Mac… Plus it has books! That’s right… books!

I have been using Coda for a little over a month. The interface is extremely sexy (well, it does run on Mac) and intuitive. The way sites are displayed is extremely nice with a screenshot preview of the site you have defined. It is a lot more fun to choose a site to work on based on a home page preview than from a list. Not real functional, but definitely a plus in the eye-candy department. Having all of the built-in features (that I described earlier) at your disposal within this easy to use window is extremely helpful, and helps reduce desktop clutter.

So, since I have been using Coda, I have been very impressed with the IDE. It is intuitive (which I said before), extremely sexy (which I said before), robust in the functionality arena, and it has books… Have I mentioned the books?!

Now, I haven’t used the books, but I have “virtually” thumbed through them. Well, it’s really only one book but it is divided into three parts: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The book these subsets are from is titled The Web Programmer’s Desk Reference from No Starch Press. It is extremely handy to have these references right in your development environment for easy access when you need to know what property X does in CSS, or what arguments function Y accepts in JavaScript.

And my last words are this: If you’re a Mac OS X user and also a web developer, I highly recommend you give Coda a try. There is a “Try Before You Buy” download available from the Panic web site (again, nice web site). Give it a try and let me know how it compares to your current development environment. I’d be interested to see what a.) other development environments and tools you all use, and b.) what you think of Coda.

Until next time…