Snow Leopard Will Be Seen at WWDC

Apple's Mac WWDC page gives it away that Snow Leopard and its technologies will take stage at WWDC. Quoting directly from the page,

Provide state-of-the-art media playback, capture, and manipulation of rich media with QuickTime X.

It is important to note that QuickTime X is a Snow Leopard (10.6)-only technology.

Firefox on iPhone is a Bad Idea

I was on Digg this morning when I came across this article (here's the Digg link). Matt Asay, author of CNET's "The Open Road" does have some pretty good points on why Firefox should be on the iPhone, and I completely agree with him on how throwing Firefox onto an N810 isn't really going to bring about wondrous numbers of community supporters, but it is simply not a good idea to let Firefox become an iPhone application.

To set the scene, everyone knows about the iPhone. Everyone's super-excited about the App Stores - users and developers alike - and all its possibilities. Apple's competitors have taken a lot of ideas from the iPhone, and mobile operating systems are all the hype these days (that includes netbooks). As far as I'm aware, the N810 runs Android, for which applications are written in Java.

When I first saw the title of Matt's article ("Why no iPhone support for Firefox mobile beta?"), I thought, Why is this question even being asked? First off, it's obviously going to be a competitor for Mobile Safari (which Apple won't even allow in the app store ), and Firefox's not that fast of a browser, either, in my opinion, compared to Safari. Besides, all iPhone applications are written in Cocoa. Let's see Mozilla trying to rewrite all of Firefox, its plug-in architecture, its support for themes, etc, all in Cocoa Touch. Furthormore, quoting directly from the article, one of the many other reasons that Firefox won't be available for the iPhone any time in the near future is because "it [has] to do with restrictions on run non-SDK code[.]"

Not only that, but it would also provide two completely different SDKs for software developers to chose from: the iPhone SDK and whatever Firefox plug-in developers use. This is really dangerous for Apple. Apple wants in no way for there to be an alternative development SDK if not that of the iPhone - that's why Flash isn't on iPhone, and won't be, either. If a developer prefers Mozilla's way of doing things and wants to target iPhone owners as potential users, there would be a visible drop in terms of iPhone SDK developers and, hence, Mac users (and possibly the number of new Mac developers too).

All in all, Firefox on the iPhone is a really bad idea. Although, idealistically, it sounds nice, Firefox won't be able to live up to its "I'm a fast and customizable browser" promise.

Spotlight and the Finder

There are two things that bother me about Spotlight in the Finder (I've already submitted these to Apple as feedback):

1. If I'm in my Documents folder and I start typing in the Spotlight toolbar item, I'll want Spotlight to start searching within my Documents folder, not throughout my whole Mac. If I want to do that, I'll either go into the root directory or search from the menu bar.
2. Also, when dragging multiple files in a spotlight results window, it is not clear that all the files are being dragged. It looks like only one file is being dragged.

Microsoft's Silverlight Gaffe

I'm not sure whether this could be classified as false advertising or what, but I don't think Microsoft can count megabytes... Perhaps it's that large for Windows, but I'm pretty sure Microsoft's able to update information based on the detected operating system.

Click the image for a larger size.

Snow Leopard Obviously will be Darker

Honestly, how many times must I say it? Snow Leopard will be darker. After a lot of research, it seems I was the one of the first ones (if not the first one) to suggest that Snow Leopard's interface will be darker:

The Original "Pre-WWDC Secrets" Post

A Confirmation when Apple Introduced MobileMe's interface

Another Hint when iTunes 8 was introduced

and now, QuickTime X (image from AppleInsider):

The image may be an artist's rendition, but it's based on reported facts, and what should stand out the most is the black title bar. Besides that, there's also the new iMovie and GarageBand 09 interface elements other people have pointed out.

More Feedback to Apple

Simply put: the Go menu should display what's in the Finder's sidebar, be it along with what's already in the menu or not.

You too can send Apple feedback at Apple's Feedback page.

Picked up my Cocoa Book

Last night (29 February 2009) I went over to a local bookstore to pick up my long-awaited copy of "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X" (3rd edition). The cover is really nice with multiple textures, but I was surprised at how the 3rd edition is just about as thick as the second edition. I ventured into the table of contents for comparison, and I found out that the following chapters were removed:

• Using NSTextView
• AppleScript
• Creating Frameworks
• GNUstep
• Creating Interface Builder Palettes

I understand why the palettes and GNUstep chapters were removed (Interface Builder no longer uses Palettes and GNUstep is somewhat dormant at the moment). In return, a few other chapters were added, most notably on web services, Core Data, and Core Animation.

Of course, it's not just chapters added that counts - a lot of new things have been written, new challenges have been added, and it really seems like a much better book.