Egg Freckles

Installing Mountain Lion Clean

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Since the unveiling of OS X 10.8, people have been asking me if Mountain Lion, which will be distributed exclusively over the Mac App Store this summer, can be burned to a DVD using the same procedure I outlined “Burning a Lion Boot Disc.” The answer is yes. Both the Lion and Mountain Lion installers contain a full Mac OS X installation image suitable for booting a compatible Mac and performing a clean install. All you have to know is how to get at the image.

Purchase and download Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store on any 10.8 compatible Mac running 10.6 or 10.7.
Right click on “Install Mac OS X Mountain Lion.app” and choose the option to “Show Package Contents.”
Inside the Contents folder that appears you will find a SharedSupport folder and inside the SharedSupport folder you will find the “InstallESD.dmg.” This is the Mountain Lion boot disc image you are looking for.
Copy “InstallESD.dmg” to another folder like the Desktop.
Launch Disk Utility and click the burn button.
Select the copied “InstallESD.dmg” as the image to burn, insert a standard sized 4.7 GB DVD, and wait for your new Mountain Lion Boot Disc to come out toasty hot.

If you want to prepare a bootable external USB drive capable of installing OS X 10.8 follow these instructions.

Purchase and download Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store on any 10.8 compatible Mac running 10.6 or 10.7.
Right click on “Install Mac OS X Mountain Lion.app” and choose the option to “Show Package Contents.”
Inside the Contents folder that appears you will find a SharedSupport folder and inside the SharedSupport folder you will find the “InstallESD.dmg.” This is the Mountain Lion boot disc image you are looking for.
Launch Disk Utility and go straight to the Restore tab.
Drag “InstallESD.dmg” the Source field, and drag your external hard drive from the left side of the Disk Utility window into the Destination field.
Check Erase Destination (if present), and begin your restore. (It goes without saying this process will erase everything on your external hard drive.) Once Disk Utility’s restoration is complete you will be the proud owner of a external drive capable of booting and installing Mountain Lion clean.

Once you have created your install media follow these steps to install Mountain Lion clean.

Insert your installation DVD or connect your external boot drive into any 10.8 compatible Mac.
Restart the Mac holding the option key, and choose Mac OS Install ESD as the startup volume.
Once booted from the Mountain Lion installation media you will have the opportunity to run Disk Utility and erase your Mac’s primary hard drive. From the Erase tab select your Mac’s primary hard drive and choose “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” as the format. Before you erase the drive confirm you have a known good backup then click Erase.
With your Mac’s primary hard drive wiped clean it is now time to begin installing Mountain Lion. Quit Disk Utility to go back to the Mountain Lion installer. Choose your Mac’s primary hard drive as the destination, and continue.

Call me old fashioned, but I always format my Mac’s hard drive and perform a clean install when a new version of Mac OS X is released. The arrival of Mountain Lion this Summer will be no different.

It is important that you burn your Mountain Lion boot disc or backup the Mountain Lion installer prior to installing 10.8. If left in the Applications folder the installer will be removed after the Mountain Lion installation is complete. If you are reading this article after upgrading to Mountain Lion all is not lost. A fresh copy of the Mountain Lion installer can always be re downloaded from the Mac App Store by clicking on the Purchased tab with the Option key held down.

Why Apple Does Not Need a Social Network

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Last night Dan Frommer and I had a healthy discussion debating the points of his recent Read Write Web article “iPhone Address Book Fiasco Should Be Apple’s Cue to Build Its Own Social Network.” Dan says that Apple should leverage their success and begin building their own social network. I don’t believe Apple needs a social network to succeed.

They Already Have Our Information

Have you have ever purchased a product from the Apple Store, downloaded music from iTunes, or installed an application on your Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad? If you have Apple knows something about you that is more valuable than all of your wall posts on Facebook, circles in Google+, or tweets in Twitter. Apple knows your credit card number, verified street address, and email address. Apple has more than 125 million credit card numbers on file, and when it comes to making money, that is more than Facebook, Google+, or Twitter can say unless of course you are paying these companies to become an advertiser.

In addition to your payment information Apple knows your purchase history. It is hard to be an Apple customer and buy just one Mac, a single song, or a sole app through their chain of retail stores and online services. When is the last time your purchased something through Facebook, Google+ or Twitter? How many repeat purchases did you make? All companies want profit, but knowing what you ate for breakfast or storing the drunk photos from last night only get a company so far. Apple is already making billions without publicizing the fact they have your drunk photos too.

Trust the Cloud

Tim Cook announced that Apple has over 100 million iCloud subscribers at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference.

We have 100 million users of iCloud — we just launched it in October! This is unbelievable.

That means that Apple has access to over 100 million peoples email, contacts, calendars, reminders, bookmarks, notes, and iCloud documents. They know where you are with applications like Find My Friends, and Find My iPhone, and they know what messages you are sending with iMessage. They have every single photo you take with your iOS devices. It may be true that not all 100 million people are using all of these services, or that Apple is not spying into any of this data, but the information that is there has already been collected. Why does Apple need to start a new social network or buy and existing one if they already have access to the personal information of everyone using their products?

Tough Competition

Even if Apple made a social network for customers of iOS, and OS X they would have a hard time competing with the hundreds of millions of users that sign into Facebook, Google, and Twitter from platforms all over the world. Dan makes the point that Apple can’t ignore the popularity of social networks and community games that sell well in the App Store. He insists that Apple enter the arena with a social network of their own and strive to be the best. Apple can’t be the best at everything. They would risk stretching themselves too thin. Despite how much we might like to see an Apple toaster, vacuum, or social network, Apple does not have the resources to be the best at everything. Their best asset is saying no.

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying ‘no’ to 1,000 things. — Steve Jobs

Apple’s products are the social network. Their stores are the hangouts. Their popularity is the hot topic in the media. Their best bet in social media is to become the dominant platform people use to access Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Building another Ping, MobileMe, or social network is not what Apple does best. Apple builds great products and are already reaping the rewards those products bring in. Starting a social network would just take Apple’s attention away from what they do well, and invite the kind of privacy concerns that go hand in hand with services like Facebook and Google+. Why would Apple risk sharing people’s sensitive information when they already know what people want and sell it directly to the customer? I would rather have Apple continue to make great products for me, then sell me and my information as a product to others.

Limbo

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The second video game I completed over the weekend is called Limbo. Limbo is a puzzle-platform game that was released for the Xbox 360 in July 2010. It has only recently made its way to the Mac. I have been excited to play Limbo since I first saw the concept art over two years ago. Once you see a screenshot of Limbo you will know why it is unlike any platform puzzle game you ever have played before.

Limbo was created by Danish game developer Playdead. The name of their company is fitting for their creation.

[Limbo] is presented primarily in monochromatic black-and-white tones, using lighting, film grain effects and minimal ambient sounds to create an eerie atmosphere often associated with the horror genre. Journalists praised the dark presentation, describing the work as comparable to film noir and German Expressionism. Based on its aesthetics, reviewers classified Limbo as an example of “video game as art”.

If you like challenging platform-puzzle games with a dark and lonesome atmosphere similar to Myst, Limbo might be for you. Just don’t be surprised that when you die, (and you will die often) your character will meet his end in the most violent and cruel ways imaginable.

Limbo follows the story of a nameless boy who awakens in the middle of a dark forest. While seeking his missing sister he encounters various puzzles and traps as he makes his way in between the menacing trees and into an industrial ruin. As is typical of most two-dimensional platform games, the boy can run left or right, jump, climb onto short ledges or up and down ladders and ropes, and push or pull objects. He must manipulate his environment to stay alive, often pushing boxes, floating logs, flipping switches, and enacting perfect timing to avoid chasms, spikes, saw blades, and the weight of oncoming objects.

The game’s second half features mechanical puzzles and traps using machinery, electromagnets, and gravity. Many of these traps are not apparent until triggered, often with deadly consequences. The boy is able to continue at the start of the current obstacle with an unlimited number of retries. As the player will likely encounter numerous deaths before they solve each puzzle and complete the game, the developers therefore call Limbo a ‘trial and death’ game.

Limbo is much more of a puzzle game than an action platformer. The few human characters the boy encounters either attack him, run away, or are dead. Other enemies include a giant spider, and white worms that latch onto the boy’s head and control his direction until removed. When playing Limbo you get the feeling you are very much alone, and since you have no means of attack the best defense when you come across an enemy is to run away and rethink your strategy.

It might surprise you that Limbo with all of its eerie atmosphere has very few sound effects and no musical score. Much of your time playing the game is spent in near silence. You might be tempted to turn on some music or listen to a podcast while playing, but you will miss out the on the emotional suspense and subtle clues the developers have infused into the gameplay.

The game’s story and its ending have been open to much interpretation; the ending was purposely left vague and unanswered by Playdead. It was compared to other open-ended books, films and video games, where the viewer is left to interpret what they have read or seen. Some reviews suggested that the game is a representation of the religious nature of Limbo or purgatory, as the boy character completes the journey only to end at the same place he started, repeating the same journey when the player starts a new game. Another interpretation suggested the game is the boy’s journey through Hell to reach Heaven, or to find closure for his sister’s death.

Your interpretation of Limbo only comes from playing it. Limbo might appear predictable to the casual observer, but each challenge is different than the last. You can rarely depend on skills learned earlier in the game to complete your latest objective. It is because of Limbo’s dark dreamlike tableaus and intriguing challenges that I recommend this game both as a fun puzzle and a work of art. At $9.99 from the Mac App Store¹, Limbo is sure to keep you busy for at least three to six hours, while its silent film effects and unnerving mood will have you coming back for reruns.

A demo for Mac OS X and Windows is available from the Playdead website. ↩

Trine

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Over the weekend I completed two video games instead of filing my taxes, or undertaking more productive pursuits. The first game is a side-scrolling platform adventure called Trine.

The game follows the adventures of three heroes bound together by a mythical crystal force known as the Trine. Only one hero can be on screen at a time, and the player must switch between the three heroes often in order to complete the games various puzzles, obstacles, and enemies.

Game play is similar to Castlevania with elements taken from the Legend of Zelda and Diablo. The game is set in a fantasy world with a very Tolkien feel.

The characters are controlled using directional keys on the keyboard. Aiming is accomplished with the mouse. The left and right mouse buttons perform different attacks, spells, and actions depending on the character in play. The scroll wheel is used for switching between weapons.

The objective of Trine is to progress through the game’s levels while collecting experience points, discovering treasure, and defeating enemies along the way. Experience points provide our heroes with new capabilities. Treasure enhances a heroes existing capabilities. Heavily armed, platform hopping skeletons block the our hero’s way with sword, arrow, and fiery breath. During the course of the game it quickly becomes apparent that the environments, and not the enemies, are the true adversary in Trine. The levels in Trine are filled with spikes, pits of lava, fireballs, giant sharp pendulums, and various other booby traps and puzzles that require the unique skills of one or more of our heroes to overcome.

Our first hero is Zoya the thief. Her bow and arrow is the only ranged weapon in the game, and her grappling hook is indispensable at reaching out of the way areas. Zoya is my favorite character for her mix of combat and maneuverability. She is very versatile. Through the use of power ups her bow becomes a formidable weapon, even at close range, and her jumping ability and agility cannot be beat.

Our second hero is Pontius the knight. He is the teams primary warrior and uses a sword, shield, and sledgehammer for melee attacks. I found myself using Pontius more during the beginning of the game. His powerful melee attacks are useful at dispatching hordes of skeletons, but his lack of maneuverability makes him a poor choice for Trine’s later obstacles.

Our third hero is Amadeus the wizard. His ability to use sorcery allows him to move objects remotely, as well as conjure new objects into existence by drawing their shapes on screen. Initially Amadeus is only able to conjure a single cube-shaped object, but later in the game he can create multiple cubes, planks, and a floating pyramid the thief can latch onto using her grappling hook. Amadeus has no traditional attacks, but he can hurl objects at oncoming enemies. He is a poor choice for close quarters combat, but his telekinesis and ability to change the game’s environment makes him invaluable for overcoming Trine’s most difficult obstacles.

Trine would be an average side-scrolling platform adventure games if it wasn’t for the lush 3D environments and realistic physics our heroes must explore in order to complete their quest. The worlds in Trine are beautiful. After seeing them you will agree with me that 3D landscapes with realistic lighting aren’t just for first person shooters anymore. Part of the excitement of completing a level in Trine is getting to experience the next area. Each level is different from the last, filled with new obstacles and picturesque background scenery that never seems to repeat. If there is one constant in Trine it is the Nvidia’s PhysX physics engine which provides objects and characters with full physics interaction.

Everything in Trine interacts with everything else in a realistic way. Stacks of blocks will topple over with an indiscriminate push. The remains of vanquished enemies fall to the ground with the characteristics of a rag doll. Pendulums swing with added force when pushed. Levers lift with the expected result of additional weight. Trine’s realistic physics make each level seem new every time you play it. On one go around a solitary block might be waiting patiently for our heroes to use its height to reach and otherwise unobtainable platform. On the next restart that block might have moved in the course of battle and be precariously positioned over a pit of lava out of reach of all but the wizard’s telekinetic grasp. It is easy to see how the realistic shifting, sliding, pivoting, swinging, and stacking of objects makes the wizard’s skills of manipulation invaluable, and how his ability to create new objects means that the same obstacle can be overcome in several different ways. Trine is never the same game twice.

Trine takes the standard side-scrolling platform adventure and turns it on its head with a choice of three heroes, upgradable abilities, and a realistic world where everything falls into place. Trine plays like a rich storybook with talented voice acting and a unraveling tale being told to the player in between each level. If there is a downfall to Trine it is that the enemies are not as diverse as the world they inhabit, and the wizard’s ability to conjure stacks of cubes, planks, and pyramids makes some obstacles too easy to overcome. I highly recommend Trine, which can be purchased from the Mac App Store for $0.99 for a limited time. I look forward to playing Trine 2 in the near future, but first I have to file my taxes.

Codecademy

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I am not normally one for New Year’s Resolutions, but this year I thought I would take advantage of Codecademy’s Code Year, and learn JavaScript in 2012. I am not a complete newb. I have been using computers all of my life. I know what a variable is, how to use a string, and when to construct an array. I can troubleshoot most scripting languages that use boolean expressions, and modify more advanced programs in a pinch. My problem is that I have never been formally trained. All too often I find myself wandering through the forest of trial and error when I should be blazing my own trail.

As a visual learner, programming has never come naturally to me. I blame the abstract nature of coding, and my impatience waiting for a compiler. I am much more at home with markup languages, like HTML, CSS, and SVG, that render in realtime, than complicated algorithms that take time to compile. But as computers have gotten faster, interpretative languages have grown more powerful, and development tools have become easier to use my excuses have worn thin. Modern interpretive languages like JavaScript are proving just as powerful as traditional languages like C, and due to the popularity of the world wide web JavaScript is being used to develop everything from desktop widgets to 3D games.

Code Year’s JavaScript course begins with the basics. Each lesson is divided into a series of sections containing a collection of exercises covering a particular topic. Students are encouraged to progress through each module in order building upon the skills they learned in previous lessons through repetition. Early exercises start out slow giving students a chance to become familiar with Codecademy’s built-in console by entering their name and performing simple arithmetic. Later exercises ask students to rely on the skills they recently learned by completing simple logic problems or finding bugs in existing code. At the end of each lesson Codecademy asks students to complete a self-guided project that puts all of their previously acquired skills to the test. New lessons are released each week which students can work on at their own pace. Achievements awarded for completing individual exercises or entire lessons can be shared with friends. Advanced students looking to get ahead can spend their time in between lessons working on the JavaScript course challenge, an interactive BlackJack game.

I have only started my first few lessons is JavaScript, but I can already tell Codecademy is changing the way I think about programming. Their website is clean, friendly, and easy to use. The dialog in each lesson is explanatory, and conversational. If I get stuck hints and suggestions from fellow students are just a click away. My completion of individual exercises is tracked so I can always pick up a lesson right where I left off. Achievements are a nice way of comparing my progress with other users, and Codecademy’s integrated console system is the perfect learning environment. I don’t need any additional applications or tools. It is hard not to recommended Codecademy’s free lessons in JavaScript as a way to get started in programming. I only wish their website was mobile friendly so that I could pickup an exercise or two on the go¹. I highly recommend Codecademy to anyone out their who has never programmed before, or thinks they never will be able to.

If we don’t learn to program, we risk being programmed ourselves… program or be programmed. — Douglas Rushkoff

An iOS application sounds like the perfect way to monetize on Codecademy’s free lessons. ↩

Application Folders

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

My Macintosh has always been a personal machine. No one other than myself uses my Mac, and I control the only user account in Mac OS X. All of the documents stored on my Mac are my own. All of the applications were installed by me. Mac OS X’s user permissions keep my system secure from outside threats even though I am the only one logging in.

For as long as I can remember I have been separating my applications into different folders by category. Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Freehand, and Adobe PageMaker went into the Design subfolder as far back as System 7. Microsoft Office, Simple Text, and AppleWorks went into the Productivity folder during the era of Mac OS 8. By the time Mac OS 9 arrived I was already busy customizing the Apple Menu, Launcher, and DragThing by sorting all of my Applications and Utilities into different categories.

One of the unheralded advantages of the Macintosh operating system is its ability to run applications no matter where they are located. In Windows, most applications have to be installed into a specific directory. In Unix, applications can only be run if they are added to your path. The Mac allows you to run applications under the root level of your hard drive, on your desktop, in your documents folder, or anywhere in between. Many applications can even be launched from external media like CDs, USB hard drives, or network storage.

Mac OS X brought order to the Macintosh operating system by implementing a rigid folder structure. For the first time users were persuaded to keep all of their applications together in one place. The Applications folder under the root level of the primary hard drive is where Mac OS X wants you to store your apps, but there is a second Applications folder few people know about that makes a suitable place for storing personal applications.

If you create a new folder under the root level of your Home directory named “Applications” Mac OS X will give that folder a special icon and treat it like a second Applications folder¹. You can use this folder to store applications you do not want other users to access. Since I am the only user on my Macintosh, I use this second Applications folder for purposes other than privacy.

Mac OS X supports two types of applications, those that require and installer, and those that don’t. The Applications folder under the root level of the hard drive is the default location for applications that come bundled with Mac OS X and those that require an installer. I keep all of my bundled Mac OS X apps, VirtualBox, Lightroom, and the Adobe Creative Suite here². The second Applications folder under the root level of my Home folder is where I keep all of the the applications that can be installed via drag and drop. I keep Camino, Einstein, Firefox, HyperDither, ImageOptim, LaunchBar, and Skype here. The Mac App Store has changed the way I install many of my applications. I no longer drag applications like BBEdit, Marked, Twitterrific, and xScope to my Home Applications folder. I leave them installed in default root Applications folder.

Services like LaunchBar, Spotlight, and the Dock have made separating my applications by category unnecessary, but I still find the time move the applications I can drag and drop into my Home Applications folder. Separating my applications this way makes it easy to reinstall the apps I have purchased outside of the App Store that don’t require an installer. All I have to do is transfer my Home Applications folder from one computer to the next, and the installation of many of my favorite apps is complete.

It is too bad the Finder does not have a special keyboard shortcut built-in for this folder. ↩
The only applications on my Mac that require an install. ↩

Perfect Preferences

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Preferences are the corners we smooth to break-in our applications. Rounding and polishing the rough edges, optimizing our apps to meet our needs. Some preferences offer personal comfort by adjusting font size, tracking speed, or repeat rate. Others allow expression with a choice of color, desktop pattern, or ringtone. A computer’s most fundamental preferences control screen brightness, speaker volume, and energy efficiency. While the interconnected nature of our modern devices makes communication preferences like wireless network, email server, and screen name indispensable.

Applications that perform a single task well are like a straight line with very few rough edges. The path from point A to point B is clear, and the requirements needed to complete the job are straightforward. Very few preferences are needed. But as customers have demanded more features from their applications the line from point A to point B has splintered into a maze full of right angles and sharp corners. The view from entrance to exit is obstructed, and more preferences are required to smooth the corners and make navigation easier.

My two favorite text editors have two different approaches to application preferences. WriteRoom is a straight line text editor designed to minimize distractions. It does not have a formal preference pane to collect application settings. All of the user configurable preferences in WriteRoom are selected from the Menubar. No setting is hidden out of sight. When I write in WriteRoom I tune it like I would an old style radio. Choosing a theme is like selecting the station, adjusting the font size is like changing the volume. Once I have selected what feels right I begin writing. WriteRoom is a great text editor, but it lacks the complex features and advanced preferences to be my dedicated coding environment.

Coding in BBEdit is like configuring a television set. Not an old fashioned television set with two discrete nobs, one for selecting the channel and the other for changing the volume, but a modern television set full of hidden settings for picture quality, input source, and surround sound. BBEdit has a preference pane so expansive that it requires a search field to locate all of its hard to find hidden settings. When I code in BBEdit I know it is capable of handling every task I can throw at it. If I can’t find a preference using the integrated search I can submit a bug report and Rich Siegel will show me the hidden feature I am missing. BBEdit is a powerful application that offers a labyrinth of corridors for completing almost any task.

WriteRoom and BBEdit are two different applications, aimed at two different tasks, with two different approaches to user preferences. WriteRoom is a simple application aimed at distraction free writing with a minimal set of preferences. BBEdit is a complex coding environment targeted at software development with a extended set of settings. They are as different as an old style radio and a modern flat panel TV can be, and yet neither approach is perfect. Applications cannot become so simple that they only perform one task well. Preference panes cannot become so complex that they require a search field to navigate. The perfect amount of preferences falls somewhere in between.

By separating the preferences people use most from the ones they don’t, developers can streamline advanced application configuration and reduce confusion. We are already starting to see this approach with mobile applications that connect to a dedicated web service. Upon first launch users are asked to enter their service credentials. Once those credentials are verified a user never has to set that particular preference again. Instead of wasting screen space with settings we only set once developers can offer us immediate access to the preferences we use most to fine tune our day to day application experience.

The perfect set of preferences is like an office chair. The difficulty of assembly is only experienced once and is analogous to configuring the server settings on a modern mobile app. Once the chair is constructed preferences like height, recline, and rotation are only a convenient handle pull away. When developers design their next application I suggest they separate the preferences users need everyday from the ones they don’t. No one wants to put together their chair twice when all they were really reaching for was a little lumbar support.

The iBooks Platform

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The iPad became the dominant tablet because of the application ecosystem it shares with the iOS and the media ecosystem it shares with the iPod. It has not had a runaway hit of its own. Apple is prepared to leverage the success of the iPad and enter the textbook industry with the same controlled platform strategy that have made the Mac, iPod, and iOS a success.

Apple’s previous successes were won by controlling the platforms they created. The Macintosh rose from the brink of death to become the premier personal computer because of Apple’s tight control over the Macintosh hardware, the Mac OS X operating system, and Xcode suite of developer tools¹. Apple, not Microsoft or any hardware manufacturer controls the Mac’s destiny, and this helps Apple stay one foot ahead of the competition.

The iPod became the world’s most popular music player because of Apple’s control over the iTunes software, and the iTunes Store that delivers music, movies, and television shows straight to customer’s iPods. The innovative, easy to use iPod hardware might have helped get the iPod off the ground, but its ties to accessible digital media through the iTunes ecosystem ensured users remain with the iPod platform.

The iPhone may have been destined to become the world’s most popular smartphone due to the amazing multitouch technology it introduced, but Apple’s control over the iOS operating system, Xcode developer environment, and App Store distribution model have made the iPhone the central member of a new application ecosystem that can’t be beat.

Yesterday’s introduction of iBooks 2 and iBooks Author were significant announcements because they complete the platform pyramid Apple needs to enter the Textbook Market with the same control as its previous successes.

The first point on the pyramid is the iPad. The success of the iOS application ecosystem has already the iPad the dominent tablet², but the iPad’s 9.7 inch screen and multimedia capabilities make it the perfect host for the rich learning experience of modern textbooks. No other tablet has the popularity of the iPad, and no other technology company has the same connection to education as Apple. It is hard to think Samsung, Google, or even Amazon could produce a tablet with the same impact in schools as Apple can.

The second point on the pyramid is iBooks. Taken straight out of the pages of Apple’s iTunes and App Store playbook, iBooks is the one stop shop for users to discover, purchase, and organize their reading collection. iBooks 2 offers support for the kind of interactive experiences Apple needs to sell if they hope to close the cover on paper textbooks.

Introducing an entirely new kind of textbook that’s dynamic, current, engrossing, and truly interactive. A textbook created by publishers using a new authoring tool from Apple. A textbook brought to life by iPad.

If iBooks becomes the same smash hit as iTunes and the App Store, then its easy to purchase and DRM restricted content will keep users coming back to the iPad. It is important to remember that iBooks is only available on devices running iOS, and textbooks can only be displayed on the iPad.

The final point on the pyramid is iBooks Author, an electronic book development environment that makes it easy for almost anyone to create books for the iPad on Mac OS X.

Available free on the Mac App store, iBooks Author is an amazing new app that allows anyone to create beautiful Multi-Touch textbooks — and just about any other kind of book — for iPad. With galleries, video, interactive diagrams, 3D objects, and more, these books bring content to life in ways the printed page never could.

iBooks Author is the Xcode of book creation. It is a free tool provided by Apple for creating content specifically formatted for the iBooks ecosystems. By giving iBooks Author away Apple is lowering the barrier of entry for content creators. Even Amazon, with its long lasting relationship with book publishers, will have a hard time competing with iBooks multimedia textbooks without a content creation application of their own.

As the past has shown controlling the platform matters. Apple is prepared to enter the textbook industry as a dominent player because they control the device, the distribution method, and the content creation tools. No other company can say they own all three. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon might try to follow Apple’s lead, but until they possess a platform pyramid of their own the battle is over before it began. Game, set, match.

Recently Apple has extended their control into the distribution of applications by way of the Mac App Store. ↩
You know you have a dominent lead when your model of tablet is classified in its own category just so that analysts can quantify the market share of competitors. ↩

What's Wrong With Sopa

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I built Egg Freckles as a platform for sharing my experiences with technology. Many of the quotations, and icons I use to tell my story were created by someone else. If you would like to have your work removed from Egg Freckles please let me know, but don’t support SOPA, a dangerous new anti-piracy bill that would give the U.S. government the ability to silent free speech on the internet. If you are a US citizen and would like personal websites like Egg Freckles to remain active please take the time to stop internet blacklist legislation. The life of my MessagePad depends on it.

From the EFF Website:

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, H.R. 3261) is a dangerous new “anti-‐piracy” bill being debated in the House of Representatives. Supporters claim that SOPA targets “rogue” foreign websites that encourage online infringement, but the bill’s vague language would create devastating new tools for silencing legitimate speech all around the web.

In spite of historic opposition from a diverse coalition including civil liberties and human rights organizations, tech industry leaders, security experts, legal scholars, bipartisan legislators, and many more, the bill is moving quickly through Congress, fueled by massive infusions of cash from big content companies.

What can we do to stop this disastrous legislation? It’s time to pick up the phone and call your Representative in Washington, and let her know that we won’t stand for this Internet blacklist bill. Here’s some facts to help her understand why:

SOPA gives individuals and corporations unprecedented power to silence speech online. Under SOPA, individuals and corporations could send a notice to a site’s payment partners, requiring those partners to cut the site off – even if the site could never be held liable for infringement in a U.S. court. Since many sites depend on this revenue to cover operational costs, even one accusation of infringement could be ruinous.
SOPA gives the government even more power to censor. The Attorney General can “disappear” websites by creating a blacklist and requiring service providers (such as search engines and domain services) to block the sites on the list.
SOPA uses vague language that is sure to be abused. The bill targets nearly any site that hosts user-‐generated content, or even just has a search function, by failing to provide protections for legal speech.
SOPA would not stop online piracy. The powerful tools granted to the Attorney General would present major obstacles to casual users, but would be trivial for dedicated and technically savvy users to circumvent.

Please call today and make your voice heard on this important issue. Find your Representative’s number at https://eff.org/sopacall. There are plenty more reasons why SOPA is bad news for the future of the Internet: it will undermine human rights efforts, interfere with important Internet security initiatives, and balkanize the Internet. For more information on these dangers, find our ongoing coverage of the bill at https://www.eff.org.

The Life and Death of Camino

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

By July 2002 Mac OS X was just over one year old, Safari was still several months away, and very few web browsers took advantage of the innovative new features and bold aqua interface of 10.1 Puma, the latest version of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system. Opera looked like it belonged on Windows. iCab looked like it belonged on Mac OS 9. OmniWeb was the first Mac OS X browser developed in Cocoa, but all three lacked a modern rendering engine capable of displaying the world’s latest websites. Mozilla and Netscape weren’t much better. Both were bloated, unstable, ugly, and slow. Internet Explorer had been shipping as the default browser on Macs since 1997, and was the only browser included with Mac OS X. It’s Tasman rendering engine was state-of-the-art when version 5 shipped in early 2000, but since then Microsoft had lost interest, updates were few and far between, and page rendering had slowed to a crawl. Looking back it is hard to think Apple could sell Mac OS X as “the world’s most advanced operating system” without a world class browser, but that is exactly what they were doing during the Summer of 2002.

In late 2001, Mike Pinkerton and Vidur Apparao started a project within Netscape to prove that Gecko could be embedded in a Cocoa application. In early 2002 [Dave Hyatt](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Hyatt), one of the co-creators of Firefox (then called Phoenix), joined the team and built Chimera, a small, lightweight browser wrapper, around their work.

At the time Gecko was a very robust rendering engine, and when it was stripped out of the bloated Mozilla/Netscape suite it ran quite fast. By combining Gecko with the stylish performance of a native Cocoa interface Chimera became a world class browser in the making.

Quick to load, intuitive to use, I learned about Chimera in July 2002 during the release of version 0.4. This was an important update for the Chimera project because it marked the first time Chimera could open a URL from an outside application, and the first time Chimera could load content into new tab without the need of additional windows. The ability to quickly open websites from NetNewsWire in a row of organized tabs instead of a mess of stacked windows motivated me to replace Internet Explorer with Chimera as my default browser that summer.

Hyatt was hired by Apple Computer in mid-2002 to start work on what would become Safari. Meanwhile, the Chimera developers got a small team together within Netscape, with dedicated development and QA, to put together a Netscape-branded technology preview for the January 2003 Macworld Conference. However, two days before the show, AOL management decided to abandon the entire project. Despite this setback, a skeleton crew of QA and developers released Camino 0.7 on March 3, 2003.

The name was changed from Chimera to Camino for legal reasons. Because of its roots in Greek mythology, Chimera has been a popular choice of name for hypermedia systems. One of the first graphical web browsers was called Chimera, and researchers at the University of California, Irvine, have also developed a complete hypermedia system of the same name. Camino is Spanish for “path” or “road” (as in El Camino Real, aka the Royal Road), and the name was chosen to continue the “Navigator” motif.

Safari was first released as a public beta on January 7th, 2003, it became Apple’s default browser beginning with Mac OS X v10.3 Panther on October 24th, 2003. During the Beta period and into 2004 I stuck with Camino because its Gecko rendering engine displayed pages more accurately than the up-and-coming WebKit rendering engine used in Safari. As WebKit’s popularity grew, and developers became accustom to its features, Camino lost much of the dominance it had over Safari. Safari 2.0 was released on April 29th, 2005 as the only web browser included with Mac OS X 10.4. This version was touted by Apple as possessing a 1.8x speed boost over Safari 1.2.4, and a noticeable speed increase over pre 1.0 versions of Camino. Safari would go on to become Acid2 compliant with the release of version 2.0.2 on October 31st, 2005. It would take the release of Camino 2.0 on November 18th, 2009, to reach that same milestone.

After the release of 0.7 progress on Camino slowed as development was taken over by the open source community. The Camino website was moved from the Mozilla Foundation’s domain mozilla.org to the Camino Project’s domain caminobrowser.org. In September 2005, Mike Pinkerton accepted a position at Google where he worked closely with Google’s Firefox team and continued to work on Camino during his “twenty percent” time. Mike would go on to develop the Mac port of Google’s Chrome browser, a direct competitor to Camino.

Camino 1.0, released on February 14th, 2006, was the first browser of the Mozilla family to appear as a universal binary. It included many important new features and advancements like a new tab bar, download manager with pause and resume, built-in ad blocker, history search, and the ability to autofill forms from the address book. Thanks to improvements in the Gecko rendering engine Camino 1.0 also adopted SVG, the <canvas> tag, and JavaScript 1.6, as well as improved CSS 2 and CSS 3 support.

My daily use of Camino stopped with the introduction of Mac OS X 10.4, because of Safari 2.0’s superior Javascript performance and RSS handling. Camino continued to be an important browser for users of older versions of Mac OS X. While Safari 2.0 dropped support for Macintosh operating systems older than 10.4 Tiger, Camino 1.0 continued to support 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4.

Camino improved integration with Mac OS X while Firefox and other browsers were demonstrating their platform independence. Instead of using an independent spell checker, RSS reader, and password manager, Camino uses the dictionary services, Mail RSS reader, and Keychain in Mac OS X. Camino’s Keychain compatibility makes it an excellent second browser because it shares the same saved credentials with Safari. Camino 1.5 introduced session restore on June 5th, 2007, more than four years before Safari would gain the same functionality in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. Because Camino is developed exclusively for Mac OS X it is able to adopt some Mac OS X specific features before any other browser including Safari.

Camino 2.0, released on November 18th, 2009, introduced many new interface features to the browser including movable tabs and tab preview. It was the first Camino release to be Acid2-compliant. Two of my favorite features from Camino 2.0 are the Growl support, and enhanced annoyance blocking features. With Growl you are notified when downloads begin and finish, helping you keep track of the content you want. The enhanced annoyance blocking features allow you to enable Flash animations on a per-site basis, helping you avoid the content you don’t. Camino 2.0 introduced a updated AppleScript dictionary that includes vocabulary for downloading the raw HTML source, or text from any webpage or selection. This feature is still missing from the latest version of Safari, and makes Camino a valuable part of many of my AppleScript workflows. The greatest new feature in Camino 2.0 may be the inclusion of version 1.9.0 of Mozilla’s Gecko rendering engine. It is this rendering engine that allows Camino to pass the Acid2 rendering test, and brings Camino up to date with Firefox 3.0 released over a year earlier.

One year behind Firefox, and more than four years behind Safari, Camino was showing its age even before it reached 1.0. Camino is no longer the world class browser it promised to be in the Summer of 2002. The latest version of Camino, 2.1, was released on November 29th, 2011 and brings Camino up to date with Firefox 3.6 released eleven months earlier. The Gecko rendering engine reached 2.0 on March 22nd, 2011 with the release Firefox 4, but Camino may never grow old enough to adopt it. Starting with Firefox 4 Mozilla announced the end of Gecko embedding, which Camino uses to include the Gecko rendering engine inside of a native Cocoa interface.

While embedding has long been relatively low priority, being officially unsupported is a significant change. As important parts of embedding stop working, core Gecko contributors will longer be fixing them. Such breakages are unfortunately common—in fact, making sure that embedding breakages were resolved was a significant amount of the work that went into the release of Camino 2.0, as well as the upcoming Camino 2.1. Without support for embedding, releases of Camino using newer versions of Gecko—like the one used in Firefox 4—won’t be possible.

The development effort that was used to maintain Gecko embedding is being refocused to rapidly bring Firefox up to par with WebKit browsers like Safari and Chrome. The volunteers who develop Camino are too few to maintain Gecko embedding on their own, or put forth the major effort required to port Camino to WebKit. If nothing is done Camino will continue to receive security and stability updates as long as Gecko 1.9.2 is supported, but it will never see full support for Acid3, HTML5, or CSS3.

Camino will continue to be a viable browser only as long as the web works with Gecko 1.9.2, but as I write this many webpages are passing it by. Earlier this year Egg Freckles adopted a new MessagePad background that is rendered using advancements in CSS3 such as rounded corners and drop shadows. Visitors using the latest version of Camino are greeted with a boxy green frame that shows none of the sleek curves or beveled edges of the MessagePad I am trying to imitate. Even though I still have Camino installed on my computer it fails to qualify as a modern alternative browser less than two months since its last update. I am saddened that Camino must die in the effort to save Firefox, a browser that has gotten just a bloated as the Netscape Suite it once replaced. By losing Camino we will not only see the end of a browser that once made the Mac great, but the end of a development community focused solely on the advancement of a great Macintosh application.