bada 1.2 is Smoking Hot! (Ménage à Trois Now Possible!)

October 25, 2010

I just saw what’s coming in bada 1.2, and wow… It is SMOKING HOT~! (Sorry — I can’t say what they are yet — I must wait until the public announcements.)

Looking at just how cool some things are in bada, and how well put together the bada SDK is, I want to make a prediction: Samsung is going to pwn Apple. Yep. iOS will get completely pwned.

Now, I know that’s a ways off. I don’t expect to see Samsung smoke Apple immediately. However, they will eventually.

I see a key difference between Samsung and Apple: Samsung is an enabler, where Apple is a limiter.

bada has some very cool things that are going to help blur the differences and knock down barriers between your mobile phone and your desktop. You will be able to operate seamlessly between the two.

Now, combine that with the power to sync your desktop with a server, and the ability to connect your mobile to a server, and you’ve got a super-sexy-swinging-techno-ménage à trois!

It’s only going to get sexier for bada.

Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Ryan

Mac Store Coming

October 22, 2010

Is this a good or bad thing? The Mac store will be the OS X analog to the iPhone App Store. If it’s as shoddy and poorly organized with no real ability to sort through the store like it is on the iPhone, then it’s going to be just another excuse to drink the kool-aid. I suspect that it will be just that though. Given that they are marketing thing like, “Buy and download. And even redownload.”, there’s really no hope. That’s an extremely basic feature that is widely prevalent all over the Internet. Yet in the Mac store it’s a feature? Something is very wrong.

But the hype doesn’t stop there.

The easiest installation ever.

The Mac App Store revolutionizes the way applications are installed on a computer — it happens in one step. Enter the same iTunes password you use to buy apps on iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. And within seconds, your new app flies to your Dock, ready to go.

Huh? Ahem… “Revolutionizes”??? This is a serious WTF moment. Didn’t you mean to say, “We’re copying the Ubuntu Software Center and hyping it as innovation!” That software goes back to 1998 in one form or another. 12 years later?

My biggest worry is that this will end up locking down the Mac the same way the iPhone is locked down. Given the changes in the new OS X (Lion), I don’t think my fears are totally unfounded. Apple has a good history of greed and contempt for its users and developers.

Apple has a lot of ground to cover if they plan on releasing something that’s actually good, and not just a kool-aid excuse like so much of what they do. They’ll need to compete with stores that have been in business for a very long time.

To top it all off, they’re going to be competing with businesses that have been strong supporters of Apple like Download.com (which absorbed VersionTracker.com, one of the top Mac download sites). It seems like Apple is determined to eat every portion of the “apple pie” and not share anything. This is in stark contrast to other companies that have thrived on encouraging third parties to participate. It looks like Apple just wants participation until such a point as they can take over themselves.

But they are doing a good job of it. They’re focusing on taking over retail and limiting access. This really is the best way to choke out competition. Got to hand it to them, for a bunch of greedy pigs, they’re smart greedy pigs.

I have a hard time believing that this is truly going to be a good thing in the long run.

Leave a Comment » | Apple, OS X | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ryan

More Censorship in the iTunes Store

October 18, 2010

I went to the iTunes store to buy a South Park episode, season 5 episode 3. Well, you can find the season list at Wikipedia here. Go to the iTunes store and try to find it. It’s not there. That episode is “Super Best Friends” and it has Mohammed in it.

Seriously. WTF? South Park aims to offend everyone that has no sense of humor, but they can’t offend Muslims? Lame. Just lame. Who cares?

There is just no end to how lame Apple can be.

1 Comment | iTunes | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by Ryan

MinimalBrowser in Visual Studio in Less than 60 Seconds

October 15, 2010

Creating a browser in less than 60 seconds? Impossible? Not in Visual Studio!

Well, I needed to get more screen real estate out of my browser for a project where I needed to view HTML files. But, Firefox, Chrome, IE and Opera just take up too much space. So, I started Visual Studio. Created a Windows Forms project. Dropped in a WebBrowser control. Toggled the border to Sizeable Tool Window. And built it. Done. That was good enough for what I needed. Zero code. None. Here’s what the code looks like:


   1:  using System;
   2:  using System.Collections.Generic;
   3:  using System.ComponentModel;
   4:  using System.Data;
   5:  using System.Drawing;
   6:  using System.Linq;
   7:  using System.Text;
   8:  using System.Windows.Forms;
   9:  
  10:  namespace MinimalBrowser
  11:  {
  12:      public partial class Form1 : Form
  13:      {
  14:          public Form1()
  15:          {
  16:              InitializeComponent();
  17:          }
  18:      }
  19:  }

Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Ryan

Kind of Back, but with IRC & #monotouch

October 12, 2010

If you aren’t in the irc.gnome.org #monotouch chatroom, then you’re missing out. Massively.

I’m at a stumbling block right now, and have been for about 3 weeks now. I spent half of that on other work and the other half muddling around in a spaghetti mess of rainbow colored unicorn feces.

So, at one point there, I finally got into the IRC #monotouch channel, as I’d exhausted pretty much every avenue I could find. (There may be an answer out there, but when you’re dealing with a relatively small pool, those results get lost in Google.) And y’know what? IRC has turned out to be pretty helpful there.

No details for now. But I’ll post back on the topic once I have thing solved. There’s no point in posting until then.

Leave a Comment » | MonoTouch | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Ryan

Taking a Break from MonoTouch & iPhone Development

October 2, 2010

Well, other work presses, and I must take a break.

However, I think I may have made some significant progress last night. But I won’t know until I can get back to it probably on Monday or Tuesday. Well see.

Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Permalink
Posted by Ryan

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.