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.

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.

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.

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:  }

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.

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.

Here are the myths he debunks:

1. The next Mono version is co-developed with Microsoft
2. Mono development is dead
3. Mono lacks features found in Microsoft.NET
4. Mono can “sneak onto” your system without your knowledge
5. Canonical are pursuing a pro-Mono agenda, and are responsible for it being “pushed” in Debian
6. The System.Windows.Forms namespace is protected by Microsoft patents
7. MonoDevelop contributors removed GPL code from MonoDevelop, in an attack on the GPL
8. Mono won’t run random Microsoft.NET apps anyway, so isn’t really cross-platform
9. Mono on Android is a terrible idea which will be super slow
10. Mono isn’t really Free Software
11. We don’t need Mono because we have $LANG
12. Mono apps are all slow, and crash your computer, and stuff
13. Ubuntu’s default GTK+ themes require Mono

I’ve posted in the MonoTouch forums here. However, getting answers there is rare. I’m starting to feel like I’m alone in there almost.

I even tried a clean reboot. No luck. Error still occurs.

[BaseType (typeof(NSObject))]
interface SomeName {…

Throws this error:

The type or namespace name ‘BaseType‘ could not be found. Are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?

Of course I’ve checked, and everything seems to be just perfect. Even in a project with nothing but that.

I’ve even added “using System.Runtime.InteropServices” and everything else including the kitchen sink. Still not found.

UPDATE:

After more time that I’d care to talk about, I finally found this. It basically says that you don’t compile the API def. file; you only pass it to btouch. Sigh… Trivial.

Try this (Don’t link assemblies):

1. Double-click the project to open the options.
2. Click iPhone Build.
3. Under Linker behavior choose “Don’t link”.
4. Compile again.

That solves the problem when you are using an external library with gcc_flags to import the external library. i.e. It won’t link and will puke out some bizarre error that has no meaning. Here’s an error I received:

ld: ldr 12-bit displacement out of range (5332 max +/-4096) in
_AudioServicesPlaySystemSound$stub in _AudioServicesPlaySystemSound$stub

_AudioServicesPlaySyste3mSound has no relevance or bearing on anything. Likely it’s just the point where the linking went wrong, i.e. where the 5332 is over the maximum of 4096.

Here’s some Apple documentation for AVFoundation constants. You may need to be logged in to see it.

Anyways, here’s the MonoTouch AVAssetExportSession.OutputFileType docs. Note this:

public virtual string OutputFileType  { set; get; }

It’s a property and takes a string. So, recall the Apple docs and this:

AVFileTypeQuickTimeMovie

The actual value is “com.apple.quicktime-movie”. The constant though cannot be used in MonoTouch as there are no “constants” in the same sense/way/manner as there are in Objective-C. Instead, you need to use an AVFileType enum, which is a string, which corresponds to one of the correct values, like “com.apple.quicktime-movie”.

The Objective-C way appears to be somewhat messy coming from C#. But the way Objective-C uses constants is analogous to how C# uses enums. Enums just seem to be neater and tidier than a jumble of constants. But once I see how things work there, it finally starts to make sense.

Anyways, to assign the OutputFileType to an AVAssetExportSession (export), any of the following are ok:

export.OutputFileType = "com.apple.quicktime-movie";
export.OutputFileType = MonoTouch.AVFoundation.AVFileType.QuickTimeMovie;
export.OutputFileType = AVFileType.QuickTimeMovie;

I hope that clears up some confusion for someone. It’s pretty trivial once you know it.