The world’s supply of brilliant-the-first-time designers and can-figure-anything-out engineers is not nearly vast enough. While the ranks of folks who think they’re the former is exponentially higher than the folks who think they’re the latter. As an industry where the two sides are so co-dependent on each other, that either group would think of the other’s role as trivial is beyond ridiculous.
Given my recent job acquisition, I’ll be spending quite a bit of my working hours booting into the Ubuntu Linux distribution directly. I don’t think I’ll be leaving OS X behind completely (need to keep my iPhone full of recent podcasts!), but I thought I would document the things that I’m already missing about using OSX.
Campfire Theme for Colloquy - At Canonical, we spend quite a bit of our time sorting things out and having meetings via IRC. On a Mac, my preferred IRC client is Colloquy, specifically because of the Campfire based theme that Phillip Toland put together pointed out to me via his blog post.
Safari 3 - For my money, the best web browsing experience on any platform is Safari 3. It’s got great memory management, Webkit is a fantastic rendering engine, and the interface is simple and non invasive.
Twitterific - More and more, Twitter is becoming the place that I go for recent news and events. I knew before the radio or television told me that Bernie Mac had passed away, not to mention getting the heads-up on the new iPhone firmware so that I could start my laborious download process. Twitterific on the mac absolutely nails the twitter experience for me, because when I bring my attention back to the app, it has stored all the tweets since I last focused on it in easy to parse format. The favorite -ing and link out shortcuts are just icing on that already delicious cake.
Interface consistency - It’s a hard thing to detail, but I know that in any Mac app, when I do a Command + Comma, I get the preferences page for that app and that’s just not something I’ve found on the Gnome desktop. I’m unsure if that is because of the differences between apps built in / for GTK, or if it’s more-so a result of the independent Mac community being so devoted to the Apple / Mac OS HIG.
I know this may come across as whining, but there are plenty of things I prefer about the Ubuntu / Gnome / Linux desktop over the Mac OS X Desktop. I’ll revisit these things in another post.
I also understand that the open source community expects me to put my time into the places I’m complaining about, so rest assured that I’ve already begun a bit of work on a revised default theme option for Ubuntu that I plan to have ready sometime a bit later this year.
I recently became interested in the Bazaar version control system (it could also be called a distributed version control system similar in some ways to Mercurial or Git). I’ve used Subversion for a year or two now, feel very comfortable at every step in the process. There are two ways that Subversion didn’t really suit me:
No offline commits - Occasionally I find myself without internet access, and because Subversion is centralized, any work that I do locally doesn’t get committed into revisions. This is especially painful if you make several changes to an existing site or application, and find out that after you commit them you’d like to only perform a portion of those changes.
Merging and working with others is painful - I know that different people have different opinions about this, but for me, using Subversion in any sort of multiple team member project is painful. At one shop I worked at, three different people were often making commits to a repository several times an hour, so that often when I would submit my changes, I found out that one of the other team members had recently changed that file. All this would get me is a nervous tick, and extra time spent trying to sort out were exactly the other persons changes were so that I could integrate my new code.
I know what you’re thinking though, “Doesn’t Subversion beat Bazaar in working with others since everyone already knows Bazaar?” But what you don’t realize is that with a few small changes, the commands to use Bazaar are very similar to the ones every one is already familiar with Subversion.
Setup and permissions are painful - This could be just an extension of my limited understanding when I initially began setting up Subversion repositories, but setup of the Subversion server can often be the most painful part of using Subversion, and while this is typically a one time struggle (at least only one time per project) there was still a ton of pain to be felt.
Solution? Find a better tool!
Now, I’m not the guy to ask about the finer points of the debate over which DVCS system to use, I’m sure Git is awesome, and I’ve heard great things about Mercurial as well, but my newfound employer is using Bazaar, so I’ve been delving into that world.
As time permits I’ll post a second time about Bazaar detailing how to actually get started, but for now this 5 minute walk through will get you started on the path to version control delight.
As you almost certainly already know if you know me personally, I’ve recently accepted a position with Canonical Ltd. caretakers of such wonderful open source projects as Ubuntu (Linux for human beings) as well as Bazaar (Version control for human beings). You may be sensing a theme here, but I’m excited to be working for a company focused on changing the world for human beings.
I’ll be doing some usability and interface work, along with front end development, and maybe, just maybe a bit of python while I’m at it. I’m working with an internal team dubbed “Online Services” which sounds a bit generic, but trust me when I say the team itself is remarkable.
I fear that I don’t have a complete understanding of the product we’re actually going to build, but suffice it to say that I’m both incredibly excited, and I also think that you might just be using the software some day.
The film is so good overall that it makes me wonder whether the Academy will have the balls to nominate it for Best Picture, rather than relegating it to the ridiculous and artificial “Animated” ghetto.
A few weeks ago I was talking to some cow working type people about the 8 MacBook Pros that were sitting near me at Stardust Video & Coffee. I’ve been working on a MacBook Pro (or a similarly designed Powerbook) for about 2 1/2 years and I was opining for a revision to the laptop that has served me so well.
While it’s kind of my default position to want something new, someone suggested that while it has been quite a long time since the base design for these machines was put into mass production (about 7 years if you look at the TiBook as being the first), the MacBook Pro is still heads and shoulders above any mobile computer available, from any manufacturer in terms of design, and while it does have a few small missing features, it certainly is a strong contender on the feature side.
That in mind, here is my hopeful list for things a new MacBook Pro would contain sometime in the next year or so:
EV-DO or other high-speed wireless functionality - This seems like a no brainer to me, but time will tell. Anyone that has done any significant traveling with a MacBook Pro will know the pain of not having any Wi-Fi available at crucial times.
Multi-card reader - It sure would be nice to not have to bring along a card reader or an extra usb cable for my camera at all times.
HD iSight camera - In my opinion, one of the smartest things Apple has done with recent updates to the MacBook Pro (outside of the switch to Intel Core 2 Duo chips) has been the iSight. Until you begin using a machine with a built in camera, even if it is a light weight, only sufficient for well lit rooms device, you just don’t know how handy it is. I’ve used it as a replacement scanner to get my signature on documents, take a picture of myself almost everytime I need a new photo for the next social site, not to mention the video conferencing abilities you get that are just bundled in with your computing experience. Upgrading the camera to a better lens would go a long way to negating the need for a separate video device in 75% of my use.
Better screen (both resolution and native brightness / color reproduction) - the current display is good, but there is room for improvement both with native resolution, as well as color production.
Speakers - I could use both more volume, and a bit richer sound.
A new design to lust after - While I love the look of the current machines, I’m sure the geniuses over at Apple (no, not that kind!) could come up with something that is even more beautiful and drool inducing.
While this list is a bit subjective (not to mention under-researched), I’m sure that when Apple comes out with the new machine (even if it’s not any time soon) I’ll be buying it. Do you have any ideas about what you’d like to see in a updated portable?
