threehv

Metric Acorn records is proud to announce that the new Tom Mansi and the Icebreakers website has gone live.

The site is built on the WordPress platform and features Paypal and Youtube integration, audio from Soundcloud and a full events (gig) calendar.

A few days ago the new Telescope Studios site went live.

Telescope’s site is built on the Radiant platform allowing maximum flexibility and extensibility with minimum hassle.

My Nottingham Forest podcast site, eighteensixtyfive, has recently undergone a major redesign.

With an audio match report after every home game, it’s the perfect way for fans who can’t attend to find out what really happened at The City Ground on Saturday afternoon.

The new look pushes forwards a sports magazine feel, with the latest report easily accessible, and a twitter feed of interesting links. It also includes a sister-site Nottingham Forest News that automatically scours the web for the latest information, so you can stay informed.

eighteensixtyfive is also optimised for mobile devices (in particular iPhones and Android devices) so you can get your fix on the move.

The Apple world has been alight recently with news of the Mac App store – similar to the iPhone and iPad App store but for “proper” computers.

In particular does this mean that Apple is planning on locking down Macs in the future – only Steve-approved software will run – no dirty hacks, no messing with the system. Instead, clean, shiny, easy to install, easy to update and easy to pay for software.

I’m sure that in Steve’s head such a world would be great. And maybe this is the first step down that path (but if it is then there will still be a place for “open” computers; in the same way that there is still a place for mainframes – just not for consumer-grade machines).

But in the shorter term, there’s one subtle change. Apple has been deprecating APIs – no more Apple-supported Java, no 64-bit Carbon – and on the App Store, apps will be rejected if they use a deprecated API.

So everyone moves to shiny Cocoa – Apple’s approved development system.

One advantage of Cocoa is that Apple (or rather NeXT) have maintained cross-platform compatibility for years. This is how Macs switched from PowerPC chips to Intel chips so seamlessly. This makes the next architecture transition even easier – anything in the App Store is effectively certified on whatever next-generation Mac comes along.

In the olden days I used to hold Apple up as an example of great user-interface (and “user-experience”) design. This was down to lots of things – a love of minimalism and simplicity, the high standards that Mac users held Apple to, a feeling that computers were just too complicated.

But overall, this came down to one simple principle – “top-to-bottom, left-to-right“.

Eye-tracking studies showed that people’s eyes scan from top-to-bottom, left-to-right (at least for “western” readers – I don’t know if it applies to Hebrew or Arabic readers). The eye starts and lingers in the top-left corner and stops and lingers in the bottom-right corner, following an across and down pattern as it moves along the page.

Why is the Apple menu in the top-left corner? Because that’s where you start. Not in the bottom-left, as on Windows.

Why is the trash can in the bottom-right corner? Because that’s where you finish up. No in the top-left, as on Windows.

Why is the default button in the bottom-right corner of every pop-up box? Because that’s where your eye lingers when it has finished scanning the box. No point using that valuable scanning time to show you the Cancel button, as on Windows.

Why is the “close” button in the top-left corner of a window? Because closing a window is a “dangerous” action and so should be taken as far out of the flow of normal operations as possible.

Apple started to give up on this with the transition to Mac OSX. Early versions had the Apple menu in the centre of the menu bar. And the Dock breaks the model completely – the application launcher at the bottom of the screen (although I understand why they did it). But after a period of experimentation, Apple settled down into a reasonably consistent pattern by the time OSX 10.5 (Leopard) was released.

The iPhone changed this. For the better. The iPhone could not use the top-to-bottom, left-to-right pattern. Partly because it is less important on the smaller screen. Partly because the bottom two corners are “dangerous” areas – it is extremely easy to hit any buttons there when using the phone one-handed. For this reason, the default button is positioned in the top-right corner in iOS. That, coupled with Apple’s minimalism (if it’s not absolutely essential then get rid of it) makes the iPhone UI, and it’s associated interface guidelines, better than the rest. All good.

But what about the iPad? It’s an iOS device with a larger screen. So should it follow the top-to-bottom, left-to-right pattern or should it use the iPhone pattern? I don’t know and I don’t think Apple knows either. I have to say I find some of the iPhone apps that Apple has built confusing – especially iTunes and the App Store. Not enough to put me off, but enough for me to stop and think. Which is very un-Apple.

And then last night I installed the Facetime beta. Unsurprisingly, Apple has started borrowing from iOS in its Mac designs. This isn’t a problem. But during the signup phase I suddenly got stuck and didn’t know what to do next. It took about a second of searching around before I noticed that the “next” button was actually positioned in the top-right. That’s right – it was positioned out of the ordinary flow because on an iPhone it would be too easy to hit accidentally if it was in its natural position.

There are reasons for things being the way they are. Apple has known these reasons for twenty five years and are choosing to break with them for no real reason. That bodes badly for the upcoming OSX 10.7 (Lion) release.

Today I saw someone riding a bike, wearing a t-shirt with the slogan “iPedal”. Everywhere you look there is an iThis and an iThat.

But, there used to be method to Apple’s madness.

The iMac was so called because it was the “internet Mac”. Long before Mobile Me and mac.com there was iTools – “internet Tools”. Arguably the iBook was the “internet Book”. iChat is for “internet Chat”. The iPhone is really an “internet Phone”. Notice a pattern?

But what about iMovie and iPhoto? Not much internet there. iWork? Not really.

iPod? iWhat?

But the worst offender has to be iTunes.

Back in the day when it was a good piece of software (up to version 4 in my opinion) it had very little to do with the internet (beyond looking up track names). Now that it is a fully-fledged piece of internet software (with the integrated Store) you could argue it has gained the “internet” but lost the “tunes”.

There’s been a lot said about the brewing corporate war between Google and Apple. They started out as friends in the face of a common foe (Microsoft) but as that foe has diminished, they have turned their sights on each other. Google moved in (unsurprisingly) on Apple’s turf with Android and suddenly the gloves were off.

The two have very different approaches to the same thing though. Apple is being attacked for being too closed, too controlling. And too expensive (as always). Google is saying that Android is open, that their products are free.

But if you step behind the scenes, I much prefer Apple’s model.

You see with Apple I can understand them at a glance. They sell an iPad, they make some money. Quite a bit of money as Apple historically has very high margins.

How does Google make its money? Not off Android – no Google is actually an advertising company, and their revenue comes from placing the right adverts in the right places. In other words it’s hidden. How much do they make off a page view? It depends – upon which page, how many times it’s been viewed and who you are.

And for all of Apple’s great product design (how it works, not how it looks) and Google’s “don’t be evil” rhetoric, ultimately, it’s all about the price you have to pay.

I’ve had an iPad for almost two weeks now. Apple claims that it’s a revolutionary device. But is it?

The good:

The screen is amazing. You can sit and read, web-pages, PDFs, books, with none of the eye-strain that sometimes accompanies traditional computer monitors.
It feels really natural. There’s something about holding it like a book and manipulating it with your fingers that is much more natural than the detachment you get from using a mouse or sitting a few feet from the screen.
It’s fast. Turn the screen, everything rotates immediately. Switching apps happens immediately (more on this below). Everything responds at amazing speed.
The instant-on and battery life is great. Less than two hours battery on my Macbook Pro and taking 15 seconds to wake from sleep just isn’t good enough any more.
The bad:

The applications just aren’t there yet. I’m guessing this is because developers have mainly been using the simulator, not the real things. But the apps tend to be more expensive than iPhone apps and the quality is much lower. In particular, you would have thought that the tablet form-factor would make for a great drawing/sketching application, but I’ve yet to find one.
Getting files on and off the system is way too complicated. Really needs to be easier.
It feels like a version one product. By the time the second or third generation iPad comes along it is going to look really really dated.
Overall, I think it’s the future. My Macbook Pro feels slow and clunky, with an antiquated user interface. But it’s not quite ready; there’s too much you can’t do with an iPad yet. Given five years though and we’ll look back on laptops in the same way as we look at those massive beige box desktop machines today.

Yeah I bought an iPad.

I wasn’t going to but it sort of happened.

And after using it for an evening I have to say that using my Macbook Pro feels clunky and unwieldy. Out of date.

Just don’t ask why I know this. Please. It’s making me cry.

Install Ruby using the One Click Installer.
Install the ODBC module (by copying the SO files into the c:\Ruby\1.8\i386-mingw32 folder).
Install the ActiveRecord ODBC adapter (gem install activerecord-odbc-adapter).
Edit C:\Ruby\lib\ruby\gems\1.8\gems\activerecord-odbc-adapter-2.0\ lib\active_record\connection_adapters\odbc_adapter.rb – look for line 1588.
Change the line from elsif dbmsName =~ /SQLAnywhere/i to elsif dbmsName =~ /SQLAnywhere/i or dbmsName =~ /adaptiveserveranywhere/i

Write some test code – something like:


require 'rubygems'
require 'active_record'

Whatever.all

Run this - hopefully you should get no errors.
Then sit down and have a long think about what the hell you are doing.