Jon's Tech Talk

Today’s announcements at WWDC announced a few new topics including updates to the MacBook Pro lineup, iPhone 3GS, iPhone OS 3.0 and Mac OS X 10.6, otherwise called ‘Snow Leopard’. I plan on talking about the iPhone 3.0 OS next week when its launched (June 17th in the US), but today wanted to post a few notes about 10.6.

For those who don’t know, Mac OS 10.6 is going to be a different type of upgrade than we are used to. Apple usually has a few years between OS revisions, and there are loads of new features in each. But this time, Apple wanted to ‘refine’ the Mac OS more, to really bring the system to the next level. Many Windows Server users may be used to the ‘R2′ revisions of Windows Server, we saw this on Windows Server 2003 and will be seeing it again soon on Server 2008. While there are a few new features in Mac OS X 10.6, its nothing like the change from 10.3 to 10.4, and 10.4 to 10.5

Apple has seen unbelievable growth in the last two years, its still hard to believe at times. To capture even more users (Enterprise users, windows developers, and more), Apple wanted to make the Mac even easier to switch. We see this with some of the new features like:

• Full Exchange 2007 support (heck, Windows doesnt even do this!)
• Changing the default gamma from 1.8 (which has been that way at least since I started using Macs in the early 1990′s) to 2.2, the standard for just about everything else. This means images are finally going to look the same on Windows and Mac, which is a huge boost to designers working on both platforms.
• Major overhaul to Quicktime

I’m actually surprised that the 1.8 to 2.2 Gamma change wasn’t talked about more. While  I don’t know anything, this could also be one of the reasons we have been hearing about the new ‘Charcoal’ look to the Mac OS, as well as changes announced to the Dock and icons as well.

Putting this all at $29 for an upgrade is also unbelievable. It makes one wonder if this would affect the Windows 7 upgrade price. Microsoft has all but acknowledged Vista’s failure. To help those that have been stuck with Vista, the Windows 7 update should possibly be rather cheap for all users. While Mac OS 10.5 isn’t a failure, its 10.6 just makes the better, well…better!

Obviously a lot of users don’t mind paying the $29 update – I sure don’t. But I also don’t think many users know what else they will be getting with it:

• QuickTime has been totally redone, really pushing it beyond anything else today. They also included simple editing, and the ability to get your media to what ever platform you want so much easier.
• Finder has been rewritten – Before 10.6, Finder is still in Carbon, one of Apple’s older frameworks that was available on the Classic OS as well. With it being rewritten in Cocoa, im sure we will not only see new features and dramatic performance enhancements, I am sure in the next year or two we will hear about more API’s to interact with the system as well.

With the Finder also being 64 bit, and new features like OpenCL and Grand Central, were going to see our Macs get quite a speed boost too. Remember, Mac OS X so far has had to work on both PowerPC and Intel hardware. Now the Mac OS can be fully optimized for the Intel processors, and that alone will bring more improvements as well.

Mac OS 10.6 ‘Snow Leopard’ is due to release this September. To read a bit more detail about some of the updates, check out this Enhancements and Refinements page on Apple’s site.

WordPress just released their much-anticipated 1.2 update for their iPhone app today after a few months of delays. Click here to get it from iTunes. 

I’ve been a big fan of this app on my  phone. While its quite difficult to write long posts on the phone, its great for taking a quick picture and uploading it to your blog, as well as jotting down a quick draft of a post I think of while away from the computer.

The new app has some great new features, including:

•  Ability to manage your comments from the phone
• Page editing
• Updated photo upload interface
• Landscape editing

One of the coolest things about the WordPress for iPhone app is that its open source - anyone can contribute to it. As I continue to learn Cocoa development for both the Mac and the iPhone, I plan on contributing to a project like this in my free time to learn more about the system as well as WordPress API usage.

Almost a month ago, Google released a product I have been waiting YEARS for, Tasks!

Gmail is a near perfect email solution, but I missed having a good way to keep a to do list through my email and various computers and devices. For a few months, I tried using the new To Do feature in Mac OS X 10.5 Mail.app, but this never worked the way I wanted (Mail.app creates a new to do IMAP folder, and creates messages in there with special formatting). While this would work, you would have to write a specially formed email for it to show back up in Mail.app.

Tasks originally started as a  new feature in Gmail Labs. I set it up as soon as I found out about it, and started creating various lists for personal stuff, side work stuff, and even shopping lists for the house. This work flow worked great, and I could keep my tasks up all day at work and home to manage everything. 

Not long after launching (and im sure this was a reaction to customers loving the new product), Google expanded on Tasks by creating a new iGoogle plug-in, as well as an XHTML version easily available through mobile devices, especially the iPhone and Andriod smart phones. 

After trying so many different Tasks list apps on my iPhone, this solved all my problems. I created a bookmark and added it to my home screen on my iPhone. Now, while I’m away from a computer, I can easily check all my lists, and mark things off as I go along. I also use a mobile list to help me manage ideas or takes notes while out. All of this data is immediately available online, and therefore I always have a live copy of my todo list, no matter where I am at. 

If you haven’t tried this yet, I recommend you check it out. While there are some great other products, like Remember The Milk, Google Tasks is free and VERY easy to use (RTM is free as well, but you have to purchase a Pro account to get features like syncing).  While this is a cool new feature, I noticed not that many people picked it up, nor the iPhone and iGoogle update. Also, with Google’s recent expansion into HTML 5 and its offline caching capabilities, I wouldn’t be surprised if tasks gets this same treatment once its rolled out to Gmail and other products.

Apple recently released a Beta preview version of their popular Safari web browser. With major updates to the core application, user interface/user experiance, and JavaScript engines, Safari is one of the fastest browsers available. 

I have been using Safari 4 for a few days now as my primary browser on both Mac and PC. As with any beta product, I have noticed a few issues (expect a full review soon). I’ve already sent in two bug reports for Sarfari, including odd rendering on Apple.com’s search bar, as well as incorrect handling of page titles (titles don’t refresh if the page updates them, for example, popular webmail applications that display your unread count as the title).

The new version of Safari touts plenty of new features, some that have been available in the nightly builds of WebKit (the rendering engine below Safari as well as the preview version name). This includes some new tools for developers built right into the application. 

Some other new features are: a newer user experiance (Tabs are on top of the window, refresh icon in the address bar like Mobile Safari on the iPhone, etc), a native look for Windows, Developer tools, Coverflow bookmarks and history, and the ‘Top Sites’ feature. 

If you haven’t downloaded it yet, you should try it out (as long as you do not need Safari as your primary browser). As with any beta product, I also wouldn’t trust it with private data or professional work. I assume that the final version of Safari 4 will be made available around the same time as Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6), which is expected sometime this spring.