By John Gruber
WorkOS launches auth.md — an open protocol for agent registration.
Linked List: January 21, 2007
Sunday, 21 January 2007
- Jens Alfke: ‘In Which I Think About Java Again, but Only for a Moment’ ★
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Jens Alfke:
Desktop Java never worked because Sun tried to build their own OS on top of the real OS, duplicating every API and feature. This led to terrible bloat, making every app as heavyweight to launch as Photoshop. Worse, the GUI portions of the Java platform are awful, because Sun is a server company with no core competency at GUIs. The APIs are too clumsy to code to, and compared to any decent Mac app, the results look like a Soviet tractor built on a Monday.
In short, Cocoa kicks Java’s ass for developing any app where the UI matters. That Cocoa is at the heart of iPhone app development gives credence to Steve Jobs’s claim that the iPhone is “five years ahead” of anyone else. What other phone or PDA OS has developer tools and frameworks that compare to Cocoa?
- Waffle: About Java on the iPhone ★
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Jesper is right: “standard” Java phone apps not only wouldn’t fit in look-and-feel-wise, they wouldn’t fit in hardware-wise, either.
The only possible way Java would be relevant to iPhone development would be through the Cocoa-Java bridge — a bridge that Apple deprecated starting with Mac OS X 10.4.
- Amnesty Generator 1.0 ★
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Update to Mesa Dynamics’s free utility for converting Google gadgets, Flash applets, and more into Mac OS X Dashboard widgets.
- Fake Steve: ‘Face It, Jim Allchin’s Got a Man Crush on Me’ ★
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Fake Steve:
Allchin was really just looking for an excuse to come down and sit in the same room at me and bat his eyelashes. Or beg me for a job.
- Microsoft’s Jim Allchin Trashed Windows Media-Based Music Players in November 2003 ★
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Todd Bishop:
A November 2003 e-mail by Windows chief Jim Allchin, made public today as part of the company’s Iowa antitrust trial, sheds new light on the frustration that the company felt with its digital music device partners, before deciding to come out with its own Zune music player and service to challenge Apple’s iPod.
I almost feel bad for Allchin for these emails that are coming out as a result of this lawsuit. In this one, he talks about his experience with a top-of-the-line Creative player, and pretty much trashes the entire experience, from the player itself (“I mean it is ugly, not smooth to the touch (hard edges and uncomfortable to hold, etc.), fragile (easy to break), the controls are difficult and they hurt your finger if you use the ‘jog’ dial much at all”) to the software to the synching.
He concludes by writing, “I think I should talk with Jobs. Right now, I think I should open up a dialog for support of the iPOD. Unless something changes, the iPOD will drive people away from WMP.” The emails are from about a month after Apple’s first version of iTunes for Windows.
(Allchin sure has a weird sense of capitalization.)
- Fork JavaScript ★
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Another new JavaScript library, this one from Peter Michaux. Stated goal, more or less, is to combine the best ideas from Prototype and the Yahoo UI library.
(Via Simon Willison.)
- Microsoft Could Launch Zune in Europe by End 2007 ★
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Reuters, after interviewing Zune marketing director Jason Reindorp:
He said Microsoft planned extensive research with focus groups in Europe to see how it could be modified for a European consumer.
Ah, yes, focus groups. That’s how they’ll come up with something innovative.
- 53 CSS Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without ★
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Great list of links to a slew of useful CSS tips and tricks.
- Web Site Source Code Easter Eggs ★
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Hidden messages on some famous web sites’ HTML source code and HTTP headers. (Thanks to John Siracusa.)
- Matthew Paul Thomas: ‘A Broken Oven’ ★
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This is why Apple needs to make home appliances.
- First Image From ‘Wall-E’, the Next Pixar Movie After ‘Ratatouille’ ★
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Luxo, a weblog about Pixar:
In a letter to Disney shareholders, President and CEO Robert Iger revealed the first image of Disney-Pixar’s next animated film after Ratatouille.
The director is Andrew Stanton from Finding Nemo.
(Via Andy Baio.)