Linked List: July 23, 2008

Wednesday, 23 July 2008

Chris Barnes’s iPhone 3G Availability Tracker 

Uses Apple’s JSON data feed, updated live throughout the day.

Markoff on Jobs 

John Markoff reporting for The New York Times:

But in recent weeks, Mr. Jobs has reassured several people that he is doing well and that four years after a successful operation to treat a rare form of pancreatic cancer, he is cancer free.

People who are close to Mr. Jobs say that he had a surgical procedure this year to address a problem that was contributing to a loss of weight. These people declined to be identified because Mr. Jobs had not authorized them to speak about his health.

And that’s the end of that, thankfully.

iPhone 2.0: The Glory Wore Off in Wash 

David Heinemeier Hansson runs down the list of problems with iPhone OS 2.0. I’ve seen just about all of these, too. The temporary freezes are particularly annoying. The Mac’s SPOD/beachball cursor is infamously annoying, but at least when it appears, you see it, and you know not to bother clicking or typing until (you hope) it goes away. On the iPhone, you get no visual indication that the system is too busy to accept input, so you just sit there tapping repeatedly until it comes back.

MDJ/MWJ Trial Subscriptions 

Murphy’s Law, hard at work: the MacJournals free trial subscription order form wasn’t working yesterday, when I linked to their coverage of Apple’s accounting methods. The trial subscription order form is working now, if you’re interested — and if you care about deep, intelligent coverage of Apple, you should be.

Indie Fever 

Academic paper by Michiel van Meeteren on the indie Mac development community.

Lucky to Be a Programmer 

Gustavo Duarte:

For the past few weeks I’ve been working with a fellow developer on a project that required an all-out programming effort. It’s done now, so we’re back to a regular schedule, but when people hear about the crazy hours they often say they’re sorry. They really shouldn’t be. I would never do this often, or for long periods, or without proper compensation if done for an employer, but the truth is that these programming blitzkriegs are some of my favorite periods in life. Under the right conditions, writing software is so intensely pleasurable it should be illegal.

(Via Gus Mueller.)