Linked List: June 15, 2009

Monday, 15 June 2009

Allan Odgaard on the Still-in-Progress TextMate 2 

It’s not at all like Duke Nukem Forever, because Duke Nukem Forever wasn’t promised as a free upgrade.

Top Gear ‘Thoroughly Tests’ a Ford Fiesta 

Stick with it through the first few minutes, it’s worth it.

The Big Picture on Iran’s Disputed Election 

It is inspiring to see so many Iranians stand up in the face of danger to demand honest election results.

Marco Arment on Apple’s WWDC-Closing ‘Fuck You’ to iPhone Developers 

Marco Arment:

The last session of WWDC ‘09 yesterday was about publishing on the App Store. The content of sessions is under NDA, so I can’t tell you what it was about. So I’ll tell you what wasn’t in it: the audience Q&A session that succeeded nearly every other WWDC session and usually provided invaluable access to Apple employees and useful additional knowledge to attendees. The session itself blew through its lightweight examples quickly, ending 45 minutes early. The majority of the audience was clearly there for the Q&A. As people lined up at the microphones around the room, the presenter abruptly showed a simple slide with only “WWDC” in plain lettering, thanked us for coming, and bolted off the stage. The Apple engineers, usually staying around the stage for one-on-one questions, were gone. The lights came up instantly, and it was the only session that didn’t end in music. The audience was stunned.

It was a giant middle finger to iPhone developers. And that’s the closing impression that Apple gave us for WWDC.

In four or five years of attendance, the only WWDC sessions I have ever seen without Q&A were those that ran out of time. The App Store team simply knew what the questions were going to be like and were unwilling to face them.

Neven Mrgan’s WWDC Summary 

Great write-up that covers everything from the general feel of the conference to his quick impressions of the Palm Pre.

Safari 4’s Full-Page Zoom 

Pierre Igot:

There is just no comparison between how Safari 4 scales pages and how it used to be in previous versions of the browser, or how it still is with several other browsers.

Craig Hockenberry on Emergency App Store Updates 

Good idea from Craig Hockenberry:

If every developer was given one or two “prioritized reviews,” it would act as insurance for the brain farts. You’d have a way to raise a flag and say “I need special attention for a critical bug.”

(And good to hear that the twitpocalypse bug fix update for the iPhone version of Twitterrific was approved so quickly.)

IE6 Denial Message for Momentile.com 

Via Andy Baio, who rightly describes it as a candidate for best error message ever.

A Special Specimen 

James Phillips Williams tells the tale of a unique type specimen book in Paul Rand’s personal library. (Via Steve Delahoyde.)

Jon Shea’s Menlo vs. Vera Sans Mono Comparison 

Every tweak Apple made to Menlo is an improvement over Vera Sans to my eyes. Better, though, would be a comparison of Menlo to Panic Sans, the tweaked version of Vera Sans Mono that ships with Coda.

Update: My wish is their command: Shea added comparisons to Panic Sans. Menlo looks really nice.

iPhone 3GS Not Yet Sold Out 

There are reports that AT&T retail stores are sold out of pre-order 3GSs, but Apple’s online store is still taking orders for delivery Friday. I ordered mine this morning.

(I’ve been dreading my first pluralized “3GS” for weeks.)

Hunch 

Hunch, the ambitious new decision-making expert system, is out of beta. Examples: “What sci-fi movie should I watch?”, “Should I buy an Apple iPhone or a Palm Pre?”, and “Where should I eat in/around San Francisco?”

MapQuest 4 Mobile 

MapQuest’s new free iPhone app — pretty much a head-on direct competitor to the Google Maps client that ships with the iPhone OS. Definitely worth checking out.

Anonymous Pro 

Speaking of anti-aliased monospaced coding fonts, Dan Benjamin has a nice write-up regarding Mark Simonson’s new Anonymous Pro.

AT&T: No Extra Cost for iPhone MMS Messaging 

What’s telling about this news is that it needed to be reported in the first place, so low is the opinion of AT&T. No decent carrier would charge extra for MMS, especially considering AT&T’s already outrageous rates for plain old SMS. But at this point nothing AT&T could do wrong would surprise us.

Font Changes Coming to Snow Leopard 

Chris Foresman reports on the findings of Chinese student Jjgod Jiang on the font-related changes in Snow Leopard: the light and strong sub-pixel anti-aliasing options are now gone; some of the system fonts are now shipping as .ttc (TrueType Collection) files instead of .dfonts; and a bit more on Menlo, the new default monospace coding font.

Foresman’s report contains several significant errors, however. First, Monaco has not been dropped from Snow Leopard. Menlo has replaced Monaco as the default font in Xcode and Dashcode, but Monaco is still there if you want it. Second, BBEdit does not ship with a Bitstream Vera Sans Mono variant; it ships with Consolas.

Microsoft Stops Paying for Employees’ iPhones 

Dan Frommer reports on Microsoft’s latest cost-saving measure:

For instance, Microsoft won’t pay for its employees’ Apple iPhone data service plans anymore, even if they’re used significantly for work purposes. Nor will it pay for Research In Motion BlackBerry service, or a new Palm Pre. Instead, it will only reimburse data plans for Microsoft Windows Mobile-powered smartphones.

On the one hand, it surprises me that Microsoft ever paid for service for non-Windows phones. But on the other hand, man, look at what a piece of crap Windows Mobile is today.

Your Publication Can Suck as Badly as TechCrunch 

Helpful set of instructions from Oliver Willis.

Update: Fireballed, so I’ve changed the link to Google’s cache.