Linked List: June 15, 2010

Tuesday, 15 June 2010

Great design, Nokia.

Engadget Previews the Upcoming Motorola Droid X ★

An interesting divergence: the iPhone 4 has gotten noticeably smaller (both thinner and narrower); the latest batch of top-tier Android phones are getting noticeably larger.

Safari Extensions Gallery Submission ★

Apple:

Safari Developer Program members can submit their Safari extensions to be included in the extensions gallery on the Apple website that will be made available later this summer.

About the Mac OS X v10.6.4 Update ★

Decent list of bug fixes.

Joe Wilcox Files Claim Chowder on Himself, Admits He Was Wrong About the iPad ★

Joe Wilcox:

Yes, I was wrong. I admit it. Flail me in Betanews comments or other blogs. Surely Macheads will peck away even my bones. Go ahead. I won’t often give you such opportunity.

Sure you will, Joe. You’re wrong all the time.

DragonFire SDK ★

Their pitch: write iPhone apps using C and C++ on Windows, using Visual Studio, using Zimusoft’s SDK and their own iPhone Simulator. Then you upload your project to Zimusoft’s servers, where they take the project and compile it using an actual Mac and Xcode. You can then submit the resulting “real” binary to the App Store yourself, or let Zimusoft publish it to the App Store themselves. It’s like a Rube Goldberg machine. (Bonus: the guy in the video calls the iPod Touch “the iTouch”.)

You’ll Never Guess Which Company Wrote This Horrendous Yes/No Confirmation Dialog Box ★

Yes/No dialogs are always a bad idea — I’ve never seen one that couldn’t be better-written using different, clearer words for the buttons. Writing is a big part of UI design. My rule of thumb: assume the user won’t read anything other than the buttons. E.g., when you log out of Mac OS X, you get a confirmation dialog with two buttons: “Cancel” and “Log Out”. Crystal clear.

(Thanks to Joe Clark.)

Update: Fireballed. Here it is in Google’s cache.

‘Somewhere’ ★

Trailer for Sophia Coppola’s latest. (Via Coudal.)

MonoPrice HDMI Cables ★

Given today’s new Mac Mini, now’s a good time to remind you not to spend a lot of money on HDMI cables. Digital is digital. MonoPrice’s cables are dirt cheap and work great.

Phil Gyford’s ‘Today’s Guardian’ ★

Speaking of readable websites, Phil Gyford’s Today’s Guardian is a rather striking example. Be sure to read the About link to get the keyboard shortcuts. See Gyford’s weblog for a full explanation on the thinking behind the design. Impressive.

Marco Arment on iOS Multitasking and Background Updating ★

Marco Arment:

I’ve already received multiple emails from people who are excited for iOS 4’s multitasking because they can’t wait for this to finally stop being an issue, because they think Instapaper will be able to download articles periodically in the background.

It’s painful to respond, crushing their hopes, to tell them that the iOS multitasking system doesn’t allow me to do that.

I like his proposal for how Apple could address this in the future.

Benjamin Mayo on iOS 4 Multitasking ★

Benjamin Mayo:

In previous versions of iOS, state-saving was the sole responsibility of the developer, but it was possible. The reason it had little use was because it was difficult to implement. It required large rewrites of some codebases, due to the nature of Objective-C classes. Apple has recognized it was an issue, and have responded with a first-party API set to abstract the difficulty to the OS.

Flash Player Update Defaults to Installing McAfee Security Scan Plus ★

Charles Arthur reports on the latest chicanery from Adobe. They’re reminding me more and more of Real Networks. (Thanks to DF reader Mehran Khalili.)

Matt Drance on WWDC10 ★

Spot-on analysis from Matt Drance:

One can’t help but appreciate the irony here. The initial friendship between Apple and Google was surely inspired in part by a common rival in Microsoft. Now the tables have turned, with Apple and Microsoft sharing the stage against Google. The reversal is so severe that a busted Bing demo in a later session drew heavy applause upon finally working. A WWDC audience would not have been so kind to Microsoft in earlier years.

The Steve Whale ★

“The Apple Store is over capacity.”

(As for me, I gave up on ordering for home delivery. I used the new Apple Store iPhone app to reserve one for in-store pickup on June 24; whole thing took 30 seconds, because it doesn’t go through AT&T. Wait and see if AT&T doesn’t fuck up activation on June 24 though.)

‘I’m Comic Sans, Asshole.’ ★

An imagined monologue by Mike Lacher at McSweeney’s.

Adobes Drops Experimental 64-Bit Flash Player for Linux ★

Ryan Paul, reporting for Ars Technica:

“We are fully committed to bringing native 64-bit Flash Player for the desktop by providing native support for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux 64-bit platforms in an upcoming major release of Flash Player,” the company wrote. “We intend to provide more regular update information on our progress as we continue our work on 64-bit versions of Flash Player.”

Don’t hold your breath. (Flash Player for Mac OS X remains 32-bit as well, despite the fact that most of the system is now 64-bit.) Anyway, as for Linux, I thought Adobe loved open systems. What happened?

iPhone 4 Goes on Pre-Sale, Purportedly ★

The order form is up, and some people have succeeded in getting an order through, but AT&T’s account information servers are — shockingly! — crapped out, so those of us looking to upgrade with an existing AT&T account are shit out of luck at the moment. Pathetic.

Also, the white iPhone 4 is “currently unavailable for pre-order or in-store pickup”.

Apple Releases All New Mac Mini ★

Sleeker form factor, and now includes a built-in SD card slot and — sweet — an HDMI port.

The Apple Store App ★

Both for shopping online and for managing your retail store experience.