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Gestures in iPhone programming

I believe in source code. UI design is best in an interactive environment, but everything else about software can and should be expressed in human-readable text.

In iOS programming, you can't do everything in source code. Some of your work has to be done with mouse gestures in Interface Builder. You cannot link controls to events or variables in source code; you must use mouse gestures. 

To read a control's data, set its text, or change its appearance programmatically, the control must be connected to a variable of the correct type declared with the IBOutlet modifier.

To respond to an event in a control, a procedure declared with the IBAction modifier must be connected to the event.

The only way to accomplish either of these things is to use a mouse to draw a line between the "File's owner" icon and the event or control of interest. "Fle's owner" represents your view controller.

To link an event to an action: drag from event (e.g. Touch Up Inside) to File's Owner and select IBAction.

To link a control to an outlet: control-drag from File's Owner to the control and select IBOutlet.

Here are examples:

To link an event (Touch Up Inside) to an action, drag from the event in the inspector to File's Owner:

When the mouse button is released you'll see a list of IBActions declared in the view controller. Pick one to be called when the event occurs.

To link a control to an outlet, control-drag from File's Owner to the control:

When you release the mouse button you'll see a list of IBOutlets in the view controller. Pick one to use to access this control.

Overall, this is a reasonably convenient way to create these connections, at least for simple applications. But there really should be a human-readable file in a simple, easy to edit format (not XML) to express these connections and make maintenance easier. Am I missing something? I can't find anything like that in the application build directory.

What Apple should make instead of the Apple Tablet

The concept of an Apple tablet is pretty underwhelming to me. Unless there's some big surprise (an innovative combo E-Ink/LCD screen, for example), I expect to be uninterested. Here are some products that would get me more excited. 

1. An Apple netbook

Steve Jobs doesn't like netbooks, but netbooks are products with a future. They have proven their value as secondary computers for travel or carrying around, or as inexpensive computers for kids or students. 

Apple needs to make a netbook that isn't cheap and crappy like most netbooks are. It should be something like the smart little Sony Vaio W - small, lightweight, and stylish with a 10.1" WXGA screen. The Vaio W easily justifies its $450 base price. A similar Apple netbook priced at, say, $549 would fly off the shelves. It wouldn't cannibalize any current Mac products other than the similarly-priced Mac Mini.

Lots of people install OS X on the $279 Dell Mini-10V to create hackintoshes, so the Apple netbook already exists, but in the cheesy, low-quality format that Steve Jobs detests. Apple is leaving money on the table and denying its customers a product they want.

Specs of the Apple Netbook:

• Intel Atom, preferably a dual-core Mount Olive to save power 
• 1 GB RAM, maximum 2GB
• 160GB hard disk, optional 60GB SSD
• 1366x768 LED-backlit display
• VGA-out as well as mini-DisplayPort, and at least three USB ports
• Price: $549

Why won't Apple build it? Because of fears, unjustified I believe, that it will take sales from the Macbook Air. It won't - the Apple Netbook should be practical and utilitarian for light duty, like a Toyota pickup truck, while the Macbook Air is refined to near impracticality, like a Lotus Elise.

2. A Core i3/i5/i7 Mac Mini

The Mac Mini is stuck in a concept that it needs to be a low-end computer for people who aren't really serious. The problem with that idea is Moore's Law. Even a low-end computer today can do practically anything you want to do, if it's designed and put together right.

Intel's new Arrandale mobile processors are dual core CPUs with integrated graphics, memory controller, and PCIe. They have a lot of promise for a computer with the Mini's footprint and power profile. With integrated graphics and a memory controller on the processor package, they outperform equivalent Core 2 Duos while using less power overall. The ability of the Core I5 and I7 to boost a single core above the CPU's base clock frequency means great performance for most common computing tasks. Something like the Core i7-620M at 2.66 GHz base with 3.33GHz Turbo would wipe the floor with the P8800 Core 2 Duo that is the  current Mini's top CPU, but I am almost as tempted by the Core i7-640LM. At a mere 2.13GHz base it doesn't sound impressive, but Turbo Boost to 2.93 GHz would make it scream for single-threaded tasks (read: most of what most people actually do).  Its TDP of 25 watts only matches the P8800, but includes graphics, a memory hub, and PCIe.

Meanwhile, why not offer the Mini with an SSD? If you have enough DRAM, hard drive speed is the bottleneck for most desktop computers. A Mac Mini using Arrandale processors with the equivalent of the 80GB Intel X-25M would run circles around the current design while using less power.

In the meantime, the base price of the Mini ought to come down. You can get a useful Windows 7 desktop for $249. There's no reason why the Mini should cost more than twice that much.

Specs of the Arrandale Mini:

• A Core i3-350M version for $499 with 2GB DRAM and 160GB, 5400RPM hard drive
• A Core i5-540M version for $599 with 4GB DRAM and 320GB, 7200 RPM hard drive
• A Core i7-620M version for $799 with 8GB DRAM and 320GB, 7200 RPM hard drive
• 80 GB SSD upgrade for $250
• 160 GB SSD upgrade for $500

Why won't Apple build it? They will, but probably not until Arrandale is a year old.

3. A few tweaks for the Macbook Air

The Macbook Air is a beautiful concept. Thin, elegant, and minimalist, it has spawned lots of admiration but few imitators. The same design discipline that created its unsullied sleekness also made it totally unfitted for business. 

As you can see from the picture, the Macbook Air has practically no way to connect to anything, other than by wireless networking. The Mini DisplayPort may be the wave of the future, but for the next few years it means you'll need a dongle to connect to a projector or to most non-Apple displays.

I have been in the boardroom more than once, scheduled to present to the CEO or the SVP. At best you have five minutes to make your laptop work with the VGA port of their projector, and you have to schmooze your immediate client - usually a VP or director, in my business - while you're making it work. And it almost never works right the first time. Little extra pieces of crap to connect my laptop to the projector are not on the program. Period.  

A single USB port is also ridiculously inadequate. If you are using a mouse, you can't attach a data key. 

It's possible to make an elegant, thin, light notebook that still can work as a business computer. I hate to keep going back to Sony, but the Sony Viao X, in the same price range as the MacBook Air, is thinner (0.55" to 0.76"), lighter (1.6 pounds to 3.0) and has up to 14 hours battery life (albeit with its included extended battery, at a weight closer to the Air's). It's a beautifully slim and minimal computer that still manages to have a standard VGA port, two USB ports, and even a wired Ethernet jack that folds open when in use.

This wouldn't have nearly the star power of launching an Apple Tablet, but if Apple reworked the MacBook Air to have a VGA port in addition to the Mini DisplayPort, and two or three USB ports, its potential audience would increase dramatically. 

Specs of the tweaked MacBook Air: same as the current one.

That's my list. Apple won't do the netbook because they don't think they could make their margins with one. Apple won't tweak the MacBook Air because that wouldn't be purist enough. It will make an Arrandale Mini, but I don't expect to see it until late 2010.

Chrome OS shows Google is the new AOL

Google's Chrome OS is more evidence that Google aims to become the new walled garden of the Internet, a la America Online. For a long time, AOL was a destination where subscribers to its connectivity services became targets for ads, enriching the company twice - once when they paid for their dial-up service, and again when they responded to pitches on the AOL home screen.

Chrome OS follows what is now Google's standard three-fold strategy: offer something that is (1) really good, (2) free, and makes it (3) dead easy to access Google's services. The Chrome browser, Android OS, and now Chrome OS are examples.

No one is forced to use Google's products or, using them, to use Google's applications and services. Like Microsoft, which triumphed for a while by placing its browser icon on the desktop, Google plans to win by being the most convenient option. People like being coddled, even if it means they're being herded into Google's pastures.

Like Microsoft, too, Google will no doubt be surprised when the antitrust vultures swoop in to punish it for for treating customers so well they don't want to patronize anyone else. So it goes.

OSBC 2009

The Open Source in Business Conference is less important and interesting as time goes on.

Five years ago, there were real questions about using open source software in the enterprise. Corporate decision makers came to OSBC, and so did top-tier open source developers. There was tension in the air, and real judgments were forming. Serious thinkers gave keynotes.

This year, the big questions about open source are settled. The conference has devolved into part tutorial for late adopters, part infomercial for open source vendors targeting the enterprise.

Even so, this year's OSBC attracted a respectable bunch,and I don't feel my time there (I only went for the first day) was wasted.

I skip most keynotes at conferences. They are trailing indicators at best. None of the keynotes I went to at OSBC did anything to disprove that notion.

The venture capital panel renewed my faith in the resiliency of American enterprise - Peter Fenton of Benchmark predicted stock prices dropping well below current levels, hyperinflation, and excellent opportunities in cloud computing and other "air war" plays where the open source advantage of reduced marketing friction and low-touch high volume distribution come into play. 

Dries Buytaert, founder of Drupal, gave a superb tutorial on managing open source communities, marred only by the use of what were apparently his own photos for illustration. I wish he'd take a page from Steve Jobs or Edward Tufte.

High point: 

Dirk Riehle's rigorous research into applying open source principles to commercial software development. This sparsely attended session was a hidden gem, providing real insights into the nature of open source projects and a lot of food for thought.

Low point: 

In the Open Source Marketing panel, Roy Russo of LoopFuse saying "I yanked the open source ... there was no money in it." So what's he doing on an open source panel?

Comcast business class: not ready for prime time.

Comcast has been sending me snail mail about their Business Class services. They offer 6 or 16 Mbps downloads, 1 or 2 Mbps uploads, hosted Exchange services (though they oddly call it "Outlook mailboxes"), along with telephony at some very acceptable prices.

My office is over 10,000 feet from the nearest ATT central office, so the fastest DSL I can get is 1.5 Mbps (I use Covad). The idea of getting 6 or 16 Mbps for about the same cost is attractive.
The call to action in the Comcast ad is a phone number, not a website, but I want in-depth information so off I go. Soon I find a link to a detail page.

The suits at Comcast have decided to position their packages by size of company. This is a serious mistake. A media company with three employees may need better Internet connectivity than a flooring retailer with 30 employees. The further you are from reality, the harder it can be to make decisions, so they were probably still scheduling meetings about what size fit which package when the website went live:

We'll ignore the grammatical crimes.

I don't need their opinion of how large my business should be, anyway. But when I get down to where some of the real technical detail should be, it gets even worse:

This pretty bad. I hope their tech support people aren't using this site as their reference.

But when I look at the category called "Dedicated Lines" my heart just goes out to the poor copywriter:

Comcast obviously has some broken processes. Or perhaps there are no processes. It's fun to speculate: maybe the copywriter's contract was canceled, and the semiliterate manager told the lazy webmaster to post whatever was already done ... so he did. 

My DSL service is slow, but it has been relatively trouble-free, and Covad has great support techs available around the clock ... I'm thinking twice about switching to Comcast.

Upgrade Tiger to Leopard: the way it ought to be

Julie was seeing weird display bugs in PowerPoint 2007. Characters were jammed together or even written over each other in some of the "SmartArt" shapes she likes. So it couldn't be put off any longer: I had to upgrade her Mac to Leopard.

Julie loves her iMac, even though it runs Windows. She runs Windows XP in a Boot Camp partition. Parallels Desktop had too much strange behavior (USB was a particular rat's nest). Julie's computer is an older, white iMac that came with Tiger. Under Tiger, Boot Camp was a beta product. With Leopard, it's fully supported and comes with updated drivers.

The first step to upgrading a system is backing up. In this case, all I really cared about was the Windows partition, because the Mac side is practically nothing but the bare operating system. Because I'm not as familiar with Mac OS, this was the hardest part of the whole operation.

I started by backing up all Julie's documents to an external drive. We back them up to a Linux server daily, but it seemed prudent to have a second copy. But what I really wanted was an image backup so I could easily restore her entire system if something went wrong. With Windows, you need to buy software to do this. On the Mac, I was able to use Mike Bombich's shareware Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the Windows partition. Done. If I keep using CCC, I'll be visiting Mike's tip jar.

Next was updating the Mac side to Leopard. Boot to Mac OS, pop in the Leopard DVD, let it do its thing ... Done.

Finally, I needed to install the updated Boot Camp drivers to the Windows side. Boot to Windows, pop in the Leopard DVD again. Here's my only nit: instead of asking "Do you want to install the Boot Camp drivers in your Windows partition?", the install software asks "Do you want to install Boot Camp?" This gave me visions of wiping out my entire Windows partition. But I read the instructions again, verified that I was doing the right thing, clicked "Ok", and ... it just worked. Reboot Windows with the new drivers, and the display problems are gone.

Good work, Apple.

Yahoo to small business: drop dead.

Recently Tim Bray sounded off on not wanting to be a sharecropper for Apple. I sympathize, but he had no intention of developing iPhone apps anyway. Come on people, it's a business decision. It's reasonable not to develop iPhone apps, if you don't want to for either business or emotional reasons. But it's also perfectly reasonable to do so, if that suits your business and/or emotional needs.

Besides, there are worse things than being dependent on Apple for the health of your business. You could be dependent on Yahoo!.

I seem to be the last person to learn that Yahoo! has raised its price for domain renewals to $34.95 per year, three and a half times what it was last year. There are comments about it here, here, and here.

Countless small business on the web owe their existence and prosperity to Yahoo!. Their business-friendly hosting services have made e-commerce possible for people who otherwise would have lacked the technical savvy. Until the launch of Yahoo's Panama search marketing platform, Yahoo! had the most small-business friendly search marketing solution. In return, small businesses have been an engine of growth for Yahoo!

Now, it seems someone at Yahoo! has decided that small business customers are chumps to be bled at will. This is a move that signals desperation. It may increase revenues in the short run, but can only hurt the Yahoo! brand in the long run.

Domain owners, of course, are free to move. Moving a domain to a different registrar is easy in principle, but vexing in practice. The only domain I have registered at Yahoo is a memorial website for a friend who died several years ago. It really doesn't matter if this site is down for a few days, so it's a no-brainer to move it. I'll save at least $25 a year by moving to godaddy.com.

Godaddy has specific documentation for transferring your registration from Yahoo. There is a "domain concierge" available by telephone, and I was speaking to a human being within thirty seconds both times I called. All this should make things easy.

But I had to shepherd no fewer than three magic numbers - a Transaction ID and a Security Code from GoDaddy, and an Authorization Code from Yahoo. I had to check whois records to make sure I was the administrative contact, and my Yahoo! account to make sure the domain is unlocked. I jumped through various hoops, then Yahoo has five days to approve or disapprove the transfer. None of this is really hard, just sort of murky and ill-designed. And three days later there is no action from Yahoo's side. I have no idea when or whether my domain transfer will be completed.

For a memorial website that's OK, but if this site were my livelihood there is no way I'd want to mess with all that. $25 a year really is a drop in the bucket compared to downtime on a commercial website. That could be Yahoo's thinking - get rid of all the small-timers who won't buy much in value-added services, and keep the customers who are locked in. I could protest that the Web is about more than who delivers the most money, but I can't come up with a reason why Yahoo! should care about that.

Is this a harbinger of things to come from Yahoo? I wonder how people who depend on Yahoo! to run a business feel.

If things do get worse for people who host businesses with Yahoo, there are a few things to keep in mind:

• The web really is an open platform. You are not really locked into Yahoo!.
• The single most important thing for you to do is ensure that all of your content is backed up in a portable format
• If you do decide to move, it might be worth trying a practice domain first. Register a new domain at Yahoo!, host a sample website, and go through the steps of moving it to a different registrar and hosting environment. This will greatly reduce the stress and uncertainty when you finally do pull the plug on your business domain.