Back to the Mac

On 20 October, Apple is going to let the world know what they have planned for OS X 10.7

My wild-ass guess is that Apple is going to let the apps from iOS run in a sandbox environment on OS X 10.7, which really shouldn't be that hard to do since development code runs on emulated iOS devices. This would broaden the reach of the iOS ecosystem and would effectively give Apple direct insight into how people are actually using their Macs, via analytics. It would then be able to serve relevant ads.

As seen on HN

1993: if
1998: "if" too slow; use "case".
2002: "case" too slow; use Boolean algebra.
2006: Boolean algebra too slow, use arrays & pointers.
2010: Who wrote this shit and what does it do? Rewritten to use "if".

By edw519.

Reasons for continued existence of 3GS

asymco's Horace Dediu has an interesting take on the continued existence of the iPhone 3GS; essentially it is still being kept around so as to "steer adoption of the iPhone 4".

The iPhone 4 is clearly better from a hardware angle, the only downside is price (natch). But I think the 3GS is still around to serve 2 main purposes:

1) Reduce supply pressure of the iPhone 4. Even as iPhone 4 production ramps up and months after its launch, there is still widespread shortage worldwide. Whereas a potential customer might be sitting on the fence with regards to a purchase decision, the existence of a 3GS provides a low-cost "gateway drug" to get into the iOS ecosystem of App Store, excellent web browsing experience etc.

2) Preserve value of the iPhone brand. Many new iPhone 4 owners have upgraded from n-1 (3G or 3GS) and the continued sale of n-1 by Apple itself means the depreciation cost of n-1 phones is minimized. Owners with carrier contracts can upgrade to the next n+1 device at minimal outlay of cash with the proviso of extended carrier contracts (24 months in this part of the world), which is not necessarily onerous outside of the US. This strategy allows the iOS apps inertia to snowball.

Speed Download and GameTrailers

If you ever wanted to download the QuickTime HD movies on GameTrailers, and if you have Speed Download, you're in luck. Just copy the following file, name it "gt.sh" or something, give it execute permissions (chmod 755 or whatever), then just run it in the shell with each raw GameTrailer URL HD link as the arguments.

If you don't have Speed Download, you can still use curl to download the files, albeit at a much slower speed; just change the last command to pipe back into /usr/bin/curl instead of sdcli.

Enjoy.

Blackberry PlayBook

So Blackberry has revealed its iPad competitor, the PlayBook. Without access to the SDK, these are some of my thoughts:

1) It's running on QNX RTOS or some flavor of it. QNX has a long history in the embedded space and it's nice to see that Blackberry management does not fall victim to the "not invented here" syndrome.

2) It seems the primary application platform will be Adobe Flash/AIR and Blackberry OS 6 as the secondary, maybe as separate mode. Probably that means developers will use the Adobe toolchain and write code in Actionscript, with a backend compiler based on LLVM targeting a VM which runs on QNX or is a module within the kernel, or even a hybrid.

3) Specs-wise it looks good. Power management is unknown however.

The PlayBook will only be launched in 2011... I think this is a credible iPad alternative. However my long term bet is still on iOS devices because Apple still has the edge on content delivery.