Contact Congress iPhone app

Steve Jobs and Apple is the reason I got into computers. I started off using and developing on an old Apple II+ by Bell and Howell in 1983ish.

When the Mac was introduced in 1984, I begged my dad for one, and thankfully he got me one. The rest as they say is history.

I’ve seen Steve talk, both at WWDCs over many years and during my time at Apple in the Newton group – which was some good talks and some bad “we’re shutting you down” talks.

I respected every time he talked, both good and bad. He will be missed, but I have the upmost confidence in the team at Apple, some of whom I know.

And I have the upmost confidence in us, Apple developers, to uphold the “make your app as good as the Apple apps”.

Rest in peace Steve. I hope you are in Heaven now, meeting Jesus and all the great folks who have passed before you. I’ll look you up when I arrive.

“Also, i’m SUPER excited the Mac App store comes out tomorrow!! Lucien, you might appreciate that. bahah”

I asked her why:

“I do appreciate that, I’m super excited too. Can I ask why? (research) ”

She replied:

“I’m just excited to see what the store has to offer, what apps will be available, how they run, what they can add to my mac hahah”

Some notes:

• She got her Mac from a friend, and he’s told her about the Mac app store.
• She has an iPod touch, so she knows how the app store concept works.

This says to me:

• Young people don’t know about the listings of Mac software on the apple.com website.
• She found out that the app store is coming to the Mac, and is super excited to see what apps are out there for her Mac.
• She already has an iTunes account.

This thing is going to be huge people.. millions of people will be getting the Mac app store tomorrow, and will be looking and purchasing.

Maybe the app stores are what Apple built that North Carolina data center for.

(Written with MarsEdit’s awesome rich text editor)

(Cross posted to my company’s blog: http://www.chromedomesoftware.com/2011/01/05/why-the-mac-app-store-is-going-to-be-bigger-than-i-thought/ )

My lovely wife Jennifer came up with the name, if you’ve ever met me and noticed my lack of hair, you will understand why she came up with the name, and hopefully understand why I love it.

I haven’t really posted here about it because, frankly, the website needs some TLC, but I decided over the weekend it’s time to get the word out more.

So, follow along at http://www.chromedomesoftware.com/ , let me know what you think of the apps, and if you have any suggestions for features. If you or a friend would like a redeem code for one of the applications, please leave a comment or send me an email (lucien at chromedomesoftware.com) and I will happily email you one.

- iOS and Mac OS will merge. Apple doesn’t have enough resources to do two operating systems. And based upon my two year olds expectations after using an iPad/iPhone that all devices with a screen have touch interfaces I think this is a good thing. Interfaces commanded by touch is the future of computing.

- future Apple machines will have multitouch displays, starting with the new MacBook Air.

Another interesting article about Fraser’s time rolling out iPads to every kid in his school (110 iPads in total). It’s well worth subscribing to if you are at all interested in the bleeding edge of iPad use in education.

Plane has finally arrived, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

Off to WWDC 2010!

Off to WWDC, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

A few days early for some time with family.

After seeing my daughter over the past few weeks use and really understand the iPad user interface, my experience at the Apple store today with my daughter completely convinced me. The future of the computer interface is a touch screen.

Watch this video and tell me you aren’t convinced.

My dad is 71 and has Parkinson’s. He’s had it for over 10 years now, and I can see the desease progressing in him, slowly but surely.

Last fall I moved from the US back to Canada to live in his home town. I wanted to be able to spend some quality time with him before he passes on. A few weeks a year for the past 14 years just wasn’t going to cut it for me.

So I’ve moved home. I’m spending time with him, and I want to introduce him to the internet. You have to understand my dad, he’s computer phobic. I think he understands computers, but wouldn’t know the first place to start on a Macintosh. He understands email and internet websites, but would have no idea how to participate in emails or find web sites, or even probably scroll to the lower part of a page.

“What’s a scroll bar?”

“How does a mouse work?”

That’s brings us to the iPad. I wrote the night before it’s introduction that the iPad would need some killer app to really show us the potential of the device.

I think what we saw in that hour and 33 minute introduction was multiple applications, all re-done to support the larger size. All redesigned to truly support doing computing with your fingers.

(As an aside, I saw Avatar for the first time last weekend. When the first glimpse of the pad computers appeared on the screen, the iPad as version 0.01 of the devices is what came to mind).

To my dad. He still has pretty good dexterity with his hands, the Parkinson’s shakes haven’t hit him too much. I’m quite certain that if I set up an email account for him, and set up some web sites for him – cars, news, weather – that he could actually use the iPad, actually become a participating member of the internet society. And, frankly, that thought brings me to tears.

So, yes, I will be getting an iPad. Probably two, one for my dad, and one for me as well. Frankly, if the walled garden approach to applications is what it takes for my dad to get online, I’ll deal.

I’d encourage you to think about someone in your family who could truly use an iPad. Think of all those seniors in homes who are on fixed incomes – a lot would have family that could afford the $499 to bring them online. Or maybe you know of someone who has no immediate family, but you could help by setting up an email account, buy them an iPad, and show them around the device. Set up some favourite bookmarks. Buy them a few cool applications in their hobbie area.

This type of expansion of the accessibility of computing to so many more is what gives me hope about the future. It’s what is slowly making me believe the iPad is really the future of computing. And I’m going to do as much as I can to see that the iPad and future devices are a roaring success.

—-

Further reading:

Greg Knauss: ‘The Days of Miracles and Wonder’

Rob Foster: On iPads, Grandmas and Game-Changing

Daring Fireball: Various and Assorted Thoughts and Observations Regarding the Just-Announced iPad

Fraser Speirs: Future Shock

Steven Frank: I need to talk to you about computers.

The Apple tablet is going to be awesome, we all know it. But in my mind, what is going to make me want to buy one? The software..

Right before the PowerMac G4 came out, I was ready to plop down some money for a new Macintosh. I was leaning towards the next laptop that was coming out. What changed my mind was the introduction ofiDVD. Here was a way to put those home movies onto an actual dvd! Or make an awesome slideshow of pictures of a particular event for family.

It was a solution that I didn’t know I needed or was really possible. That’s what the tablet needs tomorrow. Something that I didn’t know I needed or was really possible.

An iPhone four times the size with the same applications isn’t going to cut it.

It’s not supported currently in Xcode 3.2 on Snow Leopard. Your best bet is to start from scratch, and do the manual move the build settings to the new target from the old target.

I might expand upon what happened in the future, but you could have easily substituted my name for Jesse’s in this blog post:

Wanted

(Via Rands In Repose.)

Get your iPhone ring tones of the engine of that beautiful car at this url: http://speciali.ferrari.com/458italia/index_en.html

(Via: Straighline)

When I was volunteering with high school youth at our old church in Lake Oswego, we played the DVD version of these videos, and had small group discussions about the particular topic – it’s still some of my fondest memories, being in these small groups and listening to youth explore their religious beliefs.

I hope more of these dvd’s show up as apps! I can’t wait to start showing these to my daughter and discussing them with her.

Recently an update to my small pregnancy tracking application was unexpectedly delayed for a month and a half. Towards the end of that time I was pretty frustrated, with no communication at all from Apple.

But then I got a very nice call from what I would call the person that gives developers the bad news. He was extremely polite and pleasant to talk to, and informed me that the application description can’t have any mention of giving part of the proceeds to charity. The reason being someone might come back to Apple asking for a charity receipt or proof that the money actually went to the charity in question.

I changed the description while we were talking, and a day and a 1/2 later the update was available on the app store.

What did I glean from my conversation with him?

• There is a ‘first level team’ of app store reviewers that go through a predefined list of things to check.

• If anything is found, it’s marked for follow up or outright rejected, and the first level reviewer moves on to the next app.

• At some point these next level people get around to looking at the marked apps and contact developers.

I do believe that Apple is working hard to be more transparent with the process, and over the upcoming months we’ll see the app store become a better place to sell our software.

• Being a father to a wonder 10 month old daughter.
• Exploring iPhone development

Yes, that can take up a ton of time.. well, all my free time.

From the press release:

He received a liver transplant because he
was the patient with the highest MELD score (Model for End-Stage Liver Disease) of his blood type and, therefore, the sickest patient on the waiting list at the time a donor organ became available.

From Wikipedia:

In interpreting the MELD Score in hospitalized patients, the 3 month mortality is:
40 or more - 100% mortality
30-39 - 83% mortality
20-29 - 76% mortality
10-19 - 27% mortality
<10 - 4% mortality

Take that for what you read into it - but I pray that Steve gets better, not so that he can go back to Apple and make the stock go up, but so he can live a long life with his wife and family. Those of you who have gone through losing a loved one will understand. Pray for him and his family please.

But I wanted to say – wow, what a great conversation – the lady who called was genuinely happy about me coming, and excited for next week. And she’d happily turn off that flag for me in my account.

A pleasant change from faceless application rejections (of which I have not yet experienced).

I just ran across this wiki about the Newton 2010 date problem (Props to StevenF) – after 18:48:31 on January 5, 2010 a NewtonScript int variable overflows, and well, problems happen.

I know when we were working on the Newton in the late 90′s, we weren’t really considering 2010 – in reality who really does? That was 14 years away, we were bound to still be around by then, right?

Well, maybe not. Maybe your code is going to last that long. Maybe some structures or patterns you’ve designed seem fine, but have some upper boundary that you’d NEVER HIT.

Start looking for those problems now. If you find them, stop, and spend the time to fix them. If you can’t because of a fixed API… well.. what do you do then? Make sure you fail gracefully.

Even more impressive is the excitement people have over developing for the Macintosh/iPhone these days, and how they want to share that excitement with others by attending meetings like this.. I wonder if big CocoaHeads meetings like the Silicon valley chapter have that same feel?

Thanks all for a great night!

Yojimbo, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

Yojimbo is a great Macintosh organizer of information – and, as I found out yesterday, a ninja movie.

I found this in Powells in Beaverton yesterday….

(Via rentzsch.com: Tales from the Red Shed.)

I went last year, and I highly recommend it if you are an indie developer, or want to be an indie developer. This year, I won’t be able to attend, for a very good reason of which I will get into later on in the month.

Update: Ya, I should get caught up on things – it’s sold out… at least the videos should be available later on in the year.

My reasoning was the following:

• 10.5 hasn’t been out long enough for a really wide user adaption.
• Users won’t want to pay another $120ish for a new OS so soon.
• Apple doesn’t have enough engineers to add enough new features to an OS to be a big enough upgrade.

Then John Gruber posted a few interesting comments – first to an article about Snow Leopard being ‘pure Cocoa‘. This makes complete sense to me – see the QTKit as an example of the start of that. Having a consistent Cocoa API for everything is a win for newer developers who don’t know (or care) about Carbon.

Gruber also points to TUAW’s post on the subject, in which they comment that it’s a stability and performance release, and even perhaps a grand unifying OS release (Touch/Macintosh/Apple TV).

This unifying theory more than anything makes the most sense to me. Apple, like every Mac programming company these days, is hurting for good people. When they try and hire folks, it’s often a hard sell to get someone to move to the bay area given it’s high cost of living. So, why not consolidate the code, and have one repository containing all three from which you can build off of, with a shared base of source. It would alleviate having to build three large teams, or even three medium teams. One core OS team, and then three smaller teams to do the respective UI and platform specific frameworks.

What would this allow them to provide? Well, we’ve seen two – AppKit and UIKit. How about a third? AppleTVKit? I wonder if one of the unannounced sessions is one on the programming environment for the next release of the Apple TV ‘operating system’? I wonder if Apple will have a built in application store? It would be a fantastic opportunity for Apple to pull ahead in the set top box arena. Netflix Player anyone?

Here’s hoping….

(Via Downshift.)

Justin of Second Gear posts a great article on how to have a healthy WWDC. Wise words if you are going.

I’ll be giving a small presentation on NSOperation and NSOperationQueue, two really useful classes that are available in Leopard for doing background operations. They are particularly important in todays’ day and age of multi-core Macintoshes, and useful for doing background processing in a nice manner on an iPhone or iPod touch.

5:30 pm – snack and chatting before we start
6:00 pm – Q&A Session (bring your Cocoa questions)
6:30 ish – Presentation on NSOperation and NSOperationQueue
7:30 ish – finished, hang out time, show cool things time, show iPhone apps??

Feel free to arrive at 5:30 pm for some snacks and chatting before we start up.

Extensis Portland (Google Map Link) – 1800 SW 1st Ave, Portland, OR – Suite 500

The Newton Team Way Back When, originally uploaded by Lucien W. Dupont.

Man.. this brings back a flood of really good memories of my time at Apple, and all the friends I still have from way back when. Click through to see a few notes.

John sent me his presentation, feel free to download it and play with his examples.

Next month I’ll be doing a talk on NSOperation and NSOperationQueue, as it’s something I need to learn about for my personal programming project I’m currently working on. March 12 at 6pm, mark your calendars.

(Via Dan Wood: The Eponymous Weblog.)

Some great advice from Dan Wood on what he would change if he went back in time to when he started his mac indie company.

Feel free to arrive anytime after 5:30pm, the downstairs doors tend to get locked at 6pm. We’ll start off at 6pm with a round of Q&A, as that worked really well last time, and start the hands on talk at around 6:30pm. Food will be provided.

Location details:
Extensis Portland – 1800 SW 1st Ave, Portland, OR – Suite 500

(Via Shirt Pocket Watch.)

It’s been a long time coming, but I’d rather have it work 100% than released 3 months ago.

Update: It shipped, and it works great.

(Of which a friend is one).

Well done John Moltz. I’ll miss your humor and wit.

More favorite moments at Brent Simmons weblog.

I’m most impressed with the location feature in Maps. We live out on the edge of Beaverton at the urban growth boundary, so my AT&T coverage here is, well, spotty at best.

When I have WiFi turned off, here’s what I see:

When I turn on WiFi, you’ll see that my location gets dramatically more defined. Which means that the WiFi mapping that is being used is really accurate:

Yes, my home is right in the center of that circle. I’m hoping tomorrow when I suck it up and go to work that it will be as accurate as it is at home.

The other announcements didn’t particularly interest me enough to pull out a credit card to pre order anything. The MacBook Air looks cool, I look forward to checking it out at the local Apple store.

I still don’t get the Apple TV. Someone please explain to me what I’m missing? Is it because I have a TiVo Series 3?

Time Capsule has the most potential “buy now” for me. I have a backup hard drive that I use with SuperDuper! and it would be nice to have a Time Machine backup as well. I am going to wait to read some reviews though, as I’m worried about the speed of the hard drive over the network. I have an Airport Extreme base station and performance was very poor for heavy disk use. Hopefully someone at Macworld will figure out how the internal ‘server grade’ hard drive is connected.

Update: And I was wrong…  

Macworld 2008 – It’s all coming together now

(Via The Extensis Blog)

 I am looking forward to it – having owned a high-def Sony camcorder for a good 2 years, it will be nice to create some discs that show off the quality of the video.  

Our schedule is going to be this:

- bring your questions on anything Cocoa, hopefully the brainpowers in the room will be able to shed some light on it

- we’ll giggle like schoolgirls about what Steve announced, and see if we can afford to charge one to our well-used-over-Christmas credit card. (subnotebook with blu-ray anyone?)

More info is here:http://www.cocoaheads.org/us/PortlandOregon/index.html