Vincent Gable’s Blog

October 6, 2009

‘Yum!’

Filed under: Design,iPhone,MacOSX,Programming | , , , , ,
― Vincent Gable on October 6, 2009

I give Microsoft’s current Mac software some shit, but I think it’s deserved. So it’s only fair I mention their glory days.

From “Classic” Mac OS 8.1 in 1998 through Mac OS X 10.2 Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (for Mac) was the default web browser Apple chose for Mac OS. The very fist iMac? It came with IE:mac, just like the first version of Mac OS X.

And IE:mac wasn’t so bad, for it’s era. (It was the first browser to have color correcting PNGs, by the way!) There was one really neat feature that I think is worth calling out: it would match your iMac’s color, automagically.

Technical Details That I Only Half Remember

If you have a better understanding of how this worked, please let me know! I couldn’t find any details online. Mostly, I’m writing down what I remember before I forget.

The poorly named Gestalt function lets you check information about the Mac OS runtime, like “what version of Mac OS is this?“. You pass it a FourCharCode, and replies with a 32-bit value or an error code — old stuff from the “Classic” Mac OS days.

There was an undocumented code, 'yum!' 1, that returned the color of an the iMac or iBook case. IE:mac would check this when it first started, and choose a color scheme to match the operator’s Mac. It was a seamless personal touch that really impressed me.

It’s the sort of thing I’d like to see more of on today’s multi-colored iPods and iPhones.

1It might have been 'Yum!', I don’t remember exactly, and Gestalt() returns gestaltUndefSelectorErr, -5551, for all of variations on my MacBook Pro under Snow Leopard.

September 15, 2009

More Dear Than Sleep

Filed under: Uncategorized | , ,
― Vincent Gable on September 15, 2009

… making (my new MacBook Pro) well worth the ~$2700 purchase price because I use my computer for more hours in a year than I sleep

—Jason Kottke

My computer stays on 24/7. When I take it somewhere, it’s “asleep” but still on. Yes, I restart it occasionally; but by any human definition restarting isn’t turning off, anymore than someone blinking is taking a nap.

June 4, 2009

MicroISV

Filed under: Programming | , , , , , , ,
― Vincent Gable on June 4, 2009

The word microISV is all business, in all the wrong ways.

MicroISV stands for “Micro Independent Software Vendor”, which in plain english means a tiny software company, usually on the order of one or three people.

Probably the best reason to buy software from such a small shop is passion. People who build and sell their own software directly tend to care very deeply about it. Their program is their baby. Nobody in a microISV is just in it for the paycheck. No matter how cool a large corporation is, at the end of the day everyone has to compromise on their dream to work together on it. But a one man shop never has to compromise or design by committee.

“Micro Independent Software Vendor” doesn’t communicate this agile vision. It sounds like the same kind of turgid enterprise think that drove the world’s largest software company to rename Netbooks, “low-cost small notebook PCs”. (You just can’t make this stuff up!)

Three people are never going to out-Big-Business a Big Business. So it just doesn’t make sense to label what they do with a Big Business Word. (And by word, I mean several words, because that’s how Enterprise Speak works.)

The most popular synonym for microISV I see in the Mac software scene is indy developer. I think it’s a fine term — better than microISV by about a factor of IBM’s income. But there are many other excellent alternatives to “indie”, like boutique, nano, one-man, etc. The exact term isn’t important; and it need not be short. If someone wants to open their own “Hand Cyphered Soft-Wares Emporium“, then more power to them! What’s important is that their taxonomy reflect the culture of commitment that goes into their unique software.

EDITED TO ADD: Small Batch Business is another fantastic name.

September 21, 2008

The Graphing Calculator Story

Filed under: Programming | , ,
― Vincent Gable on September 21, 2008

Just read this. It’s easily the most amazing software development story I have ever heard. And yes, I used that software in school.

July 23, 2008

Wow, Macs Really Are Easier

Filed under: Accessibility,Design,MacOSX,Usability | ,
― Vincent Gable on July 23, 2008

Atul Varma learns to love his Mac

…In a nutshell, though, I had always assumed that Macs were only marginally easier to use than PCs. I guess I’ve found over the past two months that in some ways, this holds true—the Mac is essentially an incredibly sexy-looking PC, with the same annoyances and a few polishes that make it a bit more humane to use. In other ways, however, the difference is truly like night and day.

This is a story about such a situation.

… I had to go through 8 wizards in all, so that’s a grand total of twenty-four clicks required to unplug my keyboard and mouse from one side of my computer and plug them into the other side. I’m not actually installing brand-new hardware here.

The first time I had to plug this keyboard and mouse into my Mac, I was floored. In the best-case scenario, I expected it to think for a second or two and then give me a reasonably unintrusive message informing me that I could use my USB mouse and keyboard. That would have been pretty humane.

But it did one better.

The Mac didn’t tell me anything, because my mouse and keyboard just worked the moment I plugged them in. When you plug in a power cable or a pair of headphones into a computer, you don’t get some kind of confirmation message from your operating system, because it’s obviously supposed to just work—why should plugging in a USB keyboard and mouse be any different?

… I have to admit that when it all adds up, I find my Mac to be significantly easier to use than my PC.

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