Andy's Blog

And since I haven't bagged on Microsoft in awhile...

I have been having to do a lot with Outlook and Exchange at work recently (Ug, I know). Anyways, I had to laugh out loud the other day, when Outlook barfed this error message up at me:

The message reads: "You cannot add a Microsoft Exchange account to this profile while Outlook is running. Please exit Outlook and use the Mail icon in the Control Panel to add a Microsoft Exchange account."

But I got to this dialog box from within Outlook! So, I can add POP and IMAP servers from within Outlook, but not Exchange? Why even give me the option to do so if it doesn't work in the first place? It's not like the Outlook team didn't know about this deficiency -- I mean, they went though all of the trouble to to put in this dialog box telling me exactly what to do.

Amazing!

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Outlook, Exchange

The Month of Apple Bugs

One of the things that the mac web has been buzzing about this month (other than the Jesus Phone, that is), has been the so-called "Month of Apple Bugs". The Month of Apple Bugs project has declared that they are going to announce a new security vulnerability in the Mac ecosystem every day. The unfortunate thing that I have witnessed about this, however, has been the reaction from some parts of the Mac community.

The worst offender is David Chartier, who writes on "The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)". In a post from January 3rd, he writes:

"Let me be clear: if these guys have actually found enough problems with software (be it Apple's or otherwise) to fill a whole month of releases, I honestly and sincerely thank them - they can help whoever makes that software to make it better. What is so horrendously wrong with this 'project' is that they're stirring up hype and making news headlines with these exploits, instead of sticking with the traditional and ethical practices of reporting and discussing these bugs with the relevant parties."

His whole post is filled with digs at this project, David is missing the overall point. Mac OS X, like every other operating system, has security flaws. The more of these flaws that we find (and get fixed), the better off that we all are.

As an example, I read about one of their more recent finds, in Software Update. I was able to reproduce it on my iMac G5, by executing these commands:

Last login: Wed Jan 24 23:18:05 on console
Welcome to Darwin!
[currents:~] andyr% touch %x.%x.%x.ThisIsEmbarrassing%x.%x.%x.%x.swutmp
[currents:~] andyr% open %x.%x.%x.ThisIsEmbarrassing%x.%x.%x.%x.swutmp

With the following result:

The error message from Software Update (which in this case, didn't crash).
Notice that all of the %x characters that I typed into my filename are now filled
in with internal data from Software Update.

This shows, rather conclusively, that there is something wrong with Software Update, that Apple should take a look at. While arguments can be made for and against different disclosure policies for security vulnerabilities, those of us who comprise the Mac community need to keep our heads, and realize that we're not on Mac OS 9 anymore. Security problems in OS X are going to be a fact of life, and we need to understand that they aren't the end of the world, and support people that find them, and also those that fix them.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Macintosh, TUAW, David Chartier, Month of Apple Bugs, MOAB, Software Update

Daring Fireball @ MWSF 2007

Right before seeing Kevin Smith today at MacWorld, it came to my attention that John Gruber was going to be giving a talk. So, I re-jiggered my plans, and attended:

Cabel Sasser and John Gruber @ MWSF 2007

The talk was basically John and his friend Cabel (whom he has only met in person "one other time") talking about today's Stevenote, Apple, and Panic Inc. I took some rough notes for the portion where they were talking about Apple's announcements from today:

[about the iPhone:] OS on the phone is being called "OS X", they dropped the "Mac".

CS: Are they trying to differentiate between full Mac OS X that runs on macs and the slimmed down version on the phone?

JG: dropped mac so as to not scare windows users away from phone.

CS: side note about phone - can we write 3rd party apps for the phone? Apple isn't saying.

JG: Price?
CS: if you look at what it does, and capabilities, price is pretty good. If you think about it, the first iPod was pretty expensive. It's gotta start high.

JG: It wasn't too long ago that Apple was selling $499 iPods (highest capacity model, probably didn't have highest sales).

JG: What do you think about touch + gestures?
CS: Crazy to think about - something we're never thought about before. Would be amazing to see this go to the powerbook line. Going back to GUI interface design, been watching the iPhone videos over and over, and looking at the amazing things that Apple is doing, pushing the envelope.

JG: "the pinch" really seems natural, something I would have never thought of. Double tapping looks interesting as well.

JG: Only other product announced today is apple tv, what do you thing?
CS: I bought a Tivo series 3, which is way too expensive ($800), but since I have all og this content over the air already
JG: wink wink, nudge nudge at pirated content? who is buying all this content [off of iTunes]? not going to get rid of cable tv, all these shows are already coming in.
CS: specs indicate that it [Apple TV] requires hd tv

I probably could have done better with the notes, but the sleep deprivation was hitting me pretty hard at this point. Overall, I'm glad that I went -- the discussion was insightful, and is probably going to drive some blog posts out of me (in fact, the one about iPhone applications came as a direct result from attending this talk).

-Andy.

Will the iPhone support 3rd party applications?

One of the recurring themes regarding the iPhone at the Daring Fireball talk was the open question as to wether-or-not the iPhone will support 3rd party applications. Obviously, nobody outside of Apple knows the answer to this question yet (and my guess is that Apple itself hasn't decided yet), but I do feel the need to speculate.

The first thing that I noticed when I saw the "Home" screen on the iPhone was how it looked crazy-similar to Dashboard in Mac OS X Tiger (10.4). The "Home" UI looks like a modified version of the widget picker in Dashboard. And later on in the talk, when Jobs showed the Weather and Stock widgets, it became glaringly obvious that the iPhone can run Dashboard widgets, probably unmodified.

And that makes perfect sense, if you think about it. What exactly is a Dashboard widget? Well, it is a bundle of HTML, CSS, images, and Javascript, that is all rendered using Safari. And during the keynote, Steve made sure to mention explicitly that the iPhone runs Safari. So, it's not much of a stretch to think that the iPhone can run Dashboard widgets. So, I think that it's pretty likely that developers we'll be able to install 3rd party Dashboard widgets on our iPhones, when we get them in June.

And of course, it almost goes without saying (but I'm sure people will forget if I don't say it), that the iPhone will be able to run web applications. Those web applications that work in Safari today will probably work on the iPhone as well. But if the iPhone becomes a success (and I think that it certainly will), then we might start seeing a whole new breed of web applications that are written with the iPhone in mind.

But developers are going want close ties into the system, to write applications that cannot be expressed using JavaScript. And since the iPhone runs a slimmed down version of "OS X" (as Apple is referring to the operating system running on the iPhone), then all Mac developers should already have the tools that they need in order to write native applications for the iPhone. Wether-or-not Apple is going to allow this, however, is hard to predict.

A "computer", in the traditional sense of the word, is expected to be able to run any sort of 3rd party software. However the iPhone, as billed by Apple, is not a computer. So, I can see Apple take the closed approach with this thing. In general, this would jive with how games have worked on the iPod (totally closed), and how companies like Cingular like to run their CPE devices (you get applications and things for your device from Cingular, not from the Internet).

On the other hand, Apple is competing with devices that run Palm OS, Windows Mobile, and Symbian OS - all of which support 3rd party applications.

So, in the end, this one is really a toss up. My bet is that Apple will try to make the iPhone a closed platform. But since the iPhone appears to be such a kick-ass platform, I also predict that it won't be long before the hacking community is running homebrew application on their iPhones. :)

-Andy.

Update: Looks like TUAW has some quasi-confirmation that the iPhone won't run 3rd party applications.

Update 2: More reasoning from Steve Jobs as to why the iPhone won't support 3rd party applications.

"We need to talk"

Yet another great Apple banner, this one is from the booth on the expo floor:

-Andy.

Games on the iPhone?

I just read a rumor on Kotaku about Apple beefing up their games support for the iPhone. This comes just after a post about games on the Zune in 2008. While The Steve didn't say anything at all about games today, I think that Apple would be insane to not be looking into doing some games on the iPhone. Currently, the DS is lighting up the gaming space with its dual screens and innovative touch screen. Well, the iPhone has a kick-ass screen, and an even more innovative touch screen. I think there are a lot of possibilities for new and innovative mini games using the dual-touch display.

So, I would say that if you think about it, this rumor clearly has some meat to it.

-Andy.

Apple TV

Apple is devoting a surprising amount of booth space to their new Apple TV product this year. One whole side of the booth is occupied by Sony Bravia LCD TVs and Apple TV units. And unlike the iPhone, the unwashed masses are allowed to touch and play:

It's super-thin (I wonder if it uses an iPod-sized HD in there?)

An obligatory butt shot.

Overall, I am not as enthused by Apple TV. When I finally decided to leave the stone ages and acquire a HD-capable TV, I'm sure that I'll end up getting one of these thingies. But for now, it is just a curiosity.

One thing that I learned from an Apple person is that while the Apple TV wants to output HD at 720p, it will apparently upconvert for TVs that require this (probably similar to what the Xbox is doing).

The key realization that I had about the Apple TV during the keynote is that the Apple TV is basically a headless iPod. When SJ covered how you can sync your content from iTunes to the Apple TV, it struck me how similar this is to syncing to the iPod. I think that is a really brilliant move on Apple's part. The other hot feature of this thing is that it allows you to stream content from ad hoc machines (i.e. laptops) quite easily. That will prove to be a killer feature, as laptops continue their current upwards sales trends.

-Andy.

A collection of iPhone images

So, the iPhone has finally been announced. Unfortunately, not only do we have to wait for June before it becomes available, but we can't even touch the few display models that are on the show floor. I think there are only two prototype units available, and they are sitting under glass, spinning.

But of course, I couldn't resist, and joined the throng of on-lookers taking pictures of the shiny new device:

It's shiny (and the on-screen keyboard looks neat).

It's thin!

Mobile Google == Nirvana

It really looks great. But sheesh, after that impressive demo that I saw this morning, I sure would like to play with one of these things...

-Andy.

Wow.

While I haven't had much time to blog lately, that is going to be changing this week. I just stepped out of the Apple keynote for MacWorld 2007. And just let me say, WOW!. My mouth was literally agape for over an hour during the keynote, mostly during Steve's demonstration of the new iPhone.

Let me be succinct here - Apple has blown everyone away with the iPhone. Motorola, gone. Nokia? Buried. Microsoft? Those guys have got to be scared of this thing.

Speaking as someone who has a laptop, cell phone, iPod, and an Internet Tablet, the user experience the the iPhone is going to provide is just a giant leap ahead of anything that is on the market today. Or that will be on the market for the next several years. The iPhone provides the things that I am already doing today (mobile web browsing, messaging, mapping, etc.), but in a far more elegant package.

2007 is off to a very good start for Apple, and they haven't fully fleshed out Leopard or any new macs yet.

Wow.

-Andy.