Developers Buzz on Leopard and Safari, Bum Out About IPhone
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Hopes of a full-fledged software developers kit for the wonder gadget fade even as Core Animation and a browser that does Windows delight some coders.
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As expected, Apple CEO Steve Jobs went through a laundry list of new features that will come with the company's new operating system, Leopard, when it's released later this year. His keynote address opened Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference today.
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The user version of Mac OS X v10.5 &quot;Leopard&quot; took center stage during Apple CEO Steve Jobs&#39; keynote address to developers at this week&#39;s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) but it wasn&#39;t the only news. Apple also revealed new features of Mac OS X v10.5 Server, or [
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Apple has posted yet another beta of its Safari Web browser for Mac OS X and Windows.
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Apple Inc.&#39;s  upcoming iPhone  is shaping up as this year&#39;s must-have gadget, but several  perceived shortcomings are pushing some potential buyers to  wait for an updated version.
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Investor's Business Daily - 1 Apple&#39;s CEO unveiled a new version of the company&#39;s operating system, called Leopard, and disclosed top video game maker Electronics Arts will release new games for the Mac. But his highly anticipated address at Apple&#39;s developers conference offered few new details about the upcoming iPhone, which analysts think may be a boon for the company overall.
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As the engine of iPhone hype gears up for its final power thrust, discussions about the new device range from how many units it will sell to how developers can cash in with widgets to how its iPod-like features might cannibalize iPod sales.
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I've given Leopard a chance, but it's pretty clear, this is not a good operating system release. I've been out of the Mac loop for most of the last decade, just got back in a bit over 2 years ago. I don't know if early OS releases are generally as crappy as this one, but I wasn't prepared for where we're at now. If I had known, I would have waited, instead of upgrading most of my Macs to the new system. Talking with a friend a few days ago, he asked what I thought of Leopard. He had installed the new version, like me, the first day it came out. "I'm not liking it," I said. He said something that was simple, profound and revealing: "It's like Windows." It is. It's that unpleasant to use. It disappears for long periods of time. Systems that didn't used to crash now crash regularly. On one system three hard disks were rendered unusable, and I lost a couple of full days restoring them (luckily I had good backups). The user interface is quirky. The new networking interface is a big step backward. The firewall moved and lost features! That's simply never done, you don't charge customers to remove features, esp security features. I think Apple doesn't understand how many people depend seriously on their Macs.  To Apple, I left Windows because it held my time and work in low regard. I was happy with the Mac because it seemed reliable. Now it seems my friend was right, I'm using Windows again, and I'm not happy about it.
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Not everyone agrees Apple's plan to let developers build Web-based apps for the iPhone is 'a pretty sweet solution.'
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(InfoWorld) - Apple's just-released public beta of the Safari 3 Web browser -- the first version to run on Windows as well as Mac OS X -- is drawing fervent and sometimes heated reactions from early testers. The following is an unexpurgated sample of what bloggers, ranging from grumpy Windows users to Mac fanboys, had to say in the immediate aftermath of Monday's Safari 3 announcement: Is Safari faster than Steve Jobs speeding on Hwy. 280 in his Mercedes SL AMG? "I miss the spell-checking, but damn -- this gives Opera a run for it's [sic] money in terms of speed. I just tested loading my homepage with both of them, and I have no doubts about it." -- Griffith, Forever Geek "After downloading and installing Safari on XP (w/ 1GB RAM, P4 3Ghz, yada yada yada), I have to say that it is a complete joke ... the browser is just so horribly slow. Did they test this? It takes literally at least 5x longer to render pages in Safari than Firefox. Sometimes even longer. Very sad." -- Doug, Read/ Write Web "I did a comparison of loading CNN on both browsers,and Safari beat Firefox by a mile." -- Hoobam, Download Squad "The more I run Safari on Vista, the faster it launches. Am I hallucinating? Is there a cosmic force that means just when I complain about Safari taking 57 seconds to launch, as soon as that complaint is made public, it launches much more quickly? Am I going insane? Or is someone playing a clever prank on me?" -- Joel Spolsky, Joel On Software Fonts: fuzzier than a peach skin? "If you sit really close to the monitor, then the Windows way is better. However, if you move back a couple of feet (3 feet or so from the screen to your eyes), then the Apple way seems more readable. The Apple rendering is definitely darker." -- Brendan Dowling, Coding Horror "It looks like they've skewed the contrast of the fonts to an absurdly low level. I'm curious why Apple's default font rendering strategies, to my eye -- and to the eyes of at least two other people -- are visibly inferior to Microsoft's on typical LCD displays. This is exactly the kind of graphic designer-ish detail I'd expect Cupertino to get right, so it's all the more surprising to me that they apparently haven't." -- Jeff Atwood, Coding Horror "In Safari, go to Edit/Preferences ... and then select the Appearance tab. For "Font smoothing," choose Light (the default is Medium). Much better now. Not perfect, mind you, but much better." -- Tom, Coding Horror "I also noticed that if I increase the font size, Apple-style anti-aliasing becomes tolerable. I'm beginning to think that the differences are. 1) Apple doesn't hand-tune the font aliasing hints for smaller font sizes. 2) Apple chose a much, much darker contrast level for its anti-aliasing algorithm." -- Jeff Atwood, Coding Horror And now for today's bug report.... "Seems like the only website my Safari works with is Apple's own homepage. Crashed about 15 times and I've only been _trying_ to use it for an hour." --Â  Brandon, Download Squad "I installed Safari, and every single time I attempt to bookmark something, it crashes -- hard." -- EJ Passeos, TechCrunch "The only browser unable to correctly display a Google result page. Wow." --Â  Xavier, TechCrunch "Oh damn, I just crashed with Safari at the 1st Google request by entering Japanese characters." -- Eirikur, Engadget "ALL the menu dropdowns don't work (they are just empty). Half the text is missing on many pages. URL bar doesn't work. Selects a non standard font for the pages. Need some more?" -- ScOObyDoo, Engadget Well, how about the new features? "The most notable new feature is an improved Firefox-style way to search for text on a Web page. Hit Control-F, and an oval search box appears towards the top of the window. Type your search term, hit enter, and watch the page go gray with your search terms highlighted in white or bright orange (that's the selected result)." -- Narasu Rebbapragada, PC World "Tabbed browsing? Been done. Easy Bookmarks? Been done. Popup blocking? Old news. Inline Find -- stunning visually but also been done. SnapBack? This is a gimicky [sic] back button -- not good enough. Forms autofill -- zzz. Built-in RSS -- yawn. When are we getting to the good stuff? Er ... okay, so that's it, there is nothing new here." -- Vincent Maher, Media in Transition "The display window is VERY clean; even the status bar at the bottom of most Windows applications is missing (configurable to have it return) to give maximum viewable area. Notably absent are the OS X style green, yellow, and red Window controls in the top right of every dialog window -- stylized but otherwise standard Minimize, Maximize, and Close buttons are found instead." -- Scratching The Surface "If it wasn't so damn ugly, and made use of more than 2 mouse buttons (no middle button click-to-scroll or back/forward at present), it may be useful. I admit the WebKit is rather snappy at displaying web pages but I can't stand the interface." -- Lizard.boy, Download Squad The final word(s)? "The new version is 3 and really it does what they claim, SPEED. The only problem is I have become so comfortable with Firefox that just speed isn't enough for me to switch." -- Jeremy Jones, Multimedia-PCs.com "It's like software from a different world installed on a Windows-powered computer (much like how Windows users might initially find iTunes)." -- J. Angelo Racoma, J Spot "I've used it for a good 4 hours straight just surfing along a bunch of websites and stuff. It is a lot faster than Firefox, which was my browser of choice, and it is much faster than IE. There are a bit of glitches on it, which is understandable since it is a beta. Once all the features are perfected and the glitches are fixed it'll be a find [sic] browser." -- Jae, Engadget "I'm surprised nobody has said that XP/Vista is making Safari crash ;) After all you know, Apple can do no wrong." -- ssummer, Engadget
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Features in the upcoming release of Apple's operating system, Leopard, may give clues to how iPhone development will work once the iPhone software-development kit appears next year. Of particular interest to developers are Leopard's security features.
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The last few days have seen an amazing amount of security chatter concerning the iPhone considering that the thing just launched. Jon Espenschied would like to hear a little less hysteria and a little more clarity about the difference between standards and "what's usual."
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The near-final version of Mac OS X Leopard, unveiled today at the World Wide Developers Conference, introduces over 300 new features. They include a new Desktop and Dock with Stacks; an updated Finder featuring Cover Flow and a new way to easily browse and share files between multiple Macs; Quick Look, a new way to rapidly preview most files without opening an application; Time Machine, a new way to easily and automatically back up and restore lost files or a complete Mac; Spaces, a powerful new feature to create groups of applications and instantly switch between them; and enhanced iChat and Mail applications, which easily allow users to communicate even more creatively. Mac OS X Leopard, the sixth major release of the worldâs most advanced operating system, is scheduled to ship in October.
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(InfoWorld) - What a world. We have to fight off viruses, zombies, bots, phishing, and on and on. Can you believe how many just plain evil people there are in the world? And what is their point? Simple thievery? To prove they are smarter than the rest of us? And think of all the money that's spent on defending, as best we can, against these miscreants or in cleaning up the mess when they get the better of us? Indeed, what a waste. While viruses have appeared on mobile devices, they are, thankfully, few and far between. Part of the reason for this has been a lack of standardization of software environments on handsets, and part is due to the minimal functionality that is typical on these products. It's hard for the socially challenged to overwrite boot sectors, corrupt data, or otherwise run amok on most cell phones today. Apple's decision to limit local software execution on the iPhone is undoubtedly due, at least in part, to a fundamental fear of hackers. While the Macintosh hasn't been much of a target for the hacker community, the iPhone could be a lot more tempting. There will be far more iPhones than Macs in the world in just a few years. Plus, Apple partner AT&T doesn't need the support headaches that come with having a large number of users jamming its 800 numbers with reports of bizarre symptoms on their iPhones. Regardless, being a Web services guy, I absolutely applaud Apple for moving the Web services art forward a notch or two with a very capable platform that might indeed replace PCs for many of us over the next decade or so. We don't need to run a lot of local code to have a meaningful IT experience while on the go. Of course, the iPhone will be hacked over time, requiring updates and fixes, just as is the case with the PC. There are already reports of hackers working diligently to unlock the phone so that non-AT&T SIM cards can be used, and to avoid cellular activation so that the device would be used only Wi-Fi networks -- with VoFi services, of course. Any programmable device runs this kind of risk, and defending against unauthorized code will remain a challenge for some time to come. Which brings me to a really obscure but very important, shall we say, "opportunity" for hackers. Last year, I wrote about one of the most exciting technology developments in wireless, software-defined radio (SDR). Basically, SDR simplifies radio hardware design by replacing specialized circuitry with software. Among the many benefits of SDR are over-the-air bug fixes, the ability to add new features on demand, and dynamic reprogrammability -- turning, for example, a GSM phone into a CDMA phone or even Wi-Fi or Bluetooth or UWB or whatever on the fly. With so much software at play here, the question has to be asked: Could an SDR get hacked? Suppose someone figures out how to build a virus that quickly spreads to SDR-based handsets, disabling them or using them as jammers or worse? What if those handsets are being used for public-safety applications? This is not to say that hacking is the only vector for wireless disruptions. After all, anyone can use a jammer to disable communications in a local area, and any moron with a reasonable shortwave transmitter can pretend to be an air traffic controller. That fact that we still use an unencrypted, unauthenticated communications protocol for such a critical service boggles my mind. The FCC is rightfully concerned about SDR hacking and has issued new regulations for SDRs that mostly attempt to deal with open source software in SDR applications. There is significant concern that open source software creates specific vulnerabilities that hackers could exploit. I don't think this is very likely for two reasons. First, open source isn't the same as open architectures. Each product vendor would of necessity keep certain elements of their implementation secret, locking out all but the most determined hackers. But secondly, and more importantly, the real issue is how to protect individual phones from ever loading harmful software. We already have pretty good techniques for this from the PC world, and there are many effective approaches to solving this particular security concern. It could even be argued that the technical scrutiny that comes with open source actually enhances security and integrity; the real issue is controlling what software, open source or not, gets onto the mobile device. As I noted in my last column, the big issue with SDR isn't hackers or security: It is the need to lower the power demands of SDR implementations so that they have a prayer of running on batteries. The road to SDR-based handsets isn't at all paved yet, but open source is a relatively minor concern.
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Note: There was no permalink for the story on Apple's news website, here's the full text, with permalink. DW Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers&#185; hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers. It will take until February to release an SDK because we&#185;re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once&#139;provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones&#139;this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target. Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than &#179;totally open,&#178; we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone&#185;s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs. We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones. Steve P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch. [Oct 17, 2007]
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Apple announced that there will be an SDK for the iPhone.  Hooray!
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Developers will get to write applications for the iPhone. Sort of.