apple

As many of my colleagues mourn the death of a great tech icon, Steve Jobs, I pray for his soul, and hope (sincerely) that he makes it to Heaven. For all his flaws, he was a good neighbor, an optimist, a great strategist, an opponent of pornography, and he built up the tech industry in ways the future history books will show.

Much of my life has been lived along with products created or conceived by Steve himself (see my ongoing computing history here), and my current profession would be nowhere near as interesting as it is without his continual push towards extending the reach of technology into my life.

Through it all, we must remember what Steve (as well as many before him) has pointed out:

Once you realize the death is a part of life, you will live life more fully.

In other words,

"For we brought nothing into the world, just as we shall not be able to take anything out of it"
(1 Timothy 6:7).

I'm going to be reading Steve Jobs (the authorized biography) when it is released on October 24, 2011. I enjoyed reading iWoz, which spoke to much of Apple's successes in the engineering field, but the design and strategy aspects of Apple's success will likely be covered in-depth in this book.

Thanks to iOS5's support for contentEditable text areas, rich text editors like TinyMCE and CKEditor (two of my favorites, which I install on many Drupal sites using the WYSIWYG module) now work great for editing content on the web in mobile Safari!

This means that I'll be more likely to do site content work on the road with my iPad 2. I just wish they supported file select fields so I could also add images more easily on the go.

Check out all the details over on Midwestern Mac: WYSIWYG Editing (contentEditable support) in iOS 5.

While reading through a relatively decent overview/article on the current controversy, I found a paragraph that I take some issue with, especially with regard to the question of 'faith vs. science/reason':

Ms. Pynchon makes a critical observation: “These religious beliefs (that sexual conduct outside of a one man-one woman marriage is sinful and can be “cured” by Jesus) are held by fewer and fewer Americans. They have also been repudiated by many liberal American Christian churches (including my own. -JM] They fly in the face of American secular legal principles [read as separation of church and state - JM] and contradict our contemporary scientific understanding. They are matters of faith, not science or reason.” What this author is summarizing is what is becoming the national story — that our individual DNA is our essence, and we treat our essence with respect. It’s similar to our other national stories, for example, that you don’t stone a woman to death for adultery.

Unfortunately, Ms. Pynchon, along with most other academics and voices in culture today, misunderstands the unity of the human person, and of a supernatural view of our universe.

For a Catholic, like myself, human sexuality—including the psychology, physiology, and even the ideas informed by my faith—is a matter entirely wrapped up in rational (scientific) understanding, and then improved and refined by my faith.

Catholics, at least (I can't speak for other religious affiliations), are encouraged to pursue reason, to study the sciences, to examine DNA, the genome, etc... but inside a well-formed philosophical mindset. One that has a comprehensive worldview centered around the dignity of the human person, as created by a loving and relational God.

Many people, who have the same idea of religiosity that Ms. Pynchon has, would dismiss me as a religious zealot who dismisses science and rationality.

But I do not. In fact, I'm pretty sure there are genetic dispositions towards different kinds of sexual behaviors and patterns—just as there are genetic dispositions towards such things as alcoholism, racism, elitism, etc. A genetic predisposition towards homosexuality does not make homosexuality a 'good' or a 'right,' or even 'okay' for some people. Just as with every other human behavior, a wider worldview must be used to judge the righteousness of a human action or behavior—including acting on homosexual tendencies.

All I'm asking, really, is for writers like Ms. Pynchon, John Martellaro, et all to at least lend an ear to my arguments, as I do them. Don't ignore my voice because I'm Catholic. That would be just as offensive and infantile as my ignoring them for being scientists.

In the recent hubbub over Motorola Xoom pricing, I started to think a bit more about the current landscape of tablets on the market today—the iPad, and the competition.

Obviously, the iPad has won round 1. And it looks like round 2 is starting with Apple throwing all the punches—even though there's been no word on a second revision from the horse's mouth (yet).

But I was thinking to myself, "Why (and how?!) is Apple the only company selling a worthy $499 tablet." Apple's always been known to most people in the world as a luxury brand—and they are, in some senses—but why is Motorola introducing a tablet that retails for $799 minimum at launch, and will someday have a $599 version?

Motorola, and others in the 'actually working / almost shipping' tablet manufacturing market, probably see that the mid-range iPads are more popular than the cheap ones, and they target this price range/feature set. So, in a sense, what they're doing makes sense: target the large part of the bell curve of tablet sales, and make a great sub-$800 tablet.

However, I think they neglect to see one of Apple's greatest advantages: the upsell.

Apple has a $499 iPad, sure. But I don't know anyone that owns it. People instead go to the store feeling like they can afford $499 (it's only $500, right?). Then they look at numbers like 16 GB with WiFi only, and then see that they can just pay a little more and get 32 GB. A little more than that, and they can also have 3G, in case they ever need it.

Thus, Apple can still make a small margin on the $499 iPad, but they absorb the downside of that small margin by selling people the second model in the lineup. The $499 iPad is worth far more than you can imagine to Apple's iPad sales—even if it's not the hottest selling model. Even if Motorola would take a loss selling a $499 Xoom, they should do it.

After having jumped into the pool of mobile app development head first (more on that to come), I finally have a little more perspective when it comes to developing for iOS vs. Android.

One of the first things that I did when I started developing an App for iOS is purchase an iPod Touch. There's no way I wanted to be using my iPhone for all my development work, and I needed a device I could acquire quickly, at a low cost (i.e. without a contract), and not worry about battery life, durability, etc.

Plus, I know tons of people with iPod Touches already—most are people who don't want to spend an outrageous amount of money on a 'smartphone' plan with one of the major US carriers, but want a great mobile computing device/PDA/media player.

So, buy the iPod Touch for ~$200, download Xcode, and you're good to go for iOS development. Plus, the whole App Store process, while it's a bit convoluted at times, is very well structured, and offers developers easy avenues towards getting an app from development to sale to success with little effort required.

Of course, as I'm getting nearer and nearer the App's release, I'm hearing calls from all corners of Geekdom, "When you gonna release for Android?!" And the more frequent the cries of distress, the more frequently I look around for ways that I can/should start developing for Android.

Task 1 - Finding an Android-running device on which to Develop my App

Well, I was thinking to myself, I might as well at least buy an Android-running device and check things out.

First problem: There is no iPod Touch equivalent for Android. Why not? The iPod Touch is a hugely successful product, and if it's true that Apple always vastly overcharges for hardware, why isn't there a manufacturer who can capture some of Apple's market with an iPod Touch-like device. Something that is basically an Android phone, without the phone?

Well, either the manufacturers know they can't compete with Apple (for some strange reason), or maybe justjimjpc, from androidforums.com, knows what he's talking about:

An Android that is not a phone .... What For ..???? I never saw the use for a Touch except for those that could not qualify for a phone ...

Maybe some day a maker will make such a unit with android ... but not a big market IMO

(Source)

I don't know what kind of alternate reality this guy lives in, but I beg to differ with him: there is a market for the Touch—developers like me who just need a device to develop with, but not pay contract fees for.

Oh, and there are a few other people that like iPod Touches as well—something like, I don't know, 45 million people?

Task 2 - Finding a Good IDE in which to Develop for Android

Well, there does happen to be an Android SDK for Mac OSX, so that's good news. The Android developer website looks a little jarring, but it seems informative.

I heard mention of the Eclipse IDE, and it seems that's the way to go for Android dev, as there are special plugins/tutorials/etc. for it... but I've never used Eclipse—I'm more of a TextMate, Coda, etc. kinda guy, and even Xcode can be a little overwhelming sometimes. Hopefully TextMate, at least, is supported as a first class citizen of Android development tools.

Task 3 - Targeting an OS Version/Platform/Resolution/etc. for Development

I was glancing at 'Downloadable SDK Components,' and started getting a little scared... I saw in the list: Android 2.3.3, 2.3, 2.2, 2.1, 1.6 and 1.5...

Not only that... there are devices on the market today running each of these platform versions, and mixed with that, devices have vastly different hardware capabilities. One of the nicest things about iOS development is that I can target the iPhone 3G+ and iPod Touch running 3.2.x, and know that certain things will work, and others won't, and that certain things will run slowly, and others won't, across all iDevices.

Even a relatively simple app will require things like GPS interaction, different touch gestures, XML handling, filesystem access, etc.—and many of these things change a tiny bit from version to version of an individual device and OS. Keeping track of just the three main versions of the iPhone (3G, 3Gs, and 4) is hard enough—but worth the effort, since each individual revision exists in the hands of real users in the millions.

Why would I want to target even 10 different Android phones, especially since no individual unit comes close to the market penetration as one model of the iPhone?

Task 4 - Develop an App for Android?

I'm going to hold off on any Android development right now. For one, the complexity of targeting multiple versions of the platform, and multiple devices that have vastly different hardware capabilities, screen resolutions, etc. is simply not worth my time and effort.

Additionally, there's no way for me to get an Android device for development right now without paying a contract, or buying a used handset without a plan...

Finally, why develop for a platform that I don't use, and that I only know of two family members/friends who use? I know a huge number of iPhone users, and many teens and kids with iPod Touches. I can count over 20 in my extended family. I know more BlackBerry users (currently) than Android users—and I'm definitely not going to develop for BlackBerry!

Could my perspective on this change? Yes, most assuredly. But at this point, I can say with certainty that it's not worth my time/resources to try to develop an App for the Android market.

This year, one of my resolutions is to become a more experienced programmer—not only in web development (I can hold my own with PHP, server scripting, and web design languages)—and one of the measurable achievements I'd like to accomplish is having apps on the Mac App Store and iOS App Store.

I submitted a new Mac App, Visibility*, on January 9, and was hoping the app might be reviewed quickly so I could experience a few days on the Mac App store soon after its launch. Well, after more than two weeks of waiting, the App is still 'Waiting for Review.'

Following the advice of some other developers on Apple's Developer Forums, I submitted an expedited app review support ticket... and didn't get a response for over a week!

From the response email:

Thanks for your email and feedback. In order to get as many developers into the Mac App Store as possible we are reviewing apps on a first-come first-served basis. The size of any individual app or its fixes do not have an impact on when the app will enter In Review state.

We will get to your application as quickly as possible.

If your update is for a critical bug fix (reproducible crashes, for example), we can expedite a review. To do so, please let us know how we can reproduce this issue so we can confirm the resolution during our review. 

I'm in agreement with some other developers who are getting restless about their Mac App Store development timeframes—if there's no way to know how long it will take to get an app, or even an update to an already-submitted app, to the store, how can we commit resources to developing for the Mac App Store? It has taken many developers over a month to get their Apps approved.

Hopefully Apple will accelerate the approval process soon... or at least offer developers an estimated timeline for approval!

*It's an extremely simple app, but it has already allowed me to learn more about Xcode, Objective-C programming, Interface Builder, and the App Store process.