Community Blog

You may have heard about the new Lotto ticket checkers that are going in around the country that allow customers to check their own tickets. Well I'm involved in the project so if you're in the greater Wellington area and you see a short red head guy with a big sod off drill drilling holes in the counter then that's me. If it's a middle age guy with grey hair then that isn't me.

Anyhow, one thing I've noticed during this project as well as the numerous office moves I've had to do in my career is that people are pathetic when it comes to future proofing, in fact I seriously believe future proofing never enters their heads when they build something. What it means is that I have to endure architectural  idiocy on a daily basis.

I hate architects because they design for the sake of design as opposed to practicality but there are things they could do that would bring them into my good books. Take for example the mess I have to endure with the Lotto project.

If you've been reading the news about Apple you'd know that over the last few years Apple has been hit with numerous court cases regarding patent disputes. Apple has in fact settled on some, most notably the Creative case where Creative reckoned it had the patent on the iPod's menu system.

You may remember during the launch of the iPhone Steve Jobs said Apple had patented the hell out of it. It's an interesting situation because up until this Apple hadn't really taken out a lot of patents on account of the fact that they like to just get on with the job of developing great tools (and a Mac is a tool on account of the fact it allows us to do work as opposed to a PC running Windows which tries its damnedest to prevent us from doing work). But the patent system of America has rewarded morons the ability to take Apple to court to try and milk it for money these morons don't deserve.

Some drongo managed to pass a bill in the late 90's that allowed people to patent ideas and software. While I can sort of understand the idea of patenting software the ideas thing irritates me because the very idea that someone would never have the same idea as you is somewhat arrogant in nature. Okay, I admit that I'm pretty sure no one has had the same idea as me with regards to how Hannibal Lecter's face wearing tendencies could benefit society but I come from a planet called Kashyyyk so I have a certain degree of leeway on that. But humans by nature have a tendency to invent, it's what made New Zealand a great nation in the past (although thanks to globalisation I believe we're losing those skills), and because humans are the only creatures that have the ability to think on many planes it stands to reason that two people will have the same idea as to how to achieve something. So the very idea of patenting an idea with nothing to prove the idea is dubious at best.

So on Thursday Apple supplied developers the tools to create native apps and in doing so made the iPhone and iPod Touch the next computing platform. One of the most interesting aspects of this is that both these devices can now become what Palm and Windows Mobile have failed to achieve, truly great portable platforms. Don't get me wrong, Palm and Microsoft have been around for a long while and have huge development resources but clearly have a long way to being great multipurpose tools. Don't get me wrong I love my Palm (as dodgy as that sounds) but the software available for it has left me feeling this device is going the way of the Dodo which is ironically mostly due it it's own undoing. Don't even get me started on how pathetic Windows Mobile is. But the iPhone and iPod Touch are interesting. I read on Ars Technica this gem of a quote: [quote]Jobs asserted that Flash ran too slowly on the iPhone—which is another way of saying the iPhone isn't fast enough to run Flash—and suggested that something else was needed.[/quote]

Clearly this was BEFORE the SDK launch because if the iPhone and iPod Touch can play 3D games like the one invented by Apple and Spore from EA so very well then clearly that speaks of the incompetence of  Adobe to build resource friendly apps.

My favourite app that was shown in the Event video was from a company called Epocrates. This medical app pulled of some absolutely mind blowing things all done in two weeks utilising one of the lesser known parts of Mac OS X that of SQL Lite. The app was able to store the entire database of pills within the builtin SQL Lite database meaning doctors and nurses could get all the information in one place without needing to be connected to the network. Considering the policies against cellphones in hospitals this is very handy.

One of my favourite sites I keep coming back to, aside from this of course, is Roughly Drafted . The reason is how the site's owner constantly brings to light the flawed accusations that many so called analysts bring to light in their blogs. It's amazing to read how flawed these accusations are.

The current round is fun because these muppets seem to think that Apple isn't on track for selling 10 million iPhones by the end of this year based on the sales of iPhones currently. That's funny because the iPhone is one of the fastest selling smartphones on the market already blitzing Window Mobile joke phones and rapidly reaching market share for Symbian phones which includes Nokia, Motorola, and Sony.

One of the reasons they claim this is that there hasn't been the full sold iPhones being activated therefore Apple apparently hasn't sold them. Can you see the flaw in this logic? Apple only ever quotes over the counter sales so 1.4 million iPhones to date have been sold OVER THE COUNTER. These aren't the same as Microsoft's 1 million Zunes which have been sold to suppliers but have not been sold over the counter. These are valid sales, merely because 700 thousand haven't been activated doesn't mean they haven't been sold.