It's amazing, the more I read about what Apple is planning for Snow Leopard the more I realise I've already been there.

I'm not knocking Apple but I came from where Apple is heading when I left the sadly sinking ship that was the Amiga. Everything Apple is planning to do has been done on the Amiga back in the 80's and 90's.

Let me explain. Apple is shrinking Mac OS X instead of expanding it. Effectively Apple is removing things that make it bloated namely Carbon. Carbon was designed as a quick way to get Mac OS 9 apps onto Mac OS X. Unfortunately Many developers relied on Carbon to do things that Cocoa wasn't able to do at the time. When Cocoa became more inline with what Carbon did people still didn't move to Cocoa. Now Snow Leopard apparently is removing or at least reducing functionality of Carbon which means a lot of apps need redeveloping and by which I mean most likely Office and Adobe's apps. If apps are already written in Cocoa then there will be no issues.

One of the things I love about working on the Mac is how efficient the User Interface is, however it's far from perfect. There is one thing that irks me about UIs and it has to do with user interaction with the environment.

I'm right handed and I tend to have a visual path leaning to the right. My mouse is to the right of my keyboard as is most right handed people's mouse. This means to access things like the Devices or Folders on the Finder we have to travel a reasonable distance to get what we want which in turn makes the interface inefficient. To be productive you want to go as little out of your way to do something as possible and this is just something a computer's UI does not allow for on ANY platform let alone Mac OS X.

Currently the Finder looks like this:

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.

There's a couple of flaws in the views of Phil's. Firstly to say that the timeline allows more power is actually not true, in fact quite the opposite. While iMovie '06 does allow for a better volume adjustment, the fact that it only allows for two audio tracks + whatever audio is in the video means it is woefully inadequate.

My comments were going to be too long for the comment system so I decided to make a blog post in reply to Phil's post here:

The timeline does matter - to me and Apple!?

When Apple released iMovie '08 this year it caused one of the most vocal attacks that has ever happened in Apple history. Why? Well, Apple changed its interface so vastly it took people by surprise. It seems not many people like surprises. But is iMovie's lack of timeline really a problem and should Apple carried iMovie's interface to Final Cut Express if this is their new thinking?

They say that if you want to see what will be in cars in 5 years time, look at what Mercedes has in theirs now. Fantastic, just what we need is more arrogant pratts who don't know how to use an indicator. Oh wait... they meant technology wise.

The problem is we're putting computers into things that by all rights shouldn't have computers in them. In the case of cars we are making cars less driver friendly and more reliant on technology that can fail at the worst possible time.

Computers in planes is a good idea but should never be relied upon. Computers in cars makes

In my last entry I spoke about NIFE and DFTSOD. Of the two NIFE is the only excusable form of design because they had the best of intentions. Of course they say "The road to hell is paved with best intentions" so I guess Microsoft's headstone would read "He meant well but he's in Satan's arms now".

One aspect of PC design that irks me as an engineer has to do with weight. My Mac Mini with its half inch steel perimeter and it's power supply laying on top weighs less than many laptops out there. WHY? The Mini is a desktop machine (yes okay it uses lap

I've been on this planet for a while now and during my tenure here I've seen many examples of the most insidious forms of idea development ever. NIFE (Nice Idea, Failed Execution) and DFTSOD (Design For The Sake Of Design). The latter is pronounced "daft sod" on account of that's who came up with the idea in the first place, some daft sod.

I'm a fan of neither as they make life a pain to live. For example, and this is going to get a bit gross, one example of DFTSOD was when I helped my mate move. After the shift I had to christen the dunny and