Apple, on thursday, started seeding Mac OS X 10.5.3 to developers. So far, this update has about 75 bug fixes including critical memory leak with Core Animation. It seems the third update to Leopard will be coming in either April or May.

Webkit, Apple’s open source engine for Safari and many other browsers, has recently found a bug in the ACID3 test.  ACID3 is the newest web standards test certified in part by the W3.  After the bug was fixed in the ACID3 test, Webkit suddenly got a perfect score of 100/100.  When I retried Firefox/Gekko, I was kind of surprised that the score actually went down one point to 67/100 (Last time I tested it, it had a 68/100).  Opera’s newest engine, then scored a 100/100 as well along with Webkit.  Although this version of Opera is not released yet, and should be in a week or so.

It seems to me that Apple is finely becoming a worthy competitor to IE, Firefox, and Opera.  At this point Mozilla has a lot of work to do to catch up,  Webkit is still the only publicly released engine with HTML5.  As with IE, it’s no competition at this point, it’s most important feature is updating Windows for now.

EA was asked by Apple to make a game for the iPhone in 2 weeks as a demo for the iPhone SDK conferences. The game they made was a port of Spore. Spore is a game that has been in development for a short while.  It has been slated to come out on the Nintendo DS and PC/Mac platforms.  Although EA made the iPhone version as a demo to show off the power of the iPhone, they are now working on adding the iPhone to the list of platforms.  In September you’ll be able to play Spore now on the PC or Mac, Nintendo DS, and the iPhone.

Along with this, EA seems to have already put in a few more games in development for the iPhone.

“Additionally, EA affirmed that there were ‘other games in early stages of development,’ and that it was ‘actively using the new iPhone SDK to develop games for the iPhone OS.’ Jump on past the break for the full release.” - engadget

“The animation technology in the iPhone OS enables us to build awesome games,” said John Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts. “I think iPhone consumers are going to be blown away by the games we create for this platform.”

It appears, since Apple released the iPhone SDK, Adobe itself has started work on building a Flash player for the iPhone. This same thing happened with Sun Microsystems, as it is underway developing Java for the phone. Here’s what Adobe had to say:

“We believe Flash is synonymous with the Internet experience, and we are committed to bringing Flash to the iPhone. We have evaluated ( the software developer tools) and we think we can develop an iPhone Flash player ourselves.”

Link

iEmulator, one of the leading emulation companies left for the PPC Macs has posted a press release.  It says it’s working on a port of it’s product for the iPhone called iEmulator Touch.   This will allow people to install Windows, Linux, or any other x86 operating system on the iPhone.

Link:  http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/03/prweb752204.htm

Personal thought:

I’d personally like to see if a full fledge OS like Windows XP could run on a phone like the Voyager or Blackberry (I’m serious).   I’ve been saying it since June, whether people noticed it or not, the iPhone is not just a phone.  Although the name makes it seem that way, it’s actually more of it’s own platform neither a PDA, or a phone, or a computer, it appears to be in a whole new category that’s still unknown.  Since the SDK I have noticed many people start to see the iPhone the way I see it, and I find it a little sad that just about everyone(not all) underestimated its potential.

Last week’s review is here.

The Applications reviewed this week

1. Pixelmator
2. OmniGraffle
3. Money
4. Racer
5. Battle for Wesnoth

Pixelmator:
This is an interesting program I picked up.  It has an interface very similar to Photoshop, but it’s not quite like Photoshop.  It’s covered in hundreds of features and advance editing tools.  One big bonus for this application compared to Adobe’s Photoshop, is the fact that this program is a native Cocoa app, while Photoshop is Carbon.  For those who don’t know about Cocoa or Carbon, it means that Pixelmator is much faster, more efficient, and less bug prone. Saying this I do have to point out a few problems I’ve encountered.  The first one is the image browser,  I have yet to ever get this working.  Every time I open it it freezes not just the application, but the whole system, making me have to do a hard shutdown.  It is also very limiting when trying to create an image from scratch, rather than tweaking one.   Overall it’s a fairly nice alternative to Photoshop.

Latest Version: 1.1.3; 4 March, 2008
Price: $59, shareware
Developer:  Pixelmator Team Ltd.

• Type: Image Editor
• Efficiency: 4/5
• Features: 3/5
• Graphics: 3/5
• Stability: 4/5
• Ease of Use: 4/5
• Modern Mac Look: 5/5
• Price: 4/5

Total: 27/35;  77%

OmniGraffle:
If you need a graphical representation or diagramming software, this is about the best program I’ve used whether on the Mac or PC.  It has many different categories for the job you need done.  It even contains pre-made graphics to design a user interface sketch (if your making an application).  In fact there are so many features and assets within this program that at times it can be a little hard to navigate through to find what you were looking for.  After a while though it becomes second-nature and a great full-featured application.

• Latest Version: 5.0; 5 March, 2008
• Price: $99(Standard) and $199(Pro)
• Developer:  OmniGroup

1. Type: Diagraming Software
2. Efficiency: 4/5
3. Features: 5/5
4. Graphics: 3/5
5. Stability: 5/5
6. Ease of Use: 3/5
7. Modern Mac Look: 5/5
8. Price: 5/5

Total: 30/35;  86%

Money:
This is a little nifty program for people that like to organize their personal finances.  This application is like a database that keeps track of spending and even your bank accounts.  It has a very intuitive feature that actually will connect to your bank account and update automatically with it.  I have found this program to be extremely simplistic, so it’s not for advance usage, but it is fairly nice.  In truth I think the price is a little high, I believe it should be donate ware or maybe $14.99.

• Latest Version: 5.0; 5 March, 2008
• Price: $99(Standard) and $39.99(Pro)
• Developer:  jumsoft

• Type: Diagraming Software
• Efficiency: 4/5
• Features: 2/5
• Stability: 5/5
• Ease of Use: 5/5
• Modern Mac Look: 5/5
• Price: 2/5

Total: 23/30;  76%

Racer:
This is a pretty nice racing game.  It’s a multi-platform online game which uses the mouse to accelerate and turn the cars.    For a free game it has really nice graphics, and great game play,  Saying this, it is very very easy to drive and doesn’t completely follow real physics.   Along with this, just a tab from another car will send you spinning like crazy.

• Latest Version: 0.5.4.3; 6 March, 2008
• Price: Free
• Developer:  Ruud van Gaal

• Type: Racing Game
• Efficiency: 2/5
• Features: 3/5
• Graphics: 3/5
• Stability: 4/5
• Ease of Use: 5/5
• Modern Mac Look: N/A(Opengl Based)

Total: 18/25;  72%

Battle For Wesnoth:
A very addictive game.  It’s similar to Civilization or Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, with a turn based RPG style simulation.  The theme in this game is fantasy as you build up your army of warriors.  There are many different sagas with in it and a lot of replay value.  The graphics aren’t the best, but I love the music.

• Latest Version: 1.4; 8 March, 2008
• Price: Free
• Developer:  The Battle for Wesnoth development team

• Type: Turn Based Strategy Game(fantasy themed)
• Efficiency: 3/5
• Features: 4/5
• Graphics: 2/5
• Audio: 3/5
• Stability: 5/5
• Ease of Use: 4/5
• Modern Mac Look: N/A(Opengl Based)

Total: 21/30;  70%

Just to caution, this post might not be very well written. I just wrote what came out of my head.

I’ve been developing with web technologies for a few years now. I started in the bleak times of what is now considered Web 1.0. If you don’t remember Web 1.0, it was the time when web pages were read only. When there was very little interactions at all, just static pages. Those were the days of HTML. HTML did everything from the structure of the page to the style and the graphical look.

Today, we live in a world of Web 2.0. In this concept, using HTML to create the actual look of a page is obsolete. We only use HTML to add the skeleton to the page, then we use something called styles, either through Javascript DOMs or a CSS file to make the graphical look of the page. Web 2.0 is also about communities and making the internet more dynamic.

Lately there has been talk about Web 3.0, something about databases and other random assets. To tell you the truth I’m trying to build a system that is separate from the normal idea of web development. You see, places like Youtube or Google have really shown the power of a technology called AJAX and the advancements of javascript, php, and rss. I’m currently working on a system that utilizes Javascript, php, rss, and other technologies with the technique of AJAX to create not only a dynamic website, but to give it a more physical feel and experience. Another words, I want it to be similar to a desktop based system, but designed specifically for web browsers. Just to clarify, this is not a WebOS, or web operating system,I’m making a web application platform(A little different).

Along with this, I want to make a very clean simplistic design, I don’t like a lot of clutter on webpages, just like I don’t want my desktop to be cluttered. Some examples of websites which are cluttered with junk are: yahoo.com, msn.com, cnn.com, and myspace.com. This “clutter” might work with some seasoned users, but new users might become very confused, and other users might not like a bunch of junk on a webpage that they never even look at.

Yahoo should learn from Google. Don’t through everything up on the homepage, have a few needed or important items, keep it clean, and keep it simplistic. If a user wants a function of some sort on the homepage, let them add it themselves, that way what they want is on the homepage and what they don’t want isn’t. That’s one of the big reasons for iGoogle.

Now to get back to web development languages like HTML, CSS, Javascript, and so forth. Making a basic generic website is easy, and actually it’s more than just easy. Today, not only are there very powerful web designing programs on the market, but there are free code snippets and libraries everywhere online. If you want your own blog, for instance, just download wordpress and add it to your site. It’s that easy to make any generic website.

Now if you want to make a unique website, that’s a different story. It’s rare to find a unique place on the web these days. From places like MySpace to Twitter, they all look the same to me. All I see is an evolution of the web, but I don’t want to see an evolution. What i want to see is a revolution. What I mean is, I don’t want the web to get better, I want it to change. For example, Microsoft Windows is a platform that has been around since 1985. MIcrosoft has made big changes with Windows, going from Windows 1.1 to Windows 3, then 95 to 2000. I’ve seen many leaps with it, but the truth is Windows has always been Windows. In truth, Windows has never gone away from what it once was. I’ve actually seen programs from Windows 1.1 running in Windows XP. You see Windows isn’t revolutionizing itself, it’s evolving because it’s the same Windows but with a few upgrades. To create a revolution, Microsoft would have to throw away Windows entirely and start from scratch. Microsoft said Windows Vista would be a whole new operating system from the ground up, but in truth it’s the same old Windows.. Now to show you an example of a revolution, Apple’s Mac OS X. Mac OS X is not an evolved form of Mac OS 9. The reason is, it’s different from the ground up. It has a different Kernel, a different application layer, and it even has a completely different origin of development.

Web 2.0 was never a revolution, it was only an evolution from Web 1.0, and it appears Web 3.0 is the same. I am truly sick of this; I’m moving away from the generic ways of web development. Right now I’m using Javascript, a language that barely supports object-oriented programming, to create a pure object oriented language. With this I hope to create a very dynamic web environment that people can easily understand, navigate, and even add to. I wish I could say more than this, but I really can’t on a public blog. At this point I feel like I might have already said to much.

In the end, I hope developers of internet browsers will start supporting the set standards of w3 a lot more, and I hope the standards expand. I personally hate how scripting languages work with each other like HTML and CSS, I believe someone should come up with a more advance object oriented system as a web standard. Even Javascript feels outdated compared to something like Objective-C.

At this point, the web platform I’m developing, code named Pyro, will NOT work with Internet Explorer. I want to keep my code as clean as possible with as little hacking and slashing as I can do. Web developers might know what I mean by hacking and slashing, ff not: it has to do with browser compatibility. No two browser are the same. This means I want to follow the standards almost all the way down the list. Internet Explorer does very little to follow standards at this point, so it will probably not work. It seems IE 8 will be web standards compliant, but all I can do is hope.

Yesturday, it seems that Apple’s servers were bogging down. Now I don’t just mean they were running slow, I mean many people couldn’t even access the developers site. Why is this? Because there were over one million developers trying to download the 2GB, finally released, iPhone SDK. Yes, it appears, after what Apple demoed at yesterday’s conference, that Apple wasn’t joking around when it bluntly said the iPhone is years ahead of its competition.

Personally, I’ll be one to say, I’ve never seen a full desktop game running on a smart phone. Most have low resolution graphics and very horrible sound. Apple, EA, and even Sega show-case the power of the iPhone with three very good looking games like Spore and Super Monkey Ball.

Just in five minutes on the Internet, I spotted about six articles about the iPhone and its SDK. All of these takes upon it were positive and very similar. They all saw the iPhone as a next generation phone, that could in fact make a decade long monopoly for Apple as the dominate mobile device. Here’re a few quotes and snippets:

“It’s clear we’re not the only ones interested in the software development kit (SDK) — after a few hours of trying, we still haven’t had any luck downloading it” - alleyinsider

“There should be significant concern in the RIM camp… By summer there could be hundreds, if not thousands, of applications ready for the iPhone” - Computer World

“The iPhone/iPod touch games will make the iPhone analogous to the Wii, in that it opens up new concepts in game UI design”

“[Apple’s iPhone, iPod touch developer] tools look awesome — far better and more advanced than what most Mac developers were expecting”

“Then Apple kicked things up a notch with the SDK details… But the real surprise was Apple’s efforts to market and develop an ecosystem for third-party iPhone development [including] Kleiner Perkins’ [launch of the] $100 million iFund to fund iPhone developer companies” - Notes From Anywhere

“By the time Apple officially releases the OS X 2.0 update in June, there will be no doubt that the iPhone will have turned both the personal computing and mobile communications industries on their head in just one year” - CNET

Here’s a Video of Steve Ballmer, giving his views on the iPhone:

Today the iPhone is starting to pop up in businesses and corporations.  Through a survey it also appears to have the highest satisfaction score as a business phone.  Apple has show cased it’s SDK road map and to start off, it explained what it’s doing for enterprises.  Here’s a list of new corporate features:

1. Push Email
2. Push Calender
3. Push Contacts
4. Global Address list
5. Cisco IPsec VPN
6. WPA2/802.1x
7. Remote Wipe

Even better, Apple has now integrated Microsoft Exchange server into the iPhone with something called Activesync.  The room exploded with Applause and cheer when this was announced.

Today the iPhone claims 28% of the smartphone Market, with RIM’s Blackberry at about 40%.

Apple today finally showed its SDK. Here’s a link. One thing that caught my eye was a demo game Apple made in two weeks. It was a space shooter that fully used the features of the iPhone. You steer by rotating the iPhone itself, and you shoot by tapping the screen.

Even better!!!!!! Apple went to game companies and asked them to make a game in two weeks. One of them was EA. It ported its new game Spore to the iPhone! Or at least 18 levels of it so far. Another game showcased was Sega’s Monkey Ball.

This kind of concludes my theory that Apple was trying to make the iPhone a gaming platform, not just for basic applications.