Childish reactions from competing companies

19/01/2005 00:09 | Categories: Apple | 0 Comments 

In Catalan only, but Ignasi has links to the opinion of 3 world-class CEOs about what they think regarding the iPod shuffle and the Mac mini. Obviously, when those CEOs belong to companies who compete head-to-head with Apple, you can't expect favourable opinions. In fact, the opinions border with stupidity. Take a look at what Dell's CEO has to say about the iPod:
"It's interesting the iPod has been out for three years and it's only this past year it's become a raging success. Well those things that become fads rage and then they drop off. When I was growing up there was a product made by Sony called the Sony Walkman--a rage, everyone had to have one," he said. "Well you don't hear about the Walkman anymore. I believe that one product wonders come and go."
Amazing, the walkman is 20 years old! No wonder he can't see them anymore... The links: one, two, three.

Another gem from the articles:
"Actually, to me it's a big let-down: we're expecting a good fight but they're coming out with something that's five generations older,"
Says the CEO from a company whose flagship products are a blatant rip-off of the iPod, iPod mini and iPod photo...


First iPod shuffle review?

15/01/2005 23:57 | Categories: News, Apple | 0 Comments 

Engadget has it all, pictures included!


Even more on the Mac mini!

15/01/2005 20:41 | Categories: Apple | 3 Comments 

In one article, News.com insists on comparing the Mac mini to those 299$ bottom-of-the-bottom-line Dell PCs and their conclusion is obviously that it might not be that worth it... Of course, if you forget about the lousy integrated video card from the PC, the lack of CD burner, or the lack of software as iLife '05.

On the other hand, they're running another article with comments form Windows users who are waiting for the Mac mini to go on sale in order to buy one.

We don't know yet whether this new machine is going to be a sales hit for Apple but at least, it's generated a lot of attention... and that's always good :)

I would also buy one if I had a monitor... I'm even thinking to hook it up to my TV and replace the DVD player!


The power of Python

13/01/2005 02:10 | Categories: Blogging | 3 Comments 

In one my posts a couple of days ago I mentioned that I had started to look into Python for Series 60, recently released by Nokia. Of course in order to get up to speed with Python and the whole XMLRPC thingie in Python I needed to play around with it for a while, since my target is to build a simple moblogging client that will allow to post text and pictures to blogs via the Blogger and the metaWeblog XMLRPC APIs (since Nokia's Lifeblog does not support my 6600)

Look how simple it is to interact with the xmlrpc.php endpoint available in this server (all this from the Python console, the one that you get when typing just "python" at the command line): 

import xmlrpclib
srv = xmlrpclib.ServerProxy( "http://www.francesc.net/xmlrpc.php" )
srv.metaWeblog.getRecentPosts("2","oscar", "xxxxx")


and the output (too long to be included here) is a native Python list including all the recent posts in my blog (that magic number "2" is my blog id)

This is something that I had never seen so far... The good thing is that there is no such Python method called "metaWeblog.getRecentPosts" in the ServerProxy class! The XMLRPC library is in fact doing some run-time detection of the method we're calling and in fact, it is contacting the XMLRPC server and sending a request to the "metaWeblog.getRecentPosts" method so this library would work equally good if the method was called "myServer.getSomething".

That's quite unbelievable and this probably is the easiest XMLRPC library I've ever seen. And the best thing is that it works just fine in my 6600 without any change! In fact, I was typing these very same lines above in my 6600 via the bluetooth console (yeah, that's another one you've got to see... connecting to the 6600 via Bluetooth and executing Python code there typed from my laptop)

This is probably sooo old news for the Python crowd but it is something that I am really excited about :) Now I think that the hardest part about building my dreamed moblogging client for Series60 will be to build the UI and make it responsive... I will keep you updated :)


Mac OS X Tiger 10.4 videos

13/01/2005 01:08 | Categories: Apple | 0 Comments 

Apple has put up a few videos showing off some of the features that are going to be available in OS X 10.4, coming out any time in the next 6 months (in Steve's own words!) This is shaping up to be probably the best desktop OS ever.

I really like Spotlight, finally my documents will be easy to find! And how about Automator? However I am still not too excited about Dashboard. I think it's a useless waste of resources unless new great widgets appear from 3rd parties (Apple's default ones are not really useful for anything else than free eye candy)

I also like the new look that apps are going to get, specially becaue the window top bar is going to be somehow merged with the icon toolbar (the best example is the Mail.app video) It looks a bit more metallic than before, and I couldn't notice many stripes either... Is Apple going for a more cyber and tech look?

Also one new interesting feature is Mail.app's Spotlight-powered smart folders, kind of iTunes' smart playlists. It's great, it's about time we got them... I remember using this feature back in my Linux days with Evolution and it was really cool!

I'm looking forward to Tiger :) For the first time, I will be more than happy to pay 120$ for a piece of software!


Give chance a chance

12/01/2005 06:59 | Categories: News, Apple | 0 Comments 

In this keynote speech this morning in the San Francisco MacWorld 2005, Steve Jobs introduced a lot of products. Amongst them: I have high hopes for the iPod Shuffle and the Mac mini, it seems that finally Apple is going to target the masses with cheap and affordable computers. Of course nothing compared with a dual-processor G5 or a 40gb iPod but good enough for most people and a good way to lure consumers into the Mac world... Let's see how the public reacts during this year!


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