I was at Best Buy today for an iPad case. Another iPad owner was doing the same. He had waited in line and eagerly bought one on April 3rd like the rest of us. But he hadn’t used his yet. He couldn’t. His MacBook was 10.4 (Tiger) and couldn’t run the required version of iTunes for the iPad.

See, you can’t unlock and begin using an iPad until you’ve sync’d with iTunes (I mentioned this disappointment and warning in my first impressions). It is a brick until that moment.

He was picking up a copy of Snow Leopard, hoping to upgrade… And found out he couldn’t upgrade his non-Intel MacBook to 10.6. Ultimately in order to use the new iPad, that poor dude will need a new laptop. That was one pissed off customer.

This is my only significant gripe with the iPad. Not really because of it pissing off a bunch of people and requiring computer/software upgrades – admittedly this ends up being a non-issue to most buyers. It’s simply a pet peeve of mine. Good hardware and software should be usable from the get-go.

The iPad is easily capable of standing on its own out of the box. Instead it was packaged up and launched in an unusable state.

Note: This is really my only significant gripe about the iPad at this point.

I set up my Google nexus one (T-Mobile) a couple weeks ago for wifi tethering. One tap of a button and it shares its 3G. The iPad connects through it seamlessly.

If you have a tethering ability with your phone, try using it before opting for the 3G iPad. You can save some skrilla and have a little longer battery life (on the iPad – mileage on your phone may vary).

Apps
There isn’t a lot out there yet that is iPad optimized. I only found about a dozen apps I wanted to download and use… Amongst those:

• The requisite iWork suite (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote). I haven’t really used these much. They’ll probably get a lot more use this week.
• Wordpress. They did a great job getting this app together. I’m writing this blog post with it.
• Netflix. I’ve had too much fun things in real life happening to care about watching movies, but the tests of the netflix app are amazing. The video is clean and crisp. I can usually find a good movie to load within seconds and streaming begins immediately.
• Tweetdeck. This is the best Twitter client I’ve found. The default view is one’s mentions and timeline. It’s very well done.
• FlightTracker. Wonderful flight tracking app. Complete weather radar of the entire country and realtime monitoring of flights. Pretty slick.
• The Weather Channel (TWC Max+). Best weather app.
• ABC. Quality and speed were extremely impressive.
• iBooks. It’s the best ebook experience on the iPad. It comes with a free Winnie the pooh book. I didn’t read it yet… It was more fun to play with and scroll the virtual pages.
• Kindle. The UI isn’t quite as good as iBooks, but this doesn’t matter… My kindle purchases sync’d right up and the book I was reading in my iPhone even synced to the last page I was on. Really slick.
• Newspaper apps (nytimes, wsj, USA today, blah blah…). I wasn’t impressed. I found their web pages to be as good, or better, and without subscription requirements.

A lot of the popular apps on the iPhone are preferred over their mobile web counterpart simply because their web app counterpart sucks on a small screen (like Facebook). I don’t think a facebook app would be exciting on an iPad… The facebook web pages load flawlessly on the iPad. No need for an app. I think the same will be true for a lot of the other native web apps out there.

Keyboard
I mentioned yesterday that it was odd trying to touch type. The landscape keyboard is getting much easier to deal with. It’s actually getting pretty amazing. Where I preferred the portrait mode on my iPhone and nexusone, I can touch type in landscape on the iPad. Portrait mode works, but ends up just being a bunch of thumb pressing.

The virtual keypad compensates for mistypes most of the time. I can type at about 50-60 words per minute and not look at the keypad while typing. Not bad for day two! My native hardware speed is around 80-90.

Summary
Nothing major for new discoveries. Typing is rather nice and I hope I can reach my hardware typing speeds in another day or two. The apps released thus far, considering most developers never got to test on the iPad, are mostly impressive. Running iPhone apps on the iPad is mostly lame.

Purchase
I got in line at 8:30 and was out the door with my iPad by 9:15 (actual arrival time at the Apple store was 7:45 in case it was mobbed, but only 50 people were there and it was cold. Lounging in Starbucks was a hell of a lot better).

In the Apple Store they had moved all of their computers and iPods out. Every station had an iPad. Nothing else. It was interesting… The sensation of, “This is the future of computing… This is all you’ll see in the future” was the message I got.

Activate
The iPad required syncing to my laptop before I could unlock it. This was disappointing. I brought my laptop, but keep in mind you can’t use an iPad until connecting it with iTunes.

First use
The battery comes pre-charged to 100% and the sync was taking a while so I ditched the tether to the laptop and bounced around on various sites and downloaded apps. The experience is great. Even on an inundated public access point it was a smooth and a great web experience. If you want to call the iPad a “______ killer”, call it a mouse killer.

Look and feel
It feels good in the hands. It’s a little awkward for me to use the keypad because I’m used to the smaller sized iPhone keypad. It feels a little like a small child using an oversized adult keyboard. I’m sure this will change as one gets used to it.

Something odd… Remember when the iPhone first came out? If I you were in public and had it out people stared and asked, “Is that an iPhone?” While sitting in the Corner Bakery people mostly thought I was making strange gestures to a digital picture frame.

A real pain in the (photo) sync
After browsing around and downloading a bunch of iPad specific apps I went to sync music and photos. The sync of my photo library has been going for almost 2-hours now, and is about 60% complete. Each of the 10,000 images in my library has to be optimized. The good news is that the optimization for the iPad screen is stellar. The bad news is I’ll finish this post before the sync completes.

Reading
The screen quality is fantastic. I’m looking forward to using this as my go-to book reading device. This is a total eBook (device) killer. The Kindle for iPad app and iBooks are sure to be amazing.

Writing
Typing has been awkward. I have a feeling this is just a learning curve for a new keyboard style. It feels very similar to getting used to various ergonomic keyboards. Thumb typing in portrait mode is decent and intuitive. Touch typing in landscape will take some getting used to, but seems feasible.

Summary
A very good experience and device. I’ve expected I’d prefer using the iPad over a laptop for most tasks (email, news, misc. web, spreadsheets, docs, movies). So far that expectation seems to fit. If this is the future of computing, it’s looking to be a good future.

Here are the two best reviews I’ve found thus far:

• PCMag video review (short and sweet 5-minutes by Tim Gideon): http://vimeo.com/10595371
• AllThingsD/WallStreetJournal (Walt Mossberg): http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20100331/apple-ipad-review/

The most elegant feature of the iPad is that it gets you to the stuff you want more quickly than any other device. Time reduction between a dark screen and destination is the game changing attribute that makes me want one. I want efficiency.

A laptop or netbook may have more features or a faster processor. But you can’t open it, resume from sleep, enter your password, and launch a desired app, browser, or site in under 10 seconds. You can do this with an iPhone. With its new processor and 802.11n the iPad is even faster.

I don’t think people realize what instant-on will do for computing. Immediate access will enable situations where you could whip out an iPad impromptu in an elevator and give a presentation or report, read news, or whatever, before reaching your selected floor. It shaves seconds or minutes off of tasks.

The iPad combines that speed with a non-mobile 1024×768 10-inch screen. You get immediate access to relevant information, with the richness of a laptop/desktop interface in a form factor conducive to mobility. And multi-touch.

Multi-touch adds to the speed. One can more quickly navigate and perform tasks with it than via a mouse or standard touchscreen. One can rotate, zoom, and crop images more quickly. One can edit and move data in a document more quickly.

It’s all about speed. It’s the speed to information and more efficient interface that make the iPad kick ass.

Would you like them with Scott or Phil?

I would not like them with Scott or Phil.
I would not like them without vids or stills.

Would you like them in Jobs’ house?
Would you like them, they have no mouse?

I do not like them in Jobs’ house.
I do not like them with no mouse.
I do not like them with Scott or Phil.
I do not like them, there’s no vids or stills.

I do not like iPads without cams.
I do not like them, Fanboi-I-am.

Would you like them in Apple box?
Would you like them with a fox?

Not in the box.
Not with a fox.

They do not have a video frame, so
I will not like one on a train.
Not in the dark! Not in a tree!
Not in a car! You let me be!
I do not like their Apple box.
I do not like them with a fox.
I will not like one in Jobs’ house.
I do not like them with no mouse.
I do not like them with Scott or Phil.
I do not like them! NO VIDS OR STILLS!
I do not like iPads without cams!
I do not like them, Fanboi-I-am.

You do not like them. So you say.
Try them! Try them! And you may.
Try them and you may, I say.

If you will let me be,
I will try them. You will see.

…

Say! I like this iPad with no cam!
I do! I will buy them, Fanboi-I-am!
And I would like them on a boat.
And I would like them with a goat.

And I will buy without video frame.
And in the dark. And on a train.
And in a car. And on a plane.
They are so good, so good, you see!

So I can’t wait to get an Apple box.
And I will share mine with a fox.
And I will Twitter from Jobs’ house.
And I will buy a Magic Mouse.
And I will take them here and there.
Say! I will take them ANYWHERE!
I do so like iPads without cams!
Thank you!
Thank you, Fanboi-I-am!

Apple’s tablet is about to change the software development ecosystem and we mobile developers are rethinking existing and future projects. The tablet becomes the next app gold rush.

The App Store and the iPhone command a monstrous market share for mobile apps. There are a limited number of mobile app developers (20 million’ish) and a limited amount of devices any developer or team can target at one time. The first OS to target for any mobile product is logically the iPhone OS. That’s where the money is. After that, maybe Android or Blackberry or Pre. Maybe.

With Apple releasing a new device with new capabilities and resolution, the ecosystem changes. Teams who had completed an iPhone app and were planning to move on to an Android or Blackberry version would likely be more successful returning to the iPhone and optimizing for the tablet first.

Just as the first developers releasing apps on the iPhone had the least competition and greatest chance of success, the first optimized tablet apps will have the greatest odds. Competition amongst 10,000 apps is much lighter than 100,000.

There have been a growing number of Android starts and popularity of Android devices has steadily increased. Many of these app starts are by developers who completed an iPhone version and are now porting to Android.

The tablet changes one’s priority. Android starts will continue to grow because of handset market share growth, but will also take a hit due to the tablet. The priority of OS’s for developers to to target will likely be iPhone -> tablet optimization -> Android / Blackberry / Pre.

Related thoughts:

• Who wants to build Apple tablet apps? Not just game developers (survey) (venturebeat.com)
• If Apple Releases It, Will Developers Come? (bits.blogs.nytimes.com)

Apple is opening up the In-App purchase to free apps. This is going to change the App Store landscape drastically…

In App Purchase is being rapidly adopted by developers in their paid apps. Now you can use In App Purchase in your free apps to sell content, subscriptions, and digital services.

You can also simplify your development by creating a single version of your app that uses In App Purchase to unlock additional functionality, eliminating the need to create Lite versions of your app. Using In App Purchase in your app can also help combat some of the problems of software piracy by allowing you to verify In App Purchases.

Lite apps… Buh-bye. 2 (or more) copies of the same app but with different badges… Buh-bye. This is nothing but good.

AT&T confirms tethering is, “a matter of when and not if,” but the when is farther away than most of us would like.

As for tethering, by its nature, this function could exponentially increase traffic on the network, and we need to ensure that some of our current upgrades are in place before we can deliver the expanded functionality with the excellent performance that customers expect. We expect to offer tethering in the future.

While the iPhone has blown the doors off AT&T’s network capabilities, I don’t agree that tethering by an existing customer will exponentially increase traffic. The increased load from the iPhone has been due to mobile browsing and uploading of photos and videos.

Those who plug the iPhone in to a laptop are not significantly increasing consumed bandwidth (unless you’re watching Hulu?), and the number of users who tether will be far fewer than the number of iPhone-only users.

I could agree with the assumption of exponential increase based on an influx of customers from Sprint and Verizon. Those customers could migrate purely to acquire the world’s fastest VPN enabled USB modem (yes, the iPhone effectively becomes a wicked fast USB modem when plugged in – and faster/better than the USB versions available at Sprint and Verizon).

1. iRa Pro – $899.99 (or Direct – $499.99)
2. MATG – SAP BusinessOne – $449.99
3. PDR Quote – $349.99
4. Mobile Cam Viewer – $349.99
5. Lexi-Dental Complete – $299.99
6. iDcrm – $199.99
7. ROSIE Home Automation – $199.99
8. Nursing Constellation Plus – $179.99
9. Interpath – $179.99
10. XA1 – $179.99

We don’t need a full blown Google Voice application on the iPhone. A simple web app would do. In fact, it would probably be better for overall adoption because only a small percentage of people update their apps religiously.

Given Google’s API for GV, and the speed at which the native apps were developed, this isn’t a stretch. A couple decent web developers could get this launched by Monday… In time to save Arrington and the world from an unnecessary rant on the failings of Android.

I made the jump from the iPhone’s included mail application and may swap out the Phone app for a Google Voice web app later, too. The above image is my iPhone dock. Sean McKeever on Facebook asked how I get notifications for new mail being received. Here’s how I do that…

First off, with the iPhone Mail app I never used new mail notification. There’s just too much email every day and having notifications on would turn the phone in to a jumping bean. The little counter of unread messages is nice, of course.

That changes with Gmail and filters. One can receive customized notifications via SMS of new messages based on sender, subject, account, or any other attributes.

1. Create a filter for a desired message type.
2. Have the filter results be “Forward it to:” and set your_number@txt.att.net (it’ll cost you a text message if you’re not on an unlimited plan).

This nicely sets up important alerts if you need them. I use these for messages I need to know about immediately… Typically messages sent directly to me and sent from somebody important.

Verizon is planning to launch its own app store. Their latest radio ad describes “…hundreds of apps … Twitter…” They have a developer conference later this month, too.

Obviously building an app store seems like a good idea to any cellular service or handset maker. They’ve got app store envy. Apple has had a huge success. But it takes an entire distribution pipeline, from developer to device, to be a success.

I’m entirely stoked that app distribution is a focus now. Having the public excited about buying apps is about the best thing the developer community could ask for. I just don’t believe Verizon will get this right.

Check your app updates today. Looks like Apple had a busy 4th of July weekend and approved a ton of 3.0 compatibility updates.

My last check for updates was on Saturday, the 4th at 9:00pm. Only the AOL Radio app had an update. The other dozen came in between then and this morning.

The phone trail: BlackBerry Pearl 8100 -> iPhone -> BlackBerry 8800 -> iPhone 3G -> BlackBerry Bold 9000 -> iPhone 3G S

I really like the iPhone 3G. I lasted almost a full year, but something was missing. The push, immediate arrival of email, when one can blast messages out and get responses like an instant messaging client, is what I’ve always come back to on a BlackBerry.

This time there’s something different. It wasn’t as impressive with the BlackBerry email. And that must really suck for RIM because I know I’m not the only one who has grown out of their email awesomeness.

Gmail + push based IMAP and Exchange on the iPhone made BlackBerry email much less exciting when I switched back. If RIM can’t own the messaging space, they’re in for some trouble.

The other reason is that my team is doing some great things with the iPhone at Ingram Content. Customers can transfer their downloads through iTunes quickly and seamlessly. I’m using our own product on a daily basis and enjoying it (yes, I’m biased, but it’s still a good sign that a developer wants to eat the comapny’s dog food).

This post was written on the BlackBerry Bold 9000 during my morning train commute. I’ve been listening to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance on the iPhone 3G. The upgrade to 3G S is this afternoon. You can download using our Ingram Media Manager for free through your public library.

- Apple’s download + 3.0 device sales stats = ~17%
- AdMob reports 44% of ads served are to 3.0
- WeightBot and ConvertBot app developers claim 79% are 3.0

This, to me, means:
- Apple’s stats are probably the most correct, overall, but that doesn’t mean a hill of beans to developers
- 44% of active web browsing users updated to 3.0
- 79% of app downloading owners updated 3.0
- Somewhere less than 56% of iPhone users don’t browse much web or download apps, or at lease not enough to splash these stats.

It’s not really an issue with skewed results, it’s an issue with understanding what these results really mean. As the leader of a team doing iPhone development, the world being around 79% adoption of 3.0 is fantastic. And for our future web apps, it’s very intersting (if it’s true) that less than 1/2 of iPhone users using the web are updated.

What’s really intersting is that 17% are on 3.0, or 7 million devices. If 79% of app users are 3.0, and if ALL of 3.0 users buy apps, there is a cap of 8,900,000′ish app buying iPhone owners out of 41 million (8.9 million times 79% is ~7 million).

The questions that come to my mind are:
- Does this mean 1 in 4.6 owners (41 million divided by the hypothetical 8.9 million) have purchased an app? They would have probably at least downloaded a free app. This is probably why Apple is pushing ads about app downloads… They’d like to increase this ratio.
- How many iPhone owners regularly use the web on the device? 1 in 2.5 (if 44% of web browsing owners are 3.0 versus 17% of overall device updates)?

Newspapers aren’t dead here, but they’re definitely in decline. A check around me in this car has 8 people out of 120 reading a paper. Physical book reading is also down compared to my train rides three years ago.

Instead of books and newspapers I see iPhones and BlackBerry’s. There are tons of these devices, almost literally. But in three months I am yet to see a single Kindle.

Every seat one passes walking in or out has an occupant or two swishing their fingers across a touchscreen or wildly flailing thumbs on a keypad. Most people are reading on these devices, browsing web sites, consuming words.

Yesterday’s news about Kindle book downloads being 10% of amazon’s sales isn’t as surprising when looking at people’s device use, and is kind of a foreshadowing of what’s to come… If Kindle downloads were 10% of Amazon’s consumed books and the Kindle is <1% of the portable device market, what happens when iPhones, iPods, Sony eReader, and other media consumption devices cleanly support book and newspaper content?

Much like the tendrals, this was slightly dissappointing since I’d wanted to see double digits. The other interesting numbers…

• Mac up 9.63% to 9.93%
• iPhone almost half a percent, up 0.44% to 0.48%
• Linux down 0.85% to 0.83%, probably since there wasn’t much Linux activity over the holidays.
• Windows down 88.68% to 88.26% (though Windows 7 betas are picking up)

I received the Mini DisplayPort Dual-Link DVI adapter yesterday. It works great on my 30-inch Dell monitor. From my point of view, the reports on distortion are just hype. The adapter is still a pile of junk compared to having a true DVI port, but at least it works and we can get on with our 30-inch lives.

It had been since October 15th that I’d been trying to get my hands on one. It certainly hasn’t been worth the wait. The adapter is big, bulky, and feels light and frail. Pretty un-Applesque.

But it does what it’s supposed to. The display is clear and crisp. And it does something else. It has a pass-through USB port that isn’t in any of the marketing images (or maybe I couldn’t see the tiny USB port on the hideously big adapter?).

Instead of two cables dragged across the desk (1 DVI and 1 USB – you other MBPro users know what I mean), the Dell’s built-in card-reader-USB-hub and the DVI are plugged in to the adapter just under the monitor, and then the adapter’s long chord runs across the desk. It relieved a little bit of clutter and made for a cleaner, easier, experience when attaching and detaching.

For those of you having problems, check out displayblog’s post, which includes Apple’s recommendation on how to fix the distortion.

I described in December that Market Share for Apple would hit 9.5% at the end of December and break 10% in January. So far Apple exceeded expectations and reached 9.63% in December. That’s a 0.76% gain of the operating system market in one month!

Look for January to carry another increase and for AAPL to break 10%, probably diminishing the effect of Steve’s health-related absense a little bit.

In related news the iPhone browser share also grew.  It now holds 0.44% of the market, a move from 0.37% last month and the largest single month gain for the device. Windows dropped almost a full point from 89.62% to 88.68%. Pocket IE is no longer tracked, probably now <0.01% market share. Playstation remained at 0.04%.

For more in-depth detail of market share, visit http://marketshare.hitslink.com.

Found a funny little bug with Apple’s dashboard weather widget this week. It comes installed and running by default when you set up a new OS X installation or buy a new Mac. I just got a new MacBook Pro a month ago and have been using the weather widget religiously. As John Gruber of Daring Fireball described, it’s one of the favorite widgets (and he has a good old how-to on how to make it better).

But rather than validating by zip code, the weather widget validates by city name only. It grabs the first city name, alphabetically, and plugs that in as your local weather default.

There are five cities in the USA with the name Philadelphia. In alphabetical order, they are Philadelphia MO (Missouri), Philadelphia MS (Mississippi), Philadelphia NY (New York), Philadelphia PA (Pennsylvania), and Philadelphia TN (Tennessee).

Apple’s widget grabs Philadelphia, MO for Philadelphia, PA (and MS, NY, TN). Until this week the weather patterns for MO vs. PA were the same for precipitation and within a few degrees on temperature. It took a month before the cities were different enough to notice the discrepancy.

For all you’z Philadelphians buying Macs, remember to plug in your 191xx zip codes :) To see this in action if you’re in another city, add a weather widget to the dashboard and search for “Philadelphia”. The same occurs This does not occur on an iPhone’s weather app.

Population data on the Philadelphias:

• Philadelphia, MO: 643
• Philadelphia, MS: 22,606
• Philadelphia, NY: 2,349
• Philadelphia, PA: 1,517,550
• Philadelphia, TN: 4,407

Attending an Apple Tech Talk at the Millennium Hotel New York was a good use of time today. The evangelism team, despite evangelizing, is highly competent and I came away satisfied with decent knowledge consumption.

The event had a massively different feel than John Resig described last year.

There was a lot of JavaScript hate by attendees (“blah blah… GWT is the only thing we trust… blah blah JavaScript is a stupid language…”).

This year it was all about at least 50% about the web. Apple has exposed touch events, multi-touch events, gestures, location based services, and rotation to javascript both for polling and callbacks. Some of the credit for the newfound excitement around Safari and iPhone web apps should probably be shared with WebKit’s HTML5 (file caching and SQLite)… All of which are supported in the iPhone 2.2 OS release.

Over the next few days I’ll have more details on specific highlights. For now, here are my condensed raw notes.

iPhone Safari browser, starting with the basic stuff:

• If not specified, assumes a web page width of 980 pixels and scales to 360
• To override, add <meta name=”viewport” content=”width=720″ /> (where you would replace 720 with your pages width)
• Or, if you’ve optimized for the full screen of the iPhone, add <meta name=”viewport” content=”device-width” />
• Additionally, you can specify a width, height, initial-scale, minimum-scale, maximum-scale, and user-scalable. If width, height, or initial scale are set, Safari will auto-calculate the others (i.e. if width is set, height and initial-scale will be handled for you). user-scalable means the user can not scale via zoom-in or zoom-out.
• Optimize for cellular networks (duh!). Latency is often a bigger factor than bandwidth on Edge and 3G (duh!). Beat this by using fewer, slightly larger resources in a page load (i.e. use a single image and use CSS to display portions of it instead of loading multiple separate images for buttons, etc).
• A nice tool for simulating throttled bandwidth is ipfw (duh, but I’ll this to my blog for others)… Do the following to enable throttling (from terminal.app): 1) sudo su 2) ipfw add pipe 1 src-port http 3) ipfw pipe 1 config delay 200 bw 700kbit/s. Do the following to kill the throttling afterwards: 1) ipfw flush.
• Give the latest rev of Dashcode a try to get a feel for how various transforms, etc, work. See the source in the supplied samples.

Home screen icons, total beginner stuff, but necessary (mostly so I remember the filenames):

• For a custom, iPhone specific, icon from your site (a la favicon), place apple-touch-icon.png at the docroot (http://www.apple.com/apple-touch-icon.png).
• For a custom icon, without the shiny polish (not recommended unless you’ve made it shiny already), use apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png.

How to make a web app feel like a real app (no nav bar, custom status bar, control of rotation, rotation notification, etc).

• To hide the Safari UI: <meta name=”apple-mobile-web-app-capable” content=”yes” />
• To change the status bar (the top space with signal and battery indicators): <meta name=”apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style” content=”grey” /> (replace “grey” with “black” or “black translucent”)
• When the Safari UI is hidden you are locked to Portrait mode (maybe a good thing!)
• You can get notifications for rotation and can rotate your elements via callbacks with the following:

<body onorientationchange=”updateOrientation();”> …

function updateOrientation(degrees) {

case 0:

case -90:

case 90:

}

Touch and gestures via JavaScript:

• Use <div ontouchstart=”trackTouches(event)”… and you’ll need three arrays for your touch points: var allTouches = event.touches; var targetTouches = event.targetTouches; var changedTouches = event.changedTouches;
• When a touch occurs, you’ll receive a touchstart notification.
• When a touch moves, you receive a touchchange notification.
• When a finger is lifted, you’ll receive a touchend or touchcancel (if the finger was moved off the screen).
• For gestures (pinching and rotating), the same notifications will be sent, but as gesturestart, gesturechange, and gestureend (or gesturecancel).
• For pinch gestures, you have scale information. A scale less than 1.0 means zooming out (fingers moving closer together). A scale greater than 1.0 means zooming in (fingers spreading apart).
• For rotation gestures, notifications are sent in degrees. Negative numbers indicate counterclockwise and positive numbers are clockwise.
• Transforms specific to the iPhone are provided, such as calling “-wekit-transform: rotate(-20deg);” for an object you wish to rotate. Make this type of call from a touch or gesture callback and you have dragability from within a web app. Additional parameters can be used during rotation, such as “-webkit-transform: rotate(-20deg); -webkit-transform-origin: top left;” to make the rotation of the object hinge on the top left (default is the center).
• An example of rotating, scaling, and moving an object: “document.getElementById(‘myFlower’).style.webkitTransform = ‘rotate(360deg) scale(0.5) translate(600px, 50px)’;
• Transforms are usually given a period of time to perform the transform (i.e. -webkit-transition-duration: 2s;). During that time the transform can be modified so as to transform in a linear, ease, ease-in, ease-out, ease-in-out, or a cubic-bezier form.

Database support for SQLite and file caching (client side, duh):

• HTML5’s SQLite spec is supported by iPhone’s Safari
• The sample code in the presentation creates a 2.5 megabyte database. Not worth mentioning otherwise, but I was stoked with the thought of creating reasonably large DBs locally… Maybe we’ll see some radically enhanced Gmail and Google Reader web apps. Airplane mode will be a little nicer.
• filecache ability is in iPhone 2.2. This was too new and no slides were available… Still, another airplane friendly feature and would be great for flickr or other media intensive sites.

And that’s just on web apps. My notes on native apps are more sparse, partly because it was the end of the day and partly because it’s old news.

A nice finish for the day was a presentation on submitting one’s application to Apple. I’ll save those notes for later this week – too much commentary I want to include to just put it up raw ;)

Food and refreshments during the Tech Talk were top notch. They know how to take care of the folks that build their platform.

At first thought, there will be lots more app ratings and this will help Apple kull (my favorite word this week) poor applications. On second thought, why would you give a good rating to an app you wish to remove? And how about an app you never remove? There will be many bad ratings applied to apps, without getting an equal response from those who like the app and keep it… The users who love the app will never be prompted for their rating.

A new trackpad firmware update, version 1.0, is available for the new MacBook and MacBook Pro models (listed as late-2008 models).

This firmware update addresses an issue where trackpad clicks may not be recognized on MacBook (Late 2008) and MacBook Pro (Late 2008) systems.

A Google search for Apple Dual-Link DVI yields a ton of product pages and blog posts about the greatness of Apple’s use of DVI. You’ll get quite a few of Apple’s own product pages, as would be expected. But only a few blogs are calling Apple out.

Apple recently released a new MacBook Pro. It has the most advanced laptop graphics equipment on the market, with dual NVIDIA 9400M and 9600GT chipsets. Apple has also employed a new port type, DisplayPort, that is not the same as Mini-DVI or Micro-DVI. This is a port that is easier to plug in than DVI and supports HDCP (high-bandwidth digital content protection).

People with needs for the best processing horsepower on the go are going to pick up this laptop. These professionals, myself included, are going to be disappointed. If you’re in to a high-end laptop like this you’re probably also pushing 30″ monitors. If not, you should be. But you can’t. The DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI adapter doesn’t ship for 4-5 weeks (and that’s what they said on October 15th).

The image above is the dual-link DVI adapter from Apple. It’s a DisplayPort plus USB plug to a DVI female. Why does a dual-link DVI adapter require the addition of a USB plug? Giving up that extra USB port hurts. Paying Apple $99 to move us to a new port type is insulting.

So what’s with the delay? It doesn’t take 4-6 weeks to manufacture cables with DisplayPort, USB, and DVI plugs attached (the site has displayed 4-5 weeks for 4 weeks already). Either development of, or problems in, the circuitry is derailing Apple’s rollout. Or perhaps software driver updates will be required before the DisplayPort + USB adapters can be driven. If the latter, we would expect the adapters to ship at the same time as an OS update drops.

Apple, make this easy. Make it just work…

For more on DisplayPort see DisplayPort: what you need to know (Peter Cohen)

And for a little ridiculousness:

• Standard DisplayPort to DVI adapter ($29)
• DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI adapter ($99)
• DisplayPort to VGA adapter ($29)
• Mini-DVI to DVI adapter ($19)
• Mini-DVI to VGA adapter ($19)
• Micro-DVI to DVI adapter ($19)
• Micro-DVI to VGA adapter ($19)

UPDATE: Another theory is that the chip for the adapter requires additional juice. The USB connector would simply be a power chord.

On June 28th, 2007 I waited in line for the iPhone (and spent 3 days talking to AT&T to get it activated). The experience was a good one… The stench of rotten trash from a nearby McDonalds dumpster and seeing a full-grown man get beaten by his girlfriend and her purse for spending the $500 are favorite memories.

Normally I’d be all over the line parties (seriously)… This year I slept in and am happy to wait for it to arrive in the mail. Maybe next year.

Apple iPhone vs. Nokia N82, or complimentary citizens

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That’s it! Twice in a week I’ve been left with a dead iPhone from snapping pics and pushing them live at an event or outing. Don’t get me wrong; I love the iPhone for most everything, but the lack of a swappable battery is adding some hate to the relationship (lack of video has also been a bone of contention).

The Nokia N82 is looking like a sweet option. Everything but a useable keyboard…

Steve answered, “We change our minds a lot. The web apps have worked well, but developers wanted to do more. And we heard that. Creating an SDK is a lot of work, you want to make it something you can live with for 20 years, and yet update it without breaking apps. This is an elegant and clean system.”

I’m certain Apple had the SDK in development since before WWDC ‘07. As Steve said, it takes a long time to develop an SDK. They just weren’t ready to announce it yet last year and covered by offering web apps. Their marketing machine and product release practices entice us to want more. We hated Apple last summer for it!

The remainder of the question was handled by Phil, “Second question. Electronic submission will be very fast, and this is a whole new process.”

A lot of people are screaming bloody murder about Apple controlling this process. While I don’t really like the idea of only getting Apps installed via Apple’s system, it could be a lot worse. Apple will be CHiPs, not the DMV. There will undoubtably be apps which make it possible to download and install while being untethered anyway.

The impression I got during the sign-up process to develop for the iPhone and download the SDK was impressive. Not because of the smoothness of the process (I hit terrible snags due to the server congestion), but because it’s obvious they’re going to allow developers to easily publish apps. What I got out of it is they’re making it better and easier to write software for the iPhone than for Windows Mobile or other handhelds. Apps will be as easy to publish as an album of music… Same model.

Dave Winer has been leaning towards the negative side of Apple’s plans, but he likes the idea of an untethered podcatcher. I’d love to talk to him about that… It’s something I expect iofy to work on.

Above screenshot taken from http://developer.apple.com/

The iPhone SDK was released today as predicted. Either there were errors in Apple’s push of the site updates or, more likely, developers are so hungry for this SDK that developer.apple.com is down.

I’ve been hammering on ‘Refresh’ for an hour. Could everyone please stop so I can get started on some code!?

The iPhone SDK has been a long time coming. Apple has been working on it since before last June’s WWDC ‘07, despite pushing the “You can build amazing web applications” message. The reason for pushing the only-web-apps decree was because the API, tool-chains, development environment, etc, weren’t ready.

Back at WWDC ‘07 the development community felt slammed by the news that we couldn’t build native applications or otherwise access the great hardware features of the device. We grumbled and asked questions, and were told it was a marketing/branding/positioning decision.

Back then there was a feeling of something amiss. The voice of the engineers at Apple seemed to speak, “one more thing.” Every time an attendee took the mic and posed a question about iPhone access (there were a lot of these questions) the engineers responded with wobbly words about web apps while exuding a sigh of, “it’s coming…”

It just flat-out felt like Apple had to make their June 29th release date for the device and they couldn’t get the SDK complete. Standard feature-drop. The typically well groomed Apple machine was recovering from an all-nighter just to get the iPhone itself released.

At the time I wasn’t certain of an SDK in the works. As most developers returning from WWDC I was dejected – they have to have an API, they just have to! I even agreed to a bet in early July ‘07 with my company president: Apple releases an SDK within one year of the iPhone release.

I’m looking forward to March 6th for more than winning a bet. On Thursday I find out if my prediction was correct and if I read the Apple folks. If we get a healthy suite of tools I’ll have validated my assumption that Apple had an SDK under way prior to WWDC.

UPDATE: Cartwright Reed reminded me the bet was an official iPhone SDK from Apple that iofy could use. This is important since I (and all developers looking forward to the SDK) could still lose if the SDK is only accessible to companies blessed by Apple. So far this seems unlikely.