Anyone who has been unfortunate enough to be around me when I work with it knows that I don’t like Joomla very much. It’s not that Joomla is a bad framework, it’s just that I started constructing web plumbing with Ruby On Rails. And thus I have a rather… Railsian outlook on how to go about it. Joomla does not share that outlook. A large part of that is due to the fact that Joomla is a Content-Management System first, and a Development Framework second. Another large part of it is that I have never come across a good reference to building Components that integrate well with the system. I could, I suppose, work it out by tearing apart existing Components and figuring out how they work, however my disinterest in doing that is matched only by other people’s disinterest in paying me to do it.
The final nail in the coffin of my appreciation for Joomla is CakePHP. Cake is just about as close to Rails as you can get while still supporting PHP4. Which is a good thing for my purposes, since my current day job is building systems in PHP4. I make heavy use of Cake most of the time. Except for the odd occasion when I am called upon to write a Joomla component; those occasions are marked with much frustration and foul language, as suddenly I find myself writing PHP that is little better than a raw script. I don’t like writing raw PHP scripts. I like having a framework to do the monkey work for me.
Enter Abhimanyu Grover; he has posted an article on integrating CakePHP and Joomla. In one fell swoop, my Joomla Components have been granted access to a request dispatcher, an excellent set of support functions and — best of all — my library of Cake Components and Helpers. For the first time I can remember, I am looking forward to my next bout with Joomla.
Update: The bridge now has a name and a homepage! For more on Jake: The Joomla-CakePHP Bridge, be sure to check out the Project’s website.
Via Daniel Hofstetter
Posted on 29 January 2007 in Uncategorized
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John Sculley was (probably still is) in love with the idea of the Knowledge Navigator it was “a device which can access a large networked database of hypertext information, and use software agents to assist searching for information.” Usually realized in a tablet computer form factor.
The marketed realization of that dream was the Newton. It was a wonderful piece of technology and never garnered as much respect as it deserved. Especially from Steve Jobs, who described it as a “little scribble toy”, spun Newton, Inc. back into Apple and killed the product line. That act is generally ascribed to a need to refocus Apple on it’s core asset (the Macintosh), and spite. Sculley had been central to Jobs being ousted from Apple.
But now there is the iPhone. A device which can access the World Wide Web (a massive, networked collection of hypertext information). It doesn’t have software agents, but do you really need a local program to search out information when you could just use Google? The iPhone is the Knowledge Navigator.
Posted on 15 January 2007 in Uncategorized
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There is a single piece of third party software I would like to see running on the iPhone: the Kallisys Einstein Project.
(It’s a Newton Emulator.)
Even the screen size of the iPhone (320×480) is the same as the last-generation Newtons. If the screen responds to a stylus…
Update, from David Pogue (emphasis mine):
“Will the iPhone touch surface work if you’re wearing gloves? Be unpleasant to use the phone in the dead of winter otherwise.” –No, it responds ONLY to skin touch. I couldn’t use my fingernail, for example. And you certainly can’t use a stylus. (On the other hand, I doubt there’s ANY smartphone you can operate with gloves on.)
Damn.
Posted on 10 January 2007 in Uncategorized
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The Mac Tablet has arrived! Just not from Apple. Instead, Axiotron has wandered down a road filled with press releases, unreleased products, and failed companies and delivered up a tablet running Mac OS X: the ModBook (that’s a link to the OWC store page since all the ModBook information is locked up in PDFs). Ars Technica weighs in on the machine here and they like it.
I think its a nice start, but there is definitely room for improvement.
Posted on 10 January 2007 in Uncategorized
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It runs on an unspecified Intel Processor. The iPhone runs an embedded Mac OS X. Looks like Dan Benjamin was right. And I was very, very wrong.
Posted on 9 January 2007 in Uncategorized
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Just a quickie for the hell of it… with post-show analysis in italics
Expect (6/13 = 46%):
- Massive Leopard demos with lots of nifty stuff that wasn’t mentioned at WWDC. I have to agree with Gruber that 6 years is as long as an Apple UI lasts. Completely and utterly wrong. I still think it’s going to happen, but it sure wasn’t today.
- Leopard ship date Wrong
- iTV demo. It’ll look similar to the “It’s Showtime” event, but prettier. Hopefully we’ll find out what the USB port is for. Correct
- The final name for the iTV Correct
- iTV ship date Correct
- Quad-core Mac Pro Wrong
- Quad-core Xserves Wrong
- Apple phone. The WSJ earned a lot of credibility when they called the Intel switch. Correct
- Faster Airport. Probably 802.11n Correct
- iLife ‘07 Wrong
- iWork ‘07 Wrong
- More studios in the iTunes Movie Store Correct
- Revised Mac mini Wrong
Don’t Expect (5.5/7 = 79%):
- Any mention of options backdating Correct
- A Tablet Wrong. The iPhone is PDA-sized, and has the Newton MessagePad 2000’s screen resolution, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a flat computer with a touchscreen. And it runs Mac OS X. The iPhone is the Mac tablet.
- A Newton Correct
- A PowerBook Correct
- An Apple III Correct
- A ‘Photoshop Bake-off’ against a Dell Correct
- Virtualization built into Leopard Correct. But only half a point since I assumed Leopard was going to be mentioned.
Don’t Be Surprised If (1.5/12 = 13%):
- Roz Ho takes the stage Wrong
- There’s a Photoshop CS3 demo Wrong
- An Apple II shows up. “30 years ago…” Wrong. The photo of Jobs and Woz shows an Apple I.
- Woz appears on stage Wrong. But half a point for the photo.
- Phil Schiller calls Jobs and the phone ringing replaces ‘one more thing’ Wrong. But half a point since they did talk to each other.
- Leopard is available immediately Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
- Leopard is handed out free to everyone at the keynote Wrong
- iTV is available immediately Wrong. But half a point for it being available for order.
- The iTunes Movie Store goes HD Wrong
- The revised Mac mini has a new case design Wrong
- New displays Wrong
- The new displays have built-in iSights Doubly Wrong
Do Be Surprised If (4/4 = 100%):
- Apple drops the Core line in favour of the XScale line and unifies their products on ARM-based processors Correct
- A sub-notebook is announced. (Accept it people, the black MacBook is the replacement for the 12″ PowerBook.) Correct
- The iMac gets redesigned. The current form-factor still has legs. Correct
- Apple is buying Sun and dropping the Xserve. (See, the teaser image has the Apple logo eclipsing a bright light, maybe even the sun…) Correct
Overall: 18/36 = 50%. In future perhaps I should limit myself to thinking up wild, speculative ideas and denouncing them; that seemed to work the best this time around.
Posted on 9 January 2007 in Uncategorized
2 Comments »
Well, first up let’s look at the technical feasibility. The device would have to run Mac OS X or it’s not a Tablet Mac. Not that I’d complain if they resurrected the Newton, but that isn’t what we’re talking about. The device would have to share as much hardware as possible with the rest of the line. The current iMacs, minis, MacBooks, and MacBook Pros are all built on the same basic platform. The only outliers are the Xserve and the Mac Pro and they share their own base platform. Hardware consistency reduces costs. And finally, the device would not have a trackpad or keyboard built-in, opting instead for a touch-screen and a stylus. (For the purposes of this post, I will assume they won’t produce an eMate-style hybrid device.)
Over a decade ago, Apple developed a tablet Mac based on the PowerBook Duo platform. It was called the PenLite, and looked like a PowerBook Duo with the screen on the outside of the lid and the lid glued shut. That technique is so effective that people have modified iBooks into tablets using it. I’m sure that the Apple design team would refine the case so that it was seamless and more iPod-like, but this is a good place to start. The most likely candidate for this conversion is the MacBook, a tablet is not a professional workstation, so the MacBook Pros would be overkill.
Step One: remove MacBook screen, keyboard and trackpad. Replace with a touch-screen the same size as the MacBook screen.
Does a tablet need an optical drive, or external hard drives? Heck does it need an Ethernet port? I don’t think so. Tablets are good input devices — especially in vertical markets such as medicine, and for note taking. That functionality is lost if you’re tethered to a hard disk or you can’t shake it lest you scratch a DVD. The same goes for the Ethernet port: you don’t want to be tethered to the wall, and we have wifi to keep us connected. So let’s lose the non-essentials to reduce weight and cost. As an added bonus, remember that USB is built into the southbridge, but FireWire is an extra chip.
Step Two: remove Optical Drive, FireWire and Ethernet port.
Now, what about the other ports? I think the audio ports are useful enough to keep. And the same for USB, but we can reduce to one USB port if we want. Which leaves the mini-DVI port. Is the tablet going to be positioned as the ‘ultra-portable sub-notebook’? If it is, then we need the port for presentations, if it isn’t, then we can lose it. Still, the video is built into the chipset so we can always add it back later.
Step Three: remove 1 USB port and (maybe) the mini-DVI port.
And now, the internals. The motherboard is about the same size, but there’s a lot of space opened up by eliminating the optical drive. Is there more space that can be freed? Yes, that 2.5″ SATA hard drive is huge compared to the 1.8″ microdrives used in the iPod. Read/write speed will be slower, but this is a tablet not a file server.
Step Four: replace the hard drive with a 30GB-80GB microdrive.
To fill this massive void, well, we have to start by creating a little pocket to hold the stylus.
Step Five: add an internal stylus holder.
But, styli are small so the void is still pretty gaping. The device needs to be fairly cool when running, and if it has a slower Core 2 Duo and a bigger heatsink, it should run significantly cooler than the current MacBooks.
Step 6: Increase heatsink size, optimize cooling.
Of course, a bigger heatsink won’t need the whole of the space, and battery life is a good thing.
Step 7: Increase the size of the battery to take up the remaining space.
Which leaves:
- 13″ 1280×800 touchscreen
- 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo
- Up to 2GB RAM
- 30GB to 80GB hard drive
- 1 USB port
- 1 combo headphone/optical audio out port
- 1 combo line in/optical audio in port
- 1 MagSafe power connector
- longer battery life than the MacBook
- runs cooler than the MacBook
Software-wise, no real changes are necessary. You can click and drag with a stylus, and InkWell handwriting recognition is already built into OS.
So, can Apple do it? Yes. Assuming the removed hardware cancels out the cost of the touchscreen and it could even hit a US$999 price point. Is Apple going to do it? Hell no! Steve Jobs axed the Newton platform — or as he called it: “the little scribble toy”. Microsoft has been pushing the tablet concept hard, but they still haven’t found a big market for it. Which means that the tablet is something the head of the company thinks is a bad idea, and there’s no proven market for it. It ain’t gonna happen.
I’m still hoping the ‘One More Thing…’ is a Newton, though.
Posted on 6 January 2007 in Uncategorized
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A long time ago (10 years), on an Apple CPU architecture far, far away (MC68030), I wrote a few small programs in MOPS. I preferred THINK Pascal, so I drifted away from it and eventually entered the gravity well of C.
But, I must agree with Cabel Sasser, this year is definitely the time to return to [Forth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_(programming_language))
Posted on 5 January 2007 in Uncategorized
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