Marc Charbonneau’s Blog

Looking at Marware’s iPod Nano products today, I can’t helped but be a little impressed. I already own the Sportsuit Sensor+ (which lets you use the Nike+ kit with any pair of running shoes), and I’m probably going to purchase one of their Sportsuit cases soon. Unlike just about every other armband-style case I’ve seen, these are worn around the forearm or the wrist. This makes sense, because that’s really the only way you’re going to use a Nano without stopping; trying to look at a Nano’s screen while running when it’s strapped to your upper arm just doesn’t work well at all.

The big news at MacWorld today is, of course, the new iPhone. The keynote certainly didn’t disappointed, and there’s a lot to talk about and speculate over in the coming months before it’s released to stores. From a user’s point of view I’m certainly eager to try one out first hand, but what really interests me is development. Not only will the iPhone run OSX, but it will support “desktop class” applications, and seems to have some pretty powerful hardware behind it.

Now, it’s really unknown what you will and won’t be able to do with the iPhone, but assuming it supports third party development at all, it’s not unreasonable to expect it to use a Cocoa development environment. Given all the hardware behind it, I doubt there would be much you couldn’t do on an iPhone that you could in a normal, desktop Cocoa application.

The more I think about this, the more excited I get. I’ve been meaning to get back into developing mobile applications, but the complexity of writing software for the Windows Mobile OS ((The .NET compact framework does make developing WM applications a lot easier than with the WinCE API, but there’s still a bit of a barrier to getting started.)) and the fact that I’ve been busy with OSX software has really kept me from doing anything significant. I have a few ideas for some mobile applications I haven’t seen anywhere else, and it would be great to be able to implement them in Cocoa.

Even for Cocoa developers who don’t have much of an interest in handheld software, it would be extremely easy to port a lot of existing applications. Imagine buying Delicious Library, and having the option to install an iPhone version along with the desktop app. Your library would be kept synchronized of course, and the iPhone version would still have all the features, graphics and refinements in the desktop version, including barcode scanning with the built-in 2MP camera.

That’s the kind of thing I’m really looking forward to.

Update:

tuaw reports the iPhone won’t allow third party applications. Disappointing if it’s true, but it’s really far too soon to know anything for sure yet.

Using TextMate the past month, I’ve come to realize that I like font smoothing turned on when writing code. Although there’s a setting for font smoothing in System Preferences, Xcode doesn’t seem to respect it if you’re still using the default editor font, Monaco 10pt. The problem isn’t actually with Xcode; OSX uses a separate setting when dealing with fixed width fonts like Monaco. You can change this by running a terminal command:

defaults write .GlobalPreferences AppleSmoothFixedFontsSizeThreshold 4

Replace 4 with whatever minimum font size you like. Of course, you could use the same setting to turn off font smoothing, if you like the jagged look with large font sizes. You can make this setting specific to Xcode by replacing .GlobalPreferences with com.apple.Xcode.

The new MacBook Pros aren’t just a faster processor in the same old wrapping, as this Engadget post shows. Little touches like this are the reason I bought my own PowerBook years ago.

I started using del.icio.us a few months ago to keep bookmarks in sync across several computers at work and home, and it’s been my default home page ever since. Tonight I decided to change the “Home” button in Safari’s toolbar to something a bit more suitable. This might be old hat for some OSX users, but here are the steps you’ll need to take:

1. Open a Finder window and right-click on Safari.app, choose Show Package Contents.
2. Open the Contents -> Resources folder.
3. Find Home.tif, HomePressed.tif and optionally HomeDisabled.tif.
4. Make a backup copy of these, and edit the originals in an image editor. That’s it!

Remember to backup your work, since it’ll probably be overwritten the next time Safari is updated. I started with the standard del.icio.us logo, but made a few small changes to make it blend in better. You can download the files by clicking here and here.

I’ve talked briefly in the past with the original developer of CoverFlow, who recently sold the project to Apple where it’s now included in the new iTunes 7. I’m extremely happy for him. As an OSX developer, there’s always a worry in the back of your mind that Apple with pass you by with the next big set of technology changes, or otherwise step on your toes. Seeing an independent developer’s pet project go from a neat idea to being picked up by Apple itself is very gratifying, to say the least.