I’ve been trying to be a voice of reason when it comes to how Apple operates. I’d rather see them as generally trying to do the right thing, but struggling sometimes with some of the nitty gritty things. Like letting individuals interpret blanket policies for what is and is not acceptable in the app store.

I’m fine with Apple deciding that an app is unacceptable if it crashes the iPhone. If it hijacks the cellular network. If it leaks memory, data, or something.

I’m not fine with Apple censoring apps. They hold the exclusive entry for software to get installed on an iPhone or iPod Touch. There is no other authorized way to install apps, without going through the Apple app store. And that means Apple has a very serious responsibility to act honourably, and in the best interests of its customers.

The latest app store controversy is swirling around Ninjawords. An application that provides a slick UI on top of the online Wiktionary dictionary database.

Someone at Apple decided to test the app by explicitly and manually searching for “fuck” “shit” and a few other stopwords. The software was designed to disable text autocompletion for questionable terms, so the only way to find them is to type them in yourself. But the developers missed “cunt” in their autocomplete filter in the last version. So Apple responds by slapping the app with a restricted 17+ rating – meaning kids don’t have access to a good dictionary on their Apple mobile devices.

Apple, this is not cool. You don’t get to censor content, especially content in a FUCKING DICTIONARY. Jesus fucking h. christ.

ps. this screenshot was taken of the Dictionary.app that came pre-installed on my Mac – the same Dictionary.app that my 6 year old son has unrestricted access to.

Update: Phil Schiller responded to John Gruber as a result of his post on DaringFireball.net – the response is a good one, but John’s take is pretty much the same as mine – even if Apple doesn’t censor the app themselves, there is pressure put on developers to censor themselves to avoid age-restrictive ratings. The inconsistent application of these ratings means writing an app can be a bit of  crap shoot. But, Schiller’s email is a very good sign.

here are the current apps on my ipod touch, itemized for George:

main app bar:

• music
• videos
• photos
• byline (GREAT native app that provides an interface to google reader)

the remaining apps are loosely arranged by age or amount of use – I really wish there was a better interface to manage a whole bunch of apps without having to drag them around on the iPod Touch interface itself. Tedious…

Applications page 1:

• safari
• mail
• calendar
• contacts
• weather
• maps
• clock
• settings (so I can toggle wireless easily)
• calculator
• notes (I’m using this a LOT lately. man, does it need some love by Apple…)
• app store
• darkslide pro
• facebook
• wordpress
• omnifocus (living in this lately. great app that syncs to the desktop version)
• twinkle

page 2:

• monkey ball
• sol free
• bejeweled 2
• solitaire city
• scrabble
• bskieslite
• linerider
• cro-mag
• asphalt4 (great racing game. my son is quite good at this)
• r.thunder
• fastlane (more realistic, but harder, racing game)
• x-plane (addicted to flight sims. wish it had more maps…)
• pinball rc
• tetris
• crash kart

page 3:

• vegas pool lite
• cradle
• holdem
• izengarden
• cube runner
• labyrinth le
• enigmo
• slant
• brainchallenge
• pocketguitar
• guitarist
• theriminator
• digilite
• minipiano
• band
• tap tap revenge

page 4:

• countdown
• flixster
• i.tv
• checkplease
• airportstatus
• currency
• seismometer
• air sharing
• easywriter
• photoframe
• flickr (bookmark)
• a free level
• molecules
• aim
• wifinder
• ilava

page 5:

• weathereye
• remote
• google earth
• wikipanion
• stanza (books)
• classics (books)
• pterm (ssh client)
• sketches
• led football
• instapaper (offline versions of web pages)
• google
• sb2 lite
• fieldrunners
• touchphysics
• brothers in arms (WWII shooter game)
• alpha squadron

page 6:

• rc physics
• google talk
• dice
• tictactouch
• cooliris
• night stand
• light
• bubbles
• wurdle
• zippo lighter
• lightsaber
• sudoku
• simcity
• koi pond
• mmv
• motochaser

page 7:

• stocks
• itunes
• youtube
• lux touch
• tapdeluxe
• pcalc lite
• google reader (bookmark)
• flycast
• eyetricks
• topple
• dropship
• fs5 hockey
• rick free

yikes. that’s a lot of apps. I don’t even want to think about how much that cost me…

Cruz is a new webkit-based browser that supports Greasemonkey scripts, plugins, and stuff like integrated tinyurl creation and a full screen mode. It can generate thumbnails for search results on Google, and has a CoverFlow view of search results. Very cool stuff. I think I’ll be switching…

Hey! You got Firefox in my Safari! You got Safari in my Firefox! 2 great tastes…

I’ve got a fully updated copy of iDVD on my MacBook Pro that refuses to cooperate. I can create a project, save it, and burn it to DVD. But, if I decide I want to quit iDVD, it borks the next time I launch it. It gets past “loading themes” and then just hangs. I can nuke my prefs, and get the “new project” dialog, but if I create a project, I get the same thing if I quit. Which makes editing an iDVD project a bit, well, problematic. I currently have to recreate the project from scratch every time I want to make a modification. Which makes the process a bit more tedious than it needs to be.

I’ve done searching on the Apple Support site. I’ve tried Googling. I’ve poked through manuals and documentation. No joy. Here’s all I get when I launch my incredibly awesome, soon-to-be-Oscarâ„¢-winning iDVD project:

The strange thing, if I click “Close”, it pauses for a few seconds, the “Unexpected Quit” dialog disappears, and the shell of the iDVD app remains. I can select menu items, and click on interface buttons (but they don’t do anything). I have to then Quit (or Force-Quit) the app to make it really go away.

Nothing in the crash log jumps out at me. I’ve uninstalled all of my InputManagers, all of the extra QuickTime codecs, anything I can think of that’s non-stock-MacOSX. No luck yet. Very frustrating.

Alan posted about the grief he’s been having with running Windows on his MacBook Pro. He rarely fires up Windows, but when he does, it’s a painful and ugly process. The last recommended updates just hosed his Windows install. Again.

But, there’s a better way. Crossover for Mac – it’s a polished commercial version of the open source Wine tool/library which provides a way to run Windows applications in MacOSX without having to install Windows. Basically, it provides a self-contained environment where applications are tricked into thinking they’re running on Windows, but they’re actually running on a bridge between the Windows API and MacOSX (and X-11 for display). You set up a “container” or a “bottle” to hold an application or two, and Crossover takes care of system-level stuff. You get an application icon that’s right at home in your dock, too.

Here’s what a cross-platform browser test might look like. Safari, Firefox and IE6/Win all on one screen:

Text rendering goes from great to craptastic, from left to right. Also, apparently there are a few *cough*issues*ahem* rendering my blog in IE6/Win. Sorry. Shows how often I’ve used IE over the last year…

For something simple like browser testing, Crossover can’t be beat. It also runs with a bunch of other apps (including HalfLife). I tried to install NASA WorldWind, but didn’t get past the .Net install. I’ll try again after doing a bit of research first.

I got a copy of Aperture this week, just in time to get to play with the new 1.5 update. I'm really impressed with the application. It blows iPhoto out of the water.

I was trying out some of the new features, and thought I'd see if I could tweak one of my favourite photos of Evan to make it "pop" a bit more.  On the left, the original, "in camera" image. On the right, a version with white balance correction, and an application of the new "Spot & Patch" tool to remove some blemishes.

Evan – tweaked (before and after)

The tweaked image definitely "pops" more. Might be a bit too warm, but I was just messing around with Aperture. I'm realizing a couple of things:

1. shooting in RAW is awesome (I went for a walk around campus today, shooting RAW for 90% of it. what a difference…)
2. I have huge gaps in knowledge/understanding of photography. I'm having fun slowly learning, but man, do I have a long way to go.

King jokingly suggested I should quit my job to be a photographer. If that would pay the mortgage, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

I’ve been using TextMate for about a week now, and while it’s almost universally an incredible piece of magical software, I have been keeping a list of things that could use tweaking (you know, to make it even magicaller).

• Arrange Windows. BBEdit’s got a great way to tile open windows. It’s very handy to compare multiple open documents. Would be very handy in TextMate. Something like “tile all open windows in evenly spaced columns” or “tile them all in equal-sized windows arranged nicely across that 20 inch cinema display”
• Split window view. Terminal has it. XCode has it. BBEdit has it. Makes it really easy to work on 2 different parts of the same document.
• Reindent code. Like Tidy does for HTML. But for other code. JEdit has a pretty good one. XCode’s got a really good one. It makes it very easy to keep source code looking clean and tidy. Bonus points for optionally adding documentation stubs for languages that use that sort of thing (javadoc tags, etc…) It looks like I could mess around with the Bundle Editor for various languages, but having this as stock behaviour would be a better way to share with the rest of the class.
• HTML and CSS reformatting – flat, compact, hierarchical. It’s surprising how handy that is. Sometimes having the Official Tidy Cleanup Version isn’t what you need.
• Tear-off bundle palettes. The “Select Bundle Item” menu/palette is close, but not task-specific. It’s not as handy having to constantly search for a function. I’d like to just tear off the HTML, or CSS, or maybe both.
• Search all open files – if I’ve got a bunch of files open, from various locations (and perhaps on different servers) – they won’t be in the same Project, so I can’t use Find in Project.

I've been using BBEdit for what feels like a decade – it was the late '90s, anyway.

I just switched to TextMate. It's an amazing little editor, that feels like it's taken the best parts of XCode, BBEdit, JEdit, and many others, and mashed them all into one slick and powerful little app.

Here's probably the coolest feature (well, the coolest feature that I've discovered today, anyway). The HTML bundle has a "Validate Syntax (W3C)" action, which sends the contents of the document (or selection) to the W3C HTML syntax validator. The resulting page is then modified by TextMate, such that clicking the error/warning links in the report take you to the correct line in your source document. When I tried that the first time, I was stunned. But, of COURSE that's how it SHOULD work. Very cool.

TextMate W3C HTML Validator Integration

The other really handy thing it has over BBEdit is autocompletion. It'll complete html tags, code function names, and lots of other goodies. That's such a timesaver. Why doesn't BBEdit have that?

It's got the document/project drawer from JEdit, and tabs for open documents. It's got code folding. It's got a bundle that lets you send a project to XCode to be compiled, run and debugged. It's got syntax and code colouring for just about any language out there. It's got a Webkit-powered Preview window that actually lets you edit the previewed document, and creates acceptable code.

I've put in a request for a TextMate license, but if that doesn't get approved in time, I'll be pulling out my Visa card and buying one myself. I keep catching myself saying "heh. that's exactly how it SHOULD work." It's not perfect, but it's close.

I must have blinked when this was announced, but OpenAcademic.org sounds like a perfect scenario. Development efforts to integrate some of the biggest open source tools used in online education. It sounds like the goal is to come up with a way for Drupal, Elgg, Mediawiki and Moodle to all play nicely together, in such a way as to be easily deployable and maintainable by even the smallest school. Rather than attempting to build The One True LMS, they’re taking the approach of playing to the strengths of the available tools, and putting the effort into integration.

The really cool thing is a documented commitment by the OpenAcademic.org team to not fork projects, and to contribute any code to the relevant communities. So, they’ll be hacking on each of these applications directly, with all improvements freely available to everyone.

Personally, I think this is one of the biggest and coolest developments in online education for the year. I’m ashamed that I missed the announcement almost a month ago.

I’ve been spending almost all of my time lately in Drupal, with some time in Moodle. It’s pretty obvious that each has its own strengths (and weaknesses), and that spending effort to duplicate each package’s feature set would be wasteful and counterproductive. Having an effective way to integrate these various tools would be amazingly powerful, especially as more applications, platforms and tools are brought into the mix.

Imagine an elearning ecosystem that ties in Drupal, Mediawiki, Elgg, Moodle, Blackboard, WebCT, Flickr, del.icio.us, Facebook, YouTube, etc… in a flexible system that can adapt to any pedagogical needs. Sweet.

Flock hit beta 1 (or 0.7, depending on how you count) yesterday, and it seems like a really solid release. My favorite feature isn’t even part of the core Flock code – it’s got more Extensions enabled, including Mouse Gestures!

I’m hoping they nailed down the nasty memory leaks that plagued previous builds, and cleaned up the window opening code, which could take several seconds to spawn a new browser window. But it’s definitely on the right track.

Now to see if they managed to squeeze in category sorting/filtering in the blog posting interface (which, other than that, has been the best blog posting wysiwyg interface I’ve ever used).

Nope. It doesn’t sort or filter categories. Meaning that although it only took me 2 minutes to write this simple post, it’ll take at least that long just to select the proper categories from the menu provided…