Disqus - Latest Comments for rodbegbie

Re: Mockingbird, Cappuccino, and what really matters.

tolmasky — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:07:54 -0000

It all depends on your audience. Mockingbird is a design app, and I'm willing to bet that the target audience probably either runs Firefox or Safari. Thus all those grandmas and teenagers using IE don't really make a difference. In fact, you may very well be doing yourself a disservice in using Flash, since Flash, when idle, has been known to choke up over 50% of the CPU. That's right, my *entire system* gets slower thanks to Flash on Mac OS X running as a separate process in Snow Leopard. There's a reason people have clicktoflash installed. You shouldn't provide a detrimental experience to the people most likely to actually pay for your app just to maximize exposure to people likely not to use it.

The opposite is of course true: at least today, there is no "one true way", it depends on the app you are making.

As an aside, Cappuccino does work in IE. I have not looked at Mockingbird's code so I don't know why they chose to release the *beta* to just non-IE browsers for now, but as they've stated they will.

Re: Mockingbird, Cappuccino, and what really matters.

saikatc — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:43:04 -0000

Hi Rod,

The marketing copy isn't meant to be bragging - the point is that it's a web-based app. We do plan on supporting IE soon. But if it comes off haughty, we'll try to re-word it to sound less so.

The issue with IE is not at all a failing of Cappuccino (unless you count IE having a slow Javascript implementation a failing of Cappuccino, in which case Safari slowing down whenever it loads Flash would be a failing of Flash). But because of IE's slow javascript implementation, we felt that the way Mockingbird was running on it was not really acceptable and wanted to spend some more time getting it right before supporting it. There are also a bunch of custom additions I've made for Mockingbird, and these will take some time to get right in IE. Basically, we chose not to support IE just yet as we wanted to launch early to get some early feedback.

Re: Mockingbird, Cappuccino, and what really matters.

rodbegbie — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:31:33 -0000

Howdy.

First up, to clarify who I am and where my background is: I am not a Flash, standards, Microsoft or any other kind of zealot. (OK, bit of an Apple fanboy, but I don't think that affects this discussion). Also, my day job is building inaccessible Flash & JS & HTML web apps that are as guilty of what I complain about!

Also, IMO, Cappuccino and Objective-J fascinate me. They're hugely clever, and thumbs up for open sourcing them. But freetarded-politics aside, I don't see them as offering a particularly better experience than Flash (for developers or for users).

You're absolutely correct that I was hung up on Gruber's description of Mockingbird as a "true web app" and Mockingbird's bragging marketing copy. Your screen shot of Mockingbird on an iPhone is lovely. I accessed the site prior to my post. Then I tried to click on anything on the screen and was unable to. Hence my use of the words "completely unusable".

And allow me to supply a screenshot of my own: http://skitch.com/rodbegbie/ngdw1/ie7

So in comparison to the proud claim of the marketing website "Nothing to install or download, and you (and your clients) can access your mockups from anywhere.", it's closer to "you can access your mockups from anywhere, so long as you're actually at a PC, and aren't running the web browser used by ~50% of web users".

A developer looking at a Flash vs. Cappuccino decision is facing a classic case of pros and cons. Flash offers a consistent platform that behaves the same way without any further download on 99.9999% of PCs available today, but which rely on Adobe not fucking you over. Cappuccino offers some 'purer' tools which work in (mumble) percent of PC browsers (and require cross-browser and cross-platform testing on the part of the developer)

Anyway, I need to get back to work hacking some JavaScript to create DIVs exploiting cross-site JSONP to load data to call into Flash ExternalInterfaces.

Rod.

Re: On Tech Blogs As Frat Parties

parislemon — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:50:22 -0000

Great point Rob. But like Paul said, these are women we know fairly well. And as I said, I wasn't there, so I won't really speak to what was or wasn't said. I just don't see an reason to attack me (or Paul) for any of this - whatever this is, if anything.

Re: On Tech Blogs As Frat Parties

paulcarr — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:32:37 -0000

Agreed. But she was only there for an hour, and has only visited the office once. The women MG is referring to work in the office every day. I've spoken to them as well and their response was unanimous: there is absolutely no problem with sexism at TC. She doesn't even specify what the so-called "banter" was. The truth is, she was offended because noone - male or female - gave her the time of day when she swanned in. Because they were busy doing their jobs.

Re: On Tech Blogs As Frat Parties

rodbegbie — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:21:45 -0000

While I agree that your point that the images of "Asian Boobs" were pertinent to your post, and that Byrne's comments seem out of place, I'd warn you against using this argument:

"But there were other women there, and they don’t appear to be upset about this."

That's a fairly standard response to being accused of sexism, and it's never acceptable, implying that all women should or can be offended by the same thing.

Re: On Sleep

rodbegbie — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 06:03:52 -0000

You're not alone. This sums up pretty much my entire working life.

Dr Wikipedia says: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phas...

Re: iPhone OS 3.0: push notifications kill your battery

manima — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 10:23:34 -0000

in all cases it's official apple gear (USB and AC adapter) -- either plugged into my iMac or directly into an outlet.

Re: iPhone OS 3.0: push notifications kill your battery

rodbegbie — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 04:17:34 -0000

What are you using to do the charging? An official Apple cable or something else?

I've seen the "Push Notification stops charging" when my iPhone's in my Bose SoundDock, but never when connected to my laptop or the official Apple charger.

Re: The Facebook iPhone app has been reworked and open-sourced

parislemon — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 23:29:44 -0000

Ahh, good call Rod, thanks.

Re: The Facebook iPhone app has been reworked and open-sourced

rodbegbie — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 23:07:51 -0000

You misread the "3.0" in Hewitt's article. It's version 3.0 of the Facebook app ("Facebook for iPhone 3.0", not Facebook for "iPhone 3.0")

Re: 100 more things: The new iPhone 3.0 features

rodbegbie — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:42:39 -0000

Are there any apps currently which live stream video? I'm only aware of ones that download and play pre-recorded clips. (eg. the MLB At Bat app)

Re: 100 more things: The new iPhone 3.0 features

parislemon — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:27:58 -0000

Thx, fixed. That's obviously possible as well Rod, though I'm not sure why that'd really be different than several apps out there that already do that.

Re: 100 more things: The new iPhone 3.0 features

rodbegbie — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:09:20 -0000

That's "live streaming", not "life streaming". Also: No mention of if it's streaming UP from the phone. Suspect it refers more to the video streaming down from the net that was discussed earlier in the event.

Re: Twitter slowly turning back on the SMS spicket

parislemon — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:12:43 -0000

Ha ha thanks Rod -- Google search is good for nothing these days :)

Re: Twitter slowly turning back on the SMS spicket

rodbegbie — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:09:14 -0000

"spigot", not "spicket" </nitpick>

Re: I’m not in the office, just check my Gmail signature

Mike — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 01:22:55 -0000

True, but still cool!

Re: I’m not in the office, just check my Gmail signature

parislemon — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:17:16 -0000

Oh yes, that one. I've grown sick of that until they make an iPhone app or give it a proper web app :)

Re: I’m not in the office, just check my Gmail signature

rodbegbie — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:15:28 -0000

If only Google had just released a new app in the last week which ALLOWED USERS TO SUPPLY THEIR LOCATION!

Re: No Steve Jobs keynote at this year’s Macworld — which will be Apple’s last

msitarzewski — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:37:27 -0000

Yeah, Gruber has some great points. I still think it is a mistake though, they should at least use the keynote as a once a year update for the status of the company. I love seeing the market share gains and super numbers for the year. They could shrink the floor space, and just be on the floor to answer questions, etc.

Re: No Steve Jobs keynote at this year’s Macworld — which will be Apple’s last

rodbegbie — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:13:03 -0000

John Gruber wrote a good article on why that isn't the case, back when Apple pulled out of the east coast Macworld (which promptly folded that year).

http://daringfireball.net/2002/10/exposed

Re: Will Microsoft’s CES keynote yield a ZunePhone?

rodbegbie — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:53:55 -0000

Is there any record of MS launching something "big" at CES? Their recent keynotes have mostly been warmed-over stuff we already knew. (The only thing I can think of that was news last January was that Silverlight would be used on the NBC Olympics site)

Re: Apple’s Black Friday teaser hints of iPhone deals

parislemon — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:57:08 -0000

I agree, but we'll see. A small discount might be a nice little surprise.

Re: Apple’s Black Friday teaser hints of iPhone deals

rodbegbie — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:25:20 -0000

"iPhone gifts" might just refer to discounted bluetooth headsets or charging cradles. I'd be very surprised if Apple discounted the iPhone itself.

Re: Random Thoughts

rodbegbie — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:24:28 -0000

You should get a bag of meeting tokens too: http://www.43folders.com/2007/10/19/meeting-tok...