Seminar: Programming the iPhone

Speaker: Hugh Fisher, School of Computer Science, ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science

Date: Thursday, 25 June 2009

Time: 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Venue: CSIT Seminar Room, N101, CSIT Building (Bldg 108), North Road, ANU (campus map)

Website: Seminars @ CECS

Enquiries: Hugh Fisher

This seminar will give an introduction to the Apple iPhone (and iPod Touch) as a programming platform. Topics covered will include the hardware and OS capabilities, programming environment, the new styles of user interaction, and the restrictions on development and distribution. Don’t expect any impressive demos or in-depth benchmarking: the target audience is people who’ve never programmed an iPhone but are curious about what is involved.

This seminar is part of the CECS Seminar Series.

Hugh Fisher is a long time owner and programmer of Apple computers, and also interested in human-computer interaction. He is also a long time member of the School of Computer Science.

Original Seminar Notice at: Programming the iPhone, CECS Seminar List, The Australian National University, 2009

Blogpost: Who ate that byte of apple?

Ganesh Venkateshwara writes about his experiences with Apple hardware and software on the iBook G4 and his eventual migration to Ubuntu Linux.

Out of enthusiasm and out of sheer curiosity, I wanted to own an Mac. So I got one, not a shiny new one, an old, but an equally shiny white, iBook G4. After about 5 months of continuous usage of the default OS that came with it (OSX 10.3 aka Panther), I bid it a farewell.

Full post at: http://tovganesh.blogspot.com/2009/05/who-ate-that-byte-of-apple.html

Ripping one’s guts out…

Dramatic title?

Perhaps so, but KDE 4 development seems to be following this paradigm to the fullest — enough to make Stephen King proud!

KDE 4 has a laudable goal of revitalizing the internals, making the underlying framework robust and extensible. This is a reworking of function, perfectly acceptably and a valid developmental goal. KDE 4 also went the bling-bling way of oooh– shiny new interface at the same time.

The result?

It’s a dog’s lunch at the moment, stretching developer resources and skewing schedules. Notwithstanding a grand launch of KDE 4.0 which is ready yet not ready for general consumption (go figure!). After all, we’re real software developers and not language lawyers!

This is not a commentary on the state of KDE 4, but rather on the simultaneous reworking of form and function which resulted in neither being complete for a general use… yet.

Of course, the oft-repeated refrain is… KDE 4 will rock with release 4.1!

Yeah. Right!

Replace KDE 4 in the above commentary with Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows or any but-it’s-going-to-change-computing-forever software system… the end-result is the same!

Earth Hour == Guilt Absolution?

Yet another Earth Hour has passed us by.

And… what is the outcome?Absolutely nothing. Earth Hour is hip. Earth Hour is happening. Earth Hour is trendy. It’s everything that’s glorified in a consumerist frenzy.

It’s the belittling of a much  more thought-engaging problem.

What are the aims of Earth Hour? To raise awareness? Awareness of how many candles we can light up in 3600 seconds around the globe?

The fundamental motive of Earth Hour is laudable. Being responsible in the use of resources, minimizing wasteful exploitation — these should be practiced throughout the year. A token gesture of turning off the power for one hour achieves nothing.

Irrespective of whether “global warming” is a concern or not, intelligent use of available resources is always a good idea.

Want not… waste not!

What is needed is not a slanging match on the “good” or “bad” of Earth Hour, rather a coherent and cogent process of thought in proper design and usage of all resources.

For instance, let’s not turn a surface railway station into a poorly lit and ventilated mausoleum, needing powered illumination even during the brightest day!!

(External image linked from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vashi_Railway_Station_IT_Park.jpg)

Do More to Achieve Less?

The kickoff menu in KDE-four-oh provides the following options to leave a session:

Let’s say we select Logout. This generates the following dialog:

It’s always good to have a choice, a second chance to change one’s mind. But it does seem slightly overkill asking confirmation for the options selected from the kickoff menu earlier.

While there are definitely valid use-cases for the End Session dialog (such as electing to terminate a KDE session from a Logout plasmoid), it’s just another annoyingly extra step in the workflow from the menu option. Perhaps a good configuration may be to provide an option to skip the reconfirmation dialog in the scenario discussed above.