Mac apps I love: Caffeine

Caffeine, besides being one of my favorite ingredients in coffee, is a very lightweight app that keeps your Mac from dimming the screen, going to sleep, or starting the screensaver. It lives a quiet, satisfying life in your menu bar.

It’s perfect for when the Macbook is running on battery power I but don’t want the display to dim or go to sleep. I’m happy to leave my sleep/dim settings where they are and use Caffeine to keep my Mac awake.

Get it here: http://www.lightheadsw.com/caffeine/

Created by: Lighthead Software

Price: Free

Rating: 8    (1=never use it again, 10=first thing I install on a new computer)

Browser vs. Screen

From John Gruber (emphasis mine):

This is a fundamentally different vision for the coming decade than Google’s. In both cases, your data is in the cloud, and you can access it from anywhere with a network connection. But Google’s vision is about software you run in a web browser. Apple’s is about native apps you run on devices. Apple is as committed to native apps — on the desktop, tablet, and handheld — as it has ever been.

Google’s frame is the browser window. Apple’s frame is the screen. That’s what we’ll remember about today’s keynote ten years from now.

Google sells ads – search and the browser make sense for that market. Apple sells apps and devices – appstores and screens make sense for that market.

But doesn’t Google sell apps? And doesn’t Apple sell ads? Yes, but neither is very enthusiastic about it.

Gruber’s commentary is succinct and right on.

But what about Facebook? They sell ads, too, and Facebook’s frame is the browser window. But Facebook also has device-native apps, so their frame is the screen too.

Is Facebook going to get the best of both worlds? Their own ad revenue built on the backs of Google’s browser and Apple’s screens?

Two views on developing for Apple

Two different (opposing?) views on developing for the Apple ecosystem after today’s WWDC love-fest announcements:

The first is from Des Traynor’s post, “Playing their game”:

Apple always look out for their customers. They will always look to improve the experience. If that means adding software to their platform then so be it. If that software is in direct competition with your software, then so be it. If they roll out the software as a free update across all operating systems, leaving you for dead, then so be it.

Their ball. Their game. Their rules.

The second is from Marco Arment’s post, “What Safari’s Reading List means for Instapaper”:

So I’m tentatively optimistic. Our world changes quickly, especially on the cutting edge, and I really don’t know what’s going to happen. (Nobody does.) But the more potential scenarios I consider, the more likely it seems that Safari’s Reading List is either going to have no noticeable effect on Instapaper, or it will improve sales dramatically. Time will tell.

Des says you should stay the heck out of Apple’s way. If Apple might ever create it, you don’t want to be anywhere near it. If Apple decides to create the thing that you’ve created, they’ll kill your business. That makes sense.

(He also says that Apple looks out for their customers, which is almost, but not completely, incorrect. Apple looks out for their customers’ money, not their customers. It’s an important distinction.)

Marco says a rising tide lifts all boats. Apple’s new (free) product looks a lot like Marco’s existing (not free) product. Most people don’t know offline reading exists, so with Apple’s (free) publicity he hopes more people use an offline reader, and if he gets some new revenue he makes out okay. That makes sense too.

It sounds like Des thinks of Apple as powerful, childish tyrant. “You don’t want to be around when Apple loses its temper!”

Marco, however, seems to think of Apple as a morally neutral, unstoppable force of nature. “Good thing my boat is ready to sail, because we’re gonna get a lot of rain!”

Des and Marco each seem to be glad to be where they are, out of Apple’s direct path or in it.

Who is right? Apple: steer clear, or sail near?

And where are you? Out of Apple’s direct path (or Google’s, or Microsoft’s, or Salesforce’s, or Oracle’s…) or in it?

Ember is hiring in Boston!

My company, Ember, is hiring for embedded software engineers and QA engineers in Boston:

http://www.ember.com/company_careers.html

We develop the chips, software, and tools for wireless sensor networks.

I’ve worked at Ember since December, and it’s the best place I’ve ever worked (and I’ve worked at some pretty good places!) And, no joke, all of my coworkers say the same thing. So either we’re that great of a place to work, or there’s something in the water, but either way, it’s awesome.

But, as Levar Burton says, you don’t have to take my word for it: We were just voted one of the top places to work in Boston: http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2011/05/03/bbj-announces-best-places-to-work.html

Our QA engineers are more “developer-y” than many QA roles, so definitely check it out even if you’re not in the market for a more traditional QA position.

Email me if you’re interested!

iTunes->iPad sync crashes with some JPEG2000 files

Note to teh interwebz: iTunes 10.2.1 and 10.2.2 (at least) on Mac crash when trying to sync some JPEG2000 files from a Mac to an iPad (first generation iPad).

I tried to sync some old maps of Boston from my Mac to my iPad and iTunes 10.2.1 and 10.2.2 crashes every single time while trying to “optimize images” during the syncing process. I assume that means that iTunes converts (or at least examines) all images it sends to an iPad, and iTunes really didn’t like that particular JPEG2000-formatted image. When I deleted that image from my pictures-to-sync directory iTunes completed the sync just fine. When I put the file back in the pictures-to-sync directory iTunes crashed.

I filed a bug with Apple.

Hopefully they fix it. Even if JPEG2000 images aren’t supported on the iPad (which I found out they aren’t), iTunes shouldn’t crash when processing them.

Quotes from “The Bug” by Ellen Ullman

Two quotes caught my eye while reading “The Bug” by Ellen Ullman:

“To a machine, all here’s are equal.”

“To discover that between the blinks of the machine’s shuttered eye – going on without pause or cease; simulated, imagined, but still not caught – was life.” (the last sentence of the book)

Movin’ on up, to the east side

After eight years in Austin my wife and I recently moved to Boston.*  Austin was a great place to live, but we were ready for a change, and we’ve enjoyed visiting the Boston area so much that we wanted to move there.  And here we are!

Sadly, leaving Austin meant I had to leave my job at Silicon Labs.  I really liked that job and my coworkers; I highly recommend Silicon Labs to anyone in the Austin area.

Fortunately I found a great job at Ember in the Seaport District of Boston. I’m working on embedded software for our ZigBee chips.  My team has been really welcoming and I’m coming up to speed as quickly as I can.

So far working and living in the Boston area has been great!  We’ve played tourist a bit, and we finally found a good place to live after much searching.  Oh, and we were here for the great “Blizzard of 2010!” I had to dig our car out from under the snow, so perhaps I’ve even earned some winter-weather-survivor cred.

The biggest differences between Austin and Boston so far:

  • The weather.  Today in Austin: sunny and a high in the 70’s.  Today in Boston: snowing and low 30’s. I’m adjusting to the cold much quicker than I thought, which is good.
  • The commute.  Public transit isn’t very developed in Austin, so I drove everywhere.  In Boston I take the subway + bus in to work every day.  It’s really convenient and I can use the time to read, work, or whatever.
  • The accent. Austin has some southern accents, Boston has some Boston accents. Austin has water fountains, Boston has bubblers.

I’m looking forward to settling in to our new home.  Hello, Boston!

—

* And yes, Caustin will be the next city we move to.

Embedded software and open source

Embedded guru and author Jack Ganssle’s latest “Embedded Muse” newsletter has a lot of good commentary on open source in embedded software projects:

http://www.ganssle.com/tem/tem199.htm

I subscribe to very few newsletters, and Jack’s is one of them.  I read every issue, it’s that good.

If you work in embedded software, or software of any kind, you should subscribe!  (I don’t get anything if you subscribe, I just think it’s a worthwhile read.)

While I’m in fanboy mode, I’ll also recommend Jack’s other articles – click on a random one, you’ll probably learn something. My personal favorite is his guide to debouncing.  He does some good experiments and then shows hardware and software solutions to the pesky debouncing problems we embedded folks face.

Creation, Ownership, Drive, and Motivation

Ben Pieratt says:

“Creation is entirely dependent on ownership.

Ownership not as a percentage of equity, but as a measure of your ability to change things for the better. To build and grow and fail and learn. This is no small thing. Creativity is the manifestation of lateral thinking, and without tangible results, it becomes stunted. We have to see the fruits of our labors, good or bad, or there’s no motivation to proceed, nothing to learn from to inform the next decision. States of approval and decisions-by-committee and constant compromises are third-party interruptions of an internal dialog that needs to come to its own conclusions.”

Check out Ben’s full post: http://pieratt.tumblr.com/post/977179815/in-praise-of-quitting-your-job

Don’t let the title of “In Praise of Quitting Your Job” fool you into thinking it’s a negative post – it’s not.  It’s a positive post, which lines up well with Daniel Pink’s book, “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.”

Drive looks at “the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose,” which is another way of talking about what Ben calls “ownership.”