This morning I released DropDMG 2.1. It adds BBEdit-inspired recent and favorite folders, support for Internet-enabled images, compatibility with Apple’s JDK 1.4.1, and lots of other refinements. I’m especially proud of the new sheet-based interface for overriding the preferences.
Erik Barzeski has some good criticism of OmniGraffle 3 and its icons. The new palettes look cool, and I was never really a fan of the old Interface Builder–style ones. But I think I want something more context-sensitive.
Dan Sugalski write about how Parrot got started and inter-langauge interoperability.
It is understandable that carrying an advanced featureset and lots of media manipulations can’t be all that speedy, but we’re talking about the interface responsiveness here. I am, trying to assemble my first home-made movie in iMovie, using a semi-modern Mac (dual-Ghz), don’t like clicking into a movie fragment and waiting for half a second for the system to understand I clicked in and update the UI. I don’t like browsing through the iPhoto library with an ocassional coffee breaks every time i click on an up arrow because my library contains about 600 photos.
The video also made one wonder for whom public television programs are made. Despite having two hours the show did not attempt to explain even the simplest physics or engineering behind radio or any of the inventions that were the subject of the disputes chronicled. The biographical and historical information was narrated so slowly that it could have been sped up 3X without approaching the speed of dialog on the Simpsons, which most people seem to have no trouble following.
All gripes aside, however, Eclipse on OS X is the same great development environment that I’ve come to love on Windows, and that alone is cause for celebration. I would kill to have Eclipse’s sophisticated code completion features in Project Builder (since I’ve been using Eclipse at work, my once frequent visits to the Java API docs have all but ceased).
I don’t think that would be enough to get me to write code in Project Builder, but if Apple implemented more of Eclipse’s feature I might consider switching. Although the situation is much better than on OS 9, it still seems like the Mac is behind in developer tools. Using a minority language like Objective-C doesn’t help, of course.
Erik Barzeski doesn’t like the Apple Store’s new look, and I’ve got to agree. It’s too cluttered. By the way, did you know that Apple still sells HyperCard? I recently bought a FireWire hard drive from Dell. Their store is worse, of course—especially the search feature. But I paid $60 + shipping less than if I had bought at a Mac store. (The price has since gone up to the Mac-store level.)
