Archive for July 17, 2012

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Xcode and AppCode

Andrew Pontious:

Much of the reason Xcode used to be so bad was that it couldn’t link against gcc directly. Clang is now deeply integrated into Xcode, including its index and its code editor. Does AppCode have to do double the work to get the same result? Or does it try to parse the source code in its own, not-quite-matching way, leading to weird inconsistencies? Will builds be as fast? Will there be cryptic errors when I try something nobody thought of to integrate properly? Can I really trust it to edit project and workspace files (whose formats are undocumented)?

Presumably this restriction was due to gcc being GPL code and Apple not wanting to open-source its IDE.

Thunderbolt Display Static Noise

MacNN:

The problem isn’t universal, but a six-page thread (with similar other comments started by other users) on the Apple support forums detail the hardware configurations and running software from various users that are running into the problem with the display and new laptop. There doesn’t seem to be any induction by a specific software package, and a logical or physical disconnect of the display seems to work to rectify the static for a time.

The Thunderbolt displays are now a year old. They still seem like a great idea, but I’m continually hearing about weird problems like this.

1Password 3.9.6 and the Sandbox

In September, 1Password 3.9 was one of the first Mac apps to be sandboxed. It used a single temporarily exception read-write entitlement to enable access to the user’s Dropbox folder, thus annoying users who didn’t store their Dropbox in the default location. Yesterday, developer Roustem Karimov tweeted (via Gabe Weatherhead):

1Password update in Mac App Store got rejected for using a read-write exception in entitlements. Didn’t expect it go away so soon

This was unexpected for a 0.0.1 update that primarily exists to add support for Retina displays. The update has since been approved, seemingly using the same entitlement as before.

Problem of Rewind

Joshua Goodwin (via Clark Goble):

They still behave in the clever two-faced way outlined above, but now they look just like the buttons that can only rewind and fast-forward within the current track, like on that Walkman. What does it all mean? I don’t know. I don’t feel like it solves any problems.

Boolean Trap

Ariya Hidayat (via John Carmack):

For this particular discussion, I’ll pick my favorite API design mistake: boolean trap. On this topic, the above API Design Principle wiki page says that

it’s almost invariably a mistake to add a bool parameter to an existing function

Alfred 1.3

Vero Pepperrell:

You can now pick multiple files directly from Finder or navigate to them in Alfred and add them to your file buffer. Once you’ve picked all your files, you can perform an action on all of them.

It sounds like of like a shelf. Interesting.