I’m a little bit sad today. Twitter has today turned off v1.0 of their API. As a result of this my mobile twitter client, Hahlo, has also ceased to work just short of its 6th anniversary. Six years is a long time in the web world, I know a lot of things now that I wish I’d known back then – sure would have made many things a lot easier.

Twitter has changed a lot in that time, as have the capabilities of the browsers and devices being developed for. Simple things like offline storage and position:fixed were massive hurdles at the time, now we have them without having to think about it.

So, why is Hahlo dead?

Basically, Twitter have turned the old version of the API off which, as you can probably work out for yourself, means it no longer works. This affected pretty much every twitter client in existence, but the main difference being that many of them are still in active development, Hahlo was not and hadn’t been for a couple of years.

When they originally announced the plans for the v1.0 API retirement I investigated ‘upgrading’ Hahlo to use v1.1 of the API, but the changeover would have required much more than a simple find ’1.0′ replace with ’1.1′. An extensive reworking of the code was something I just simply didn’t have time for – especially considering that it had been a couple of years since I’d looked at the code, and it was neither very well organised nor suitably documented. Rookie error. So, the code didn’t get updated, and Hahlo was destined to die when Twitter eventually pulled the plug on the old API, which has now happened.

The beginning, the challenge.

Hahlo has been around longer than the iPhone, or any other iOS device, has even been on sale in Australia – and many other parts of the world. In fact the first two iterations of Hahlo were developed entirely without first-hand access to an iOS device. Big thanks to all those on the other side of the planet who helped test fiddly incremental changes as I made them and posted about them on twitter … using Hahlo, of course.

The original concept, back when it was iTweetr.

Hahlo comes from a time before native apps were even an option. It was one of the original web apps designed specifically for – but not limited to – iOS. Development of the original concept was started on the day of the WWDC keynote in 2007 – in fact it is exactly 6 years to the day (depending on which part of the world you are in) that I posted the original concept.  A more ‘functional’ version that people could use followed a couple of weeks later. My concept also landed me on the front-page of Digg which was more of a ‘big’ thing back then than it is now.

Of course, webapps are still around now, but they are much less dominant than they were 5 years ago – despite what some corners of the web will still try and tell you. Mind you it’s hard to imagine such a time existed now that Apple have sold more than 50,000,000,000 native apps – god only knows how many of them are twitter clients of some variety (and of quite varying quality).

Some numbers.

Hahlo is/was just 2 weeks short of its true 6th anniversary – and even though it hasn’t had any regular maintenance since 2009 it was still 90% functional (a few things had broken, and never been fixed, as the Twitter API evolved over time, most of them were minor).

In those 6-ish years Hahlo racked up:

• 3.2 million visits
• 600,000 unique visits
• 27.5 million pageviews
• 50,000 pageviews per day at its peak

A twitter client for (almost) everyone

It might have been conceived as an iOS-dedicated web app, but it was much more. It was truly cross-browser (user experience did vary…) with people using it in everything from Safari to Firefox to Chrome to Opera and even Internet Explorer – although I doubt the experience was very nice in IE.

Of course, as you’d expect iOS users made up the bulk of visits (about 60%), outside of that – somewhat surprisingly – there were equal amounts of Windows and Mac users (about 15% each). With the remaining 10% logging on using a variety of gadgets including: Playstation (PS3 and PSP), Blackberry, Nintendo Wii, Nokia phones, Android devices, Linux, Windows phones and probably any other device from the last 5 years that you can think of.

Made in Australia, but for the whole world.

Hahlo has had visitors from 198 countries/territories (according to Google Analytics) – The top 10 countries (in order) were United States, United Kingdom, China, Japan, Germany, Canada, Australia, Netherlands, Brazil and France.

Number 198 on the list was Vatican City with a solitary visit that lasted 1 minus and 36 seconds. Hello Mr Pope?

When Oauth was introduced for Hahlo v4 I even kept the old v3 site around specifically for users in China who couldn’t use v4 since they couldn’t authorise their accounts because Twitter.com was blocked. v3 and the much older version of the API it was using lived on for a little while longer but both have been dead for a while now.

Within those 198 countries Hahlo had visitors from some 16,392 cities/towns – Top 10 being (in order) London, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Tokyo, Chicago, Beijing, Sydney, Los Angeles and Atlanta.

Lots of usage.

• Approx 80,000 unique users logged in
• 1.5 million tweets posted
• 110,000 direct messages sent
• 100,000 tweets retweeted
• 50,000 tweets favourited
• 200,000 searches

Twitter has exploded in the last 6 years.

@hahlo was twitter user 7,097,682 – now, 6 years later there are well over half a billion active users on twitter… not to mention  all the wonderful spam bots.

Hahlo was just the 28th ‘app’ registered for the Oauth API – the time when registration of apps with Twitter became required – there are now more than 4.5 million apps registered.

Growth.

There were 4 major version releases – with a few smaller updates in-between – the last being v4.2 in May 2010 when I added the iPad layout. The original version was really just a timeline and a profile, by the time it reached versions 3 and 4 I think I had pretty much every Twitter API endpoint covered.

Hahlo integrated the Summize search (May 2008) well before Twitter acquired them and adopted their search technology as the default twitter search. Hahlo had ‘conversation views’ before (I believe, please correct me if I’m wrong) twitter.com had them. There were maps of locations, and oEmbeds galore in later versions allowing everything from YouTube to Flickr and more to display directly in your timeline long before the same thing became common place on twitter itself and other clients. It had Growl support, and even had mobile push notifications via the Boxcar service.

And in November 2008 when Hahlo’s growth happened a little too quickly for my original web host they freaked out and cut off my account, that was when the awesome people at Media Temple stepped in to help out. Hahlo hasn’t had an issue with hosting since.

A visual progression

Version 1.0 – Simple, and a bit ugly…

Version 2.0 – Still simple, a little tidier

Version 3.0 (couldn’t find a good shot with the titlebar…) – introduced a refreshed UI and a stack of features

Version 4.0 – Everything was new for v4

Version 4.1 – tap a tweet for more options, just like the popular native apps have now

Version 4.1 – geo-tag your tweets

Version 4.1 – viewing retweets

Version 4.1 – full user profiles

Version 4.2 for iPad – and the last update Hahlo received

More screenshots and mockups here.

Sticking it out until the end.

While traffic to Hahlo is just a faint shadow of what it once was – now just 4,500 visits a month down from around 300,000 per month at its peak (May 2008) – there have still been nearly 1000 active users in the last 6 months. I’m sad they now need to find something else, but I’m sure they’ll be ok, there are countless options available to them.

Moving on.

I’ve know this day was coming for a while, and although it’s a little sad, I’m not worried – nor should anyone else be – there are a ton of great alternatives out there. Twitter.com is a whole stack better than it once was, and there are great mobile clients literally everywhere you look, my personal preference (on iPhone, iPad and Mac) is Tweetbot but both Twitterrific and the Official Twitter clients are also pretty great options.

Thanks.

Thanks to everyone who used Hahlo, especially to those who helped with testing (for example, the Hahlo 3 beta had over 1,000 people taking part). Thanks to those who reviewed it and wrote about it – in 2008 John Gruber described it as his favourite third party Twitter web client. Thanks to those that talked about it on podcasts like TWiT, or recommended it to friends.

BIG thanks to those who donated a few dollars here and there – the donations were never going to make me rich nor cover the several hundred hours I spent working on it, but they did help with some initial hosting costs, plus caffeine and sugar to assist with the coding process. Massive thanks, again, to the awesome folk at Media Temple, without them Hahlo might very well have disappeared back in 2008.

Hahlo, you taught me many things. It was a little stressful at times, particularly for something that was really just a hobby project, but it was a lot of fun.

Goodbye Hahlo.

I’m not a Star Wars person, never have been, but I still find today’s announcement that George Lucas has sold Lucasfilm (and all associated bits and pieces) to Disney really interesting. Almost as interesting is that they are proceeding with and ‘Episode 7′ with a view to make more in the future.

I joked on twitter that while Lucas said that he would never make Episodes 7,8 and 9 that he never specified that he wouldn’t sell his company and let someone else make them … then George said pretty much exactly the same thing.

I still question why you would refer to it as “Episode 7″, why not completely restart with fresh characters from the same universe – why not just keep it completely separate from the originals?

Lots of people I follow on twitter (pretty much all of them actually) are Star Wars fans of some description – and the general consensus is that while they are quite surprised by the announcement they don’t necessarily have negative feeling about it. In fact many seem enthused by the prospect of a Star Wars film that George Lucas isn’t at the helm for.

They all have their own preferences for who they’d like to see in the director’s (and/or writer’s) chair – although I have my doubts that any of the names being thrown around would actually get the gig. There are numerous reasons for this, some of these guys are likely huge Star Wars fans and wouldn’t want to risk screwing it up, some are involved in other ‘competing’ projects and some maybe wouldn’t be interested at all.

So what if the names being thrown around this morning got a hold of the reins for Episode 7 and beyond? (Slightly tongue in cheek…)

Christopher Nolan.

Skywalker begins.
The Dark Lord.
The Dark Lord Rises.

But, I doubt he’d be up for another big trilogy.

JJ Abrams.

Something with spies, and monsters, and secrets, and islands, and infinite layers of mystery that may never be explained…

But he’s already doing Star Trek and that’s with Paramount. Not going to happen.

Joss Whedon.

Darth Vader vs Iron Man. Chewbacca vs Hulk. Princess Leia vs Black Widow.

Episode 7 is apparently being targeted at 2015, which just so happens to be the same time as Avengers 2. So Whedon is out.

David Fincher.

Something dark about a kid who is taught about something called ‘the force’ by this eccentric green dyslexic midget who he later discovers was all just a figment of his imagination but not before he’s found the head of his sister in a box and posted about it on an online community that he whipped up in-between lessons. Swords made of light. Pfft. As if that’s realistic.

I’d still like to see him do the two sequels to “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, which would probably overlap with the Episode 7 timeline. That aside, I’d happily watch a Start Wars film that he was in charge of.

Michael Bay.

So, Stars Wars is no longer set in space. They’re now mutant reptiles that live in the sewers. Obi Wan is now a giant rat. Oh and robots, lots of robots. Oh, oh and explosions. EVERYTHINGS EXPLODES.

No. Just no.

Brad Bird.

The Skywalkers. They’ve all got super powers, and they’re animated. It’s the Pixer/Star Wars film you’ve all wanted for so long.

Maybe, but I doubt we’ll see a Pixar version while Clone Wars is still kicking.

Tim Burton.

Johnny Depp is Darth Vader. Helena Bonham Carter is Padme. It’s all stop-motion animation. And it’s going to be worse than Episode 1.

I love most Tim Burton films, but he’d be a terrible choice for Star Wars.

Jon Favreau.

It could be like Cowboys and Aliens, without the Cowboys, and with a better story. That and he kick-started the current Marvel run with the first Iron Man film, which is still the best of the Marvel films – with Avengers the only possible exception.

Damon Lindelof.

As writer, not director. I throw this one in simply because I love how pissed off Alien fans were with Prometheus. I love how many people are still (unjustifiably) pissed at him for how Lost ended. And he’s just written something mysterious called ’1952′ – to be directed by Brad Bird – for, yes, you guessed it, Disney.

To those suggesting that the new iPad mini, which starts at US$329, will make more people buy the $199 7-inch competitors – have you been paying no attention during the past couple of years?

The only thing that is going to breath real life into the sub-standard 7-inch device market is if Apple discontinues the iPad line entirely. Intelligent people, with the necessary monetary funds, have been choosing the 10-inch iPad over the “wish they were iPads” for years now. Why now, just because Apple’s iPad mini is a touch expensive do you think they are suddenly going to regress and buy a Kindle Fire or some nasty piece of plastic Samsung crap. If these devices were people’s preference – and some people do prefer them – then they’ve probably already got them. Apple introducing a new product doesn’t change this.

All this aside I’m not sure I see the point in a non-retina screen on the mini. The physical size difference alone is not enough for me to consider buying one. Weight and size are not an issue with the current iPad design (also, damn you Apple for refreshing the new iPad again) as anyone who owns one will tell you. The are not heavy by any stretch and have a super battery life – even with the glorious retina display. If you can afford the extra $150 you’ll go the 10-inch iPad.

Also I can’t help it, but every time I look at the one-handed holding position of the iPad mini (the current image on the Apple homepage), all I see is one of those morons who own one of the Samsung jumbo phones – I’m still not sure these people realize just how fucking ridiculous they look when they take a call in public and hold the massive device up to their ear.

Apple felt that it needed to fill the gap between iPhone and iPad, and that’s fine, but I don’t feel it. I’ll stick with my own ’mini iPad’, the one with a retina screen that fits in my pocket and that I’m writing this article on. iPhone 5 is the only iPad mini that I need…

Also, OH MY GOD THE NEW IMAC IS AMAZEBALLS I WANT ONE AND I WANT ONE NOW… or maybe next year once it (hopefully) goes retina.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that Samsung are scared, you only run stupid marketing campaigns like this one if you are, or if your marketing folk are equally as daft – or both. If you haven’t seen the ad, and have no idea what I’m rambling about, I’ve attached the full thing at the bottom of this post.

Numerous people have already taken aim at the ad, there is the one that flips it around to a pro-iPhone stance with the headline “Don’t settle for cheap plastic”, there are the ones where people have filled out the feature lists on both sides in a little more detail for a ‘better’ comparison, and there is even one that removes the S3 completely instead comparing the iPhone to the Nokia Lumia.

Let’s start with the headline. “It doesn’t take a genius” is implying that Apple are the genius, and Samsung are not. True I guess, you don’t really need to be that smart to operate a photocopier.

It also doesn’t take a genius to realise that they should have picked a better wallpaper image to display on the S3. Sure we all know its one of those floaty, flower, seed thingies but at a quick glance it looks like a bullet hole and smashed screen. Yup, well though out guys.

It doesn’t take a genius to pick holes in the compared features between the two devices.

4.8″ S3 screen vs 4.0″ iPhone 5 screen

It doesn’t take a genius to see that 4.8 is a larger number than 4.0, Samsung’s marketing folk certainly see it. What they also see is the need for enormous pockets to fit their giant phones in.

4.7oz S3 weight vs 3.95oz iPhone 5 weight

It doesn’t take a genius to see that 4.7 is a larger number than 3.95, oh wait maybe it does. If the Samsung marketeers had noticed that “bigger isn’t better” in the weight category they might have left this one out. The S3 is nearly 20% heavier than the iPhone 5, weight doesn’t worry me personally, but 20% is lot – especially considering once phone is made of plastic, and one is not…

S Voice vs Siri

I still think Siri is kind of a dumb name (and it never understands anything I say), but ‘S Voice’ is worse.

16 or 32 fixed + up to 64GB microSD storage

Wow, I totally want a microSD to boost the storage of my phone when the manufacturer should probably have just made it available in the higher capacities to begin with. MicroSD storage expansion was cool when phones came with 16MB of internal storage, that time has long passed.

Android 4.0 OS vs iOS 6

Well you get Android 4.0 if your carrier lets you. On the other hand, everyone, everywhere, with a compatible iOS device (pretty much anything from the past two or so years) gets the same iOS 6 for free at the same time.

Standard micro USB plug

Woop-de-doo. I’m sure everyone has seen the photo of the multiple Samsung power adapters from the past couple of years that’s doing the round on the internet. I’d post a picture of all the different connectors Apple has used in the past 10 years but it would be pretty boring because they’ve only used one. How dare they introduce a brand new, smaller connector. Shame on them.

So, that’s the comparative features, but what about the differentiating features? Well, it doesn’t take a genius to see that these “extras” that the S3 includes are mostly irrelevant fancy marketing derived names for mundane basic features.

NFC

Nobody fucking cares. Oh, that’s not what it means? I just see Samsung using it so much that I assumed… oh well, whatever.

Smart Stay

Is what exactly? Thanks to its stupid marketing supplied name only Samsung S3 owners are going to know what this is, and they already own an S3 so that’s kind of pointless, right?

S-Beam

See ‘Smart Stay’. No idea what it is (and I’m not looking it up), but if I had to guess I’d say its a torch. A torch is not a feature.

ShareShot

See ‘Smart Stay’. Or maybe this is being able to share photos? Yeah, because that’s something the iPhone can’t do…

Group Cast

See ‘Smart Stay’. Group video chat? Or something a group of people get after a mass skiing accident?

Direct Call

Holy fucking shit guys, the Samsung S3 can make phone calls. Why didn’t I think of that, a phone that makes phone calls. Genius.

Smart Alert

See ‘Smart Stay’. Or maybe this is notifications, you know, like the ones iOS doesn’t have, oh wait…

Tilt to Zoom

Yeah…. sounds like a fucking terrible idea.

Palm swipe capture

No no no no no. Why would you want to swipe your entire palm? Is it just because the enormous screen is larger than most people’s palms?

Picture in Picture

On a phone? Why? What picture is going inside what other picture? Video conference calls inside movies? Movies inside video conference calls? This feature makes no sense at all.

Turn Over to Mute

Why? If my phone is muted I want to be able to see the screen, if I have to turn it over then I can’t see the screen. Presumably this is optional, but its hardly a feature difference that I’d be highlighting as a reason why the S3 is better than the iPhone 5.

Shake to Update

Much like ‘shake to undo’ on the iPhone it just seems like an excuse to use the accelerometer for something that’s not really that helpful. And also like Apple’s ‘shake to undo’ it will also make you look like a knob when you use it in public.

Removable battery

Really? In 2012 you still want to tout a removable battery as a ‘feature’? I thought we were past this? What percentage of S3 users actually carry around a spare battery? Do they do it because finding a compatible charger is difficult? Do they do it because they are too stupid to charge their phones at night? Or is the removable battery so that when the battery completely dies – which it should never do within the life of the phone – that users can purchase a replacement? If the battery in an iPhone died you’d just take it to an Apple store and they’d give you an entirely new phone (well really they shouldn’t, but they probably would).

Overall the extra features that Samsung list are really scraping the bottom of the barrel. None of them make me think “Man I wish my iPhone could do that”. Samsung users probably love them, but they’re already Samsung users, they aren’t the target of this ad, or are they?

“Appearance of phones may vary. Phone screen images simulated. Above listed features are representative, not all inclusive”

Appearance may vary? Yes, there’s a black iPhone and a white iPhone, don’t know what variations there are of the S3, don’t care either.

Simulated screen images, well ‘image’ as they only put an image on the S3, and they didn’t pick a very good one.

“Representative” features only. Perhaps Samsung could have picked some features that better “represented” why they think the S3 is a better device. They could have also listed more comparative features for the iPhone, but I guess that wasn’t really the point of the ad.

The Next Big Thing Is Already Here.

Yes Samsung, you are correct, and its called the iPhone 5, and Apple unveiled it last week. They also announced pricing and availability on the spot, pre-orders opened a couple of days later, and by the end of this week users will have the device in their hands. Can anyone tell me how the last Samsung launch compared?

Give it a few weeks and I’m sure Samsung will announce their innovative new phone, the Samsung Galaxy sPhone V, no doubt complete with “coming soon” and “pricing not yet available” tag lines, and a sleek new design that looks nothing like the iPhone 5. Because the form factor of the iPhone 5 is just so obvious, why would they do it any other way?

Apple has confirmed, as has been rumoured for weeks, that there will be an event on March 7th presumably to announce the iPad 3. The image below is from the invitation to said event and it’s got people all worked up for a couple of reasons. Firstly because it appears to be hiding the retina display in plain sight, and secondly because there is no home button shown in the photo. Oh gawd.

Ok, the home button. People are freaking out, comparing the above image with photos they’ve taken of their current iPad trying to show that the icon position and the water droplets on the homescreen background image all line up the same and that this definitely indicates that the iPad in the photo above is in portrait orientation and that then this definitely means that Apple has removed the home button. Oh my the world is ending. No it’s not…

Why?

Siri.

Ok, next.

Is that really a retina-equipped iPad hiding there right before our eyes? Maybe, maybe not. Look at the size of the finger in relation to the icons. Those icons are enormous. On my iPhone 4 my boney little fingers almost entirely cover a single icon, on the current iPad the icons appear a little bit larger, but then this dude with normal sized fingers is tapping on an icon that his finger is only covering about a quarter of. Yes, we’re going to see a retina display on the iPad 3. No, this photo isn’t one, unless of course Apple has started using toddlers as hand models. My guess is that this is just photoshopped together for the purposes of the invite.

What of the other rumoured improvements? HD upgrade for the front-facing camera? Upgraded back camera to match the iPhone 4S? I think both of these are covered by the same issue. Space. If the leaked photos are anything to go by then the iPad 3 is only very, very slightly thicker than the iPad 2, I don’t think this is going to allow enough room for ‘better’ cameras, especially given talk that the extra width was to allow for a bigger battery required to power the retina display everyone is craving. I’d like to see a camera upgrade, but I won’t be massively shocked or disappointed if it doesn’t get one.

Keeping expectations low is always going to be better.

I’ve seen a couple of people mention that they think the software (OS and core apps) is going to receive some changes. For the most part I doubt it, at least for the initial launch. Sure they might give a sneak peak at what they might be looking at for iOS 6 when it drops later in the year, but I don’t think that any major changes will appear in iOS 5.1 … with one exception of course.

Siri. Right now Siri is only available on the iPhone 4s, this is the first iPad update since the 4S was released so it seems more than reasonable that Siri is going to make an appearance. Personally I haven’t played with Siri (don’t have a 4S), and I think even if I did has a 4S I’d probably play with Siri for a week and then just go back to using my phone as I would normally. Still seems too much like a novelty item to me.

The internals will no doubt get a boost, the inclusion of a quad-core processor and 4G LTE seem to be the most expected improvements. RAM will probably get/need a boost to deal with the plethora of extra pixels that need to be driven – another reason why the quad-core processor rumour seems reasonable.

What else? There’s always a ‘what else’.

People are starting to talk about the possibility of an Apple TV update accompanying the iPad 3, with a feature bump to enable 1080p mirroring. I don’t mind the logic behind it, whether Apple is going to drop two new products at once is the question. They may prefer to keep all the attention squarely focused on the iPad 3.

On the other hand, to Apple, a minor spec bump might be a worthy ‘one more thing’ when paired with the freshly revealed iPad3. We’ll just have to wait an see.

Credit cards are ready.

Flicking through my rss feeds, as I do every morning, I spotted an article on MacRumors with (yet more) rumoured details about the specs of the unannounced, unreleased iPad 3. After reading the short article my sole thought was…

Oh great, its going to end up being called iPad 2S and I’m going to have to listen to the elitist-tech-morons of the world complain for months because it wasn’t called the iPad 3.

“No, that won’t happen again” I hear you say. Of course it will, it always does — it is just that last year’s iPhone 4S nonsense was a little more extreme than usual. You do remember the ridiculous rumoured feature set that was being spouted as “fact” for the iPad 2 around this time last year don’t you? About the only feature that the tech blog’s “sources” hadn’t confirmed was that the iPad 2 would be a personal intergalactic teleportation device. How many of the “crazy” rumours panned out? Maybe one or two (thinner design and dual cameras) can’t find the original list to compare.

The one thing that was at the top of most lists was the surefire retina display for the iPad. Just about every tech blog had this right at the top of their feature list.

Of course iPad 2 will have a retina display. Why? because the iPhone’s already got one.

Did the iPad 2 get a retina display? No, it did not. *shock* But the impact of that non-appearance of a feature was probably lessened by the fact that 90% of the rumours turned out to be complete garbage. Roll on iPhone 5.

The next iPhone will be the iPhone 5 and it will be awesome, its going to be a complete redesign to match those cheap mass-produced Chinese cases, they’re going to get rid of the home button so you can control it with your mood, and their going to make the screen massive like one of those jumbo-tron-wont-fit-in-any-normal-persons-pocket android phones.

Or so they said. Instead what turned up was the iPhone 4S, a ridiculously good upgrade over the previous generation, bringing faster processor, faster graphics, new antenna, new 8MP camera that can also shoot 1080p/30fps video, and a brand new version of iOS with a stack of features including the amazing Siri voice control system… and then people started to complain.

Firstly because it looked nothing like the magical iPhone cases that the Chinese manufacturers had been churning out, secondly because it wasn’t called the iPhone 5.

Yuk, its looks like the iPhone 4 and how dare they not call it the iPhone 5, I’m never going to buy an Apple product again.

Le sigh. Anyway, back to the iPad 3. The most persistent rumour yet again is that it will definitely get a “retina” display. The new “details” provided by iLounge are that both cameras (front and back) will get an upgrade, that it will be slightly thicker (this one’s been going around for a while) and that the current iPad 2 might also remain but at a lower price point.

But here’s the thing, its all speculation. Sure these people have “sources”, you know, as in “I know a guy who knows a guy who’s girlfriend’s aunt’s second cousin once visited the same Chinese province where the iPad is manufactured so they are clearly an authority on all things technical”. And yes, sure, I get that tech blogs love the time in the lead up to the release of an “iDevice” because it means that if they can post some juicy rumour that the internets get a hold of then their blog traffic will explode and they might make a quick buck from the ton of gaudy advertising plastered all-over their site.

But for every one “true” rumour, there are two dozen other completely stupid rumours to distract (and annoy) people. Don’t get me wrong I love rumours and speculation as much as the next guy, but don’t read everything the tech blogs write as gospel. It’s not. All they are doing is unrealistically building up your expectations way higher than they need to be so that no matter what Apple actually do release you are guaranteed to be disappointed for some daft reason.

Then, of course, you can head back to their site and take part in the noob comment threads on the topics that they will undoubtedly write about how Apple has stooged everyone by not releasing the device that their “source” had told them about.

Hmm, now I kind of hope Apple actually do call it the iPad 2S…

It’s 2012 and this blog is now 5 years old. I figured, then, that this would be as good a time as any to clean things up. So I have. As far as “clean ups” go, this one is extreme. I’m starting with an empty root directory, brand-new database, fresh install of WordPress 3.3 and an extra-minimalistic theme. I’ve rebooted.

Those playing along at home will know that I’m fond of the odd redesign — or twelve — and for the majority of the last 5 years I’ve redesigned this blog with dedicated regularity. That is until the last year or so. It’s not like I haven’t “tried” to freshen things up, just that I’ve made a dozen attempts and none of them ever really progressed further than a basic mockup before I would get sidetracked with something else or simply lose interest.

Last night at 9:50pm — yes, I redesigned my blog on New Year’s Eve, I’m just that awesome — I decided that if I was going to relaunch for 2012 then I had to do something about it pronto. What you’re looking at is the result of that snap decision. The focus being on the articles that I will (or at least intend to) write, rather than the site itself. I had been toying with the idea of also publishing short posts with links and other things I found interesting but in the end I’ve decided to stay away from that — at least for the moment, I may yet change my mind.

Gone is all the old content, all the old (unnecessary) plugins, all the comments, all the likes, all the images, all the scripts — everything, gone. And I like that. (That’s not entirely true, I haven’t blown them all to oblivion, instead I’ve archived them off onto a sub-domain and will attempt to set up some ‘smart’ redirects so that old links don’t break)

I do intend to bring back some of the “better” articles from the archive, still not sure what I’ll do for the couple of articles that have really good comments attached to them.

As far as plugins go I didn’t have a huge amount running anyway, maybe 20 or so, but they weren’t doing much. Aside from Akismet none of them were really that useful if I’m completely honest. And now that I’ve banished comments as well, I probably don’t even need Akismet. I’ll probably turn a couple of plugins back on in the next week or so after I discover that I was actually using them, will have to wait and see.

While this site is now live again with it’s new look, its far from complete. I still need to work out basic things like the archive and an about page. The site header probably needs a little work, its simple, but I can’t decide if its too simple. I also need to redo the “responsiveness” of the design so that it adapts to different situations — it is one of the “nice to haves” not one of the “must haves”, at least on this site.

This year

On the immediate radar for 2012 is to continue to pimp out my very first <subliminal>you should buy it</subliminal> iPhone app, CricLive, that was released just prior to Christmas. I submitted an update for approval yesterday, and there is still a few more improvements that I hope to make. I’m pretty happy with its release considering that 10 weeks ago I’d never written an iPhone app — sure I’d played around with Interface Builder, but that doesn’t count. This is an actual app, an app that you can buy, with money, in the iTunes store. Wonderful.

I’ve got rough plans/ideas for a second iOS app, one that would have a much broader audience — I just need to a) work out if the ‘rough’ idea is a ‘good’ idea, b) work out if I’m capable of executing the idea, c) work out how I find enough time to put into the idea and d) find a cool name for it. Maybe it you keep an eye out on dribble you might spot some of my “ideas” in near future. I’ve already trawled the app store and couldn’t find anything the same — there were a couple that were “similar”, but they looked poorly done and hideously designed. I don’t want anything I do to ever fall into either of those categories.

On the web front I’ll continue to update the BigBashBoard which I started on a whim one Friday night earlier in the year and suddenly people started using it. It spiraled out of control from that point, and now I’m (slowly) building up this massive database of Twenty20 Cricket stats. It’s fun though, and that’s the main point.

A couple of my other side-projects died (or at least went into deep hibernation) at some point during the year. Not because I didn’t love them, but because I wasn’t getting anything out of them. The time spent maintaining them was was probably 100-fold the time other people spent using them. A bit sad, maybe one-day when I’ve got more free time (ha! like that’s ever going to happen) I’ll revisit some of them.

Fluency Admin needs an update, the current version simply doesn’t work with WordPress 3.3. But I’ll admit the motivation to start work on the update is low, primarily because the main feature (fly-out menus) of Fluency is now just part of the default admin interface, but secondly because the default WordPress Admin itself is not really that bad anymore — it gets closer to looking like Fluency with every update… but I’m sure I’ll get to it at some point, it’s probably something I can work on during my lunch breaks at work.

During 2011 I set up a ‘portfolio’ site, where I could stick stuff I’m working on or have worked on — essentially the sort of things that used to be in the “projects” section of this site. That’s part of the reason that this blog has returned to “just” being a blog. That way Fluency Admin, CricLive etc. can all live over on the FortySevenRobots site instead. And they do, quite happily.

Ok, that’s enough rambling. I’ve got some idea expansion to do. On with 2012.

So.

Let’s get this straight.

Apple have just announced their new iPhone with a dual core processor that’s twice as fast as the previous model, graphics that are up to 7x faster, an improved – global (GSM/CDMA) – antenna design, an all new 8MP camera that blows the previous 5MP one out of the water with its new sensor and lens AND it can shoot 1080p/30fps video with image stabilisation, plus a new OS that includes hundreds of features and updates, like in-built twitter integration, a new message system, reminders, better photo/video editing, newsstand and even some of those things that you’ve been moaning about for years (better notifications) plus the iCloud service that backs everything up for you without ever needing to plug it into a computer, not to mention probably the most advanced voice control system ever seen on a mobile phone…

…and yet you’re disappointed because it looks the same as its predecessor, rather than like that new design that the Chinese case factories were suggesting, oh and it isn’t called the iPhone 5.

Boo-fucking-hoo, you spoiled twats.

Grow up.

If Microsoft, Blackberry or any other company had announced these improvements it would be getting endless praise. Then again, if it were Microsoft it would have been called “Windows iPhone 4S Professional Edition for Windows Phone 7 Mobile”, and if it were Blackberry it would still have a physical keypad, thumb wheel and shitty little screen.

Ergo.

Stop complaining.

I’m not nuts enough to get up at 3am my time to follow the keynote live, and I’m still waiting for the downloadable version to be posted (the streaming version just doesn’t do it for me), so this is all just based on what I’ve read on the Apple site, and heard via twitter. Please correct me if my assumptions are totally wrong or were elaborated on in the keynote itself.

iOS 5

First up, it looks like an awesome update, I look forward to playing with it – just need to convince myself that I *need* to upgrade my devices to the beta.

Notifications

Possibly the most complained about aspect of iOS, its finally been given an overhaul – and its amazing just how similar it appear compared to some of the ‘fantasy’ and ‘jailbreak’ notification system that have appeared over the last couple of years.

The only bit I’m not entirely sold on, but will reserve full judgement until I’ve played with it myself, is the ‘swipe-down’ interaction to access the notifications screen. Now I’m not saying there is anything wrong with it, but I guess I just expected it to be in the form of another homescreen (or merged with the existing search screen) or as a standalone app. That said, showing the notifications on the lock-screen is great… now, can we get those widgets on there too?

iMessage

Its the iChat you have without having iChat. Guess I will no longer need Textie or PingChat. Can anyone give me a good explanation why iMessage and FaceTime couldn’t be combined into one app? After all they are both forms of messaging, aren’t they? Maybe to Apple saying “we have iMessage and FaceTime apps” just sounds better that “we have the iMessage app that can do FaceTime”. Doesn’t really worry me though.

Newsstand

I don’t really do a whole lot of ‘proper’ reading of any sort on my iPhone or iPad, sure I’ve downloaded a bunch of sample magazines to try out but nothing has reached out, grabbed me and said “you must buy me every month or kittens will die”.

Again, why does ‘Newsstand’ need to be its own special folder? Couldn’t it have been added as a third ‘shelf’ in iBooks? Is it simply because the ‘subscriptions’ you manage in the newsstand are actually just apps, and launching one app (a magazine) from within another app (iBooks) would be silly?

Reminders

I feel sorry for all the makers of good, simple to-do apps. There are several. There are also hundred of shit to-do apps, I don’t really feel sorry for them. Reminders looks nice and simple, which is all I’d want from a basic to-do app.

I saw a couple of people comment on Twitter saying that Reminders would ‘kill’ apps like Things, The Hit List etc. I don’t believe this for a second. Things and The Hit List are much more than just “to-do apps”. I can’t wait for The Hit List to come out. The location reminders that Apple has included in Reminders look kind of neat.

But Apple using the line “Say you need to remember to pick up milk during your next grocery trip.” on the iOS feature page is a fairly big kick in the guts for a certain, very popular, to-do app…

Twitter integration

I don’t really ‘share’ content from other places all that often – yet – maybe the deeper integration in iOS will change that, maybe it won’t. One question I do have though is whether or not the Twitter app is now installed as part of the core package. I suspect it isn’t based on the screenshots of the twitter settings page that show an ‘install’ button.

I wonder if this same level of Twitter integration will also come to the desktop in Lion?

Camera+, err, I mean Camera

The quick access to the camera from the lock screen is nice, but not overly secure is it? Can you accidentally hit the camera button and take pictures of the inside of your pocket? What about if you have a passcode set? Does it ask you for the code before you can take pictures? I’ll need to play with it before I can judge it appropriately.

The volume button as the shutter button. Gee, original idea there. Now lets hope they let other camera apps like Instagram and Camera+ to also make use of the button in this manner. Would be also super if we could specify our preferred ‘default’ camera app that would be activated by the lock screen button, at least until Apple steals the image filters (that make my crappy photos better) from Intagram.

Safari

Tabbed browsing on the iPad is welcome, but how many tabs can we have? Are we still limited to 9 like we were with the ‘old’ method?

Reader and Reading list aren’t really of much interest to me personally – I’ve had an instapaper account for months and I don’t think I’ve ever used it. Maybe the iCloud enabled Reading list will change that? But then again, Firefox is still my default desktop browser so I never see the Reading List when I’m sitting at my computer.

PC Free / Wi-fi sync

“With iOS 5, you no longer need a computer to own an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch.” While this is great, and over-the-air syncing will be fantastic, how many iDevice owners aren’t going to have a computer? More to the point, who is going to have a wi-fi network for their new iDevice to connect to if they don’t have a computer?

Everything else…

I hadn’t even noticed that the iOS Mail app didn’t have text formatting options until Apple pointed out that they are new features in iOS 5. This tells me that I don’t need them.

The multitasking gestures will probably feel ultra-futuristic when using them but will they actually be *needed*, I’m guessing I will still find myself hitting the home button more often that not – if only out of habit.

The split keyboard, another ‘fantasy’ idea that some clever person came up with at least a year ago that as been “adopted” by Apple, no doubt Microsoft will claim that Apple stole it from Windows 8…

OS X Lion

Having only upgraded to Snow Leopard about two months ago (yes, I slow) I don’t feel that I should be ready to upgrade again next month. But the truth is I am ready, and I want Lion now.

Availability

So Lion is only going to be available via the Mac App Store. Nothing surprising about it being available via the Mac App Store, but *only*, really? Since the Mac App Store is Snow Leopard only, how does someone using Leopard (or older) upgrade to Lion? Or is it just that they can’t? Presumably this means they will have to continue producing physical Snow Leopard discs at least for a while.

Multi-touch gestures

I knew there was a reason I ordered a magic trackpad with my new iMac, now I just need to fit it into my ‘working style’.

Full-screen apps

Yeah, Windows has kind of had full-screen apps “forever”, and when I switched to a Mac five years ago I missed that. For about a week.

There are still a few cases where I’d really like ‘proper’ full-screen app goodness, in things like Fireworks or Illustrator (the current full-screen modes blow), but given that they are both Adobe products I guess thats never going to happen.

Mission Control

Sounds cool, has an even cooler sounding name. I’m looking forward to playing with it once Lion is released, I suspect though that it will still take a while before I stop using command-tab to switch between my apps though.

Launchpad

iPadifying your applications folder. I have no problem with this, even though I really only ever launch apps from my dock or via spotlight search.

Resume

Apps closing and reopening right where you left off? Cool. But what apps are going to support this? Will it only be Apple apps, or those that are developed to support it? Again I’ll use the Adobe example, this resume feature would be awesome, but if its something we have to wait for Adobe to implement then it could be a long wait.

AirDrop

Just a pretty new name (and a prettier new icon – that isn’t brushed metal), and simplified process for something we’ve been able to do for years, right?

Mail / Address Book / iCal

More iPadification, ok with me, although I actually (mostly) like the current version of Mail, and barely use Address Book or iCal.

iCloud

FREE. For 5GB of storage. I couldn’t find anything about extra storage being available for a price, maybe that info will come at a later date. Kind in mind though that purchased music, apps and books, plus the last 1000 images in your photo stream don’t count towards that 5GB.

Looks like all the core iOS apps will be be iCloud-ready in iOS 5, and hopefully plenty of third-party developers are able to make use of it as well meaning we can get useful syncing capabilities in a whole bunch of apps without those individual developers needing to set up their own syncing services.

iTunes match

So *any and all* music that you have that wasn’t purchased via iTunes can be added to iCloud for just $25 a year? Really? Wow. They say the ‘matched’ music will also play at iTunes Plus quality even if your copy wasn’t… can we also download the iTune plus quality version? I suspect I know the answer to that.

One more thing.

Whats with all the brushed metal icons? Maybe if the radial gradient weren’t so ‘harsh’ it wouldn’t bother me as much. Maybe they just done it so Dribbble users have something to endlessly redesign for the next couple of weeks.

I’d much rather they made the desktop icons follow the same style as the iOS icons.

One more one more thing

Is it true that there was no “one more thing” at the end of the keynote? How odd. Also a little surprised that there were no hardware announcements at all, not even the rumoured iPhone 4S. Yes, I’m aware that WWDC is not about the hardware, but I’d just gotten used to some cool new device being shown off.

Every developer has their preferred ways of working, they like to do things in a specific way or using a specific app. It might be something simple like whether they use 2-space tabs or 4-space tabs. It might be a greater thing like whether they prefer Ruby or PHP or Java. Or it might be to do with how they work with two of the building blocks of the web, JavaScript and CSS.

Two tweets from @anthonyshort popped up in my timeline in the last hour, the contents got me thinking. The first tweet:

Learning that there was a lot I didn’t know about JavaScript thanks to jQuery. Starting to not like jQuery

The second tweet:

Ergh, normal CSS sucks balls after using Sass so much.

Anthony is a friend and good guy (which aside from the fact that he knows what he’s talking about is why I follow him), and I’ve definitely got nothing against the tweets above (even if they are basically the opposite of my current views), but I think the topic is something worth discussing, as both are more than valid points. Feel free to provide your own sensible views in the comments at the bottom of this article.

“Raw” JavaScript vs. jQuery

I’m a jQuery lover, I make no attempt to hide this fact. I lover that it (for the most part) lives upto its “write less, do more” tag line. It’s not perfect, but no JavaScript framework is, and it gets better with each update. I’ve used many other JS frameworks in the past few years such as prototype, mootools, scriptaculous, YUI. While they all have their ‘good’ points, jQuery has (for me) more ‘good’ points than the rest.

Something like YUI (which I currently use at work, and am desperate to get rid of) is packed with “stuff”, 98% of it you’ll never need or use. Its heavy, somewhat bloated (you don’t have to include all the individual components in the framework, but even the components themselves are probably larger than they need to be). For the most part it has pretty good cross-browser compatibility, which was the primary reason for it being our ‘chosen’ framework at the time. But after working with it for close to 4 years the love/hate relationship with YUI is about 90% hate to 10% love.

An example why I prefer jQuery over YUI. Our current YUI-based menu scripts (which admittedly aren’t fantastic, but they get the job done) are long, the implementation of the YUI code is a couple of hundred lines, then you’ve got to include 4 or 5 separate YUI components just to get the thing working – the menu component alone is a 600-700 line js file. I recently replicated the functionality using jQuery, it was about 15 lines plus the jQuery framework, and it took me only about 15 minutes to create form scratch.

A couple of quick examples, the same thing in ‘raw’ JS, jQuery and YUI, first ‘raw’:

document.getElementByName('myElement');

jQuery:

$('#myElement');

YUI:

YAHOO.util.Dom.get('myElement');

In a world where I build things in the browser, usually without planning or thinking them through fully first, being able to prototype these things ridiculously quickly using jQuery is awesome.

However. I still find that I return to just writing ‘raw’ JavaScript on occasion. I don’t necessarily see the point in including a framework if the ‘raw’ JavaScript itself is only going to be a handful of lines. Code for the scenario, jQuery when its needed, no jQuery when its not.

Knowing how JavaScript works, and being able to write it without the aid of something like jQuery will make your code better when you are using jQuery. If that makes sense. Its my view that if you have an understanding what that simple jQuery function (ie. the complex bit that you don’t need to write) is doing in the background, then you will get more out of jQuery (or whichever framework you are using).

“Raw” CSS vs. Sass

Now I can’t really provide any great thoughts on Sass, because I don’t use it, have never even tried it, maybe I should? Maybe the enjoyment I get out of writing ‘raw’ CSS is unnatural and wrong? Maybe I’m weird because I prefer to code css properties by hand (not using auto-complete functions).

I can see why people like it though the idea of nested selectors, variables, inheritance, mixins etc are all nice. I guess the “issue”, whether rational or not you can decide for yourself, I have with things like Sass is that I don’t want to have to compile my stylesheet in order to use it. Yes, I understand that Sass will mointor the .scss file and update the compiled .css file as needed, but doesn’t that make debugging a bitch?

For example, you write a style with variables, nested bits, mixins etc using Sass, then you load the page which uses the compiled css file only to find that the style isn’t behaving quite right. the first thing I would do is open Firebug or Web Inspector and try and work out what has gone wrong. With ‘raw’ css, I’d see exactly what selector and/or property is wrong, go back to the file fix it, reload and done.

But with Sass is it more difficult to track down and fix issues this way because the selector/property that Firebug or Web Inspector report won’t actually exist in your Sass file, and instead you’ll need to track down which bit of Sass is actually the cause of the issue? I’m well aware that its probably a silly argument, but that’s how I see it, and its the reason I’ve never used Sass.

Some of the examples on the Sass site don’t do much to convince me that I *should* be using it, for example:

.fakeshadow {
  border: {
    style: solid;
    left: {
      width: 4px;
      color: #888;
    }
    right: {
      width: 2px;
      color: #ccc;
    }
  }

why is the Sass style above any better or easier to write than this css style:

.fakeshadow {
  border-left: 4px solid #888;
  border-right: 2px solid #ccc;
}

Its a very basic example, and I know Sass does much, much more complex things, but in this specific case I don’t see the point in it.

I also see mixins, such as one that ‘simplifies’ the rounded-border syntax, as causing the same potential ‘knowledge’ issues for CSS that jQuery does for JavaScript. Especially if you didn’t write the mixin yourself. For example if you have a “round-corners” mixins that you use, but you didn’t write that mixin (so you don’t know what syntax it spits out the other side when compiled), and you just know that to make something round you use @include rounded(left, 8px);, the what happens when you get to a situation where you’re working on something that isn’t using Sass and needs rounded corners except you’re never learnt the correct syntax to be able to write it? Especially when the syntax is not the same across all browsers?

I’m not saying that these mixins are bad, or that people shouldn’t use them, but like I said about JavaScript above, if you’re going to use them you should have enough basic understanding of what they actually do so that, if need be, you can write the same styles without the aid of Sass.

Plenty of people have the view that Sass make css more awesome, powerful and easier – I’m not here to say they’re wrong – but for me, someone who several hours every day writing ‘raw’ css it just looks like it complicates things more than is necessary.

Conclusion

The more I think about this the weirder it seems. You would think that those those who like JavaScript frameworks like jQuery because they make life easier would be the same people who use things like Sass because they, apparently, also make life easier. And yes, it might very well be the case with a lot of people, what’s your preference?