The View from the Spaghetti Factory

In the long, speculative build-up to the announcement of the iPhone, my attitude varied between mild intrigue and real excitement. As the sort of mobile phone user for whom being able to talk to people is one of the least important functions, I knew that the right mix of features could easily put me in the market for yet another Apple toy.

In this particular case, though, they just haven’t hit the mark for me. First of all, the cut-down version of OSX used on the iPhone doesn’t allow for the use of third-party applications. That’s a bad limitation, and Steve Jobs’s explanation doesn’t really wash with me. I don’t recall hearing of Sony Ericsson’s being criticised because of their smartphones bringing down mobile networks.

There certainly quite a tasty selection of software already on the iPhone, but the internet features seem to be geared towards access to Wi-Fi or, at the very least, EDGE networks. Free public Wi-Fi is still a rarity here in the UK; the rip-off wireless services offered by cafés and certain rail companies are more common, but still not sufficient for widespread mobile phone use. As for EDGE, Orange’s UK network was only launched last year and still seems quite limited.

No, if I’m going to be making the best of the ridiculously expensive mobile internet facilities offered by UK service providers, I want to use WAP sites for the basic information services (train timetables, football scores) and a browser (such as Opera Mobile for cut-down, bandwidth-saving versions of regular websites. See? That’s why I want to use third-party apps, iSteve.

Finally, although the interface looks absolutely beautiful (in true Apple style), I wonder how effective the touch-screen system will be when you want to start sending emails or writing documents. For that sort of task, I would have thought that handwriting recognition (with a stylus) or a physical QWERTY keyboard would be minimum requirements. With that in mind, I think I’ll be sticking with my P900 for a while yet…

From Gizmodo… Apple Lossless on the Way to iTunes?

Having whined at length about the service offered by Apple’s iTunes Music Store, I certainly hope so. Tracks encoded at 128kbps are fine for quick’n'easy download purposes, but pretty pathetic when you’re paying for them, especially when you can often get actual CDs from Amazon for only a little more. I know the price issue is largely due to extreme money-grabbing by the record industry, but still… Apple knew all of that before they set up the store. Thanks to this unfavourable combination of quality and price, I’ve bought maybe nine or ten tracks from the iTMS, certainly no more.

I would have been happy with a two-tier mp3/AAC service (128kbps and 320kbps, for example) but lossless compression would be fantastic, bringing us one large step closer to the “music on demand” ideal. Of course, this could all be just another frothy internet rumour, but if not, the next question is: how much will the lossless downloads cost? If Apple don’t compete with Amazon’s prices, the whole thing could die a very early death, but if they can absorb the extra storage/bandwidth costs, I’ll be a very happy punter.

Mac users who, for whatever reason, are still using Panther rather than Tiger (like me) might be interested in the Shiira Project.

Shiira is a web browser built using the same rendering engine as Apple’s Safari, but its designers aim to make it better than Safari. Based on my quick test, it’s certainly every bit as good as Safari, but there are a few little differences which may be enough to tempt you to switch…

1. All open tabs can be shown in tiled layout on the screen (using the F8 key) in a fashion similar to the OS X Exposé feature.

2. As soon as you have two tabs open, a little “+” button appears… you can click on this to open further tabs instead of hitting command-T. If you have the “always show tab bar” option selected, this button will always be visible.

3. The navigation buttons are nice. And there are several designs to choose from. Yeah, so that’s only a cosmetic feature, but I do like the default fruit pastille-style buttons.

4. Source code is shown in four (customisable) colours for easy navigation.

5. Downloads can be shown in a separate window (like Safari, Firefox, IE) or in the sidebar.

6. Clicking the pull-down menu in the search box gives a list of alternative (to Google) search sites (does Firefox do this? I can’t remember). In Safari, you get the list of previous searches… these are also available in Shiira, via the last item on the menu. I prefer the Safari approach, but YMMV.

7. Shiira supports bookmarklets.

8. There doesn’t seem to be a progress display at the bottom, unlike in Safari. Shame.

9. You can have your current memory and disk cache usage shown in a small window (no keyboard shortcut, though).

10. Choice of Aqua or Metal appearance.

The browsers are so similar that there’s no need to import your Safari bookmarks at the moment (although the Shiira site implies this is a temporary thing). All I had to do was download and unpack the 2.9MB disk image, launch the application, select “use Safari bookmark bar” and there it was… a fully functional, tweaked version of Safari. The main difference is the lack of RSS capability, even in the Tiger-compatible Shiira, but I imagine that’s going to follow soon. However, the real challenge will be to invent some totally new features. Most of the current differences are the sort of things that Apple could easily incorporate into Safari at the drop of a hat; it’d be nice to see the Shiira team really pushing the design, if only to generate a healthy sense of competition at Apple.

The latest big news for Mac users is the release of Tiger, the fourth incarnation of the OS X operating system. Reviews, on the whole, seem to have been good, with the inevitable caveats (Apple x.x.0 versions are always too buggy; ninety quid is a lot for what’s becoming an annual major upgrade routine). Attention is, quite justifiably, focused on the latest additions to the GUI, particularly Dashboard. Called up with a simple mouseclick or keystroke, Dashboard is a temporary, transparent layer, superimposed over the Desktop and containing a (customisable) selection of small utilities known as Widgets… anything from train timetables or dictionaries to live stock market statistics or the latest uploads to Flickr.

Well, being something of a hopeless OS X fan, I was bound to grab my copy of Tiger sooner or later. In the interests of responsible personal finance, though, I didn’t just go out and spazz the full £89 on the first day of release. No, I waited *eight days* and then bought it. HA! EVEN THE MIGHT OF THE APPLE CORPORATION IS POWERLESS AGAINST MY CUNNING AND DEVIOUS MIND.

Ahem.

Anyway, I got the thing installed, using the safe and sensible “archive and install” method rather than the more paranoid “erase and install” option. And all was good. It’s a beautiful OS, just like its predecessors… to be honest, there seems less of a general improvement than there has been with previous upgrades (particularly compared with the huge boost in speed from 10.1 to 10.2) but the new apps are the big difference this time. Dashboard looks great and will, I’m sure, become part of my instinctive Mac use in the future, as will Automator, while the RSS capability in Safari makes me realise I need to learn more about what I can do with RSS. Spotlight… well, that one seems a bit “er, whatever” to me, but then searching my hard drive isn’t something I do regularly. I just know where things are. As for the newly redesigned Mail… unlike (seemingly) a lot of people, I love the new design, but I’d definitely like to see some sort of progress display in the main window, without having to open the ugly Activity Window.

So, a triumph overall, but there’s one big problem.

Much of my Mac’s work involves music. I record all of my music on here, using Logic and Reason, and I spend a lot of time listening to music on iTunes, both upstairs in the “work room” and downstairs (via an AirPort Express). For maximum sound quality (rather than using the minijack output on the back of my G4) all of these programs run through Apple’s Core Audio system and out via my Digidesign Digi 001 interface/soundcard. And here’s the problem…

Digidesign’s Core Audio drivers haven’t supported the Digi 001 (itself EOL’ed a good year or so ago) since version 6.4 (they’re now up to 6.9) and even then, there’s a couple of features which don’t seem to work under OS X. Nonetheless, it works sufficiently for my purposes, offering 8-in/8-out PCI audio and MIDI in/out, compatible with Logic, Reason and iTunes. But… not with Tiger. None of the current Panther-compatible versions of the Digidesign driver work under Tiger, and according to the Digidesign tech support people, there won’t be anything Tiger-compatible for 8-10 weeks. Given the gradual erosion of official support, I seriously doubt whether there’ll be any way of getting the Digi 001 to work under Tiger *at all*. Damn. This leaves me in a sticky situation… do I stick with Panther (which is, after all, a superb OS… just not Tiger) for the foreseeable future, or do I spend money on a new recording interface? Gah!

This isn’t really a rant at Digidesign… the £700 I spent on the Digi 001 back in late 2000 was one of the smartest purchases I’ve ever made. I just wish there wasn’t such a gulf in compatibility between products, especially over a period of only five years.