Musings from The Software Underground

SQLGrinder version 2.0.1 is now available and includes many bug fixes and improvements. Please see the release notes page for the full list of changes.

SQLGrinder 2.0.1 can be downloaded here.

SQLGrinder 2 is available for $59. Version 1 serial numbers can be upgraded to the latest version for only $19 by sending your current registration information to sqlgrinder [at] advenio.com.

I've been kind of following the whole My Dream App idea competition, and in the process, along with some interesting ideas, I have noticed a couple of recipe organizer dream apps in the discussion forums. Being the creator of MacGourmet, this in and of itself doesn't trouble me. I get idea submissions from users all the time, and do my best to accommodate as many of them as possible, while still attempting to stay cohesive and not adding a feature just for a feature's sake, but I know MacGourmet is not perfect yet, and I'm constantly working to add new features, the features that users are requesting. What bothers me though, is that none of the ideas presented are anything that is not in MacGourmet or its competitors, and none are anything that I haven't put on my roadmap or discarded/postponed because not enough people are interested in them yet.

There are things like Amazon.com integration in the shopping list. I looked at that initially, and really, cooking rarely works like this. You won't find most people shopping this way. Prepare shopping list, wait 5-7 days for ingredients to arrive if free shipping is used, then cook. Cooking is much more immediate than that. Let me know if I'm wrong about this.

A lot of the requested features, I've noticed, are already in MacGourmet, or are planned, like nutritional analysis. In addition there are other things that are pretty much "been there, done that."

The Share button lets you email a recipe or published (sic) it on the web.

.Mac publishing using templates, is already in MacGourmet. In fact, Apple is even helping publicize this by featuring MacGourmet on its Software with exclusive features for .Mac members page. The template system I use allows anyone to create their own publishing and printing templates too. Additionally, you can email recipes to people in the current version as well.

...printing is handled by the Print button in the top toolbar. Clicking it would open a sheet allowing you to choose from different templates, such recipe cards, grocery lists, etc. With that, you can also aggregate multiple recipes from the database, so you don't have to print one list/recipe at a time.

Already in MacGourmet, much better in the forthcoming version 2.

Would this include a nice print-out, with the ingredients on one side for in the supermarket, and the recipe on the rest of the page for in the kitchen.

Not a great idea. You don't need the recipes in the grocery store, and once done shopping you don't need your shopping list in the kitchen.

It would HAVE to have nice, high resolution pictures of each food item or else it'd be lame.

Bigger pictures mean a lot more disk space, and more time loading. MacGourmet v2 will provide for the display of larger versions of images though.

I really like this idea, especially if there were add-on modules such as "a Man, a Can, a Plan: cookbook" and/or "top secret recepies" cookbook.

Already in MacGourmet.

There are also suggestions for timers (planned), a chef's view (my name, already in MacGourmet), menu planning (planned), scaling (already in MacGourmet and improved in v2), .Mac syncing (planned), a shopping list that sorts ingredients by aisle (coming in v2)...

So what's going on here? Why are these people asking for all of these things, things that already exist in MacGourmet for their "dream app?" MacGourmet is here now, has a two year head start, and will have a lot of the things they are asking for, in addition to some the posters haven't even thought of. I'm incredibly receptive to feedback and requests from my users as well, and fully investigate ideas submitted, ideas which often get added to the overall plan.

Not even mentioned in the thread are a lot of other features that MacGourmet already has that aren't in the "dream app" concept. Things like importing MasterCook and Meal-Master recipes, importing from the web using web clippings, Quick find for finding recipes based on ingredients you have on hand, smart recipe lists, wine notes, cooking notes, varied display templates, shopping list export to PDAs and a bunch of new features for v2.

So, is the "dream app" of these posters already here, or nearly so? I guess the thing that troubles me about the posts is that clearly, the posters don't know what even exists for the Mac right now, don't know about MacGourmet, and I view this as a failure of mine to make MacGourmet the best known, most popular recipe organizer on the Mac. If they knew about MacGourmet, they'd be sending me feature requests instead of submitting a very similar idea to My Dream App. If you have any ideas about how this can be improved let me know in the comments.

I'm kidding of course, but my, my how times change. In 1997, Michael Dell was infamously quoted as saying, "What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders" when asked how he might fix a then ailing Apple Computer.

Fast forward about 9 years, and the tables seem to have turned. Apple keeps hitting the ball out of the park every quarter, selling more and more Macs, dominating the portable mp3 player space, and innovating all over the place. Dell Computer? Well they just reported a 50% fall in profits in the latest quarter.

The chief executive, Kevin B. Rollins, said yesterday that the company had cut prices “too aggressively” in a number of markets to win market share, which hurt its profitability. “We didn’t do a good job of it,” he said.

HA! "Didn't do a good job of it." Are you kidding me? Dell has been pretty much GIVING away desktop computers and laptops for years, and it's finally caught up to them. The supposed Dell "price advantage" has always been smoke and mirrors, and now we have proof. Yes, for years Dell was able to build PCs cheaper than anyone else, but at some point their prices became so low, after all the deals and coupons were taken advantage of, that they clearly started taking a loss on these things.

Dell’s basic problem is that it is set up to sell the bulk of its computers in the market showing the slowest growth: United States corporations. Sales in Asia were up 27 percent year over year and in the Americas, outside of the United States, up 29 percent. But in the United States, sales grew only 3 percent.

Sales of PCs only grew 3%, whereas sales of Macs grew 12% in the last quarter year over year, with latest Gartner report saying that it's as high as 15.4%. Apple is now up to 4.6% of the total U.S. PC market overall. Meanwhile Dell has other issues, like having to recall 4 million laptop batteries:

Dell Inc. said it is recalling more than 4 million laptop computer batteries because they could overheat and catch fire, in what government safety regulators reportedly said was the largest recall ever in the U.S. consumer electronics industry. Dell said the lithium-ion batteries included power cells made by Sony Corp. that were included in notebooks sold between April 1, 2004 and July 18, 2006.

Granted this could have happened to Apple as well, these things do happen, and Apple has had their own recalls in the past, but Dell just can't seem to win these days.

And Dell seems to be trapped by their PC business. Attempts at other products have all failed miserably. Remember the Dell PDA? Development seems to have quietly ended. Dell mp3 players? Well apparently that didn't work out so well for them either, they've closed that down too.

Sadly it seems that after all this Dell executives still think they are right:

Consumers prefer to buy notebooks in stores rather than online, said Ted Schadler, principal analyst for consumer technology at Forrester Research. Dell sells online direct to consumers, though it displays its models in mall kiosks and is experimenting with displays in larger spaces in malls. He said consumers seemed to want to feel the notebook before they bought it.

But Mr. Rollins, the chief executive, said, “We disagree with that.”

According to data from I.D.C., Dell’s market share in the United States for notebook computers rose to 31.9 percent in the second quarter from 29 percent in the first quarter.

“The Dell model is a vibrant model,’’ Mr. Rollins said. “We are really going to stick with the Dell model.”

Traffic to Apple stores keeps increasing, and their percentage of the overall retail laptop market has doubled to 12 percent.

Apple's not completely without their own headaches right now either, but the good times seem to be rolling, especially in comparison to the company founded by the guy who thought back in 1997 that Apple was worth more to it's shareholders liquidated than as an ongoing business.

Read more: Profit Falls by Half at Dell

Hmmm, it seems that even when the Mac is "hackable" it's not:

In early August a senior researcher at SecureWorks said he had revealed a vulnerability in Apple’s MacBook wireless software driver that would allow him to take control of the machine. While the researcher did find a vulnerability, he was using a third-party wireless driver, not the driver that ships with the MacBook.

So I guess in all the brouhaha, SecureWorks researcher David Maynor and “Johnny Cache” left that little nugget of information out huh?

As it turns out, Maynor did not use the internal Apple wireless driver, but rather a third-party driver. SecureWorks’ Web site has been updated since the demonstration to reflect that fact.

“Although an Apple MacBook was used as the demo platform, it was exploited through a third-party wireless device driver -- not the original wireless device driver that ships with the MacBook,” says the company’s Web site. “As part of a responsible disclosure policy, we are not disclosing the name of the third-party wireless device driver until a patch is available.”

Honestly, who'd even be running a third-party driver on their MacBook... Hmmm let me think... um... NO ONE?

So, like those supposed Mac "viruses" and "trojan horses" more bozos have used a bogus Mac security "hole" for unwarranted publicity. Get a life people, and find something else to hitch your wagons to.

Read the whole thing here.

MacGourmet 1.2.3 has been released with an updated licensing engine, and an updated Spotlight importer that will prevent version conflicts when MacGourmet version 2 is released. The full list of changes can be found on the MacGourmet Release Notes Blog.

One of the new features of MacGourmet version 2 will be support for Spotlight searching of all the recipes and notes within your database. Currently, searches are only supported for MacGourmet recipe files. The new Spotlight importer will allow both MacGourmet version 1 and version 2 to run without conflicting.

This update is recommended for all users.

The new version can be downloaded here.

Ok, let's assume for a minute that Apple has an iPhone in development right now, and that it's even close to release.

What would be the big deal, really? Why do people seem to want this from Apple SO badly? Is it because they want to combine an iPod and a phone, and have one device instead of two? Well, we already have that, the Motorola SLVR L7. This plays iTunes music, it has support for AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, and ICQ and email. It has bluetooth and a Java VM. It has a camera. What more do people want/need? On top of all this, it's actually made by a company that is primarily a PHONE maker (ok, that may be arguable, but Motorola makes a LOT of cell phones) and it's sold by... cellular service companies! Apple is neither a phone maker nor a cell service company.

These companies have been doing their respective things for years, so what makes people think Apple can do all of this any better?

Maybe it's because of this: cellphones, in general... well, they suck. I think what we're really all wishing for is for a company like Apple to come in, and actually make these phones USABLE.

I've had a Sony Ericsson Java-enabled, web enabled phone for a while now, a couple of years maybe (I know that's like 20 years in cell phone years). I've downloaded a Java game at some point, and it works well enough, but of course when I get rid of the phone, bye-bye game. I use the web on it occasionally, but the web interface is horrible. To get to the scores for say the current Red Sox game in progress takes I think 6 or 7 clicks, about 6 or 7 times longer than it does for me to process the information. From what I've seen, the operating systems on other phones aren't much better.

So now what if... what IF Apple brought their style and design to this space?

What if they made a phone that synced information: contacts, calendar, notes, to dos, even recipes or a shopping list, as easily as an iPod syncs?

What if they went beyond the pretty much utilitarian OS of the iPod and offered an OS on a phone that developers like us could extend, enhance and create cool apps for? Not OS X-on-a-phone, but something simpler, and even easier to develop for.

What if they made a phone that was a phone AND an iPod and didn't sacrifice some features from both spaces? A phone with dual batteries, or extended battery time, so that playing your MP3s wouldn't sacrifice your talk time, and vice versa? A phone that took pictures and could sync directly with iPhoto. A phone that could sync with iCal, Mail or with any application on your Mac that supported it? And finally, a phone that had many gigabytes of storage instead of the 512MB in the SLVR.

All of the above, all of this is what I think Mac users are salivating for, what they are hoping will be offered, and THAT'S why an iPhone is potentially such a big deal.

Apple changes spaces completely when they enter them. Yes Creative had an MP3 player, the Nomad, which offered a hard drive, Pre-iPod. But it was as big as existing portable CD players of the day, had a really simple interface and didn't sync with the Mac at all (at least I don't remember that it did). Apple came into the space and changed the game completely by doing what they tend to do best: thinking "different." Remember when the iMac was first released, and it was released without a floppy drive, and with solid USB support?

Apple has this way of studying and then entering existing spaces... and changing them forever. I think this is why an iPhone would be such a big deal, because if Apple does the typical Apple thing, and comes out with a phone, the cell phone space will never be the same. ...and that's what everyone is hoping for.

Some of the things I noticed they didn't mention at all, or glossed over...

• iCal - They vaguely mentioned some new functionality with system to dos, etc. but didn't show us anything.


• Spotlight - They gave us a list, but we didn't see anything of it, how it will work, how it's changed, etc.


• Frontrow - Sure it will come with all Macs, but what changes will there be for Leopard?


• What were are "other" new features in Mail?


• What changes will there be for Safari, beyond the addition of the features that were mentioned?


• What about Address Book? Font Book? These are major apps that could be overhauled... no mention.


• What, oh whatever will happen to the Finder? I'd put money on the chance that the Finder we saw in the demos was not the Finder we'll see after the first of the year.


• Will Macworld 2007 be the big "coming out" for Leopard?


• Like I said in my predictions, I'm sure there are things coming we haven't even really thought of yet...

Some things to think about.

Not a lot of big surprises today, I think the biggest surprise was how little they showed off, and how short the keynote was. A lot of things were mentioned as still being "secret" and were not shown. You know, I'm actually OK with this. When at WWDC in the past, I often wondered why so much was divulged to the public at what is supposed to be a closed-door NDA event. Clearly, this year Apple has seen that they are essentially Microsoft's user interface design studio and decided to slam the door on the behavior.

So what WAS shown and talked about?

• New Mac Pros, using Xeons, all dual CPU dual core, which makes them all Quad core Macs. 4 drive bays, and they run cooler. Whoot!


• New Xserves, again quad core Xeons, 64 bit.


• Time Machine - All new back up service, with a really cool interface and what appears to be versioning. Very cool. I wonder if apps will have to support this. For instance, how might the searching for things from the past work in MacGourmet? It uses a database file, not individual files, so how exactly this works (the implementation details) remains to be seen.


• Mail - New email templates, called Stationary, and notes. I don't use HTML email, so while cool, the html templates, which make Mail almost Pages like, don't really impress me. The notes feature might be cool. I already find myself using draft messages to do something similar, so this would be a definite improvement. Despite the rumors, no wide version of Mail. And whoa, I missed this initially: RSS support in email. By the sounds of it, this turns Mail into a simple RSS manager.


• iChat - Lots of changes here. No more brushed metal (YES!), very cool sharing, effects (yawn, this is such a gimmick), tabs (again, YES!), and Theatre, which allows you do essentially do slideshows using iChat. A lot of really nice changes.


• Spaces - OK, I got this wrong. I really thought that adding virtual desktops to OS X would add too much complexity for a lot of people and that Apple wouldn't be interested in something like this. I was wrong, wrong, wrong. I should have realized, that if Dashboard wasn't too much, why would virtual desktops be? Their implementation looks to be really nice. I love how the dock now becomes a desktop Nav, click on an app in the dock and get taken to the desktop where it is running. Transitions and navigation seem to be pretty Apple-slick.


• Dashboard - No widgets on the desktop, so those rumors were wrong, but they added "clipping" that supposedly allows you to take parts of any web page and make widgets from them. Dashcode was officially unveiled, we already knew that was pretty cool.


• Spotlight and iCal - Steve mentioned both, but based on the lack of info on the site, I think these largely fall into the "secret" category.


• New XCode 3.0 - A brief preview, but it looks impressive, and I really can't wait to get my hands on it. Objective-C 2.0 with "modern garbage collection, syntax enhancements, runtime performance improvements, and 64-bit support," Research Assistant, which sounds like docs on steroids, Project Snapshots, which sound like project versioning, new Interface Builder which offers a way "to imitate the iChat sliding list view" and "add Keynote-like transitions to make your applications drag and stun", and a new debugger... Tasty.

Additionally Apple dropped the prices of the Cinema displays. No changes were made, so my "iSight integration" guess was wrong.

There you go, some of my thoughts and comments on the WWDC keynote from today.

This time from Stephan:

Perhaps I’ve missed it in years past but I find it interesting that many people are talking about UI changes, particularly unification, instead of guessing about new technologies. I suppose this shows how mature the operating system is at this point.

Read: WWDC - Look into the crystal ball

Wow, the blogsphere is a BUZZIN' today at the tail end of the week leading up to WWDC. Two of my fellow Mac developers speculate on what full Windows application virtualization (running a Windows app without modification or emulation) being added to Leopard might mean to the average Mac developer, if rumors turn out to be true.

In short, if high-quality virtualization (read: as seamless as Rosetta) occurs, developers all over the Mac will be left with a lot of new competition and the same size user base. Over time, that base would (hopefully) increase, but would everyone survive? Would the new users purchase true Mac software or stick with the software they used back on Windows? I don't know, and I don't think anyone can claim he does. I do know that the whole thing is very interesting and more than a little bit scary.

• What Does Virtualization Really Do To The Mac World? -- Paul Kafasis of RogueAmoeba

And another take:

Bottom line? Optimistically I think that better products will win. The problem is cutting through the noise, and technology seems to be on our side. The growing popularity of blogs and “peer editorializing” seems like a natural match for promoting quality products and thereby elevating them from among the noisy ineffective ones. To the Mac developer’s advantage, there are already complex systems in place for distributing Mac propaganda. The online news sites and download trackers that many Mac users frequent are going to be hesitant to embrace and recommend lackluster Windows software - because they themselves are Mac users who know the benefits of native software.

• Compete With What? -- Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater

Here's my take: I really don't think seamless virtualization being added to Leopard will happen. Why? WINE has been out for Linux for years, and it's not perfect and it hasn't stopped Linux-native apps from being developed. My understanding (it's been a while since I've had to look at it) is that it's still just not the same as a native application. And how COULD it be? A Windows application will STILL be a Windows application. It will look and feel like a Windows application and it won't feel anything at all like Mac OS. It also will not be able to take advantage of any of the cool Mac-native stuff that users are used to in their Mac applications. These will be applications developed by Windows users, for Windows users and they will look and feel that way. You can already do something similar, you can run say, The Gimp, a Linux app, on Mac OS X, but you don't find a lot of people doing it. Why? Because it's a Linux app first.

So, why would it be in Apple's best interest to even DO this? OK, let's create all of this great technology, all of these great features for our operating system... and then help assure that no one will use them, by killing Mac only developers mostly by encouraging applications, that weren't developed on the platform, or for the platform, and can't use these great features, to dominate?

OK, so, let's say it DOES happen... Most Mac users I'd say are Mac users because they don't want to be Windows users. Why would they want to run Windows applications then, when the overall Mac experience, created by developers developing FOR and versed IN the Mac experience, is so much better? If this does happen, will Mac users start trolling Windows download sites, looking for Windows apps? Not likely. The Windows user audience is nothing like the Mac user audience. You don't really find the equivalent of VersionTracker, MacUpdate, MacNN, MacMinute, etc. that Mac users have come to know and use, and go to for Mac software. Things in the Windows camp are just... different. To make any kind of inroads in the Mac market would require Windows developers to actually market to, and think like Mac users and I just don't see that happening, because, well, they are Windows developers.

And what would a Windows-native application even look like to a Mac user? You can bet they wouldn't be packaged up all nicely in a disk image with a nice application package, etc. Do we want our Mac file systems to look like Windows file systems? Ug.

My guess is that if virtualization did become a reality, there would be a transitionary period where some former PC users might continue to run some of their Windows apps after switching to the Mac, especially if there were no equivalent or better Mac substitutes. So this could be a transitionary technology.

But really, they can do this in a "box" now quite well with Parallels. This application already provides an easy way to run Windows applications, without making the experience so comfortable for the user that they won't want to switch over fully. Apple did Classic this way for a reason, I think. Sure people ran their Classic apps under OS X for a while, but after getting comfortable with OS X, each time they wanted to do something only found in OS X using their Classic app, and couldn't, they were likely to look for something native to switch to. And I'm guessing that Apple views Windows users the same way, as "Windows Classic" users they eventually want to be full-fledged OS X users at some point.

Ultimately this decision will come down to one thing: does Apple want new and current users to be Windows users... or Mac users? I really hope it's the latter. A Mac platform populated mostly with Windows apps wouldn't be much of a Mac platform.

Seems TransGaming is working on a technology similar to WINE (which it was based on originally) that will allow PC games to run on a Mac, without being ported.

Coming soon: Windows games that will run on Intel Macs thanks to TransGaming’s new Cider software. There’s no rebooting involved and no separate Windows partition to be installed. It all happens transparently.

Sounds interesting, but I'll believe it when I see it. If the library will have to be modified to support each game that works it probably won't amount to much. This would have to support pretty much ANY new PC game, when it's launched to really be a hit. I'm also reminded that marketing statements always make things sound like they'll be a lot better than they are:

Gupta said that PC games running using Cider on an Intel-based Mac provide near-native performance. “The average user won’t be able to discern any difference,” he said.

Though in some cases, Gupta indicated users are bound to see 10 to 15 percent lower frame rates than they would in a truly native game.

If this is for real, there will really not be much need for Mac porting any longer...

Read more here: 'Cider' makes Windows games run on Intel Macs

I've been meaning to do this all week. I can't attend WWDC this year (a lot of money, and when you don't have someone else paying for it...), which kills me because this is one of those BIG years that seems occur every other year now. At least I can still make predictions (and fight with every other Mac user to see the keynote when its done, geeze you'd think paying to be a ADC member would give us a leg up or something!). These are just my own guesses, I have absolutely no inside info on any of this:

• New PowerMacs - to be renamed "Mac Pro"
  This is a given, I mean they are the only Macs remaining to be upgraded, and they are due for a refresh. And really, this IS a developer conference afterall. What we don't know is the CPU that will be inside of them. Oh they will be Intel of course, but what will Apple be able to use? Will it be the Xeon 5100 series as proposed by Ars Techica? The Core 2 Duo or the Core 2 Extreme? Some combination? At any rate I think you'll see at least some slight case redesign. I'd like to see something entirely new, but Apple doesn't seem to be doing that: the MacBook Pros and Mac minis have all been released in the PowerPC cases, so I'd expect the same for the PowerMacs.


• New Cinema displays with built-in iSight.
  Prices haven't come down much since the last rev, and really unless they change the PowerMac case, why mess with the displays, beyond adding a camera, something they seem to be adding to everything now?


• New Xserves
  I think this is also a given, considering how long it's been since these have be revised. Could we see something new along the lines of the Xserve mini? I'd kill for one of these for a home server, something I think more and more people will find a use for.


• A New "Sleeker" Finder
  I have to go with both Brent Simmons and Gus Mueller on this one. I think metal will be done (THANK GOD!) replaced by the sleeker skin we've been seeing in the iApps. I think that the stripes will also finally disappear in their entirety. My big hope is that this is finally the release that gives us the reliable, bullet-proof Cocoa Finder we've all been pining for. No more waiting several minutes for the current Finder to figure out that that shared disk you failed to unmount before sleeping your laptop is no longer there. A sortable column view. I mean come ON this is version 5! I don't think we'll see a tabbed finder. I'd bet that we don't see virtual desktops. Could we finally see "Piles?" I also think we'll see something that none of the rumor sites have even thought of.


• New Version of Spotlight
  I do think we'll see a new version of Spotlight, one that replaces that FREAK of a UI that's there now. Who exactly did this UI make sense to in the first place? I curse it every time I use the damn thing.


• A New iChat
  iChat's pretty good, I use it every day. It is getting kind of old though. I see this being reskinned, and updated, probably with tabbed chats (which I already have now thanks to Chax, but come on this is too obvious a feature to add), etc.


• Virtualization? Outlook Not So Good
  We already have it, using Parallels, and unless they provide Mac OS X virtualization (something I'd KILL for, Mac-in-box, great for testing), I don't see it happening.


• No iPhone
  Not at WWDC. If they do it, it won't be at their developer conference. I also think that this photo, is yet another fake.


• Cocoa Improvements and Additions
  This is a given of course. I expect that all of these iApp-type UI widgets (that have had developers rolling-their-own code to keep up for the last year or two) will be built into Leopard's Cocoa, giving us this functionality for free. Things like Safari-style tabs, the translucent utility windows found in iPhoto and Aperture, and possibly even toolbars that are unhooked from the window, as described by Brent. This seems to be Apple's pattern: new widgets are developed with new iApps, 2 years later after developers expend the effort to reproduce them as a way to keep up, Apple adds them to Cocoa.


• A new version of XCode
  Yep, XCode has continued to improve, but it's pretty much THE dev env to make Cocoa apps now, so I hope to see an all new version with some of the things that users of Eclipse and IDEA and NetBeans have been holding over our heads for YEARS. Things like plugin support, code generation, refactoring.. Come on throw us a bone here!


• Dashcode
  It's already out... sort of. I really think that this was mistakenly added to the install disks for the MacBook Pro. I mean how ELSE can you explain the way it was "released?" Expect it to be "unveiled" for real.

So there you have it, my own off-the-cuff-top-of-the-head guesses, based on nothing more than my own speculation and hopes... and dreams.

Looks like as of today, the new IconFactory site design is up. I like it, it's clean, and professional, which probably is a sign that they are moving up in the world. Still, I'll miss the old "Classic Mac OS" feel of the old site but it was certainly time to move on. I do find the nav nicer, it seems to be easier to get around now.