Musings from The Software Underground

Yesterday was a very busy day for the mac indie world:

First Panic released an all-new app, Coda, which is a kind of web development IDE. My cursory try of it tells me it may solve some problems I have, but I'm still evaluating it. Overall though, it's a great, high quality release.

What is Coda?

The easiest way to sum it up is this: One Window Web Development.

There are a lot of great products out there already that let you design pages visually (WYSIWYG) or from templates. That base is well covered. But for those of us who work at the raw code level, your next stop was probably either the $400 (and somewhat wonky) DreamWeaver, or a workflow cobbled together from a half-dozen different applications. -- Announcing Coda 1.0

Next up is an app I really enjoy using, CSSEdit, from MacRabbit, which just hit version 2.5. New in CSSEdit is... TABS! Yeah, this makes things a LOT cleaner for me, and keeps my window clutter to a minimum. Also added was an X-ray Inspector, which shows you what styles apply to the selected element in X-ray. Very nice. -- CSSEdit 2.5 Out Now!


Finally the guys over at Rogue Amoeba released the latest version of Fission with many new features, and including full support for audio insertion:

We're happy to announce that our easy to use audio editor Fission has just reached version 1.5 with several major new features! Fission 1.5 now has full support for audio insertion, meaning audio can now be copy and pasted within one file or copied between multiple files. One file can even be appended to another with a simple drag and drop. -- Hot From The Oven, It's Fission 1.5!

It's dual update day at Advenio! Both MacGourmet and SQLGrinder received updates today.

First up is MacGourmet 2.1.1, a maintenance release that fixes a bunch of minor issues. For a full list of changes, please see the release notes.

MacGourmet 2.1.1 can be downloaded from the MacGourmet download page.

Additionally, a web import plugin for cooksillustrated.com (paid registration required) is now available with a simple installer. Just download the plug-in installer, run it and press the Install button to put the plug-in into your MacGourmet Application Support plug-ins folder.


Next up is SQLGrinder 2.0.5. Included in this maintenance release is a slight "refresh" of the UI, bringing it more inline with your typical "Tiger" application these days. The splitters in the editor, browser library and log windows have all been changed to the latest style, and grab handles have been added where appropriate.

Some of the fixes include the display of a class of error message that was only getting written to the Mac OS X console, instead of also being displayed in the application, better error display in general, and improved SQL syntax processing while editing and when first opening a file. For a full list of changes please see the release notes.

From Ars Technica:

A panel of judges at the Copyright Royalty Board has denied a request from the NPR and a number of other webcasters to reconsider a March ruling that would force Internet radio services to pay crippling royalties. The panel's ruling reaffirmed the original CRB decision in every respect, with the exception of how the royalties will be calculated. Instead of charging a royalty for each time a song is heard by a listener online, Internet broadcasters will be able pay royalties based on average listening hours through the end of 2008."

What we're essentially now seeing is the death of Internet radio, as it existed prior to the ruling. Most internet sites, sites that really exist to promote bands, artists, etc. will certainly be knocked out by this ruling. This isn't about protecting rights, this is about concentrating the power in the hands of the few, plain and simple.

May 15th will be a sad day, a day after which most, if not all of your favorite streaming sites will no longer be able to afford to broadcast, and after which will mostly likely just shut down instead. Gone will be internet radio, but gone also (if I understand things correctly) will most likely be college radio streams. No longer will I be able to listen to the Boston area college radio I grew attached to. It will most likely no longer be an option for me here in Maine. It's yet another sad win by those who would deny you the music you really want to listen to: the RIAA and the major record labels.

You can read the full details of the new fee schedule at the Radio and Internet Newsletter.

No, no it isn't. Honestly, the slip to October isn't surprising and it's not a big deal, or any kind of embarrassment. Please, comparing Apple's 4 month delay to the (conservative) 2+ year slip of Vista, like John Markoff of the New York Times, did is a joke.

Leopard, even by Apple's publicly available list, has a lot going on under the hood that needs to be done right. Apple, with this delay, isn't throwing out new features like MSFT did when Vista was slipping *cough* WinFS *cough* so honestly I see the release date move as more about quality.

Was the slippage also caused by development of the iPhone? Daniel over at Red Sweater seems to worry about that. While it wouldn't surprise me if some developers were moved from Mac OS X to iPhone OS X, I wonder if blaming the slip on the iPhone was more of a marketing idea than an actual fact. I guess it remains to be seen how well Apple handles development on the many fronts it has now opened up (Mac, iPhone, AppleTV, iPod) and if there really are staffing problems. (I do think that Daniel's musings about Apple's desire to concentrate everything in Cupertino hurting them is right on. I'd love to see an Apple Development East in, say, the greater Boston area).

One thing this "slip" does certainly do is make all of the analyst/rumor mongers look like idiots, especially the ones claiming a March release date. It also makes WWDC a lot more important, I think, which has me questioning whether or not I should try harder to attend now. More than likely, that's where all of these "secret" features will be unveiled.

The delay also pushes back planned "Leopard-only" releases, which is probably either a blessing or a curse I guess, and probably pushes back a lot of people's decisions to buy a new Mac, which could hurt Apple's sales near-term.

The end of the world, or the end of Apple however, it is not.

Labels: Mac Musings

In case you haven't seen the post on MacGourmet News, version 2.1 was released on Tuesday, and now it's Apple's featured Home & Learning download (Thanks Apple!)

Version 2.1 adds all sorts of new import and export options, including export to your iPod, one-step clipping from a variety of popular recipe web sites and more. Check it out!

Labels: MacGourmet