|
Spaces home  KevtrisPhotosProfileFriendsMore |  Tools   |
KevtrisSeptember 28 Holy crap, SpaceX did it!!SpaceX, which I have been following since the beginning, has finally done it. Falcon 1 Launch 4 was a complete success. They made history as the first private company to reach orbit. I can't wait for them to put Falcon 9 into orbit and bring the cost of space access down. Supposedly, Falcon 9 will be in many ways more reliable since it can tolerate the failure of a few engines, so I'll bet anyone $100 that Falcon 9 will be successful on their first try.
Go check it out at http://www.spacex.com/.
September 21 My first Mac - MacBook ProI bought a MacBook Pro this weekend. This is a very nice laptop, though I'd expect that for a $2000 laptop. Just some thoughts about it after a couple of days of use:
The good:
* Very well designed - at first I wasn't huge on the design, but it really grows on you. It feels solid as a rock.
* OS X Leopard is swell. Boots quick, always responsive, and so far hasn't so much as hiccuped once.
* The screen is very, very bright
* The battery life is very solid. Unlike Vista, this OS doesn't seem to run the system hot constantly, and I do get a solid 3-3.5 hours of life consistently.
* Safari is pretty solid, though I like IE8 Beta 2 better.
* The speakers are very nice for a laptop.
* The GeForce 8600 makes Expose, Dashboard, and the Dock very smooth.
* The keyboard is great. Very solid. I don't like Chiclet keys of the smaller MacBook.
* Comes out of standby far, far more smoothly than Vista
The bad:
* The system ran pretty hot in the first few hours of usage, but seems to be completely under control now.
* Had to install about a gig of updates. The biggest one was the OS X update from 10.5.3 to 10.5.5. Just like Windows in this regard.
* I don't know why Apple can't license ClearType from Microsoft, because XP/Vista's ClearType kicks the crap out of Apple's font smoothing.
Overall:
* Why didn't I get a Mac before? Really, I can see why so many have switched. For me, I only bought this because it's the only way to do iPhone development. But now that I'm knee deep in learning the ways of Apple, I'm liking what I'm seeing. Now I have to learn the ways of Xcode, ObjC, and Cocoa.
I'm sure I'll hit some snags, and I'll blog them as I find them.
September 19 Selling out againA long time ago, I sold my soul to Microsoft. Before I went to work in Redmond for a few years, I was a Linux and Java guy all the way. I loved writing Java applets because there was nothing cooler than having a rectangle in a browser whose behavior was determined by procedural code. HTML? Lame. Javascript? LMAO. Obviously no longer true. Anyways, after Microsoft, the only things I knew were a lot of Win32, COM, and a little SQL Server, VBScript, etc. My resume is the same as any in the stack of resumes on my desk at work - like a glossary of Microsoft technology acronyms. How impressive.
I got into Windows Mobile because the dev tools are the same and Win32/CE is mostly still Win32. That was really great while it lasted. I still remember coding for my first-of-its-kind Compaq iPaq. Slow, but my buttons worked! That was pretty amazing stuff for its time. I wrote Kevtris some years later and that was an amazing experience for me. My code executing in all its glory on a Motorola MPX-200.
Well it's no longer amazing and times have changed. I'm still finishing up Sentry Alpha, which is DirectDraw-based, and that was hard. I spent an immense amount of time getting my subpixel drawing right, getting my fixed point math to work, and making the whole thing acceptably performant. What I learned is writing apps and games for WinMo is quickly becoming not worth the trouble. I spend too much time futzing around how to make simple things happen with and outdated, broken, and disorganized API, and not enough creating stuff.
Microsoft can defend their design decisions around their WinMo SDK all they want, and that's exactly why they will continue their WinMo decline - unless they bat it out of the park with WinMo7, which I suspect they won't.
They've lost me. I'm tired of wasting what drive I have left searching for arcane API's. I'm tired of Microsoft shoving all of the responsibility for a good user experience onto the developer. Backwards compatibility, they say? Give me a good SDK and I will port my crappy code over. Developers did it for Apple. Game developers do it all the time among consoles and PC's. Screw compatibility - do it right first, k? thx.
I got an iPhone. This weekend, I buy my first Mac. I've got Xcode on my USB key ready to go. Let's see how this goes.
I'm selling out again, this time to Apple.
September 17 AT&T Game Development Contest NewsThe results are in, and Nikos Konstas won the contest.
I had a chance to play Pool Rebel, and all I have to say is: Best. Pocket. Pool. Game. Ever. Really, the graphics are amazing, and it's highly compatible with lots of devices. Go to www.poolrebel.com and check it out!
Congratulations, Nikos!
August 29 Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine to suspend publicationThis is sad news. One of my favorite magazines, "Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine" is going to suspend publication. This magazine has always done a great job at reviewing new devices, showing what's on the horizon, teaching new software tips and tricks, and giving little guys like me a chance to get our software some press. "Kevtris" had been repeatedly nominated for their Best Software award, and though it has never won, it has been a Finalist. I'd like to thank Hal Goldstein for running a great publication. I'll be sorry to see it go.
|
|||||
|
|
