By Zac White on May 30, 2008
So it is that time again. Time to pack up and head to California for another badass week of techno-babble and nerd socializing. I totally know everything that will happen at the keynote, so I thought I’d share.
.Mac -> Mobile Me
Yep, that’s happening and guess what? It is going to be pretty nice. Third party developers can easily use the service to sync data between the iPhone and the Mac. Basically, developers can post data to Apple and it will get pushed to the iPhone. The best part? Buy an new iPhone and it comes with a year free. Oh, and Apple is going to add some pretty nice iPhone integration too. Think Visual Voicemail web interface kind of stuff.
iPhone gets 3G
Yeah, duh. There have been 3G rumors forever and it was bound to happen. It will have GPS, but not much software that utilizes it at first. Oh, we will finally be able to use the iPhone as a modem.
App Store
Not available after the keynote. We are going to get a nice little demo of apps, then Jobs is going to tell us that we should get out there and start putting the finishing touches (no pun intended) on our apps because in August they are going to launch the store. Yep, not until August, sorry.
OS 10.6 demo?
No.
Other Hardware?
Psh, what do I look like? A magic 8 ball? Speaking of that, I expect around 10 magic 8 ball apps at App Store launch.
There you have it. What do I win when I’m right?
Anyone wanting to meet up, let me know at first name + last name + @gmail.com.
Posted in Uncategorized
By Zac White on March 3, 2008
Who’s ready for the iPhone SDK? Me. In preparation, I’ve been working on a project I’m code-naming Engineer. That might change, but the app is a search application. At the moment, it searches SMS, Notes, and Contacts and it is pretty easy to add support for just about anything. I plan to add iTunes, Mail, Photos (if the computer’s metadata transfers over), and Events. For 1.0, expect a subset of those and for 1.5, expect all. I’m also designing it with plugins in mind, so anyone can write a plugin for their special data format.
I’m aware that this probably will get replace by Apple at some point. Duh, people need to search for stuff on their phone. But until then, I’ll get some iPhone practice.
Email me if you would like to know when it gets released: Zac White
Posted in apple, mine, software
By Zac White on January 11, 2008
Well, it has been quite a while since we talked. How are you? Good to hear. I’m fine thanks. Just wanted to let you know I redesigned my website…and when I say “I”, I mean I picked a different WordPress theme. That isn’t entirely true. I copied the design to other parts of the site so that everything is uniform. The theme is a slightly modified PocketT and I’m pretty happy with it. Very minimal, but still stylish.
One of my new year’s resolutions is to blog more, so to help with that, I purchased the badass MarsEdit 2. I bought MarsEdit 1 with NetNewsWire back in the day (which now is free!!). Ten bucks to get all the cool features of version 2 was a no brainer, so check it out if you haven’t.
Alright, I’ll have more later. I plan on posting some thoughts on some really old happenings so download the free NetNewsWire and subscribe, because I’m back!
Posted in site, this site
By Zac White on August 12, 2007
I finally entered an Iron Coder! The theme this year was “Conspiracy” and the API was “iPhone”. Which is a little funny considering there is no real API for the iPhone.
Basically what I did was write a little cocoa app that lives up in your menu bar and takes a shot with the iSight ever 5 minutes.
The reasoning being that if you are the victim of conspiracy the best way to uncover it all is to set up this “nanny cam” type thing. Basically the built in web server serves up an iPhone specific web page with all the images on it. Check it out:
SpiPhone
Just run it, make sure your isight’s plugged in, and then go to http://localhost:9138/ and test it out.
If you want to check out how I wrote it (it isn’t anything super special), the source is here.
I unfortunately didn’t win (my presentation lacked flash and generally sucked), but I did get 4 votes and I didn’t even vote for myself…
By the way, C4[1] was amazing. I will blog about it shortly.
Posted in apple, events, mine, software
By Zac White on June 15, 2007
What a great week. Not only did I have a great time at WWDC meeting a bunch of new people and hooking up faces to names, but I also got a C4[1] scholarship.
I actually got the news via twitter, which was kind of cool. I was in a session at the time and I’m pretty sure the people next to me were curious why I had a huge smile on my face while some guy was talking about fast enumerations…
Being the 1337 hacker that I am, I had a look at the essays (boy, figuring out that url was hard). All the essays were really good, so it is really an honor.
Now I have to figure out how to get/stay there…Anyone have a couch?
Posted in apple, life
By Zac White on June 10, 2007
So I arrived in San Fran yesterday and have a nice day today just jumping from bus to bus around the city. I ran into some fellow MacSB-ers and we wandered around together. We went to the Haight-Ashbury street fair which was…interesting. We ate at In-and-out in the warf and got a street car back. Quite nice.
I registered at Moscone before we left and now I’m worried. Apparently they aren’t letting students into the Keynote, just into the overflow room. This coupled with the cutting back on parties etc. really makes me think they might be giving something good to attendees…like a $200 off coupon for an iPhone or something. I know I don’t really deserve an iPhone since I didn’t actually pay to get in to WWDC…but it would be really a shame to be left out if they do give them away. The best way to break into the market is to give them to college students!
Of course, they wouldn’t give out coupons to devs unless Apple had plans to open up the API. I kind of have the feeling that Steve is going to say something like “Yeah, the iPhone is really great and we want you to make it greater. That is why we are working on a way to get widgets to the iPhone in a couple months. We’ll let you know how that goes. In the mean time, go buy one for 50% off!.”
Posted in apple, life
By Zac White on May 29, 2007
Before I get to SF.
After I leave SF.
CRAP. Oh well. I got to see Laura Veirs in Dallas and it was amazing. It was a really small venue with only about 40 people. I got a picture with her and a signed album, Year of Meteors, which is an amazing album if you haven’t heard it. Her new album, Saltbreakers, is amazing too. I really hope she tours again…
Posted in life, music, Uncategorized
By Zac White on April 26, 2007
I am currently trying Callwave. The main reason I’m trying it out is I want to get voicemail to my email. So I was setting up a GMail filter to deal with it.
When I try and add a “Voicemail” label to GMail, it won’t let me…
Interesting…
Posted in software
By Zac White on April 21, 2007
So I was minding my business the other day strapping some babies to roombas (more on that another time), when all of a sudden a twitter popped up…
Hm, that is an interesting twitter (sorry to hear that Daniel). I was supposed to find out if I got my student scholarship to WWDC that I applied for at around this time. I went to #macsb and asked Daniel why he would say something like that. He said that a friend had told him he had gotten his acceptance email earlier that day. But wait a second. All my email goes to gmail and:
Ok, at this point I’m a little scared. What if I don’t get this scholarship? Did I screw up the application? Did I accidentally type “screw your mother” into one of the application answers (the “screw your mother” key is so close to the “t” key). Ok, at this point I started to calm down. Gmail probably just didn’t check my other mail over POP yet.
Two days?? Man, that is stupid. I manually checked the mail and waited for a very long time for Google to chew threw the 141 emails I got in the 2 days. It was only a few minutes before an email from ADC popped up…but it felt like an hour…
Oh thank god.
Posted in apple, events, life
By Zac White on April 12, 2007
Well, poo. I have to wait until October for a final Leopard?
Here is why I think this is bad:
Apple could have had the high ground on getting an OS out the door. Look everyone! We got Leopard out in only a year and it took Vista 37 years! Now they are delaying Leopard publicly.
Here is why I think this is good:
At WWDC 06, we got wind of some “Top Secret” features in Leopard. Here was the problem…those features wouldn’t be tested by seed tester people unless they weren’t top secret anymore. So apple would unveil some of those features through a rumor site. They would hate that. Now they have the opportunity to keep them under wraps a little bit longer.
Now they will unveil these features at WWDC 07 aside the iPhone. Maybe it will be called “Leopard Developer Release 2″. Then they will have developers test these new features for the October release date. Get ready for a drought of seeds while they fork all these features…
Posted in apple, software