fplanque: dev blog

So that new iPod touch that Apple presented today is pretty nifty, isn't it? And Steve's keynote was pretty entertaining too.

Yeah well... there's quite a few missing features (no it's not the Beatles) that itch me... even before I lay down the $399 I will no doubt end up spending on this (nonetheless) beautiful peace of art. And Especially:

Podcasts: yes, so it has WiFi and a browser and an online music store... but what about podcasts? You subscribe to podcast in order to get new episodes when they become available. The least I'd expect from a WiFi enabled portable podcast player is to actually get the episodes of the podcasts I'm subscribed too. Not a single word about that...

...well maybe it is actually there. Maybe Steve just didn't mention it because they haven't found a way to gently rip you off with it, as they're getting ready to do with their iPhone ringtone business! Think about it: you already bought a full length song (at a fairly high price). Now Apple lets you clip out 10 seconds of that song to use as a ring tone. All you have to do is pay another $.99 for those 10 seconds you already have on your iPone! Why exactly did people applause to that?

Email: can you name one single good reason why this thing doesn't include a POP3/IMAP mail client? Does Apple's partnership with Google go so far they're going to encourage us to use Gmail instead?

And by the way, if Google rules, where's the Google maps application?

Edit: The new $20 iPod Touch upgrade finally addresses that!

Games: Steve proudly showed off the games on the new iPod nano. What about the iPod touch? Can I play all the games I purchased for my iPod "classic" on my soon to be iPod touch? Odds look pretty bad...

PDA features: This device now clearly has the capabilities of a top of the line PDA. It just lacks some software to do it right. Todo lists, anyone? Can you at least edit your calendar and contacts on the go? You couldn't do it with the previous iPods and Steve didn't mention it. It would be odd not to be able to do it, but then again, the software on this one is so trimmed down compared to the iPhone that I'm a little scared...

Edit: you can now edit calendar and contents in version 1.1.2.

Now of course, what I should really do is get an iPhone... Especially at the new $399 price! Yeah... if only they were available in Europe... (fingers crossed for Apple Expo Paris this September).

Camera: Actually, now the iPhone is just $100 more than the iPod, does it really make sense not to have a camera built into the high-end iPod? ... well, that would make it a killer blogger tool for sure. And again, the iPhone is *not* available everywhere, not even in certain regions of the US where there is no AT&T coverage...

I want to recommend this post by Joel Spolski about differences in font rendering philosophy between Mac OS & Windows.

I never really understood why Apple failed to render sharp fonts on screen. Now I understand the purpose. I'm still not sure which is best though...

It's been 3 years since PHP 5 has been released. Yet PHP 4 still rules on the vast majority of web hosting platforms.

This is annoying for PHP open source developers who cannot leverage the potential of PHP 5 as long as they need to support PHP 4. This is also annoying for the PHP development group since they still need to support PHP 4 instead of focusing on PHP 6.

In a way it is also annoying for the web hosts themselves, since they too need to deal with clients who want PHP4 compatibility and others who want PHP5 features.

What strikes me is that the solution seems obvious, and yet the PHP team fails to recognize it.

The only reason webhosting providers haven't massively upgraded to PHP 5 yet is because it would break applications running on their current client's site. It may also prevent new clients from installing well known applications (phpBB...) which may fail on PHP5.

Of course, that would not have been such an issue if PHP5 was indeed upward compatible with PHP4. But it isn't! (object references, clone keyword, etc.) So what do we do now?

Web hosts install PHP5 next to PHP4, but you need to rename your scripts to script.php5 instead of script.php ... which breaks existing URLs... so no-one uses that either.

The real simple solution would be for the PHP team to release some PHP 5.x version which would actually behave like PHP 4 (completely!) with a simple config switch. It could then be installed in place of PHP 4 without breaking anything.

Once that is done, any PHP application that is PHP5 aware would just include something like this:

PHP:

and everything would be fine.

Maybe PHP5 should have 2 separate php.ini files. Maybe that ini_set() call should be required to come at the very top of the script. Maybe it should be a different function. But all in all, the solution seems so simple you have to wonder why anyone would want to support the older version for 3 years instead...

I just bought this cool gadget app for $19.95: EarthDesk.

I may have bought it only because it looks cool, or only because it gives you a sense of global awareness. But the real reason is, I guess, because it's 100 times more effective than having a series of clocks on your wall or on your desktop!

I'm in contact with quite a few development and business partners around the globe (+ special thought for the evoTeam members! ) and I'm constantly looking at clocks to know what time of day it is in their region.

Now I'm just gonna look at my desktop and get a sense of global time much quicker! It really makes a difference!

Besides showing day & night (with city lights), EarthDesk also does "real time" updating of clouds as well as real moonlight rendering. And you can choose from a dozen different map projections, set your viewpoint where you want... The only thing missing is being able to drag your desktop earth around as if it was Google Earth

Note: rectangular maps look best on widescreen monitors (Even with a multiscreen span, you won't match it). Also I very much prefer the "feel" of the Mac version... and it's really hard to tell why, since the look is pretty much the same. I bought a license for the Mac... I'm still unsure as to whether I should buy one for Windows or not...

Besides the basics, there's three simple things I'd expect from an FTP client:

1. Symetrically navigate in subfolders locally and remotely with single clicks;
2. Upload files and overwrite the server side only if the local file is newer;
3. Search the server for old files that no longer exist locally (with an option to ignore folders that contain user uploaded content).

I have never ever found a Windows tool doing all 3 !

• CuteFTP 8 Pro does #1 and that's about it (Its folder sync tools are basically a joke : it compares dates without comparing times!)
• FileZilla 2.32 does #2 but that's about it.
• My old DreamWeaver MX does #3 but is so painfully slow that it's barely bearable!

I'm so impatient to see FileZilla 3 as well as the new DreamWeaver CS3... but I fear I'm gonna be disappointed again...

Maybe I should start to figure out how to run rsync on Windows right now...