skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> I think Apple feared that more third-party toolkits are on the way, and that they'll become more popular.

I guess Apple has been surprised by apps popularity. Their original policy was that 3rd party applications ought to be web apps (initially, it was the only way to go).

Embedded applications make sense:

* for super-tightly integrated user experience: but then, you don't want any lowest common denominator middleware on the way, as they guarantee a crappy experience (typically way worse than a decent and portable web app, see below).

* for driver-like stuff that do magic (but Apple always hated the idea of 3rd parties writing such sensitive code, which is one of the reasons why OSX is way more stable than Windows)

* because in some countries, users are stuck with a not-so-reliable 3G carrier, so being able to run offline is valuable. Hopefully that's a temporary situation, and I understand that HTML5 allows to write offline-compatible web apps anyway.

* because it's culturally accepted to pay a couple of dollars for a fart simulator app, but most people won't pay a dime to access the New York Times content in a web site. That's the reason why most apps are apps rather than web sites, but that's a problem with the web, not Apple's business.

This last point is at the core of most issues with Apple's tight control on iPhone apps: most of them should have been web app. They've been written as apps not to benefit from the iPhoneOS platform, but to benefit from the AppStore's easy monetization and publicity. It's about the AppStore, not about the iPhone!
I've used the charts widget from YUI 2 more than once. It's not amazing, but if you have a small amount of data it gets the job done. Large data sets can take a while to render and then be hard to read once they do render.

http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/charts/
Pretty interesting predictions, very thought provoking at least.
Ideas I would like to build / see built
Contact info? I've been working in embedded mapping software for years, and Amsterdam sounds like fun.
I'm not talking about programming on the Mac, I'm talking about the iPhone OS and devices like the iPad.

I need a Mac to program the iPad? Why?

We needed a LISA to program the Mac in 1984. The Mac had 128kbyte of RAM and couldn't do much.

The iPad has 256MB RAM, a multitasking OS based on Unix - I want to see end-user programming on the touch screen. Not a generation of link clickers.

We have 2010.

I want a better EMAIL program for my iPhone (or something like the iPad). I don't get it. Apple does not allow that. WHY? It can't even filter mails. We had that twenty years ago.
The website doesn't work or is it just me? (Tunisia, North Africa)
Berto vs Quintana Live Stream Online Boxing Fight Video - Vox
Totally agree, Facebook will win location war hands down.
> They're hurting themselves (...) but they're hurting other mobile platforms far more.

That's true today because they're the main platform. This might change if, say, Android becomes much more widespread than iPhoneOS. When this happens, they might concede on things like 3.3.1.

Then again, Apple is quite comfortable with having minority share but huge profit margins in a market: I'd guess that 90% of laptops sold over $1000 are Apple, and that their margin is something like 5 times Dell's...
Is there an alternative way for Apple to meet its goal of prohibiting extra layers of cross platform toolkits, without mandating the choice of programming language?

Could they somehow say that programs must use native CocoaTouch widgets, while still allowing for people who want to compile from Scheme into Objective C or C?
I don't think they're "worried". They may be a generally secretive company, but Steve has been replying to a lot of emails in the last few months. I'm not surprised to hear about someone else hearing from him, although I can't recall the last time someone emailed Steve about a developer issue specifically.

The only time I remember them reaching out to developers was a while back when app rejections were getting out of hand, and Phil Schiller (SVP of Worldwide Product Marketing) started making the press rounds to say that Apple was working to improve the situation (e.g., http://daringfireball.net/2009/08/phil_schiller_app_store)
The effect is that people are divided into developers/content providers/media providers and consumers.
interesting...

I personally wouldn't find a lot of use for it because I have twitter DM's sent to my cell already. But people who don't hook their cell up to their twitter (or have multiple accounts) might find a use for it.

Something I have been looking for is a way to have any @myname mentions sent to me in a DM. Set up a service to do that and I'd be interested.
Is this just a scientific study, or will I gain anything useful for daily life? This is a looong article.
One thing to keep in mind when doing these sorts of comparisons as well are the small lifestyle changes that kick in when you live in a really urban place. Before, I usually bought about a weeks worth of groceries - go to the market, load up the trunk. Now, I only buy for dinner or maybe the next couple of meals.

The whole infrastructure of CA still seems suburban, more driven by mindset and culture.

Comparing the convenience of the day-to-day things would be very interesting, but I'm not entirely sure how one would do this outside of just "cost analysis", which seems pretty shallow.
Firefox was my default browser on Windows since v. 0.6 when it wasn't a Firefox yet but Phoenix.
It was still my default when I switched to Mac, but with the
release of Safari 3 Firefox was relegated to development/tools role. I'd say the only area it beats Safari is extensions. Alas, Chrome also has those now. When Web Inspector matches Firebug, my usage of FF will be for testing only :(
It is not (D),(C); it is (C (D)).
We are all consumers, just some happen to be developers.
Why Apple does not take DuckDuckGo as the default search engine?
That's a very important distinction to make, which a lot of people elide right over (I'm looking at you, singularitarians). We've been moving really fast recently, but the destination is pretty mediocre in a lot of ways. C.f. Warren Ellis: "Having a nice robot phone is not an acceptable substitute for a future." http://www.wired.co.uk/wired-magazine/archive/2010/05/start/...
Show HN: I just made 4sqvision at SuperHappyDevHouse
I built Grafico, a free (MIT licenced) javascript and SVG charting library. it's fast in most browsers and should see a ridiculous speedup with ie9. Also it makes really pretty charts :) http://grafico.kilianvalkhof.com/
You can look at it this way: Apple will have less apps to review :)
There are definitely a lot of upsides to NYC living, especially if nightlife is your favorite thing (and you have the cash for it).

I personally have spent a lot of time in NY (my gf lives there), but I definitely prefer SF (or anywhere in the bay area):

-NYC rents are pricier. SF is at least $300/month cheaper for a similar distance from downtown, which easily covers the price of a car (I'm one of those who really values the convenience one gives)

-SF has much better weather. I find NYC way too cold in the winter and way too hot in the summer

-SF wins on the outdoors - hiking and mountain biking are <15 minute drive away, but very hard to access in NYC (esp. without a car).

-NYC wins on mass transit, though often, I found it difficult to say, work on a laptop there due to overcrowding - BART/Caltrain typically have more seats available.
"Lastly, and probably the biggest problem is that there's no support. You can resort to posting messages to the forum but if you've got a customer who is pissed off because they just got double charged we call tell you from personal experience that they don't really care if you've posted something to a Google forum."
Man.. can we not just appreciate the fact that we now have WAGONS that move your STUFF without you having to CARRY IT?!
As an iPhone/iPad user one of the things I like most about it is the UI consistency and being able to install third party apps without a huge amount of paranoia that it will steal my data or crash my phone. I like that I can always get a phone call even when playing a fairly intense 3D game. I accept the restrictions to achieve those goals. That's my choice -- it's also Apple's choice. So I don't really understand why people who have a problem with it don't just go develop for Android, WebOS, BlackBerry, etc. You'll be happier, I'll be happier. We'll have more competition in the SmartPhone market. It's a win-win-win situation. This obsession over the iPhone platform is not healthy. It's not like we don't have choices. Use them.
Ha..
And we do not count how many software engineering problems have been solved this way.
But it is incorrect to attribute this to Blogging only.
The phenomena of collaborative research through electronic media started in early 80-s, with rise of Usenet.
Then IRC, webforums took part. So it is gradual, not revolutionary.
Unless I'm entirely wrong, most of those older tablet PCs have keyboards (and larger screens, worse battery lives, and so forth). That's the difference - and, because multitouch/touchscreens as the only input is a big thing right now, it's ignoring all the older ones which are basically laptops with rotating touchscreens.
VPS provider just went nuts, and now I have to go to bed.

I'll pick Slicehost next time. Crap.
calender => calendar

Attention to detail, buddy.
If Adobe wants to fight Apple, it should leverage Linux
A good reminder for us who haven't been around as long, ideas and tech tend to come full circle.

Hopefully this time around, the tools are better and the limitations are well-known (and I think they are).

[edit] I think I misused the term "come full circle" -- I meant something more like oscillation.
We here at [Startup Digest] just launched a job posting board specifically for startups. Check it out here http://thestartupdigest.com/2010/04/07/work-with-startups/ each post goes out to our 30,000+ founders around the world.

We just recently launched it so would love feedback on it!
Not to hate, but these are vague ideas overall. Those are the kind that are a dime a dozen. ;)
Firefox isn't written directly on top of the OS APIs. It's written on top of NSPR (Netscape Portable Runtime) on the bottom, with layers of more compat piled on top.
It has some of the best descriptions of what is considered "social norm" I've seen. I'm sure people can learn a lot from it.
I meant a theme. With a matrix, you can use what you find on other sites to guide the development of your own.
That's true. I should clarify that I meant in the short term - definitely they'll change their position the minute it benefits them. But right now, it certainly doesn't.

If multi platform engines take off, we are a few short years away from a situation where the choice of mobile platforms is like the choice between browsers is now - no lock in, low switching costs - and I think they want to avoid that at all costs.
Steve Jobs Responds To iPhone SDK Complaints
heh cheers, I had even ran it through after the deadline but still managed to miss it, fixed
It took me a few days to figure out why Apple would risk driving away developers like this, until I realized: That's the whole point.

Apple wants to drive away developers who are spreading their apps thin over multiple platforms. I think you're right that it's quite unlikely they will relent on this, at least on paper.

As for policing, I think you're also right that it won't be particularly onerous. I see enforcement less to the letter and more to the intention of 3.3.1: If your submitted app feels like a rough port, they'll probably check for cross-compiler evidence and reject it on those grounds, but if it fits right into the iPhone experience, they probably aren't going to go hunting for traces of Lisp.
No, consumers are not developers on the iPad.

You can't program filters for the Email program. The Email program is neither open source nor scriptable. You can't program formulas for the calculator. The people who program for iPhone OS are doing it in a completely different stage and environment. I can't just log into MY iPhone and change a program.
From the article:

It's funny how many different ways you can react to that clip. I even read something by a marketing expert who said, "Louis CK is on to something. We have to figure out how we can to get consumers to really appreciate our product; there's no brand value anymore." Does that surprise you? That even the marketing industry's like: "Yes!"

Life imitates Bill Hicks?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDW_Hj2K0wo

(edited to fix formatting)
If they did this 'native UI widgets' only restriction for non-game apps, it would help. However, as other commenters have pointed out, there are a lot of crappy applications that are built with the native tab bar control.

Maybe some people don't want polish, they just want a momentary diversion (hence the proliferation of silly trivia type games and gag apps). I even saw the developer of a top-50 paid iPhone app be wow'd recently by a simple iPad game. Fun is fun, no matter how it is coded.
The clip is comical in tone so the premises are inexact but it touches on something very important. As we watched the evening news the other day, my flatmate said 'what a terrible world we live in.' Since the news had just reported several abductions and murders, this may seem like a reasonable assertion. But my flatmate's problem is he never appreciates the good of modern society. He simply does not consider all the good things that happened today when he forms the equation. And this goes for a lot of people. All the benefits of technology, etc, are somehow not REAL benefits to us because some corporation is making profit, therefore everyone else must be sustaining some sort of net loss and there's no point feeling good about it.

I'm not suggesting everyone should be permanently ecstatic - everyone's happiness is at root based on achievement of goals they set (or don't set) for themselves, and will fluctuate accordingly, and normalize to the social context. But equally there is no reason to hold a constantly pessimistic and critical world-view.
From what I've seen of the CS5 packaging for iPhone,
there are no native UI controls. Adobe claims to have
a project to port Flex to iPhone, and I can't assume
that it will use native UI controls.

Adobe did not even bother with their own apps, just visit
http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/

A couple of telling examples:
http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/post/296745150/photoshop-why-i...

http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/post/236090781/the-many-slider...
They are pretty vague so far, I just wanted to jot down general ideas that I keep having and forgetting over time, thought itd be handy if they were online for others to try as well. It will be updated and refined pretty regularly.
> it's culturally accepted to pay a couple of dollars for a fart simulator app, but most people won't pay a dime to access the New York Times content in a web site. That's the reason why most apps are apps rather than web sites, but that's a problem with the web, not Apple's business

Brill!

The funny thing is, the price of 'software' has often really been driven by the price of distributing it, not the value it delivers or how much it cost to create it.

(Joel Spolsky has pointed out this is why Enterprise Software costs so much: because it costs so much to sell software to Enterprises).

The App Store really takes the friction out of the business of distributing binaries, including the friction out of marketing it. So it should come as no surprise that a lot of really good software is cheap in the app store.

It won't be long before you won't be able to charge for the NYT in the app store either.
Bug Report: At 7pm Austin time (April 10th, 2010), I cannot load your site in IE 7.0.5730.11 on Win XP Pro SP2.

Before the site fully loads it freezes the browser then leaves an empty (blank) broswer outline.

I tried twice and it happened both times. I had to use the task manager to kill the browser both times.

IE 7 is still in service for many users, thats why I used it to look at your site.
Once 3G will be reliable and truly unlimited, what would cross-platform apps offer that web app don't anyway?

There is already a cross-platform, 100% uncensored dev framework, with excellent distribution channels, and it's called HTML5. I'm not sure there is a niche for a 2nd one, especially if Apple is unhelpful.
IDK. I think erlang syntax is charming when compared to C syntax.

In reality, if someone is having trouble switching languages because the syntax is too different, i have trouble imagining them being very good at programming. It is a problem between the ears.
How the iPad can become Apple's Trojan Horse into the Enterprise Market
It is interesting to think about how the iPad might become Apple’s stepping stone into the Enterprise Segment. Recently with the announcement of iPhone OS 4 Apple announced support for features as multitasking, folders, support for mobile device management, Exchange 2010 and SSL VPN.
What about a social network especially for people who haven't owned Apple (stock, hw and sw) and never will?
In Germany there is a saying:

Man erkennt Wohlstand nicht daran, dass die Leute weniger jammern, sondern daran, auf welchem Niveau sie jammern.

(You don't recognize wealth by less complaining people, but by the level on which they are complaining.)
Actually, the web development tools and the JavaScript debugger in recent Chrome betas are starting to get really good, almost as good as FireBug and even better in some respects. You should definitely give it a try.
That's not really an answer (and, btw, not really honest -- location, isp and ip don't matter if they have your email address). Just because something can't be tracked doesn't mean it's legal.
Interesting. Even though it is just translation of pure server-oriented code, it is a nice start. Of course, I can make the argument that if they can write a program that translates one platform to another - they should go after the holy grail of game development - write once, perform spectacularly anywhere - and make hundreds of millions.
Freshbooks is hiring too, we have a pile of positions open for everything from developers to support people. So if you are in Toronto, ontario and need work check it out. http://www.freshbooks.com/careers/
For the first idea, have you checked out tinychat? http://tinychat.com/
Twenty years ago you did not have a handheld device that read your emails.
The New York Times

Location: New York, NY

My company is looking for a ton of developers (at least 9) in various levels of experience and departments:

* Senior Software Engineer x2

* Software Engineer x3 (1 in Mobile Applications)

* Creative Technologist

* Web Developer, Senior Web Developer, Web Designer/Developer

Full list with links to detail descriptions:
http://www.nytimes.com/features/openings/index.html

I'm sure here will be some fun comments about print media dying and the pay-wall etc. but this is platform and web focused. We build a lot of cool fun stuff from our own API's, standalone web apps, social platforms, open source apps, standards, and a lot more mobile stuff on the way too. I've been there many years (web developer) and its a great place to work with many smart people…

Some URLs of note (the fun stuff IMHO):

Open Blog: http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/

NYT APIs: http://developer.nytimes.com/

Times Wire: http://www.nytimes.com/timeswire/index.html (completely developer driven)

Times Skimmer: http://www.nytimes.com/timesskimmer/ (completely developer driven)

Times People: http://timespeople.nytimes.com/view/user/37963625/activities...

Here is a horribly titled NY Mag article on some of the developers in the Newsroom:
http://nymag.com/news/features/all-new/53344/

Happy to answer questions and update this as I check back but otherwise follow that first link up top.
Richard Dawkins: I will arrest Pope Benedict XVI -Times Online
If you like SVG, or even if you don't. http://g.raphaeljs.com/ has some sweet graphing. I wouldn't recommend it for huge data sets, but for small to large datasets its quite nice.
Always get a response to your Match.com messages
You are a very small minority.
Apple may have other motives, but the effect of this is still positive; encouraging a higher standard of quality is a good thing for a massive platform.

Remember, Microsoft didn't do this with Windows. Where did we end up? For years, an incredibly bad user interface became the norm, with shaky programming APIs to match. Most 3rd party developers simply copied whatever Microsoft was doing (out of laziness?), causing other applications and APIs to also be horrible.
I don't think it has to do with the quality of the applications at all. Apple hasn't taken many steps to control quality in their app store, and there's not much difference between having an app that's bad because it's a port and an app that's bad because it's a badly made original.

What is has to do is with lock in. Right now, there's a decent barrier to porting an application from iPhone to Android, and in most cases the port will cost more than the profit it makes, so it won't be done.

If people start using multi platform engines, the ports will be very cheap, and the iPhone will have far fewer exclusive apps, which is a huge threat to their platform. Each multiplatform app reduces the costs of a user switching away from the iPhone to an Android phone or similar.

Apple's been on the losing end of lock in with Mac OS for a long time. I think now they're experiencing the effect in their favour and want to keep it going for as long as they can.
Technically, yes you can have a better mail program. You just might not be approved to sell it once you create it using XCode. If you are serious about this, start with reMail. reMail has implemented a lot of features and solved a lot of thorny email client implementation issues.

"As someone who is passionate about mobile email, my hope is that developers interested in making email-related apps can use reMail code as a starting point. Part of the reason email apps are hard is because you have to pay the tax of figuring out how to download email via IMAP, parse MIME messages, handle attachments, and store data. reMail has already solved these problems. If you have a great mobile email idea, I hope you will find reMail's source code helpful in your quest."

http://www.remail.com/blog/

http://code.google.com/p/remail-iphone
And this is exactly what Apple wants us to think; be in awe of the favor that they are doing developers. This is an abusive relationship to say the least.
All I got out of the article was that a hedge fund was hedging.
yeah, is this guy serious? Not that I have much room to criticize others on grammar, but I don't spell you as 'u' - I was almost expecting to see 'Sent from my iphone' at the bottom of the story.
Interesting concept, but it would be more useful if I could limit it to my city. Without a local context, it is mostly noise and no signal.

An ideal visualisation would be to show the activity as blips on a Google Map.
sorry about the lack of spelling or grammer [sic].

i'm an acquired [dis-]taste...
I was speculating on what would happen if Microsoft bought Sun and decided to port Windows to SPARC.

IBM would want to keep the patents for itself, but Microsoft would probably wrap them in a do-not-hit-us term and sell them to trolls. This way they could undermine the competition while staying completely out of it.
The IDE around it ;-)
Ruby vs. Haskell: a love tap
His prediction about Google buying Twitter and Yelp to take on Facebook made me laugh. Until he said they will "probably still [lose] due to no clue on social"
cough flash support cough