Category: Miscellaneous

WORLD WILD DEBACHING CHOCK

DEAR LOSERS WHO ARE GOING TO WWDC HERES MY GUIDE TO MAKE YOUR TRIP PLEASENT IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN

CHOCKTUB

APR 23 SO THIS GUY @MACGUITAR GETS IN THE HOT TUB AND SAYS HE WANTS TO SHOW ME HIS THINGS WHAT A WEIRDO MADE @GRUBER JEALOUS TO

CHOCKTUB

APR 24 @jsnell BE CAREFUL OR I WILL MAKE YOU GET IN THE HOT TUB WHAT KIND OF WHINE DO YOU LIKE

CHOCKTUB3

MAY 8 WELL LOOK WHOS SHOWN UP AND HE BROUGHT SOME READING MATERIAL COULD IT GET ANY HOTTER IN THIS TUB I HOPE SO

CHOCKTUB4

MAY 9 NOW THAT @SIRACUSA HAS FINALLY SHUTUP ABOUT HIS DEEP FEELINGS FOR LARRY WALL WERE GOING TO LEARN ABOUT THE BLINK TAG FROM JEFFRAY PARTY ON

CHOCKTUB5

MAY 13 OK WHO LET THE CHICKS IN I TELL YOU WHAT IF SHE STARTS UP WITH THE POETRY SHELL BE LOOKING FOR A WORD THAT RHYMES WITH PALM

CHOCKTUB6

MAY 16 WHO THE HELL LET THE KID INTO THE HOT TUB BOY BE CAREFUL OF THE GUY BEHIND YOU HELL WANT TO SHOW YOU HIS THINGS YOU CAN LEAVE YOUR HAT ON TO

CHOCKTUB

MAY 19 I THOUGHT CATS DIDNT LIKE WATER THAT SNEEKY BASTARD @SOCKINGTON IS PROBABLY GOING AFTER MY WHINE

CHOCKTUB

May 21st Looks like Twitter’s avatar uploading is broken. Again.

MAY 21 OR MAYBE IT WAS JUST THAT @ATEBITS AND ME BEING IN THE SAME TUB WAS TO HOTT TO HANDLE

MAY 21 IN MORE IMPORTANT NEWS TWITTER FIXED THERE SERVER SO THE CACTUS FITS IN THE HOTT TUB AND @GRUBER THOUGHT SITTING IN MY LAP WAS PRICKLY

CHOCKTUB

MAY 29 SO ITS BIKINIS ON MONDAY AND WOLFS SHIRTS ON TUESDAYS WHAT ARE WE GOING TO WEAR THE REST OF THE WWDC WHEN WERE NOT IN THE HOTT TUB

MAY 29 AN IMPORTANT AVATER UPDATE IS NOT WORKING AND NO IM NOT WEARING A BIKINI IN IT BUT ITS BETTER

MAY 31 HEY HEY IT LOOKS LIKE THAT FOXY @TJW DUDE LOST HIS HAT ON THE WAY TO THE HOTT TUB AND WHAT THE HELL DOES INMO MEAN http://twitpic.com/59r88

CHOCKTUB

JUN 3 WHO LET THE DOGS OUT THIS HOTT TUBB IS FULL OF PARTY ANIMALS NOW MOOF MOOF MOOF MOOF http://bit.ly/QNz2G AND DONT SPILL MY WHINE

CHOCKTUB

JUN 4 I LOVE TO CUDDLE WITH TEDDY BEARS ESPECIALLY IN THE HOTT TUBB WONDER WHO LET HIM OFF THE FARM IN THAT KEEWEE COUNTRY

CHOCKTUB

JUN 4 OH CRAP ANOTHER BEAR SHOWED UP BUT THIS ONES CANADAIAN AND HES GOT HIS EYES ON MY DRINK HES ALMOST A FRENCHIE TO

CHOCKTUB

JUN 5 WHOA SOMEONE AND THERE ROCK HARD ASS JUST SHOWED UP IN THE HOTT TUBB NEVER SEEN SUCH FANCY SWIM TRUNKS EITHER WHAT AN PARTY ANIMAL

CHOCKTUB

JUN 5 THE HOTT TUBB IS GETTING SO FULL WERE ONLY ALLOWING SUBATOMIC PARTICLES FROM THE HARDON COLLIDER MAYBE HIS EXISTENCE PROOFS THE THEORY

CHOCKTUB

JUN 5 @Curvyboom YOU CHICKS SPEND ALL YOUR TIME ON FACEBOOK PLANNING LUNCH AND WAITING IN LINE FOR THE TOILET NO TIME TO PARTY WITH US ANIMALS

JUN 6 WITH ALL THE CHICKS SHOWING UP FOR WWDC I KNEW ONE OF THEM WOULD TRY TO SNEAK INTO THE HOTT TUBB GOOTEN MORGEN MINE FRAULINE ICH HABEN CHOCK

CHOCKTUB

JUN 6 IT LOOKS LIKE SOMEONE WITH A TELETYPE SHOWED UP TO THE HOTT TUBB ID KICK HIM OUT BUT HIS PALMS LOOK DELICIOUSLY FLESHY

CHOCKTUB

JUN 6 @dsandler ITS EASY TO EXPLAIN JUST SAY THAT ITS PINK AND WARM

JUN 7 ANOTHER DAY ANOTHER CHICK IN THE HOTT TUBB SHES ALMOST AS PINK AS I AM AND I THINK SHES LAUGHING AT US NOT WITH US WONDER IF SHES MARRIED

CHOCKTUB

JUN 7 @AmyJane ILL MAKE SURE TO WHISPER POPS IN HIS EAR WHEN WE HAVE OUR ANUAL SNUGGLE

JUN 8 YOU LOSERS WHO DIDNT COME OVER TO THE YERBO BUENO HOTT TUBB MISSED OUR SURPRIZE GUEST DURING THE KEYNOTE @GRUBER WAS SO EXCITED HE PEED

CHOCKTUB

JUN 9 ITS GOT SO CROWDED IN THE HOTT TUBB LAST NIGHT I HAD SOME GOLDEN GATES INSTALLED SO YOU CAN ALL LEAVE NOW

CHOCKTUB

JUN 10 SOMEONE TURNED UP THE HEAT ON THE HOTT TUBB LAST NIGHT AND IM STILL FEELING A BIT WOOZY ALSO SEEING GRUBER SWEAT IS NASTY

JUN 10 OOOOOOHHH FUZZY BALLS ARE TICKLING MY NOSE IN THE HOTT TUBB AFTER FREE BEER AT THE MAC WORLD

CHOCKTUB

JUN 11 YEAH ITS TRUE I MAY BE GETTING OUT OF THE HOTT TUBB TO PERFORM AT A BASH WORKING OUT DETAILS WITH THE LAWYERS

JUN 11 FRICKEN LAWYERS WONT MEAT MY DEMANDS FOR THE YERBO BUENO SHOW MAY HAVE TO GET A FAMILY MEMBER TO DO IT STAY TUNED FOR OFFICIAL CHOCK ROCK

JUN 11 BTW DONT FOR GET TO USE CHOCKROCK WHEN LOCALIZING FOR JAPAN

JUN 11 IF YOUR LOOKING FOR THE HOTT TUBB ITS CONVENIENTLY LOCATED NEAR THE FOUNTAIN AND KEGS LOOK FOR GRUBER IN HOTT PANTS

JUN 11 YES I AM LIVE TWEETING THE BASH TURN OFF YOUR FRICKEN PHONE SO I GET SIGNAL LOOSER

JUN 11 HOTT TUBB http://yfrog.com/5hgdgtj

HOTT TUBB

JUN 11 CAKE IS BEING SERVED IN THE HOTT TUBB BEER TO

June 12th For me, there will never be a beer bash as special as the one this evening.

JUN 24 AND YOU THOUGHT I WAS JOKING ABOUT MY BUDDY STEVE BEING IN THE HOTT TUBB http://bit.ly/Y8MCf A MAGIC MOMENT

Written on May 26th, 2010 for Miscellaneous

A lot of typing

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to write a book. Now I know. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but rewarding beyond words.

For those of you asking for PDF or Ebook editions, you can order them now directly from O’Reilly. The printed version will be available in a couple of weeks. The “Look Inside” feature at Amazon.com will give you an idea of what the book covers. I’ve also written an overview of each chapter. (And for those of you who are dying to know, the CHOCKLOCK first appears on page ix.)

If you think you know everything about iPhone development, this book will probably prove you wrong. I learned a lot while writing it, and it’s my sincere hope that you’ll benefit from reading it.

Written on May 4th, 2010 for Miscellaneous

Communal computing

Dear Steve,

First, let me congratulate you and everyone at Apple on the release of the iPad. From my dealings with your company, I know it wasn’t easy. Thanks to everyone for busting their asses: a lot of very complex puzzle pieces came together during those last 60 days!

I recently had an encounter with Bill Atkinson. I told him that “I haven’t had this much fun with a computer since 1984.” He laughed, said “Thanks!”, and went back to working on his iPad app. We, and many other developers like us, are completely smitten with this new device.

After owning an iPad for a little over three weeks, it feels like we’re dealing with something much bigger than that Mac we all got excited about over 25 years ago. I’ve been struggling to define exactly what that is: beyond the technical specifications like the beautiful screen with its large multi-touch surface. Those specifications define what the device can do, but not what it means in our lives. I want to understand the magic.

Last week, much of that meaning came into clearer focus at a birthday party for my brother, niece and nephew (April is birthday month in our family!) My wife had loaded our iPad with photos from a recent trip to see the desert wildflowers in Anza Borrego and my 50th birthday party from the week prior.

Predictably, people’s initial reaction was “Wow, that’s the new iPad!” But that quickly faded as I opened the Photos app and passed the device around. My family was more interested in sharing the photos than talking about the new technology.

I was particularly interested in how my mother, the quintessential technophobe, would react to the device. She picked up on things quickly and was flipping through photos in no time. It astonished me how the interface disappeared for her: at one point she subconsciously licked her finger before “flipping” to the next photo.

As interesting as it was to see someone non-technical use the device, the real eye opener was how several people could interact with the iPad at once. Much of my mother’s fear of computers was overcome because she was looking at the pictures alongside my sister-in-law who helped her out when she got stuck. Learning was organic.

My niece also discovered some of the games I had on the device. One, Abca, was a hit because many people could play it at once. I’ve always played the game by myself and was surprised at how much fun it was to have other people guessing words simultaneously. A group of people transformed the software into something no developer had ever expected.

All of this led to the revelation that we’ve begun a new age of “communal computing.” The desktop revolution centered around empowering individuals: this new revolution will extend that empowerment to groups of people.

The iPad was naturally passed around amongst the partygoers. Many people interacted with it during the evening, and I lost track of who had it at any given time. And therein lies a fundamental problem.

My iPad has a lot of personal information on it: email, business documents, and financial data. When you pass it around, you’re giving everyone who touches it the opportunity to mess with your private life, whether intentionally or not. That makes me uneasy.

It’s hard to fault Apple for this shortcoming. The secrecy of the project undoubtedly limited the amount of group interaction your designers and engineers would experience with their new creation. The social aspects of this device is probably just as much as revelation to them as it is to me.

I can envision several ways to solve this problem: either with a traditional login screen or with something new like folders that require a passcode to open. I have no doubt that your designers can find something elegant that gives me peace of mind as I share my iPad with friends and family.

Thanks for your time and consideration,

Craig Hockenberry

Updated April 30th, 2010: I filed Radar #7922808 for this issue and it was marked as a duplicate of Radar #7584426.

Written on April 29th, 2010 for Design, Miscellaneous, Observation, Personal

An apology…

Until Gizmodo publicly apologizes to Gray Powell, this is going to be in my /etc/hosts and in all of the DNS servers under my control:

127.0.0.1	gizmodo.com
127.0.0.1	www.gizmodo.com
127.0.0.1	m.gizmodo.com
127.0.0.1	gawker.com
127.0.0.1	www.gawker.com
127.0.0.1	m.gawker.com

The person at fault is the shithead who stole the phone, not some overworked engineer drinking beer.

Please vote with your attention and do the same. Thanks!

(Thanks to @sebastianlewis for the idea.)

Update: I can’t believe there are some people defending Gizmodo’s actions. Let’s put the shoe on your foot:

  1. You’re drinking beer with some friends.
  2. You leave your wallet behind at the bar.
  3. Some stranger finds your wallet and opens it up. Inside is a naked picture of your partner.
  4. That stranger finds a website that wants to post the picture and they sell your wallet intact for $1.
  5. Your partner finds their naked body on the Internet. Shit hits the fan. HARD.
  6. The site that posted the pictures looks at the ID in the wallet and calls up with an offer to return the wallet. “Don’t worry, all the money’s still there!”
  7. Then that website posts another article saying how dumb you were for leaving your wallet behind. And instantly millions of people associate your name with a stupid mistake.

How do you feel now?

Update: If you’re the kind of person who forgets that you edited your hosts file, use Marco Arment’s IP address of 66.135.33.106 instead of 127.0.0.1.

Update: For those of you who don’t feel comfortable with the Terminal, here’s a Cocoa application that runs an AppleScript to block Gizmodo. Thanks @digdog!

Written on April 19th, 2010 for Miscellaneous

Benchmarking in your lap

It’s been a little over 2½ years since I last looked at the performance of Apple’s mobile devices. A lot has changed with the software and hardware since then, let’s take a look at how the new iPad compares to the devices we’re more familiar with.

Native performance

Test iPad/3.2 iPhone 3GS/3.0 Faster by
100,000 iterations 0.000035 secs. 0.000137 secs. 3.91x
10,000 divisions 0.000010 0.000018 1.8x
10,000 sin(x) calls 0.000012 0.000018 1.5x
10,000 string allocations 0.004321 0.007915 1.83x
10,000 function calls 0.000338 0.000600 1.78x

This first benchmark compares the native performance of the iPad against the iPhone 3GS. The version of the iPhone OS is the one originally released with both devices (3.2 and 3.0, respectively.) The application used to test the devices was a release (optimized) build for ARM v7.

On average, the iPad is about twice as fast as the iPhone 3GS when executing native (Cocoa Touch) applications. Great news for developers, because it gives us much more flexibility when creating our apps.

JavaScript performance

Test iPad/3.2 iPhone 3GS/3.0 Faster by
100,000 iterations 0.011 secs. 0.017 secs. 1.55x
10,000 divisions 0.006 0.012 2.00x
10,000 sin(x) calls 0.009 0.024 1.85x
10,000 string allocations 0.007 0.017 2.43x
10,000 function calls 0.005 0.006 1.20x

Oddly, the same 2x improvement is not seen for the same benchmarks when executing JavaScript code in web pages. Again, the iPad with 3.2 is compared against the iPhone 3GS with 3.0. Things have definitely improved, but there was a wide variation in results when performing the tests. I suspect that just-in-time compilation or other similar types of caching are affecting the results.

The raw numbers really don’t matter anyway: the browser experience on the iPad is exceptional (and will only get better.)

Native performance: Original iPhone vs. iPad

Test iPad/3.2 iPhone/2.0 Faster by
100,000 iterations 0.000035 secs. 0.015 secs. 428x
10,000 divisions 0.000010 0.004 400x
10,000 sin(x) calls 0.000012 0.105 8,750x
10,000 string allocations 0.004321 0.085 20x
10,000 function calls 0.000338 0.004 12x

The most remarkable change is when you compare the original iPhone to the iPad. Using the numbers from my original tests and the results above reveals an improvement of several orders of magnitude in just over 2½ years. I believe the technical term for this is “Holy crap!”

Note: I don’t remember if the original tests were optimized builds, or if it was even possible to get gcc to do them with a jailbreak toolchain. Even if they weren’t optimized like the current tests, the performance increases are still stunning.

All-in-all, a remarkable achievement by Apple’s engineers, especially when you consider that the battery life of these devices has gone up, rather than down.

iPad hardware

When using sysctl() to query the amount of memory available to the iPhone OS, the following values are reported:

Kind Bytes Megabytes
Physical (HW_PHYSMEM) 258,998,272 247 MB
User (HW_USERMEM) 210,284,544 200.5 MB

Again, it’s likely that the device is using 256 MB memory chips with a portion of the total being used for other purposes, such as video memory. Also, developers have noted that all of the 200 MB of user memory is not available for use by apps. The OS and background apps make use of a large portion of that memory.

And last, and unfortunately least, we have the CPU speed reported by sysctl() using HW_CPU_FREQ. It’s zero: the A4 chip is truly magical. I guess that means we have to trust the spec sheet :-)

So hats off to the engineers in Cupertino: the iPad is an inspiring achievement no matter how you benchmark it!

P.S. Check out Twitterrific for iPad to see how we’re putting this processing power to use with our first app for this new platform.

P.S.S. If you’d like to perform these tests on your own, I invite you to download PantsTest.zip.

Written on April 3rd, 2010 for Miscellaneous
Newer
Older