Macworld 2006!

Excited and a little scared I headed over toward Apple.com after school today to meet a very unfamiliar gadget gawking at me: iPhone. The black, touch-screen PDA-esque toy looks a little different from simple and white Apple things we’ve seen in the past. But as an entering college student, what do Apple’s announcements mean to me?

Initially, not much. Steve Jobs said little about the future of the Mac, but rather focused on new Apple entertainment products such as Apple TV and the iPhone. What about iLife ‘07 and iWork ‘07? I’ve seen the Amazon skeletons, so they must be in the works. But I have always expected a fresh new version of iLife/iWork at the beginning of the year. After reading an article on Macworld, the editors made a great point that the next edition of the iWorld could be Leopard-dependent, and since Steve was using things in Keynote that are clearly not present in the ‘06, then that means he must have been using a Leopard machine. Good news for any skeptics.

But what about Apple TV and iPhone? The iPhone looks like a major seller and will definitely help Apple, but I probably won’t be picking one up since I really don’t have that kind of money to spend on cell phones. But Apple TV is a much different story. $300? A decent price in my opinion. But if I can somehow figure up a way to rig up my TiVo to do all these things (it can already do the photos and music), then there will be no need.

And the Beatles on iTunes is pretty cool. But overall, merely mediocre announcements that have made me even more antsy.

Ruby on Rails => My New Girlfriend

Ruby on Rails is fantastic. That’s probably the greatest way to describe it. For years, I have stuck my nose briefly into about every programming language known to nerd, starting with Python and ending in Objective-C. Ruby was found somewhere in there, a long time ago. After each and every failure, I usually respond to the situation by promising myself to never program (or try to program) again. But this is different. I have always claimed to hate Web apps, swearing by NetNewsWire and Mail.app rather than Newsgator and Gmail. There’s just something about Ruby that I always liked, and I love Backpack. What makes it great is it’s simplicity–something the Mac usually leads the race in.

I started my little adventure by roaming around the net like Babe the pig in the big city, and then I came across the Rails website. Hmmm, how great. But see the problem was, I am lazy. I am too lazy to install MySQL. Too lazy to get PHP to run. Too lazy to update my Ruby distribution, then install Rails…Just lazy. Lazy is a trait of mine. When all hope seemed lost, I came across MAMP, a great little Mac app that runs a MySQL database and Apache server right from within your Applications folder. The thing I love about it is there is almost no configuration, you just hit “Start the Servers!”, and they start! Well, sorta. I fucked around with MySQL for like two hours, and it wouldn’t work. Finally, I rebooted to clear out what processes were running, and sure enough there it went…Now onto Rails!

Rails was pretty easy, too. I went the lazy route again, and found myself another little friend named Locomotive. Locomotive is the exact same thing as MAMP, only it does Rails. They work together well, except for one little thing. Try as I did, I could not get my Rails apps to connect to MySQL server. So, if you have this problem too. Do what I did. Open your app folder, go into config, then open database.yml. In your development setup enter this:

socket: /Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock

That took me hours to figure out. I’m an idiot. Anyway, now I am watching videos and reading tutorials, and making all kinds of things. Scaffolding is such a great concept. It really is. Cocoa was great, but Rails has won my heart. Plus, like the dudes from SubEthaEdit, the developers have German accents. And everyone knows Germans kick ass. Literally.

A Review of Sherlock: An Old Friend

This is probably the most outdated post I will write in a very long time, but this is an issue that makes me very sad: Sherlock. Old Sherlock is an old friend of mine, and the veteran Mac user. Sherlock was the Spotlight of OS 8.5 (straight 1999, fool), and is still included on your Mac even though the average person either ignores it, deletes it, or laughs at it. But Sherlock kicks ass. Sherlock is seriously Apple’s way of doing a lot of basic internet tasks, such as finding movie times, checking stock prices, reading the news (okay even I have switched to RSS for this one, but Sherlock is second-best), looking at AppleCare documents, and last but not least, doing eBay. Apple has since given us plenty of replacements for the old chap: Dashboard, a built-in dictionary, RSS in Safari, etcetera. Third-party developers fill in the gaps with apps such as iSale. But some things just can’t beat a tested, proven solution. I am unsure of what I believe Apple will do with Sherlock in the coming months, with Leopard and Intel on everyone’s mind. I am almost positive Sherlock is a Carbon application, which makes it considerably more difficult to port to an Universal binary than if it were a Cocoa app. However, if Apple does decide to abandon the aged gentleman, I am pretty sure they will do it quietly and put him to rest with the rest of the PowerPC golden boys. But onto the issue at hand, my love and review of Apple’s Sherlock 3. (3.6.1, if you’re that picky).

The best way I could think of doing this review is to give examples. I have chosen three tasks that I use Sherlock for constantly, and I have found its competitors (inside Apple and out). This will give you three good reasons to try out Sherlock, and three good reasons to mourn it’s loss if the day comes.

Movies: Finding good films, show times, and theatres
A great medal on Sherlock’s coat is it’s movie channel, which is designed very intelligently for its time. In this example, I have chosen the movie Clerks II, out of movies available in theatres within miles and miles of my city. I can then pick the theatre, and the time. I can read a review and watch the trailer, as well as find out how long it is and look at how super hot Rosario Dawson is on the poster. Kick ass, if you ask me. Of course you can do this on a ton of sites, and Google can even find times for you. But it’s just not the same. These sites just aren’t designed as elegantly as Sherlock is, and they sure don’t have the speed. Sherlock has most of this information cached I think, and updates when you select the Movies channel. To find times with Google, you must know the specific movie you want to see. Sherlock lets me browse and pick a great movie out of every one available to me. In a nutshell, the design and ease-of-use beats the rest.

And this design isn’t going anywhere. Sherlock’s movie channel is probably years in age. Let’s look at Blockbuster’s as-of-yet unreleased, “new” Blockbuster Online design. Look familiar?

eBaying away, the Apple way
Dude, Sherlock owns when it comes to searching and tracking auctions on eBay. I use this thing constantly. I have never really looked at the competition for this, because I have never had any problems. I can’t imagine anything that could top Sherlock’s method of doing eBay as it’s just so much easier than going to eBay.com to look for items. eBay is pretty slow for me, everything just seems so “clunky”. Sherlock condenses each auction down to it’s plain text title so it can display so many more auctions, and when clicked you get all the photos and auction details just as you would in eBay.com. Sherlock can’t sell things on eBay though, for that you go to iSale.

Translating for homework
Dashboard had this feature from the beginning, but myself and plenty others found it to be so slow. I realize translating phrases is a complicated process, but it doesn’t take that long. Sherlock does exactly what the Dashboard clone does, but it does better, faster, and in my cases more accurately. Websites like Babel offer solutions for translation as well, but I have never found them as quickly accessible as good ole’ Sherlock.

Admittingly, this review doesn’t take into consideration the fact that with Sherlock’s age, there comes a lack of support. Anyone can make a Sherlock channel, and plenty of people used to. However, with the days of widgetry and RSS, there doesn’t seem to be much of a demand. Slowly over time I forsee Sherlock’s usefulness to me to decline, as the web evolves into 2.0, but until then Sherlock is a necessity for me as a Mac and internet user. It has helped me throughout the years with buying, learning, and enjoying life, and I desperately wish to see a Sherlock 4 in Mac OS 10.5. But I am more than ready, and expecting, to see Sherlock fade away with Classic support and IBM processors. So while you still can, bust Sherlock out and try it out.