Rubénerd!

I finally got around to updating iTunes to 10.4 this evening. Unlike Firefox 5 to Firefox 6, the difference in performance is like night and day!

iTunes wasn't always bad

Before even getting my first iPod, I first started using iTunes on my beautiful blueberry iMac DV with Mac OS 9. While Winamp (and XMMP) allowed you to generate playlists, they were shoehorned into a relatively small window in an application that otherwise still attempted to emulate the appearance of a physical sound deck and amplifier. Speaking of which, remember those SoundBlaster "Deck" applications for Windows 3.1? Those were the days ;).

By comparison to these, iTunes put the playlists front and centre in a large, easy to navigate window with controls optimised for computer screens. It was dead simple to use, and as a bonus it kept all your media organised on your hard drive automatically. No more unwieldly folders of MP3s!

A couple of years later I got my black and white 15GB iPod 3G (which I still use!) and was able to sync my music with my growing collection of (ahem) legally obtained media on iTunes, ironically faster than even my iPhone 4 can today with its inclusion of a FireWire cable. As is generally the case with Apple, it Just Worked™.

People only buy Apple stuff because of advertising

Over time, we moved to Mac OS X, and Apple released Windows users from that awful RealPlayer application by releasing a version for their platform. Remember RealPlayer? Sometimes when we talk about how Microsoft and some open source software projects can't design graphically pleasing and easy to use software, it pays to remember software like that!

Ironically, starting with version 5 (from my own memory), iTunes began to be the victim of its own success. With each iPod iteration, the application took on more roles to accommodate them, and the Carbon codebase which had enabled the transition from Mac OS 9 was starting to let it down, big time. As I said in October 2010 when it was really starting to get ridiculous:

Oh and by the way Apple, when are we getting a Cocoa version of iTunes?

What was once a nimble and usable application turned into a sluggish mess, so much so that applications were released specifically to allow people to not have to interact with it. And people (like me) paid for them!

Some iTunes KL nostalgia from January 2007 ;)

Today

I belabour all this to put into context just how thrilled and happy (both!) I am with iTunes 10.4. Despite running on a 8 core Mac Pro with 6GiB of RAM, the previous iTunes simply couldn't handle scrolling through 40,000+ tracks. Changing metadata on multiple tracks used to be agonisingly slow, and adding new content even slower.

The new version is fast. Everything is instant. The window resizes without artefacting or jittering. It has visual consistency with other apps again. Hallelujah!

I'm sure I speak for all Mac users when I thank the iTunes team from the bottom of my heart, and ask them what the heck took them so long!

In a worrying trend, it seems Apple will be furthering Facebook integration this time with iTunes. MacRumours is hardly an impartial source on such matters, but that ratio above doesn't look too favourable.

Look, Apple, I love you man, but instead of all these gimmicky features that introduce serious privacy and security concerns for a website people won't be using in a few years, why not focus on making the software run smoother? I've been using iTunes since version 1 on Mac OS 9 and it keeps getting worse; it's the only software other than the Firefox 3.5 series that can frequently crash my Mac.

I understand you have two concurrent code bases to maintain and in that context it makes sense to keep using C++ and Carbon for this reason, but when you start to hear people complaining about using an iPhone because the otherwise easy to use iTunes software is bloated and slow, you know you have a problem.

I really, really hope you either have plans for a native Cocoa version or have one running in house along with these silly new features.

I just updated iTunes to 9.1, seems they're gearing up for the iPad release because my "Audiobooks" library is now a subheading in a new library called "Books". Wonder how many long years it'll take for books to be available in Australia and/or Singapore?

Oh and by the way Apple, when are we getting a Cocoa version of iTunes? I run Ecuote and Exaile, the latter of which is a GTK+ X11 app and it's still faster and more reliable.

UPDATE: I wonder if I can start dragging ePub books into this now? That'd be really, really, really cool!

First of all I want to congratulate everyone over at Mozilla for the stellar and record breaking release of Firefox 3. Back when I was a Windows user I was an avid user of Phoenix (the original name) and eagerly awaited with almost fanatical excitement when newer beta releases were released. I'm extremely pleased that there is such a vibrant, usable, free and open source alternative to commercial web browsers on so many different platforms, especially Internet Explorer.

Wait, this isn't Firefox 3...

All this said though, and after upgrading Firefox to version 3 on my MacBook Pro this morning, I'm still typing this entry using Camino. Camino is a free, open source web browser for Mac OS X that uses the same Gecko rendering engine that Firefox does. As usual Wikipedia provides the most succinct description for the software for those who don't know what the heck I'm talking about:

Camino (Spanish for way/path) is a free, open source, GUI-based Web browser based on Mozilla's Gecko layout engine (also used by Mozilla Firefox) and specifically designed for the Mac OS X operating system.

In heindsight, that Wikipedia quote really didn't add much to my own initial explanation. Mental note: don't add superfluous and useless quotes to weblog posts any more.

Life is a big old circle. There is no beginning, and there is no end. That's because in a circle there isn't a beginning and there isn't an end. And if you had any brains at all, you'd understand that!

Jimbob Kloss, Whole Wheat Radio

It's probably more to do with me being set in my ways or preferring to use what I'm most used to, but Camino to me still provides the best Mac web browsing experience, full stop. This isn't to say I haven't been tempted by other offerings. In my /Applications folder I can count no less than eight web browsers including Camino, Shiira, Safari, Konqeuror, Mozilla Firefox, SeaMonkey (I still see if it can replace Thunderbird, but it doesn't... for another post) and the PowerPC version of Internet Explorer, for testing how my sites render.

If you use VICE with a virtual VICMODEM it would count right?

What makes me keep coming back for more Caminoish goodness is... it's good for me. I'm serious, I don't rip any hair out of my head when I use Camino. That's a big plus in my book. For me it also excels in several critical areas:

Interface

Camino, like Safari and Shiira uses Mac OS X's native Aqua GUI framework instead of Mozilla's XUL to draw the elements on the screen (save for the textboxes). This means it works like a Mac application, feels like a Mac application and has all the interface cues we're used to... because it is a real Mac application! Firefox may have Mac-like skins available, but it does show through that it's been hacked together in many places, such as the tab bar, preference panes and window controls.

Loading time

Again because it uses Aqua and is a smaller executable, Camino loads with just a few "dock bounces" on my iBook G3 and my original generation Core Duo MacBook Pro compared to the 7-12 bounces to load Firefox each time. I've read it argued that Camino loads faster because it's simply less extensible than Firefox with plugins, but with my version of Camino absolutely loaded with plugins and add-ons from PimpMyCamino.com I question how much that latter reason can really be relied upon as an explanation for performance.

Integration

As I discovered in an earlier post, Camino uses Mac OS X's keychain to store your passwords, in the same way Safari does. According to the Camino site it also uses the native Mac Bonjour system to discover bookmarks, though I haven't ever needed to use that feature.

Icon

Camino has the most slick web browser icon (view the image I posted above). This is a critical point and one which must not be ignored for it speaks not only for... ah I can't pull it off.

All this isn't to say that Camino is perfect for everyone or isn't without faults, but from my experience it's still the best darn Mac browser. I know I've said this numerous times already; it shows how much I believe it to be true.

Older Camino posts

• 2008.05.28: Uncover lost passwords in Camino
• 2007.10.28: Making Camino look like a Leopard app
• 2007.10.21: Camino runs rings around Firefox
• 2006.12.08: HSBC doesn't like Camino!

AFTERWORD (is that a word?): After submitting this post I got a very helpful comment from Gedeon at the IconFactory who helped to explain why I was getting these errors and possible remedies.

As it turns out the cynical conclusion I came to about my computer preventing me from becoming too addicted to Twitter by forcing me not to use it as much... was ironically accurate! As it turns out Twitter itself has a limit to the number of accesses to their site you can make in a given period of time, and obviously with Twitterrific running on my Mac, TwitBin running on Firefox on FreeBSD and m.twitter.com on my phone I consistently overshoot my allowed number.

Twitterrific is a native Mac OS X application that displays tweets you and your friends have posted on Twitter, the microblogging site that I am hopelessly addicted to and post to almost every hour of every day.

Well I was having no end of trouble with the 2.x series of it on Mac OS X Leopard which is understandable considering it was written originally for Tiger, the latest version seems only to have added advertising and not fixed the endless stream of Twitter Errors that seem to always sit as the first post:

ASIDE: That advertisement for Camino popped up just before I took the screenshot. As you might have already read, Camino is my favourite web browser on Mac... how ironic!

I've tried allowing the Twitterrific app in the new Leopard firewall settings panel and have checked all my other networking settings but it still shows these errors constantly. To get a version without advertisements you have to pay $20.00, but I want to know that what I pay for actually works :(.

Anyone else had problems running Twitterrific on Leopard? I tried running Snitter as an alternative, but uninstalled it because it was giving me even more problems. Does my beloved MacBook Pro think I'm wasting too much time on Twitter and is trying to stop me posting to it? Is it an intervention on my computer's part? That's probably the reason!

I've been looking for a good, thick tome to work through to help me learn the Objective C programming language. Just like Ruby, I like the fact Objective C was also inspired from Smalltalk and given my past (icky) experience with C++ and the fact I run Mac OS X and FreeBSD (which has the GNU compilers) I figured it would be a cool language to work on for another study project, and gosh it just looks like a really interesting computer language. Girls love it when I talk like that you see.

Alas, Singapore seems to have as many books on Objective C as elephants have tails. Wait, elephants do have tails. That was a stupid comparison.

Anyway I've searched at Borders, Kinokuniya, Times, Popular... and nobody has anything other than For Dummies books on basic Cocoa development. My personal preference is the O'Reilly book series simply because I remember having lots of fun learning Perl and Python from their books back when I was in high school and I like their format. The Dummies series were fun to learn Visual Basic from back when I was in primary, but these days they seem to chatty to me.

I know I'm probably being really picky, but everyone learns in different ways and I find O'Reilly books to click with me the best. So it begs the question, does anyone know of any good places to buy O'Reilly books (or books that follow a similar style) on Objective C in Singapore?

My next try will be to go to that really good computer book shop in Funan Centre, I'm hoping they might have a better range that some of the generic chains. Or I could renew my subscription to Safrai Books Online, I'm sure they'd have some good material.

Today for a quick break from studies and work I decided once again to download the latest Mozilla Firefox for Mac and install it, and once again after half an hour it was wiped off my drive. Fact is, I've been spoiled completely by Camino.

It's no secret to anyone that Firefox is slow on Mac. In a time where virtually every other Mac app has been written to use the Cocoa widgets or even Qt, Firefox (and unfortunately Thunderbird) still use the OS 9 era throwback Carbon widgets which really shows. The graphics and user interface in Firefox look tired and outdated, whereas the graphics and user interface on Camino look polished... and damn it Camino looks like a real Mac app.

Those complaints aside though, using Firefox today on Mac reminded me once again why I stopped using it: the scroll speed is abysmal. Despite the fact I have a MacBook Pro which you can use the two finger motion on the touch pad to scroll I still prefer to use the keyboard arrow keys, and using these there's a noticeable lag. I'd guess that Firefox scrolls at almost half the speed that both Camino or Safari do.

Not to mention the fact that Firefox on idle with one tab open somehow manages to use so much more RAM than Camino (or even Safari) do:

According to Wikipedia Gecko 1.9 will support native Cocoa widgets which should close this gap, then I'll be able to use all the wicked Firefox plugins. Until then, I'll continue using Camino, as I have for years.

Smultron is an open source text editor for Mac OS X written by Peter Borg, and I must say I'm impressed with it. Simple code editing on individual files is a snap, and the sidebar is much more elegant than an entire row of confusing tabs.

I'm currently a TextMate on my MacBook Pro user mainly because of convenience. For one thing the projects are easy to set up and are in XML (which I've been told I have a borderline perverse obsession with), and from one Bundles menu I can select the language I'm coding in and I have all the actions and properties I need. Smultron does have Project like functionality, and it does have a code colouring menu which actually supports far more syntax rules than TextMate, but it doesn't have the other functionality for individual languages.

I don't think it's fair though to compare TextMate and Smultron head on, because I use them for different things. Editing individual text files which have little in common with each other is obviously easier in Smultron because of TextMate's maddening lack of tab support for files that aren't a part of the same project, but TextMate is more useful for managing entire projects, such as Ruby on Rails site or a graphical Java Swing programme. If you've used Mac OS X for a while, I like to think of TextMate as a replacement for Xcode, and Smultron as a replacement for TextEdit. Sort of.

From a polish point of view, TextMate's icons are certainly much slicker than Smultron's default ones, though Gaetan Ark has released the original icons for Smultron he designed as a separate file you can use to patch your Smultron.app file.

Like a true open source gentleman Peter doesn't ask outright for money, but he does have a donation page if you find his program useful. When I get my POSB MasterCard thingy I'll definably put some bread in the jar. Even though I'm not a Piano Man.

Some basic screenshots of some crappy Ruby and Perl scripts I whipped up to demonstrate the syntax support. Ignore the date, as of May I'm still typing 2006 on everything.

As for my FreeBSD machine though, nothing beats Kate!