I thought the most interesting part was his wish list at the end.
"I wish my MacBook had built-in 3G capabilities, I wish it was easier to type on my iPad, I wish Chrome was a better browser, I wish SABnzbd+ was smart enough to not re-download files, I wish my iPhone was faster, I wish I didn’t need a dongle to do a presentation with my MacBook, I wish Boxee didn’t crash so much, I wish my car accepted audio input, I wish Dropbox could backup my Google Docs and Mail."
I tried it a few months back, I didn't end up using it. I felt like it was unnecessary, I rather focus on one app than two. I stuck with sabnzbd+ & nzbs.org, after newzbin was taken over.
I actually have SABnzbd running on my low-power NAS, while ~XBMC is running on a dedicated machine with dedicated GPU. I find it advantageous to run the lower power NAS 24/7 and only crank up the graphics-heavy front-end when something needs to be displayed.
Regarding typing on the iPad, a thumbs layout keyboard as previewed in this Windows 8 video would be great - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13628154 (skip to 00:40). Is there anything like this for iPad now?
The split layouts are meant for when you're holding the tablet. If you've got it on a table or such, you're going to find a traditional layout much more usable. SwiftKey has a toggle button for split/solid on the main keyboard because of this.
OH dear god. Split thumb-keyboard is horrible. Why would I want to make the keyboard any smaller? I used it once on the iPad and that was enough. Ever again.
> I thought the most interesting part was his wish list at the end.
Yes, well. I always thought it was really dumb for cars to not accept audio input. I mean, why? but why? and most importantly: since when will we, users, let those machine makers dictate the way we have to use their tools?
My car is a cheap minivan, but I HAVE external audio input, and use it 100% of the time.
It is the same with iTune: why can't I delete audio files? I am a grown-up, please let me delete files I want to delete.
Letting other people control your environment drives me crasy. It is very strange to see so many devs like Resig using more and more Apple Inc products. We devs shouldn't we not being in full control of our tools? Dear Mr Resig, what is GNU/Linux for you? Why is it not in the landscape? jQuery is open, right? Don't you care being trapped in a closed garden? Do you agree with the fact that iPhone software must be developped on iX machines using iY IDE, plugged together with iZ cables, all from one manufacturer?
Apple sure have their downsides, but compared to Linux OSX is just the better Desktop Operating system if you want stuff to just work to get your stuff done.
I sure want to get my stuff done, but not to the cost of loosing control on what software I should use, in what format , etc.
I would suggest my mother to buy Apple products, either phone or laptop, and maybe also to my sister if she does a lot of photo or video editing. But for developpers, what can't you do with Linux?
It takes only a day or so of saved time over 2 years to justify the increased cost of buying a Mac for me. It pays for itself numerous times over by not having to fuss about with sound/video drivers, printers just working when I'm on a client site, etc.
I'm not sure what you're getting about about losing control, formats, etc. I use Pixelmator for image manipulation (even after all these years, Gimp just doesn't cut it), Inkscape for vector illustration, vim for code, Spotify for music. Apple haven't curbed my ability to do anything based on that list.
I just used a Grom adapter to add bluetooth to my 1999 daily driver. It doesn't have whizzy features like voice dialing and A2DP audio quality is not excellent but, for podcasts, pop music, and phone calls, it's great.
Very interesting, I'll have to check into that! I use a Griffin FM transmitter right now, works OK, but has frequent problems with competing radio stations.
Definitely get yourself a car radio that has Bluetooth audio man.
Once you hear the music from your device coming on your car speakers with out the need for wires you'll never go back.
Whats interesting that I learned about it once I got one came from the way I bought it. I made sure that it had a usb, a 3.5 mm jack, and bluetooth.
USB - sound quality is best but you have to use the radio user interface to interact with your device and play music, a ui which is terrible. Also on my HTC EVO the USB port doesn't stay connected reliably
3.5mm - not noticeably above radio quality still needs another cord
Bluetooth - better than radio quality audio (though not quite as good as the usb), no interference and no wires. I use this most of the time as not having to hassle with wires or the usb disconnecting interrupting the music is great.
ipod - Also almost forgot, if you use an ipod for your music most car radios nowadays have a special mode for them and the audio quality is awesome. (Like crazy almost CD if not CD quality awesome)
I have a Griffin device and you can set them into "international mode" which lets you transmit on frequencies that aren't used by US radio. It works great for me, this review appears to contain instructions for your particular device: http://www.amazon.com/review/R26BNQ42BQKKE9/ref=cm_cr_rdp_pe...
Because (with few exceptions) you lose steering wheel controls and thieves become a lot more interested in smashing your windows. Also, my radio is nonstandard size and the adapters are fuuugly.
Wow, I just bought a late model VW Golf and didn't want to spring for the factory bluetooth upgrade (500+ AUD). I'm definitely going to look at this more later tonight! Thanks for the tip.
I used a cheapo Grom unit just to add the aux audio, although this depends on the car model. The instructions were terrible, but the internet provided.
There are all kinds of kits for adding an iPod input to Honda Accords. I installed one and it does a good job. Isn't the solution pretty heavily contingent on knowing what kind of car he has though?
This is the programmers' version of the celebrity clothing/bags pages with the latest trends : )
At the end of the day, use what makes you happy not because a programmer rock-star is using it.
Disclaimer: I love apple products developing on the .NET framework, it may be ironic that up until last week I was running win7 on a macbook pro to develop for WP7 :)
A little, but not really. I've learned about a number of really useful tools that I use every day now from usethis articles. Clothing is just clothing after all, but tools make my life easier and help me become a better programmer.
John is one of the most on to it people i've ever met.
He arrived in NZ after a delayed, long flight from the US and went from the airport to a presentation (to over 400 people) without fault.
He'd already adjusted his sleep patterns to match NZ time.
BitTorrent does have many legal uses (it is used to distribute World of Warcract, Linux distros, independent music/movies, et cetera) but there are also many private trackers designed specifically for the illegal distribution of copyrighted materials. If you admit you are a heavy user of one of those, you practically admit to participating in this.
Similarly, USENET is completely legal, and there isn't anything intrinsically wrong with binary newsgroups either, but NZBs.org and Newzbin specialize in illegal content distribution. If you have a subscription to a site like Giganews and need a tool like SABnzbd+ to automate the downloading process then you aren't an incidental user either.
So let's not play games; we both know how the internet works. "There might be one or two legal-to-distribute files on that site." or "Filesharing may not be illegal in his jurisdiction." are good points to bring up in a court case, but in reality we both know what it means when you are "running SABnzbd+ [..] connecting to Giganews [..] pulling from NZBs.org or Newzbin". It's sad that that throwaway240 is downvoted for just explicitly stating it.
Even if these tools are commonly used for suspicious activity, in a legal context simply stating that you use them does not constitute evidence of any wrongdoing. The former does not simply mean the latter; rather, it is speculation on your part. Whether or not it has a probabilistic basis is irrelevant.
There are many examples where this is true: BitTorrent/P2P (this is actually far more prominent than you'd think; a trendy example is Spotify), BitCoin, Usenet, Tor, Metasploit, any anonymous network, et al.
This isn't a legal context - it's Hacker News. I think we are all intelligent enough to realize & accept that John is almost certainly using SABnzbd to download copyrighted material.
It doesn't matter if we do. The original question was if he just openly admitted to illegally downloading copyrighted material, and the answer is he didn't.
It's sad that people have to hide their actions. Downloading copyrighted material is legally in the clear in .us and his particular setup sounds highly oriented towards downloads, not uploads.
Additionally, as somebody that highly seeds Linux distros through torrents, I'd like you to go back to your Jump to Conclusions mat.
They could probably swing it in court as similar to knowingly purchasing counterfeit goods, which I'm pretty sure is illegal. Thus far they're only going after people for uploading because: 1) it's less of a legal grey area and 2) the huge monetary damages serve as a warning while going to prison would probably seem too harsh, even for people that think side with the RIAA/MPAA.
If you are using bittorrent, you are almost certainly uploading.
I'm also not sure that they never prosecuted anyone for downloading is actually a sufficient amount of evidence that it is legal. I've never heard of anyone get prosecuted for uploading just one song or one movie, that doesn't mean that it would be legal to do so.
I don't know about the U.S., but at least in The Netherlands you are allowed to freely download copyrighted movies and music for personal use. For now, anyway...
Off the top of my head, three things that've bugged me:
I use a ton of tabs in my browser, in Firefox the tabs go off to the side and allow me to scroll through them (while still allowing me to read the title) whereas Chrome squishes the tabs into tiny micro-sized pills that are completely unreadable.
Additionally I use App Tabs in both browsers - but only in Firefox does it highlight when I've received an update (such as a message in Hip Chat or an email in Gmail).
The lack of integrated extensions in Chrome makes for a weaker overall experience. I use PasswordMaker to manage my passwords - works great in Firefox, can enter passwords into any field, but in Chrome it frequently doesn't detect a password field - and since it doesn't have context menu access I can't fill in my password. I end up having to open up Firefox just to get to my password.
So yeah, I still use Firefox for daily browsing, and Chrome for dev.
Chrome does have a notification that a tab has updated, it's a gentle little pulsing light across the tab (granted, maybe there should be an option to make this a colored pulsing light or something)
Hmm... wait, y'know, I just realized that I usually notice it on my Windows machine (though maybe that's because of the semi-transparent chrome)... maybe it doesn't work on OS X though.
Have you tried using tree tabs in Chrome? It isn't quite as slick as the Firefox tree tabs, but still nicer than the little nubs that are the default. That's interesting though, I always do dev stuff in Firefox because of how anemic firebug is in Chrome, and casual surfing in Chrome because it feels faster.
I find the developer tools in chrome actually better than firebug these days. Do you have any specific features that you miss with the current builds of both?
I find they are all lacking in major ways and I have to jump between IE, FireFox, and Chrome. Anyone that swears by a single browser's dev tools isn't making much use of them.
- Only Chrome lets you set a breakpoint on JS event listeners.
- Only IE let's you change the next line of execution in JS.
- You *can't* edit the value of a local variable in the Chrome console!
- Only IE9 & FF search multiple JS files when doing a text find.
- IE doesn't refresh the dev tools representation of the DOM without clicking refresh.
- Only IE has a "format JavaScript" for minimized, obfuscated JS. And it allows you to set breakpoints on the formatted lines!
- Only Chrome has tools for finding memory leaks (see dev channel for big improvements in that).
Minor quibble. The latest versions of chrome(12 onwards) let you de-obfuscate JS code, and set breakpoints in the cleaned up code. Just right click in the source tab pane, and the code get prettified.
Only IE (so far) has lied horribly to me in its debugger: http://cl.ly/012t192A2s3Y1A3b3j3H . How in the world does that happen? For the record, `FireEvent` doesn't exist, but `fireEvent` does.
And then there's the worthless "{...}" object display from the Javascript console...
The horrible "{...}" output for almost everything (and proper callstacks when using named function expressions) are all fixed in IE9. That still puts it dead last for MOST visualizations behind all the other browsers OTHER than IE8, but some things, such as the profiler call tree, are still the best.
I suppose it's mostly layout/look&feel. I actually didn't realize how powerful the built in Chrome developer tools were. Little things, like showing the color or image when you mouse over the hex or link are what make Firebug nicer to use, I think. Is there a way to persist the network tab or console across page loads in Chrome?
yep, they have a persistence button like firebug these days. on the network panel it's the black circle, and the console seems to have it in a settings panel (although I'm on a dev build, I think it's also a button on release build.
agreed about the little things like hovers. I still find that double clicks on image resources in css not opening them in a new tab drives me mad :)
I do love chromes timings panel, with rendering timings. much better for optimizing. and their whole dev tools seem to run a lot quicker for me, firebug I have speed issues with sometimes, especially on complicated js pages.
Well if you use a ton of tabs in Chrome, you can try Vertical Tabs. You would have to add the following to your Chrome shortcut:
-enable-apps -enable-vertical-tabs
Open Chrome, Right Click on a Tab and check on Use Side Tabs.
It eats up a little of your screen real estate but I guess that should be okay as you have a 27" iMac. And you will be able to see the names of every tabs then !!!
It's sort of like TreeStyleTabs, but nowhere near as powerful. With TST, you can configure the placement and look of the tab bar (or autohide it), group tabs into trees that you can collapse/expand/reload/close separate trees, and a number of other nit-picking options and actions that just make it feel right. Side tabs feels like an afterthought in comparison.
I mention this not to hate on Chrome or side tabs, but because I hope one day it will be as good. Once Chrome gets an actual equivalent version of TST and Pentadactyl, I'll happily switch.
I feel like a broken record on this issue, but every few weeks I'll get fed up with something about FF and look to see if Chrome finally has a decent port of this and I'm always disappointed. One day, I hope...
I prefer them to scrolling when there are a lot of tabs open. Although Firefox's expose-style tab candy feature is nice enough that I don't get as many tabs stacking up as I might otherwise.
You should try the vertical tabs option in Chrome's about:flags page. Tabs move to the left side of the window and don't become squished when you have many of them. You can just scroll up and down the stack.
Yes I found this statement interesting too.. wonder what issues he takes with chrome. I find my taste is opposite: firefox for development and chrome for regular browsing.
Not seen the website or concept before but i really like it. Its a very good way of opening people up to new apps and whatnot. I'd like to see more tech celebrities on that site.
I too wish it was easier to write on the iPad, and that multi-tasking was an actual possibility.
- Andrew Warner from Mixergy is the first one that comes to mind.
- Second one is Derek Sivers.
- The guy behind TheOatmeal comic.
- Salman Khan from Khan Academy
They're all very accessible people from experience.
(i realise they're not ALL true techies, but still)
Sadly true. And Plex, the main alternative, crashes as much, but in different ways. No more Front Row in Lion. I think Apple want us to buy Apple Tv...
Also agree about Boxee, though I still love it. Not least because it's the only device in the UK (PS3 with US PS Store account excepted) that offers access to MLB.TV subscription.
That's pretty much 95% of the posts on UsesThis. Which I wrote off at first as being elitist, but the more top tier developers you meet the more you realize that it is actually the norm. The interesting thing is that for those not using a Apple laptop are always on a Lenovo.
I'm working on a infographic, or something along those lines, that shows a breakdown of what it used on UsesThis, but the pie charts are going to mostly be Apple flavored.
I assume the reason they're on a ThinkPad/Lenovo is that there is a well-deserved reputation there for running Linux well.
I recently picked up one of the new Toshiba Portege models to run Linux, and stock Ubuntu is giving me flashbacks to the circa-1999 Linux experience -- it doesn't detect when a monitor appears over HDMI, randomly will run up to 100% and freeze (kernel patch coming soon!), power management settings seem basically ignored with the display dimming when that is both disabled and I'm typing... and the worst part? Mentioned it to the local department Linux people, and they just said, "oh, yeah, you should've bought Thinkpad."
I just got a Thinkpad T420s and almost everything worked right out of the box (Ubuntu 10.04) despite some people having trouble on the forums a few months ago.
Sometimes I have problems getting the display connected to the docking station to detect if I suspend while not connected, then connect, then resume. This is a pretty minor flaw that is fairly easily worked around.
Before switching to Apple laptops, I had several Thinkpads - and would have to say their solidity, reliability and no-frills approach were major factors. I'd probably go Thinkpad again if I needed a non-mac machine.
Another factor represented here is they're popular in the corporate world - I know Adobe is standardized on them for the Windows side and I /think/ Google is too.
When i was young i wanted to know every detail of the configs pro gamers used in quake, tried their settings, bought the mice they used, etc.
Today its the same with top coders, only difference is that i know now that tools alone dont make you great, but still i can always take a thing or two away from such a list.
I wonder if John figured out a solution to the "Home" and "End" keys not working properly in Gmail for Firefox/Mac. This issue is a bit frustrating and compels me to use Chrome. If anyone has a solution for this it would be great.
"I wish my MacBook had built-in 3G capabilities, I wish it was easier to type on my iPad, I wish Chrome was a better browser, I wish SABnzbd+ was smart enough to not re-download files, I wish my iPhone was faster, I wish I didn’t need a dongle to do a presentation with my MacBook, I wish Boxee didn’t crash so much, I wish my car accepted audio input, I wish Dropbox could backup my Google Docs and Mail."