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Here are some pics from France of my book, fresh off the presses and soon to be published by e-on software, makers of Vue3D.  So, what is it? It's a 120+ page handbook on 3D which has everything you need to get started creating PHOTOREAL renders, both outdoors and in– plus it COMES WITH A FREE VERSION OF VUE! 

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Excellent Article on the iPad’s Usability. I’m sure Steve Jobs is surprised his XCode developers haven’t created optimal interfaces. I’m sure with a few more license changes, this will all get sorted out.

http://www.runrev.com/company/runrev-blog/

It’s a sad day for RunRev, and all high level language (HLL) developers. In an unprecedented decree by the current King of the Hill, Steve Jobs has declared his tools, and only his tools, can be used to create compiled binary applications for his new favorite pet platform. The Hell with the rest of us. Making matters worse, he didn’t proclaim his intentions to do this until the fourth release of the SDK, thus allowing multiple millions of dollars in new iPhone initiatives and thousands of developers to believe they were right to develop for his platform. It’s not like he was starting some new platform from scratch, and set up the rules from the beginning. 

Nope, he changed things when it suited him best– After he climbed the mountain and didn’t need the little people anymore. “Be damned with the rest of you– oh and thanks for your support, UP TO NOW,” is the message he is sending. He couldn’t care less. Screwing his partners, their customers and their customer’s customers.

Honestly, will anyone really be surprised when he does this yet again to Mac OS X developers?

My next phone will be an Android.  

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Ouch. More about iAds for iPhone and iPad, from a patent filed by Steve Jobs and his minions at Apple. In their own words:

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At 99 cents, this is a must have for serious iPad users who spend a lot of time surfing. This mobile browser can replace Safari for accessing the web. The two best features are full screen mode and tabs. You can open up as many pages as you like, each in a different tab. And they can even load in the background.

Aromic Web has settings for Privacy, Disabling page advertising, and setting it up to look like a different browser to different websites. This last feature is especially handy for those websites which insist on showing the mobile version of themselves on the bigger screen of an iPad. Highly recommended!

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http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/an_antitrust_app_

Looks like the Feds are looking into Apple’s developer licensing practices. I wonder how long Apple will leave Jobs’ “Flash Manifesto” up on their website?

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Time to spread some love to Apple. Sure, I’m miffed about how Steve is acting like a spoiled brat, trying to dictate terms to developers, but let’s talk about his products for a moment.

Not since I went out and bought the first Mac 128, have I been totally blown away with a technology, than I am with the iPhone. It truly is a magical device, and continues to amaze each day. I suppose I was lucky in that my first iPhone was the 3GS, and moving from my Verizon LG phone to it is like buying a brand new Kabota. Total awesome piece of technology. When I really stop and think a minute, for me the apps are what really make the iPhone great (certainly NOT AT&T’s service– remember I came from Verizon). One of my favorite iPhone apps is FastFinga, a terrific way to jot notes on the iPhone. It’s sorta like a word processor for bitmap text. Hard to explain, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes the go to app for jotting down anything, in meetings, on the plane, sitting in your car. It’s great!

Funny though, FastFinga doesn’t look like a standard iPhone app. Far from it. In fact, this very popular app has real issues conforming to any of the Apple HIG’s for iPhone. As one can see by the picture, it’s very different from any app you’ve probably seen anywhere. I doubt Steve Jobs would approve, and I expect that’s the next shoe to drop: the censor police of the app store will also soon become the fashion police for good taste in interfaces– and cool little apps like FastFinga will suffer. Along with you and I.

So, I lied. I guess this wasn’t a total lovefest post for Apple.

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I’ve been thinking ahead, after reading Adobe’s CEO’s controlled reply to Jobs condemning remarks of his company and Flash technology. Consider this hypothetical situation in the next couple of years: No doubt Apple has lit a fire under Adobe, and Adobe knows it’s do or die time for Flash. Imagine Adobe manages to get their act together, and with the combination of faster new processors and an meaner/cleaner Flash kernel, a new class of products come out coded in Flash for the tablet and mobile market. Maybe this new genre of product includes some sort of interpreter, sort of an easier version of Hypercard for mobile devices. Now, a whole new class of individuals are empowered to create some of the most interesting mobile apps out there.

Maybe Adobe creates an incredible free magazine authoring tool, which allows anyone to create and read their favorite mashups of blogs, news, sports, and real magazines in Flash. Or maybe they give it to real magazine publishers and help them publish on tablets and other devices which use Flash (they already own the print part of this technology with InDesign and Acrobat).

Or, maybe there is another new single incredible Flash breakthrough, one which can reshape whole industries like Flash video did for companies like YouTube. Whatever, just something GREAT.

If this comes to pass, what exactly happens to Apple’s positioning with regard to Flash? My guess is Steve is too dug in to ever go back, and even if he did “relax” and request Adobe forgive and port to iPhone, why would Adobe even consider? It would make for smart business to not make the mistake of doing business with one so fickle as Apple has been in all of this.

Let’s see, it Tuesday and which way is the wind blowing in Cupertino? This is the situation Apple has now found itself in, one which it cannot take back. It is a mistake, and why Steve should’ve never made this personal. In fact, most CEO’s would’ve handled all of this in a much more tactful manner- one which wouldn’t have created problems for their company moving forward, no matter the circumstances. Funny, you think Jobs has been around long enough to know what goes around, eventually, comes back around, and you have to deal with it.

Food for thought.

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Dan and Richard Gaskin both sent me a link to a funny segment last night on the Gizmodo stolen phone thing. It's the first bit. Jon's got it right on this one.

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One interesting point which seems to get lost in all of this developer licensing issue, and is particularly relevant is the concept of “the right tool for the job.”

As many of us know, years ago, in what has been described by some as a “stroke of genius,” Apple created a programming tool “for the rest of us.” It of course was Hypercard. No one thought Hypercard could or would build the next SuperPaint or MacWrite, but it provided an excellent solution for those who wanted more control and didn’t want to have to become a hard core programmer. It was the right tool for the job for many of us.

While perhaps not a monetary home run, Hypercard did change the world for lots of users. And, it helped Apple differentiate itself from other, harder to use and program systems.

Fast forward to 2010 and a new Apple platform, the iPhone/iPad. Why is this concept of the right tool no longer a good idea? Are there no more “inventive users” out there? Does no one want to create a simple app, which does a single thing, without having to learn Objective C? Take RevMobile for instance. Its a Hypercard like tool for iPhone/iPad and was recently outlawed by Apple. It may not create the next Layers, Brushes or other Photoshop iPhone/iPad clone, but certainly it provides the ability to create some simple apps which fill individual needs. For many, it’s the right tool.

Now, I suppose I can sort of understand the notion we don’t need a tool like RevMobile or Hypercard for creating cell phone apps. But, we’re not talking about cell phone apps. We’re talking about an entirely different, new and exciting platform OS running on a tablet, perhaps the most personal of computer ever designed. And because it’s so personal, folks who are not hardcore programmers will want to create their own solutions and quickly. A perfect fit for RevMobile. One would think a person with Steve Job’s history and vision would understand all of this. Evidently not.

Certainly such an authoring tool has a place in this new generation of tablet OS’es– sadly it may not be on Apple’s iPad.

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