blog.no-panic.at

Facebook iPhone Dev Quits Project Over Apple Tyranny

What a shame! Joe Hewitt was a very skilled iPhone developer and it’s a pity to see him move back to the web because of Apple’s App Store policies.

My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple’s policies. I respect their right to manage their platform however they want, however I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process. I am very concerned that they are setting a horrible precedent for other software platforms, and soon gatekeepers will start infesting the lives of every software developer.

The web is still unrestricted and free, and so I am returning to my roots as a web developer. In the long term, I would like to be able to say that I helped to make the web the best mobile platform available, rather than being part of the transition to a world where every developer must go through a middleman to get their software in the hands of users.”

via Techcrunch

Here’s quite an interesting interview with Joe Hewitt from earlier this year at the Mobile Orchard Podcast.

I use the really great macFUSE to mount several server directories via SSH on my work computer. One programm that makes this process really easy is Macfusion which offers a menu item and a standalone application to configure your mountpoints and mount/unmount them.

After upgrading to Snow Leopard recently Macfusion & macFUSE stopped working, so I was searching for a solution and luckily found one at Racker Hacker - Fix MacFusion on Snow Leopard.

Now I’m happily developing my PHP projects again in Netbeans with my remote dirs mounted via SSH

Finally! Colloquy, my IRC client of choice for Mac OS X came out as a mobile version for the iPhone. For a mere 1,59€ (in the Austrian App Store) you’ll get a full featured, slick IRC client on your handheld device.

via First Look: Mobile Colloquy - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).

Mecca - A Social Browser for Mac OS X Leopard.

Looks interesting.

Thanks Olli for pointing it out!

Ed had a neat modification done to his (originally) white MacBook which should make this computer quite unique.
Click on the images to see more!
(Sorry for the bad picture quality, blame it on my cellphone.)

Back in 2007 Nokia started releasing iSync plugins. Also back in 2007 I read a similar Sony Ericsson announcment.

The slight difference: Nokia iSync plugins actually exist.

As every project needs a kick-off… here it is.

• There is a great tool called iSync Plug-In Maker (it’s included in the Apple Developer Tools)
• Apple already has many Sony Ericsson plugins included in iSync (so it’s easy to diff Apples plugins with the plugins you exported via iSync Plug-In Maker)

And finally:
We crafted a Sony Ericsson K800i plugin via the iSync Plug-In Maker. It’s 100% compatible to the plugin provided by Apple. As it is not possible to modify “exported” plugins via the iSync Plug-In Maker, we are providing the dot ppdoc “source” file here as a free download.

@ Sony Ericsson:
We’d provide more samples, but since we just have this old and shabby K800i we had no chance to througly test other plugins (but it looks like our K770i plugin works as expected, so far noone complained). Of course donations are very welcome. What about a nice new K850i?

Maybe you should also add an iSync section at developer.sonyericsson.com where developers upload iSync plugins for your review (of course you should offer some incentive for uploading).

@ All:
Your welcome to modify the plugin and build plugins for new phones.

• Probably the documentation at developer.sonyericsson.com (-> Docs & Tools -> Phone Specs -> Whitepapers) will be helpful (looking up SyncML specs etc).
• Use the automated tests of iSync Plug-In Maker.
• Have a look at the iSync plugin introduction at thetaoofmac.com
• Read Apples iSync Plug-In Maker userguide.
• If there already is support for a similar phone, use FileMerge (also included in Apples Developer Tools) to check for differences between your plugin and the existing plugin.

Of course donations are welcome, too If you blog this article, please add “U0UtaVN5bmMh” (SE-iSync! base64 encoded) to your title and your tags. We’d like to track the spread of this article. If it spreads like hell, probably Sony Ericsson will more likely offer iSync plugins in the future

via open.source.mac