After she decided to quit after a couple of days on the job, Waylon asked her to write an article for the site explaining why she was leaving. The reasons sound awfully familiar:
Category Archives: regular
Why Xcode 4 is on the app store
When it released Xcode 4, Apple stopped giving it away to folks with free developer accounts. Now you need a $99 developer account to get Xcode. Or, you can buy it on the App Store for $4.99 (coincidentally, the same price as Angry Birds).
From the looks of things, adding a price tag hasn’t interfered with people acquiring it:
(Screenshot is from the App Store today.)
Is buying a house really better than renting?
So many people mindlessly repeat the line that “buying a house is better, because when you rent, you’re throwing your money away.” That’s true in some cases, and false in others, so check your assumptions at the door. This calculator from the NYT is great. Click Advanced Settings to play with the underlying assumptions.
(Quick reminder that, historically, the stock market beats the housing market in the long run. Your current bubble may vary.)
Given housing prices in Boulder, the likely stagnation or fall in house prices, and cheap rent where we are, buying here makes little sense. In your own situation, what actually results in you spending less money? Quit assuming, and play with the numbers!
Thoughts around the iPad 2, and touch-based interfaces
I just finished reading “Apple iPad 2 is here and tablet rivals need to hit the drawing board”, Andy Ihnatko’s article on the iPad 2.
One sentence really resonated with me, because I think Apple’s very busy right now getting the world used to the next generation of computer interfaces (lots of OS X Lion’s upcoming interface is borrowed straight from iOS):
I hate editing video, but this app intuitively felt better and easier than even the desktop edition of iMovie.
Reverting changes in Subversion
Let’s assume you’ve got a file (or a directory full of files, doesn’t matter) that you’ve been working on, and have committed it to the repository. Whoops, you’ve just overwritten something good with something bad. How to get the old one back?
I thought it would be a variation on the svn revert command, but no. It’s svn merge. This makes sense on some level, but not a lot of sense. Continue reading
Apple and subscriptions
Apple launches long-awaited subscriptions for App Store (Macworld)
Seems to me that this is a pretty fair model for subscriptions. And yet, I keep seeing articles and blog posts claiming this will be “the death of Pandora” and other crap like that, due to Apple taking 30% of the revenue, and the publishers can’t afford that. As I read it, publishers have two options: in-app subscription purchases with 30% to Apple, and outside-the-app (e.g., on their website) subscriptions at 0% to Apple. The agreement is that they have to offer the in-app subscription at a price no higher than the outside subscription, but I don’t see anything that says they must provide an in-app subscription option at all.
Apple’s position appears to be, “If we help you make sales, we want a piece of the action; but if you do it, it’s all yours” — which seems pretty fair to me. (The guy at the newsstand certainly didn’t sell me my copy of Bicycle Times as a volunteer this morning…)
Am I missing something obvious?
Remote server monitoring
Background: BES has an exceedingly flaky T1 router, and I’m getting tired of pinging it all the time to see if it’s alive (it is remotely rebootable). Also, I have Prowl (normally used for Growl notifications, but has a nice API of its own) installed on my phone.
Continue reading
Torx Plus 5-lobe security bits
Apparently, these bits are used in current Apple hardware (mid-2009 MBPs, some iPhone 4s, probably others). I think my MacBook Pro is old enough to not have any, but at least I know where to get the bits if I need them…
Dead-end jobs and Stockholm Syndrome
Chad Fowler asks, Are You Suffering From Stockholm Syndrome?
Extra bonus, from the comments: Jeremy Hutchings’ story of Burnout.