whatever happened, happened

With my installation of the new Intel SSD today, my good ol’ MacBook Black Early 2008 has become much more powerful than ever before. This has surely achieved my dream setup:

• 22” ViewSonic VA2213w as main display
• 13” MacBook Black as secondary display
• Apple Wireless Keyboard & Magic Mouse to drive the main display
• 2x2GB Crucial RAM to replace the old 2x1GB configuration
• Intel X25-M 120GB to speed up the whole machine
• Icy Box StuE-B HDD Enclosure w/ Firewire support to hold my old 250GB Hitachi HDD

To put things in perspective, I timed how long it takes to perform various tasks — the results were amazing:

• MacOS X 10.5.2 installation: 13 minutes
• MacOS X 10.6.3 upgrade: 12 minutes
• MacOS X 10.6.6 upgrade: 6 minutes
• Xcode 3.2.5 w/ iOS SDK 4.2 installation: 10 minutes sharp

In contrast, it used to take me about 50 minutes each time I installed a new version of Xcode.

Verdict: So obvious that I don’t even have to say aloud — If you have money to spare, a SSD is a worthwhile investment.

Shh… I’m launching a new app for the iPad and looking for some beta testers. Feel free to reply to this post with your iPad UDID & firmware version if:

• you’re interested
• you know what Instapaper & Delicious do

The first beta built will be sent out later today (Sat 2 Oct) or tomorrow, so please be quick if you want to be in!

• I read far more often than before. Be it iBooks or Instapaper or the fugly-but-feature-packed GoodReader, I always have more than enough interesting stuff to consume.
• Single-tasking is actually a good thing for me. Less distractions, less procrastination.
• Reeder turns my iPad into the best RSS reading machine ever. Much faster than NetNewsWire, and the interface looks so beautiful.
• This is the first device I could bring into the kitchen and watch films on it. An iPhone or iPod is way too small, and even a 13” MacBook feels awkwardly big and inconvenient.
• Playing games on the iPad is a totally different experience than doing so on other devices. The big screen and speedy hardware are amazing.

Verdict? My iPod Touch looks and feels like a mini, and inferior iPad. In the last 2 years, I have been bringing my iPod with me outdoor every single time. Now it has been sitting quietly on my desk for 2 weeks. I don’t even charge nor sync it with iTunes any more. How about my MacBook? I leave it mostly untouched during the day, and only use it for serious computing work, like coding stuff.

You gotta use an iPad to understand how gorgeous it is.

♫ iPhone 4 Plans

As much as I want to lay my hands on an unlocked, SIM-free iPhone 4, I simply couldn’t afford to pay £500 up front at this time, after spending an equal amount on my iPad, plus my new monitor and a few more things, just last month.

On the other hand, I need a new iPhone to test my apps on iOS 4 (this is more of an excuse than an actual need, to be honest). So, a subsided iPhone from one of these UK carriers is the way to go.

I’m with O2 right now, which means I could theoretically get an iPhone 4 at launch, and while the data limit is modest compared to the other carriers, the fact that I can have my iPhone unlocked the official way at any time during my contract is really compelling. The only drawback (a major one) is that O2’s 3G coverage seems to be the worst in the UK. Search Twitter for #o2fail and see for yourself.

Vodafone provides the best deal out of the three carriers who have announced their plans. No one is perfect, though. Vodafone doesn’t allow me to unlock my iPhone, during or even after the contract, and I don’t want to mess around with unofficial unlocking methods every time I upgrade my iPhone firmware.

Orange does allow carrier unlocking, but it’s obvious from the table that everything they provide with their tariff is more expensive than the others. Half the minutes, limited texts, etc.

T-Mobile has yet to provide their tariffs, yet I don’t want to switch to them given my girlfriend’s bad experience with them.

3 told the press that they’ll wait for the others carriers to announce their plans, and undercut them all. I have no idea whether they’ll provide official unlocking, though. Let’s wait and see.

As you may have heard, I received my iPad 3 days ago. That was 1 day earlier than its official launch date in the UK, thanks to the fact that I shelled out my money merely 8 minutes after the Apple store accepted pre-ordering 2 weeks ago. Anyway, here’s the tl;dr version of this blog post: the iPad is an amazing device and I wouldn’t think twice before recommending it to anyone.

First thing first: the hardware. The iPad is smaller than I expected, and it’s as heavy as people say on Twitter. Holding it requires me to use both hands, and it becomes quite frustrating after a while. Letting it rest on my lap is a workaround, though I’m not totally satisfied with it. On the other hand, the black bezel that some complained about is the least of my worries when I use the device. All apps are gorgeous and grab my full attention.

The rotation lock, being a hardware button, is great - I really hope my iPod has had one. I’m aware that a software solution would be added to the 4.0 firmware, but my 1st generation iPod doesn’t have the pleasure to enjoy it. Anyway, I digressed.

The volume button is quite confusing, given the fact that I can hold the device in any directions. Keep my iPad in portrait mode and it makes sense that the upper button increases the volume, while the lower one decreases it. Keep it in landscape mode and things become awkward: When the home button is on the left, pressing the left volume button decreases it. When the it is on the right, pressing the left button increases the volume. Feeling lost? You aren’t alone.

The iPad’s display is times bigger than that of an iPhone. While it offers the apps much more room to breath, it also multiplies the constant annoyance of leaving my fingerprints on it. And I don’t want to cripple the display by putting a screen protector there.

The cable that goes with the iPad works best when being plugged into a wall socket. It shows as ‘Not charging’ when I plugged it along side with my iPod into my MacBook, which means I mostly depend on the wall socket for my recharging need. It isn’t much of a problem, since the battery life has been very good.

While many have criticised the lack of a camera, I don’t feel it to be an absolute necessity. I guess the next iteration of the iPad will come with a camera, but I am not too excited about it. Maybe it’s because i’m stuck with a camera-less iPod for so long.

Enough about the hardware. See you in another post, brother.

P.S: Have you watched the Lost Finale? I love the ending so much, especially the scene in which Christian Shephard opened the church’s door and the light started pouring in. Keep watching it again and again.

♫ My (Updated) First & 19

Back in January I wrote about all the apps I put on my home screen as well as my dock. Since then, the landscape has changed dramatically. So, here it is - my updated First & 19:

• Mail, Mobile Safari, Music, Facebook (Free), Y! Messenger (Free): The same old things in their same old spots. Admittedly I don’t use Mobile Safari much, but I need it for my university network authentication (which, by the way, sucks big time). I don’t listen to music on my iPod these days, but instead enjoy podcasts. I highly recommend you to subscribe to The Conversation talk show hosted by Dan Bejamin. I have only gone through a handful of episodes, but they’re very insightful and entertaining.

• Tweetie (soon to be free), Reeder (£1.79), Instapaper (£2.99), Momento (£1.79): Again, same old trusty apps. All these apps are, like I said before, indispensable. I tried a couple of other Twitter clients, but always find Tweetie the best one out there.

• Ego (£1.19), My App Sales (€20+ for both the app & SVN access to the source code), and PositionApp (£2.99): I simply love stats & numbers. Ego gives my access to my site’s total hits, my blog’s number of RSS subscribers, my tumblelogs’ followers, etc. My App Sales bring me the updated number of App Store sales at noon every day, and PositionApp gives me an insight into my apps’ rankings across all App Stores.

• WriteRoom (£2.99) and TaskPaper (£2.99): Amazing apps written by Jesse Grosjean. You got to try out TaskPaper - it blows Simplenote out of the water. The interface is equally simple, but the app itself is much more powerful. Go read this review by Smoking Apples and you’ll get some ideas of what TaskPaper is capable of.

• ReaddleDocs (£2.99) and ReadMore (£1.19): ReaddleDocs replaces Good Reader for me. The interface is nicer and the feature set is quite the same, though I hate its in-app dock icons with a passion. Meanwhile, ReadMore helps me keep track of my reading progress and give me some incentive to continue my reading whenever I got bored.

• Tumblr (Free): I still prefer tumblr gear, but have to switch back to the official Tumblr app because of its multi-dashboard support. Maintaining more than one tumblelog is a big pain.

• Today Todo Pro (£2.39): A strange yet colorful todo list app for the iPhone. It doesn’t aim to be yet another 2Do in terms of features, which is a good thing.

• Words With Friends (£1.79): A great game you gotta try out. It’s too much fun and addictive and amazing. My username is ‘quanganhdo’ as usual - looking forward to playing against you.

Jesse Grosjean wrote about using Notational Velocity with SimpleText:

To integrate Notationl velocity with SimpleText for Mac:

1. Open Notational Velocity Preferences

2. Open “Notes” preference pane.

3. Select SimpleText’s folder for “Read notes from folder”

4. Under storage, select ”Storage and read notes on disk as Plain Text Files”.

Those switching from Simplenote like me might want to do 3 more steps:

5. Open “Editing” perference pane.

6. Deselect “Soft tabs (spaces)”

7. Convert previous notes’ soft tabs to real ones using Terminal:

perl -pi -w -e 's/ {4}/\t/g' *.txt

From then on, all notes will appear properly in Taskpaper for iPhone.

1. The price and availability date for the iPad in the UK has been announced. The 16GB Wifi-only model will cost me £429, which is the exact amount I expected. That means I will have absolutely no problem shelling out my hard-earned money on May 10th, the day I can pre-order the device. I’d receive it on the 28th, just in time I get back to Sunderland from my short trip to London. I can’t wait to see my workflow being changed dramatically by the iPad.

2. Yesterday I learnt about the Manga Rock iPhone app written by 4 Vietnamese students in Singapore. Some of my observations:

• Manga Rock seems to make use of the MBProgressHUD code to display its loading messages. I myself used it in some of my apps, and not until now I realise that it sucks. Instead of letting the user browsing around while the task is carried out in another thread, the whole UI freezes during the process. The wait really annoys the hell out of me.
• It has the same licensing issue as other manga reading apps based on One Manga, which means a large number of licensed popular manga is unavailable for reading (e.g. Naruto and Bleach). This quite limits the potential of the app IMO.
• There should be a way to remove partially-downloaded manga. They take up precious space.

3. This is also about Manga Rock: I found an amusing article on Người Lao Động praising the app developers for ‘successfully making a deal with Apple’. Every time I read an article like this, I feel a little bit sad for the so-called ‘reporter’. The fact that he has no idea what the App Store is about totally ruins the article’s otherwise interesting content.

4. I decided to create yet another tumblelog, namely Chém gió, available at http://chemgio.tumblr.com. Think of it as a site dedicated to the most ridiculous Vietnamese articles written about IT. Currently I have only a few links, so feel free to add your own.

5. I joined the iPhone Developer Program since last August, and had my first app approved for selling in November. Two third of a year has passed, and I quite enjoy the process. The amount of money I made greatly surpasses my expectation. I won’t disclose the exact number, but I guess you will be interested in this graph:

FYI, the graph shows the number of sales I had for all of my 6 apps since day one (4 iPhone apps, 1 universal app and 1 iPad-only app). I have no idea why sales suddenly shot up on April 1st, so don’t ask me about it. So far, I have spent zero dollar on marketting, and rely entirely on the word of mouth. As the number of sales have started to go down this week, I might make a few forum posts to get the words out soon.

For the record, the fastest reviewing time I experienced is 4 hours for an update, 4 days for an entirely new app. The slowest one had me wait for exactly 1 month before it turned out to be a rejection. One of my app was rejected 6 times in consecutive, which depressed me a lot, but in the end, everything went well.

No doubt I’ll renew my developer account once it expires this August. I have some ideas to improve my iPad-only app, but it has to wait until I get hold of the device. Having no iPad to test my own app sucks in every way.

That’s it for today.

This post is inspired by that of zack shapiro. Since I know myself enough to realise I suck at planning far ahead, I will only post my goals for the upcoming summer here. Everything after that is subject to changes.

In no particular order:

• Graduate from university, and get a well-paid full-time job.
• Finish my Google of Code 2010 project successfully and within the alloted time
• Go back to Vietnam for a few months
• Write one or two iPhone/iPad apps
• Get an iPad, and an iPhone if possible
• Know a thing or two about Photoshop
• Learn more about mobile development. Might try to play with the Android SDK, but I need to learn Java first
• Take full advantage of Git in my daily coding
• Read more books. My current reading list: Predictably Irrational (still haven’t finished it), The Knack, The Pragmatic Programmer, The Passionate Programmer (just started).
• Blog more frequently. Have you seen my new theme lately? It’s optimised for long text posts, which I’m hoping to write more.

Ought to be enough for this summer.

Disclaimer: I promised to write a review of 20couch and got a free copy from its developer. I’ve been using it along side with Tweetie for Mac for nearly 2 months.

20couch is, as Matt himself puts it, ‘the bastard child of Twitter and Google Reader’. Indeed this Twitter client has a very similar interface to Google Reader and quite a few nice characteristics.

The good

• Built with CakePHP. Has plugin support (huge win!). Since the developer is very involved with CakePHP development (go check out his CakePHP Digest series, book and plugin), I could learn a lot about the framework by reading his source code.
• Multiple accounts support, ability to subscribe to keywords and/or hashtags, and so-called ‘Ninja Follow’ feature (follow someone without actually following him). The first two are nice to have, while I find no use for the last one.
• Threaded conversation display, inline image preview and rudimentary short URL expansion.
• Ability to selectively mark tweets as read (e.g. those older than 6 hours/1 day/1 week, you get the idea).
• Ability to ‘mute’ someone for a pre-defined period of time.
• Frequent updates. Since it was shipped in mid March, there have been 9 updates and the developer is VERY responsive.

The not-so-good

• More like a ‘Twitter reader’ rather than a full-blown client. Has yet to support favoriting tweets, following and unfollowing other users, viewing user profiles, etc.
• The mobile-optimised version is usable, but a native app is more than welcome.
• The first few versions were quite buggy. I ran into quite a few problems when trying to install/update it on WebFaction, which went away when I switched back to A Small Orange. While most of those bugs have been fixed in subsequent updates, some annoying ones still remain (e.g. Marking tweets as read sometimes doesn’t work as expected)

Verdict

I was mainly drawn to it because of 20couch’s plugin support. Having the ability to customise a Twitter client to my liking is something I has wished to do for a long time. Currently I have 2 ideas in mind: 1/ a link-extracting plugin running on the whole Twitter stream to make sure I don’t miss a thing and 2/ a filter to remove boring/spammy tweets. Hope I’ll find some spare time to implement them soon.

In terms of price, like a few other self-hosted PHP scripts (Mint, Fever), 20couch costs $30. If you need a highly customisable Twitter web client, go for it. Otherwise, desktop apps like Tweetie for Mac is more than enough.