Jakub Pawlowicz – Thoughts on life

Tagged: apple RSS

• Jakub Pawlowicz 10:29 am on October 20, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: apple, information visualization, mac (2), macbook, macbook pro (3)   

  Passion for engineering 

  I really like what Apple did with the latest revision of MacBook and MacBook Pro. This time they put a lot of attention into refining the external look and manufacturing process, and as usual for Apple they show passion in very every detail.

  Rather than looking at static images, go ahead and take a look at movie presenting the manufacturing process of new MacBooks. It’s perfectly well done, very well shot, and presented by Jony Ive (Apple SVP).

  PS) At the end of the movie they show how they optimized notebook packaging to reduce environmental footprint. Very nice, classic example of how combining animation with information visualization can explain complex matters the simple way.

   

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• Jakub Pawlowicz 5:38 pm on July 30, 2007 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: apple, human interface guidelines, macos x (3), undo   

  Warning does not mean undo 

  There’s a really interesting article recently posted on A List Apart called “Never Use a Warning When you Mean Undo”. Generally speaking it is about overuse of warnings and not allowing users to undo the operations.
  It is (as always?) already clearly stated in the Apple Human Interface Guidelines that the only reason to display a warning is an unrecoverable or a very long operation. That simply implies the fact that undo should be available to most of the system commands. As always Apple was first, but what have been obvious in the desktop space (MacOS X at least) hadn’t been so in the web space till Web 2.0 arrived.

  If you are interested go ahead and check the ALA article. If you want more, then Apple HIG site covers even more than needed.

   

• Jakub Pawlowicz 6:16 pm on January 21, 2007 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: apple, ipod (2), Java (8)   

  Why no Java on the iPhone? 

  The whole discussion (see “Java to the iPhone: Can you hear me now?” on O’Reilly Blog) is pretty interesting as the Java motto is “write once, run everywhere”. It’s true at least on every machine that have its own Java Virtual Machine. But looks like iPhone wouldn’t have its own JVM, so it won’t be possible to run Java applications on the iPhone at all.

  But the question is not why Java wouldn’t find a place to the iPhone, but why it should. The only reason to keep Java on the iPhone is to let it use Java applets on some websites. But how many websites uses Java applets: 1%? And how many of them have to be used by future iPhone owners? 2? 5? So for sure it’s not worth to support another environment.

  However, there are much more arguments against putting Java into the iPhone:

  • iPhone won’t allow 3rd party applications – no Java is needed
  • Java applications look ugly and are slightly slower than those build with native languages like Objective-C
  • there would be problems integrating Java apps with other, non-Java ones
  • Java doesn’t offer good interfaces for interacting with peripherals, such as USB, controllers, etc.
  • I’m almost sure Apple has more experienced Objective-C developers than Java ones
  • Apple wants to control iPhone in every aspect – needless to say games market is worth millions
  • There’s also no Java on the iPod – a coincidence?
  • (more still to come… ;-)))

  But don’t get me wrong – Java is not bad. No doubt it is one of the best languages for the server-side programming. If not the very best one…

   

• Jakub Pawlowicz 6:15 pm on January 21, 2007 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: apple, ipod (2), shuffle   

  The small, nice thing called… iPod 

  It finally happened. Just before Christmas I became a part of one-hundred-million iPod community by getting a shiny new iPod Shuffle from my girlfriend, Ewelina. It came to me attached to a sweater in the same fashion as on Apple ads. That was great – what a surprise! :-)))

  And I must admit I had always wanted the Shuffle as it was all I needed – no screen, simple interface, and played music only. I can simply turn it on when I want to listen my music and turn off when I don’t. No photos, no video, no radio – it’s almost invisible when turned off. That’s why I like it so much!

   

• Jakub Pawlowicz 6:46 pm on April 1, 2006 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: 30th anniversary, apple   

  Happy birthday Apple! 

  On the 1st of April 1976 the great story has begun. Two guys named… Come on! You already know this story, don’t you? :-)))

   

• Jakub Pawlowicz 6:57 pm on March 1, 2006 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: apple, mac mini   

  New Mac mini a disappointment? 

  Yesterday, Apple has unveiled it’s new Intel-based Mac mini. Now it has a Core Duo (or Solo) processor, up to 2GB of RAM, faster hard drive, and Apple’s Front Row with a remote control. Everything seems to be fine, but there’s one little glitch that brings attention of the Mac community. The integrated graphics chip from Intel (GMA 950), which does not have it’s own dedicated VRAM, but dynamically borrows resources from the system RAM. Needless to say, that this is rather a poor solution, so the chip performance could be the biggest bottleneck of the whole system.

  But IMHO, the people who are complaining about it, are missing a one significant point. This is a non-gamer, starters machine! Although it is a Mac, and new Macs usually works pretty well for a couple of years, this could be much different with the Mac mini. It’s designed solely to give PC users an opportunity to “taste a Mac” and serve for no more than a year or two. And that’s why Apple did this. Want to give Mac a try? Buy mini. Want some more? Buy iMac, iBook or whatever you want.

  Apple is a hardware company. The more it sells, the more money it earns. It’s that simple. Period.

   

• Jakub Pawlowicz 6:58 pm on February 18, 2006 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: apple, corland, laptop (2), macbook pro (3)   

  Waiting for my MacBook Pro 

  Waiting for a dreamed computer is a hard time. Especially if it takes a month or more. I’ve ordered mine on February 1st, and the guys at Cortland (polish Apple reseller), said that they hope to ship them by the end of February (but they didn’t say which year ;-)). My waiting was interrupted today by a post at TUAW with the first pictures of unpacked one (click here to see). I must say they are looking great, especially the aluminum enclosure :-). Now, I’m eagerly waiting to see the battery life tests, because it’s the last thing that nobody knows. I hope it would be as long as my old iBook G3, which could run on battery for about 4 hours without a problem. So fingers crossed!