• Clunky Cube Mac Os Update
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Archive 5

Given that you can target both desktops and consoles with the same code base in other engines, the lack of support for consoles in Godot is pretty hard to get past if targeting desktops for a game. But asking for an open-source engine to target consoles is probably too much to ask.

The Power Mac G4 Cube is capable of running Windows through emulation using a program like Microsoft Virtual PC 7, but it cannot boot Windows or run Windows via virtualization like the Intel-based Macs. If you need a system capable of running Windows, you would be best served with an Intel-based Mac or a Windows PC. It ran a modified version of Mac OS X (the mobile version of the software, iOS, was still years away). Apple’s first prototype tablet was built from parts taken from the white, plastic iBook. This zaps the PRAM. PRAM is where the system — both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X — stores system & device settings. Your Mac should boot into Mac OS X with out having any keys pressed. Open System Preferences again and select the Mac OS 9 folder to be the system you want to start up from and reboot again.

Travel The iMac Way

11 March 2000.

Hair-raising Laptop

11 March 2000.

Yes, it's designer hair gel - in iMac colours. Released last November.

Apple Wins Again

21 March 2000.

The United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa has dismissed Microware Systems Corporation's lawsuit seeking to enjoin Apple from using the name 'Mac OS 9' for its current operating system release.

In dismissing the case, the court held that Apple is entitled to use the Mac® OS 9 name under the doctrine of 'fair use'. The court also issued an order denying Microware's motion for a preliminary injunction.

Mac Stands Firm

25 March 2000.

The US Army switched to using Mac G3 Web servers running WebSTAR to host its main site, citing security concerns with Microsoft servers. But yesterday the army's servers were attacked by Brazillian hackers.

The hackers were from a group called Crime Boys. The Web sites hacked were http://www.cpma.apg.army.mil and http://www.2rotc.army.mil.

The Mac servers withstood the attack, but two Windows NT servers running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 were broken into. The hacked site has already been removed.

Star Wars' Preference

22 June 2000.

There's much politicing that goes on in the platform wars. This from an anonymous, supposedly-Adobe source regarding Industrial Light and Magic:

The reason JAK and ILM have been quiet about their use of Macs is they've got this deal with SGI where SGI provides them with free machines in return for they're NEVER saying they use Macs. In the end, they did come out and say they use Macs for 'pre-visualization' which is true, but far from the whole truth. In fact, there were many, many scenes where the FINAL render was done on Macs, using After Effects and other 3D software. I don't want to bust up the nice deal Lucas has with SGI, but I do want people to know they can make real movies on their Macs using off the shelf software.

Applemaster Michael Crichton

1 July 2000.

On the ease of setting up a Macintosh network, Applemaster and author Michael Crichton has this to say:

Clunky Cube Mac Os Update

Even my most dedicated PC friends questioned their beloved technology when they tried to install home networks in the 1990s. It took them days, and often they had to cry for help. I, on the other hand, had installed and maintained my own networks since the '80s. (It was about as difficult as plugging in a toaster, which I also do myself, without expert help.)

And on designing simplicity into a product:

I once had a kitchen stove where the six burner knobs were identical, arranged in a straight row along the front. I could never remember which knob controlled which burner. I had to turn the knobs and watch which burner came on.

Eleven years later, I still hadn't learned. Because I don't think I should have to use my thinking time to memorize the controls for a gas stove. The stove designer should take care of that for me.

My parents have a double switch in their dining room. One controls the dining room light while the other switches the lounge light. They are unlabelled, and more than 25 years later people still flick the wrong switch because they are simply the wrong way around. PC-loving father refuses to let them be rewired.

For more, read Mr Crichton's Applemaster pages.

More Reasons Why

30 July 2000.

Why Macs are better than PCs reason 34,576:

Mac icons use the full 256 system colours - PC icons can use only 16 present colours. This means that Mac icons can use shading, leading to almost photo-realistic... ummm... photos for icons (which almost all of my many homemade icons are). And just by chance, the Firelab director just today was criticising PC icons because they're so badly drawn and often hard to understand. (And compared to Mac icons they really are ugly and clunky looking.)

Why Macs are better than PCs reason 34,577:

Mac mice use acceleration - a non-linear speed relation between the mouse speed and the cursor speed. PC mice have a linear relationship which can be set anywhere from almost useable to frenetic. The fine control required by designers and publishers (while still having a practical speed at larger mouse movements) make it clear why such a subtle effect helps make Macs so popular with that group.

Initial experiments with my own Mac mouse show better than a 4:1 acceleration ratio. When I move the mouse slowly I can move it all the way across my mousepad while the cursor moves less than half way across the screen. When I move the mouse quickly I move the mouse half way across the mousepad for completely traversing the screen. (The customisable control panel indicates 8 different speed steps/multipliers.)

Overclocked Mac

11 August 2000.

Mac in Space

28 October 2000.

SkyCorp has signed an agreement with NASA to fly the first web server in space. The cool part: The Web server will be a PowerMac G4 running Mac OS X Server.

The satellite's computer will use a G4 500 Mhz processor running OSX with a webserver running under Apache. The server will have 10 GB of storage space and will be hosting up to several thousand websites. The server will also have a mail server that will allow people to get email directly from space.

The SkyCorp satellite will use the 802.11 Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) worldwide industry standard, and will be accessible for operations purposes at up to 11 Mb/sec. This protocol is the core of Apple's AirPort wireless technology developed jointly by Apple and Lucent Technologies. For end users on the ground, Wingo says that 56kbps speeds will be available to people with wireless devices - when the satellite is overhead.

Mac World San Fransisco 2001

29 November 2000.

Just over a month to go before Macworld San Francisco in early January 2001. Among the expected announcements:

Software:

• Release of Mac OS 9.1.
  
• Release of QuickTime 5.0.
  
• A firmer timetable for Mac OS X 1.0 along with extensive previews of new features in latest build(s).
  
• Delayed until March/April: Release of two new Apple multimedia applications; one is confirmed to be a new DVD Authoring app, the other is still a matter of disagreement.
  
• Oracle is expected to announce plans to release their 9i database for OS X.
  
• Numerous developers, including some surprising new faces, trotted out to trumpet support for Mac OS X.

Apple Hardware:

Evidence that the entire Mac range will be upgraded is Apple's mail-in rebate for extra memory, valid until 31 December 2000. The offer gives US$1 off for each extra MB, which means buying a little extra memory with a computer makes the computer cheaper in total than the standard configuration. This is not being pushed as a Christmas special, but some voices claim the discount is merely to try to increase waning sales, not decrease old inventory for new releases in the new year.

• 466, 533 and 600MHz G4s in PowerMac line, although possibly speeds of only 400, 466, 533MHz. UMA-2 motherboards, adding DDR SDRAM support at 133MHz. All speeds with dual processors.
  Indirect evidence is the price drop for the Cube/monitor bundle (see below), indicating a Cube upgrade. Apple would not have faster CPUs in the Cube than in the PowerMac - the top of the range Mac.
  
• Powerbook G4. UMA-2 motherboard chipset with 4X AGP graphics, ATi RAGE Mobility M4 accelerators, ATA-100 storage, and many other new features. Possibly a 15' 1600 x 1024 widescreen.
  Evidence of a big update is a second-hand report of Apple Australia's prize for its current buy-a-PowerMac competition. Quote the conditions of entry:'8) The major prize is an Apple PowerBook G4 computer valued at [AU]$4,700.'
  Also, Apple is offering US$200 off PowerBooks until 31 December (mail-in rebate). Apple has also quietly reduced the price on its high-end 500MHz PowerBook by US$500, with a new minimum advertised price of $2999 (128MB/20GB). Unknown at this stage if this second reduction is permanent (ie, if it will apply to January's model). Meanwhile, in New Zealand, Apple is offering a NZ$400 rebate on the 400MHz, and a NZ$1450 rebate on the 500MHz model. Similar rebates are being offered by Apple Aus.
  
• 533 and 600MHz G4s added to Cube line, although possibly only 466 and 533MHz. UMA-2 motherboards, adding DDR SDRAM support at 133MHz.
  Evidenced by Apple offering US$300 back on Cube/monitor bundle.
  
• Delayed until March/April: 'Cube Portable' whose shipping name is rumored to follow none of the current schemes (iMac/iBook, PowerMac/Powerbook, Cube). UMA-2 motherboard chipset with 4X AGP graphics, ATi RAGE Mobility M4 accelerators, ATA-100 storage, and many other new features.
  
• Updates to iMac lineup with faster IBM PowerPC 750CX/750CXe low-power G3 processors and UMA-2 chipset. Possible price reductions across the board.

Non-Apple Hardware:

• ATi expected to release RADEON MAXX dual-processor AGP graphics card with up to 128MB of DDR video memory for Apple's PowerMac G4 and G4 Cube; if Apple makes the planned update to UMA-2 for both of those machines at MWSF, the cards will likely be 4X AGP.
  
• nVidia expected to release Mac version of GeForce MX and possibly high-end GeForce256.
  
• Formac is expected to demonstrate its forthcoming ProFormance IV, with 64MB of SGRAM, dual 128-bit rasterization processors and an additional geometry processor on a dual-monitor-capable 2X AGP card. Support for 3D goggles.

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Whether you’re a developer who’s working on mobile apps, or just someone enjoying the millions of apps available for your phone, today is a very special day. It’s the ten year anniversary of the original iPhone SDK.

I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that this release changed a lot of people’s lives. I know it changed mine and had a fundamental impact on this company’s business. So let’s take a moment and look back on what happened a decade ago.

There are a lot of links in this piece, many of which were difficult to resurrect on today’s web. Make sure you take the time to explore! I’ve also tried to avoid technical jargon, so even if you don’t know your Swift from a hole in the ground, you can still follow along.

Touching the Future

For many of us, holding that first iPhone at the end of June 2007 was a glimpse of the future. We all wanted to know what was inside the glass and metal sitting in our pockets.

Apple had told us what the device could do, but said very little about how it was done. We didn’t know anything about the processor or its speed, how much memory was available, or how you built apps. In many ways, this new device was a black, and silver, box.

As developers, we wanted to understand this device’s capabilities. We wanted to understand how our software design was about to change. We were curious and there was much to learn.

And learn we did. We called it Jailbreaking.

Breaking Out of Jail

Discoveries happened quickly. It took just a matter of weeks before the filesystem was exposed. A couple of months later, the entire native app experience was unlocked. Development toolchains were available and folks were writing installers for native apps.

This rapid progress was made possible thanks to the tools used to build the original iPhone. Apple relied on the same infrastructure as Mac OS. They chose a familiar environment to expedite their own development, but that same familiarity allowed those of us outside Cupertino to figure things out quickly.

For example, much of the software on the iPhone was created using Objective-C. Mac developers had long used a tool called class-dump to show the various pieces of an app and learn how things communicated with each other. After getting access to the first iPhone’s apps and frameworks, this software gave great insight into what Apple had written.

Clunky Cube Mac Os Catalina

The most important piece was a new thing called UIKit. It contained all the user interface components, like buttons and table views. Since they were similar to the ones we’d used on the Mac, it took little effort to make items for taps and scrolling.

Another important piece of the puzzle was the operating system: Unix. This choice by Apple meant that a lot of open source software was immediately available on our iPhones. We could use it to build our apps, then copy them over to the phone, and, most likely, view the content of LatestCrash.plist in /var/logs/CrashReporter :-)

I distinctly remember the first time I got a shell prompt on my iPhone and used uname to see the system information. I was home.

Early App Development

I was not alone. Thousands of other developers were finding that the inside of this new device was just as magical as the outside. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to hear that there was an explosion of iPhone app development.

One of the pivotal moments for the burgeoning community came at an independent developer conference called C4[1]. Held in August of 2007, many of the attendees had the new device and were discovering its capabilities. Most of us were also experienced Mac developers. We had just been to WWDC and heard Apple’s pitch for a “sweet solution”.

Amid this perfect storm, there was an “Iron Coder” competition for the “iPhone API”. The conference organizer, Jonathan “Wolf” Rentzsch, asked us to “be creative”. We were.

My own submission was a web app that implemented a graphing calculator in JavaScript. It epitomized what we all disliked about Apple’s proposal a few months earlier: a clunky user interface that ran slowly. Not the sandwich most of us were hoping for…

Video conferencing without a front-facing video camera.

On the other hand, the native apps blew us away. The winner of the contest was a video conferencing app written by Glen and Ken Aspeslagh. They built their own front-facing camera hardware and wrote something akin to FaceTime three years before Apple. An amazing achievement considering the first iPhone didn’t even have a video camera.

But for me, the app that came in second place was the shining example of what was to come. First, it was a game, and well, that’s worked out pretty well on mobile. But more importantly, it showed how great design and programming could take something from the physical world, make it work seamlessly on a touch screen, and significantly improve the overall experience.

Lucas Newman and Adam Betts created the Lights Off app a few days before C4. Afterwards, Lucas helped get me started with the Jailbreak tools, and at some point he gave me the source code so I could see how it worked. Luckily, I’m good at keeping backups and maintaining software: your iPhone X can still run that same code we all admired 10 years ago!

Lucas Newman presenting Lights Off at C4[1]. Photo: John Gruber

If you’re a developer who uses Xcode, get the project that’s available on GitHub. The project’s Jailbreak folder contains everything Lucas sent me. The Xcode project adapts that code so it can be built and run – no changes were made unless necessary. It’s much easier to get running than the original, but please don’t complain about the resolution not being 1-to-1 :-)

In the code you’ll see things like a root view controller that’s also an application delegate: remember that we were all learning how to write apps without any documentation. There’s also a complete lack of properties, storyboards, asset catalogs, and many other things we take for granted in our modern tools.

If you don’t have Xcode, you’re still in luck. Long-time “iPhone enthusiast” Steve Troughton-Smith sells an improved version on the App Store. I still love this game and play it frequently: its induction into iMore’s Hall of Fame is well deserved.

Now I was armed with tools and inspiration. What came next?

The Iconfactory’s First Apps

In June 2007, we had just released version 2.1 of our wildly popular Mac app for Twitter. It should have be pretty easy to move some Cocoa code from one platform to another, right?

The first version of Twitterrific on the iPhone. And pens. And slerp.

Not really. But I was learning a lot and having a blast!

The iPhone attracted coders of all kinds, including our own Sean Heber. In 2007, Sean was doing web development and didn’t know anything about Objective-C or programming for the Mac. But that didn’t stop him from poking around in the class-dump headers with the rest of us and writing his first app.

But he took it a step further with a goal to write an app for every day of November 2007 (inspired by his wife doing NaNoWriMo.) He called it iApp-a-Day and it was a hit in the Jailbreak community. The attention eventually landed him a position at Tapulous, alongside the talented folks responsible for the iPhone’s first hit franchise: Tap Tap Revenge.

Over the course of the month, Sean showed that the iPhone could be whatever the developer wanted it to be. Sure, it could play games, but it could also keep track of your budget, play a tune, or help you hang a painting.

Screenshots from Sean Heber’s iApp-a-Day.

Both Sean and I have archives of the apps we produced during this period. The code is admittedly terrible, but for us it represents something much greater. Reading it brings back fond memories of the halcyon days where we were experimenting with the future.

There were a lot of surprises in that early version of UIKit. It took forever to find the XML parser because it was buried in the OfficeImport framework. And some important stuff was completely missing: there was no way to return a floating point value with Objective-C.

There were also strange engineering decisions. You could put arbitrary HTML into a text view, which worked fine with simple tags like <b>, but crashed with more complex ones. Views also used LKLayer for compositing, which was kinda like the new Core Animation in Mac OS Leopard, but not the same. Tables also introduced a new concept called “cell reuse” which allowed for fast scrolling, but it was complex and unwieldy. And it would have been awesome to have view controllers like the ones just released for AppKit.

But that didn’t stop us from experimenting and learning what we could do. And then something happened: we stopped.

A Real SDK

Apple had worked their butts off to get the iPhone out the door. Those of us who were writing Jailbreak apps saw some warts in that first product, but they didn’t matter at all. Real artists ship. Only fools thought it sucked.

Everyone who’s shipped a product knows that the “Whew, we did it!” is quickly followed by a “What’s next?”

Maybe the answer to that question was influenced by all the Jailbreaking, or maybe the managers in Cupertino knew what they wanted before the launch. Either way, we were all thrilled when an official SDK was announced by Steve Jobs, a mere five months after release of the phone itself.

The iPhone SDK was promised for February of 2008, and given the size of the task, no one was disappointed when it slipped by just a few days. The release was accompanied by an event at the Town Hall theater.

Ten years ago today was the first time we learned about the Simulator and other changes in Xcode, new and exciting frameworks like Core Location and OpenGL, and a brand new App Store that would get our products into the hands of customers. Jason Snell transcribed the event for Macworld. There’s also a video.

Our Turn to Be Real Artists

After recovering from all the great news, developers everywhere started thinking about shipping. We didn’t know exactly how long we would have, but we knew we had to hustle.

In the end, we had about four months to get our apps ready. Thanks to what The Iconfactory learned during the Jailbreak era, we had a head start understanding design and development issues. But we still worked our butts off to build the first iPhone’s Twitter app.

Winning an Apple Design Award. Thank you. Photo: Steve Weller

Just before the launch of the App Store, Apple added new categories during its annual design awards ceremony. We were thrilled to win an ADA for our work on the iPhone.

How thrilled? The exclamation I used while downloading the new SDK was the same as getting to hold that silver cube.

After that, we were among the first apps to be featured in the App Store and ranked high in the early charts.

We knew we were a part of something big. Just not how big.

The Journey Continues

The Iconfactory’s first mobile app entered a store where there were hundreds of products. There are now over two million.

We now sell mobile apps for consumers and tools for the designers & developers who make them.

We now do design work for mobile apps at companies large, medium, and
small.

We now develop mobile apps for a select group of clients. (Get in touch if you’d like to be one of them.)

A lot can happen in a decade.

But one thing hasn’t changed. Our entire team is still proud to be a part of this vibrant ecosystem and of the contributions we make to it. Here’s to another decade!