Riccardo Mori

Where have all the other developer tools gone?

February 19, 2012

Peter Hosey:

Xcode’s distribution has changed greatly in 4.3.

First, it’s now simply an app, without an Installer package. If you install it through the Mac App Store, it’ll install directly–no more “Install Xcode.app” (which I think I read earlier that you have to delete, although I can’t speak to this myself). If you install it from the disk image, it’s a drag-and-drop install.

Second, the set of applications that come with it (now bundled inside) is now much smaller. The other developer applications have been split out into separate disk images that are only available on connect.apple.com.

So, I thought I’d make a catalog listing where everything is now. Every one of the below sections corresponds to a disk image on connect.apple.com, and with the exception of Xcode, every one of those disk images is only available from connect.apple.com—only Xcode is available from the Mac App Store.

I strongly suggest you bookmark Peter’s article, Xcode and Friends to keep track of the various developer applications that once came all together.

(Side note: Apple could have easily made them available as a developer bundle in the Developer section of the Mac App Store, anyway.)

The urban explorations of Anna Arinova

February 18, 2012

by Riccardo Mori

Handpicked

Abandoned design organisation

I found Anna Arinova’s photos by chance. Since Urban exploration (her LiveJournal) is in Russian, I had to resort to Google Translate to put things in context. I believe she’s based in Moscow, and that many of the places and abandoned facilities you’ll see in her photos are in or around Moscow. I am a sucker for this kind of images and I find the documented exploration of abandoned places engrossing and utterly fascinating.

What’s more, Anna is a fantastic photographer and I’m glad to make more people aware of her skills. The three photos I’ve chosen to publish here are from an abandoned design organisation. You’ll find the complete set here.

Fontfabric

February 17, 2012

by Riccardo Mori

Handpicked

From their About page:

Fontfabric is an independent type foundry , which was launched at the close of 2008 by designer Svetoslav Simov who is based in Sofia, Bulgaria. Our goal is to create high-quality fonts which stand in a unique class of their own, and which will serve as a good base for any designer project whether it be web, print, t‑shirt design, logo etc.

Every week, a new and totally unique font will be rolled out of production, which you can easily buy or download free of charge.

Their latest font is called Rex:

Fontfabric rex

But please check all of their work, it’s good stuff. My favourites are probably Archive and Solomon Sans (this one isn’t free, though; you can purchase the whole family of 14 styles or each style individually at MyFonts). I’ll say it again: it’s not common to find such a good catalogue of free typefaces. They’re also quite varied, to meet the most diverse needs.

Source: Fontfabric.

(Hat tip to David — @inkxel)

Sales are good

February 17, 2012

by Riccardo Mori

Handpicked

Cumulative sales for Apple products asymco

Source: Apple sold more iOS devices in 2011 than all the Macs it sold in 28 years | asymco.

Nice work, as usual, by Horace Dediu. There’s very little to comment on the data itself — it’s quite self-explanatory. This is undoubtedly one of those graphs with a great ‘whoa’ factor. Apple sold many more iPhones in five years than Macs in 28 years. But once the immediate ‘whoa’ factor wears off, I wonder: is this really that surprising? And also: Macs, iPads and iPhones/iPods are three very different categories; should they be compared against one another?

I remember a while ago how people were afraid that Apple could abandon the Mac platform because of the huge success of iOS devices, and I also remember how all these people were surprised that Apple could sell so many more iPhones than Macs. But, I thought, isn’t it rather obvious? Of course Apple sells more phones than computers. These are different devices with different uses and different prices, aimed at (slightly) different markets.

Imagine a company into the office furniture business, specifically desks and chairs. Beautifully crafted wooden desks and chairs. First they serve a rather niche market, then the business gets more profitable as word is spread about the quality of their products. Then one day they start producing pencils and small drawing tools. Then after a while you examine the sales of desks, chairs and pencils. Of course pencil sales are going to be way higher than desk sales. A pencil is versatile, portable, more affordable you buy more than one, you change pencil after a while. A desk is comparatively more difficult to place. But is it reasonable to compare their respective sales as if they were two competing products? I don’t think so.

My example is a little extreme, I know, but I hope it helps to illustrate my point. When looking at that graph, one is tempted to conclude that, since almost 200 million iPhones were sold in 5 years and roughly 120 million Macs were sold in 28 years, therefore the iPhone is a more successful product than the Mac. They are, however, products with different stories, born under very different circumstances and in very different computing eras. We should look at that graph as a breakdown of a compounded success, where each ingredient is not ‘competing’ against the other, especially considering that Mac sales help iOS sales and vice-versa.

Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion: essential coverage

February 17, 2012

by Riccardo Mori

Handpicked

Mountain Lion

As you’ve surely heard, Apple announced that the next Mac OS X iteration — 10.8, codename Mountain Lion — will be available in summer, and earlier today released a Developer Preview of Mountain Lion (Apple press release).

Of course, such announcements usually ‘make the Internet explode’, like someone said on Twitter. Suddenly everyone in the tech world was talking about it and the list of unread articles in my RSS feed reader skyrocketed in a matter of hours. To avoid being overwhelmed by information in cases like this (and especially by the often idle chatter), I tend to filter the intake, trying to locate good broad pieces that give me a fair amount of information without having to rush here and there fishing for possibly interesting bits.

So today the only articles I read from top to bottom are the following, and I highly recommend you read them too:

1. Hands on with Apple’s new OS X: Mountain Lion, by Jason Snell (Macworld)

2. Apple OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion preview, by Nilay Patel (The Verge)

These two articles give you plenty of information about the main new features in Mountain Lion.

3. Mountain Lion, by John Gruber

Gruber at his best.

4. About Gatekeeper, by Steven Frank (Panic)

Steven Frank does an excellent job at explaining in plain English what code signing means, and what is the role of Gatekeeper, a new security feature in Mountain Lion.

One more thing… Apparently, Mountain Lion will leave other older Intel Macs behind. Topher Kessler at MacFixIt writes:

Unfortunately Apple has not yet officially released the system requirements for the new OS, but the developer release that is being issued to members of its Mac development community does contain a list of supported devices:

iMac (mid-2007 or later)

MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, 2008), (13-inch, early 2009 or later)

MacBook Pro (13-inch, mid-2009 or later), (15-inch, 2.4/2.2 GHz, mid-2007 or later), (17-inch, late 2007 or later)

MacBook Air (late 2008 or later)

Mac Mini (early 2009 or later)

Mac Pro (early 2008 or later)

Xserve (early 2009)

Since these systems will run the developer preview, it is fair to assume they will also run the final release. It appears that this list leaves out a few systems that currently do run Lion, which include the following:

MacBook Pro from late 2006 (models 2,1 and 2,2)

MacBook from late 2006 through late 2007 (models 2,1 and 3,1)

Mac Mini from mid-2007 (model 2,1)