So In yesterday’s post, I posited that a custom chip from Apple might make it impossible for people to port other operating systems to the iPad hardware.

It turns out, according to this artice over at Bright Side of News, the A4 is simply a system on a chip. It is an ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU mashed together with memory and other functions.

Porting something like linux to the iPad won’t be easy but it should be possible. As far as I know, no alternative operating systems have been successfully run on the iPhone and the iPad will probably have a very similar story. Theoretically, iBoot from the iPhone Dev Team is close to getting an Linux to load on the iPhone. Let’s hope they can bring some of the same know-how to the iPad.

wow. months of the blog world jerking off to today’s fantasy finally ended with everyone feeling a little disappointed. The iPad is here, and we are all once again, wondering what we will use it for. I wasn’t going to post about it but there are a few things I think people are overlooking.

A4 Processor. whaaa?

We knew apple bought a processor manufacturer so this isn’t a total surprise but it is a big move that I think will impact things more than people realize.

First, apple is now in the business of once again using proprietary technology instead of off the shelf components. While it may be totally awesome now, Apple runs the risk of chips from other companies getting way faster quicker than their own and users waiting years for upgrades like in the PowerPC days. Luckily Apple has gone through processor switches before and knows how to package binaries that work on multiple architectures.

Second, and I think perhaps more significant, using a custom processor could stop the porting of other operating systems dead in their tracks. If apple doesn’t provide the right specs or compilers, it could be forever before we can see Chrome OS or any other Linux running on their hardware, which is too bad.

Missing Features

All the tech blogs are hard and fast complaining that there is no SD Card. personally I don’t think people will give a shit. Most people who have SD slots in their phones or Netbooks never use them.

No Camera – sucks. video conferencing and even (choke) A.R. would be cool on it.

No GPS – As far as I can tell there is no GPS receiver. This is too bad. It would make a great co-pilot tool on road trips. I guess with gsm you can get psuedo gps but it’s not quite the same.

Awesome Features

USB Charging – You can charge the iPad with USB. This means car charging. The thing I miss most about my tiBook was being able to use it in my car without killing the battery.

GSM unlocked. Yeah, AT&T sucks. everyone knows that. With an unlocked device, it opens up the possibility not just of other carriers supporting it, but perhaps real price competition. If this thing sells as many as they hope it would be a prime opportunity for T-Mobile to offer the same data plans for $10 cheaper.

Hopes for Accessories

I think the right accessories could save the iPad for me, here is what I would like to see:

DSLR Tether – If I could plug it directly into my camera and get shots full screen as I take them, it would be amazing for studio shots. Even better if I could use it as a remote while the camera is on a tripod. This should be possible with the SDK: so Nikon, Canon, get to it! I would switch to Canon if they pull this off first.

A really good, accurate, stylus – yeah, finger touch is great and all. but as @thisIsStar said on twitter earlier, it isn’t a Wacom killer. There would be a certain awesomeness to be able to sit on the couch and work in illustrator or photoshop with precision. I don’t know if the touchscreen is sensitive enough for good fine control, but maybe it is, and maybe they could do it with some sort of add on.

We’ll see

Anyways. I have no doubt apple will sell a ton of these things. At $500 bucks I’ll probably get drunk and buy one eventually.

oh. and yeah. did I read that correctly on the tech specs page? The OS still can’t read iCal .ics files sent as attachments in email? WTFx1000? My windows mobile phone from 8 years ago can do that.

It’s been about half a year since Apple announced that they would be allowing 3rd parties to develop integrated hardware/software applications for the iPhone. Here is a roundup of what has come out so far.

In my opinion, the most exciting announcement made at the 2009 WWDC was that the 3.0 version of the iPhone operating system would support integration with 3rd party hardware. Considering the number of stupid docks out there, I fully expected there to be hundreds of new accessories for the iPhone by the end of the year.

Here we are, a little over six months out, and I decided to dig around and see just what 3rd party hardware is out there with iPhone integration goodness.

L5 IR Dongle
Turns your iPhone into a universal remote.
link to site

WowWee Cinemin Pico Projector
Small projectors are being touted by tons of hardware manufacturers. I have yet to see anyone buy one but maybe since this one works with the iPhone it will be the first.
link to site

WakeMate
This is an armband that monitors your sleep to wake you up at exactly the right moment in your cycle. Even more compelling to me than the waking up is that it monitors your sleep and makes nice charts of it on their web site.
link to site

PedalBrain
This is appealing because rather than try to invent new proprietary hardware this good looking bicycle mount reads data from standard Ant+ sensors on your bike to track everything you would want to know about your riding. The mount is carbon fiber which pretty much ensures it will cost a ton but also that I will buy one.
link to site
Ant+

iCarte RfID Reader
This one doesn’t get much press, but a cheap reliable RfID reader could be just what the RfID industry needs to get their technology into smaller businesses and retail shops.
link to site

Square
Square is getting a ton of press despite their newness in the industry and the fact that their dongle looks like absolute crap and plugs into your microphone jack. Of course, their software looks tip top and the company was started by Jack Dorsey of Twitter fame. I won’t be impressed until I see one work in person or they beat out the wikipedia entry for the word “square” in google rankings.
link to site

Verifone Payware Mobile
A much better looking accessory from a proven player in the payment processing biz, the press is largely ignoring these guys because they are all in love with Square. What will probably kill these guys is the fact that they are a very 1.0 company and generally a pain in the ass to buy services from.
link to site

Nasa Chemical Sensor
As far as I know, this one isn’t available for sale but it is very cool to see that those way smart folks at NASA are out hacking up their own accessories. I recently watched a documentary about the Apollo Space program and wondered if you could now replace the 1975 NASA Central Command Center with a good iPhone app.
link to site

This is a good start, but I really hope and expect to see some crazy and varied 3rd party hardware add-ons this year.

• A real barcode scanner, you know with a lazer and not trying to make the camera do something it doesn’t want to.
• A voltmeter
• An oscilloscope
• Still no Dj accessories? Despite the billion iPod mixers, you guys can’t make an auto-tune mixer or something?
• Um, lazertag guns
• Expensive home automation systems, so people on MTV cribs can replace all the light switches in their house with iPhones.
• Something that plugs into my power tools. Don’t know how, but surprise me. Chainsaw hero?

Ars Technica has an article talking about how Microsoft Entertainment and Devices President Robbie Bach came out and said that the Nexus One will hurt Android. Basically, he said that Microsoft thinks releasing your own device will scare off 3rd parties from using your Operating System.

I think comments like this that continually come out of Redmond highlight why Microsoft struggles so much connecting with customers. Microsoft has taken the strategy that focusing on OEM partners is more important than focusing on user experience. Windows mobile was the dominant smart phone OS on the market for years because they did a great job signing up hardware makers. Unfortunately they didn’t pay any attention to end users and as soon as something better came along their demand disappeared.

Google has taken the right strategy, focus on the customer experience first, worry about the hardware vendors later. If the public is excited to use your software, the hardware companies will follow, especially if you don’t charge any Licensing fees.

I wonder if Robbie Bach thinks that hardware manufacturers wouldn’t wet their pants at a chance to run OSX on their own devices. With his logic they wouldn’t want to because Apple already makes a good phone.

This is a widget for showing you real-time data about bus arrival times for a chosen stop. Using Next-bus satellite data you can have a very accurate prediction of when your bus is coming. Currently, the following 5 bus routes are supported 39 111 114 116 117

 Download Version 1.0

OpenCV is rapidly changing and there is no bundled version that comes with OSX. I’m working on some command line apps and don’t feel like explaining to my users how to install Macports so I decided I would need to statically compile it into my application. There is a OSX Framework available, but I’m not making an application bundle so that was a no-go.

Here is what needed to be done:

First off, this document on the OpenCv Wiki doesn’t seem to work anymore if you are pulling directly from subversion.

Build System – Open CV seems to have 3 types of build scripts in subversion: Make, Autotools, and CMake. It took a lot of trial and error before I realized that only CMake appears to be working, at least on my system.

You can get a copy of CMake here here.

Before you run CMake, you have to change the following files:

• src/cxcore/CMakeLists.txt
• src/highgui/CMakeLists.txt
• src/cvaux/CMakeLists.txt
• src/cv/CMakeLists.txt
• src/ml/CMakeLists.txt
• tests/cxts/CMakeLists.txt

Look for the add_library lines and change this:

add_library(${the_target} DYNAMIC ${lib_srcs} ${lib_hdrs})

to this:

add_library(${the_target} STATIC ${lib_srcs} ${lib_hdrs})

Once you have made that change, follow the CMake instructions here

In Your Own Project
Assuming the above worked well, you can now statically compile your application pointing to the .a files generated by your opencv build.

One thing to keep in mind, is that your application now has to be linked to OSX system frameworks. You can resolve this by adding the frameworks to your linker in your Makefile:

-framework Carbon -framework CoreFoundation -framework QuickTime -framework QuartzCore

Parallels crashed on me this afternoon while Windows was installing patches and rebooting. When I tried to start the system up again I kept getting this error message:

Parallels Desktop is unable to access the virtual hard disk image file winxp3.hdd. The file is missing, corrupted, or used by other application.

I knew that the file wasn’t in use by any other application because Parallels was no longer running and I had rebooted my machine.

It took a bit of digging, but here is how to make it stop thinking the file is in use:

- Locate your .hdd file (usually in ~/Library/Parallels)
- Right click on the file and choose “Show Package Contents”

When the package is opened, look for a file called “DiskDescriptor.xml.lck”. This is the file it uses to determine if the disk image is in use. Toss this file in the trash and close the package. Parallels should now start up.

OSX ships with a respectable version of Vim, 7.0. I can’t remember why, but I had some reason where I needed to upgrade to the latest copy (currently 7.2). Here is how to do it:

In a terminal window, run the following commands:

svn co https://vim.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/vim/vim7
cd vim7
./configure
sudo make install

This will install a vim GUI in your Applications folder. In order to upgrade the vim in your terminal window, you have to run these commands:

sudo mv /usr/bin/vim /usr/bin/vim_original
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/vim /Applications/Vim.app/Contents/MacOS/Vim

Vim on the command line should now be updated to the latest version.

A side effect of this update is that your .vimrc file will be read from the more standard UNIX location of your home folder. To copy the OSX vimrc to your home folder so it can be read, run this command:

cp /usr/share/vim/vimrc ~/.vimrc

Last night I had been waiting for about two weeks to hear back from apple about membership in the iPhone developer program. I’m told this is normal wait time and I should just keep waiting.

At one point, I was thinking to myself “crap, this is reason enough to take another look at android and see what that has to offer”… but then I realized, I may be waiting for my application from Apple, but I couldn’t have installed an android app on any phone anywhere anyway. duh. quit complaining self.

They finally contacted me today asking me to fax them in some information. Lets see how long the next step takes.

Maybe my Macbook is messed up because I seem to get way more weird issues with it than other people I talk to.

Today it started doing this thing where it thinks the number lock and caps lock buttons are reverse what they should be. In order to type normal, I have to have both the lock lights turned on, rather than turned off. Toggling them on or off seems to work normal, it just thinks that a green light means turned off rather than on.

A bit of digging turns up that it seems like I’m not the only one with this problem. A forum post says that resetting the PRAM fixes the issue, but so does resetting the computer without doing anything sometimes so I don’t know.