Alef Arendsen

I just installed the beta version of Safari 4 and so far it’s pretty impressive. Things seem a lot smoother now!

I started it up for the first time and opened a new tab and the following is what I saw…

1. nu.nl – the Dutch news site… I think this is the number one site for a lot of Dutch people
2. hanglos.nl – site for the Dutch kiteboarding community
3. blog.arendsen.net – my own blog
4. actuelewaterdata.nl for IJmuiden – the actual wind situation at IJmuiden beach, close to my home spot for kiteboarding
5. higherlevel.nl – a Dutch community site for entrepreneurs
6. InfoQ.com – a (mostly Java-related) tech site
7. Twitter.com – well, you know what Twitter is, don’t you
8. iGoogle
9. maps.google.com
10. techcrunch.com – a web 2.0 blog
11. kitehigh.nl – another Dutch kite community
12. Google Logon page

I’m not sure if this is ordered at all. One thing to note is that I’ve had hanglos.nl, blog.arendsen.net, actuelewaterdata.nl and higherlevel.nl all as my start pages in the last few weeks, but then again, even if I didn’t, they’d probably still appear on ‘the wall’. I was surprised to find my own blog up there, but then I realized I don’t get emails from my blog when a new comment arrives (for some reason these cat categorized as spam and get deleted immediately), so I check for comments manually a few times a day.

One thing is for sure: I’m going to like this Wall thing a lot! It’ll save me from having to type in stuff in the address bar a lot!

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I just noticed a feature in Safari that I had never seen before. I’m looking to buy a new (or actually used) car and I had opened plenty of tabs in my browser, all looking for a Nissan X-Trail 2.2dci. The titles for all these tabs started with ‘Nissan X-Trail 2.2dci’ and then a bunch of stuff specific for the car followed. Safari actually strips of the stuff that all the tabs have in common and only shows the stuff that’s coming after that… The following screenshot shows this.

I think this is a wonderfully thought out feature that makes Safari just that little bit more usable.

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Now what always intrigues me is how or where does Apple get their ideas for features like this!

I know for a fact that an open source community-based model works like a charm for to get good feature requests in. Spring (the product I’ve been working on for ages) is a prime example of a (partially) community-driven effort. The actual work on the code itself is largely done by people employed by our company (SpringSource) and before there even was a company, it was a small group of people that did it (essentially already working in what seemed like a company-mode before the company even started) and I think this is a healthy way to support products (like Spring) that are used on such a widespread basis.

The features however, new ideas, testing, the fine tuning and even some of the actual coding actually happens largely by the community. We get lots of feature requests (almost) every day in our public issue trackers, people test it, discuss it, et cetera. Maybe it’s not all work done by the community, but parts of it sure are and the rest is greatly stimulated by having a community around. I’m a big believer in community-driven development. In the case of Spring it makes for a much better product that is lower-cost, easier to maintain and in the end better to use in all areas.

Back to the question: how does Apple do this? I have never spent much time on figuring out how Apple makes such good products, but I would sure love to hear stories about this or have references to it. Sure, there’s Steve Jobs and all, and the people working at Apple are really passionate about what they do. Just look at the introduction for the new MacBook (view it, all of it and you’ll see what I mean), which clearly shows how passionate the people working on the new MacBook are (you may call be naive, but I seriously believe every word all of these people say is sincere and admire their passion). But… it can’t simply be possible that this company simply does it all on its own. Is there some hidden body of people outside of Apple (the Apple community) that discusses features and gives Apple new ideas? Does Apple in a way also do community-driven development?

Okay, back to hunting cars again… The old (well, it’s only 3 years old anyway) car has to be handed in by the beginning of next month, and I’m looking for a good replacement that fits all my kites and can drive up a snowy road in winter… The X-Trail seems to fit the profile so far…

Vorige week kwam de nieuwe MacBook Air uit, tjezus wat een machtig apparaat. Ik heb net zo ongeveer 3 maanden een nieuwe MacBook, nadat m’n eerste in November in Mauritius uit mijn hotelkamer was gestolen. Dat was welgeteld de vierde (!) laptop die van mij gestolen is. Ik zat al te denken: er kan er nog wel eentje bij, dan kan ik daarna gewoon een MacBook Air bestellen. Maar dat leek me toch een beetje te veel van het goede .

De MacBook Air is wel echt een mega apparaat. Met Solid State Drive kost ie volgens mij wel een vermogen, maar dan heb je ook wat. Een stuk lichter dan elke andere normale laptop waar je een beetje fatsoenlijk op kan werken, ook nog eens erg dun, en zonder bewegende in de hard-drive. Naast het feit dat mijn laptops vaak gestolen worden hebben ook hard-drives bij mij de gewoonte om me in de steek te laten.

Ach, voorlopig eerst maar even met het normale MacBookje doorgaan…

O ja, voor het geval je het echt wilt weten: m’n eerste twee laptops werden tegelijkertijd gestolen, uit de kofferbak van mijn auto (oud-collegae van JTeam hebben hier sinds kort ook ervaring mee geloof ik). De tweede is uit ons kantoor gestolen door een inloper. Die vent is overigens wel gepakt later. Hij was bij het inbreken zo slim geweest een ontvangstbewijsje van de Cash Converters achter te laten (deed ie vast niet expres). Hier op stond z’n identiteitsnummer (echt, hoe stom kun je zijn) en de politie heeft hem toen achterhaald. Ik geloof dat ie twee jaar onvoorwaardelijk gekregen heeft omdat ie ook nog een aantal andere dingen op z’n kerfstokje had. Gerechtigheid!

Ben trouwens inmiddels aangekomen in Polen. Ik zit in het centrum Krakow, vijf minuten lopen van het Wawel kasteel vandaan. Ik ben helaas wel m’n dress shirts vergeten, dus moet het morgen met een vestje doen. Morgenavond dan toch maar even de stad in om een nieuw shirt te kopen. We kregen vorige week het volgende positieve commentaar van iemand in de blogosphere: ‘the Spring guys are always well-suite and businessmen-like. They’re always the centre of the crowd’. Nou, dat gaat morgen in iets mindere mate voor mij gelden

O ja, laatste update: ik ben ook nog even wezen kiten vandaag. Was relaxt, hoewel erg kort. Jack en ik waren bij de Stichtse brug (de brug over het Gooise Meer heen naar de polder) en daar is het wel altijd erg vlagerig. Zo ook vandaag. Aan zee was er volgens actuelewaterdata.nl rond de tijd dat wij bezig waren (wij waren dus niet aan zee, maar toch), een knoopje of 26 met vlagen van boven de 35 knopen. Landinwaarts zal het gemiddeld iets minder geweest zijn, maar de vlagen zullen ook wel rond de 30 gezeten hebben denk ik. Nou trek ik dat met m’n 8′je wel. Jack was een beetje aan het body-draggen, maar dat ging niet lang goed. Op de een of andere manier schoot z’n safety los en kon ie z’n kite niet meer houden. De wind stond goed en we hebben de kite gelukkig daarna aan de andere kant van het Gooise Meer weer op kunnen pikken. Anyway, toch weer een paar rakjes lekker kunnen varen. De temperatuur van het water was best goed te doen moet ik zeggen. Nou maar hopen dat er niet nog een onwijs koude-front komt die de watertemperatuur nog meer omlaag jaagt…

Eclipse on Leopard used to have a very nasty bug that made it to crash in certain circumstances. Now I just downloaded the main Eclipse distribution (I figured, it’s been a while, the main download SHOULD have fixed this now). And it still crashes.

Now, I’m sure it’ll be fixed in the next version, but what does it take to supply all people on Leopard with patched version (as the main download version).

Sure, I know the integration and stream builds all have the fix, but do I really have to go through all the trouble of downloading a stream integration build to get such a patch? What about people that just want to try things out and don’t know about this bug.

Of course, I could be totally wrong here and maybe there is a easily downloadable version for Leopard somewhere, but then I missed it. Let me know if you have any alternatives.

Okay, apart from Java 6 not being available on the Mac, I’m not complaining at all:

Last login: Thu Nov 15 10:06:52 on ttys000
Macintosh:~ alefarendsen$ which ant
/usr/bin/ant
Macintosh:~ alefarendsen$ which mvn
/usr/bin/mvn

I just got a new laptop and immediately installed Leopard on it. I was in such a rush that I really didn’t have time to do anything else than the bare necessities. So when I checked out some source code today and needed Ant to build it, I didn’t need to download it at all!

Thanks, Apple

And about that Java 6 thing: who’s on Java 6 anyway

I was reading a piece on Leopard the other day over at Ars Technica and I was dumb-struck by a survey that Apple apparently took among its customers before creating Time Machine. Apparently only four percent backup regularly:

Apple took a survey of its customers’ backup habits before creating Time Machine. Eighty percent of Mac users said they knew they should backup their data. (This is scary already. Only 80 percent?) Twenty-six percent said they do backup their data. That actually doesn’t sound too bad until you get to the next question. Only four percent backup regularly.

I realized just now that I’ve been pretty lucky that I do a backup every two weeks (or whenever I’m at home), to a networked drive at my place. This is meant to make any data survive that’s not in our version control system. I actually needed the backup desperately a short while ago, as I had to switch to a new laptop without having access to the old one all of a sudden anymore.

The story is that Time Machine takes away all the hassle of doing backups manually and completely and transparently automates the process. As Ars Technica puts it:

If you have more than one hard disk attached to your Mac, it’s more difficult not to use Time Machine than to use it.

I do have to change my setup a little bit though. I heard it’s possible to first connect a networked NAS drive via USB and initialize it as a Time Machine drive, after which (if the NAS supports AFP) you can reconnect to it through the network and Time Machine will still work. That’s suboptimal though, as I want to change to a RAID setup anyway. I’m going to buy a Firewire RAID drive soon that will serve as my Time Machine drive. The networked drive that I already have (a Lacie too) will continue to serve as my music drive (I don’t have backups of my music, maybe I’ll use the RAID drive for that too).

If you have any suggestions (different drives, different setup), let me know!

Last week, two ex-colleagues of mine made the exact same mistake as I made almost two years ago: leave their laptops in the trunk of the car. Both laptops were stolen and one of the guys lost a lot of pictures I heard.

That made me realize: I do have a backup script that copies all the important stuff from my laptop to a NAS drive, sitting in the basement somewhere, but I didn’t manage to get my pictures backed up yet in a nice way.

I’m using Aperture, which has its own internal backup mechanism using what they Vaults. Vaults however cannot be stored in a network drive–at least, that’s what the error message said when I last tried a couple of months ago. Today I found an article buy a guy that did manage to get his vault stored on a networked drive. Thanks!

p.s. I have a MacBook and like it for its size. The only time I actually hate it is when using Aperture. The graphics card is just too slow, so any real digital post processing is kind of a nightmare.
p.p.s. Just as Pages files, Keynote presentations and many other file types on a Mac, the Aperture Vault is a bundle. In other words, it’s just another directory which MacOS shows as if it were a single file. Very nice…

I love my Apple power adapter (wow, thats sounds realllly weird doesn’t it?). It’s got magnets and all you know! (for those who are not into computers: the power adapter had a magnetic connector that keeps it attached to the computer instead of you having to ‘plug’ it in). Even if after a few beers (or more) I stumble over the power cord (which happens about five times a week), I don’t ruin my Mac. It’s simply great!

I also hate my Apple power adapter (okay, that’s sounds a little more normal). You can exchange the part that goes into the wall socket for different (international) ones. Of course this is a smart thing to do, but then you always have to remember to put the original one back in place when you get back home. Now I have two power adapters, so I don’t forget one when I head to a client (it’s always in my bag), but I don’t always keep those little what-’should-we-call-it’s with me so occasionally I have to deal without an adapter for a while.

Sometimes that doesn’t always work however… Today I had to do some serious speeding again to drive back home after my morning appointment to pick my power adapter (or rather, the European part that goes into the power socket) and be in time for my afternoon appointment. Afterall, I wouldn’t want my laptop to die down in the middle of a presentation would I . I hope the camera on the A9 was out of film…

p.s. If anyone can tell me what this adapter-adapter-thing is called, please tell me!
p.p.s. I was kidding about those five times a week, just in case you were wondering…