RubyMotion brings serious Ruby development to the iOS world

For the past several months I’ve been involved with, but unable to publicly discuss, an exciting project called RubyMotion. My friend Laurent Sansonetti, creator of MacRuby, has now officially launched a serious alternative to Objective-C for iPhone and iPad development. RubyMotion is not a bridge; it actually generates native applications that are as fast as the ones written in Objective-C . You can check...

The Strange Case of John Dillinger and the Fraudulent Apple ID

I suspect someone, somewhere has managed to find a way to create Apple IDs from email IDs they don’t have access to. The following is what leads me to believe this may be the case. This morning I received the following email starting with “Dear John Dillinger, Welcome to the Apple Online Store”. Four odd facts about this email: My name is not the same as that of an infamous 1930s criminal (John...

Requiem for a Dreamer

Steve Jobs passed away a week ago. When I first learned about it, I cried. That was an odd reaction on my part. I never met or interacted with Steve Jobs and I’m not what most would define as an Apple fanboy. I reflected upon what led me to shed tears for someone who was, technically, a stranger to me and came to realize that Steve Jobs affected and inspired my life far more that I cared to admit. My deep...

Mobile Development Marketshare Among Hacker News’ Participants

Yesterday I ran a poll amongst Hacker News participants in which I asked them to indicate which mobile platforms they develop for. Here are the results for the first 24 hours, in chart format, of that poll. Keep in mind that participants were allowed to select more than one platform if they develop for more than one. I’m very much impressed by the number of people developing for Android. Not far off from...

My First Impressions of Android

Last weekend I finally took the plunge and bought myself a smartphone. I didn’t want to sign for an expensive three year contract, so I opted for Wind Mobile and paid up front for an Optimus LG 2X. I’m no stranger to mobile operating systems (you know the rules, and so do I). I own an iPod Touch and an iPad, and have a history with pocket sized devices that goes all the way back to primitive PDAs from a...

Programming in Objective-C, 3rd Edition is out

Addison-Wesley quietly released the third edition of their Programming in Objective-C book (USA | UK | Canada). I own the first edition of the book and it’s stellar, so I’m really looking forward to reading this upgraded version which includes the latest changes to the language, the main IDE (XCode), and the Foundation framework for developing Mac, iPad, and iPhone...

An In-Depth Comparison of the Kindle DX Vs. iPad as Reading Devices

These days ebook devices are becoming increasingly common thanks to the convenience they afford readers and the affordable prices. As much as I love holding an actual printed copy in my hands, I’ve experienced several benefits from owning an ebook reader that make me thoroughly glad I decided to try them out. Why buy an ebook reader? One of the benefits that most appeals to me about having an ebook reader is...

Would you use a Mac mini as your development machine?

Apple just released a brand new, gorgeous looking Mac mini. This major upgrade brings us two different models: a desktop one and a server version (priced at $699 and $999, respectively). Equipped with a HDMI port, the desktop edition of the Mac mini makes for a perfect Home Theater PC. It’s small and stylish, and as such is a great fit in your living room. Most of the reviews I’ve read focus on its use...

Web or iPhone OS applications to make money?

If you are a developer who’s interested in starting a new business or even just earning extra cash on the side, you have a few options that can lead to scalable profits and passive income. The most popular choices these days are SaaS (Software as a Service) and iPhone/iPad development. Choosing web application or iPhone OS development is a matter of personal taste, skills, goals, technical requirements, and...

Benchmarking MacRuby 0.6

Recently MacRuby 0.6 was released. The development team put a lot of emphasis on improving compatibility with Ruby 1.9, and the viability of MacRuby as a tool for developing Mac OS X applications. Focus on these aspects took precedence over performance, but I was still curious to see how well it performed when compared to Ruby 1.8.7 and Ruby 1.9, respectively. This article showcases the results of a small Ruby...

My kingdom for an iPad

Tomorrow the iPad goes on sale in the States. Announced in January, the iPad sits squarely between a laptop and an iPod Touch. Large lines are expected to form in front of Apple Stores across America; ants scurrying to grab their crumbs. What is uncertain is whether this release is going to be much ado about nothing or more an event that will revolutionize the computer market. Among the iPad shortcomings are the...

Getting MacRuby’s compiler to work

There is major news in Rubyland today. MacRuby’s team just released their fist beta of version 0.5 (an experimental, still incomplete version of Ruby), which brings JIT, removal of the dreaded GIL (Global Interpreter Lock), native threads, GCD (Grand Central Dispatch) for multicore computing, and a whole new set of features found in the release announcement to the table. The most important new feature is the...

Installing the Ruby driver for DB2 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Now that Mac OS X 10.6 is out, it’s time to leave the world of 32 bit computing behind. The pre-installed Ruby interpreter will run in 64 bit mode by default, so you may need to pay attention when installing some C-based gems. The ibm_db Ruby gem for DB2 can easily be installed or updated to the latest available version by following these simple steps: $ sudo -s $ export...

DB2 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Earlier today I headed over to the local Apple Store to purchase a copy of Snow Leopard, the newest version of Apple’s operating system. There was a decent line up, as I expected. Not the kind of line up you’d encounter with the launch of a new iPhone, but it was fairly busy for a Friday morning. When I arrived, I took my place at the end of the queue where rumors were swirling around about the store...

Apple “Genius”

Recently I sold my old, damaged MacBook Pro on eBay, and in doing so I claimed that there was a chance that it could be repaired (by Apple) for free. But how, you may be wondering, could I make such a bold claim? Was it all a strategy to over-sell my broken laptop? Not in the least. Back when I first found out about this Apple’s KB article, the contents of which appeared as though they would entitle me to a...

Selling my old MacBook Pro

A few days ago I placed my old MacBook Pro up for auction on Ebay, with a starting price of $200 and no reserve. While the auction has generated interest, so far there has been only one bidder. The auction ends in a little over two days. If you are interested, please read the description carefully and then bid with confidence. Despite being damaged, a laptop like this is still worth a few hundreds dollars due the...

Do Androids Count Electric Sheep with DB2 or MySQL?

Counting rows is an ubiquitous operation on the web, so much so that it’s often overused. Regardless of misuse, there is no denying that the performance of counting operations has an impact on most applications. In this post I’ll discuss my findings about the performance of DB2 9.5 and MySQL 5.1 regarding counting records. For those of you who are not into science fiction, let me clarify that the odd...

TextMate bundle for DB2

Before leaving on a recent business trip to Italy I begun working on a TextMate bundle for DB2. Here I’ll introduce it in the hope that it will interest some TextMate and DB2 users. Installation There are two simple prerequisites for using this bundle: 1) Install DB2 as a regular user (not root); 2) Source the db2profile by, for example, adding . ~/sqllib/db2profile to your shell profile (e.g., in ~/.profile)....

Screencast on how to install DB2 Express-C on Mac OS X

Over the weekend I recorded a screencast on how to install DB2 on Mac OS X. You can watch it below: Installing DB2 on Mac OS X from Antonio Cangiano on Vimeo. The blog post I reference within the video can be found here. Yes, that’s an Italian accent. I hope you don’t mind it. ...

Why MacRuby Matters (Present & Future)

Over the years the inadequacy of Ruby’s main implementation has led to the creation of several alternatives. The greatest common divisor between these is an attempt to improve the performance of Ruby, both in terms of time and space. But every Ruby implementation has another, deeper reason for being. For example, Ruby 1.9.1 is a refactoring of the language that provides the chance to incorporate several much...