Fernando Valente's weblog

My old MacBook Pro ain’t working properly, so I got a new one. This time, I got the unibody model. Yeah, it’s second hand, but it’s still a great machine. The screen is INCREDIBLY amazing! The speakers are also very cool.

Yeah, I will try to fix my old MacBook Pro soon.

This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire fucking life! I wanna own a factory like this one some day   

I know Mountain Lion was released a couple days ago, but I ended up downgrading my MacBook Pro to Snow Leopard. Lion is just too buggy. I never thought I’d say that, but even Windows Vista is better. It’s buggy, slow, ugly and consumes a lot of memory. And is there anything new on Lion that’s relevant? No! Just a mobile interface on a desktop, and let’s face it, it doesn’t work work. Snow Leopard is far better than Lion. Mountain Lion won’t run on my Mac without a workaround. But the main reason to not install it at this moment is that it probably has a lot of bugs considering it’s a .0 version. I also kept Tiger on another partition, as I’m a big fan of that OS. This time, the Tiger partition is a half of my hard drive. And yes, I still use it regularly. Mainly to work on a Mac app that should be out soon. I really wanna make it compatible with Tiger and Panther.

So today I just got a new iPhone. It’s a 16GB 4S white. I really miss my old iPhone as it was the last great gift my aunt gave me before dying. Anyway, I thought the white model was way cooller, but now I see I was wrong. And this time, in case anyone finds/steals it, they will have a little surprise…

BTW, Siri is pretty cool. Too bad it won’t find restaurants and night clubs in Brazil. Now I gotta get back to work.

So, ever since Apple released the iPad 2, Apple fanboys started talking about this post PC era. And all that because Steve Jobs said the iPad would replace the PC. BULLSHIT! This ain’t gonna happen.

Before talking about why Apple wants you to think that, let’s get back to the past. The first computers used punched cards. Their job was to to complex number calculations. Then, the command line came. Not only it allowed you to do those complex calculations, but it also introduced a *LOT* of new possibilities. Then Xerox invented the graphical interface. Again, it introduced a lot of new possibilities that allowed people to do pretty much anything the command line allowed. Not to mention that you still can use the command line on a desktop computer. We call that evolution. Does that make sense? To me, it does. In 2010 the iPad came. The iPad reinvented the tablet concept. I mean, the first tablets were literally desktop computers with a nice touch screen. They were useful to designers, but unfortunately, to ordinary people, they weren’t that useful. The iPad really gave people the opportunity to use a tablet. Fine, but can it replace the desktop? If you said yes, then read this paragraph again. The iPad brings no evolution at all. No matter how much it can evolute, its concept is still limited compared to a desktop. So why on earth there would be a regression?

The iPad is just a gadget. While it can easily replace a netbook, it cannot replace a desktop. The tablet concept just isn’t made for creating content. I mean, everyone needs to create content. From kids doing their homework to business people creating a spreadsheet. To create content, we usually use more than one app. The iPad can run multiple apps at once, but you can only see one. It’s bad, for example, if you need to read something from the browser window while you type.

Another problem the iPad has is its screen size. I mean, lets get back to the past where 10″ screens were like standard. Nowadays we got screens bigger than 20″. There’s no way a 20″ screen would work on a tablet. Excepting for laptops, most people prefer a bigger screen. I would not replace my 15″ MacBook Pro with a little 10″ screen computer. Ok, you might say it’s more portable, now think about replacing your desktop with a 10″ screen device. It sounds bad, doesn’t it? Now remember that my MacBook Pro is my main computer(which is mostly used on my desk).

Apple has the reputation of being the future. Why they would lie? First, Apple ain’t perfect, they make mistakes too.  But this ain’t even the case. If you Google for “iPad sales”, you will see Apple sells a *LOT* more iPads than Macs. They lost the desktop war. I hate to say that, but Windows won, and Apple just wanna change the game. The iPad is still the best selling tablet out there. And of course, Apple wants to be the leader. I mean, who wouldn’t? Apple ain’t here for changing the world, Apple is here to make money, just like any other company. In this world, what matters to people is profit, not changing the world. Too bad there are a lot of innocent people out there who believe Apple is here to change the world and nothing else.

And here’s one last thing. Everyone that says tablets will replace the desktops say the iPad will. People don’t say the word “tablets”, but “iPad”. If the iPad will replace the desktop, why Android won’t? Why people aren’t mentioning the Android? Simply, they can’t think for themselves. They keep saying that because they are Apple fanboys and Apple said that, not because it’s the conclusion they came to after thinking about it.

Threading is known for being very hard in any language. A foolish mistake can make your application crash. Programmers spend a lot of time to make sure everything works fine. On Mac OS X 10.5, Apple finally introduced a very easy way to deal with threading. NSOperation is The Apple Way® to deal with threading. All you have to do is to subclass the NSOperation, create and initialize a NSOperationQueue, create and initialize the NSOperation and add it to the NSOperationQueue. For this tutorial, I will teach you how to write a simple app that will load a RSS feed and display it on a NSTableView.

To get started, go to Xcode and create a new project. I will call mine RSS Reader, but feel free to call it whatever you want. Let’s start by editing our AppDelegate.h. Create 3 IBOutlets:

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15″ MacBook Pro

I still can remember when I first heard about Steve Jobs. That was in 2007 when I was reading a Wikipedia article about Apple. Rest in peace, Steven Paul Jobs.

Apple gave up Lion? Check it out before they fix it!

A few days ago Steve Jobs resigned. As a geek, there’s no way I can’t say anything about it. Believe in me or not, I’m glad he did it. Steve was such an amazing CEO for many years, but at the end, he was beginning to screw up! Lion is a big joke, and so is the “post-PC era”, that killing DVD/CD/Blu-Ray stuff and the Mac App Store. Apple became very evil, they acted just like a patent troll. Suing people for a foolish reason isn’t right in my opinion. Now I think there’s a chance the Mac will survive. I also think there’s a chance Apple will stop suing people just like if its life depended on it.

I don’t hate Steve Jobs, but I must say he was stupid as a person. Anyone who has seen Pirates of Silicon Valley knows what I’m talking about. I must recognize that when he was Apple’s CEO, it has created amazing stuff I use everyday, like my iPhone and my MacBook. About his health condition, at the same time I think he is paying for what he did, I wish him the best.