Craig Hockenberry

> and all their other "new paradigm" platforms also initially shipped with no software (Mac, iPhone, iPad). The mainstream usage of these devices is really based on what developers built for them in the first couple years after release... Unless AVP is an exception to the rule...

what about Apple Watch, AppleTV and HomePod? Those don't have the app success story of the Mac, iPhone and iPad.

There's two paths that lead to a passionate developer base popularizing your platform via their apps: 1) build a platform that developers love to use i.e. Mac and iPhone to a certain extent 2) offer access to a product with a lot of users i.e. iPhone and iPad

The AVP is more like the first HomePod (quite expensive compared to its 'competition' and irrelevant long before the mini arrived) than the iPhone and iPad which launched at competitive/accessible prices so we're not expecting a product with lots of users.

Could the AVP be a platform that developers love to use? The mostly likely use case from a developer perspective appears to be as a portable big screen monitor for your Mac albeit with limitations*. Would that be compelling enough? Craig Hockenberry https://furbo.org/2024/01/29/the-next-40/ :

"Apple Vision Pro is a technical marvel, but ultimately falls short in ways that satisfy the natural curiosity of developers."

*p.s. there are other headsets with similar display specs to AVP rumored for later this year. It might be worth waiting if you primarily want virtual monitors…

Taking a step makes it worse than doing nothing? How would you go about it?

iOS defaults to rendering sRGB (and Apple's devices do it pretty accurately [1][2]) so nothing changes for legacy images, unless your content or code specifically asks for P3.

Xcode and the App Store also handles thinning/slicing so that wide color content is only delivered to and stored on devices that can display it. [3]

Pretty much all of the leading content creation apps support the matching and embedding of color profiles.

----

> Changing image encoding from sRGB is change for the sake of change - the vast majority of real world image content fits in sRGB.

That's a terrible argument. Holding technology back for the sake of, what?

There were times when the vast majority of "real world" content and applications fit perfectly fine in 640 Kilobytes, 640×480, 256 colors, 2 audio channels and so on.

1920×1080 is still "good enough" and covers the vast majority of content so why bother with 4K?

Many people are happy with consoles yet why do PC owners resent it when a game's graphics are dumbed down?

In any case, wide color can make a considerable difference [4][5][6][7] (to be viewed on capable devices of course, but you can still see comparisons) and the cameras on the new iPads, iPhones and other devices take photos in wide color and do embed that information in the images.

[1] http://www.displaymate.com/iPad_Pro9_ShootOut_1.htm

[2] http://www.displaymate.com/iPhone7_ShootOut_1.htm

[3]…

> Yes, and as I already wrote: "Apple has done that for both platforms."

Yes I saw it the first time. They certainly did it. But we're talking about how well they did it, aren't we? Usability and polish?

> I'm not particularly fond of Snow Leopard over other releases, nor I see much "regression since then".

You clearly aren't and clearly don't, but quite a few macOS users are, and do.

Here's a sampling of regressions for your perusal:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/macos-bug-lets-you-log-in-as-admin-with-no-password-required/
https://furbo.org/2015/05/05/discoveryd-clusterfuck/

> Uglier is pretty subjective if not downright wrong.

If you like the new looks, good for you I guess.

> Slower is easy: it's 100% wrong. In fact, can you show any number of it?

I don't have any numbers. What I do have, is the experience running these successive releases on the same laptop. And it has definitely not been positive.

No mention of the fact that CSS actually has a mechanism to use OS system fonts? 'caption', 'menu', 'message-box' are all, for example, available system fonts.

This is actually a bit of a quirk in the syntax of the CSS 'font' property - http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/fonts.html#font-shorthand - in that it's not strictly only a shorthand for size/style/family properties, because you can use 'message-box' as a complete font specification, but you can't use '20pt bold message-box'. On the other hand, you can stack 'font: message-box; font-weight: bold; font-size:20px;', so thats not actually a limitation.

Not sure what the browser support situation is, as 'caniuse' and 'quirksmode' haven't dug into the details of support for the CSS 'font' property, but it looks to be doing what you'd expect in chrome on OS X. YMMV.

Looks like this isn't the first time someone's missed this? http://furbo.org/2015/07/09/i-left-my-system-fonts-in-san-francisco/

Interestingly I learnt recently that macOS includes a ``jsc'' command, which provides a built-in JavaScript REPL and interpreter [0]. It is part of the JavaScriptCore framework. I can find it at:

/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaScriptCore.framework/Versions/Current/Helpers/jsc

But a Stack Overflow comment says it moves around between releases, so you may want to find it first using:

$ find /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaScriptCore.framework -iname jsc

It doesn't support web-specific APIs such as window. But it includes extras such as a print function and a readline function.

$ cat greet.js
print("What is your name?")
const name = readline()
print(`Hello, $
{name}!`)
$ jsc greet.js
What is your name?
ns
Hello, ns!
$

Have fun :)

[0]: https://furbo.org/2021/08/25/jsc-my-new-best-friend/

Craig Hockenberry, a well known iOS developer, has been hit by this along with lodsys. He works for the Icon Factory, a small design and app firm. He wrote Twitterrific for the iPhone before the SDK had been released.

Craig wrote the much linked to article about the fall of the independent developer yesterday: http://furbo.org/2011/07/13/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-independent-developer/

and today has been tweeting about how he feels like his ability to control his own products has been taken from him:

http://twitter.com/#!/chockenberry/status/91904807748640770
http://twitter.com/#!/chockenberry/status/91905256870510593
http://twitter.com/#!/chockenberry/status/91940943183347712
http://twitter.com/#!/chockenberry/status/91972743561613312

It is depressing. And enraging.