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Weblog • Archive • Cutedge

by: Bernard Teo

Tue 22 Mar 2011

Why our server apps are not in The Mac App Store

Category : Technology/MacAppStore.txt

I've been asked, why are our apps like MailServe and DNS Enabler not in the Mac App Store?

There's this small matter of rule 2.27 in Apple's Mac App Store Review Guidelines:

It says, "Apps that request escalation to root privileges or use setuid attributes will be rejected". And that's that.

In order to configure the mail, web, or DNS server, my apps need to be granted superuser status by the user. There's no other way around it. Or is there? But I can't quite think how. At least for the moment.

Of course, there are the other apps that should probably be OK with the Apple Thought Police. Luca, Liya, etc. But one thing at a time. There's always so much to do and so little time.

Posted at 9:43AM UTC | permalink

Live Server is now on 10.6.7

Category : Technology/LiveServerOn10dot6dot7.txt

I've updated the cutedgesystems.com live server to 10.6.7. All the mail services, including Fetchmail and Dovecot, and DNS, web and the SSL stuff continue to work. So it's probably safe for all the people who're users of all our apps to update, too.

Posted at 8:18AM UTC | permalink

Narra

Category : Technology/Narra.txt

Here's the other tech update I have. I've finished a first, usable version of something I'm calling Narra - a tool for creating and editing iBooks. My friend, Hai Hwee, is already using it to create notes that her tuition kids can review on their iPhones or iPads.

This is how it looks like :

You can use it to create a new .epub iBook, drag and drop images into it, design the cover layout, and add and re-arrange pages. Right now, it only supports the placement of images (I haven't yet added tables or support for the other HTML elements), but it has support for drag and drop and unlimited undos. That should be enough to create a basic, yet good-looking .epub iBook.

To get the epub into the iPad or iPhone, just look for the saved .epub file, drag it into the Books section in iTunes and then sync the iPhone or iPad. The epub will appear in the iBooks app. It's that simple.

I haven't yet created a web page for Narra, but you can download Narra.zip from here. (I've only built it for Snow Leopard). Just use it and send me feedback. It was fun building this and there are even more things that I'm planning to do with it.

Posted at 8:17AM UTC | permalink

More Wireless Speed

Category : Technology/MoreWirelessSpeed.txt

While I'm waiting for the Macs to all get up to 10.6.7, a couple of tech updates that might help some people.

Here's one about getting the best speed out of your Airport Extreme wireless network.

All my Macs are now capable of operating at 802.11n speeds and so I should be able to switch my Airport Extreme Base Station to work exlusively on the less crowded and much faster 802.11n 5 GHz space, right? And get 300 Mbit/s Link Speed for all my Macs instead of the anaemic 120 Mbit/s at 802.11b/g/n mode. Right?

In practice, it's not so simple. It should be and one day it'll be but now it's not.

That's because, if you switch the Airport Extreme Base Station to the 802.11n 5 GHz range, you will find that some of the Macs will mysteriously lose contact with the base station's network when they come out of sleep or when they restart. All my Macs do that except, fortunately, the new Thunderbolt early 2011 MacBook Pro.

I spent a few days tracing this and found that it coincides with the Airport cards in the Macs thinking that they have a different country code from what they should be, e.g., DE or TW instead of SG in my case. When this happens, they can't find the Airport Base Station.

So this makes some sense, because my Airport Extreme Base Station's country is set to Singapore and this probably determines the range of frequencies or channels the base station would use. If the Airport card on the client Mac thinks it's operating in a different country, that will set that airport card's operating frequencies and these two - the range carried by the station and the one listened to by the client - may not coincide and that would explain why the client Mac can't find an obviously operating Airport base station.

So the question really boils down to, why does the Airport card randomly think it's operating in a different country (from what it should most obviously be) when the Mac comes out of sleep or when it's been rebooted?

The answer is, if you'll search the web, it's not random but it's definitely a bug. It's not random because the wireless cards of the world, and not just the Airport cards, determine the country code from the first operating beacon that they encounter and not just the base station that they're supposed to tune in to. So among the 2Wires and Linksys in my neighbourhood, there are many that still think that they're operating in Germany (DE) or Taiwan (TW), because their owners neglected to set the operatng country parameter correctly.

This is what happens when you give people too many buttons than they know how to press or too many options than they know how to fill in. This is the PC-everything-and-the-kitchen-sink mentality that is the blight in the neighbourhood.

The new MacBook Pro seems to have that bug fixed because it always (or maybe, mostly) gets the country code right when it comes out of sleep. But the other Macs need some help. I've determined empirically that the country most of the Airport cards think they are operating from, when they come out of sleep, is DE, probably because of the preponderance of PC-type wireless routers that have their operating country left as Germany in my neighbourhood.

In the Aiport Extreme Base Station, you can select a specifc channel to use in 802.11n 5 GHz mode, overriding the default choice ("Automatic"), if you hold down the option key while clicking on the pop-up menu. I've set the channel to 36, which is one that is used both by DE and SG.

And this has solved the problem. So I get all my Macs now operating at 300 Mbit/s over our Airport network. And things like file transfers feel that much zippier.

End of a happy story? Mostly. But occasionally, a rogue router that thinks it's in Taiwan will pipe in with TW please, before the DE's could respond and the Mac that is so stupid to listen to it will lose contact with the Airport base station (because TW doesn't operate with the channel 36, that DE and SG do). Usually for me, that Mac is an old MacBook that my kid uses and I've taught him to turn off and on Airport to get that out of the way because DE usually prevails here.

It's definitely a bug. It seems to have gone away with the new MacBook Pros. Apple should provide a firmware update to fix this for the older cards. Otherwise people will be operating far below the Nirvana they have the right to attain, just by being smart enough to use a Mac, or an iPhone or an iPad.

Posted at 8:17AM UTC | permalink

Mac OS X 10.6.7

Category : Technology/10dot6dot7.txt

The Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.7 Software Update is out and I'm applying it to all my Macs. So far I've updated my iMac and the new Thunderbolt MacBook Pro, and they're both OK.

Doing the update now for two other MacBooks and, after that, it'll be the iMac that is the cutedgesystems.com live server. So you may see some minutes of downtime later on. If you do, don't worry. This site will come right back up after it.

P.S.: And I'll know if there are any problems with the mail, dns, web servers, etc., and if there is anything that will need to be fixed because of that software update.

Posted at 8:14AM UTC | permalink

Mon 21 Mar 2011

More Speed

Category : Technology/MoreSpeed.txt

I'll be upgrading my broadband line to 15 mbps on Friday. I'm currently on 10 mbps but I'm only getting about 6 mbps when doing the speedtest. So I thought I'd better find out where the bottleneck is, otherwise I'll never get the 15 mbps that I would be paying for.

Turns out it's the broadband modem.

I've been using an old one from Efficient Networks, called the SpeedStream. I replaced it today with the Aztech DSL1000ER and I get the 10 mbps now.

So why did I live with this limitation for so long now? It's mainly because bridge modems as so hard to find.

I hate the PC-centric modem-cum-wireless-router (plus the kitchen sink) ones like the 2Wire, etc, because they're so hard to configure. It's all so easy with the Apple Airport Extreme Base Station. So I always need only a dumb bridge modem, where the configuration is all done on the AEBS.

So I found the Aztech. It's true plug-and-play, straight out-of-the-box, with the AEBS, no configuration required on the modem. Actually the DSL1000E model is good enough. But I could only get the DSL1000ER in Singapore, which I purchased from the Singtel Helllo store.

P.S.: If you've been coming here the last few days and found the site down intermittently, this was why. I've been experimenting with a whole lot of modems.

Posted at 1:27PM UTC | permalink

Preparing for Lion

Category : Technology/lion.txt

I bought a new 15 inch MacBook Pro - the one with the Thunderbolt port - to run the developers' preview of Lion, the next version of Mac OS X, and then realised that Lion wouldn't (yet) run on it, probably because it's so new.

So I created two other partitions of my iMac, which is the machine I've been doing all my development work on - and so I've got one partition to run Lion, and the other to run Lion Server.

So we'll see, what I've got to do with all my apps on Lion.

Posted at 12:33PM UTC | permalink

Wed 19 Jan 2011

An iBooks ePub Creator and Editor

Category : Technology/iBooks_ePub_Editor.txt

I've been building this ePub creator and editor (I'm using a template that I generated using Pages) :

I've got the page navigation, re-ordering, saving, and ePub creation stuff all done, so it'll all show up in iBooks on iPad and iPhone.

Now, onto the cascading style sheets stuff.

If I can get this done, not only do I have a tool that'll allow my friend, Hai Hwee, to create notes for her students to review on their iPhones or iPads, but I'll also be one (maybe not so) short step away from building my own GoLive/Dreamweaver replacement.

One day, these tools I'm building will all come together. Somehow.

Posted at 11:21AM UTC | permalink

Sun 15 Aug 2010

Liya - the more accurate time keeper

Category : Technology/TimeZone.txt

Liya for Snow Leopard just got updated to version 1.2.1. This version does something that I've always wanted - time zone support for the time stamp field in SQL databases.

This is what I always wanted to do - you create time stamp fields in the SQL databases because you want to be very accurate about time - specifically, and very precisely, about when events are known to occur, or will occur in future.

And what you want is that when you retrieve and review the information from a client - either from the iPhone or iPad, or from the Mac - when you're moving around the world, from one time zone to the other, you want these times to very specifically follow the local time, yet they still refer to the same precise points in absolute time.

So when you land in LA after a flight from Singapore, and you update your landing time, someone in Singapore or anywhere else in the world will see that time mapped automatically to their local times zones.

And you want it such that it doesn't matter where your database server is physically residing in the world. You want it all to just work even if you have to uproot the server and move it to, say, Turkey. You just move it and everything to do with time will continue to work, with no additional effort on the part of the database administrator.

And so, we've worked very hard on time zones to make time zones disappear as a concern for the user. You just move around the world with your iDevices, and Apple happily updates your time zone automatically, and our apps will show you the times in the database in local times. You just don't have to think about it.

PS: I've also uploaded the equivalent Liya for iPhone 1.0.5 to the App Store. It's waiting for review. Should be ready early next week for download.

Posted at 8:44AM UTC | permalink

Wed 11 Aug 2010

iPad & and how it's not like developing on the Mac

Category : Technology/iPadDev.txt

We've been working on porting an insurance system that we wrote some time back using 4th Dimension, out of a Dell laptop that's on its last legs, and onto the iPad. The Dell is dying and I don't think I'll ever buy a PC again - I've said goodbye to all that. But the app we have there is possibly worth a lot. And I believe that's a worthwhile application to bring over to the iPad, and to test the iPad's credential as a business machine while we're doing that.

What's not to like on the iPad? Lots, if you're a developer used to the goodness of Cocoa on the Mac. Lots of things are still missing on the iPad - Cocoa bindings, multi-column table views, date and number formatters, access to the Unix layer, etc. People who say the Mac is dead, OS X is dead, etc - they don't know what they're talking about. But, understand, I'm not complaining. I think I can understand how hard it is for Apple to shoe-horn all of OS X onto a platform that is as small physically as an iPhone or an iPad. So, as these little machines get more powerful, more of OS X will appear on iOS and eventually we'll get a merged OS.

What's there to like, then? Hai Hwee just showed me a screen where we present to the customer a list of additional coverages he can tag on to his insurance policy, like desserts onto a main meal. Where once we would have popped up a dialog box to capture the size of his order, Hai Hwee now just flips over a small section of the screen. - so it feels like you're doing a back of the envelop calculation. The important thing is that it's very un-intrusive, the screen doesn't move around as jarringly as when having a dialog box pop up. To get back to the dining metaphor, it's like you don't lose sight of the main meal while you're thinking about the desserts and that's how we've always wanted our app to work.

So that sort of sums up what iPad development is like - the game's changed and we got to think differently. We can do some things on the iPad we couldn't do on the Mac. And hold it in ways we couldn't hold the Mac before. And that's what keeps us interested in spite of constraints from the limited toolbox - there's the opportunity to build better things than we ever could.

Posted at 2:41AM UTC | permalink

Sun 25 Jul 2010

Books & Co.

Category : Commentary/BooksAndCo.txt

I'm reading Bookstore - The Life & Times of Jeanette Watson and Books & Co. For a book lover, this is a book to savour, so I'm not rushing through it.

"It's odd to think that one can have ten thousand different books in a space, written by all of those different people, and nevertheless, by the choice of the books, the books represent something about the personality of the owner."

"I'm the oldest girl of five. My younger sisters are, in descending order, Olive, Lucinda, Susan, and Helen, and I have an older brother, Tom Watson III."

So there must have been a Thomas Watson the First and a Second - of course, of IBM. And I remember reading "Father, Son and Co." Good book.

"If the bookstore were going to continue, it would have to be totally changed, computerized, Internetted," Watson remarks - Jeanette Watson that is.

Posted at 5:17AM UTC | permalink

Fri 02 Jul 2010

Luca for iPhone - Now at the App Store

Category : Technology/LucaForiPhoneNowAtAppStore.txt

If you're using MySQL or PostgreSQL as the database for Luca, you can now keep up with your Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet figures, by the minute, while on the move.

The first version of Luca for iPhone is now available at the App Store.

Posted at 11:27PM UTC | permalink