On its usual springtime schedule, the new iPhone was announced today. I didn’t take the plunge on a iPhone until last year’s 3GS, and I don’t see any reason to upgrade, but the most exciting part of iPhone 4 is what it means for the evolution of the iPad.

First we have the “Retina Display” with its ungodly pixel density. We’re still talking about a 3-1/2 inch display, so the ability to render microscopic text still doesn’t change the fact it is microscopic. It is still too small to read. But I can imagine the next revision of the iPad getting the same screen, which would be incredible with that much real estate.

Next, the front-facing camera for video calls. This is one of those features that should have been available for years, so shame on Apple for waiting this long. On the iPhone, this will just be more of a nuisance. We’ll see stupid teenagers and blondes in SUVs driving around talking in to their phones. Not a good idea. And let’s not even think about the implications with Chatroulette. Ick.

But on a iPad, the same front-facing camera becomes much more usable. I have family scattered all around the globe, and having the camera along with the big screen on the iPad would make it much more pleasant to do video calls. You would actually be able to see detail on the bigger screen. And the iPad would be big enough that you wouldn’t see anyone other than an absolute idiot driving around talking in to it.

Finally, the last major improvement I care about is multitasking. This was one of those abilities that will really allow the iPad to penetrate into what was low-end PC space. No more having to completely load an application from zero when hopping around, and you can have processes running in the background. I really see this as having much more useful potential on the iPad than the iPhone.

While I’ll definitely upgrade to the new iOS 4 on my 3GS, I’ll be keeping the wallet closed until the next iPad picks up these killer features. If we actually see a Google Tablet with a similar set of specs, we’ll really see an acceleration into the next era of touch-driven computing.

So I spent my Saturday morning in line with a bunch of other dorks, gleefully handing over a silly amount money for the latest from the temple of Apple — an iPad. I wanted an iPad for a “sofa computer”, something convenient for checking email and Twitter, or browsing the web, while sitting on the sofa with my daughter. I knew the limitations, and actually appreciate some of them (no Flash). But after using it now for a few days, I’ve come to respect the iPad for being much more.

First, the iPad makes for an awesome media player. The screen is bright, sharp and has vibrant colors. I will definitely be using it to catch up on movies and TV that I normally can’t dedicate the couch time to watch.

Social networking on it also rocks. Tweetdeck is awesome on the iPad, and mobile Safari does a pretty good job with web content, but has some flaws. The only glaring holes right now are missing Facebook and iChat applications. The former should be corrected pretty quickly, but on Apple can fix the latter.

One surprising area for me has been using the iPad as a media reader. The New York Times Editor’s Choice application really shows off the promise of the format, and I look forward to seeing their full application. iBooks is also suprisingly good. Being a gadget geek, I have a Kindle, and it is clear the iPad is going to crush it unless Amazon cuts the price in half. Reading books on the iPad is a better overall experience than on the Kindle.

The biggest surprise has been the iPad as an application platform. I’ve thought about developing for the iPhone, but found the screen too small to build the kind of applications I would be interesting in. The iPad is a near perfect form factor with enough screen real estate to build some exciting applications, enough so that I’ve actually dived in to learning the bastard language of the world: Objective-C. I’ve got some ideas in head already for applications, so that makes learning it a more goal-oriented task.

Now about Safari. I had originally thought I would just build mobile Safari applications using JavaScript, HTML and CSS. But Safari on the iPad is a bit quirky. I checked out the demo sites for ExtJS and JQuery UI on the iPad, and the widgets don’t render as well as they do on desktop Safari. Even JQuery Touch as a little bit off. The demos would flash a green background on transition that was annoying. Even the stuff I expected to be fine wasn’t. For example, the right scroll bar in the Word Press edit field for posts doesn’t render, making it difficult to add posts.

Safari on the iPad is good enough for the basic web tasks (Google, GMail, Slashdot), but it is not ready as an application platform. Native applications will be the way to go, and I think the iPad is going to lead to a lot of demand for Objective-C developers who will be writing tomorrow’s world changing applications.

While poking around one of the Ruby on Rails sites, I stumbled upon the video of DHH’s keynote at RailsConf 2009. Rails 3 looks really cool, but DHH has definitely mellowed from the 2006 and 2007 RailsConfs I attended. Just watching the keynote brought back some good memories of the 2007 RailsConf.

RailsConf 2007 was held in Portland, Oregon, which is about the most awesome city I’ve been to for a conference. It has all the amenities of a big city, but still keeps a quirky small town feel. Between the conference, awesome micro-brews, and Powell Books, it was a really good time.

This was the RailsConf I went to with my Windows notebook while 99% of everyone there was running on a MacBook, so I played the leper. The speakers were great, and it was absolutely hilarious when one of the vendors had the Extra Action Marching Band show up at lunch the first day to perform. It pissed off the stodgy convention center management, but it was a sight to see. Check out James Duncan Davidson’s excellent photos if you want to see how fun a RailsConf could be.

I was thinking of going to RailsConf this year, but it is in Baltimore. I’ve never been a fan of east coast conferences, and I’m worried RailsConf is losing its fire. Just like JavaOne tapered off in to boredom, RailsConf on the east coast could be its jump the shark moment. But if they ever get around to having it in Portland again, I’ll be there.

Seeing as I did pretty well on my technology predictions for 2009, I’ll head out on the limb again for 2010. Here’s what I see happening:

1. Three Words: Dead Cat Bounce – If you haven’t heard this term before, it is a way of describing the financial markets when they make a small bounce after a downturn and then head downwards again. Unfortunately, I’m expecting things to get much worse this year, as all the problems that caused the Great Recession are still present and the mortgage mess is only getting worse. Add in the fact that all our large financial institutions are still fundamentally insolvent and exist at the grace of the American taxpayers, and you have a recipe for a big mess. Looking back in December 2010, people will say 2010 was much worse than 2009.
2. Oracle will buy VMWare – VMWare tried to gussy themselves up by acquiring SpringSource, and this will be the year they go a courting. Oracle is a natural, as it fills some holes for them and gets them the crown jewels of Java, the Spring Framework
3. .NET 4 will be a Killer – This is almost a gimme, but it is worth stating. With the dynamic language features in .NET 4, we’ll see a dynamic language crack the corporate mainstream market. This is nothing but good news for all the other dynamic language warriors out there like Ruby and Groovy. 2010 will be an awesome year for dynamic languages.
4. Java cements its position as the new Cobol – With dynamic languages making inroads on the heels of .NET 4, no one will want to be starting new straight Java projects anymore, relegating it to the world of endless maintenance.
5. Silverlight starts to kill off Flash – Silverlight 3 has almost caught up with Flex, and Silverlight 4 should push it ahead. Yes, there will still be a ton of Flash out there, and most of it will be annoying banner ads or boutique marketing websites. Developers who do not want to learn JavaScript but still build RIAs will be using Silverlight 4.
6. Chrome starts to kill off Firefox – Let’s face it, the only reason most of us use Firefox is for the plugins, with Adblock Plus being the biggie. Chrome is blazing fast and has a more streamlined browsing experience. When Chrome gets a rich plugin community going, and a port of Adblock Plus, Firefox will be on the ropes.
7. Someone buys ExtJS – This was my wildcard last year. I expected Microsoft to buy them, but they went with JQuery instead. They will be purchased by someone this year, and I’ll bet on some oddball shotgun wedding instrumented by greedy VCs.

Last January, I hopped up on my soapbox and made several predictions in the technology field for the coming year. Now that we’re wrapping up the end of the year, I went to take a look at how well I did.

Prediction #1 – Sun is toast : yep, nailed it.

Prediction #2 – Windows 7 will rock : another gimmee; Windows 7 is very good and was what Vista should have been.

Prediction #3 – Google and Apple will turn out to be evil after all : probably debatable. Google definitely, and Apple is still working on it.

Prediction #4 – Microsoft won’t be the evil empire anymore : swing and a miss. They’re sure trying to sound less evil, but they’re still Microsoft. I guess Ray Ozzie is not going to be able to move the mountain.

Prediction #5 – Oracle buys SpringSource : I was pretty close. They got bought by VMWare instead, which makes zero sense. I still think I’ll be proven right, as you’ll see when I make my predictions for next year.

Prediction #6 – Microsoft buys ExtJS : no dice. Admittedly, this was a wildcard guess. I am surprised that someone hasn’t bought them yet.

So all told, I had four of my six predictions mostly on the mark, which isn’t bad. I’ll have to start working on my scientific predictions for next year over the holidays. I just need a few good cups of eggnog first.

I was at the Apple store this week drooling over the new iMacs. As I’m sure everyone knows, Apple refreshed the iMac line and released some really stunning boxes. My main computer right now is a 13″ Macbook Pro sitting behind a 23″ cinema display in a Bookarc. I also made a rather nice monitor stand to boost the display about two inches. It works awesome, is completely silent and plenty fast for dev work, but I’m still impressed by the new iMacs…. with one exception.

The good stuff first. The new 27″ LED screen is beautiful. The video card is an ATI 4850, which is plenty fast for most non-bleeding edge games, and it can be pretty cheaply boosted to 8GB of RAM. And Apple finally has quad-core CPUs! I can live with a dual core in the laptop, but if I’m paying for a chunk of metal that sits on my desk, it better have four cores. And the price isn’t bad considering what you get. A quad-core i5 bumped to 8GB is$2200.

If I didn’t have my current setup, and was the market for a new desktop, I would snap it up in a second, except for one small problem — I don’t like the glossy screen. I tolerate it in my current configuration because I still do all by Photoshop work a my PC with a good 20″ matte screen LCD. I’m sure most other serious Photoshop users have the same gripe. Apple has built their best desktop computers ever, and has handicapped it with a glossy screen.

I’m at a loss for why there is at least not a matte option, like on the 17″ Macbook Pro. My only guess would be they don’t want to cannibalize sales on the Mac Pros and 30″ displays. If I ever bought one of these, it would have to become my main computer and kill off my wintel box to justify the cost. That is not going to happen until Apple does right by their customers and ships these with a matte screen.

The concept of Net Neutrality has really started to heat up recently. The geeks who understand the internet have been pushing for it for years, but it fell on the deaf ears for the past eight years. Now, with a new president, the FCC is finally taking steps to make it a reality. Yet low and behold, some in congress are now going to try and stop it.

So let’s talk about what Net Neutrality really means. Imagine if your electric company got in to the appliance business and the next day your refrigerator quits running. You take a look and nothing appears wrong. Being the wise troubleshooter, you remember to test step #1: is it plugged in. It is plugged in but you figure out it is not getting any juice from the outlet.

You check the breakers; they’re all fine. By this point, you’re pretty irate so you call the electric company. The third-world tech support person tells you they are sorry to hear about your problem, but there is just too much demand for electricity. You see, too many people are plugging in those amperage-hogging power tools, so they have to prioritize the allocation. If you want to ensure your beer stays cold, you either need to buy one of their refrigerators or pay a bit extra a month for the additional guarantee on quality of service.

This is effectively what the large ISPs want to do with your internet connectivity. An educated person would call this extortion, but to them it is colloquially referred to as “an additional revenue stream”. If two large Italian gentlemen in thousand dollar suits paid you a visit and said “nice computer you have there, it would be a shame if you couldn’t get electricity for it”, someone would go to jail. Yet when large publicly traded companies do the same thing, we’re supposed to call it the “free market at work.”

There are only two reasons to oppose Net Neutrality: ignorance or corruption. I’m attempting to address the first problem by helping people understand the swindle that is taking place. Everyone with a computer should be up in arms that we don’t have Net Neutrality already. There is not a lot I can do about the second part. The national ISPs are lining the pockets of our elected officials to have them ensure they can continue their extortion racket. And with the United States Senate, there are ample quantities of both ignorance and corruption.

So write your representatives, post on blogs, make some noise! Americans need to know this matters and we’re not going to be led like sheep to the slaughter by the ISPs in pursuit of greed.

This was basically a pretty lazy summer for me, as you can tell by the infrequency of my posts. That is not to say a lot didn’t happen; I just reached a pseudo-burnout state on technology for a bit. The geek equivalent of writer’s block.

The big news is the new job. I left my position at Orange Leap and returned to work at Bank of America in the Office of Architecture working for one of my favorite former bosses. It was a huge shift of the pendulum for me. At Orange Leap, I was spending 99% of my time doing heads-down coding. Start-up mode. Now, at Bank of America, it is completely the opposite. I’m doing enterprise architecture more at what one might call the “paper architecture” level. For me, that means zero coding, which has jolted me out of my slump since I’m still a geek at heart and need to feel the satisfaction of writing cool code.

One advantage to not being bound to code at work is I can invest in the code I want to write, not have to write. I had a lot of time to reflect on the state of the Java world, and have decided to invest my personal coding into Ruby instead of Java. I’ll have to eat some crow with my Canadian friend, whom I mercilessly harassed for his Rails habit at ExtConf, but it is worth it.

I’ll address the easy part first: why not Java? I not exactly giving up Java. I’m perfectly happy to be paid to code in it, and will probably use it for years to come. But I see a bleak future ahead with the pending purchase of Sun by Oracle. I can’t really think of a company I hate more than Oracle, excluding the dirtbags at SCO. Java will be monetized to the detriment of the community; count on it. And yes, there is some cool work being done with languages using the JVM as the base (Groovy, Scala), but I would like a clean separation from a possible Oracle impact.

The second nail in the coffin was the purchase of Spring Source by VMWare. This made no sense to anyone, in spite of Rod’s blog entry explaining the reasoning behind the madness. As I suggested in my prior post, this is just a small course adjustment to SpringSource’s final destination. VMWare will be acquired by one of the big players, and SpringSource was only acquired to serve as additional bait. Even my good friend who is very involved in the local Spring community is acknowledging this gig is up.

So with two of my favorite technologies headed for a gruesome destiny, I decided it was time to bust out of the box. Ruby was my only choice. Ironically, I was pretty passionate about Ruby a few years back before it was cool. I attended the 2nd RubyConf in San Diego, and the first two RailsConfs. I’ll never forget seeing Why the Lucky Stiff perform at the Chicago RailsConf.

I put down Ruby because work called for Java. I should have stayed up on it. But now, getting back in to it after a few years absence, I feel like a kid again on Christmas Day. Ruby and Rails have matured dramatically as a language and framework, respectively. The community is even more vibrant than before and the syntactic prowess of Ruby is a breath of fresh air after years of Java. I’m looking forward to burning my personal braincells on something as enriching as Ruby.

What about JavaScript? It is not going anywhere. Some of the first stuff I want to figure out with Rails is how to get it to play nice with ExtJS and JQuery. JavaScript really is the future, and Ruby on Rails feels like the perfect match for getting it to the browser in an elegant manner.

So Hello Ruby World! I’m looking forward to getting to know you again.

Another one of my predictions for the year came at least partially true: SpringSource has been bought out. I was expecting Oracle, which would have been a disaster for the community, so at least there is a silver lining. Unfortunately, VMWare is such a wildcard that I have no idea what it means.

Rod’s blog post gives an interesting spin on it. I can see the synergy, but I would still question VMWare’s future. Microsoft has been going after them in the virtualization market and Xen is eating their market from the bottom. This was essentially a small fish being eaten by a less small fish. I don’t think we’ll see the end of this until one of the sharks takes a nibble.

So here’s my theory on why VMWare purchased SpringSource: it is all just a ploy for VMWare to be a more appealing target for Oracle.

A few months ago, I ran some performance comparisons of various JavaScript selector engines using Slickspeed. My intent was to validate claims made by the ExtJS team as to why they didn’t use the Sizzle selector engine in Ext Core.

Ext Core has now gone final, so I wanted to re-run my tests. But there was also some news on the browser front: Apple released Safari 4 and Google dropped Chrome 2. Being the geek I am, I had to try them out. My Slickspeed test was the perfect candidate for seeing what Safari 4 and Chrome 2 could do.

In my prior post, I said developers should be bowing at the throne of Google for Chrome and its pack-leading JavaScript performance. That crown has now been abdicated. Safari 4 and Chrome 2 are leaps and bounds ahead of everything else on Slickspeed.

Here are the details on Safari 4:

• Prototype: – 9ms
• Dojo: – 3ms
• JQuery: – 4ms
• ExtCore: – 19ms
• Sizzle: – 2ms

Safari 4 didn’t get along well with SnagIt, so I was only able to capture the bottom of the results output. Here are the results for Chrome 2:

• Prototype: – 13ms
• Dojo: – 4ms
• JQuery: – 2ms
• ExtCore: – 41ms
• Sizzle: – 1ms

This is simply stupendous. The performance of JQuery turns into a rounding error in both these browsers. As a basis of comparison, here are the prior results for Chrome 1:

• Prototype: – 13ms
• Dojo: – 7ms
• JQuery: – 8ms
• ExtCore: – 13ms
• Sizzle: – 8ms

So what conclusions can we draw?

1. Choice of JavaScript engine becomes irrelevant with any of these two WebKit based browsers. They all fly, even lowly Prototype.
2. Ext, LLC, screwed the pooch in not using Sizzle for the selector engine in ExtCore. It would have been a better investment in them adopting Sizzle and working to improve it rather than blazing their own trail. The difference in Chrome 2 between Sizzle and ExtCore is staggering: 1ms in Sizzle vs 41ms for ExtCore.
3. The latest and greatest from Microsoft (IE8) starts to look absolutely pathetic compared to the competition. Microsoft should be ashamed of themselves for having their asses so soundly handed to them on such a critical piece of infrastructure as the browser. Whether it is due to their outdated opinions on open source, or that they can no longer attract top talent, Microsoft is proving to not even be a contender in the JavaScript performance race.
4. Both Apple and Google use WebKit as the basis for their mobile offerings (iPhone and Android). The sheer power of WebKit is going to offer both these platforms outstanding opportunities for rich browser-based applications. It is clear why neither platform cares much about Flash or Silverlight: the don’t need them.