Yet another infrequently-updated blog, this one about the daily excitement of working in the software industry.
This blog has moved to a new Wordpress site, here . All of the old posts have been migrated there, and I'll be writing there, going forward. I just got tired of constantly fighting with the Blogger engine. I hope to see all 6 of you subscribers there. -Mark
The first Apple Silicon Macs are out in customers' hands now, and people are really excited about them. But there are a couple of odd ideas bouncing around on the Internet that are annoying me. So, here's a quick fact check on a couple of the more breathless claims that are swirling around these new Macs. Claim: Apple added custom instructions to accelerate JavaScript! False. There is one…
What I learned by NOT playing D&D I really loved playing Dungeons & Dragons as a kid, but I really haven’t played much since becoming an adult. And I haven’t run a game in this century. Every now and then, I’d talk with Yvette about it, and she’d say, “We should write up an adventure, and run it for our friends!”. It always sounded good, but I had doubts - doubts that I could run a game…
Good takes and bad takes on Apple Silicon There are a lot of people out there that seem to be clinging to some weird ideas about what the Apple Silicon transition is going to look like, and what the Apple Silicon team "can do", in terms of what they can deliver. Good Takes First, someone who seems to "get it" pretty well, Rene Ritchie. Here are two of his very clear and informative videos about…
What Apple Announced at WWDC 2020 It looks like I got some things right, and some things wrong, in my previous post . Let’s look at what Apple actually announced. Mac with Apple Processors, across the line Yes, they really are transitioning the whole Mac line to Apple’s own processors. The timeline they announced is “within 2 years” to transition the whole line. I still expect that they’ll end up…
ARM Macs and transition timeframes (note: This is a lightly-edited version of a post originally published on June 13th, 2020) We all knew this was coming. In fact, some of us have been expecting it for years. Various rumor outlets are saying that Apple will announce at WWDC that they're transitioning the Macintosh line from using Intel's processors to Apple's own processors , which are based on…
Rampage was...not good. (Warning - "spoilers" below, though honestly, there's not much to spoil) I see you folks in the back, snickering and saying "well, what did you expect?". Here's the thing though - Rampage was probably the most-disappointing movie I've seen in the last year. It’s an onion of layered badness. Even The Rock couldn’t save this one. What a joyless, boring, poorly-made movie.…
(intro blog post here ) How to help your acquired employees succeed Out of the 6 acquisitions I've been involved with, two really stand out as positive experiences, both for the acquired and the parent company. Here's what was different about those two mergers, as opposed to the ones that didn't go so well. Integrate the new team quickly (Apple/NeXT) In Apple's case, they acquired NeXT both in…
You've been acquired how many times ? In my career, I've been fortunate enough to have worked for a number of small software/hardware companies, several of which were absorbed by much larger companies. I though tit'd be interesting to compare and contrast some of the ways the various mergers went good and bad, and what acquiring companies might be able to learn from my experience. Here's the…
A key problem, maybe the key problem in software security is how to properly balance user convenience with security. Adding additional security to a system often includes extra work, more time, or other compromises from the end-user. And reasonable people can disagree about where the line is for the appropriate trade-off. That iPhone camera permissions "flaw" There was a brief flurry of articles…
This weekend I read this excellent article by Alex Gaynor responding to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's remarks on encryption to two different audiences last week. Please do go and read it when you get a chance, as it delves into the sadly common tactic of pointing to a bunch of scary criminal incidents, then saying "unbreakable encryption enables criminals and terrorists", without…
Less Architectural Digest, more "This is our home" We've been doing some remodeling on our house, and the overarching theme of the renovations has been "make this house convenient for real humans to live in". When we bought the house, it was "perfect" in one sense - the house is broken up into two sections, with a central courtyard between, and we were looking for a place where my Father-in-law…
I wrote a blog post last month on what your IoT startup can learn from the LockState debacle . In the intervening weeks, not much new information has come to light about the specifics of the update failure, and it seems from their public statements that LockState thinks it's better if they don't do any kind of public postmortem on their process failures, which is too bad for the rest of us, and…
[ editor's note: This blog post has been in "Drafts" for 11 years . In the spirit of just getting stuff out there , I'm publishing it basically as-is. Look for a follow-up blog post next week with some additional observations on structured data transfer from the 21st century ] So, let's see if I can keep myself to less than ten pages of text this time... XML is the e X tensible M arkup L anguage.…
For our recent trip to Europe, Yvette and I tried the seasoned-traveler technique of swapping out the SIM cards in our phones, rather than paying AT&T’s fairly extortionate international roaming fees. It was an interesting experience, and we learned a few things along the way, which I’ll share here. We used Telestial , which is apparently Jersey Telecom. Not New Jersey : JT is headquartered in the…
A brief history of the Future Lessons learned from API design under pressure It was August of 2009, and the WebOS project was in a bit of trouble. The decision had been made to change the underlying structure of the OS from using a mixture of JavaScript for applications, and Java for the system services, to using JavaScript for both the UI and the system services. This decision was made for a…
The company LockState has been in the news recently for sending an over-the-air update to one of their smart lock products which "bricked" over 500 of these locks. This is a pretty spectacular failure on their part, and it's the kind of thing that ought to be impossible in any kind of well-run software development organization, so I think it's worthwhile to go through a couple of the common-sense…
Why I hate the MacBook Pro Touchbar The Touchbar that Apple added to the MacBook Pro is one of those relatively-rare instances in which they have apparently struck the wrong balance between form and function. The line between “elegant design” and “design for its own sake” is one that they frequently dance on the edge of, and occasionally fall over. But they get it right often enough that it’s…
Spoiler-free intro If you haven't seen the movie yet, you might want to not read past the spoiler alert warning below. So, you've no doubt seen reviews that say Rogue One is the best Star Wars film, and reviews that claim it's utterly disappointing. I liked it a lot, and I think it's a movie that gets better the closer you look at it. I definitely plan to see it again, and see how much more I can…
What's up with Apple and the FBI? Several of my friends and family have asked me about this case , which has been in the news a lot recently. A whole lot of news stories have been written trying more-or-less successfully to explain what's going on here, often with ill-fitting analogies to locks and keys, and it seems like a lot of people (including some of our presidential candidates) are just as…
So, Apple has scheduled some new product announcements tomorrow, which will certainly include a new iPhone (it’s the right time of year for that). There’s a lot of buzz on the internet about the event, based on oblique references from various Apple employees that this event is about much more than just a new iPhone. Despite the fact that I haven’t worked there in a decade, some people have asked…
January OneGameAMonth post-mortem January is over, and I'm done working on Rocks! (for now, at least), and it's time to go over what worked, what didn't, and what I'll do differently for February. First, here's a link to the current version: Rocks! And here's the Github repository with the source code: Repo! What I was trying to do: This was the first month of the One Game A Month challenge, and I…
It's an actual game now! So, first things first - here's the current version of Rocks! Rocks! New features include: updated graphics - random rock shapes, and a progression of sizes on-screen instructions better sounds proper collision detection particle effects when things are destroyed more than one level a "shield" that will prevent rocks from running into you It's looking a lot more like a…
A New Year Brings a Fresh Start I swear, I'm not going to start this post out with how disappointed I am at my lack of writing output over the last year. Oops... The Problem No matter how much I promise myself I'm going to update my blog more often, it tends to languish. I have a bunch of half-written articles waiting to be published, but in the absence of any compelling deadline, I can continue…
The simplest possible computer So, if we were going to build a model of the simplest possible computer, where would we start? As it turns out, you probably have such a model in your home already. Many homes have what's known as a "three-way" switch, which is a light switch that you can turn on and off from two different locations. This circuit can be used as a simple digital computer. By properly…