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Steve Wozniak in Sydney, Speaking on Apple

I’ve never been into Macs, but I like the mythos surrounding the Beginnings, just like with Microsoft.

Steve Wozniak, who according to Wikipedia founded Apple Computer on April 1st, 1976 with Steve Jobs, has been visiting in Sydney, Australia.

What I like when reading what "Woz" says, is that he’s pretty open. Speaks his mind. He’s a guru to many people, which probably gives his opinions far greater weight than others who speak their mind but noone listens. Woz has a fair bit of clout anyway. He designed the first Apple computers. That’s good enough for me.

The main concerns he raises in the article that sparked me off are the lack of 3G support in the iPhone, and the MacBook Air’s lack of DVD drive, inability to swap batteries out, and the 80G hard drive (read: small).

It’s a pretty funny/crazy story about the iPhone over here in Australia. For a while you could get them, but there was no network for them. Then some talented chaps hacked it (this was in July 2007, a while ago) so that you could make calls on the Telstra network. That’s right, no incoming, no sms. Just outbound calls.

According to the iPhone Australia blog, there’s a 3G edition on it’s way. It’s also apparent that Australia really isn’t on the Apple radar for iPhone release yet.

Anyway, back to Woz. It’s interesting to follow him as opposed to the Job’s Reality Distortion Field. I mean, I love the field, but it’s also good to look up the "other guy", who generally is the true nerd who got the actual stuff done. The guy who isn’t necessarily good at selling, hyping, or any kind of public eye. He’s at his best stuck in a room with cold caffenated drinks and boxed pizza lying about, staring at the screen, scribbling down file relationships on a pad.

Of course, Woz was a hardware guy. So translate the above for hardware.

Also, Woz seems to be quite a charismatic personality in his own right. According to the wikipedia entry he’s currently dating Kathy Griffin. Well there you go.

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Using Aptana and Ext with Nettalk Web Server

There’s some good discussion centering on web development going on at NetTalk Central.

One of the threads has some folk talking about using the Aptana IDE with Ext 2.0 (Javascript Library), inside the NetTalk WebServer.

Further, if you install Spket you can get proper code completion for Ext within the Aptana interface.

Javascript libraries (Ext, YUI, Scriptaculous, Prototype, and more here) are all the rage, and have been for more than a year now. They provide desktop-ish functionality within the boundaries of the web. That’s a fantastic thing.

But what people forget is that the web is _not_ the desktop. There will always be things the web cannot do that the desktop can. There will always be things the desktop can’t do that the web can. At least until Google takes over and Borgs all desktops and the web, assimilating into one gigantic organism.

I like the differences. And I like that you can meld the two together, playing off both sets of strengths.

NetTalk WebServer gives us the ability to weave desktop functionality into the web. You can’t do everything. You cannot make a desktop program with the desktop paradigm of browse and form windows.

wait! "What’s this?" you say. NetTalk WebServer can so create Browses and Update Forms.

. It can. But it’s still the web. The Browse window is not "open" while the Form Update window is "open". The web has single direction. We have Session Vars to compensate, and the almighty "Back" button .. but none of these will ever make it exactly the same.

And that is good. We should embrace this as we develop in NTWS.

You can only go onward and upwards, never backwards