MentalPolyphonics

I just paid for software! Specifically, the Snow Leopard update. After installing it, I have ~20 gigs more space free! Plus, I got stickerz:

The $40 CAD price point was just about right for me to not consider it a “real” purchase. Conversely, I pirated some effing fantastic software today because it was at a $100 price point which I thought a bit much (though if I had it to spare it would be worth every penny). Partly I figured I could pay up when it started generating income for me.

Both would, essentially, have been fully deductible* because they were business acquisitions. The second application gave me a little “Please don’t pirate!” popup when I mis-clicked, which I circumvented. Similarly, I could have got Snow Leopard for free but didn’t. I was looking at the torrent description, which mentioned the price of a legit copy, and I ran to the Apple retailer around the corner and just bought it:

1. It was faster than downloading, and
2. I’m terrified of being thrown out of the Garden of the Apple by the mighty ban-hammer of Thor Steve.

I thought I’d mention the fact that I paid though, and go into just a tiny bit of my psychology — I assume our readers are at least somewhat interested in the software purchase decision.

* Check with a real accountant.

Again from FC, here are the browser share breakdowns and deltas from Jan ‘010:

• Chrome: 5.61%, up 0.39% from January
• IE: 61.58%, down 0.54%
• Firefox: 24.23%, down 0.2%
• Safari: 4.45%, down 0.08%
• Opera: 2.35%, down 0.03%

Any analysis of the deltas, as FC does in its article, amounts to a lack of understanding of basic stats — they’re probably just analyzing noise and sampling error.

Something that often goes unmentioned is that IE’s users are broken into roughly-equal subsegments. First, there are the people who don’t care about updating their browsers (including users who suffer under the heel of lax administrators). Second, the people really into IE (they exist, and include some of the best engineers I know) and people who are forced to use IE by an institution that updates it correctly.

In short: the browser market actually looks more like this (rough numbers pulled straight from my brainhole):

• IE6: 30%
• IE7/8: 30%
• Other, standards compliant: 40%*

* Although the current Opera can’t do the new rounded-border CSS stuff — which I suppose isn’t really a standard, just useful).

Since, as I’ve mentioned before, IE8 isn’t terrible with its standards compliance one can target those standards and blanket most of the users who care about Internet stuff (ie, the market you’re trying to reach with web apps). The rest you can just ignore, like Google (which is phasing out IE6 support starting yesterday).

And: Chrome on Windows is better than Chrome on Mac because the tabs have an infinitely-tall catchment for the mouse (they’re positioned at the top of the screen when the window is maximized). OS X reserves this space for itself, so Chrome’s tabs on that platform are just as hard to target as everyone else’s.

I’m ramping up on both Android and Berry development for SIN. It’s pretty horrible.

First, the Android emulator takes effing forever to start. At first I thought my Spotlight hangs were back. But, no, Usenet sez, no — the pithiest answer:

continue waiting !

Apparently it’s faster on Linux and faster still if you tell it to emulate a smaller memory card. It’s taken a half-hour so far. WTF is Google doing!?

So, that’s pretty terrible. Also, Berries don’t have an OSX development environment — just Windows — so I’m forced to work through the Linux hacks for doing Berry dev on unix-like systems.

If you’re not keeping track, that means I, and other mobile developers, need three machines:

1. MacBook for iPhone/iPad
2. Windows for Windows Mobile/Blackberry
3. Linux for Android/Blackberry

Even with the new tax credit that’s a lot of hardware. I can get around lots of this with some virtual machines, but what if I want to hire a designer or artist? Are they just out of luck until I can load them up with software, laptops, or rent physical office space? Gross.

All-in, I’d almost rather stay an Apple-only shop because of this, but I’m pushing through because I am on the scent of a Berry contract, and it would be nice to be able to pitch Android as well.

Windows Mobile can burn in the fires of Hades. Do any phones actually use that platform?