Creating iTunes Scrollers

Apple introduced new scrollers in iTunes 7 and then moved on to give us the HUD, which many developers want their own scrollers for too. In Leopard, many of us thought that these would come in a nice, shiny box; but as they didn’t we’re all forced to roll our own. The common method is to draw all the components in Photoshop and then make a composite image when subclassing, but now with NSGradient and some nice additions to NSBezierPath all these have become quite easy to do, even for those with little artistic ability.

NSTreeController and Core Data, Sorted.

Having recently taken the plunge into Core Data I decided it was time to rip out all the model code from my current application and replace it with a Core Data version. After about a day I had my app up and running again but with one huge problem, the content of my NSOutlineView always appeared in a random order. Such is the problem with Core Data that NSManagedObjects store their to-many relationships in an NSSet, not an NSArray, which is unordered. So when your NSTreeController tries to display its data it appears in a random order.

This is not nice, imagine if the playlists in your iTunes library always changed their order? It gets even worse if your user wants to use drag and drop. In this case they decide the order, and they’d probably want it to stay that way.

DRM-Free Tracks to be Sold on iTunes

Gracefulflavor

I understand why people don’t particularly like DRM on their tracks, but let’s not forget that it allowed the iTS possible. I’m hesistant to hail this is a killer move; but a great option, yes.

I wonder how long it will take for all the non-DRM tracks to be available over sharing networks like BitTorrent. Call me naïve but I do think that too many people will take advantage of this to get more free music. I know lots will be careful enough to not put them in a shared folder for the world t see, but there’s many stupid people out there.

I’ll get slated for this, but I like DRM, it has allowed me to get the music I want, simply and cheaply. The iTS enabled me to buy music, rather than paying for overpriced CDs. Having the option to choose your player is great, but I love iPods, and I think its very important that people don’t steal.

Anyway, if I wanted to put all my stuff on another player I’d burn it and rip it(which would take forever), I’d never share it, I have a conscience. Please don’t think I’m implying everyone who has non-DRM music is a criminal, but there are enough people out there who copy music to damage iTunes sales in the long-run.

The best part of this is the higher bit-rate of these unprotected tracks. I’ll buy some for that reason alone, but don’t expect to get them off me!

UPDATE: Just listening to the news on BBC Radio 1, only the biggest radio station in the UK, broadcast worldwide; and what was their headline?

“Why it will now be a little easier for you to share music with your mates.”

That’s irresponsible.

Klingon Language in Mac OS 10.4?

Can somebody please tell me why I have KLINGON language support on my computer! Well, when I turned it on, no programs had a Klingon interface, but still. I think someone somewhere has way too much time on their hands. And yes, the reason I know that it says Klingon is because I used to watch Star Trek avidly, like you wouldn’t believe. I’m kinda glad those days are gone now, I still appreciate it but one day I just stopped watching. I think the sun was shining outside, so I went out.

Macworld 2007

Well, I have to say it was a let-down. After all the rumours of upgraded Mac computers, more on the upcoming Leopard operating system and new iLife and iWork applications, the keynote at the expo in San Francisco was disappointing. Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone looks excellent, and seems to be the phone I’ve been wanting for such a long time. Finally we have one that is intuitive and simple to use, but does so much you want it to do. The touch screen is a fantastic addition, and the only way to allow a complicated phone to be operated. I don’t mind about the price of it, or the availability in the fourth-quarter of 2007 here in the UK, but I was expecting more about the Mac. The Apple TV isn’t bad too, but I would never need anything like that, especially since the rumoured TV and Movie download service from iTunes in the UK didn’t come to fruition.

For a computer company, I think many people will be disappointed at the lack of computing innovation at the expo, and the loss of ‘Computer’ from the the name ‘Apple Computer Inc.’ may, for some, hail the beginning of the end for the Mac. I’m not so pessimistic, but I would definitely be loathed to return to using Windows after 3 years of an iMac doing everything I wanted to do, and more.

Vienna - Free RSS Reader

Having recently begun to blog, I have found that trying to view all the blogs I want to see can be quite a task. I found a great free RSS reader called Vienna. Its a very simple and uncluttered interface and has its own built-in browser for viewing full articles in the app. I even managed to easily import my Google Reader feeds perfectly, without messing with settings.

My First Dashcode Widget

So it turns out that Steve Job’s famous reality distortion field was at work again when he first talk about the ease of use of dashcode. From a cursory glance at it, to do anything even remotely out of the field of the templates still requires you to learn java, or is it javascript?

It is very powerful, don’t get me wrong, but as someone who cant program in the relevant languages, and has no artistic bones in his body, I was only able to create a simple widget to display the RSS feed from this blog. Many of the components are drag-and-drop, so more playing may allow me to create a widget with a field on the back that allows the entering of a feed URL, only time will tell.

Dashcode

On the 20th December, Apple released a public beta of ‘Dashcode’. A scaled-down version of that to be included in OS X 10.5 (Leopard). Over the next few days, I will be seeing just how easy it is to use, and begin to scratch the surface of what it can do.

I’m no developer, I know a bit of C++ and FORTRAN, so this may help the average user to get started with makiing their own widgets for our favourite OS.