Open source is not always the answer

I've been a huge fan of open source software for years and have contributed back to a few projects including the Palm OS Emulator and pilot-link. I've used a number of open source projects in my own applications and, of course, follow the license for attribution (I don't touch GPL code). Years ago when I was a lot greener, I used open source thinking that it must be perfect and treated the code at black boxes. This bit me on at least one project where we had to fix the code for years due to assumptions by the developer.

Now that I have more years under my belt and have done some of my own open source, I take a different view of open source. When I incorporate open source into my projects (with a few exceptions such as Sparkle that has been thoroughly tested), I closely examine the code and make sure I understand it. This takes time, but makes it less likely that I'll get bitten. I've seen a number of projects where developers find open source, shove it in an app, and call it a day without understanding what it does. I found one piece of code that completely went against what Apple has said to do in determining if a feature exists on a device; in another application, I found extremely complex networking code that may have been unnecessary (networking code is hard and the more complex it is, the harder it is to debug).

The main thing to realize with open source is that it was written by humans that can make mistakes and do! I have a large collection of open source code on my machine for reference (someday I'll catalog all that I've found) and use it to save time. I'm not saying that developers should reinvent the wheel for every piece of code, but they should be cautious when shoving code in their applications.

XPAL Power and the MacBook Pro

Last year I wrote about hooking up my XPAL Power XP 18000 to my MacBook Pro. My method was a bit wacky, but worked fine. As I was surfing the web the other day, I found that XPAL now offered a connector to the MacBook Pro. Very interesting, I thought, so I looked at it. As Apple has a patent on the MagSafe connector, no company has been able to create a knock off cable. What did Energizer do? Well, they created a cable that connected the battery to a female connector that you then use the Apple airline adapter with MagSafe connector. Very clever, but an added expense.

In my case, I already had the adapter, so I used my free tips for life and for $4, I got the connector. The connector works fine and is a bit cleaner than my solution. However, there is a slight difference between my cable and the XPAL Power solution. The Apple airline adapter doesn't charge the computer when connected (the MagSafe connector has electronics in it to indicate if it should charge the computer). The cables that I used were regular charger cables, so they charge the computer when the battery is connected. In my case, the battery heated up quickly as it was charging the computer. With the XPAL Power solution, my computer didn't charge, but the battery stayed cool.

So, having said all that, I think that the XPAL Power solution is better than my solution as I'm seeing better battery life. As I compile code a lot, my main battery only lasts about 90 minutes, so if I can get another 1.5-2 hours out of the external battery, I'm quite happy. I believe that the XPAL Power is now going to give me that (before I maybe got an extra 1 hour to 1.25 hours.

Rollover minutes - great gimmick

When I signed up with AT&T for my iPhone, I got the lowest number of minutes I could get, 450 per month as I don't talk on the phone much. AT&T has rollover minutes which will let me rollover the minutes I don't use until the next month and they add up for a year. Well, most people have pretty consistent phone usage, so if they get a plan that has more minutes than they need, the rollover minutes start adding up and will never be used.

I'm about half way through my billing cycle and I've used 23 any time minutes. At this rate, I'll use maybe 50. If I keep this up for 12 months, I'll have almost 5000 rollover minutes. For someone that doesn't make voice calls all that often, what am I going to do with that many minutes? Effectively I'll never go over my minutes. Too bad I can't cash them in at the end of the year for a prize or a discount!

Rollover minutes sound great in commercials, but serve very little practical purpose. Yes, I realize that there are some people that may have unexpected phone calls one month and it will help, but for those people that are always way under their minutes, it's useless.

iPhone 4 Antenna bar fiasco

I've been listening to the MacBreak Weekly podcast and the biggest topic lately is the iPhone 4 antenna mess. It seems that there are 2 technical problems with the iPhone 4 related to this. The first affects all iPhones going back a few years and that has to do with the number of bars. The second is the "death grip" that causes the bars to go down and to drop calls.

Everyone has discussed both of these to death, but I'd like to throw in my 2 cents. The number of bars is not a true indicator of anything. How do I know this? Well, I'm actually someone that has written code to display antenna bars. I wrote the Mac status software for Franklin Wireless. In that software, I read the RSSI value from the modem and put up the bars. Well, I was told to change the bar "calculation" a few times. When I say calculation, it was more like, "if it is in this range, display x bars". There is absolutely no rocket science involved here; the modem gave me the dB of the RSSI and I displayed bars. So when Apple says they messed up the calculation, it is, in my opinion, a bunch of baloney. I believe it is more likely that someone either tweaked the value to make it look like there were more bars (AT&T says "more bars in more places") or someone was given the wrong table (you could argue that the latter is actually the wrong calculation, but it was probably overlooked as it looked like there were more bars). So Apple's upcoming fix will make AT&T look worse which they may deserve.

On the "death grip", I think people are over reacting (we'll know more on Friday when Apple has a press conference). The reported fix is to use a bumper or a case. I had ordered Apple's bumper, but cancelled my order because it would take too long to arrive and the $35 (including tax and shipping) just didn't sit right with me. So, I decided to go on eBay and see what they had. I picked 4 different cases for a total of under $5 including shipping, direct from China. All of the cases arrived this week and the case that I'm using right now is a silicone case that cost $0.99. If I, as a consumer, can get a case that effectively solves the "death grip" problem for $0.99 with shipping, Apple can easily get cases for half that. At this point (with the information at hand), I think that Apple should send everyone that is having a problem a free bumper. This would allow them to save face and move on. Going forward, they can include the bumper or coat the metal with something.

It's amazing to me how blow out of proportion this has become; everyone knows about it, even those people that don't care about the iPhone. I wish Apple the best of luck on a quick resolution, but for me, I'm quite pleased with my phone and haven't had any issues with it.