Does anyone at Apple actually care about us developers?

I fired up ReceiptWallet beta on a Tiger machine today to check out a problem and it didn't launch. Huh, I looked at the crash log and it said there was a problem with a symbol not found using the dynamic linker (I'm not sure why my testers on Tiger didn't find this as it clearly doesn't work). So, I look at my code and I have:

	[pictureTaker setValue:[NSNumber numberWithBool:NO]
		forKey: IKPictureTakerAllowsFileChoosingKey];

This code only executes on Leopard, so it should be fine. However, whoever decided to define this constant decided to define it as such:

	extern NSString *const IKPictureTakerAllowsFileChoosingKey;

instead of something smart like:

	#define IKPictureTakerAllowsFileChoosingKey	@"IKPictureTakerAllowsFileChoosingKey"

Why is the second one smarter? Because it allows people to compile in features that work on 10.5 while still supporting 10.4. I have checks in my code to not execute this chunk of code on Leopard, so that isn't a problem. The problem with this is that while everything compiles and links, it crashes on Tiger.

Apple wants us to use new technology, but most of us can't abandon Tiger users, so we compile against the 10.5 SDK with a Mac OS X Deployment Target of 10.4 as indicated we should do in the Core Data Release Notes.

Apple, please fix this!

Another set of bugs in Leopard

A number of weeks ago, I fought with Leopard to be able to use a magnetic stripe reader in one of my apps. The Apple sample code worked on Tiger, but broke on Leopard. OK, I reported that as a bug. Next, I looked at some new USB code in Leopard and that failed as well. After opening an Apple DTS incident, buying a magnetic stripe reader for them, and going round and round, they acknowledged the first bug and the second bug which was a workaround to the first one. DTS did send me code that finally did work.

This week, I fought with Leopard (or maybe it is Tiger) dealing with the Keychain. The Keychain (along with System Configuration) are some of the most confusing frameworks to write code. This weeks' issue dealt with using the Keychain framework to get a password out of the System keychain (like for PPP passwords). If the user clicks on Always Allow, the method returns a -61 error which is a write permissions error. What's the workaround? Well, if I get a -61 error, I put up the request again. While this gets me to the end goal, it really confuses the user.

Today was another bug dealing with the Image Capture. I wanted to add supporting Image Capture in addition to TWAIN as it might be more reliable. I got as far as implementing the UI and all the code, only to find out that if I scan once, when I close the scanner session, I get an error and then I can't scan again. All that I've read indicates that the Image Capture Framework (ICA) doesn't work properly when compiled against 10.5. This doesn't surprise me as someone changed the TWAIN header files in Leopard so that UInt32s were changed to void * or vice versa. This, of course, causes lots of warnings that have to be typecasted. Scanning is one of those areas in the OS that doesn't seem to get touched and no one seems to care. The scanner vendors write crappy drivers so they don't complain and no one else is big enough to get Apple to care. Maybe things will change.

Paying for being stupid

The recent measles outbreak here in San Diego could easily have been prevented if the parents of the original infected child had vaccinated that child. However, the parents exercised their right to not vaccinate. Some parents believe that the mercury in vaccines leads to autism; the problem with this theory is that vaccines haven't had mercury (thimerosal) in them for years. At the same rate, autism rates have gone up, so it would lead any reasonable person to conclude that the vaccines (at least mercury in them) has nothing to do with autism.

While the parents exercised their right, their negligence (in my opinion) caused others to become infected (infants under 1 year can't be vaccinated for measles). I think that these people should pay for the medical costs of all those infected and should pay everyone for being inconvenienced. My wife has had to change plans because our son can't be vaccinated (he's 9 month old). These parents' choice has caused people all over San Diego to worry about something that I hadn't heard of in years.

Please vaccinate your children as your decision should not put my child at risk. If you choose not to vaccinate your children, please never come out of your house.

Planning for Aiden's first birthday

Our son, Aiden, is rapidly approaching his first birthday. We're trying to figure out what to do. Should we have a clown? How about a pony? How about one of those jumpy things? Wow, this is going to be huge. We're going to spend a lot of time and money planning a party that our son will never remember! Just kidding, we're not going overboard with his first birthday, maybe another birthday down the line, but why one that he won't appreciate? My wife has told me that some of the mothers she has run into are planning elaborate parties for their child's first birthday. What a waste.