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Apple's Transition to Intel Revisited
I wrote awhile back on how moving an application from PowerPC to Intel isn't as easy as Steve Jobs has indicated. This topic has come up again and I'm a bit offended by what one author has said in a recent article where the author basically says that developers that have been using Xcode and have programmed in Cocoa have a relatively easy transition moving code. This may be true for simple applications, but doesn't reflect the reality of many applications out there. In one of the programs I've been working on for the last few years, we developed it using Xcode and used Cocoa throughout (OK, one slight component still has to be in Codewarrior as it needs to be CFM). One engineer spent several months making things work on Intel; the main reason is that the application talks to an external device over USB. Any application that talks to an external device is far more complicated than outsiders think. In addition, we have taken, what I consider an extraordinary step, in supporting third party plugins that weren't designed for Intel. Apple says that users should run applications that require third party plugins in Rosetta by forcing it in the Finder. I find that this is unacceptable to have to run a universal application under Rosetta just so that plugins can run as I want the speed of the universal application. So, additional work was required to get this to work seamlessly (I'm still amazed at how well this works) which most applications don't have to handle. (In this particular case, it is unlikely that most of the third party plugins we support will be made universal any time soon, so waiting for them to become universal is unrealistic.)
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New Video Camera
Last week I went to use my Canon ZR85 video camera to record our dog doing something wacky. When I turned it on, instead of an image on the screen, I saw lines. After futzing around with it, I came to the conclusion that the CCD was busted as playback worked fine. We're going on vacation soon and I know that my wife will want video of it, so I started research into a new camera. I don't use the video camera all that much, so I didn't want anything real fancy and didn't want the bottom of the barrel. I went to Circuit City to look around, looked online, and settled on a Panasonic PV-GS36 that I bought at Costco for $279 (there was a coupon this week). For the price, I don't think I could beat it. It has similar specs to the Canon I'm replacing, but I must say that the user interface (via a joystick) is far superior to anything else I've seen. It seems to have everything I want and we'll see how well it does. I hate that we're a disposable society, but getting my Canon repaired would probably be a minimum of $100 to look at it and then the cost of parts. Then I'd only get a 30 or 90 day warranty on the repairs.
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Signed up for the Marathon
I know that I said I wouldn't pay the $4.95 extortion fee for signing up online, but thanks to a post on SlickDeals, I used a $15 off coupon which saved me $10.05 even after paying the fee. I guess I no longer have a choice, but to run this marathon!
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Free checking
I see that Washington Mutual is offering Free Checking. This is interesting because they've been offering it for years; when I moved back to San Diego in 1999, I went to Washington Mutual to get their free checking, but closed my account within days because it wasn't completely free. I had to pay for checks, something that wasn't disclosed to me. That annoyed me and so I opened a new account at Bank of America, a bank I've been dealing with for years (Oregon and California branches weren't really linked at the time, so I had to close my Oregon account and open a California account). So now, it looks like Washington Mutual is offering free checks. How nice of them to finally make correct their misleading advertising.