AT&T and iPhone - Your world delivered… for $20 per web page.

Courtesy Adam Aronson

So here again we have an example of AT&T sucking the positive energy out of the otherwise revolutionary and exciting iPhone experience. More and more, AT&T seems to be the clumsy, dottering older sibling in the Apple/AT&T relationship.

Adam Aronson, owner of San Francisco-based Arc Design, was floored (literally) when he opened his latest AT&T wireless bill. After spending two weeks in the UK and taking along his iPhone, Adam returned to a special gift from AT&T in the form of a $5000 phone bill, mostly data roaming charges. He did the math and figures that his web surfing worked out to the low-low rate of $20 per web page (two cents per kilobyte).

How can AT&T justify this? Do they have some superfast, 25th century wireless fat pipe in the UK that, for those willing to pay, provides blazingly fast connections? No — it’s the same slow EDGE network we enjoy here in the USA.

Check out Adam’s story.

 [Update - Aug 30, 2007]
I heard from today Adam that after turning down several offers from AT&T to reduce the bill, he finally threatened to file a formal complaint with the FSS and BBB. AT&T responded by removing all of the data roaming charges from his bill.

Is Adobe Flex Builder sluggish on Mac or is it just me?

I run Adobe Flex Builder 2 and Flex Builder 3 (Moxie, Beta 1) on my MacBook Pro (Intel Dual Core Duo 2.16GHz, 2GB RAM) and have noticed that both run sluggishly. When clicking “Run” my app opens with lots of screen artifacts, then I have to close it. If I then switch to run it under “Debug” it will appear correctly. Interestingly, this behavior will then reverse itself occasionally. Also, the IDE will periodically freeze while I’m typing in Code view, then will release (similar to keystrokes being buffered while it’s working on something else). It’s the most annoying thing.

In contrast, when I run the same two versions of Flex Builder in Windows XP under VMWare Fusion, they run without a hiccup.

I’m curious if anyone else has noticed this problem. Let me know.

Apple iPhone Tech Talk Debriefing - Part 2 (Vector graphics and animation)

Today we’re going to cover vector graphics and animation on the iPhone which was discussed by Mark Malone, Internet Technologies Evangelist at Apple. Frankly, I was surprised that hardly anyone asked questions about this during the session because it was all new information to me. There was no mention of Canvas at the iPhoneDevCamp just a month earlier nor have I seen it discussed on the iPhoneWebDev Google group. So let’s jump right in…

First, we all know that iPhone doesn’t support the Adobe Flash plug-in or SVG. So how does one incorporate scalable vector graphics and animation into a web app intended for an iPhone Safari audience? The answer is Canvas.

Canvas 101
Canvas is an addition to the HTML 5 specification dealing with programmable vector graphics implemented using the <canvas> tag. There’s a bit of intermediate history to it, suffice it to say Canvas was born at Apple as part of their Mac OS X Dashboard SDK. If you want the nitty gritty I encourage you to check out the Mozilla Developer Wiki article on Canvas.

“So I can create vector graphics and animations for the iPhone!”, you say. “Great, where do I start? What IDE should I use?”

Stop right there. There’s no IDE. If you want to paint a circle on the screen you’ll be using your keyboard to do it, not a mouse. Here’s the code needed to draw a circle:

function drawShape(){

  var canvas = document.getElementById('myCanvas');  if (canvas.getContext){

    var myCircle = canvas.getContext('2d');

    var x          = 25;

    var y          = 25;

    var radius     = 20;

    var startAngle = 0;

    var endAngle   = Math.PI+(Math.PI*j)/2;

    var clockwise  = true;

    myCircle.arc(x,y,radius,startAngle,endAngle, clockwise);

    myCircle.fill();

  } else {

    alert('You need a browser that supports Canvas to see this demonstration.');

  }

}

There is some good news — several open source Canvas libraries have been written which make the task of drawing complex shapes and animations somewhat easier. Also, because no plug-in is required there’s no Flash-JavaScript bridging required (say goodbye to FSCommand). If you used the early versions of POVRay where an entire 3-D scene was modeled and rendered with code, then learning how to draw in Canvas should be relatively easy.

Animating in Canvas
Animations done with Canvas are a challenge unto themselves. Because there’s no timeline/frame construct with which to work, animating with Canvas requires constantly re-drawing the scene. The Mozilla Developer Wiki has a nice tutorial on animating in Canvas. It’s not for the wary, however. Alot of stuff (e.g. maintaining screen state, redraw intervals, etc.) which are handled transparently in Flash require programming intervention in Canvas.

Native iPhone Apps Use Canvas
Probably the tastiest morsel of information I got from the Apple iPhone Tech Talk was hearing Mark Malone explain that Apple developed all of the iPhone native applications, such as the Stocks, Clock, and Weather apps, using Canvas. It makes sense now when one understands that Apple developed Canvas as part of their Mac OS X Dashboard SDK for creating widgets. Who knew?

So, eager iPhone developers, cast aside your mice and styli and embrace your keyboards and JavaScript references — a world of compelling Canvas graphics and animation awaits you!

Update: Silverlight for Windows Mobile Prototype Demo

I should have checked this before publishing my previous post where I stated that it seemed “reasonable” to assume that Microsoft was going to include Silverlight support in the Windows Mobile OS. To that point, I just found this video on YouTube where some Microsoft folks at Microsoft Mobile DevCon 2007 demo a prototype of Silverlight for Windows Mobile.

Why Apple will have to support Flash on the iPhone

I have a one word argument as to why Apple will have to support Flash content in Safari on the iPhone: Microsoft.

While I was at the iPhoneDevCamp back in early July I shared this very argument with Robert Scoble and a few others. At the time the entire BarCamp was abuzz with Walt Mossberg’s report that a Flash player build for iPhone was imminent. Such rumors seem to have died down since and there hasn’t been any recent news on this front.

With the Silverlight marketing machine spinning up to full speed at Microsoft it seems reasonable to assume that the folks in Redmond would plan to include full Silverlight runtime support in the next major release of Windows Mobile OS. It wouldn’t be improbable for Microsoft to even slipstream the Silverlight player into a Windows Mobile 6 service pack. Assuming this happens, can anyone picture a market where there are Windows Mobile phones which support Microsoft Silverlight for delivery of rich content while Apple iPhone users can’t view either Flash or Silverlight content? (Note also that some phones today running Windows Mobile already support Flash or a subset of it via FlashLite.)

From a developer’s perspective deciding which mobile platform to target would be easy — considering Silverlight has a full-fledged IDE (Microsoft Expression Studio) I’d choose the Windows Mobile platform. Why would I waste my time targeting the iPhone which only supports Canvas currently? If you aren’t familiar with Canvas, picture writing lines of code to do something as simple as painting a circle on the screen and moving it around or many, many lines of code to tween a rectangle into a different shape. I’d wager that any Flash developer/designer would rather gouge out their eyes with a blunt instrument than use Canvas for any serious project.

So I hold out hope that indeed Flash support on the iPhone is coming — maybe as a gift to all iPhone owners by the holidays.

Cairngorm for Beginners

If you’ve been to any Flex conferences recently you’ve probably heard about the Cairngorm framework for developing Flex applications. Or maybe you’ve asked yourself, “What is Cairngorm?” Personally, I’ve sat through no less than three sessions about Cairngorm presented by a variety of Flex developers over the past few months and also read chapters devoted to the topic in various Flex books , but have unfortunately walked away from each scratching my head. My conclusion is that when it comes to understanding Cairngorm I’m definitely a kinesthetic learner.

Thankfully, Neil Webb, a UK-based Flash and Flex developer, has authored a three-part series entitled “Cairngorm for Beginners.” If you’re new to Cairngorm, and especially development frameworks in general, check out Neil’s tutorials.

Apple iPhone Tech Talk Notes

I’ve made available for download the notes I took during Apple’s iPhone Tech Talk in San Francisco on 24 Aug 2007.

Download Apple iPhone Tech Talk Notes

Apple iPhone Tech Talk Debriefing - Part 1

I attended Apple’s iPhone Tech Talk in San Francisco yesterday (24 Aug 2007). Although I’ve stayed on top of everything related to iPhone Web 2.0 app development since the iPhone hit the streets on 26 June 2007, it was nice to finally attend an Apple sanctioned event. Not surprisingly, there wasn’t alot of new information (there was one very important piece of info about Canvas which I address in Part 2 of this series), but it was interesting to hear Apple’s opinion on iPhone web app design.

There were roughly 100-150 attendees. The Apple contingent included: John Geleynse - Apple User Experience Evangelist Mark Malone - Apple Internet Technologies Evangelist Matt Drance - Apple Sharing Technologies Evangelist Mike Jurewitz - Apple Developer Tools Evangelist Allan Schaffer - Apple Graphics Technologies Evangelist Linda Ouandji - Apple Developer Tech Support Allison Vanderby - Apple Bug Reporter Stephen Tonna - Apple QuickTime Product Manager I’m going to post separately my raw notes from the Apple iPhone Tech Talk, however over the next few days I’ll be summarizing each presentation. Today I cover the presentation by Mark Malone (Internet Technologies Evangelist) about Safari on iPhone. Safari on iPhone (Mark Malone, Internet Technologies Evangelist) The Safari browser presentation was chock full of good information, most of it clarifying info mixed with a good bit of “under the hood” stuff. Mark Malone explained that Safari 3.0 for iPhone, Safari 3.0 Beta for Windows, and Safari 3.0 Beta for OS X Tiger all share the same WebKit rendering engine. He presented an“Ensuring iPhone Safari Compatability Top 10″ list: 1. Be aware that users can set browser preferences on the iPhone. 2. Separate page content into .html, .js, and .css files to take advantage of iPhone caching. 3. Make content is well-formed to HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, CSS 2.1 (and some CSS 3) and ECMAScript 3. 4. Be browser agnostic — don’t sniff and present different content based on user-agent. Apple recommends instead using objectDetection. 5. Leverage CSS 3 media queries. 6. Know the resource limits per resource (see my raw notes for details). 7. Use supported windows and dialogs (see my raw notes for details). 8. Be aware of natively supported content types such as .doc, .pdf, .xls, etc. Mark weaved into this bullet the fact that Canvas content and <canvas> tags are Apple’s recommended approach to including vector animations in iPhone web apps. More on this later. 9. Know the built-in fonts: Arial, Courier/Courier New, Georgia, Trebuchet, Zapfino, Helvetica, Times/Times New Roman, and Verdana. 10. Test and debug using Safari 3.0 on the desktop using the Element Inspector feature and Drosera third-party tool. For more details please see my raw notes from the Apple iPhone Tech Talk. My summaries on the other presentations will follow over the next few days. Continue to Part 2 > Vector Graphics and Animation on the iPhone

Grabowska’s “Crown of the Continent” an HD Jewel

Has the “HD awe” you felt when you first purchased your HDTV faded? Rejuvenate it by watching “Crown of the Continent”, a 30-minute documentary by John Grabowska released in 2003, about Alaska’s Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. It’s America’s largest national park and also claims the largest concentration of glaciers in North America.

I’ve always loved national parks it seems; I think it was born from reading National Geographic’s Picture Atlas “Our Fifty States” when I was a kid in the early 1980’s. This fascination with the wilderness and nature became more cemented after visiting Yellowstone National Park in 1997 and, the next year, flying my dad out to visit it again with me for his 50th birthday.

The HD cinematography in “Crown of the Continent” is stunning and the writing in this short piece does just enough to complement the pictures. Grabowska also adds touches from his childhood and why he comes to Wrangell-St. Elias that put everything in perspective. It’s as close to a work of art as one can get on television these days.

Check to see when it’s on your local PBS station.

AT&T Responds to iPhone Paper Bill Outrage

Well, chalk one up for the environment, iPhone customers, and AT&T shareholders. This afternoon AT&T sent out a text message to iPhone users (I presume all iPhone users) stating:

“We are simplifying your paper bill, removing itemized detail. To view all detail go to att.com/mywireless.”

Also included were instructions on how to keep getting your full paper bill. By my very conservative calculations, assuming an average cost of mailing a 50-page bill (the average reported) of $2.50 and 350,000 account holders (factoring for multiple iPhone families/businesses), on the low side AT&T is going to save probably $875,000 a month or $10,500,000 a year — the likelihood is that it’s probably more. Shareholders should be pleased. Perhaps while they’re on a streak of goodness, AT&T could pass along the savings to their customers instead.