Comments on: Ditto

By: pauldwaite

pauldwaite — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 02:11:52 +0000

I thought Netscape renamed LiveScript to JavaScript smply because Java was popular at the time.

It’s one of the worst decisions ever. The fact that it’s still confusing people as smart as The Macalope, over 10 years later, makes me want to cry a little.

By: Jed

Jed — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 01:15:53 +0000

And it already seems to be a hit in Germany. Amazon has a pre-order page up, surely prematurely, and it’s just hit no.1 in the charts, even at 1000 euros. Great fun.

http://www.amazon.de/gp/bestsellers/ce-de/ref=pd_ts_h/303-6586680-7214650

I think they’ll be able to sell as many as they can build for the forseeable future.

By: Jed

Jed — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 01:04:53 +0000

Oh, and read Rentzsch. In particular, read that last sentence…

http://rentzsch.com/cocoa/iphoneIndieAppDevelopment

By: Jed

Jed — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 01:00:49 +0000

I’m sure that Safari will run javascript. I’m equally sure it will be able to run web apps perfectly well. You can do quite a lot with web apps these days.

The whole reason they can make a device like this is because it’s closed. Their advantage over the opposition is that they make the entire thing, hardware and software. Steve actually made the point in the keynote. So, at this stage at least, they need a closed environment just to be sure that it’ll work. No-one says that has to be forever.

But what a lovely potential roadmap now. Those wishlists getting published everywhere are probably just revisions a, b and c to the line over the next couple of years. As the hardware gets ever more powerful it’ll be increasingly possible to add these extra features.

Sigh. All I know is that I’m having to revise my childhood dreams. Steve Jobs thinks this is another revolution and the iPhone seems to pretty much fit the criteria of what we were all told ‘would be possible one day’ back in the early days of computing. It’s the device we all drew pictures of as kids. A ‘communicator’. All it really lacks from those fantasies is a teleport function and I guess that’s gonna take a while.

Oh dear. I’m now wondering how many years/revisions before I can have a 5mm thin, 5 inch, 300dpi, full touchscreen, 48 hour battery life, open filesystem, 100Gb hard drive version. 5 years? 10?

;-)

By: Ölbaum

Ölbaum — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 22:22:04 +0000

What strikes me is that Steve Jobs emphasized on the fact that the iPhone runs OS X, including Cocoa. Why would we care that it has Cocoa if it remains a closed platform? After all, I never heard him talk about the OS and APIs in the iPod.

By: The Macalope

The Macalope — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 20:12:16 +0000

Thanks for the clarification.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 20:01:10 +0000

Hmmm, for some reason, the comma I typed after that URL got included as part of the link. A working link is http://jdeber.blogspot.com/2007/01/apple-consumerelectronicsworld-2007.html

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 19:59:00 +0000

As was mentioned, Java and JavaScript have nothing to do with each other, except for sharing a similar C-style syntax and half of a name.

Webkit uses JavaScriptCore (http://webkit.org/projects/javascript/index.html) to implement JavaScript, and I’m sure it was ported without much difficulty.

I’ve got a few thoughts up on the iPhone as a Blackberry competitor up at http://jdeber.blogspot.com/2007/01/apple-consumerelectronicsworld-2007.html, if anyone cares.

By: John Evans

John Evans — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 19:54:08 +0000

Well so far the iPhone seems as buttoned down as it could be to please several parties, I would assume no Javascript, otherwise GTalk would work and so would a whole bunch of very useful things. My personal bet is it doesnt. Which would be weird as Nokias Webkit implmentation also includes a companion called Javascript Core alo made by Apple, go figure.

By: Karl von L.

Karl von L. — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 19:52:28 +0000

Oops, that “certainly not” was in response to the first question, not the second.