John Debay

From a wonderful piece by Walt Mossberg:

After his liver transplant, while he was recuperating at home in Palo Alto, California, Steve invited me over to catch up on industry events that had transpired during his illness. It turned into a three hour visit, punctuated by a walk to a nearby park that he insisted we take, despite my nervousness about his frail condition.

He explained that he walked each day, and that each day he set a farther goal for himself, and that, today, the neighborhood park was his goal. As we were walking and talking, he suddenly stopped, not looking well. I begged him to return to the house, noting that I didn’t know CPR and could visualize the headline: “Helpless reporter lets Steve Jobs die on the sidewalk.”

But he laughed, and refused, and, after a pause, kept heading for the park. We sat on a bench there, talking about life, our families, and our respective illnesses (I had had a heart attack some years earlier.) He lectured me about staying healthy. And then we walked back.

Steve Jobs didn’t die that day, to my everlasting relief. But now he really is gone, much too young, and it is the world’s loss.

Much too young.

Here are a few random predictions for today’s iPhone event. Who knows if they’re right, but here goes:

• Two new iPhones, one cheap, the other expensive. The cheap one might just be an iPhone 4 with an A5 and a couple other small upgrades. I think Apple wants to fill out their price points iPod-style, and they want to do it with a new device and remove the stigma of buying “last year’s model.” I think the existence of two phones is responsible for the “iPhone 4S/iPhone 5” confusion in the rumor mills. I think both exist. (Another interesting aspect of updating the iPhone 4 is that an A5 processor would presumably allow all new iPhones to support their rumored voice assistant feature.)
• Any new phones will have the same square design as the current iPhone 4. The square design at least partially comes from putting the antennas on the outside of the device so they can save space inside. When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone 4 last year, he was clearly in love with both the engineering cleverness and the overall design of the phone. The iPhone 4 has gone on to become Apple’s best selling iPhone of all time (maybe best selling product, period?). I think Apple loves the design and will keep it for at least one more generation.
• Even if Apple does ditch the square form factor, they certainly will not release anything asymmetrical, like the “teardrop” nonsense that’s been floating around online. If it’s not square, it’ll have a tapered edge like the iPad and iPod Touch.
• The new phones will have some new software camera feature, similar to adding HDR to iOS 4. Maybe panoramas or something similar?
• The new phones will be available one week from Friday, October 14.
• iOS 5 GM will be released today (if not today, certainly within the week), but it will be released to the public around the same time as the next iPhone. Releasing the GM soon will give Apple time to accept iOS 5-enabled apps so that enough are approved by the time iOS 5 and the new phones ship.
• Tim Cook will MC the event. Steve Jobs won’t appear publicly (I hope I’m wrong about this.)
• The iPod lineup will not change at all.

This doesn’t cover everything. I believe the Sprint and voice assistant rumors, for example. These are the rumors that are most interesting to me, and about which I think it’s possible to make educated guesses. I believe there will be at least 2 or 3 other “tentpole features” available only with the new device, but I obviously have no idea what those are. Apple did an amazing job of keeping the iCloud features secret before announcing them public, and it looks like they’ve done the same thing here.

Twitter integration is a common requirement of iPhone apps. Indeed, two of the apps my company sells are built around Twitter. Many other apps I’ve worked on for clients have also required Twitter integration.

I’m hoping to make that job a little easier for other iOS (and Mac) developers in the future by releasing TwitterKit, a simple and lightweight library for communicating with the Twitter REST API. TwitterKit should work with iOS 4.0 and up, and Mac OS X 10.6 and up. (I haven’t tested it on the latter yet, though.)

TwitterKit was built with a few goals in mind.

• Simple. TwitterKit is designed to keep the simple things simple. It has a small and clear API. There are a small number of general methods for sending API requests, rather than one Objective-C method that maps to each available REST API method.
• Small. TwitterKit is a small library. You won’t need to triple your build time just so you can post a tweet from your app.
• Easy to use. TwitterKit’s minimal API means it should be straightforward for most people to get started quickly.
• Flexible. TwitterKit is designed to handle changes to the Twitter REST API, including both new methods and changing parameters to existing ones, without requiring changes to the library itself.
• No dependencies. No conflicts. TwitterKit is completely self-contained, and it won’t clash with other libraries you may already be using in your app. Just drop the source files into your project and you’re ready to go.

In addition to providing support for the Twitter REST API, TwitterKit also includes a simple wrapper for authenticating your app using the Twitter OAuth web flow.

Give it a try in your app. If you find any bugs, or have any suggestions whatsoever, please feel free to file issues on GitHub. Any and all feedback is certainly welcome.

Republicans in control of Pennsylvania’s state legislature are considering a significant change to how that state awards its electoral votes in presidential elections:

Now, Pennsylvania, like most states, has a “winner take all” system, in which the winner of the statewide popular vote gets all the electoral votes; in 2008, Barack Obama won 55 percent of the state’s popular vote and 100 percent of its 21 electoral votes.

The proposed change would award the electoral votes based on the winner of each Congressional district. Redistricting, which is controlled by Republicans, will leave Pennsylvania with 18 districts next year, 12 Republican seats and 6 Democratic seats. The state will have 20 electoral votes, one for each of the 18 House districts plus two others for its senators.

Under the proposal, the candidate who wins the statewide popular vote would win the two others. If the change were in place next year, Mr. Obama, as the Democratic nominee, could win the popular vote and carry the six Democratic districts but end up with just 8 electoral votes, while the Republican nominee would take 12.

Bare knuckle politics is nothing new, but this seems a step too far. How could it possibly be palatable to even Republican Pennsylvania voters, not to mention the majority of citizens who vote for the Democrat, to have the popular vote winner in a presidential election not win the majority of the electoral votes? I can’t remember the last time I heard about a realistic effort to do something so anti-democratic.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Nothing about the Republican Party over the last 15 years at least hasn’t suggested anything less than a ruthless, uncompromising, and increasingly extreme organization.