"A Crude Awakening - The Oil Crash" - Thoughts on the Movie

Just finished watching "A Crude Awakening The Oil Crash" by Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormark a thought provoking documentary on the future of oil production. The documentary centers around questions about the history of oil, the use of oil then moves on to topics covering the growing demand for hydrocarbon based fossil fuels.

The filmmakers gather a broad series of perspectives in presenting their case for the point that we are running out of cheap easily recovered oil. The film consists with interviews with a number of experts including: former Oil executives, oil geologists, various academics and political advisers and takes the viewer on a journey across the world (e.g., Britain, China, India, Venezula, Russia, USA, and the Middle East). The film is an interesting journey covering the early discoveries of oil, through to the case of peak oil in the U.S. in terms including the definition of Hubbert's Peak (named after American geophysicist Marion King Hubbert).

This movie does what any good documentary should do which is to make you think critically and thoughtfully about the topic being addressed. In this case it leaves you with as many questions as answers including:

• What happens when its clear we've peaked in terms of discovering new oil?
• How do we best adapt to the reality that the era of cheap oil is coming to an end?
• Are the alternative energy sources being put forth a stop-gap or a clear alternative

Overall, well worth renting or picking up a copy from your local library for a watch.

Prepping for Leopard - Only a week to go!

Okay, its only a week to go before Leopard hits the street at 6pm!

Have you pre-ordered your copy? I'll admit I have a copy on the way and will be getting the discounted version since I recently upgraded to a Macbook Pro from the white Macbook I'd been using for the past year. Hopefully, the web orders will ship in time to arrive for next Friday. Although, if you're near an Apple store and don't qualify for either the education discount or have bought a Mac that qualifies (in the past month) and you want the full fanboy experience you may want to line-up supposed free Leopard t-shirts are being handed out to an early number of buyers.
If you need a fix Apple has posted a guided tour that covers the key features watch it here

Alright time to talk about getting prepared. The following are some useful links that I've encountered in thinking about prepping my machine (since it was a migration of my previous OSX image from my Macbook).

1. Start with this article from MacWorld
2. Next I'd move on to reading this set of tips from Lifehacker
3. A great post about cleaning up your hard drive
   
4. My starting advice would be to back-up you Mac to an external drive using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner.

Huzzah! Apple announces SDK for iPhone & iPod Touch

GREAT NEWS!

Following on the heels of the rumors from yesterday regarding the potential for Apple to relent and open up the iPhone and iPod touch platforms to third party developers - this announcement was posted on Apple's site today:

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

...

We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.

Steve

P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch. [Oct 17, 2007]

Digital Signatures: The other interesting topic that is directly addressed in the posting is the topic of mobile security and the desire on the part of Apple to control. Nokia is cited as using digital signatures issued to developers as an initiative to allow third parties to develop for their handsets yet still enable Nokia to ensure control over content in the name of security and stability. While I'm sure there will be some that snipe and grouse about the lack of unfettered freedom my take is that this is a logical and should cut down on the level of frustration for all concerned.

I think that everyone in the Mac community owes a HUGE hats off to the dedicated set of hackers that forced this issue by developing some interesting and compelling apps beyond Apple's initial weak "Web 2.0" excuse of using browser based apps. My take is that the future for this platform looks bright and in general Apple's creativity and moves have given the handset manufacturers a wake-up call. We're starting to see some interesting innovations related to user interface as opposed to the thin, bland and often weird designs the handset makers have been putting out over the past couple of years.

As a side note - stop by Engadget and have a look at the recently released Nokia 810 definitely some nice advances on an interesting device that I think will continue to point to the direction of personal computing.

A call for Apple to open the iPhone & iPod touch platform.

Well, we knew it was bound to happen sooner of later the iPod Touch was hacked last week through a browser exploit that created a small enough hole in the OS and the hackers forced their way in. There is now a full scale automated hack with a OSX and Windows GUI versions available in the form of iJailbreak for the Mac - see TUAW for links to the Windows app.

I will say undertaking the hack process when not sick would be a good move and having sufficient patience to ensure the hack goes smoothly helps. My best advice is to ensure that you start with a clean iPod Touch that has been restarted before beginning the process. The good news is unlike the iPhone there is a much lower risk of "brickage" on the touch since it lacks the need to connect to a cellular network.

I will admit that the touch apps are definitely worth the effort and highlight the potential that a haptics based touch screen interface has in terms of potential. Apple is in a very interesting position at the moment having surged ahead of the rest of the cell phone market with Nokia, Motorola, RIM and others in a frantic dash to catch-up with their innovation. Clearly, the competition has seen the threat and is reacting as in this great video clip showing a cleaned up version of Nokia's upcoming S60 Touch.

While Apple needs to be sensitive to its carrier relationships and the need to ensure a high degree of stability and reliability in its devices the biggest weapon it has at its disposal is a large and willing body of third party developers interested in building cool apps for its platform. Hopefully Apple, won't make the same mistake that Sony made with the PSP in sticking so rigidly to a view that it must maintain a closed system that the potential of the device as demonstrated by inventive third parties will wither on the vine.

I think Apple should be able to see the interest and desire from its customers for these enhancements to its product that it will see the light and open up the platform. It shows that customers are willing to invest their time in jumping through technical hoops to open up their device to new applications. I would even hazard to guess that if the process of installing, managing and certifying applications that Apple would even be able to make some money most easily in the form of driving significant market share gains in what now looks to be an emerging market for personal mobile devices. The rumors now circulating today are that Apple will introduce an SDK for developers in January 2008 - let's hope they're right!

Can't wait for Leopard

I must admit I am eager to get my hands on Apple's next release of its operating system Leopard. I recently, upgraded my laptop to a Macbook Pro after using a white Macbook for the past year and was planning to wait until the release of Leopard but couldn't hold off on the upgrade. Since the demonstration of Leopard at MacWorld this summer providing a glimpse into the new functionality I've been eagerly awaiting this upgrade.

At this point the main items that I'm most interested in upgrading to take advantage of include:

• Stronger real-time back-up via TimeMachine aided by the new file system
• Improved processing and load times with a return to OS 9 speeds
• Enhancements to Mail
  

I will say that AppleInsider has been running a good series of updates on the release of Leopard that offer an interesting history lesson to provide context for this launch and an update on the new features. Here are some useful links:

Mail 3.0
Time Machine
Spaces
Dock
Finder 10.5

I also want to point out a good article from Blackfriars Marketing (a former Forrester analyst) with a passion for Apple who does a solid job outlining the ZFS file system inside Leopard.

Here is a great list of all 300 features in Leopard from Apple's site.


When Leopard launches which at this point remains rumored for October 26th at 6pm (makes sense since its a Friday night) I'll likely go and pickup a copy that night and migrate my Mac. A word of advice before attempting any upgrade make sure you have a full backup of all your files - in case things go wrong!

UPDATE - Looks like its official Macrumors just reported that the launch will be Friday Oct 26th @ 6pm