Logan Leger — Technologist

Ketchup is one of the most wonderful things known to man. It’s the king of condiments and goes great with almost everything. I absolutely love ketchup. I mean, I’m even a ketchup snob. I totally look down upon anyone who uses anything other than Heinz and people who refrigerate their ketchup. That’s almost as bad as screwing up homophones. Seriously, it’s one of my top 10 favorite things ever (next to sweet tea, of course).

So, naturally, I was really shocked when I heard there was a new ketchup packet. After all these years, I can’t believe they would go and change the classic, familiar ketchup packet. And then I saw this wonderful diagram and realized: this is going to change the world.

First of all, it’s triple the capacity — triple! For someone who routinely has to ask for more ketchup, this is a blessing. Secondly, it’s multi-functional: you can dip and squeeze! There’s no more need for those egregious tiny paper cups. These new packets mean serious business. And they didn’t make it small, either. The orifice through which dipping occurs is so big that almost everything I can think of will fit right in.

I am so super stoked for this. I think it might even be more revolutionary than the iPad — and that’s saying a lot.

Yesterday Steve Jobs took the stage, and after triumphantly announcing impressive economic statistics, showcased a new device that everyone has been longing for: a device the internet predicted would revolutionize every industry under the sun and a device that Apple itself heralded as magical.

And so it came: the iPad.

The iPad is not unlike most Apple products that break into a new industry. When the first iPod was released, most received it negatively — “not another mp3 player, please.” But 240,000,000 units later, there’s no denying that the iPod changed the music industry. When the first iPhone was released, nearly everyone had something to complain about: no 3G, no GPS, no removable battery, and a closed ecosystem. And now, after 40,000,000 units, there’s no denying that Apple changed the mobile devices industry.

People hate the iPad. Even fanboys are complaining. About the name, the form factor, software and design bugs, even the concept — almost everyone who has a voice on the internet is claiming the iPad is a failure.

That’s absolutely balderdash. The iPad is the exact opposite of a failure. It’s exactly like the iPod and the iPhone: it’s Apple’s triumphant entrance into a new market, one that they will likely overtake. And here’s why: it is magical.

Looking at it from an engineer’s standpoint, it’s phenomenal that Apple was able to pack all that technology into such a form factor. It’s 0.5 inches thick and 10 inches wide. It packs an 802.11n WiFi chipset with 3G, GPS and a compass. It’s got probably the biggest fully-capacitive display ever mass-produced and it’s an IPS display, which means you can view it at virtually any angle.

What’s even more incredible is the Apple A4 chip. Clocking in at 1 GHz, this magical piece of silicon can decode full HD videos for ten hours — ten hours. To me, the engineer, the single biggest victory of the iPad is the A4 — it’s a technical masterpiece. If this is the same chip that they plan to put in the next iPhone, then no one stands a chance — it’s that incredible.

But it’s not just the hardware: the software is equally amazing. You might think that it’s just an oversized iPhone or iPod Touch — but that’s completely off base. The software has been completely reworked for the form factor. It’s elegant in a whole different way than the iPhone OS or OS X. It gets out of your way and just allows you to use the device — to experience it. It’s an OS imagined to do only basic personal computing — i.e., email, personal productivity, browsing, media functionality — using the most familiar input device known to humans.

If you look at it only from the standpoint of an engineer, the iPad is a truly magical device.

But the engineering triumph isn’t the biggest point of the iPad or why it’s going to be successful. The iPad is going to be successful because of the form factor and the targeted market. The biggest opponents of the iPad — the fanboys, geeks and professionals who rely on powerful computing — are exactly the market for which the iPad wasn’t intended. The iPad was intended for people like my mom and my uncle, both of whom are over 40 and completely technologically illiterate. But they use their iPhones with absolute ease and after a few short weeks were veritable power users, rivaling most geeks. This goes back to the brilliance of software: everyone knows how to point their finger and touch a screen. The interaction is natural. And so this target market — the casual user who just needs basic personal computing — is the exact market that the iPad will dominate. They don’t need full-powered OSes like Windows or OS X. They need the iPad, they just didn’t know it.

The other reason the iPad will succeed is because of developers. The same people who are complaining about the device are the same force that will create thousands of apps to be downloaded — and paid for — by millions of consumers. Because Apple didn’t just create another device, they created an entirely new platform. A new platform with more to offer than the iPhone.

The iPad is pure brilliance, so much that I’m not necessarily convinced that the iPad isn’t what Apple was working towards all along. It’s so hard to believe that when Apple was looking at the future they didn’t see the iPhone as just the first iteration of the iPad. It’s very clear now what Apple sees as the future of personal computing, and as the most powerful entity in the mobile device space, it’s almost entirely likely that this is exactly where the industry is going. And I’m not convinced that that is a bad thing — I’m actually convinced it’s a good thing.

The iPad is sexy, well thought out, well implemented and damn near perfect. Steve Jobs, the man who pontificates and perpetuates perfection, has done it again. Not once, not twice, but for the third time he has produced a device that will change and nearly create an entire industry. Because Apple isn’t gunning for their typical audience with the iPad; they’re trying to dominate a completely different sector they have yet to penetrate. The iPad is perfect, in the sense that the original iPhone was perfect, and it will succeed — we just don’t know it yet.

Introduction

I’ve been working on a Ruby on Rails app recently that requires a little bit of ecommerce. Obviously, one of the first things I have to setup is an SSL to secure communication of sensitive customer data between my server and the credit card processor. I was able to snag a good deal and get a SSL with GoDaddy for $12.99 / year and set it up on my MediaTemple (dv) with relative ease. However, I first needed to test the app in development using SSL. I’ve been running Ruby on Rails via Passenger on my Mac OS X Snow Leopard with the help of the Passenger PrefPane and it’s been like a dream come true. If you’re doing Rails development on OS X, this is a must have.
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I honestly never thought I’d live to see this day. The Saints are going to the Superbowl and I literally couldn’t be more proud of Brees and the team. Congratulations, boys — bring home the trophy!

I’ve been working on a Rails app recently where I used the excellent jrails_in_place_editing plugin to create a large number of in-place editing textfields. I used this in lieu of the Rails plugin because I removed Prototype completely from my app. I’m prone to do this because jQuery is so clearly better than Prototype. Please, Rails Core, replace this? I usually do this using the JRails plugin because it has all the built-in helpers written for jQuery — beautiful!

In any case, the jrails_in_place_editing plugin is quite wonderful, but limited in terms of the number of features it actually implements. The jQuery plugin it is based on has a load of more configurable features. I added in a few back for my needs, but there’s one basic functionality I was surprised to find missing: on-blur saving. Brandy suggested I needed this in my project, and I have to say she was very right — it makes editing a lot of fields so much easier for power users.

Doing this is very simple. All you need to do is add the following to /public/javascripts/jquery.inplace.js:

//ON BLUR SAVE functionality
original_element.children("form").children(".inplace_field").blur(function(){
	//put the original background color in
	original_element.css("background", settings.bg_out);

	var new_html = jQuery(this).parent().children(0).val();

	//set saving message
	if(settings.saving_image != ""){
		var saving_message = '<img src="' + settings.saving_image + '" alt="Saving..." />';
	} else {
		var saving_message = settings.saving_text;
	}

	//place the saving text/image in the original element
	original_element.html(saving_message);

	if(settings.params != ""){
		settings.params = "&" + settings.params;
	}

	if(settings.callback) {
		html = settings.callback(original_element.attr("id"), new_html, original_html, settings.params);
		editing = false;
		click_count = 0;
		if (html) {
			// put the newly updated info into the original element
			original_element.html(html || new_html);
		} else {
			// failure; put original back
			alert("Failed to save value: " + new_html);
			original_element.html(original_html);
		}
	} else if (settings.value_required && new_html == "") {
		editing = false;
		click_count = 0;
		original_element.html(original_html);
		alert("Error: You must enter a value to save this field");
	} else {
		jQuery.ajax({
			url: settings.url,
			type: "POST",
			data: settings.update_value + '=' + new_html + '&' + settings.element_id + '=' +
					original_element.attr("id") + settings.params +
					'&' + settings.original_html + '=' + original_html,
			dataType: "html",
			complete: function(request){
				editing = false;
				click_count = 0;
			},
			success: function(html){
				// if the text returned by the server is empty,
			// put a marker as text in the original element
				var new_text = html || settings.default_text;

				// put the newly updated info into the original element
				original_element.html(new_text);
				if (settings.success) settings.success(html, original_element);
			},
			error: function(request) {
				original_element.html(original_html);
				if (settings.error) settings.error(request, original_element);
			}
		});
	}

	return false;
});

Of course, if you use cacheing you’ll want to delete all.js and let Rails re-cache with the reflected changes. This code worked like a dream for me — hope it helps you too!

So, we’re on twitter now.

Hit us up with your suggestions, comments, complaints — whatever.

@homophone