Ever since upgrading from OS X 10.9 to Yosemite (10.10) I’ve been getting the above error message periodically. As far as I know I have no software that needs Java to run.
When I asked on Twitter, the most common suggestion was that it was the Adobe updater. But I don’t have PhotoShop or anything else likely installed.
If you look at the Swift Language guide, you get the distinct impression that the type system is sleek and modern. However the more you dig into it the more eccentricities you find.
The one I’m going to look at today makes sense only if you look at the problem domain from a slightly skewed perspective. I’ve been trying to think whether this is a sensible, pragmatic way of designing a language or a mistake. Judge for yourself.
I’m seeing a surprising amount of vitriol aimed at Swift, Apple’s new programming language for iOS and Mac development. I understand that there can be reasoned debate around the features (or lack thereof), syntax and even the necessity of it but there can be little doubt about the outcome: if you want to consider yourself an iOS developer, it’s a language that you will need to learn.
The only variable I can think of is when you learn it.
Swift is a new programming language designed by Apple for development on OS X and iOS. I thought that I should try to learn it a little so I decided to convert a non-trivial collection of classes from one of my apps (www.cut) into Swift. I always find it better to work on a real project rather than just to play around with things aimlessly. Also, by re-working an old project, I knew that all the problems I would find would be language related rather than anything to do with the architecture.
Since I wrote about iTunes Match nearly eighteen months ago I thought it was worth revisiting and seeing how things have changed in that time.
Oddly, the short answer is “not very much.”
The problems that I identified last year are still very much present. Indeed there are some new examples. This is my favourite: when listening to “Man Machine” by Kraftwerk, iTunes Match seems to have decided that track four, which should be “The Model,” is really “Wouldn’t it be nice” by the Beach Boys. I don’t even own a copy of “Wouldn’t it be nice.”
Eric Schmidt says Google is the new Microsoft and it’s winning the war against Apple. I think he’s missing some perspective.
One of the key things that Steve Jobs realised when he returned to Apple in the late nineties was that the industry is not necessarily a zero sum game.
It seems that there’s a large variation in people’s experience with iCloud and iTunes Match, Apple’s recently introduced service for making your entire music collection available across all your devices. At the risk of making things worse — since I have nothing conclusive to add — I thought that I’d add my anecdote to the collection.
Like most software — and especially Apples — it works best when you work in a particular way. It’s often difficult to tell how close your expectations are to the real thing until after you’ve handed over your credit card. But what I will say is that iTunes Match works pretty well if you want to do what I do. So if you read nothing else in this post, you should look at the next few paragraphs.