"Unfortunately, Java's designers didn't seem to value CPU time at all. The language has a nasty reputation for sluggish interfaces, and its execution speed drags well behind C++'s. Pointer aliasing or not we are many generations of optimisers away from languages such as Java overtaking C++ so if you need fast code C/C++ is the obvious choice."

So maybe Java is slow for UIs. But this general statement isn't true. Next time the author should fact check: https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#...

"one of the best IDEs around in Xcode" Ha. Ha ha.

Sublime is great in general. One area it lacks is good auto-formatting support (it has the feature, but it generally fails) I use this feature all the time in JetBrains IDEs and it's tough to live w/out once you are used to it.

I use IntelliJ for java/groovy/JavaScript. AppCode for Objective C. RubyMine for Ruby. Basically JetBrains products when I can. I have all the key bindings set consistently across all the IDEs.

I think JetBrains makes the best editor on the planet if you really learn all the features avail. but JetBrains IDEs don't support quick editing of arbitrary files, so I use sublime for those. Again, I set up the sublime key bindings to be consistent with the JetBrains products.

Sublime is very sweet. Not quite up to the JetBrains standards, but it's faster and you don't have to set up a project.

And of course there is vim when I need it

I'm a Jetbrains convert too. Editing on a structural level rather than a purely textual level is so much more efficient and having really strong refactoring tools has changed the way I code. I just wish it was easier to edit single files outside a project.

At least on OS X you can set up an "idea" command for opening arbitrary files. Only local files though. Check the File menu.

Specs don't capture everything. An iPad is way better for browsing/reading/watching movies. Instant on is awesome. And I have to charge my iPad once every two weeks or so. Laptops don't have much for standby time. The App store is way nicer for installing software.

Of course I spend much more time on my laptop. I'm sure not going to code on the iPad.

If you run Linux on your netbook and don't turn it off (e.g. only go to sleep) then you can both have "instant-on" and an even better way to install software.

Most of the great IDEs are java. Jetbrains makes their money in the java market, so seems reasonable to leverage their existing code base. Also, java gives you cross platform. Not an issue for AppCode, but it's a biggie for all their other languages (ruby, python, php, java)

just for reference, here's what it looks like: http://cl.ly/5rbn

doesn't look ugly to me. Looks clean actually...

Clean, perhaps, but absolutely non-native, which is generally considered an ugly quality on OS X.

The disclosure triangles and combo box look native. The icons, scrollbars, tabs, toolbars, status bar, tip-of-the-day dialog (wtf?), and confirmation dialogs all are obviously non-native, some of them in ways that are trivially fixable (such as getting the button order right in the confirmation dialogs).

I understand that it's pre-beta, but if they consider the current GUI to be even a prototype instead of the placeholder that it is, they'll likely never get any traction outside of Java developers trying to cash in on Apple's App Stores.

> but if they consider the current GUI to be even a prototype instead of the placeholder that it is

I doubt it is. It's not the first Jetbrains IDE on OSX. They may decide to go a very different graphical route for this one as it's pretty obviously OSX-only, but that's not really a given.

gimme optional dynamic typing and I'm sold

I believe it's in there, no? (Requires the java 7 runtime, if memory serves?)

Can you link to an example or something?

Here's the example from Mirah's repo: https://github.com/mirah/mirah/blob/master/examples/dynamic....

It does require Java 7 and there's no plans to make it work on Java 6-. Unlike the rest of Mirah, this feature (if you use it) does require a runtime library, since Java 7 / invokedynamic do not ship anything builtin for choosing a target Java method. We use Attila Szgedi's "dynalink" project, which provides a default dynamic linker based on Java language specification method selection rules.

Long story short: yes, Mirah can support dynamic dispatch as well, but it needs a little bit of runtime library to support that.

Eh? They have had 2 iOS refreshes in the past year.

No no, they've had feature patches on top of the UI they've already got. If you take my original first-gen iPod Touch and compare it to iOS 4, the differences are largely hardware, plus multitasking.

I would like a rethink of the icon grid, of staticness (like how the Calendar app doesn't actually show the correct date) and the like.

then why didn't they do this for the Verizon iPhone 4?

Ask Apple, I'd only be speculating at why they didn't redesign their existing product to support it :P

But, since what they did for the Verizon iPhone has no bearing on what will appear in the iPhone 5, I don't really understand the point of your question.

it doesn't drop internet when it rings, it drops when you answer. right?