Many developers are up in arms about a new policy from Apple that mandates all iOS applications to be written in either a flavor of C or JavaScript. It’s original motivation is apparently to prevent Adobe’s imminent Flash-to-iOS compiler in CS5 from working, but the collateral damage is much greater than that.

There’s a wealth of cross-compilers in the wild that looks to be outlawed by the same provision. Titanium, Gambit Scheme, MonoTouch, and Unity3D are a few of the bigger ones. These layers allow you to write applications in programming languages like Scheme or C# and compile that into a native iOS applications (as well as other platforms like Android).

Lots of developers, me included, have had such a gut-turning reaction to Apple’s new policy that we have a hard time thinking and speaking rationally. The emotions take over and we start screaming “fascists!”, which isn’t very persuasive to non-developers who don’t have the same instinctual reaction. So instead, allow me to go through five (mostly) rational arguments for why this is a bad idea.

Continued…

Some interesting excerpts from Derek Sivers’ notes on “Business Stripped Bare” by Richard Branson [Amazon].

I had never been interested in being “in business”. I’ve been interested in creating things.

Although the combined Virgin Group is the largest group of private companies in Europe, each individual company is generally relatively small in its sector. And so we have the advantage of being the nimble ‘underdog’ player in most markets.

The first law of entrepreneurial business: there is no reverse gear. No one in business can unmake anything, any more than a band can unmake a song.

The Virgin brand is about irreverence and cheek. It values plain speaking. It is not miserly, or mercenary. It has a newcomer’s voice – and in a world of constant technical innovation, the voice of a company that’s coming fresh to things is a voice people find oddly reassuring. It’s a brand that says, ‘We’re in this together.’

Don’t waste your precious time. Phone calls and emails can eat your day. Don’t let them. No one will think less of you for getting to the point. Because there are so many calls to make every day, I generally keep them very brief. And a short note to somebody is often quicker than a phone call. As the business has got bigger and spread across the globe, a lot is dealt with by short notes.

Engage your emotions at work. Your instincts and emotions are there to help you. They are there to make things easier. For me, business is a ‘gut feeling’, and if it ever ceased to be so, I think I would give it up tomorrow. By ‘gut feeling’, I mean that I believe I’ve developed a natural aptitude, tempered by huge amounts of experience, that tends to point me in the right direction.

Creative, responsive, flexible business comes easier to you the smaller your operation.

Even in a big business like the Virgin Group, I sit down now and again and sign every single cheque that goes out, and I ask my managing directors to do the same. For a month. Sign everything for a month every six months and suddenly you’re asking: ‘What on earth is this for?’ You’ll be able to cut out unnecessary expenditure quite dramatically when you do that.
As a small-business person, you must immerse yourself 100 per cent in everything and learn about the ins and outs of every single department. As you get bigger, you will be able to delegate, and when people come to you with their problems, they’ll be surprised how knowledgeable you are and how much practical advice you can offer.
The reason you’re knowledgeable is because in the early days of the business, you learned all about it.
This is how business leadership is achieved. There are no short cuts.

Money’s only interesting for what it lets you do.

More of Sivers’ detailed book notes.

Lots of the little stuff that used to wind up here at SvN gets posted by us individually at Twitter these days. So as an experiment, let’s try a wrap-up post featuring highlights from this week’s 37signals staff posts at Twitter.

@rjs Here are some notes on my talk at the School of Visual Arts by @soulellis: http://bit.ly/9MBLig

@jasonfried http://twitpic.com/1ea9hl – The Russian jet train: http://bit.ly/dpeU3f

@dhh The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you”. http://bit.ly/dCLsmW (The Fisherman’s Parable)

@dhh Kindle still owns the iPad for use outside. You can’t see anything but smudges and it overheats in 5-10 minutes in direct sunlight :(

@jasonfried You haven’t blown them away until they send you a check.

@jsierles Travel, but have a modest base. Carry a pen. Put the camera away. Talk to people.

@asianmack For all the praise Apple gets for its quality user interfaces, iTunes really sucks the big one.

@bergatron You can double-tap a paragraph of text with TWO fingers on the iPad to select it. The alternative is four successive single taps.

@mattlinderman Good piece on “Producing Pro Podcasts.” http://emusician.com/tutorials/emusic_producing_pro_podcasts/index.html

@jasonfried Zillow’s iPad app is really well done. Great way to explore homes for sale/rent: http://www.zillow.com/ipad

@mattlinderman Robie House video: Experience a Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece from inside. http://bit.ly/9bHKGe

@dhh Talking computer setups at http://david.heinemeier.hansson.usesthis.com/

@rjs “Goodbye Point & Shoots, Goodbye Laptops.” http://bit.ly/d1Apz5

@jasonfried My first article for Inc. Magazine. Also in the April issue on newsstands now: http://bit.ly/d7B66F

@rjs Beautifully simple and complete sketches of splashes and falling drops from “On Growth and Form”: http://bit.ly/a7yCPU

@jasonfried Newsweek on 37signals and REWORK: http://www.newsweek.com/id/235687/output/print

@asianmack Apple’s market capitalization exceeds Walmart’s. Microsoft and Exxon are the only US companies whose market caps exceed Apple’s.

Some recent posts at the 37signals Product Blog:

Basecamp
[Case study] Happy Cog: ”’Photos, or it didn’t happen?’ is how we feel about Basecamp”
“We use Basecamp as a file repository for shared resources, from An Event Apart attendee email boilerplate to every deliverable of every phase of every Happy Cog client job. It’s our discussion forum for the editorial and technical review of every article commissioned by or submitted to A List Apart Magazine. Our A List Apart editorial team edits and copyedits every accepted piece in Basecamp’s Writeboard tab. We also use Writeboard to edit site and newsletter copy and for cross-studio strategic discussions about the agency, the conference, the book series, and the direction of the magazine. And of course we use Basecamp to keep project dates and deliverables on track.”

Freshlog lets you easily take a screenshot, annotate it, and upload it to a Basecamp project
You can send screenshots directly to Basecamp with Freshlog. The app lets you take a screenshot, crop it, annotate it, and upload it to a project.

Tip: Add client names to your Basecamp Milestones for quick scanning on your Dashboard
“We type in the name of the client when creating a milestone. That way, we can see the client that any given milestone relates to on the dashboard.”

Basecamp is now more secure with XSS protection
“We have improved the security of Basecamp against cross-site scripting attacks. This means filtering all HTML posted to messages, comments, and anywhere else you can enter text in Basecamp for JavaScript and dangerous tags.”

How Resolve Digital starts its day: “Coffee. See what’s going on in the world. Basecamp.”
“We also use todos lists not just to log tasks that need to get done, but as a brainstorming tool. For example, we’re using a todo list to document marketing ideas for the upcoming release of a new version Refinery, our Content Management System. The team can then elaborate upon any todo item by posting comments to it.”

How KROME uses TimeTrack to count hours in Basecamp
“I use Basecamp everyday to track my project deadlines, keep everyone on the same page to prevent miscommunication, and, of course, I need to measure the amount of time I’ve spent to always counter check if the project is profitable. TimeTrack is a Basecamp widget on Mac OS that I use as a counter and submit the results directly into the system every time.”

Highrise
Bridge is a Blackberry app for Highrise
Bridge is a subscription based BlackBerry application that enables synchronization and online and offline access to Highrise. (Note: Bridge is not a 37signals product.)

Campfire
Latest Propane update lets you use new Campfire conference calling feature
If you use Campfire with Propane (a Mac download that lets you run Campfire as a standalone app), you can now upgrade Propane and start making conference calls.

UK/Indonesia team leader gives four reasons why using Campfire to communicate can be better than voice discussions
“1. You can take your time. 2. You review what you say before you say it. 3. You have a written record of what you all said, which is super-helpful when you forget why, exactly, you thought that doing such-and-such was a good idea. 4. In-line images.” More details at link.

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The Opposite of Fitts’ Law [via Berserk’s comment at the spiky button post] asks:

“What should we do with UI elements we don’t want users to click on? Like, say, the ‘delete all my work’ button?”

The possible answers given: Make the button hard to click, offer an undo, and/or show a confirmation alert dialog before proceeding.

The piece also highlights Alan Cooper’s interesting “ejector seat lever” analogy:

Certainly gets the point across.

Here’s an example of separating a dangerous element from a harmless one in Backpack: The recently added add/edit an event box that pops up in your features a trash can icon that deletes a post. It’s located far away from the Save/Close actions.

In Basecamp, the Delete/Edit message links are close to each other. But if you do click on Delete accidentally, you have to confirm it:

We go the dialog route when the action does irreversible damage to something you might care about a lot. Loss of a calendar event is unfortunate but easily reparable. But loss of a message with comments can cause significant pain.

(Btw, one thing about the examples used in the Fitts’ Law post: There’s actually a setting in Gmail that lets you undo email sends up to 5 seconds after a message is sent.)