satine.org

FaceBook released their new OS Platform this afternoon. It’s a big deal, but it’s hard to get a grasp on what the new changes are for developers.

Briefly, the FaceBook Platform extends the existing FaceBook API with:

• A few new APIs, for setting FBML on a user’s profile.
• A new FaceBook markup language, FBML, a subset of HTML with some FaceBook extensions. JavaScript and AJAX is not allowed per se (except via a Mock AJAX proxy), but Flash and SilverLight are.
• An application directory for new FaceBook applications.

I’ll post later why you might think of this as “Windows 1.0 with deep social network integration”, and all the dangers and excitement that goes with it, but for now… you can read all the fun details and try out some FBML here: (until the main Developers page is updated).

FaceBook Platform Developers

More coverage: Facebook Launches Facebook Platform; They are the Anti-MySpace

Technorati Tags: FaceBook, FBML, APIs, Development, Mash-ups, Operating Systems

… a complete fabrication. April Fools!

Didn’t see it? See here: Digg.

Little easter eggs were mixed in that people found, namely:

• LayerKit instead of Core Animation
• LLVM as the static compiler and part of the runtime
• Apple Computer, Inc. instead of Apple, Inc.
• Bertrand Serlet as the PDF author
• OS X 10.4.8 internal developer seed
• Onyx as a successor to Quartz
• % date -r 1143931338
• Pixo is the original iPod OS
• llvm-gcc instead of gcc-llvm

WTF? Why? How?

• I like subtle April Fools jokes, and hadn’t seen any truly convincing ones so far. I had to be careful not to get carried away and slip on something (like llvm-gcc).
• A lot of the components (Core Services, BootCache, etc.) come from the Apple TV dissections posted around the net. I grabbed the file dump from a homebrew site and cherry picked some frameworks that seemed likely.
• LLVM comes from my prior posts on the LLVM ARM backend contributions from Apple.
• Onyx was picked because it matches the Quartz theme, and it’s black, matching recently designed Apple UI, including iPhone.
• And finally the major features (and the fact that it’s OS X) are derived from the Macworld keynote.

Thanks for the great comments, I hope you had a good laugh and it wasn’t too annoying. ;-)

Technorati Tags: iPhone, Apple, April Fools

iPhone Aloha Module Overview

Wow. I was surfing Scribd this morning for some code snippets and I happened upon this thing. It looks like a high level block diagram of the OS X that’s running in the iPhone. I’m not sure how much you can tell from this picture about what’s going on, though.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, Apple, OS X, leakage