Life has been great lately. Although summer is ending and school is beginning soon, I have definitely enjoyed my time off this summer. I've been able to develop a ton, even though one of the resulting apps is being indefinitely postponed (see below).

This will be my last year in high school and I'm really stoked to simply do the best I can and get it over with. I think the entire public school system has some real issues (I may or may not write about these later) and it doesn't seem to be getting any better, so I'll be happy to get out of there once and for all. I am hoping post-secondary school will be a lot better.



Finally, I'm putting my project that I mentioned a while ago on hold indefinitely, to make time for school and a brand new project that I'm starting with Andrew Kazmierski, which I am really excited about. The other secret project (link) that I am putting on hold is more of a fun little side-project anyways and thus it must get the proverbial shaft. Beta testers: thank you very much for the hard work, you'll most likely be hearing from me again soon.

The second amazing new feature in Wallet 2.6: the very cool Dashboard widget. In addition to the many new features, we've also been fixing a lot of bugs, incorporating feature requests, and more.

Wallet 2.6 will be available before the summer ends, and will be a free upgrade for registered users. We think you'll agree that 2.6 will be the best release yet.

And yeah, we really need a new company blog. It's in the works!

I hear some of you have been requesting this. Yes, it's what you think it is. Coming very soon to a Wallet near you.

But I totally called it. Resolution Independence in Leopard. (see my previous post if you missed it) Woo!

As expected, this will be accomplished using both vector graphics and high-resolution bitmap images, most likely in ICNS format. There's some more exclusive interesting information on the AeroXP Forums and TechPedia. I'm starting to wonder why this wasn't mentioned during the keynote.

The moral of the story is: what's the best part about not being able to go to WWDC? (age restriction) Being able to talk about this stuff.

The next major release of Mac OS X - Leopard, was previewed today at WWDC. Here are my first reactions:

- Time Machine. This will change backup forever. And for all those times you've misplaced or deleted things, this is going to be perfect. Terrible icon.
- Spaces. Honestly, I'm not impressed with the idea, never have been. However, if its easy enough to set up, I may use it. Terrible icon.
- iChat. Well, isn't iChat just becoming awesome. Especially cool is screen sharing, which looks like a "lite" version of Apple Remote Desktop. I'm not sure what happened to the GUI, though.
- Mail. "If you're anything like me, you're constantly emailing yourself notes." Uhh, what? Other than that, looks great, and finally puts a solid end to RSS readers.
- Core Animation. Looks amazing and I can't wait to try it out.

Still to come in Leopard (hopefully): updated system theme, resolution independence. ;)

A couple weeks ago I came across an application called Libra. It's an app that allows you to manage multiple iTunes libraries. I have no particular use for this app, but what caught my attention was the icon. Three colored books, on a CD. That's it. It's so generic that one could easily ignore it...

But wait! Where have I seen these three books before? Hmm, libraries, books, hmm.... Oh, of course! Library, the predecessor to Delicious Library, had similar looking books! That's okay, people copy icon styles all the time.

...

Uhh, wait a minute, those books are just a little too similar. Let's look at the Library icon side-by-side with the Libra icon, just for reference:


Whoops! You can even see the word "ArcaneWare" on the blue book, the name of the company responsible for Library.

Now even that we know this is a ripoff, it's not a big deal. I mean, Libra is a relatively small app, and developers are poor. Clearly this is a common hack of the Library icon and possibly the default Mac OS X CD icon. But the story gets even better.

Today I came across an icon designer named Vincent van den Heuvel. Looking through his portfolio, I discovered something simply jaw-dropping. With a closer look in his portfolio, you can see that he indeed takes credit for creating the icon for Libra! Finally, our thief has been found! Strangely enough, his icon creation process doesn't contain ripping icons from other apps. I guess he forgot to include that step.

If you need some more proof, a simple Google search will expose the Library icon in other places. What makes me even more sick is that the developer of Libra most likely paid this guy for the icon. Hopefully someone will inform him of this post, if he wasn't already aware.

Design talent at its best here, no question.

Update: A few things have happened since I first posted this. Namely, the developer of Libra replied to my email. He wasn't aware that the icon had been stolen, and will be getting a replacement icon for Libra soon. There have also been a few changes on Vincent's site, but I won't go into detail.