On RubyRef - Ruby Doc on iPhone

Just learnt from @IndianGuru's tweet about RubyRef - it's an iPhone app for Ruby Doc.

Sound like a nice idea - however redundancy was already a thought by the time I went to the Appstore to check it out. However I am spoilt by free iPhone app already - and seeing a tag of $0.99 I didn't care to even try it. Here's why -

1) There's hardly any time I am coding Ruby/Rails I am not online. And there's really great free doc (rubybrain, railsbrain, and the excellent one stop shop gotapi). When I have these at a keypress away, why will I turn to the iPhone?

2) I find myself copy-pasting most of the time I am looking up some obsecure Ruby functionality. Agreed, Ruby makes it concise. It's not like you have to a) code up an Iterator, b) have a while loop to go thru it c) and finally iterate, like in some other languages - Ruby is good at being concise. But still, you gotta cut-paste sometimes right?

3) I find myself working with different Ruby/Rails versions all the time. Ruby 1.8.7/Rails 2.2 at home, Ruby 1.8.6/Rails 1.2 at work (don't get it started on why) - so I find rubybrain/railsbrain very useful for this purpose. I haven't tried RubyRef yet - but looking at the screenshots it probably supports one version. Especially with Rails evolving all the time, we definitely need something like that

4) I haven't talked about ri/irb combo yet - I find them very useful for Ruby docs. Right in the shell, no context switch to move to the browser/phone. Even if you don't use them, having a downloaded copy of the doc (from rubybrain for example) will probably be much more easier to refer to than the iPhone.

I mean, I don't see myself coding Ruby/Rails without a computer (at least now). As long as I have a computer won't ri/irb/rubybrain/downloaded-doc be easier to refer than the iPhone?

I had all the intentions of trying the app out - but given so many good, free alternatives I don't think I'll try a 99 cent app.

What about you?

iPhone 2.1 upgrade crashes!

Now I seriously didn't expect this from Apple. I was so-waiting for the 2.1 update to iPhone - and iTunes couldn't install it or me! :-)

and look at the awesome error message!

Go Apple!


Update after fighting for 20 min or so:
I did a restart of Windows and iTunes - still got the same error.

iTunes documentation says I might need to upgrade my iTunes. So I go and click Check for latest version - and hey I am already on the latest one (iTunes 8).

Then I tried to upgrade iPhone to 2.1 again - and this time it worked. I have to agree to one of my colleagues - is Apple going the Microsoft way???

iPhone 3G!!!

yay! yay! yay!

My T-mobile contract got over end of July and I finally gave in to the temptation - I got the iPhone 3G today!!! :-) (yes in spite of all the bad things ppl are saying about the battery and Exchange integration). I get 14 days to return it so why not try it!

Only two problems till now:

1) Yahoo mail won't sync! I figured it was the non alphanumeric characters in my password! So apple could not figure out this advanced piece o technology - people do have passwords with non-alphanumeric characters in them. Well it's only been, umm, 20 years since this "technology" started! :-)

2) While setting up the phone, it crashed my OS twice. A-ha - Windows XP. So it's a classic case of Microsoft v. Apple :-) And apple slam-dunked you twice Windows! :-)

But other than that, I love the phone!