Any decent technology concept ought to be something that can be outlined in fewer than 500 words. These entries are my attempt to make that work.
On music streaming and Apple...
My mother asked what I thought of this article. So I wrote:
My opinion is it’s worthless uninformed conjecture based on existing business models with no imagination added.
Apple has never been a me-too company and I sure don’t see them starting with Music Streaming.
The electronic music/book/movie/television/app market lacks something for which we have an existing and remarkable model already extant. We simply need to find a way to make it work with modern delivery methods.
In the days of AM/FM radio many listeners listened to specific DJs, hoping to hear about the latest in music and culture with the DJs acting as curators. I remember waiting for a specific DJ’s show just because I knew it would have all the latest information and music that was important to me. There were some DJs that were basically creating a shopping list for me!
The issue of curation, of having someone staying up-to-date and helping to guide interested consumers through the vast array of new things available hasn’t been properly solved thus far. I remember going to a record store and browsing through that week’s new releases, and that was a weekly thing for me. Today I can’t even find a decent online listing of what’s been released and I miss album releases from artists I love.
Learning to love Contacts.app
Why doesn’t Contacts work the way I think it should or the way my previous favorite app did?
1. The majority of average users are most interested in KNOWING that their contacts are the same in all locations; desktop, laptop, iPhone, iPad, Web. They want this action to be passive, i.e. not requiring any interaction or knowledge.
2. Some business clients want deeper integration into their workflows - CRM, (Customer Relations Management). CRM solutions might provide additional information like contact history, links to documents, emails, etc. as well as tight integration with a calendar.
3. Data that collectively represents a "contact" is not something easily pinned down. Put any two people in a room and ask them what should be part of a contact record and you're likely to have an argument. Add more people and you add to the size of the argument.
4. Add a variety of logical plans for storage, formatting and syncing of data and we begin tilting toward chaos.
5. Everyone expects moving from one contact application to another to be simple, easy and to properly transfer all data.
The New York Times gets it wrong
In response to this posting at the New York Times, Disruptions: You Know You Can't Live Without Apple's Latest Glass Rectangle by Nick Bilton…
Wow, I don't come close to agreeing... The naiveté exposed in this article is staggering.
Fins on a Cadillac? Nothing functional about the fins changed (because there was nothing functional about the fins, of course). The look of the exterior of a TV as the sole criterion for choosing one? This guy is a world champ idiot.
The operant in the evolution of Apple products over the past few years has been to build at the absolute limits of what is possible and financially feasible at the same time in the consumer space.
Look at the product line over the last, I don't know, decade? Each new model has been built using manufacturing techniques, parts and design that were not possible in the previous design. It takes the market's adoption of a new technique to drive manufacturing and component vendors to rise to the challenge of producing at that level. The one spurs the other and the evolution continues.
On the subject of passwords...
A very public internet figure was hacked. In the end it turned out not be a flaw in his passwords, but actually a social hack worked against Apple, which in a way is worse than the kind of password-cracking we typically mean when we speak of hacking. The full story is here.
But reading about the episode made clear some of the weaknesses of the casual way many of us link accounts and use the same or similar passwords and the basic vulnerabilities that are introduced in the new ways available to control our data. Following are some simple concepts to help govern how to approach security with a bit more cognizance of the weaknesses:
1. Use unique passwords for each online service - Of course we've all heard this one before, however when you add in Twitter, Facebook, Google, Tumblr and all the other options out there, it becomes clear that the online "you" is multi-faceted and it's going to be easier to deal with a single account being hacked instead of all of "you" at once.
2. Passwords to be created by 3rd party utilities - There are many available schemes for creating complex or memorable passwords, but when it comes right down to it you may come up with a good that you then use to violates #1, above. Your passwords protect not only your ability to use your account but also that account's very existence; imagine your entire accumulated identity being systematically wiped out at each service. Deleting an account is simple enough, but recovering it may or may not even be possible. Your passwords should be unique, appropriately complex and handled in a way that still gives you needed access. Applications like 1Password from AgileBits Software make this tolerably easy.
And now we have Flash's death certificate...
A dirty little secret known to those of us who do troubleshooting work is that Adobe's Flash plug-in has long been one of the least well-behaved pieces of "required" software for users. Users insist on having it so they can use content spread far and wide on the web, but it has never been particularly stable, it's a tremendous resource hog (hear the fans spin up on your laptop while you're browsing the web and you can be sure you just landed on a site heavily using Flash content) and there are continued issues with security vulnerabilities. However, it's a deeply entrenched technology, used for everything from coding websites to online games and videos, etc.
When Apple was teetering on the edge of survival it needed to keep Adobe happy, and so Macs shipped with the Flash plug-in installed for many years. Then Apple quietly stopped including it. Finally, with the advent of iOS, the iPhone and iPad Steve Jobs announced in April of 2010 that there would be no Flash support in iOS, and Flash would not be allowed on the platform. HTML 5 would be the only acceptable method of delivering the rich media content that Flash had had a lock on. Jobs went so far as to publish his reasoning in an open letter, Thoughts on Flash.
On the passing of Steve Jobs
My iPhone beeped at me to let me know that AP had some very sad news for me, while I had my MacBook Pro open configuring an AirPort Extreme in the home of a prominent writer and director in Hollywood, and for a moment I was overwhelmed with the following realizations:
The iPhone is from Steve.
The MacBook Pro is from Steve.
The AirPort Extreme is from Steve.
My career is from Steve (and ok, so I had something to do with it too, but without Apple my work would not be in this field).
The writer/director's assistant was using her white MacBook, from Steve.
The writer/director writes on an iMac or a MacBook Pro, views dailies on his iMac, uses his iPhone, all from Steve.
Steve has been famously quoted as saying he wanted to put a ding in the universe. Mission Accomplished.
I don't mean to diminish the work of the thousands who helped shape and bring Steve's dreams to reality, but when we think of the overwhelming spread of his impact it's hard to even come up with a way to wrap one's mind around the idea that it's almost impossible to come up with any area of the arts, science, industry or even sports that has not been impacted by Steve's vision of what's important in this life.
Apple's Lion in the Tall Grass
I know many of you are excited about Apple's impending release of the next Mac OS X version, 10.7 or Lion, as it's called. Lion is scheduled for release this month, but no specific date has been announced.
I'm a registered developer with Apple and I've been using Lion for months and I'm very excited to share it with you, but there are some important considerations that will affect when you update. I'm writing this to help you make a good decision about when you upgrade your Mac(s).
Lion changes some underlying core ways in which the OS works and chief among these changes is that Rosetta will no longer be part of the codebase that makes up the OS. Rosetta was an emulator that allowed code written for older PowerPC machines to run on Intel computers. It's been years since Apple sold PowerPC machines, but some developers have not chosen to update the code for the applications (even though they've had years to do it). What matters about this is that those applications will not function in Lion, and some of these applications may be key to your work.
On not accepting the status quo
The existing order of things is just that, and it's open to change. Here's a quick for instance. I just celebrated my 48th birthday and I've been tying my own shoes for about 45 of those years. So, imagine my surprise when I learned I've been doing it wrong! This video is Terry Moore recorded at a TED Talk (and certainly one of their lighter ones, watch some of the amazing others too):
The idea that I might have reached this age and been tying my shoes wrong all these years was too silly for me not to give this technique a try, and of course Mr. Moore's comments are exactly right. I no longer bother with the double knot I've always tied, my laces don't loosen during the day and it took me perhaps two days to revise my habits.
I'm a smart guy, so naturally this leaves me questioning basic knowledge I've been relying on and that's a good thing. For nearly 300 years starting about 300 BC the Library of Alexandria was the central repository for the collected wisdom of civilization. It was well-funded and collected, some say, more than 500,000 books (papyrus scrolls) and after 300 years of active collecting it was a remarkable collection.
Headphones and Earphones
Imagining the unimaginable... Your Laptop/iPhone/iPad's been stolen!
It's awful to even have to think about it, but it DOES happen. What if it happens to you? Think about it before it happens and you can at least be ok.
There are three main things to consider:
1. Your device - A small percentage of these items get recovered, but it's a very small percentage and the odds are against you. You might use software on your Mac to locate it while a thief is using it. There are commercial applications that will do their best to help you in this regard - check out GadgetTrak and LoJack if you want to go this route, but be careful to take additional precautions like enabling a firmware password and creating a "honeypot" account to get a thief to log in and encourage use so you have a chance to track the machine. But honestly, don't plan on getting it back. Instead, make sure you have insurance to get your device replaced with as little fuss as possible.
2. Unauthorized access to your data - While you can, imagine the liability you face if your data is "in the wild." You should consider this well in advance so you can either use Apple's File Vault, an alternative, or limited encrypted archives to cover your sensitive data. Do not delay in setting up Find My iPhone, especially now that it's free! This service will allow you to track the location of your iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch and remotely wipe the data on it.
Closing out 2010
2010 is about to become a memory. This is a great time to take stock of your IT situation. Rather than simply a reminder to backup (Please, of course, do that!), this is a suggestion to consider a worst case scenario in your IT world.
I recently watched a fascinating talk in which a hacker discussed what took place after his pride and joy computer was stolen out of his apartment. He was able to track it over the course of the next two years as it crossed the country and eventually wound up in the hands of someone in Las Vegas. All that time his data traveled along with the computer. He is a very sophisticated user and his methods are beyond what most people would be able or willing to do, but the warning should be clear; if your computer or iPad or iPhone was stolen what would your level of pain be?
Let's take a few moments and pretend it's actually happened to your computer or phone. Was your machine backed up? Was your only backup attached to the computer? If so, it likely went with the machine. How accessible is the data on the machine?
Archive those memories!
One of my childhood memories is of the family sitting in the dark around the slide projector watching family history click by, one frame at a time accompanied by the soundtrack of the hum of the fan that kept the bulb from burning out. So what happened to those slides? They live in the basement of my father's house, of course, where nobody sees them, ever.
Recently my mother decided to scan some of these slides and sent out the results. No offense to her well-intentioned efforts, but the results were terrible. Fortunately, I had an option. I begged her to send the slides to ScanCafe to be scanned by professionals. Eventually she did and the results were spectacular!
The procedure is simple and convenient. Collect whatever media you want scanned; prints, newspaper clippings, slides, negatives, whatever you have, go to the website, open an account, and list the quantity of what you're sending. ScanCafe will give you an estimate (generally $0.20 to $0.35 per image, often discounted), create a UPS shipping label for you to print and give instructions on how to box your images. Then you drop the package off at UPS and wait a month for the scanning to be done.
I'm waiting for the Verizon iPhone
This is something heard frequently from savvy smartphone shoppers. The general perception is that Verizon offers the best cell phone service available in the US, and that may actually be true. As discussed previously the difference between CDMA and GSM is such that a wireless provider gets better range and more power out of CDMA towers and phones than GSM. GSM offers advanced features, more simultaneous connections per tower and more conservative power usage for handsets, allowing the phones to be lighter and smaller, all at the cost of reduced range which means more towers are needed to cover the same area.
There are rumors, presented as fact, in a variety of reputable news sources stating that a Verizon iPhone is just around the corner. Stories have appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and countless others. They point to release at various times, but generally they seem to be settling on January, 2011. At this point exclusivity on AT&T serves AT&T more than it does Apple and in other markets around the world Apple has already moved to multiple carriers, so it would make sense. But in those other markets all the carriers were GSM...
Simple security camera
No boring details (actually the story is pretty awesome, but I'm not sharing it here) but there was an attempted robbery at my home. The would-be thieves were interrupted and left with nothing, but the entire experience was invasive and unnerving. There are a number of overdue improvements to security that will take place, however, there's no way to stop a determined burglar from victimizing you.
Technology has a response, if not a solution. Given that I can't stop burglars, I can do a bit to dissuade them and I can also do my best to make them more identifiable to law enforcement. I purchased a very inexpensive IP-based camera with a motion sensor and WiFi.
After an easy setup I was able to place it with a view of the most likely point of entry and it now sends me an email alert with several still frames each time the motion detector is activated. It can record continuous video, video on a schedule, video with or without audio, record in near darkness and store this all on a sharepoint on a desktop, a server or a NAS.
It can also be monitored in real time in the house or from outside, via a computer or an iPhone.
The camera I chose is the LinkSys WVC80N, but there are many others that will do this same job, including some with PTZ (Pan, Tilt, Zoom) controls.
I'll be adding a real camera system and DVR to cover the exterior of the house but this is a simple approach that can be added to an office or to monitor a door or any secure area for an investment of little more than $100.
Where should backups be kept?
My house was burgled on Friday. Nobody was hurt, nothing was stolen, the damage was minimal and all in all it was about the best outcome one could hope for, under the circumstances. But it made me consider what might have happened.
As one would expect there's an interesting assortment of equipment in my home that I must acknowledge would have value to some if it were outside my home. But all of that would be fairly easy to replace, whether via insurance reimbursements or simply choosing a newer and better version of this or that piece of hardware. What can not be easily replaced is the immense and growing archive of data; the ones and zeros that make up my digital world are stored here. They're backed up, but the majority of the backups are also kept here and who's to say that with enough time and searching those backups might not find space on Craigslist?
So what to do? Well, first one needs to actually know what one has. Take the time to make sense of what you've archived and backed up. Still have data on floppies? What about Zip cartridges or tapes or any of the other media that has fallen by the wayside? Take the time, now, while you can profit from my misfortune, to assess what you've got, dump what you don't need and centralize the data you want preserved. Will it fit on a single hard drive, a RAID, a NAS? Finally do that filing you've meant to do, collect the data, organize it and get it ready to sit in nice and orderly fashion.
In praise of Time Machine
Of course I do backups and I recommend strongly that you do too. A good percentage of my billable hours are spent on making sure that clients' backup systems are operating correctly and backing up what they're supposed to. Some of these systems can be quite complex, firing off at specific times, moving data from one location to another, even synchronizing servers.
But... most of my "backups" of my laptop were really clones done whenever I got that funny feeling in my stomach (it's a very different story for my servers and desktop). Mac OS X Server can offer a destination for Time Machine backups, and since I keep a server running in my house it's just silly that I hadn't set it up to do the work (and this can be done on a server or on an AirPort or a Time Capsule, even some NAS devices). Several months ago I configured my laptop to use a server-based Time Machine. Of course I assumed I'd never need it and I kept doing clones at the same pace I used to. I assumed I'd never need to worry about that - sound like your thinking too?
AT&T sucks, Verizon is better! Uh, maybe not.
Targeting AT&T for complaints about coverage, or voice reception, or incomplete 3G coverage is accurate, all those charges are true, but the next thing in the argument needs to be compared to what? Verizon's voice is better, but it's not better because Verizon has put more money into their network or because Verizon is modernizing faster. Verizon's voice is better because they use CDMA instead of GSM. CDMA is higher power, uses fewer towers and has significantly longer reach than GSM, but GSM has wildly more capacity, does better at a bunch of lower level things like encryption, and handles data far better. Those commercials where a Verizon user needs two phones to do data and voice simultaneously aren't a joke, that's a real failing and it's not what iPhone users expect.
So, for the initial launch of the iPhone and its maturing AT&T needed the iPhone and Apple needed AT&T, thus AT&T was the only reasonable choice. Verizon wouldn't play ball, AT&T would and continues to, and the other carriers in the US are too small or financially unhealthy to be considered. But now we're past that, right?
Why is the iPhone on AT&T when Verizon is better?
Many people complain that AT&T is the reason they either won’t get an iPhone or that iPhone service is bad. So, why is the iPhone exclusively on AT&T?
When Apple was creating the iPhone the company realized that it would need a partner that would be able to deal with a completely new product. The sales model would be different, the phone would cost more, and the users of the phone would tax the nascent data side of cell communications. Apple couldn't just drop the iPhone on any and all carriers, because at the time of release and as things have continued the iPhone pushes the boundaries of what's currently available and what will be available. Apple could not risk that the iPhone would be with a carrier that wouldn't or couldn't keep up with the evolving uses Apple hoped for the product.
AT&T was willing to essentially refocus their company to match Apple's vision of the future of cell phones and persistent and pervasive data access. AT&T believed that working with Apple would completely change their company and the market they served. They were right, clearly.
Old tech beats new tech
Sometimes it's the old tech that works best. After an incident a client called me to their home to export video from their security system for the police. I don't normally do that kind of work, but they hoped not to have to give the police their DVR and they didn't want to call the security company back in.
I spent a few minutes looking over the control software (PC only, of course) and the manual and began an export of the relevant time period. I gave the parameters in 24 hour time as the entire system used it, but the resulting footage was nighttime and the incident was daytime. I switched to 12 hour time and got daylight, but it wasn't the period I was looking for. Since the first error had shown that time was not properly registering, I wondered about days and exported the time period from the days before and after the incident, but still didn't get what I was looking for.
Finally, I noticed a lamppost... Sure, at night it provides illumination, but by day it just sits there, acting for the all world like...
The value of user interface design
Designing a user interface is something most people who use devices in general and computers specifically don't usually consider, so before we look at what I'm hoping to show, a quick word about how user interface impacts your life.
Think for a second about driving your car on a familiar road. Directly ahead of you a parked car begins to move into traffic! Without needing to think about it, you slam your hand on the center of the steering wheel to honk the horn and alert the driver.
So let's think about honking the horn. I don't know of a car sold in this country today that doesn't have its horn on the steering wheel, and I'll bet you don't either, because that's where the horn is, right? You know the interface of your car very well, and it probably feels natural, normal, and as it should be to find the horn right there.
Good thing you weren't driving a European car. Many European cars have the horn on the turn signal stalk! I'm not suggesting that this represents good or bad user interface design, I'm saying that interface design can become almost invisible to the end user. When you rent a car in another city in the US you have a very reasonable expectation that you'll rent a car that has its horn right where you expect it, this isn't information you'll need to re-learn.