February 2012
3 posts
3 tags
Remedy: Inconsistent Bluetooth headphone volume
I’ve been having a problem with Bluetooth headphones on my iPhone 4S (iOS 5.0.1), where sometimes the volume, even when turned up to maximum, is very low. Sometimes it seems to fix itself, but other times, I couldn’t fix it even by rebooting the phone and the headphones.
Although this doesn’t fix the problem permanently, I have found the following to be the quickest way to...
5 tags
Apple Tick Tock
Listening to @siracusa’s podcast, he prescribes an interesting solution to the problem he perceives with OS X moving to a yearly update schedule: Intel’s tick-tock model.
It certainly seems to fit with Apple’s behaviour in recent years.
Exhibit A: iPhone
The iPhone 3G, a big update to the original iPhone, was followed by the relatively modest 3GS. It had an identical...
4 tags
"See iTunes for more information"
iTunes Sync
2 items could not be synced. See iTunes for more information.
…But iTunes appears not to show any information about this error. And it keeps happening. And it seems a lot of people are having the same problem:
Well I figured it out, so I’m posting it here in case I forget later. Hopefully it’s also useful to you as well.
There’s a little,...
January 2012
1 post
5 tags
iPad 2S
The next iPad will not be iPad 3. It will be iPad 2S.
Apple has established the pattern already with iPhone: after the original iPhone, there was a significant external hardware design change in the second generation, iPhone 3G. The third generation iPhone retained the exact same external hardware design as the second generation, and got the name “iPhone 3GS”. This was repeated with...
November 2011
3 posts
4 tags
Ocean, Trust
On his podcast with Dan Benjamin The Talk Show, episode #68, John Gruber said, of the way he views the Kindle Fire’s competitive position relative to the iPad:
The Fire is way more interesting, because it’s not an iPad rip-off. I mean, clearly it’s following the path that the iPad blazed in terms of basic form factor, and that the key to tablet computing is touch-based...
1 tag
GTD Rebirth Cycle
Phase 1. Use a GTD system. It works well. Things are getting done, nothing is being forgotten, and you’re feeling less stress. Life is good in Phase 1.
Phase 2. You grow confidence in your system. So much confidence that you throw new tasks into it with giddy abandon. Adding tasks to the system starts to give you the same feeling of accomplishment as actually completing the task. (This is...
5 tags
Future of Siri
The API for developers to interact with Siri will be in the cloud.
Siri requests are processed in the cloud, so the shortest path from Siri to apps is within iCloud.
This will require apps to be integrated with iCloud. Siri API will be a part of the iCloud API.
How this could work:
An iPhone user speaks to Siri.
Siri in the cloud deciphers the user’s speech, and figures out that the...
September 2011
1 post
2 tags
How to Work All Day
I’m trying a variant of the 30/30 Work Cycle for days when I work by myself, without the distractions of meetings and random interruptions. So far, it seems to work fairly well, especially when motivation is a bit low and the work takes a lot of concentration.
My variant goes like this:
Set a timer (on iPhone, in my case) for 25 minutes.
Work on something hard until the timer goes off.
...
August 2011
1 post
2 tags
July 2011
2 posts
ISO... Pffft!
I like standards. Standards are good. Except when they’re stupid.
A while back I found myself about to argue that the Japanese date format (yyyy/MM/dd) was the international standard, followed by a long spiel about why it’s better. But I thought I should check my facts first, and a quick search in Wikipedia found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 The tl;dr summary is, the...
June 2011
1 post
4 tags
On Apps, Docs and the "Death" of File Systems
In iOS, Apple hid the file system completely from the user, making apps the main way users find their documents. From the murmurs we’ve heard from WWDC attendees last week, it appears Apple is now preparing to do the same thing to Mac OS X.
If my memory serves me, this is not the first time we’ve had an app-centric OS. Windows was also app-centric in the beginning. Although Windows...
May 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Don't press the handicap elevator button
(I’m talking about elevator ranks that have two buttons to call the elevator, and one of them is marked with the handicap symbol.)
I always thought people who press both buttons were just inconsiderate, but it seems that many people don’t actually know what that button does, so this post is to enlighten anyone you know who does this.
The handicap button is a feature of elevator...
John Resig - Learning from Twitter →
(via Instapaper)
April 2011
4 posts
3 tags
Flow — Update 3
After Metalab made collaboration with non-members free, it suddenly became feasible to use Flow as both my main GTD system in anger, and as a team management tool. I signed up for $10/month and have been using it for the past couple of weeks.
All I can say is “wow.” I never expected it to be so good. It’s very subtle, but there is something about Flow that makes it the first...
3 tags
Flow — Update 2
So Metalab, the people behind Flow, have just announced free collaboration with non-members.
Metalab:
Today, we’re making it even easier to collaborate with anyone in your life. From now on, when you delegate a task to someone who hasn’t signed up, they’ll receive a personalized link to the task instead of a generic invitation to Flow. They can respond to comments, complete tasks, and view...
3 tags
Flow — Update 1
As soon as I went back to Things I immediately noticed probably the most compelling thing about Flow as a personal GTD system: the ability to use it on the desktop (via the web UI) at work (Windows). It was jarring to have to suddenly go back to picking up my iPhone while processing email in the morning just to enter an action item.
I realised that with Flow, I’ve got a desktop app on both...
2 tags
Flow
I’ll admit to jumping on the bandwagon of pretty much any product that has a promo video by @lonelysandwich. I also have a GTD/to-do app addiction, so when I saw this video for Flow by Metalab, it was a forgone conclusion that I would sign up.
What interested me most about Flow is its collaborative nature. Right from the promo video, they are very clear that collaboration with others is...
March 2011
2 posts
“the first 90 percent of the work is easy, the second 90 percent wears you down,...”
– Graphing Calculator Story
6 tags
Another New Market (Apple's subscriptions API)
I’ve let this subscription stuff swirl around in my brain for a week or so while reading the arguments on various sites. There have been a few really well-thought-out articles, but I feel there is an important point that’s either missing or way under-represented.
All of the opinions I’ve read seem to focus on what it does to existing business models. But there has been very little focus on what...
October 2010
1 post
Dear display technology inventors,
Just so we’re clear: Your mission is to create a flexible, capacitive touch, e-Ink like display, at RD or better resolution, in full colour, that can be read comfortably in harsh direct sunlight, and also backlit when it’s dark, and can handle full 1080p HD video at ~60fps, on the power of a light breeze. M’kay?
Oh, and it should be able to switch between “glossy”...
September 2010
4 posts
“If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you are the product being...”
– http://www.metafilter.com/95152/Userdriven-discontent#3256046
@gruber When innovation moves the platform...
Surely you don’t think Twitter for iPad is all bad? I mean, sure, it has some rough edges right now, in v1.x, but it does work. Is an extra 10 seconds to grok the UI really enough to dismiss it entirely?
For the record, my current Twitter client of choice is Twitterrific. I can’t live without the colour coding in the main timeline. But I was thrilled to see someone breaking the mould...
1 tag
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a...”
– Robert Heinlein, via The Simple Dollar
August 2010
4 posts
3 tags
Macro: iPhone Microphone Detail
Never mind the disgusting pocket lint — look at the incredible precision of the bevels and curves cut into the steel antenna band! (Click to see full-res image.)
The star-shaped screw with its circular grooves freaks me out as well.
How the fuck did they make this thing???
I just bought an extension tube for my Canon 50D to experiment with macro photography. (I’m not sure if I will...
“It’s like buying an SLR if you’re only ever going to use the kit lens.”
– Marco.org - The 2010 Mac Pro CPUs and pricing
Great analogy.
July 2010
8 posts
2 tags
A Couple of Awesome iPhone tricks
Hide SMS Notification Popover Without Acknowledging
It’s really annoying when you’re right in the middle of something and an SMS comes in, and you don’t want to tap “View”, but you don’t want to tap “Close” either (because that will remove the count badge and you might forget to go back to it later).
There is a third option. Just lock your...
“I realized recently that what one thinks about in the shower in the morning is...”
– The Top Idea in Your Mind
Sounds like the epiphany shower! (Inside joke. Sorry.)
WatchWasshai!
Shibaura Matsuri in 38°C heat.
“She had scratched through her skull during the night—and all the way into her...”
– The Itch
1 tag
Finally, the truth about the iPhone 4 antenna →
The above graphic, from this article by Richard Gaywood (and based on this excellent, clear analysis by Anandtech) explains, in a way even complete morons would understand, why the “death grip” problem of iPhone 4 seems to affect some people but not others.
Apple has also finally issued an official statement about it (you’re better off reading it on Daring Fireball than the...
June 2010
12 posts
3 tags
“I do believe that a keyboard-less multitouch text navigation and manipulation UI...”
– Touch Content Creation — Cocoa Therapy
3 tags
FaceTime protocols →
High-level overview of the open protocols used by FaceTime to connect two iPhones - er, I mean, “FaceTime devices”.
It will be interesting to see if anything comes of the 12-foot-high “OPEN” from the WWDC10 Stevenote.
1 tag
“And the iPhone 4 does offer a few additional 3G bands that could make it work on...”
– Reality Check: The iPhone’s Not Going to T-Mobile or Verizon Anytime Soon (the World Trumps USA) | Cult of Mac Not sure I would like to go back to DoCoMo. I think if this happened I would probably stick with SoftBank. Still, it would probably be good for iPhone users in Japan to have multiple...
4 tags
“We did not enter the search business.”
– Steve Jobs Hang on a sec. What search business? There’s no such thing as a “search business”. Nobody pays anybody for search results. Google has—and has always been—an advertising business. And Apple most certainly entered that.
Honestly I cannot fathom the Apple vs Google war. Android is the...
3 tags
THIS is why Animation is Important in UI →
Check the video at around the 10:58 mark. Brain researcher Pawan Sinha discovered that motion is the crucial secret to how our brains interpret what we see. This, more than anything else I’ve seen or heard, explains in concrete terms why animation is a key tool in great UI.
Like anything else, overuse of animation can destroy the user experience. But, applied judiciously in the right...
4 tags
DIY Camera Case
I’ve started to collect more and more gear for my time lapse habit, and I’ve gone somewhere to shoot more than once only to realise I’d forgotten some piece of equipment, so I decided to make a case for all my stuff.
I did a bit of research, and spent an hour or two at Tokyu Hands (god I love Tokyu Hands!) This is what I came up with:
There is another shot here that shows the layout. As you...
“Power to the pixel”
– Resolving the iPhone resolution | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine
3 tags
Tumbling from iPhone to iPhone
When I decided to move from Blogger to tumblr, I knew about the automatic theme for iPhone, which makes blogs easy to read and scroll on iPhone without needing to zoom & pan, etc.
But I didn’t know about the awesome tumblr app for iPhone - sweet! I’m using it to type this right now.
2 tags
Marco.org (Instapaper) on iPhone multitasking and...
Marco:
The addition of one more multitasking service would solve this issue for a lot of application types: a periodic network request. Here’s how I would do it:
The application gives the system an NSURLRequest and an ideal refresh interval, such as every 30 minutes, every few hours, or every day.
iOS executes that request, whenever it deems that it should, and saves the response to a local...
May 2010
5 posts
4 tags
Irrepressible, Art
After only 1 day playing with my iPad, it’s clear that the “beautiful” apps own this space. I’m sure we will see the same deluge of fart apps and just plain ugly apps that we have on the iPhone, but on iPad, the really gorgeous UIs stand out more than they do on iPhone. And with the higher price tags that for now seem to be the norm, users will expect more and demand...