May 2012
6 posts
“I think something’s up” →
Me too.
2 tags
Regarding "Regarding The Talk Show"
I just listened, and then re-listened to Dan Benjamin’s thoughts on The Talk Show, in which he responds to what must be an avalanche of emails, Twitter messages, blog posts, and even a song about John Gruber’s decision to move The Talk Show away from 5by5 to Mule Radio Syndicate.
The whole thing is very tastefully done, and I have buckets of respect for the way Dan did this. He does...
3 tags
Software Patents as Hong Kong
The debate on software patents, and patents in general, is alive again thanks to John Siracusa on recent episodes of his brilliant podcast. Thanks to Siracusa’s sharp analytical wit and the audience he has cultivated, the quality of the discussion is extremely high.
Of all the interesting points — and there are many — the one that stands out to me is that there appears to be fairly broad...
3 tags
Wishful Thinking
I’ve had a couple of rounds of Twitter debates with iOS designers over this 4-inch iPhone rumour, specifically the taller-but-not-wider variant, with me on the pro and them on the con. While I’m not putting my money on a 4-inch screen this year (more on that later), I see a pattern of wishful thinking about it on the “no way Apple will do this” side.
Anatomy of the Con...
3 tags
Oh, Steve. →
Paul McNamara, writing for NetworkWorld:
Entitled “1944,” the almost 9-minute full version was Apple’s in-house takeoff on “1984,” the iconic first Macintosh TV ad that caused a sensation during that year’s Super Bowl. Set as a World War II tale of good vs. IBM, it is a broadcast-quality production (said to have cost $50,000) that was designed to fire up...
7 tags
If you can't join 'em, beat 'em
Back in June (and again in November), Horace Dediu pointed out the astounding fact that Apple could buy the entire mobile phone industry, with cash.
But Apple didn’t buy all its competitors. Instead, it just pounded them.
Horace Dediu, today:
Apple captured 73% of phone industry profits and Samsung captured 26%. HTC took 1%. Everybody else lost money.
(via Daring Fireball)
April 2012
9 posts
8 tags
TimeFreeze →
Congratulations to my friend and colleague Michel Lönngren on the update to his awesome app, TimeFreeze.
It’s one of those I-can’t-believe-a-phone-can-do-this things: TimeFreeze uses some crazy mathematical jiggery-pokery that I don’t even pretend to understand, to synthesise additional frames between the frames of any video you shoot on the iPhone. The effect is that it can...
4 tags
Four million digits of π →
Practically, one needs only 39 digits of π to make a circle the size of the observable universe accurate to the size of a hydrogen atom.
<keanu>whoa.</keanu>
(via @charlesarthur)
1 tag
Bones
How cool is it that bones make blood? As if supporting our body structure wasn’t enough, they also make probably the most important substance in our bodies as well. That is awesome. Bones are awesome.
I also think it’s pretty cool that bones can heal themselves when broken. Although, instead of evolving the ability to heal our bones, we should’ve evolved the good sense to avoid...
3 tags
2012 iPhone concept design #2
I realised the problem with my previous mockup was that in order to have enough room for the rounded “pebble” look, there is a bigger margin on the left and right sides of the screen, so either the phone would be wider, or the screen thinner. I don’t think either of these is likely or desirable.
So this time I took a bit more care with precise measurements. The screen in...
4 tags
How Wil Shipley can get Paid Upgrades on the Mac...
Wil Shipley wrote a characteristically well-written and introspective post a few weeks ago, calling for paid upgrades on the Mac App Store. I heard about this from John Siracusa on Hypercritical #63 just today, so I’m a little late to this party, but here goes.
Siracusa skilfully breaks the issue down, via his listeners’ feedback, into two different but interrelated philosophical and...
I'll give you a social network movie
Just thought of this awesome movie idea:
Set in the near future.
“Likes” and “favs” on social networks are given monetary value.
When someone “likes” (etc.) your photo/video/status/whatever, you get a credit.
When you “like” someone else’s you use up that credit.
Enormous sums start to accrue.
The people at the top want to cash out.
But...
wuat asked: I enjoy your concept, but I doubt that Apple will change the near-perfect screen size of the iPhone. The size of the screen is one of the main factors which keeps me from considering switching to Android
5 tags
How to send work email from iPad
As much as I would love to live the independent developer lifestyle, unfortunately, I have a day job. I work for a big financial company as a software architect and I manage a large team of engineers. For those who don’t know what the finance industry is like, one of its defining traits is an obsession with information security. As such, there is no way in hell my company would ever let me...
March 2012
8 posts
Apple’s Tim Cook Visits Foxconn IPhone Plant in... →
Shouldn’t that headline read, “Apple’s Tim Cook visits Foxconn iPhone plant in China, as usual”?
I mean, he was the COO. Visiting those factories regularly was, you know, his job.
4 tags
iPad (3) Retina Display
I’ve had the iPad (3) for about 2 weeks now, and although the screen is stunningly sharp, I have to say that apart from being much larger (obviously), it is not as good as the iPhone 4/4S screen.
The main complaint is that the iPad’s screen is not bonded to the front glass, like the iPhone’s. The improvement Apple made when they first did that in the iPhone 4 was, I think, one...
6 tags
How to set up Gmail and Google Calendar on iOS
The following is a note to myself to remember how to set up Gmail and Google Calendar properly on iOS.
Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Add Account…
Don’t select Gmail. Instead, select Microsoft Exchange.
Enter the following details and tap Next.
Email: your email address
Domain: leave blank
Username: your email address
Password: your password
Description:...
5 tags
Instapaper's Fireball Immunity
Speaking of Instapaper, I find it amazing that Marco Arment is able to keep his site up despite receiving what I’m sure must be an insane amount of traffic.
Think about it: So many sites go down when they are linked to by Daring Fireball that “fireball” has become a verb, and there is even a service to cache a copy of Gruber-linked sites before they are pulverised by his...
5 tags
Not Cloudy Enough
I recently had to get my iPhone 4S replaced at the Genius Bar twice within the space of a week. That’s another story. But it meant that I had to go through the new iPhone set-up process a few times, something that normally I would only do once a year at most.
This is not the first time I have set up an iPhone after the launch of iCloud, but it’s the first time I’ve done so...
4 tags
A Hobby No More
Apple has always been careful to call the Apple TV a “hobby” — until now. During the announcement of the 2012 Apple TV, just before the iPad (3) was announced, nobody mentioned the word “hobby”.
And now, I see that the Apple TV occupies one of the high-profile panels on Apple’s home page. Even more amazing: the iPhone is nowhere to be seen on the home page. There...
“The right idea could start out life as the wrong idea.”
– Give it five minutes - (37signals)
3 tags
"The New iPad"
Just checking in on my predictions for the third-generation iPad, which was announced today. Here is what I predicted back in January:
Name: iPad 2S.
Nope. It wasn’t “iPad 2X” as I predicted in my update, either. It seems that Apple is using both “The new iPad” and “the third-generation iPad” in their marketing copy.
This begs the question,...
February 2012
6 posts
2 tags
3 tags
iMac Prediction: All-Glass Exterior
Here’s a crazy thought: At some point, I think maybe the iMac will have an all-glass exterior. Maybe the next model.
Here is a visual history of the iMac exterior design since it changed to the current form factor. (All images courtesy apple-history.com.)
iMac, circa 2004:
iMac, circa 2007:
iMac, late 2009–present:
The aluminium “chin” at the bottom is getting...
iPhony →
daringfireball.net
John Markoff’s New York Times article speculating about a vaporware Apple-branded mobile “iPhone” is getting a lot traction. Go ahead and read it, but remember that it’s all bullshit speculation at this point.
Flashback: Gruber snorts at the possibility of a mobile phone made by Apple, dubbed “iPhone”. http://daringfireball.net/2002/08/iphony
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
