Yearly Archives: 2010

Shhh…

Everyone has daydreams and fantasies. I’m betting for the most part, the things people fantasize about are fairly common. Being wealthy, for instance. Traveling the world. Secret crushes. Super powers. You know, the usual.

That said, I’m not sure about mine. I don’t know if the central theme of my daydreams are universally shared or if I am a kook and should be voted for the most likely to hospitalized for their own protection. Hence my desire to share it. To put it out there to see how others respond. I need to know if I should check myself in somewhere “safe” as soon as possible.

There is one theme to all of my my deepest and most personal fantasies. One that propels me into internalized fits of longing and desire. One I think about daily, and some days hourly. The central theme that seems to intersect every thing I dream…

Silence.

Gosh, you have no idea. You have no idea how many collective hours I have spent fantasizing about what it might be like to live in a monastery practicing a vow of silence. How compelling the thought is of walking alone down some long cobbled road as far as it will take me away to distant places. How I see the dystopian movies depicting the last man on earth, and think “Lucky him!”, right before the zombie hoards arrive and destroy what I see as his world of quiet bliss.

I’ve had this fantasy for as long as I can remember. Perhaps it is driven by my introverted nature. Perhaps it is because I have always obsessed over the things I’m not good at. Perhaps it is a very common and universal desire. Perhaps I am really odd in this respect. Perhaps it grows stronger the more “connected” I feel thanks to our modern world. All I really do know is that there are many moments I would trade all I have for a life of simple silence, contemplation, and solitude. Is that really so strange?

iPad First Impressions

OK, I think I have had enough time with the iPad now to share some first impressions. Keep in mind that these are based upon a few hours of sporadic usage and hence they are a lot more jerk then knee. Also, this was written entirely on the iPad in landscape orientation on my lap.

  • Holy Moses is this thing fast! I mean, the first thing I imagine any iPhone user will think after using this for a few minutes is how BadAss™ the next iPhone will be if they use a similar A4 chip as they do here.
  • That speed comes with a side advantage that I did not put much thought into before today — making the device disappear. The experience is so natural and reflexive, the only thought that comes to mind is “Yes. This is the way computing should have always been”. After only a few seconds you are suddenly flying around the interface with such speed and grace that you forget the interface completely. It is simply an extension of you.
  • The keyboard is entirely useable and comfortable to me. Especially in landscape orientation. The whole “lean back a bit and cradle it in your lap” experience works quite well. So does the “hunched over looking down at the thing” experience. In other words, if one is not careful this will produce a whole new range of ergonomically induced syndromes. Keep in mind that I am a “two finger” typist and generally don’t have issues on keyboards of different sizes and types your milage may y.
  • Many, many of the apps are far better, more useable and more natural than either their desktop or iPhone counterparts. While that is certainly true of many of the built in ones, it is not exclusive to them. Twitterific for iPad is far better than any other version. The Kindle app is even better than the Kindle itself, let alone on the iPhone or Desktop. Instapaper is an absolute dream. The list could go on. I really believe this is also related to the speed and fluidity of the iPad and how these apps simply behave in ways that are natural and intuitive.
  • Some short term investment advice – The future is in microfiber! Short of that, if you have been thinking about starting a business that sells cleaner for the iPad screen, now is the time.

In all, I am beyond happy with the iPad. It not only lives up to the hype, it exceeds it.

Random Apple Thoughts, Loosely Joined

I have been struggling for a while how to write a post to tie these things together but just can’t seem to get there. These things are all related to my pure conjecture, speculation and general feelings about some of Apple’s short and long term strategy moves so they are pieces loosely connected in that respect. Then, I had the dilemma of whether or not to post this today, a day when the internet is rife with fake news and clever pranks. I was afraid that no one would take me seriously. But then, I had an epiphany – This is exactly the reason to post this today.

Therefore, without further ado, here are just some random thoughts, observations, and, in the words of Arseno Hall, things that make you go “hmmmmm”:

  • If I were Apple, and I was considering creating an App Store for the Mac, I might start by making the Mac Developer program the exact same price as the iPhone program (and by “iPhone” I mean any iPhone OS based device). It would certainly be the step I would take before I merged the two programs. In fact, perhaps the best reason for doing so would be that, eventually, the tools would be in place for developers to write one application and have it behave in device specific ways. In other words, install it on an iPhone and it looks and runs like an iPhone app. Install that same application on a Mac and it magically works and feels like a Mac application.

  • I don’t think enough emphasis has been placed on the real and advantageous reasons (in their mind at least) Apple might have for creating a Mac App Store and making that the only way to install Apps on a Mac as it is with the iPhone/iPad. This is not only about control for the sake of control – which they clearly prefer. It is also about control for the sake of quality and security. The Mac OS only remains fairly secure and virus/malware free mostly through obscurity. The folks who would want to exploit the many known security holes just don’t see enough money in it for it to be worth the time. That said, as Apple’s marketshare increases, so does that metric. Certainly, if the only way to get any executable on the Mac required going through the App store, or installation of a specific Ad Hoc Profile that requires the user supply their UUID, and then that had a forced expiration date and creating such required Developer Program membership… I think you see where I am going. The system in place for the iPhone is an incredibly secure one in comparison to the Mac OS. There is a lot of value in that – especially from a marketing perspective.

  • The fact that Tim Cook has been increasingly more visible as a public face of Apple has not escaped my notice. Also, I have noted that so many of the times he has spoken at some event, he goes well out of his way to talk about the “culture” of Apple is what allows it to perform at the level it does. Not any one person and, in a sense, not specifically people at all. It is, in his mind, the culture that powers the success machine. Good ideas develop at one end and magic comes pouring out the other and it is the culture that drives that. Once thing that a lot of people don’t think about is how incredibly flat of an organization Apple is compared to most others like it. By flat I mean that the number of people between, say, a retail store employee and Steve Jobs himself is quite a bit less than say, at Microsoft. Such flatness works very well for maintaining and instilling a unique culture. Simply hire the right people that fit well into that culture and the machine will keep churning out successful products.

    • The subtext of the above: Everything will be fine when Steve leaves and Tim Cook takes over, it is the culture that drives Apple’s success, not any one individual. So every time you hear an Apple executive mention “culture”, this is what they are saying.

    • Pixar is a good example of a post Steve Apple. Put the good stories at one end, let the culture develop them, watch the magic happen.