Category Archives: technology

A Good Watch

I have to wear a watch. I’m very old school this way. I feel naked without one. Time itself is so precious and fleeting, I need to feel aware of my place and connection to it at all times.

Perhaps it’s a mark of my age, but I don’t understand how one can get used to checking the time on their phone. Even if it’s right there when it’s turned on.

I also have rigid and specific preferences surrounding the type of watch I will wear. It must be analog. It must have real numbers. Not markers, not roman numerals. Numbers. It also must have a day and date. I can’t remember what happened five minutes ago, do you honestly expect me to remember the date?

My current watch is a Timex Perpetual Calendar. Great watch, simple, durable, fits my requirements, and I don’t have to remember which months have 30 days.

Addiction, Step One of Twelve, and Focus for A Fiver

Not too far from my home, is an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting house. They have several meetings a day. I would guess ten to twelve (the house is large enough to accommodate). I regularly observe the people coming, going, mingling outside on the porch between meetings. They’re from all walks of life. They are all at ious steps of dealing with their addiction to alcohol. No matter who you are, step one is always the hardest and most important. Believe me, I get that and have a lot of respect for it.

That said, I often wonder as I see them – almost as a rule – chain smoking, downing cup after cup of coffee, chatting endlessly on their mobile phone, if they are merely confronting the one addiction that was causing the most problem, and ignoring the others that are not. Have they really confronted the real problem? The problem of addiction itself? And by confronting and applying the steps to that core problem would it be successful in not only the battle with alcohol but in countless other ways? Have they really done “step one”?

I’m starting to wonder about the numerous applications one can now buy to help with “focus”. There are many of these I have covered here before. Heck, there are many that I use myself. I’m using one right now. That said, am I really curing the root of the problem? Am I simply replacing it with new ones? Would working on the root of the issue eradicate my need for an application like Writeroom when I find even my Desktop too much to handle? Have I really done “step one”?

Don’t get me wrong, I know that these root problems are much harder to tackle. I know that, on the surface, throwing down a fiver on something that will help seems like the right thing to do. But pretending that will cure the real problem, and in many cases not simply replace it with others, is the same as the chain smoking, coffee swilling alcoholic who claims he has dealt with his addiction because of the color of coin in his pocket.

“Hi. My name is Patrick. I have no self control.”

See? Step one. Where’s my medallion?

See also: On distraction and virtual crutches « The Quillink Observer – A similarly themed and introspective post that was brought to my attention in the middle of writing this one.

Of Mice and Magic

You may have heard already but, along with some new iMacs (Win), Mac Pros (Big Win), 27inch Cinema Display (Lickable), Apple released a brand new product – The Magic Trackpad.

Now, there are those who are trackpad people, those who can’t stand them, and a few in-betweeners who are comfortable with either. I’m one of the later. I even have a use case for one – My media center is an iMac and, due to its station on a shelf, there is just not enough travel room for a mouse. I currently have a Kensington Orbit Trackball attached to it and, while it does the job, it sure is not as sexy or, well, magic. But these details are not the story from my perspective.

Let’s do some theorizing on that magic for a bit. You may see a revolutionary mouse and trackpad. I see something far larger and more subversive…

Apple is rewiring our brains for touch.

Just like with the iPhone and iPad, Apple is steadfastly reinforcing the idea that touch is the way we interact with our computers. The Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad are just one more step in that direction. In fact, I would not be surprised if, before we ever see a touch based iMac, we see a keyboard without keys. A completely touch aware input experience in order to prepare the masses for the “next big thing”. That big thing is input devices as we have come to know them going away for good. 

So, this begs the question, “Why not just make a giant desk sized iPad type iMac now?” Here is the answer: It is a minor adjustment to behavior and learning to make such moves with a brand new device, because the general public will see it as “new device, new input”. It is much more difficult to take something that has followed only one input method (keyboard and mouse) for twenty years and suddenly thrust something this new upon them. Revolutions generally start with a few new ideas that pick up steam and grow larger as they roll down the hill. The Magic Trackpad is the visual representation of the revolution to come.