Frozen Transparency

The new iPhone (the second generation one, which can handle third generation cellular networks) launched a week ago. As someone who keeps up with tech (and therefore Apple) news, I paid attention to things going on that day. I just have a few thoughts on the whole thing:

• The number of people who got up early to wait in the AT&T line who didn’t seem to know anything about what they were planning on purchasing was staggering. From what I saw, there were several people who weren’t even aware that there were multiple SKUs.
• When Halo 3 launched for the XBox 360, the XBox Live servers had so much load they couldn’t handle new registration for a few days. It’s rare that a massive launch event happens that doesn’t cause servers to have a meltdown.
• Apple should have waited a day or two before releasing the firmware 2.0 update for first-generation iPhones. Having not only all second-generation iPhone purchasers but also all first-generation iPhone owners hit the store at the same time was not the smartest move. If they had staggered it a little, it might have helped.
• I am utterly shocked at the number of business people who were mad because they didn’t have a working phone for the course of the day. While you certainly can expect the best, you should prepare for the worst. I am not particularly convinced that business people who buy a new phone on its launch day are particularly good at business, seeing as businesses are typically slow to upgrade for a reason.
• Opening on a Friday morning at 8 is a great way to kill productivity that day. I wonder if the lost productivity from an Apple product launch is anywhere near the lost productivity from the NCAA tournament?
• I realize AT&T wants to maximize profits, but the different prices based on eligibility things are confusing, to say the least. Dealing with Family Plans and Account Holders and so on is even more so.
• Despite rising gas prices and economic worries, a million people were willing to drop at least two hundred dollars (more in other countries) on a collection of plastic and metal that allows them to stalk their friends from anywhere. Either the economy isn’t as bad as people think, or people are just that bad at making economic decisions.

I recently stumbled upon this YouTube video, which is of Steve Jobs first presentation at MacWorld after having been hired back into Apple. It’s been eleven years since then, and it’s interesting to watch it purely in terms of history.

Just a few thoughts:

• I hear it in his voice, and I see it in his smile, but it’s hard for me to imagine that as Steve Jobs. He looks so young!
• We often forget that it was Microsoft that bailed Apple out back then. The stock was later sold, but it forms an interesting dynamic in the history between the two companies. Has the student now become the master—or does Microsoft actually want Apple around?
• I thought Powerpoint presentations made today often looked bad. Those slides are horrendous.
• He was a smooth performer then, but he’s gotten even better as the years have gone by.
• Apple really hasn’t changed since Steve Jobs took the helm again. They’ve just gotten popular.

I want to have a personal calendar in the cloud. I want to be able to view it easily at work (bonus points if I can do it in Outlook), and be able to make modifications. I want it to sync with my mobile phone, so I can see my schedule anywhere—and change it, if need be. I would like to allow friends to view my schedule, to varying degrees of transparency, but not give them the ability to modify it.

I want to have one set of contacts that I can access from any computer, therefore on the cloud. I want that list to sync with my mobile phone, so I can edit phone numbers from anywhere and have that information accessible anywhere. That contact information should also contain birthdays (and hook into my calendar for reminders) and addresses, accessible on any computer and my mobile phone.

Since I have one set of contacts, I want it to also be linked with my e-mail. I want one singular e-mail account that all of my e-mail addresses feed to: both free-service addresses and my-domains addresses. I have one primary account that I use to send e-mail, but I want to be able to send e-mail from different addresses in some circumstances. Across my domains, I have an infinite incredibly large yet still finite number of e-mail addresses to siphon into one location—preferably avoiding forwarding chains of any kind, because of the lag induced. While I would like to check my e-mail from my mobile phone, it’s not that big of a deal, and being able to respond to it even less so. However, I want access to all my outgoing addresses from any computer I’m on.

Any other nifty online tools that might have data useful to me on my mobile (such as map locations) should also be in this sync. An RSS reader that synced between mobile and any computer would be nice. Getting all of this under one account with one sign-on in the cloud would be sublime.

Price is not as much an issue for me, although I want to keep costs reasonable. I want to have this implemented by September first (an arbitrary date) if at all possible.

Anyone have any good ideas on how to go about doing it?

I’m sorry, Microsoft, but you’ve failed me once again. You are a company filled with a great many intelligent people, and yet, I find the following to be the case:

Required to run Windows Vista smoothly:

Required to make OS X (Leopard) run smoothly:

I think the difference is pretty clear.

Interestingly enough, the cost in both cases is approximately the same, being a reasonably high amount of money. To be fair, the Vista machine also has two expensive hard drives in it (instead of one cheap one), and I got extra software for the Mac.

The Vista machine is known as Atalanta. She is, of course, my main computer, and indeed, in everyday life, she looks much like this:

(You can tell the general date when this was taken). The reason you don’t see the huge case is because it’s hidden in the desk—and in usual operation, you can’t hear it, either. Which I think is pretty cool, for such a powerful machine to be virtually undetectable (unless you look in the desk).

After putting her together, I had collected a fair amount of excess cardboard, plastic, and other strange materials:

Imagine my surprise, then, when I opened up the new MacBook case and found this:

Simply minimalistic. Reduction of trash, reduction of waste—in fact, the box is so nice, I plan on keeping it in case I happen to need a MacBook-sized box hanging around. It is simply beautiful, to over-use the term. When I think about it, though, the word I would ascribe to this is simply elegant. As a programmer, I appreciate elegance.

In either case, I named the MacBook Echo, because I seem to have this thing where I name my computers after Greek women (Artemis, Atalanta, Echo, Athena (which is actually a hard drive), Apollo (err, wait…)).
Actually, I also use Greek mythology in general: Apollo (my Zune), Hermes (an external hard drive), Aether (my network), Mnemosyne (my backup hard drive)…Echo fits right in.

I admit, though, as a person who has been a dyed-in-the-wool Windows user and general Microsoft fan—and, admittedly, as someone who has bashed Apple a lot in the past—I have been suitably impressed by Echo. She’s mostly nothing more than an experiment; a purchase (actually made several weeks before this is posted) because I like the sleek, plastic look of the MacBook line more than the sleek, aluminum look that’s constantly rumored to take over. Also, Artemis was having problems, I wanted a good laptop for giving presentations, and I’d been saying for a long time that I needed a Mac just to have one. A Linux box is next!

The shopping experience was halfway very pleasant, halfway not. The employees were all helpful, although almost too helpful, and one of the girls failed my most important question: what is the worst thing about a Mac? She said “Nothing”, and it didn’t take me long at all before I found several simple flaws. But I let it slide. Really, had the store not been filled with a bunch of other people (many of them there for tech support, amusingly enough), it would have been much nicer: a quiet location where I could think things through. Thankfully, I had essentially made the decision before-hand and acted like I was browsing to confirm with myself, check out the MacBook Air, and not make it look like I was some fanboy out to just immediately buy. The downside is that I still missed the Mini-DVI-to-VGA cable in all the rush.

The difference between setting up a Mac and setting up a Windows box is not actually as large as I’d been made to think it would be. I was impressed that Leopard got my wireless network settings out of the way early and with much less hassle than Vista. On the other hand, I like how Vista asks you to name the computer early on; I really think “Keith’s Computer” is a stupid name. And anyways, I have a naming scheme going on!

The ability to immediately use the camera to take my self-picture was nice—once I figured out how to use it. I was annoyed that the preview went away after the first picture, which made subsequent attempts at not having the screenlight glare against my glasses an exercise in frustration. It is something I can fix later, but it could have been easier. On the other hand, Vista’s bland offering is less than stellar.

One thing I found interesting was that the world of serial numbers and software keys also rears its head on Macs. And there is absolutely one thing that Microsoft totally has right that Apple screwed up on: they automatically insert the hyphens for you. I typed out my entire iWork serial number and wondered why it didn’t recognize it; I had to go and manually add the hyphens to make it work. With Office, it added the hyphens for me, and when I had to go back and add a letter, it automatically re-adjusted them. It’s a little touch, but that’s supposed to be what Apple is good at.

Another minor frustration was that I was under the impression that I could get a discount on my .Mac account because I bought a new computer (and am a new .Mac user to boot)—however, I saw no such way of getting it, and ended up paying full price. And I figure that if I’m going to give Macs a fair trial and a full shake, I should do the whole thing.

The control panel on OS X, however, is superior to that on Vista.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I had my gripes with getting Echo, much as I have my gripes about Vista’s installation. But I was greatly impressed, and to an extent enlightened. I had spent so much time vilifying it that I hadn’t thought of it even having good parts.

Mind, I still don’t like the dock. I’m not particularly fond of the mile-high menu bar, but I can appreciate Fitts’s Law, and suspect that I’ll get used to it. I’m again not fond of clicking the button I expect to close a program not actually closing the program—this is cited by some Mac enthusiasts as a “feature”, so I assume it’s deliberate; it still feels unintuitive to me. The lack of maximize might work on a large screen (as I rarely use maximize on Atalanta for this reason; it just makes it too big), but on my tiny MacBook screen, I could really use the entire real estate. The auto-sizer just doesn’t seem right to me. The icon-similarity problem oft-cited for Leopard I also agree with.

The real point is, though, that I shouldn’t have been relegated to a MacBook, especially as there are some serious gripes I have (as opposed to simply bashing Apple). But Windows computer seem fragile, physically. I have a computer with eight gigabytes of RAM and a 2.33 GHz Dual-Core processor; and yet, there are times when Vista still gives me slowdowns (to be fair, they are incredibly infrequent and seem to very often have to do with Firefox). My Zune has a tendency to spontaneously reboot itself, much to my annoyance (possibly caused because I have subjected it to lots of temperature extremes). I understand that Vista’s UAC was a choice made between a rock and a hard place, but I can see where it gets in the way (my annoyance has more to do with how it utterly disrupts my workflow). Things don’t communicate with each other as well as one might hope. The much-touted Start Menu Search is really awesome for running programs, but I constantly have problems with it and files.

It’s not fair to entirely hold it against Microsoft, though, but I chose the 64-bit Vista option, to access all eight gigabytes of memory. However, thumbnails have issues in 64-bit explorer (because other companies haven’t written the right plugins). Some programs don’t even function. Little things crop up, on top of the random Vista compatibility issues.

On the MacBook side, I still abhor touchpads. But I’m getting used to the one-button interface. However, I tried the Mighty Mouse at the store and was utterly repulsed. And the fact that I have to buy a special cable to be able to use my MacBook with any external display is, frankly, kind of stupid. I wouldn’t mind if it were possible to find in places that sell other common computer cables; but to have to only get it from Apple is frustrating to no end.

In either case, I paid a lot of money for Atalanta, and I intend on using her to that full end. She is still my main home PC, powerhouse that she is (apparently I like strong, athletic women). I like Windows, and I’m still a Microsoft cheerleader. I also paid a lot of money for Echo, and I intend on using her to test out OS X and to be a good, portable laptop.

One of my friends likes to use the term “Apple Fag” to describe the people who—almost cult-like—are major fans of Apple and Macs. I’m not particularly fond of the term, partly because the association of homosexuality with “bad” is distasteful to me (not to mention my dislike of how the term for a bundle of sticks or a cigarette turned into a word describing homosexuality), but also because I’ve met a large number of people who are Apple fans for good reason. I have not turned into one of these so-called “Apple Fags”. I’m still in Microsoft’s camp, and I’m still skeptical of Apple. I haven’t joined the cult, and I have no intentions about switching anytime soon (especially because, as noted, I want to get good use out of Atalanta).

However, when I sit back and take stock of the computing landscape and its future, I cannot help but loose some of my firm footing with Microsoft, especially since they seem to be having so many problems. I’m not yet an “Apple Fag”, but if Microsoft can’t catch up sometime soon, my next desktop computer may very well be a Mac.

Apparently, change is good. One of the main points constantly made in the Obama campaign has been that he stood for “Change”. In this case, it is apparently a change in the political system, although I have my doubts that any politician that started in Chicago is really that different from other politicians. I also find myself skeptical that electing one person can somehow catalyze a governing system that’s worked for over 200 years to suddenly become something new. Or his change is more subtle, and won’t be as obvious to normal, everyday people. In either case, change is good.

Apparently, change is bad. The main complaint I hear leveled against Microsoft products whenever a new one comes out is “It’s different!” Office 2007, for instance, did away with the horrid convoluted drop-down menus that had cluttered up previous versions of Office (to the point where ninety percent of requested features already existed in the program). The first response? “It’s different! They changed it!” Windows Vista has also had similar charges leveled against it: “They changed the start menu!” Never mind the new interfaces being better (in general; some in Vista were pretty neutral), never mind the sudden discoverability of features (in a version of Word prior to 2007, take a 100-page document with headings, tables, and pictures and quickly change the margins, add a table of contents, add an index with index entries, reformat your body text and headings, and then create repeating headings on your tables. And then create a bibliography of sources—and halfway through, change your citation format from MLA to APA). Remember, change is bad.

Thesis: change is bad. However, chanting a slogan is no change from the past, even if such a slogan is, in fact, the word “Change”. Because we know it really won’t.

As someone who has done a decent amount of website coding, I can appreciate the difficulty in creating a dynamically-generated website that always works and is easy to use. The goal is to build an “application”, as it were, that is easy for the user to use—preferably without requiring much documentation-reading.

What baffles me, however, is the sheer number of websites I visit for people that handle my money that are poorly-designed and poorly-coded. If you are a business that offers doing business-like things online, why would you not strive to have a good online experience?

It frustrates me as a user when I try to view my account details and figure out 1. how much I owe, 2. when I owe it, and 3. if my bill’s been paid up to now—and there is no actual method of navigation for determining this. I have had to call these companies before in order to find out this information, which to me defeats the entire purpose of having account viewing in a website at all.

My conclusion is that either the company’s core business does not use the Internet (and therefore I am not in their core business), or that their core business does use the Internet, but the company does not care about their core business. This is not a question I should be having to ask for companies that receive regular payments for me for services I am legally obligated to purchase.

It’s possible that I expect too much, but it still astounds me how so many companies seem to not care how bad their websites are. There’s a reason Facebook succeeded where others (such as Orkut) failed (in the United States, at least): their website was easy to use and presented relevant information in a better manner.

Way back when, IBM decided to standardize computers. Prior to that point, all hardware was custom—IBM had the sense of mind to realize that the computer needed to be modular, and that custom-made hardware would be marginalized. Lo and behold, they were right.

Along came Microsoft (more especially, Bill Gates), who realized that with market forces, the cost of hardware was going to sink to nothing—all the cost was going to be in the software. Lo and behold, they were right.

Then came the Open-Source community, and they saw that eventually, the cost of software was going to sink to nothing—all the cost was going to be in support. Red Hat and several other companies positioned themselves for this, and they’ve been shown half-right.

Then came Apple, who realized that all computers are really just consumer electronics, and that’s how people want to treat them: like any other appliance. And wouldn’t it be cool if all of these things worked together? So they create the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone, the iTV, and so on and so forth. And, like history before them, they’ve destroyed the previous competition in those spaces (Microsoft, mostly). Produce good code on specialized hardware that “just works” and lasts forever (because honestly, people don’t need to know all the details), and that’s where the money is.

They’re being proven right.

My beef is this: Apple has shown time and time again that they can produce very good code with supreme design and aesthetic. There are some problems to be sure, but overall, they create a wonderful experience and have amazing brand loyalty.

Microsoft has a bunch of really smart people. IBM has a bunch of really smart people. The Open-Source community has a bunch of really smart people.

Why is Apple the only company that seems to be able to do this, and do this well?