Monthly Archives: April 2010

Open Letter to Apple? Come on

Posted on April 26, 2010 | 4 Comments

So I just finished reading the “Open Letter to Apple” penned by John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly. The self serving nature is a bit over the top for my tastes. “Please come to our exclusive, invite only, outrageously expensive summit, that has been seeing lower and lower (I assume) attendance. You’d be a really big draw.”

Here’s my thoughts on the whole thing (the open letter, Flash, Apple Culture)

1. It’s Apple’s phone. I don’t want Flash on the iPhone because it often has trouble enough running native apps. I haven’t missed flash once on my iPhone. i DO want Flash on the iPad. I think it makes way more sense. The CPU is faster, the screen is bigger. I’d watch hulu, CBS, NBC, etc on my iPad. I love Adobe, I love Flex and Flash (like any programming language, the shitty apps, are written by shitty developers. To say there aren’t stinkers in the app store would be an outright lie), but it’s Apple’s toy.

I’m glad Adobe finally decided to move on!

Rather than see Apple go to an exclusive event for executives who don’t want to touch the unwashed masses, I’d love to see Apple support the developer community. Hey Steve, Phil, et. al. Come to the next 360|iDev. Meet the people writing the apps, meet the developers who bought 4 iPads. After all, they (IMHO) more than any one in attendance at Web 2.0 Summit, are the people important to Apple. The Developer community is buying iPads like their going out of style, buying each other’s apps/games, etc. They’re the early adopters, the strongest pro-Apple voices, etc.

I do agree with the letter in so far as the Apple of Today isn’t the Apple I fell in love with. It’s not the Apple of the Powerbook, the Newton, the Performa. Times change, and (as many do) if you argue bank accounts as an indicator, Apple is doing something right. I’m tickled pink (I’d be more tickled if I owned Apple stock) that Apple isn’t $8/share. I remember when it was. As a kid in school, I checked the price daily in the paper before I left the house. I saved and saved and bought a Newton, I bought a powerbook 510 for College (ok well my folks did). But I’d love to see that Apple (tempered by age, fine) come back. The Apple of “Think Different”, the Apple of Ellen Feiss.

Embrace the community that loves and supports you. Embrace the community that was there before the iPhone, before Unibody macs, etc. Embrace the community writing the apps that make the devices awesome.

What’s the future hold for Apple, who knows. I’d love to see them take a more active, supportive role in the community that exists around them though.

→ 4 Comments

Posted in 360|iDev, Business, community, Conferences, I am a Consumer, iPhone, Technology

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Adobe needs to buy Palm.

Posted on April 20, 2010 | 10 Comments

And here’s why.

To screw Apple. It’s clear that no matter how much, begging, suing (this is a bad idea anyways), cajoling, “I’m with Adobe”ing, etc, takes place, Apple has given the one finger salute to Adobe. That’s that. It’s their phone, there’s lots of other handsets for Adobe to play with.

Frankly, as much as I’d love to have Flash on my iPad (not my iPhone though) it’s Apple’s call. I don’t agree, but since they don’t call me to ask my opinion, I assume they don’t care.

Palm is for sale. The Pre is a nice phone, it’s actually frakkin sexy, I dig it. WebOS, isn’t that bad either. If Palm had 1. not gone with Verizon, and 2. listenned to their developer community, and 3. not been retards about brand/marketing/and reach, the Pre would be a huge hit. Instead, Palm is for sale.

Picture this.

Adobe buys Palm. Retools WebOS (or goes android, but I think that’s a bad idea) to be more Flash focused. Basically create a “Flash Phone” Build out a marketplace, somewhere between Draconian Apple, and Hippy-free-for-all Google, for Flash devs to build and sell their apps. SELL. Adobe, you build the market, and back out. Don’t start building your own things and giving them away for free. That screws your community over, cut it out!

Flash Devs have been denied a reliable, useful marketplace… well pretty much forever. Companies like Litl are working on devices to show how awesome Flash apps (Channels) can be, and hopefully help developers make money too. Adobe could easily kill some of their soon-to-be-dead-but-no-one-knows-it-yet projects, and focus on a mobile SDK for Devs to build stand alone “apps” that the “Flash Phone” could run.

Apps that exist as good citizens, outside a browser, as a standalone executable/process. They kill when closed, and don’t burn through the CPU. This is totally possible!

I know I’d buy a Flash Phone (assuming it’s the Pre aka nice hardware) in a heartbeat. I’d want to support the community, but I also think it’s a huge untapped market. Look at the flash content out there on the web! So much could easily become apps.

Flash Devs need to stop giving everything away in the hope of attracting consulting business! Build things people will pay for, and sell them! You guys are your own worst enemy! You’re not helping the community!

So Adobe, if you’re reading this, I know hardware isn’t your thing, but hey, consumer electronics wasn’t Apple’s when they launched the iPod (hardware still was, I know, it’s an imperfect comparison), and they’ve pretty much crushed that market now. You need to give up on the iPhone, yeah I know it’s the pits, but rather than waste time suing, being snarky on stage at MAX, and building hacky work arounds in Flash Pro, move on. You’re bigger than this “Let me in! Let me in!” nonsense. I want Adobe to shine, and rock the house! I want Adobe to do what it does best! Innovate! Build tools that let developers do mind blowing things! Now… Provide hardware for those mind blowing things to live on!

Ok that’s it! What do you think?

→ 10 Comments

Posted in Adobe Flex, Business, community, I am a Consumer, iPhone, Mac, Random, Technology

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

iPad….. nice but not magical, yet (my Review)

Posted on April 5, 2010 | 8 Comments

So I’m writing this on my iPad. I’m not feeling the magic. (update, i had to save it so I could edit on my Macbook, else this post take would’ve taken 40 years to write)

Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty, but not useful. Yet.

And before you decide I’m just an Apple hater, let me lay out my credentials for those that don’t know me.

I own:

Unibody Macbook, 2 Minis, 3 iPods (including an iPod Photo), 2 iPhones, 1 iPad, 2 Airport Express, 1 Airport Extreme, my wife has a white plastic macbook.

I’ve Previously owned:

a Macbook Pro, Newton 110, Powerbook 510, Performa.  I think it’s safe to say my fanboi-ness is secure.

That out of the way.

The iPad is a very pretty device, and if your life (as some do) revolves around reading websites, watching videos, and …. well that’s it. Checking email I suppose too. Then the iPad is the perfect toy for you (albeit, for those simple tasks, the price IMO is a bit steep).

I tried. I didn’t write this review the night i got my iPad, I didn’t write it Sunday night, I waited and actually tried to do things I’d normally grab my Macbook for.

First I went up on my deck, to get some sun, and enjoy working outside. Since I was just gonna reply to a few emails, I grabbed the iPad.

  • While I enjoy seeing myself, i don’t want to watch my face as I type emails. That’s easily fixable though, so it’s not a knock. Why Apple is obsessed with uselessly glossy screens is beyond me.
  • First I tried holding it and typing with my thumbs. I prefer landscape mode, and have locked it in that orientation. I have big hands, so it’s quite possible, but not a long term thing. Then I set it in my lap, as many have proclaimed is the perfect use case… I got a sore neck. By this time I’d responded (lengthy responses sure) to two emails. Perhaps if I invested in a $40 (?) case from Apple that i could sit on our patio table, and use? Or buy a Bluetooth keyboard?
  • One email I needed to send an export of attendee data to. I couldn’t. The export is .xls of CSV. kudos to Mobile Safari for opening the .xls and showing me, but I needed to send it to some one. Sure the iPhone doesn’t support this, but if the iPad is a revolutionary bridge device between my iPhone and a laptop, I expect a few laptop like things to be there.
  • Of course since I can’t run two things at once, I had to close out mail.app mid compose to look up a discount code for a sponsor. Close mail, open safari, go to eventbrite, copy the code, close safari, open mail.app
  • Then I thought I’d take a break, check on my Kingdom and my weird little people on Planet Wilker. Thankfully the display is so crisp and bright, it overpowers (mostly) the sun, so i could actually enjoy those games.

Last night I went to a user group meeting, taking only my Mifi and my iPad.

  • The auto brightness doesn’t seem very responsive, so I was routinely blinded when loading something with a white screen in the darkened room. No biggy really, annoying a little, sure, but not a “Damn you Apple”
  • I had two tasks I was hoping to get done, or at least get started, while listening to the presentation. Write an email to attendees of 360|iDev (thru eventbrite.com’s email feature), and compose the last speaker email to speakers at 360|iDev using mailchimp. The result. FAIL. Both websites use HTML based text editors, apparently not the html web that Apple supports. Kinda crappy. Can’t use Flash, can’t use some HTML…
  • So I spent the UG meeting, not using my iPad except to occasionally tweet, and that was only because my iPhone was in my pocket

I’ve tried to replace some of the things I do on my iPhone and my laptop

  • I completely understand why Apple made the iPad support iPhone apps. It’s nice to launch and crow about 100k + apps. I have yet to use an iPhone app on the iPad that wasn’t completely and utterly fail. Why use it in 1x mode? I’ll just fire up my iPhone. In 2x mode, no app escapes the ugly tree. I understand the logic, but think Apple should have given developers more time to get their apps ready. I mean really, no facebook app? Hell, the mobileMe app… uh Apple. I know you want me to shell out $30 for the iWorks, but I’d love to be able to access my mobileMe account in a native iPad app, how about that?
  • I think the iPad will be much more interesting 3 months from now. Now that developers have an actual device to test with, those that (I can’t blame them) waited to actually use the device before building apps for it, will begin releasing apps. Right now the iPad app store is woe-fully anemic… well maybe not if you’re independently wealthy, and can afford every $9.99 app, LOL. Even then, there’s only a small list of apps I’m buying later, as I feel richer. Most of the apps I want, aren’t there.

Yeah Apple is about the experience, I agree, and sure surfing the web is very nice, if you only want to surf the web and consume. If you actually want to create… well so far the iPad hasn’t done much to support creation. I read one review that gushed and gushed about how awesome surfing the web is. OK sure, but I don’t spend my day complaining about surfing the web now.

So what do I like?

  • The feel of it. It’s a nice piece of equipment. The screen (once covered in a smudge/glare free cover) is awesome. Sure I’d like to not have letterboxing when I watch a movie but whatever, that’s a first world problem, and not that important to me.
  • The OS, it’s the iPhone OS, which while I wish wasn’t so closed off, and anti-hacker (Pro user), it’s an easy OS to understand.
  • The Apps. iPad apps, are nice. They use the screen really well. Those that will shine are the ones that didn’t simply recompile for the larger device.
  • The future potential. The iPad right now, for me is a cute toy that gets attention, and let’s me play a few games, and waste time. The iPad in 6 months, could seriously kick ass. There will be more apps that are useful, there will be (Please Apple, it’s kinda obvious) some way for me to work on files in mobileMe (or Googledocs) over the cloud. Screw this dragging files into iTunes, and back and forth. It’s 2010 Apple, you have a cloud storage service, that people are paying money for now. Tie that in to your devices!

What don’t I like? (and please, you don’t have to agree, I welcome your opinion, but if Apple makes you happy with what they deliver, don’t try to tell me what I should be happy too)

  • It’s a bit heavy. Not really a “Bad mark” but it’s not light.
  • The video app needs an update. Looking at my movies, it’s fine to see the thumbnail and name. Looking at TV shows. A thumbnail from an episode, isn’t helpful. I had 6 icons. Some Seinfeld, some Big Bang Theory. No labels. I had to open one up to see that it was the folder for a season of that show. I like the breakdown by season, that’s nice, but not having any visible clue, it’s like hunting around to find the show you want to watch.
  • The single port. This is totally an Apple thing, and I wasn’t surprised, that they’d only have a dock connector, and sell $29 things that plug into the dock connector. Doesn’t mean I think it’s ok.
  • The lack of Flash. I don’t actually miss Flash THAT much, because I’ve had my iPhone for a while. I think flash on the iPhone isn’t really a deal breaker. But the iPad is another device entirely. I expect on a media consumption tablet, that I could hit up Hulu, or youtube (fuck having a separate app, that’s lame), or any of the what? 80% of the web that uses flash to deliver content. It’s a business play pure and simple, and as a business person, I can’t find fault. As a consumer, hacker, and person who tries to see thru bull shit, I think it’s weak sauce. “Open Web”, my ass, it’s the “Apple Web”, and them trying to come off like it’s anything but a power grab, is disingenuous at best.
  • the iPad of now. If 360|iDev wasn’t the weak after iPadmas, I probably would have waited. It just doesn’t do anything I can’t do now with the tools I have. I don’t need “an semi-adequate alternative” I need a “solid replacement”… the iPad isn’t there.

→ 8 Comments

Posted in 360|iDev, eBooks, I am a Consumer, iPhone, Kindle, Mac, reviews, Technology, Travel, Work

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,