January 2011
1 post
Products That Won't Exist In 10 Years, Thanks To...
After a friend told me about using her iPhone to help tune a capella singers in a rehearsal, I started thinking about just how many products the iPhone has eliminated, or will soon eliminate. Things that used to be standalone tools, now seem totally unnecessary, and in a generation will barely be remembered.
Here’s what I came up with in two minutes:
Walkman, Discman, and MP3 player
...
October 2010
2 posts
I guess this solves the problem from my previous... →
Why I can't get a MacBook Air
The MacBook Air looks gorgeous. And though the performance of past Airs — and being realistic about how mobile I really am in a week — gives me pause, none of those concerns are serious enough to stop me from buying one as my next computer.
Electronics being smaller is almost always significantly more important than it seems while you’re looking at a product online.
I remember...
September 2010
16 posts
“Today we demonstrated new mobile editing capabilities for Google Docs on the...”
– http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/three-million-businesses-have-gone.html
“Most of the people (lawyers, lobbyists, business owners, PR people) who walk...”
– A TPM reader who’s a Hill staffer
Jobs’ war on Flash video and growing iOS device... →
Rethinking the mobile web - QuirksBlog →
A really fantastic presentation on (mobile) web development, via @natekoechley (my brother).
Sunc (synced?) costs
I use at least 7 different syncing services every day to keep everything current between my laptop and my iPhone:
Gmail, over IMAP, for email;
MobileMe, for contact and calendar info;
BusySync, to sync my iCal with Krista’s iCal via sharing with our two Google Calendar accounts;
iTunes, via USB cable, for my music, podcasts, videos, photos, apps, books, PDFs, and other random files;
...
Blargh. The .docx format is the end of me. It causes so many problems with interoperability and attachments, and as a user, I see no upside to it. (I’m sure there are engineering or product design upsides—it’s just that none of them are obvious or visible or important to me.)
Amazingly, my version of Pages.app opens them, but my last-year’s-version of Microsoft Word does not....
It immediately feels crazy this didn't exist until... →
“It’s only when the tide goes out that you see who’s wearing a...”
– Warren Buffett
Why is Ping so bad?
As I watched Steve introduce Ping last week, I was impressed. Sure, he came off like an uncool dad trying to sound hip while talking about music—who name-drops the “Honda Civic Tour”?—but the project itself seemed like a natural, reasonable way for Apple to get into social networking, and an addition to the iTunes experience that some/many people would enjoy.
But then I played with...
“Language to avoid at all costs: ‘Ban same-sex marriage.’ Our base...”
– National Organization for Marriage, aka the group dedicated to BANNING SAME-SEX MARRIAGE.
It is insane to me that Apple still does not connect the “Location” field of Calendar appointments to the “Maps” app in iOS. If I put a well-formed address in an area explicitly designed for location data, I should be able to click on it and get directions.
Google Maps & Commander's Intent
In the book Made To Stick by the Heath Brothers, they describe the idea of the Commander’s Intent. Goes something like this: As battle plans make their way down the chain of command, they become incredibly detailed and specific. But as soon as a fighting starts and reality intervenes, the plans are rendered immediately useless. So rather than having soldiers worried about what Step 6 is...