Thoughts on WWDC Keynote (2007)

So, now, that I've had time to digest some of the WWDC Keynote address, here are my thoughts:

1) Cover View - This iTunes-initiated interface is getting out of hand. It's on Apple's redesigned web site, it's now a view option in Leopard's Finder. It's on iPhone.

I just don't think it's very effective for a large amount of stuff. It's nice in iTunes, as you see the album covers, and it harkens back to a time of flipping through LPs…but for the Finder? No way. Give me a list of files and their content and I'll be happy. A better way to improve Finder navigation would simply make column view default to always show full filenames (instead of truncating them). People need better ways to find their stuff (like Spotlight, not another way to view icons).

2) Safari on Windows & Ver. 3 - Hooray for re-arrangable tabs! Finally!

People are bitchin' about restarting upon installation. Doesn't bother me too much. I'm sure the newer versions won't have that.

The fact that it is available for Windows is so smart and so huge. iTunes is on everyone's PC, and it's ease of use has piqued people's interest in Macs and OS X. It does open up an interesting question of how these two operating systems (Windows and Mac) are starting to come closer together and are we beginning to see the end of true differentiation between platforms.

3) New dock - Eh. Not sure how cool it is. Kind of weird to see it recess into space, although it seems to be working towards the feel of Time Machine. I just don't think I need to see more reflections in design. Our Web 2.0 obsession with the properties of glass has jumped the shark, I hope.

4) New menu bar - Oh, we're just realizing that people put their own pictures on their desktop? And now we're going to make the menu bar semi-transparent so you can see 10 pixels more of a photo. I don't think so. This reeks of degrading functionality and seems unnecessary. Hopefully, it'll be an option we can turn off.

5) Stacks - Like tabbed browsing in iChat, this seemed a long time in coming. My biggest question is why are these opened stacks leaning like the tower of pisa? Is it just me or is there some funky reasoning behind this windblown effect?

6) iChat - Looks awesome. Tabbed chats, finally! Love the presentation feature. It makes it much more appropriate for business use. The changing backgrounds thing is weird, and I can foresee more pornographic uses for this than actual functional uses. Plus, I don't know how many times the holographic version of me can bee seen before getting old and just weird.

7) Time Machine - Sounds great, but seems like it will be less easy to use than Jobs has been boasting. First, you need a massive hard drive to keep backed up with all your home computers stuff. Second, if you're going to do this wirelessly-even with the new 'n' protocol-it seems like it will take a much longer than demonstrated.

Ultimately a good first step, but I don't think most people will have the resources needed out of the box. Plus, am I the only one who feels like the whole swirling space time-contiuom feel is a bit to treky for my liking?

8) Quick Look - Seems like a great answer to a common frustration. Opening the wrong file, and waiting for an application to load is always a tad frustrating. So, if this can help that's great. I don't think I'll be using it a lot, and I actually think there are some big problems with it.

I think people are going to open files via Quick Look and then want to edit them. I don't think people will understand that it's a "quick look." I see it's use in driving the iChat functionality, but I'm afraid most everyday users will misunderstand the purpose and find it frustrating.

Plus it seems like the biggest pain is having developers add the quick view functionality to their files. I can Quick Look this file, but not this one? Seems like something's not working right, then. How much bigger are these files with a high quality preview in Quick Look? How much resources does it take up to use it? Is it a RAM hog like Dashboard?

Plus, for some apps, what's the difference between Quick Look and the app? For example: Quicktime and Preview. If I can play a quicktime file via Quick Look and make it full screen, then why do I have an app for Quicktime? Same with Quick Looking PDFs. What's the point of having the Preview app?

9) iPhone apps - This seems like a joke. I'm no developer, but if you wanted to show me how developing an app on the iPhone is cool, you could give me something better than a directory. Doesn't this thing already have an address book? Don't I already have a sense of what that looks like? Didn't you just do the same thing with an LDAP on the back end?

This is the coolest extension of the iPhone's capabilities that I have seen: a shopping list application called OneTrip.

10) .Mac stuff - "Back to my Mac" is fantastic, and really nice the way the IP integration works behind the scenes. My biggest question is will it work when the computer I want to access is asleep?

11) Boot Camp - Parallels is way better. I don't know why you just wouldn't use that.

Overall, I'm not too excited about Leopard yet. Tabbed iChat browsing and the Safari features are honestly all I'd want right now. Tiger is so nice, and these newer features seem like they will really need some solid user time to work out their functionality.

Lastly, does anyone know for sure if Leopard will be a Universal app?

Steve Jobs at D

Terrific, if for nothing else, the last 15 seconds.

Caption contest

Okay, so let's have some fun. Gates and Jobs were seated together at some D4 conference thing-a-ma-bob (I'm sure not as cool as TED).

Anyway, let's write some captions for this photo. Whoever writes the best one will be given…a brand new Zune! There's enough leftover, that we're willing to give some away. So, caption away.

*Zune prize to be awarded if and only if Zune sales exceed iPod sales in the next 3 months.

Flexibility vs. Simplicity

Apple and EMI made their big announcement yesterday about DRM-free music and premium downloads. It certainly is a big deal, as those who care a lot about technology and music, have been fighting for a wider range of DRM-free music for a long time.

The announcement is really wonderful and begins the slippery-slope of DRM changes that consumers have been demanding. There are a few things that haven't been discussed in the Q&A session that I found interesting.

First, EMI's CEO, Eric Nicoli, made the statement that EMI had known about Steve Job's feelings about DRM far before his well-known open letter about DRM. It seems that this letter was more of a rebuttal to attacks on Apple's iPod and iTunes in Europe than an attack on the music companies. It was as if Jobs was letting the nay-sayers know that he has been in favor of DRM-free music all along, but it was the music companies holding everyone back. Kind of like saying, "I told the big boys already, but their not listening, so stop blaming me and my company." Passing the buck a bit.

Anyway, the really interesting comment to me was from Steve Jobs on choices (Timestamp 41:02): "Life is a balance between total freedom and simplicity. We try to strike the local maximums… where we can give people what they tell us… and what we think they want… and yet keep it very simple."

I connected to this statement, because it Jobs articulates the struggle of design very well. As designers you want to create something that will satisfy the consumer's problem (i.e. I want to buy music easily and securely form the Internet), be flexible (i.e. I want to buy only one song, or a song at a better quality, or without dirty words), and yet keep it simple (integrate the store within the player, make backing-up the music integrated, and give me album artwork automatically, etc.).

To me companies like Microsoft and Sony have always been scoring really high in the total freedom category. Their products can be "modded" and third-party applications abound for them. They allow a person to do virtually anything related to their products.

Companies like Apple and Google have done well with simplicity. Here's one white page with a dialog box, one image, and two buttons. Apple for years had only a one-button mouse ship with it's computers.

To me the race is now on for that balance that Jobs mentions. Google's front page is actually a bit more complex now, including a personalized home page, and customizable widgets. Apple has embraced a mouse with four buttons and a click-wheel. Microsoft is simplifying it's interface to resemble the more user friendly OS X.

Google's Adwords is a terrific example of the two extremes of simplicity and freedom. There are two ways to use Google's Adwords: a Starter Edition and a Standard Edition. The Starter Edition is on the simplicity side of the extreme and the Standard Edition is all about Freedom. Starter has one campaign, one defined area, one set of keywords, etc. Standard has the ability to create multiple campaigns over many specific areas with various keywords. It includes analytics and reports. You have a virtually infinite array of choices.

Jumping from a Starter Edition to a Standard Edition is overwhelming, and I wish now that I could jump back for my NJ Mac Help campaigns. If you have ever "graduated" from Starter to Standard like me, then you perhaps know what I mean. There is no middle ground for Adwords.

Apple, I think has been doing a great job of opening itself up to more flexibility, while still safeguarding it's simplicity. Boot camp, the Intel switch, iTunes/iPods working with PC's: these were all flexibility moves. So, as we see Apple become more balanced or hit those "local maximums," I wonder how many people will seek to reap their benefits.

iRack

Thanks to Chris from Source for this:

The 79th Oscar Ads in Review

I have been known to say that the Academy Awards is now the new Super Bowl of creative advertising, based on last year's ads, and the fact that advertising has jumped the shark with the actual Super Bowl.

Last night was clearly a disappointment for someone like myself, looking for great advertising. There were however some terrific moments in the show, but the overall the advertising efforts fell short for me. Let's review:

Coke: they had a few spots last night that were nice. Diet Coke had more if I recall correctly, and introduced us to the idea of "Yours, Diet Coke" I think the notion of Diet Coke writing it's consumers a letter is nice. The "Yours" aspect is certainly great for conveying the personal relationship that every brand covets. The best of these spots was the one with a woman moving from picture frame to picture frame - which I still cannot find on the Internet.

JC Penney: did some strangely inspiring work with 'Every Day Matters.' The biggest flaw I see for them is that they are trying so hard to look like a Target ad that I always thought their ads were for Target, but alas they were for JC Penney. Very cinematic ads (great placement) and their only miss is with the spot for a lingerie line with the line "for every body." Who are we kidding with this stuff? You're only showing hot models in your ad. Is it really for every body?

Apple: with some fanfare, Apple did a teaser spot for their iPhone, 'Hello.' I am so deep in the world of Apple rumors and opinion that I sufficiently have no opinion about this spot. I will say that for a "revolutionary" product, it doesn't seem to be a revolutionary spot. I don't know what you do with it, but I am not sure that was it either. I'm losing the connection between these stars and the product. Yes, it was aired for the Oscars, but what does that really say about the phone or Apple? Seems like it'd be more appropriate if the whole spot had turned out to be playing on the iPhone. My phone doesn't do that.

L'oreal: got f*ck yourself. Shame on you for doing such crappy, unoriginal spots on such a big stage. A lipstick that is the perfect shade for a specific celebrity? Good for them. Let them wear it. Where's the lipstick that's MY perfect shade?

Bank of America: 'Bank of Opportunity.' Oh, I get it… Land of Opportunity = America, thus Bank of America = Bank of Land of Opportunity or best shortened to "Bank of Opportunity." We've used the transitive property to describe what is essentially nothing. Every bank is a bank of opportunity. Good job ditching higher Standards - because that wasn't true anymore.

Saturn: Turning some car award into the ultimate Stanley Cup experiment: pretty fun and another reason to like Saturn.

Okay, so those are the ones I can remember. Clearly they didn't live up to what I had hoped for, but oh well. At least we had the actual show to watch!

What's in a name - iPhone?

In considering the recent unveiling of Apple's iPhone and the excitement surrounding it, I believe Apple has made a misstep.

First, Apple now has a continuing legal battle with Cisco, as Cisco had announced their own iPhone several weeks prior and had owned rights to the name 'iPhone' for even longer.

Second, and perhaps most perplexing, is Apple's abandonment of the 'iPod' moniker. Well, perhaps abandonment is too harsh. Apple isn't phasing out 'iPod.' But in Steve Jobs own presentation, he pointed out that Apple's new product is at least a third iPod. As he put it: an iPod, a web device, and a phone.

So, what I wonder is, why not call it, 'iPod phone?' It would follow in the same line of current iPod naming conventions: iPod nano, iPod shuffle, e.g. It would eliminate any worry about litigation with Cisco's iPhone. It also would fit in a logical way with the rest of the iPod line.

One of the best things about the name 'iPod' was the foresight involved with it's naming. At first, it was primarily a music player, and no one would have thought twice if the name for it had been iPlayer or iListen or iBox, etc. But Apple had the prudence to realize that there was room for growth for the device. And thus, iPod was actually an appropriate name as the device grew to include photos, video, games, contacts, calendars… and you would suppose phone capabilities.

Instead Apple is abandoning iPod as part of it's phone's name, and it leaves me saying 'iWonder.'

Apple changes the world again

Steve Jobs, in today's keynote speech, alluded to Apple's ability to change the way we do things. They certainly did it with the Mac in 1984. They did it with the iPod. And will this next endeavor, did they do it again?

It's an iPod, it's a phone, it's a web browser... but is it revolutionary? I hope so, because everyone has been talking it up so much... without ever knowing what it really was. With touch screen technology, it seems versatile enough to grow and be copied and be wanted... badly. Seems like all the ingredients that helped the last two revolutionary devices.

The really nice thing was making the technology work with something we already have... fingers. No need to keep track of your stylus or key in with tiny buttons. No, instead use fingers and gestures.

When I was at school at the University of Delaware, there was a Computer Engineering professor who was working on exactly this technology. He wanted to make a keyboard without keys. One where cutting and pasting was like gesturing a grab and a drop. The coolest part was how he had figured out how to identify each finger, so that an index + middle finger touch was different than a index and pinky finger touch.

I'm not sure if this professor's work ties in at all with the Apple iPhone, but it sure seems like it's similar.

As I hear more and more about this phone I am stoked! It's running OS X! It's got a 2 megapixel camera! It's really so much more... a new way to call people.

Holy shit... it's just getting cooler.

Spam 2.0

According to a New York Times article, Spam is on a come back. How do people really profit off of spam e-mail anyway? I've always wondered. Well, that's for another time.

I started noticing a few months ago that I was getting a really large number of messages that were not being picked up by my spam filter. I'd cycle through them, marking them as junk, but it didn't seem to matter. They were still getting put in my Inbox.

Then I came up with a way to virtually eliminate them from my Inbox, sending them where they belong - to the Junk Mail folder. Today, I share that method with you.

The method works well for a few reasons. First, I am using an Apple computer, running Tiger (OS 10.4). You may have a way to do what I am about to show if you are on some other machine or operating system, but I'll be going through the Apple way.

The second reason the method works for me is that I keep a very good address book that is integrated with my e-mail program. Apple makes it easy by calling these programs "Address Book" and "Mail" but most e-mail programs integrate the two (Entourage, for example). Keeping a good address book allows you to really keep spam low, because e-mail sent from someone in your address book is e-mail you know.

Apple already has a great junk filter that learns what is junk by what messages you mark as junk. It's a process that in the beginning can seem tedious (going through every e-mail to find junk messages and marking them as such), but it quickly gets easier. What surprised me was that Apple's junk filter was not learning that some e-mails I was marking as junk, were in fact junk... because they kept arriving in my Inbox.

So I took a look at the e-mails and I noticed a pattern. Most of them were not text e-mails. They were e-mails with embedded images, made to look like text. A lot of junk mail filters will learn to look at the text of e-mails for irregular grammar, but these e-mails had no text... well, at least no text that the computer could see because the text was part of an image.

The junk filter was also not picking up on any pattern of the sender's e-mail address, because these messages were coming from everywhere. Judy and Elsa and Warren... the names and e-mails were all unique and never duplicated. However, they do share one thing in common. They weren't in my address book!

So, in Apple's Mail program there is a wonderful section called "Rules" (Go to Mail > Preferences > Rules). In Rules you can set up processes that automate things you want to happen in your e-mail. For example, I have my fiancé's e-mail always show up with a purple color highlighting it in the list. This allows me to easily see if I have a message from her.

Awww, too cute? Okay, well using Rules is also how I get most of this new junk mail moved to my junk mail folder as well. Rules uses a series of conditions, and the way I have it set up it looks like this:


Let's go through some of these conditions:

1 - Make sure you set the action to respond only if ALL of the conditions are met. Otherwise it might send a lot of your regular, good e-mail to your Junk mail folder.

2 - We are looking for messages that use image attachments of the file type .GIF This is a standard image file type. Many of you might say that you don't want to do this, because then when people send you pictures they'll get put in your Junk Mail folder. Well, most pictures are saved as JPEGs or .JPG files (as they should for pictures) and that is why we have set the condition to look for senders in your address book and previous recipient lists. Same goes for people who have signatures with their e-mail that use a .GIF image. If you are getting e-mail from these folks, they should be in either your previous recipient list or your address book. If not, put them there and you'll be fine.

3 - I have the rule set to move (not copy) the message to my Junk Mail folder and also flag it. You don't need to flag it, but I did so that I could see how many of these Junk mail messages I was actually catching. It turns out that they make up 48% of my Junk Mail folder!

So, yes it was really helpful to set up this new Rule or filter to manage the new wave of spam. Hopefully it can be helpful to you as well.

Zune, zune, zune

So it's been a few days since Microsoft brought to market their own mp3 player, Zune. It' pretty clear where my loyalty lies in the Microsoft/Apple battle, but when Zune came out I wanted to try to take an objective look at it, because it's a unique situation. Apple has constantly been playing second fiddle to Microsoft's dominance, and for once, Microsoft is now playing catch up in the music market. So, it is to Apple's advantage to look at this with seriousness, as they really haven't been in this position of #1 before.

So, I went to my local Target in order to see the device for myself, and see how I thought it could fare. Here's what I thought.

First off, I couldn't find it. The Target I went to has avery clearly marked electronics department filled with TVs and cameras and video games. There are end caps of aisles devoted to iPod accessories and PlayStation consoles, even musical instruments now. But I had to ask in order to find the Zune display. I thought that they might not actually have it in stock. It turned out that I had buzzed right by it, because the display was capping none other than the diaper aisle immediately preceding the electronics department.

There was so much established stuff in the electronics department that the Zune display had been pushed to a nearby, but not integrated aisle. These speaks volumes to the problem faces Microsoft. They have been out of the music game for so long that they are going to have to survive on the cusp of it for a long while before they are seen as a real player. (no pun initially intended)

So, once finding the darn thing, I took it through the paces (as much as I could because it was bolted down better than a field goal post). The first thing I noticed was the use of a click-wheel. It seems that Apple's click wheel user input has been so popular that Microsoft could not ignore it. They had to have one in order for Zune to look like it was an mp3 player.

The problem is that the click wheel is not a click wheel. It doesn't scroll with your touch, in fact it's simply a four way navigational button, with a select button in the middle. The first thing I tried to do was use it to scroll through a menu like a click wheel. When I brought Dee to the display, I saw her try to do the same thing. It doesn't work that way, however.

In addition to the non-wheel, click circle, there are two buttons to either side of it. One is "play/pause" and the other is "back." The thing that was terrific about iPod's click wheel design was that it eliminated the need for multiple buttons, by including all the functions of the iPod in the click wheel. (Early iPods had four buttons to control the music play back, when the wheel was strictly used for scrolling, but we're past that now.) This Zune design is not terrible, but...

one of the great things about the zune is that it uses it's screen in both portrait and landscape modes. If you're listening to music the Zune is held vertically, and if you are viewing photos or watching a movie, the screen can be turned horizontally allowing for a widescreen display. The problem is that your interface also turns, and those side buttons are now not that intuitive. What does an arrow pointing downward mean? What does a rotated play/pause button mean?

I have no idea how heavy the Zune really is in comparison to the iPod (again it was practically welded to the display), but the box that I was able to hold felt significantly heavier than an iPod box. The price is $250 which is only dead even with the iPod's price. The songs bought through Zune's music store can't be played on an iPod and vice versa.

It seems to me that you are going to have to be in one camp or the other, and I'm afraid for Microsoft that the iPod camp is far too big and the motivations for switching not great enough. (People want to cite the ability to share songs wirelessly as a great reason to switch, but honestly I can think of less than a handful of situations when this would happen for me and the shared music only plays three times.)

I know that there are people who have attacked the iPod over issues regarding the battery or scratches or price... but I just don't see people rushing to buy a Zune based on these reasons. I think they will catch some Windows users who still don't have an iPod and want to stay in the Windows world. I think they will get a few people who just want to try what's new... but I think the majority of people who already own iPods or have had an iPod experience will be disappointed in Zune and will either choose an iPod or no player at all.

Sorry, Microsoft, but I think Apple is still going to soundly beat you here, and as referenced earlier, keep you in the aisle where you and your brown colored player belong: with the diapers.

Are Macs for drop outs?

I just saw an ad for the new movie by Justin Long, a.k.a. the "Mac" in the new Apple ad campaign. The movie is called Accepted and chronicles the events surrounding a high school senior, played by Long, as he fakes not only his acceptance into college, but the colege itself.

So, my first question is: do we need another "college is just an amazing party" movie?

The bigger question is: what does Apple think about this? The hero of their newest ad campaign, the guy who they use to personify their personal computer, is not only faking his way into college, but lying about being a college student altogether! Hmmm.

Did he use Pages to create the fake letter of admission? Did he edit the whole experience in iMovie and burn it to a DVD with iDVD for nation-wide distribution? Is this the kind of movie that Apple wants coming out close to back-to-school with high expectations surrounding computer sales for new colllege students?

OR is this only the worries of an overly-obsessed Mac geek, and no one else really cares about this stuff? Probably the latter. In fact it's probably even better press for Apple, as proven by the fact that I wrote about it at least.

UPDATE: So, after actually watching the trailer... I've noted a few things.


Justin' Long's character actually is using a Mac when he fakes his acceptance letter, but he is using Microsoft Word and an HP scanner. Proof of concept for the "Macs can do that too" ad and the "works well with other technologies" ad.

Plus the movie has the ultra-edgy moral that "all it takes is a committed group of people, dedicated to learning to make education happen... not an institution filled with traditions and schedules and credits." Nice commentary, poor premise for a movie about hazing, wet-t-shirt parties and celebrating the nerds and losers from high school.

Nike+

There are people out there doing really cool things. That was supposed to be our motivation while I was in college. It was supposed to drive us to better ourselves… to face the competition and accelerate our own game.

There were a lot of times when I didn't accept it as a true statement. I often would think that for every cool thing being created, there was a exponentially high number of uncool things being produced—especially in advertising.

Today is one of those days when my pessimism is flipped on it's head, because today is the day I discovered the new partnership between Nike and Apple. They have come together to mold two products into one great idea.

They took Nike's passion for running and Apple's passion for music and created the Nike+Apple Sport Kit. The sport kit allows you to set up, track, and motivate your runs, by providing you with real time audio feedback of your progress during your run, syncing for tracking your progress over time and integrated music playlists to help motivate you along the way.

The idea is genius because it is simple and it's derived from the observation of what was naturally happening in the culture of both industries. People who run were buying iPods. They'd strap the to their arms and go out pumped up.

Apple and Nike came together to see the value in making a deeper commitment to the products for runners.

Give them the ability to track their progress. Give them specific music for their workout. Give them a community online to share in their accomplishments. Those are gifts that these types of consumers will snatch up.

The Nike shoes, designed to take the transmitter (pedometer) cost $100, and the pedometer and receiver for your iPod are $29. Not bad for what you're getting. There's also apparel, like shirts with nano pockets.

The shoes themselves are a bit understated for Nike. They actually look like simply a basic running shoe, black for men, grey for women. I'm excited to see what new designs they'll create with compatibility.

I'm guessing that the transmitter that plugs into your nano's dock connection is a bluetooth gadget, but they don't say on either Apple or Nike's site. I'm also wondering if it only works with the nano, or if it will work with fifth generation, video iPods as well. The 5th gen iPods aren't as comfortable or reliable to work out with in the long run, but there's no reason they can't be used for exercise.

Overall, this is a killer idea and it really gets me excited to go out and run. It's definitely proof-positive that people are out there thinking and creating worth-while stuff. I wonder who came to the table with the idea first, Nike or Apple?

Mac man?

Can anyone confirm if the guy in the new Apple spots (left) is John Hodgman of recent Daily Show fame?

iOlympics

Did anyone else note that the snowboarders (like Shaun White of the U.S.) in the half-pipe competition were almost universally sporting iPod nanos in their jackets? Does tis mean we'll see some black, silhouetted figures performing 900s and backside fakies? It wouldn't be the worst direction for the campaign to go in.