You can’t see them unless you are a registered iOS developer, however John Gruber has done an excellent job recapping it. Take a look at the points that he calls ‘interesting ones’.
Of note Apple is flat out saying that if your app is crap they will reject it, likewise if it is the same as 10,000 other apps without improving upon them. Really interesting is that the higher the price the more time they spend on it, which from a consumer stand point is really great.
A bunch of great quotes that TechFlash got from the AT&T President for the West Region Fred Devereux, here are some of my favorites:
Nationwide, the company is spending $18-$19 billion on wireless and wireline improvements this year, a 5-10 percent increase over last year.
“Of the four major carriers in the U.S., we carry half of the mobile data traffic,” he said.
I would guess that most of us use a calendar tool of some sort, maybe you stick to paper calendars, but if you read this blog I would guess you use a digital calendar of some sort. The problem with digital calendars though is that they all suck, at least all the ones that I have tried.
The user interface of most calendar apps is set to mimic old day planners, failing to take advantage of the dynamic digital interface that is at their disposal. Further most digital calendars exist in their own bubble, much like PCs before networking was standard, no calendar program talks to the other (unless you have an expensive Exchange or iCal Server setup, which most people don’t and even then you are restricted to those using your server).
I spent a good three hours today driving around to and from various appointments, this gave me way too much time to ponder about the state of digital calendars. Luckily (for whom I don’t know) I came up with some ideas on how to fix calendar apps.
First things first, all calendars suck at showing the data that we store in them. Who wants to see 30 boxes arranged in a grid with tiny text? Who wants to see only what they need to do today? Who needs to see the past days of the week when you use a week view? I would guess that for most of you these views are mostly useless, most useless is the seemingly more popular ‘list view’ where you get a list of upcoming events with times. Yeah, that isn’t very helpful in spatially planning your time, now is it?
Here is what my iCal looks like in the view I always look at it in, week view:
Here is the same view on the iPad:
And lastly the day view on the iPhone (because all the other view options suck):
Can anyone honestly tell me that those views work perfectly for them? Because I think they suck, actually I think they really suck.
Here is how I would like to see it (click for larger view):
You get ‘today’ a bit larger than the rest, since it is the most pertinent. You see the next three days, as I don’t plan a whole lot much more in advance, nor do I need to worry about it sooner than a fews days away. My reasoning for three days is so that on Friday you would be able to see Monday’s events in the view, thus helping those of us that work M-F. Additionally this doesn’t show you the past days, because really how often do you need to refer to your calendar to see what you did yesterday?
Additionally I used one column to show a list view of upcoming events. The idea behind adding this list view (even though I hate list views) is to help people see just how busy they are coming up, and as a quick point of reference when you are on the phone planning a meeting. If you are on the phone you wouldn’t have to switch from the current week to see your upcoming schedule instead you get an idea of what is going on and can click a link to add a future event.
I think this would be pretty sweet, but that may just be me.
I despise the refusal that calendar app creators have when it comes to getting all the clients talking to one another. Yes you can ‘invite’ someone to a meeting, but that is it. Unless you have iCal Server or Exchange you can’t see when they are free, or do a search for next available time everyone I want to invite has. It is 2010 and we have yet to figure proper scheduling, instead we waste time sending around 50 emails with 100 people CC’d and hitting reply all to figure out that everyone is free on Tuesday at 10.
Have you ever used iCal to invite someone to an event? Have you? It sucks. If the other person is using a Mac (which is not guaranteed) they get the option of Accepting or Declining. So if you happened to invite them when they are not free all the can do is decline, leaving you wondering if they don’t want to meet or if you just picked a bad time. If they are a Windows Outlook user forget about it, rarely does it work – often they have to manually reply.
If I send out an invite to three people all using Macs (let’s not ask for too much here) I should be able to immediately get automated responses letting me know if that person is not free, and if they are busy the computer should suggest 3 other times I can pick from that works for everyone – all without the end user ever having to see the request, yet. Once a time that works for everyone is seen we should then be asked if we want to attend, and given the option to add a custom response in – that way the communication is kept clear.
Why is it that I can’t attach a meeting agenda to the invite? That seems stupid, and trivial to do. Come on, I mean is anybody really trying to make a decent calendar program because I really get the feeling that I must be the only using a calendar at times.
Right now my household is just my Wife and I, and I can’t imagine how bad it will be scheduling things later in life when we add kids to the mix. Why is it that we can only subscribe to each others calendars? Why isn’t there just an option to make an event a ‘joint event’ where by one of us creates the event and it is automatically added to both our calendars, no acceptance needed. It would also immediately give an overlay of my calendar on hers when she goes to add a joint event so she can see if I am free (and vice versa).
Right now if we want to do something like this we have to use shared calendars (to make sure we are both free) and then invite each other to the events. How 1999 is that? Sure there are other web based options, but none that my Wife really wants to be using, if you want my wife to use it then it needs to be made super easy.
I would also like to set times where the calendar app knows that I am busy (e.g. After 5pm before 7am and on weekends and holidays) and if I get an invitation during those times it is automatically declined with my pre-typed reason as to why. This is a tiny thing, but time savers like this really add up and keep you focused.
I figured we better hit on the hot topic of late, and I wonder why calendar apps don’t seem to know where things are. By that I don’t mean that they should know when I am at a particular place, but where things are in relation to one another. For instance if I set a meeting at 8a in Seattle, WA and another at 10a in Portland, OR shouldn’t my calendar program be smart enough to know that this is impossible. That is a 3+ hour drive, no way I can make it to both meetings.
I would like to see calendaring programs that take into account drive times. What if you could set a meeting to start at 10a, but remind you at 9:30a and block out the 15 minutes before the meeting as the needed travel time. How cool would that be? Then when you get an invite using the new invite system I devised above, the computer would be able to tell if that time is available and if you would even have time to get from one place to another. This is in the realm of possibility, so why isn’t any one doing it?
As we all know this comes down to money, who wants to pay $50 for a good calendar app? I know I would, and a handful of others probably would, but enough people to make the product profitable? That is the real question, and the only way to find out is to try.
Malik:
Chaos at HP essentially helps Oracle.
Sound theory, and I wouldn’t put it past Ellison to try something like this.
Quentin Hardy of Forbes speculates on a possible Oracle acquisition of Dell, which is really interesting. What I know about Ellison is that without a doubt he loves taking over companies, especially when they start to resist. This would make for a great story if Oracle buys Dell and inserts Hurd as the CEO.
#8 is duly noted, who knew.
Charlie Sorrel:
We don’t have any reports on the power use, but apparently the scaled-up cellphone interface doesn’t work so well.
Gee who would have thought.
Oracle via a press release:
“Oracle has long viewed HP as an important partner,” said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. “By filing this vindictive lawsuit against Oracle and Mark Hurd, the HP board is acting with utter disregard for that partnership, our joint customers, and their own shareholders and employees. The HP Board is making it virtually impossible for Oracle and HP to continue to cooperate and work together in the IT marketplace.”
Here is how I read this, “back off, we (whereby ‘we’ I mean me, Larry Ellison) is bigger and more powerful than you. This is going to be so good, I am glad Oracle responded, this is going to be great.
In a rather pathetic attempt to make money Macworld magazine has launched a subscription model to their website, it gives you all the features that they should be giving everyone for free already (except the ad free part) along with this little gem:
Special community status and features. Members of Macworld Insider receive a special Insider badge on every post they make in the Macworld Forums.
Yay a special badge for only $40 a year!
Among the new features here are the ones that they should already be offering for all readers of the site:
Given the stupidity of this I felt compelled to post about it.
Those that follow me on Twitter may already be aware that I spent the labor day weekend in Las Vegas. It was a short trip, but in my opinion one can only stay a few days in Vegas before they are either completely burned out, or broke.
During the trip there were quite a few ideas that popped into my head that I wanted to suss out, but never got the chance to, instead the point of this post it to share some half baked thoughts that came from my trip.
Now my hotel was a bargain price and old (Luxor), but even still wireless should not have been an unreasonable expectation. I really expect this to change over the next few years and more and more small computers omit Ethernet ports.
Now this was not just in the Casinos, I saw this when we were on the roads, highways, freeways, street, airport, malls. My guess is that the network was simply over loaded, but even still how odd. I have rarely seen the network become useable and unusable in such short times, without moving around. ( I of course checked to make sure I was holding the phone correctly).
The MiFi was a life saver, because it was on Verizon. I cannot tell you how much I used the MiFi with my iPad this weekend, it was invaluable and really snappy. This was in stark contrast to the lovely craptastic AT&T network.
Gowalla, and Foursquare have some serious work to do on their implementations if they want people to check in while in Vegas. I only tried a couple of times and was overwhelmed trying to find exactly where I was (on top of the network troubles), eventually I gave up (which brought much happiness to my Wife). When you go to check in, every place inside the casino appears and then they often appear a couple of times leading to tons of confusion.
My new Bose In-Ear Headphones
I introduced my wife to Angry Birds, now she too is addicted.
Reading articles in Instapaper while on the plane is bliss.
I only brought the iPhone 4 as my camera, which was a mistake. It is a great camera for a phone, but there are some really weird white balance issues that I ran into. HDR will solve the rest of the backlighting problems that I had though.
I checked my bag and only carried on my iPad bag. Holy cow was that a small carry on, I loved it.
They sell iPods in vending machines at the Airport, which is not all that uncommon. What struck me though is what you would do with that iPod. I mean if you forget your iPod and buy one before you hop on a flight how are you supposed to get your music on it to listen to it? Made no sense to me.
It had been quite a while since I last flew Southwest Airlines, and the boarding system has been revamped, which is rally stupid. Instead of being a free for all for everyone as the groups are called (A, B, and C depending on how early you checked in), you now get a group and a number in that group. Everyone then must line up by group and number. This is way to confusing for most people, I think they are better off assigning seats at this point.
I charged the iPad Thursday night and only once for 10 minutes before I left Vegas to Seattle. Last night when I put the iPad on the charger it had 19% battery remaining – which is astounding.
Hani Durzy for the HP Corporate Blog:
In response to the news of Mark Hurd’s intention to join Oracle, HP today filed a civil complaint in the California Superior Court (County of Santa Clara) against Hurd. HP’s statement on the matter:
“Mark Hurd agreed to and signed agreements designed to protect HP’s trade secrets and confidential information. HP intends to enforce those agreements.”
Sounds like a whole lotta crying over at HP. Larry Ellison is going to have a field day with this, God do I wish Ellison had a blog of his own.
Shawn Blanc:
The greatest value the iPad has added to my life is that I read much, much more.
I agree with just about everything he says, though I do regret not having a 3G model even though I have a MiFi.
BaseApp:
BaseApp is a menubar application for Mac OS X that helps you stay on top of everything that happens in your Basecamp accounts.
Works great, and a great idea to boot.
Pretty interesting page from Google showing the edits to their Privacy Policy set to take effect next month. I really like that they have this page for people, but really I don’t remember getting a notice about this, and there are a lot of edits.
I have talked a lot about email lately and since I was out of town this weekend checking email sporadically I came to a realization about a new email rule that I want. A little background first, I try my very hardest not to work unless it is 8a-5p M-F (not including vacation and holidays). This means that if I get an email after hours or over a weekend it waits until the next time I am working, some emails go unanswered from Friday at 5:01p until Monday at 8a, it is just the way that I work. I don’t like people demanding that I be available to them 24/7, when I only get paid for 40 hours a week.
So then you can imagine the email rule that I want:
Now of course I can’t create this with the tools that I currently have, there are work arounds (turning off email checking for that account during those times is one) but the workarounds all suck. Why can’t I just build natural language rules like this, how great would that be?
[This part of an ongoing series on dealing with email, to see more posts look here.]
Staci D. Kramer on The Atlantic for iPad:
In coming weeks, the magazine publisher plans to convert single-issue app sales to an iPad digital newsstand app—and to launch Atlantic Premium, a daily bundle of everything the magazine produces online for a monthly access fee.
I like the idea of more publishers creating monthly subscriptions for their magazine apps, but I worry that they think $4.99/mo is acceptable. You can subscribe to a paper magazine for $15-20 a year, sure there is ads but hey that is not a bad price. iPad magazines however cost $2.99-4.99 an issue and you still get ads, which is just absurd.
If the hardware depicted in the ad is real, then the iPhone may have a real competitor in the hardware arena. That is a sexy looking phone.
David Karp:
When creating a post, you can now attribute its content (eg. a pull quote or image) to a source outside of Tumblr. That source gets clearly attributed everywhere that post is reblogged on Tumblr.
A much needed update for Tumblr, making a great blogging platform even easier, though I am still a huge WordPress fanboy.