Month: October 2013

It is likely that there are going to be a lot of reviews about Mavericks, including some ridiculously in-depth ones. I’ve been using it since the first beta, so here are my assorted thoughts on the first non-cat version of OS X.

## Calendar

The new calendar is much improved over the ones of years past. The biggest addition for me is the ability to list travel times. You can set a meeting from 1p-2p, and additionally specify that it will take you 1 hour to get to the meeting. The travel portion is then reflected on your calendar, as is the actual meeting time.

The down side to the feature is that it doesn’t sync with iOS, or account for travel time *after* your meeting. So while your calendar will show that it takes 2 hours to get there, the calendar will have no indication of how long it takes to get back.

I would love for a little more Apple magic in this space. Specifically why can’t I define places and have Apple tell me the travel time. So I could define my Office, client office A, client office B and the calendar then assumes I will always be at my office, unless otherwise specified. So if my day is: office, client A and then client B — the calendar shows the travel time from my office to client A office, then tells me if I have time to come back to the office, or if I should travel to client B office right away (and that time), then assumes I head back to my office afterwards. Sounds complicated written out, but I see no reason it would be complicated in practice once default locations are setup.

So Calendar is a net positive, but the travel time addition is rather half-assed.

## Contacts

I keep all my contacts in Apple’s Contacts app. Traditionally this app looked like a book and following that tradition I loathed the app. This version of the Contacts doesn’t look like a book, and actually looks worse.

Contacts is easily the worst app that ships with Mavericks and that statement takes into account the Calculator app — an app that probably has never been updated.

## Maps

This is actually a fantastic addition for someone who does’t use Google. With the added bonus of easily sending a route, or map view to my iPhone. I really love having Maps as a part of OS X.

This is going to be really handy for those moments when you need to run to a meeting, but you don’t know where you are going. It used to be: get directions on your phone while still on wifi, then go. Now you can use a real keyboard, grab the directions quickly, shoot them to your phone. Way better.

## iCloud Keychain

I used it, but didn’t like it. 1Password is a far superior choice.

## Get It

[Mavericks is free][1], so I see no reason to not install it if you Mac is supported.

[1]: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/os-x-mavericks/id675248567?mt=12

As a nerd, you typically watch popular TV shows and think: *come on*. Hey, CSI, you can’t take a low-resolution and blurry security camera image and create a high-definition sharp image of a license plate. And you certainly cannot do that with just a few keystrokes and no mouse movement at all.

*So unrealistic.*

It’s also fun to look back at old TV shows and movies and laugh at how the entire plot is moot if one or more characters had a cell phone or iPad. And for years nerds have *known* that you can’t just ‘hack’ into XYZ server in a few minutes time — even if you are Chloe.

But then we found out that maybe if you are the government you *can* hack into these places. Not because you are that good of a hacker, but because the NSA had already spent months hacking into the system in preparation for you needing access at a future crucial point in the plot.

Which now presents TV and movie writers with a really awkward problem: they know just how powerful the NSA is, and it is more powerful than they thought the public would find believable to begin with.

This all came to a head last night when I was watching the most recent episode of Homeland (warning: possible spoilers ahead). In this episode the main character, Carrie (former CIA), is trying to escape the watchful eye of the CIA. Now pre-Snowden this episode would have been fine, but post Snowden (and even logically) it had a lot of problems.

1. Carrie kept her cell phone with her. She called a CIA contact that had the CIA listening in on the call next to him on this phone. Yet the CIA couldn’t find her? Come on. First of all it was an Android phone and we should have every reason to suspect that not only could the NSA/CI,A working together, find her, but that they could tap the mic on her phone to listen in. Yet, the CIA, didn’t find her. Magic phone?
2. Carrie also went to an ATM and into the branch of the bank only to find her accounts frozen. In reality the NSA/CIA would have known about this about 1 second after it happened, and yet… nothing. Dumb luck?

Ok, it’s fair to say that (due to the “twist” ending) the CIA really didn’t want to find her, but even still wouldn’t a trained CIA person, well anyone at the CIA, still ditch their phone and stay away from banks and ATMs? That seems like “on the run” 101.

Even if you don’t buy that, then what do you make of the fact that the kids in the episode who went on the run ditched their cellphones saying “they can track the GPS in these”. Yeah… oops the the former-spook didn’t think to do that, but a couple if dumb-shit teens thought of it? *Come on.*

This is very likely to be an ongoing problem for TV and movies going forward. In order to make the show based somewhat in reality, writers now have to account for the fact that if the government is after you, you are likely screwed. And that is just going to cause all sorts of problems for future plots, as characters are going to have to go dark and no longer will there be that tense period of “the character doesn’t know the government is after them, but the character manages to luckily escape”.

Basically all future characters will have to use pretend encryption on everything, thus talking to no “normal person”, and/or go on the run *before* anyone is after them.

[David Pogue, announcing his leaving NYT for Yahoo][1]:

> It’s not easy leaving the Times, especially when you admire it as much as I do. No matter what happens to prose on paper, the Times itself, as a gatherer and curator of news, will always be necessary and important. The culture may be changing, and the readership may be shifting, but this paper steadfastly focuses on responsible journalism, ironclad ethics and superb writing. I’ll always be a loyal ally.

I don’t have any particular interest in this news, but what I find interesting is the overall trend. The trend of, shall we say, “big name” writers for publications leaving larger publications to start their own. We are seeing this right now with Pogue, Greenwald, Mossberg and Swisher, Lessin, et al.

How many of these sites can the web sustain? I ask that not because I think the web can only sustain a finite amount of web sites, but because the business models underlying the web seem to only sustain a finite amount. As ad dollars need to be spread around more, the overall ad rates drop will drop across the board. Paywalls will become harder to run, ((And that’s saying a lot.)) as the wallet share is being pulled in more directions.

Advertisers can’t afford to pay high ad rates for every sites, and publishers already struggle to get advertisers to pay enough (and get advertisers to begin with). Readers cannot afford to “subscribe” to every site, and many *won’t* pay to subscribe to even their favorite sites. This doesn’t seem like an industry setup for success to me.

I don’t like consolidation in general, but it seems to me that if every writer who reaches X level of fame leaves to start their own publication, then pretty soon these small publications will all have to merge, or face overall declining revenue and wages. Having an audience and traffic is only the smallest part of success. Getting someone, *anyone*, to pay is the hardest and most important part. [Trust me on this][2].

[1]: http://pogueman.tumblr.com/post/64682813641/goodbye-and-hello
[2]: https://brooksreview.net/members/

[Interesting turn of events for Apple][1]. The choice Apple now faces is how to enforce their patents. It seems HTC and Microsoft/Nokia are likely fine due to earlier patent licensing deals, but Samsung and Google aren’t looking to hot. However, I don’t think it is as dire as Jason Mick makes it out to be.

Apple was out for blood with Google/Samsung, but that seemed driven more by “hot heads” than by business motivations (i.e. it was personal). It seemed like it was pushed by Steve Jobs with perhaps Forstall encouraging it. The read I have on Tim Cook is that he is a lot more analytical in his operations.

The smartest move would be to make it *more* expensive to sell Android devices through licensing agreements with these companies. They could still be crafted, like Google does with Google Android apps, that would keep Android hardware companies “in line” but that would also make money for Apple with each handset sold.

This should be very interesting to watch. ((I’d love for Apple to be a little cheeky and line-item Android patent licensing income. “And this quarter we made $793 million dollars from Android device sales. Off of Android sales of XX million units, note that is not the activation number Google touts, but the real ‘sold’ figure, as calculated by our licensing partners.”))

[1]: http://www.dailytech.com/Apple+Patent+on+Touch+Typing+Multitouch+Upheld+Allows+Ban+on+Most+Androids/article33580.htm?utm_medium=App.net&utm_source=PourOver

[This is a very interesting white paper][1] on the security built into iMessage. The outcome of which, [as summarized by Ars Technica][2], is that Apple theoretically *could* engineer iMessage in a way that it captures messages.

[Not surprisingly Apple has responded to AllThingsD][3]:

> “iMessage is not architected to allow Apple to read messages,” said Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller in a statement to **AllThingsD**. “The research discussed theoretical vulnerabilities that would require Apple to re-engineer the iMessage system to exploit it, and Apple has no plans or intentions to do so.”

Once again, this all comes down to trust of the company. Do you trust Apple to evade pressures from, say, the NSA for Apple to thwart this? For as big as Apple is, I trust them to do just that — flip off the NSA. Why? There’s lots of reasons I have, none of them particularly good, or worth sharing.

I do want to point out, that Apple’s argument sounds a lot like [Ladar Levison of Lavabits][4] argument. The “yeah, we *could* do that, but it ain’t gonna happen” argument.

[1]: http://blog.quarkslab.com/imessage-privacy.html
[2]: http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/10/contrary-to-public-claims-apple-can-read-your-imessages/
[3]: http://allthingsd.com/20131018/apple-no-we-cant-read-your-imessages/
[4]: https://rally.org/lavabit

[John Gruber][1]:

> I think the single biggest improvement Apple could (and really must) make to Siri is to make it faster. And that’s exactly the sort of thing Apple has never really shown the chops for.

I agree with the idea that Siri needs to be a lot faster, but it is the last sentence that I find odd. Because it seems to me that long-time Apple fans are incredibly skeptical that Apple will *ever* be able to have good “cloud” offerings (e.g. Siri, iCloud, sync, file storage, etc.) for the same reasons the Wall Street is skeptical of long-term Apple success.

These Apple-fans tend to point to past Apple failings as evidence of Apple will likely have future failings in cloud offerings — while at the same time these Apple-fans are mocking others that point to past Apple failings as indications of likely future failures in, well, anything. ((Notwithstanding the fact that I admit that .Mac and MobileMe were pretty crappy by general web standards.))

Seems a bit *off* to me.

[1]: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/10/17/siri-response-times

You are likely to hear a lot about a new weather app called [Weather Line][1] today. It’s making the rounds and a lot of people (rightfully) love it. I was one of the people that can brag that they got early access — though I think I may have been the last one added, doesn’t matter.

I’m personally still a bit undecided about the app. I like many things about it, but I have yet to have that moment where I feel the “yep, this is it”. That said here’s a few general thoughts on the app:

1. My sentiments are pretty closely reflected by what [Shawn Blanc said about the app][2]: “So, is Weather Line the best new general purpose weather app you can buy? I don’t think so (because of its lack of radar). But it is a fantastic app nonetheless.” (Great photo on his review too, if I do say so myself. And I do.)
2. Truly fantastic icon.
3. The more I use the app, the more annoying I find looking at other weather apps that don’t show hourly forecasts as pretty lines on a graph. That said, I am not sold on these pretty lines being the best way to display *current* weather conditions. When I want to check the weather right now, I just want to glance at the screen and that is hard to do with Weather Lines.

Overall, this is a solid weather app. I personally think it is more geared to weather nerds than, say, my parents.

[1]: http://weatherlineapp.com/
[2]: http://shawnblanc.net/2013/10/weather-line/

[Ingrid Lunden for TechCrunch][1]:

> Domain registration and hosting company GoDaddy is continuing on its acquisitions roll, with the announcement today that it acquired Media Temple, a premium domain hosting and website services company based out of Los Angeles that targets website development professionals. Financial terms are not being disclosed.

[From the Media Temple FAQ on the acquisition][2]:

> **Will you be sharing my personal & financial information with GoDaddy?**
> Your personal and financial information stays securely in our system. No third-party vendors will ever have access to it, which has always been our practice.

Translation: yes.

Media Temple *used* to be such a great company.

[1]: http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/15/godaddy-buys-media-temple-to-build-up-its-business-with-web-professionals/
[2]: http://weblog.mediatemple.net/2013/10/15/faqs-about-the-godaddy-acquisition/?utm_source=mtemail&utm_medium=text&utm_content=faq&utm_campaign=gd

[New report from the Snowden leaks by Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani][1]. The main points are:

> During a single day last year, the NSA’s Special Source Operations branch collected 444,743 e-mail address books from Yahoo, 105,068 from Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook, 33,697 from Gmail and 22,881 from unspecified other providers, according to an internal NSA PowerPoint presentation. Those figures, described as a typical daily intake in the document, correspond to a rate of more than 250 million per year.

And:

> The NSA has not been authorized by Congress or the special intelligence court that oversees foreign surveillance to collect contact lists in bulk, and senior intelligence officials said it would be illegal to do so from facilities in the United States. The agency avoids the restrictions in the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act][2] by intercepting contact lists from access points “all over the world,” one official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a classified program. “None of those are on U.S. territory.”

They want the contact lists so that they can do network analysis, as they do with PRISM collection. What’s interesting is that this is a bulk sweep that is rather indiscriminate and only approved by the President. Not even a faux-court here, just the office of the President.

At the very least, the NSA could take care of the SPAM problem for all of us:

> Spam has proven to be a significant problem for NSA — clogging databases with data that holds no foreign intelligence value. The majority of all e-mails, one NSA document says, “are SPAM from ‘fake’ addresses and never ‘delivered’ to targets.”

They took out a nuclear reactor with code, and they can’t take out the fucking spammers for us?

[1]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-collects-millions-of-e-mail-address-books-globally/2013/10/14/8e58b5be-34f9-11e3-80c6-7e6dd8d22d8f_story.html
[2]: https://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/