Marco Arment:
iOS 7 only “set you back months or years” if you haven’t been paying attention to the iOS development cycle and decided to take on far too much unnecessary additional work with the migration to 7, both of which would cause problems in any year, on any app, with any new OS release.
iOSecure on Reddit:
With iOS 7.1.1 Apple now takes multiple scans of each position you place finger at setup instead of a single one and uses algorithms to predict potential errors that could arise in the future. Touch ID was supposed to gradually improve accuracy with every scan but the problem was if you didn’t scan well on setup it would ruin your experience until you re-setup your finger. iOS 7.1.1 not only removes that problem and increases accuracy but also greatly reduces the calculations your iPhone 5S had to make while unlocking the device which means you should get a much faster unlock time.
Fascinating. I have noticed that with every update Touch ID gets better and better.
Matt Gemmell:
For the vast bulk of stuff that most people will want to do on a computer, though, most of the time you don’t need a desktop monster. I don’t think you even need a 15” screen, which is essentially a portable desktop. You just have to use a small screen productively.
I’ve never used an 11″ Air for work, or anything, but I did have a 13″ Air for quite some time and currently use a 15″ MacBook Pro. What Matt is saying is true for me 95% of the time. I got rid of my 24″ monster screen because I simply didn’t need all of that.
There is, though, one specific instance where I am still cramped working on a 15″ display: working on a large spreadsheet while flipping back to reference information.
Just today I was inputting data into a property tax analysis spreadsheet from Assessor websites and it was a pain. Would have been faster for those two tools to be side by side, but that creates its own problems on small screens.
But, then, ask yourself how much you do that work — likely it’s less than you think. For just about everything else I have found the smaller screens to be better.
Speaking of Jared Sinclair he has a blog post up today about the wasted year iOS 7 brought on developers:
Fast-forwarding a year, the effect that iOS 7 has had on third party development is disheartening — which sounds like a fatuous thing to say, since there have been so many well-liked redesigns over the past year. But that’s the rub: the vast majority of third-party developers’ time has been spent redesigning and reimplementing apps to dress the part for iOS 7.
The one thing iOS 7 seems to have done, though, is to bring easy money to many developers who hit a wall with improving their app(s). That is: redesign for iOS 7 and sell the app as new. That was a pretty common, if contentious, theme for this past year.
That said, while I agree iOS 7 redesigns were a set back, I have less empathy for this complaint. iOS 6 looked old, iOS 7, or a redesign in general was needed if the platform was to continue to be successful. So on the one hand you can look at this as a setback, or a reboot. On the other you can look at it like the shift from PowerPC to Intel on Macs — annoying but necessary for long term health of the platform. (Or if you prefer the shift to the taller iPhone format. Or retina displays. Or…)
Ben Bajarin on the iPad:
As I have reflected on this point, it has led me to think the iPad may be cursed. It may be too good of a general purpose device in that it lacks a preferred or specific use case. What I mean is the iPad lacks a function its owner prefers or can only do on the device. One that can not be done on any other device they own.
Kim Zetter:
In a study spanning two years, Erven and his team found drug infusion pumps–for delivering morphine drips, chemotherapy and antibiotics–that can be remotely manipulated to change the dosage doled out to patients; Bluetooth-enabled defibrillators that can be manipulated to deliver random shocks to a patient’s heart or prevent a medically needed shock from occurring; X-rays that can be accessed by outsiders lurking on a hospital’s network; temperature settings on refrigerators storing blood and drugs that can be reset, causing spoilage; and digital medical records that can be altered to cause physicians to misdiagnose, prescribe the wrong drugs or administer unwarranted care.
Comforting.
Frank Chimero:
What’s interesting about digital tools for information work is how frequently they are born from a specific ideology: someone thought work should be done in a certain manner, they found no tools to support that method, so they set off to build their own tool that presumes their ideology is true and best. Thus, we get another to-do app, Twitter client, or project management app.
Ben Thompson:
Apple, though, does deserve some of the blame for the slower development of these new opportunities. Their reticence in enabling sustainable businesses on the app store makes building a business on apps, particularly new-to-the-world concepts, a risky proposition. This is unfortunate; after all, it was a 3rd party – Adobe – that truly drove desktop publishing. Unfortunately, the way Adobe treated Apple in the late 90s likely contributes to Apple’s current attitude towards developers, but it’s to Apple’s own long-term detriment.
Thousands of words have been spilled this past week dooming the iPad, or holding it up. Of all those, the above passage strikes me as most imperative. I've talked to a lot of iOS developers and they seem to be struggling a lot. After all, when's the last time you heard some kid making millions on a new app? Only big studios are making that money now, because the App Store is simply broken. Search, charts, upgrades, trials, you name it — it's broken.
The iPad will never reach its full potential if developers are not properly incentivized to develop for it, to look at it as a way to do what they love.
Federico Viticci on the biggest need for iOS:
I could discuss ideas for inter-app communication on iOS for hours, but I’d like Apple to start from the basics and iterate from there. Look at how apps can open a Mail compose window now, or how you can create a Calendar event from email messages.5 Those are essentially app features made available to other apps with no manual switching required: imagine if, again, a user could configure actions available in Safari, Mail, or other apps through this system. Combined with a UI for picking files from apps, iOS could be better suited for productivity tasks and general sharing actions than it is now.
I'd put the need for this on par with the need for copy and paste back when then iPhone launched. Apple simply cannot ignore this any longer. Something must be done.
Nikil Saval on the creation of the cubicle:
And it was too late to fix the problem. He had trapped people in giant fabric-wrapped walls, when he had meant, like Propst, to free them.
It turned out that companies had no interest in creating autonomous environments for their “human performers.” Instead, they wanted to stuff as many people in as small a space for as cheaply as possible as quickly as possible.
We have cubicles in our office and they are terrible, but I think “open plans” are probably just as bad (but prettier). The plan for the original “action office”, complete with standing workstations, sounds truly great. We should bring those back.
There were many idiosyncratic touches. Because Propst had convinced himself that work out of sight was work out of mind, there were no large desk drawers. Instead, there was a movable display surface, from which items could be retrieved and replaced at ease. A standing rolltop desk not only kept workers on their feet but also allowed them to leave work out overnight, securely closed.
Modern update would be needed, but sounds really neat. I might try to devise a way to have my “office” space defined like this.
Justin Williams isn't so hopeful about Flickr:
I want Flickr to succeed, but I worry that the Flickr I want to succeed isn’t the Flickr that Marissa Mayer is building.
Shawn has a nice overview of the new Flickr iPhone app, well worth the read. I'm really excited to see where Flickr is heading these days and I would wager they stand a good chance to be my go to service in the not to distant future.
This is excellent.
Step 2.
This is step one.
Galen Gruman:
It’s time for Google to admit what it does and to act consistently on its policies (or withdraw policies it doesn’t intend to enforce). That honesty will help stem the loss of trust. People know that companies exist to make money, but they need to know the true relationship they’re entering and don’t end up feeling misled. We all know the promises that the banks, airlines, insurance companies, cellular providers, and cable companies make aren’t real, and they routinely mislead us on pricing and services — so we don’t trust them. Does Google really want to be like those industries?
I could quote the entire post, it is a must read for anyone who uses Google. The above bit was the best part.
Matt Gemmell on negative criticism:
I still struggle with that type of feedback, and anyone who says they don’t is deceiving themselves. It’s all too easy to take it to heart, without trying to assess the validity of the remarks first. You have to cultivate an attitude of being open to pushback, without letting yourself be destroyed by it. The assessment itself must be assessed. If you can manage to do that, you’ll live longer, and you’re a wiser person than I am.
I get a lot more negative emails than most of my blogger buddies do — it’s the nature of the way I write, and the way I speak about things. I speak more in black and whites than in grays — that’s my personality — and that causes more furor.
Matt is right here, though, every time I get negative feedback I feel my skin flush just a bit. It’s not a lot, and I quickly quell it see what the true complaint it. The hardest thing for most people (including me) is to ignore the personal pain of such feedback and instead try to see the merit. Negative feedback cuts, and sometimes you heave to step away to let the red fade from your face.
If the complaint is about my “crazy anti-Google stance” then so be it, why not see if they have a point. Most criticism has a good point masked by personal attacks, and just because it is a good point doesn’t mean you have to agree with it. I’ve gone back and forth with many readers who initially seemed furious, but after a few emails realize that we do have a lot of common beliefs, but we apply those beliefs to the world differently.
It’s old and annoying to say, but learning to agree to disagree on some things will do you a world of good. I can respect most of the criticism I get, and sometimes it does make me change, and I think the most anyone can hope for is to remain open to admitting you were wrong.
What company does this description sound like (from Andy Westlake):
Most cameras are built around an internal chassis, with all of the electronics fixed to it and a body skin finally added over the top. Leica has done something completely different; instead the body is formed from a solid block of aluminum, with all of the electronics attached to it directly. The result is an extraordinarily tactile, solid-feeling object.
It sure looks close to an Apple product. If only it weren’t priced like people pretend Apple products are priced.
Hey, if you want to buy it, use this link will ya?
Edward Wyatt for the New York Times:
Those earlier rules effectively barred Internet service providers from making deals with services like Amazon or Netflix to allow those companies to pay to stream their products to viewers through a faster, express lane on the web. The court said that because the Internet is not considered a utility under federal law, it was not subject to that sort of regulation.
ISPs have a lot of money, and what they are doing now in their anti-net-neutrallity fight is a two part struggle:
I think the second point is the biggest motivation — and the same fight cell phone carriers are facing — where you simply do not want your service to be relegated to a service agnostic pipe.
I think of it like cable TV, where it reality you should be able to pay one price and get all 10,000 channels, but that’s not the case. Instead you pay extra for HBO, Showtime, etc — that annoyance is effectively what ISPs want to do to the Internet. Except, instead of blocking content from you (which would be wrong, obviously), ISPs just want to make non-paying content a bit slower than the other content.
I can see a future where Netflix pays Comcast to get faster service to users and users also pay Comcast to get faster Netflix service — a double profit for Comcast. Yuck.
Tim Wu, in The New Yorker, on a response President Obama gave in 2007:
“The answer is yes,” Obama replied. “I am a strong supporter of net neutrality.” Explaining, he said, “What you’ve been seeing is some lobbying that says that the servers and the various portals through which you’re getting information over the Internet should be able to be gatekeepers and to charge different rates to different Web sites…. And that I think destroys one of the best things about the Internet—which is that there is this incredible equality there.”
It is within Obama’s power to tell the FCC they fucked up, but don’t hold your breath — it would seem if it cannot be cured by a drone strike, then it cannot be cured by this administration. ((Or that’s how it feels.))