Gruber wrote a comparison of Ballmer’s earlier memo to Jobs’s MobileMe memo, but I think the most interesting part was the single footnote:
Those Apple employees who are fortunate enough to work on the MobileMe team were treated to something extra: a 40-minute lecture from Jobs in Apple’s Town Hall theater, which lecture was, shall we say, slightly more profane.
Junior year of high school (2004-2005), I realized that committing my tasks to memory was not a viable strategy, but up until that year, that was more or less how I managed doing work. I was facing a memory-storage deficit; between my course load, and debate, which was a work-intensive activity, I simply could not remember everything I had to do. Due to sheer number of tasks, I sometimes turned in incomplete assignments or, worse, forgot to turn anything in at all. My productivity diminished under the strain of remembering what I had to do, and my stress skyrocketed because of what seemed like an insurmountable amount of work and obligations.
My English teacher had a Ti Powerbook, which he used every day in class. This was my first real experience with post-OS X era Macs, and I loved its elegant design. But what struck me, in brief flashes as he switched between applications on the projector screen, was iCal. He had several calendars set up, and his month view was full of events — all colorfully differentiated. iCal, from what I saw, was easy to conceptualize and use, and most importantly, was a joy to work in. It looked like it was fun to add events to and manage a calendar.
I bought my first Mac in December 2005 (a 15″ Powerbook), and iCal was the first application I fell in love with. It made — and still makes — managing my schedule simple and enjoyable.
But when I entered college, I had a problem: I needed less to manage events (turning in papers, taking tests, study sessions, et cetera), and more to manage tasks associated with courses (research for a paper, write an outline, study for a test), which iCal is not very good at. I tried using iCal’s to-dos support for three weeks, and after painstakingly entering hundreds of to-dos, I stopped using it — because I did not enjoy it.
So for my first and second years of college, I suffered much the same way I did in high school: I mostly committed tasks to memory, with even more disastrous results. My stress rose to a new high as I struggled to keep my tasks straight for five courses and work.
What I really wanted was a well-designed, simple and beautiful application to manage my tasks, which would make managing tasks as much a joy to use as iCal.
After reading Chris Bowler’s excellent GTD Series, I decided to try Cultured Code’s Things.
Tap Tap Tap: Donkeys and Pickaxes
iPhone development company Tap Tap Tap, which sells Where To and Tipulator, had almost $9,900 in revenue last week, and almost $7,000 after Apple’s cut, which is quite amazing.
Even better, though, is this is only last week’s data — two weeks after the App Store was launched, and thus also after the initial surge of people buying apps to test out the store. These figures should track much more accurately with future sales, which is quite impressive.
(Via Daring Fireball.)
A Macintosh in Your Pocket: iPhone 3G Review – Michael Mistretta
Michael wrote an excellent, in-depth, review of the iPhone 3G. It is especially good because this is his first iPhone, and his impressions are fresh.
Michael writes:
Think about it, the iPhone + the AppStore could be a major paradigm shift in how people look at “computers”. For many people, the iPhone can be the only computer they need. Why do I need a big beige box, or a laptop anymore?
I’m not talking about the geeks. I’m talking about normal people: my mom, a teenager, the cashier at Wal-Mart. How do these people use their computers now? Email. Web browsing. Facebook. A bit of IM. Maybe some Youtube. Music. And a couple games. What if I device the size of a deck of cards could do all of that? It fits in your pocket, gets Internet anywhere, and costs $200.
The one downside to this argument is the lack of a proper word processor and an Office suite. If the iPhone eventually is able to pair with a bluetooth keyboard, I could see some people using it to take notes and type up short documents, but practically speaking, people want a bigger screens for that. Video editing, graphic design, and high-end photo editing will obviously be reserved for desktops.
It is an interesting point, and worth considering, because it is clear people want mobility. Notebook PCs have outsold desktop PCs, but most people do not need a notebook for what they do. They need access, as Michael explains, to email, the web, and social networking — none of which is dependent, or even better experienced, on a full-fledged PC. A mobile device like the iPhone fits this role perfectly.
It begs the question, then, of how people’s use of computers will change. Will they continue buying notebooks so they can use the web away from their desks, or will they buy mobile devices like the iPhone — the “post-PC” — for mobile use, and a powerful, affordable desktop for work?
Or will there be a mix somewhere in-between? I own both an iPhone and a Macbook Air, which I use as my primary computer. While as a student I depend on the Macbook Air’s mobility, I am not going to be a student for long. I still benefit from that mobility, though; I do freelance web design, and being able to pick up the Macbook Air and go to a cafe or a meeting with a client is invaluable.
Yet I also find myself looking at the iMac’s store page often, because I would benefit from its large monitor and, most importantly, its GPU and large hard drive.
From this perspective, which is a web professional one who works on a computer most of the time, I can see the Macbook Air, and perhaps a large swatch of notebook PCs, moving to a more niche position. Rather than have a full-purpose CPU, GPU and hard drive, notebooks would adopt Intel’s Atom processor, small and affordable hard drives, and a small, Macbook Air-like form factor. With a “full-sized” screen and keyboard, these notebooks would sell for under $1,000 — preferably for $799 or under.
We would then have three devices: a powerful desktop for power and screen-intensive work; a mildly powerful, mobile notebook for general work; and a post-PC device for ubiquitous communication.
This is the first academic study on the Mac developer community I have seen. I have read the first forty pages so far, and its discussion on how the developer community works is intriguing to read.
Brent Simmons is the creator of NetNewsWire, the best feed reader for the Mac, and an application I use every day.
Brent has developed NetNewsWire for the iPhone, and made an interesting design decision. Rather than attempt to implement all features, or even a large subset, of the desktop version, he built it to be used quickly when its user has a few minutes to spare. This becomes immediately clear when you first open the application, and it illuminates what iPhone applications will be.
Brent and I traded emails over the course of last week.
KYLE: In a discussion with Macworld’s Jason Snell, you said that when designing NetNewsWire for the iPhone, you started off simple, but realized even that was too complicated, and pared it down. Did you start the design process with assumptions about how the application should be structured or what features should be in it that you realized were wrong?
But once I implemented all that, it was way too cluttered. So I kept paring back until I got to a more minimal look, which felt right.
I might still add some of this back (excerpts in the News Items list, for instance, have been heavily requested). But I’ll do so very, very carefully, since it’s so easy to make a mess.
Clarity is more valuable than density.
KYLE: The iPhone’s size and touchscreen require a simplicity and intentional design that desktop applications do not. It requires finding an application’s core functionality and re-focusing on it. What does this mean for the iPhone as a platform going into the future?
I like this, a lot, by the way. It appeals to my temperament as a minimalist.
KYLE: This also fits nicely into Apple’s “small apps for individual tasks, which integrate together” philosophy, such as Mail, iCal, and Address Book, though Apple has moved away from this with iTunes (for some good reasons). Does this also reflect the iPhone’s intention as a complementary device to the PC, rather than a standalone device?
KYLE: How has developing for the iPhone affected your design philosophy for the desktop?
I do delete features, by the way, from the desktop version. But I can’t just go nuts deleting stuff without having a revolt on my hands. ;)
KYLE: Does this lower price point relative to Mac applications discourage thorough application development for the iPhone, or does the App Store’s huge sales potential actually encourage the opposite?
KYLE: How many copies of NetNewsWire have been downloaded?
KYLE: The Mac’s developer community is a large part of why I love the Mac so much. It tends to be very community oriented, and open to new developers. It requires little more than a great application, a nice website, and willingness to be involved in the community for Mac users to embrace a new developer. The App Store certainly is beneficial both for developers and consumers, but does the App Store’s exclusivity change this communal and egalitarian feel at all? Or could it increase it by giving new exposure for new developers that they would have a hard time getting exposure when selling an application for the Mac?
It makes it harder to develop apps — Mac developers have always been a collegial lot. (Which is one of the top three reasons I’m a Mac developer.)
KYLE: Many developers have been frustrated by the NDA, including Craig Hockenberry, who has made a bit of a refrain out of “Fucking NDA,” but another complaint he made on his weblog is the current inability to easily send out updates to beta testers, and to collect logging information from end users with malfunctioning apps. These factors seem to leave developers in the dark both about how to fix certain problems with their apps, and how other developers are solving similar issues. Does this threaten the iPhone platform, and has Apple made any indication that these issues will be fixed?
All software takes time. If Apple doesn’t have answers for certain things yet, that doesn’t mean they won’t ever. For instance, I’d love to get crash logs from my users. Will they add that? Maybe. Just because they haven’t doesn’t mean they won’t. I’m sure they know that we developers would love that feature, and that it would help us make our iPhone software better, which is in Apple’s interests.
KYLE: One of the most exciting parts of the iPhone, and certainly the one with the most potential, is the built in location service. OmniGroup is using location-support in an innovative way in OmniFocus for the iPhone by showing to-dos that are relevant to your location. For example, if a current to-do of yours is to buy groceries and you are running errands, OmniFocus will show you that, say, a Trader Joe’s is only half a mile away. What other ways do you envision using location services? Are you planning to use it in any future applications?
KYLE: I like that idea a lot — it would be great to add a location-based aspect to the already existing weblog community, which is a complaint I have — I simply don’t know many people around me involved in it. Do you intend on integrating this into NetNewsWire?
AT&T has brought back free WiFi for the iPhone. Let’s hope it lasts more than a few days this time.
Update: AT&T, how many times can you screw this up? According to Ars, AT&T is not launching free WiFi for iPhone owners yet.
TechCrunch: Pandora Usage Stats Prove It’s iPhone’s Killer App
Pandora’s free iPhone application is now the fourth-most popular application for the iPhone, and streamed over 3.3 million tracks to iPhone users over the weekend.
I have played with it a bit over EDGE, and the sound quality was excellent, and did not skip at all. Absolutely great application.
I haven’t tested it with my Alpine car receiver yet, though. If it will play back through my car stereo, and I can get the charging adapter to use Firewire-based chargers for in the car, then I will be using Pandora a lot.
Gruber commented today on copy and paste in the iPhone, whose lack of it has become the go-to reason to criticize the iPhone. Some wonder why Apple hasn’t implemented it when copy and paste seems like such an easy feature to add.
Gruber explains:
Writing the code to implement a system-wide clipboard isn’t the hard part — as I wrote in August, the hard part is coming up the right UI design for it. Whatever the UI for copy-and-paste for the iPhone OS eventually is, it’s very likely to remain as the UI for copy-and-paste on the iPhone for decades to come. (The basic UI for copy-and-paste on the original Mac remains in use today by everyone using Mac OS X and Windows — same concepts, same menu commands, even the same keyboard shortcuts.)
That’s a point that no one has made. Apple is developing the user interface for their future mobile devices, and, really, the rest of the industry’s, too. This isn’t something Apple should throw together to lengthen the feature list a bullet point — they need to get it right.
Apple answers Psystar’s taunts, and filed suit against them on July 3rd.
Goodbye, Psystar.
Apple Sells One Million iPhone 3Gs in First Weekend
Incredible. With summer and Christmas still left in 2008, they really are going to sell a ton of them this year.
Just as importantly, though, iPhone and iPod Touch users have downloaded 10 million apps thus far. There is little doubt now that the iPhone will be the mobile platform going into the future.
Where is the Native Brightkite iPhone App?
Brightkite is developing a native iPhone application, and is committing to releasing it by the end of the month. I can’t wait to see it — I love the potential of these location-based social networks, but they have a chicken/egg problem going. They aren’t very useful because hardly anyone uses them, but people aren’t going to use them unless others are already doing so.
Hopefully the excitement over the iPhone and the App Store will give it some momentum.
As some of you know, I bought the original iPhone when it launched last year, and sold it days before WWDC 2008 in anticipation for iPhone 3G. In the last month, I used an old Motorola V557, and the experience has made me appreciate just how good of a phone the iPhone is. It was a long month, but I bought a black, 16GB iPhone 3G yesterday.
I arrived at 6:45 AM at the Brea, California Apple store. I did not expect much of a line; the media was not covering this launch near as much as they did the last one, and I figured the mandatory contract and in-store activation would turn people away. I thought I would be on my way home with iPhone in pocket by 9 AM.
I was also wrong.
I passed a small AT&T store on the way, and saw something discouraging: there was a relatively long line, with a few tents toward the front. Bad sign.
When I arrived, there were at least 150-200 people already in line at the Apple store. I got in line with a friend and waited. Apple employees, all smiles, walked the lines handing out pamphlets on AT&T’s service plans, and brought out Smart water — of course.
At exactly 8 AM, a cheer toward the front of the line rang out as the store opened. Or at least that is what I assume they were cheering about; since I could not actually see the store from so far back, people may have been cheering simply because the coffee cart was making another round.
The line moved forward a great amount, and my departure estimate, despite misjudging the line, seemed accurate.
But then an hour went by without any movement. Rumors spread down the line that the activation servers were down, which turned out to be true.
The line moved every hour or so, and a new wave of rumors came at about the same rate. Some were saying that Apple was sending people home with inactivated phones, and others said that they were still attempting to activate them. It turns out both were true; this Apple store was trying to activate each iPhone sold, and if after 10 minutes it would not activate, they would tell the customer to activate at home.
At 12 PM, the line started moving more quickly, and by 1 PM I was the next person to enter. After waiting a few minutes, an Apple employee came and took me in. She grabbed a black 16GB model and began taking my information. Selecting a plan was relatively painless; we BSed a little about the app store, and she made fun of my last name.1 After signing AT&T’s agreement and charging my credit card, she handed me off to another employee who tethered my new phone up to a Mac to make sure it activated. It did without any trouble — Apple apparently had fixed whatever problem they had before then.
I was not only surprised by how many people showed up, but also by the age diversity. There were equal amounts of 18-27 year olds as there were 35-50 year olds; even the 60+ year old age group was well-represented. Even more interesting, I did not see a single person leave.
Which is quite incredible, because I waited for more than 6 hours. The demand for the iPhone 3G is not only strong, but cuts across all demographics. The “young, well-off, male geek” stereotype no longer applies to iPhone owners.
Apple is going to sell a ton of these. There is no doubt that they will sell more than 10 million iPhones by the end of the year; the real question is how many. I would not be surprised to see them sell 15 million.
I was skeptical about Apple’s decision to use a plastic, high-gloss back on the iPhone 3G. I have too many bad memories of scratched iPods to not question it.
My fears appear to be wrong. The plastic Apple is using, while it displays fingerprints as well as the iPhone’s front does, seems very scratch resistant. It does not feel like it is going to scratch at all.
The plastic case has another benefit, too. The rear feels slightly “grippy,” whereas the original iPhone was very slick. It feels much less likely to slip out of your hand like the original was prone to do.
The iPhone 3G, with its all-black rear case and front, is beautiful. The original’s aluminum and plastic back looks outdated and, oddly, ugly, in comparison.
The solidness of the original was one of my favorite things about it, and I can happily say that the move to plastic, which on other phones is weak and cheap feeling, did not change this. In fact, the phone feels more solid than the original, mostly due to the bottom plastic piece being ditched, which was flimsy.
One odd thing is that the home button seems like it takes more effort to push than my original iPhone did. I am not sure if this is because it loosens with time.
My biggest complaint with the original iPhone was the speakerphone was all but useless because it was so quiet. This created other problems, too: the ringtone was so quiet that even when in relatively-quiet areas, I would never hear my iPhone ring.
The iPhone 3G is much louder. It still is not loud, but it is loud enough; it may even be a feature that it is not as ear-piercingly loud as other phones. Ringtones are now useful, and Super Monkey Ball sounds great with the speaker.
Even better, though, the speaker sounds much better. The original’s speaker distorted at high volumes, and sounded tinny. The iPhone 3G does not distort at full volume, and sounds excellent for a mono speaker. I may actually use speakerphone during calls now.
I know a better speaker is not the sexiest feature, but it is one of the few that I am really excited about. A good, loud speaker is necessary for usability, and the iPhone 3G provides it.
It is fast. I am averaging between 300-430 kbps, which is great for a mobile network. Safari, Mail, Twitterific and NetNewsWire are much quicker and more enjoyable on 3G than EDGE — the difference, at least in my area, between 3G and WiFi on the iPhone is negligible.
My home town is covered in 3G service, but if I drive even five miles north, I am back on EDGE. I expect that AT&T will move quite rapidly to expand 3G coverage.
One other benefit that I am excited about is the ability to use data and still receive calls. Frequently while waiting when picking someone up, I would browse the web on my iPhone, and they would attempt to call me for whatever reason, and I would miss the call. 3G solves that problem nicely.
I am glad to have 3G. While EDGE was livable, if disappointing, the iPhone was meant for 3G.
I do not have much to say about this yet because up until 20 minutes ago, location services were not working at all on my iPhone 3G. Oddly, turning off 3G and using EDGE for a few minutes seemed to fix it.
I love how Weatherbug allows you to add your location using GPS. Apple’s own weather widget should do the same thing — whenever you open it, it should give you the weather for your current location without prompting it.
Push email works quite well. Right now, new emails are showing up on my phone within a minute or so after they are sent, which is excellent. As far as I can tell, though, push calendar and contacts are not anywhere near as quick. Changes on my Mac take quite a while to show up on the MobileMe website and on my iPhone. I have been making changes to my calendar for the last fifteen minutes, and they have not been reflected in MobileMe or on my phone. The reason, it seems, is because even if your Mac is set to synch automatically, it doesn’t. It is 5:05 PM right now, and my Mac last synched at 4:46 PM, despite the changes made.
I am sure this will improve soon. MobileMe has improved rapidly already in its short life, and I don’t expect anything less in the future.
This, combined with the iPhone 3G’s price point and enterprise friendliness, is the reason Apple is going to dominate the market. The market they are competing in, though, may be a surprise: it is not the smart phone market. Apple has created the world’s first mainstream post-PC, mobile communications platform. The long lines and enthusiasm makes this quite clear.
The App Store is easy to browse and it is easy to buy applications, but the selection is a little on the rough side so far. There is a must-have class of applications, such as NNW, Super Monkey Ball and Twitterific, and then there is a precipitous drop-off in quality. I expect this to change in the next few months as new applications are developed, however.
I think people are still learning how to develop for the iPhone and what kind of applications it should have. Currently it seems like developers are focusing on porting existing applications or ideas to the iPhone, but I think within a few months we will develop some entirely new concepts for applications based entirely on the iPhone platform that can only exist on the iPhone rather than the desktop.
The next few months are going to be exciting with the iPhone community. Expect it to grow at an incredible rate, both in size and in the number of fresh ideas.
I woke up today at 8:30 AM. By 2:30 PM, with 2.25 hours of use on my iPhone 3G, my battery level had dwindled down to 25%. Use mostly included listening to music, using Twitterific, checking Mail, playing a few minutes of Super Monkey Ball, and using NetNewsWire.
Granted, I had bluetooth on (California’s handsfree law leaves little choice), but if it is going to drop that quickly in the course of a day, its battery life is unacceptable. My hope is that this is just because it needs a few charge cycles, but if it does not improve significantly within a week, I will be exchanging it.
If this is the normal battery life, it is an unusable device. The iPhone may focus on data, but it is still a phone, which I can’t have go dead in the middle of the day.
This problem is compounded more by the iPhone 3G’s inability to charge from certain devices the original would charge from, such as my Alpine car stereo receiver. The original iPhone, while supplying music to my car stereo, would charge at the same time. The iPhone 3G does not, which I am not at all happy about.
WSJ – Justice Department ends investigation
The Justice Department’s investigation of Apple and past executives for improper backdating of stock options has been ended. Big news that will undoubtedly be over-shadowed by today’s (much more fun) news.
Just checked Software Update, and 7.7 showed up. By the grace of God.
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