On mobile phones

1. A couple of months back I was talking about the iPod touch, and how I wanted one, and how I didn’t want an iPhone. I now have an iPod touch, and I’ve been using it for the last couple of weeks, and what do I think? Well, Iku thinks it’s my new girlfriend, that’s how much I’ve been using it.

2. The interface is far better than I had expected, it’s just magic. Well, 90% of the time. The other 10%? That’ll be the times when you want to change the volume one handed, or whilst walking, or trying to scrub ahead in a podcast or video. Those slider bars are insanely hard to use unless you use both hands, and are wildly inaccurate — I’ve accidentally blasted myself a few times already. But wait — why is that stuff only 10% of your time? It’s a media player, shouldn’t that account for more?

3. Well, yes. If it didn’t also have WiFi and a web browser.

4. Honestly, the touch has become my main internet device, something I can use pretty much anywhere (who knew there were so many WiFi access points in this city?) Safari works wonderfully, the “flick” method of scrolling feels so much more organic than using a mouse and a scroll bar. The whole device has a lovely heft to it, and it balances well in one hand, so I can pretty much read the morning news on the touch in my left hand, using my left thumb to scroll and click on links. And, just as importantly, the internet looks good on the touch. Compare the New York Times mobile site on my touch, compared to my Nokia N73:

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5. Which one would you rather use?

6. The font on my N73 is perfectly legible, if a bit small. But the font rendering is fantastic on the touch, and it raises the legibility of mobile devices to the point where I would actually prefer it to the computer. Look again at those photos, a single column of text is about the same size (perhaps a bit bigger) as a column of text in a newspaper. There are about five to seven words per line, so it’s easy to follow from line to line — unlike blocks of text on computer screens where you could, depending on the width of your screen, have twenty to thirty words per line. Having too many words per line makes it more difficult to find the next line in the text. Just think, how many times have you gotten lost in a passage because of this?

7. What has this to do with the iPhone? I was adamant about not getting one because I didn’t want to get locked in to a carrier, I hated that Apple makes this amazing platform but shuts it off to developers. But using the touch just brings home just how much better it is than my Nokia, which is a pretty sweet phone as it is. But there’s no comparison, despite the very many failings of the iPhone, for 90% of what it does, it does it waaaay better than the competition.

8. And I’d rather have a great user experience 90% of the time, than having a passable experience 100% of the time.

iHave Entitlement Issues

1. From CNET:

“Some commended Jobs and the company for what they considered a humble and fair response to the iPhone price flap. Others, however such as CNET News.com reader Jake Kushner, president of JK Media, said Apple’s response didn’t go far enough to satisfy those who bought a 4GB iPhone for $499, only to see the 8GB model become $100 cheaper. They should get a free upgrade to an 8GB model or a $200 rebate, he said.”

“I feel wronged and misled by Apple. Such a quick price reduction indicates that Apple premeditated this reduction before the initial release,” Kushner wrote, addressing Jobs. “I read your public response on Apple.com to this issue, but I still feel that the solution you are offering is not adequate.”

2. Pfffft. The only thing inadequate is your ability to control yourself… twice. Once for being a cheap bastard and buying a 4gb iPhone, and once for telling the world about it. Fake Steve has a tshirt for you, have you heard of him?

The only question now is…

1. …the 8gb iPod touch, or the 16gb?

2. I’ve been betting quietly that one of these would come out, and even without WIFI I would’ve bought one. Why? That kickarse interface. I’m an interface geek, a holdover from my design days, and that multi-touch interface is just mind-bogglingly awesome. I don’t really want an iPhone, ’cause while it might be thin, it’s not a small phone, and if I’m out on the piss the last thing I want is to break that screen by being drunkenly over-enthusiastic. Or by dropping it. And how can you have a smartphone where you can’t even cut-and-paste text? Here’s hoping for iPhone 2.0.

3. But this… all the best features of the iPhone, and I can still leave it home when I don’t need it. And, lets face it, it’s really an 8mm thick computer. You just know that this thing will get the crap hacked out of it, and by Christmas there’ll be a bunch of 3rd party apps available — who knows, even Apple might get in on the act, since the only excuse they gave for the lack of 3rd party app support in the iPhone was because of “stability issues”.

4. Now if you can plug in a foldable keyboard and run third party apps, I’ll never need a laptop, ever again.

5. (Anyone who whinges about the lack of storage should look at an Archos 605, equally drool-worthy, 160gb storage, and matches the iPod touch in pretty much every regard except OSX and thinness. So quit it with the damn whinging.)

Running. I don’t do it. Normally.

1. I recently spoke to a close friend online. I mentioned to her that I’ve recently started running, to which she responded:

TB: BULLSHIT!!!

2. …which neatly sums up my attitude towards running, and excercise in general, since about Year 11 of High School (AKA Some Years Ago). But, I’m not getting any younger, although the way I spend my weekends here suggests that I am, mentally at least, regressing, and I promised myself that when the weather warmed I would start excercising. So, the weather warmed, and I went to the shoe store and bought a pair of NikeFree shoes.

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3. They’re wicked! Super light, super comfortable, and super flexible which lets my feet flex the way they’re supposed to. The whole upper material is mesh, and on a cold night you can actually feel the cold air come in, but it means I’m not assaulted by foot-sweat-smell when I take my shoes off after a run. Extra points for that.

4. I also bought the Nike+iPod sensor kit, which is basically a pedometer and transmits information to my iPod, where it calculates things like distance, pace, calories used and the like and puts it on display. At the press of a button a voiceover will tell you those stats, and when you sync the iPod it will transfer that info to a Nike website when you can track your runs. The website lets you create goals (time spent running, pace, distance etc) and you can compare your results with other people online. I’m really diggin’ it, makes the whol excercising thing fun — something I ‘d never thought I’d say.

5. (And before I get accused of being an Apple/Nike whore — if anyone can point out a $30 device that does all that, I’ll look into it.)

6. Anyway, the sensor kit is really nice, and you don’t need to buy a pair of Nike+ shoes to use them either. I taped my sensor to the top of the tounge of my left shoe, it doesn’t get in the way at all.

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7. Maybe I’ll post monthly updates of my running stats — maybe. When they’re not so embarassing.

iPhone

1. Look, I’m not going to talk too much about it, and besides wanting one bad, what else is there to say that won’t be said by the rest of the internets? But, I have to say, I wrote this in 2004:

Imagine an all aluminium iPod, around the same dimensions of the current iPod. On the outside there is the black and white display, the scroll wheel and navigation buttons, with the hinge on one side, and the release catch on the other (which magnetically retracts, a la PowerBook). Press the release catch and the iPod unfolds like a clamshell, revealing the colour touch screen on one side and a thumb board on the other. Nestled in the hinge is the stylus.

Running the PDA side of things is a mobile version of OS X, ported to run on Embedded Linux. Included is cut down versions of basic OS X productivity programs — Mail, Safari, Address Book and iCal — all of which ties in perfectly with the full calorie versions.

Bluetooth is enabled automatically when it is opened, and at the click of a button it’ll hook up with your phone and connect to the internet. mac.com you can synchronise your contacts and iCal. With iSync all your personal info would be transferred across, including all the Safari bookmarks. With a special cable into the dock connector you could plug in your digital camera and import new photos using mobile iPhoto, sort them into a new album, plug in the TV cable and show the day’s shots at a friends house. Including that short video shot with your digital camera. And in the morning it’ll make you coffee just how you like it too.

2. How ace was that? While my imagination failed with the form factor, an awful lot of functionality that I was lusting in 2004 has materialised in 2007. I wrote that around the time the project started, so maybe I was cosmically channelling an Apple engineer, or maybe the other way around; either way I don’t care, I just can’t wait to get my hands on one. If, and a big if at that, it’s ever sold in Japan.

Dipping into the past

1. Progress is a strange thing. I am quite fond of progress, believing that there are very few things that were truly better in the past than it is now. So I find it strange that I am currently typing this in the DOS version of Microsoft Word 5.5, running in a full screen DOS window, which I’ve adopted as my primary writing program on my PC laptop.

2. On my Mac I have WriteRoom, which is a great full screen text editor. On the PC I was using DarkRoom, a program offing almost the same functionality of WriteRoom. But it was not a perfect match of WriteRoom, and the few differences were jarring.

3. My first complaint with DarkRoom was how long it took to load. It almost as long as a full fledged word processor, yet it offered the functionality of Notepad. It’s nothing more than a text window, yet it required a mammoth .Net Framework download. It’s supposed to be a modern text editor, yet it had that nagging feeling of yesteryear; pressing backspace did not delete a whole block of selected text, you need to press delete.

4. Enter the DOS alternative.

5. DOS offered the sort of isolation and sparseness I was looking for when writing. All I needed was a readable font and zero distractions, and this version of Word delivers in spades — I reckon this is the best version of Word I have ever used. It’s just blue background and white text for me, having hidden everything from scroll bars to menus. I daresay I prefer this even to the Mac — the default DOS font is actually quite a pleasant thing to stare at for a while.

6. It’s not the perfect solution though. For one thing the now stock standard ctrl+c and ctrl+v keys for copying and pasting were not standard back when this version of Word came out, which takes some getting used to. And obviously Word for DOS and WinXP do not share the same clipboard, so you can’t copy and paste a link or a quote from a website, you have to edit the text in another editor. But for me the lack of visual clutter is such a boon that I am more than happy to use another editor in Windows to format and add links to my text. This is a case where it’s what you don’t get that counts — the clutter, the distractions, and the stress.

WWDC ‘06

1. I don’t write much about Apple anymore, but with an event like WWDC and the new toys Apple has released, how could I resist?

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WriteRoom / Dark Room

1. I never realised how much visual clutter there was on my desktop, and how much it affected my writing, until now: thanks to a great bit of software called WriteRoom (OS X only, Windows users can try Dark Room, which does pretty much the same thing. I use it on my VAIO.) Such a simple idea — remove everything that could cause distraction, leave only the most important things behind. In this case, it’s just you and the words. Nothing else. It’s brilliant! It basically turns your computer into a typewriter, albeit one which lets you edit as well as type. You have a blank background with nothing but type. You choose the colour, the font, the size of the font and the length of a line. That’s it. The rest is up to you.

2. What’s even better is that WriteRoom also lets you install scripts and plugins that extend it’s features. I have scripts that, with the appropriate keyboard command (which you can choose), will do a word count, or send it to my email client. The company keeps a section of the forum for users to submit their own scripts, so other users can use and abuse as they see fit. And, best of all, the program is freeware.

3. This is what I love most about using a Mac. It’s not just the shiny hardware and pretty software from Apple, but the great user and developer community. I’m sure there are great programs for Windows as well, but they’re really hard to find. Most programs I find useful on Windows has a user interface that doesn’t just look like an afterthought, but rather a no-thought. But Mac developers seem to care about what their software looks like as well as how it functions. I like that. Aesthetics matter an awful lot in UI design — people work better in nice looking places.

4. Anyway, rant over, have a look for yourself — I’ll bet you’ll dig it as much as I do.

Intel on a different kind of front line

1. An unintended consequence of building a design centre in an area of the world for which stability is a very fluid concept, Intel now has more than just AMD gunning after them. Intel’s Haifa design centre is within range of Hezbollah strikes, the most recent of which led to 8 Israeli deaths and 17 wounded at the local train depot. From the MacWorld article:

Responding to the Home Front Command’s orders, essential employees are working inside protected areas at Intel’s development center while others work from bomb shelters near their home. “The protective shelters in Haifa are equipped with wireless connections and all Intel employees have laptops, so that hasn’t affected work,� Bahar said.

2. How crazy would it be if you were the person responsible for planning and running a campus in a part of the world that carries such high risks? What would that meeting have been like? This might sound a little off-topic, but while many people complain about the high salaries senior business executives are paid (and they’re probably right about a lot of them), I’d want to get paid an awful lot to shoulder that sort of responsibility.

3. I wonder what working from a bomb shelter would be like?

170,000 Reasons

1. I guess Japan was always gonna be trouble for me, with my weakness for gadgets and the superlative-inducingly high density of gadget-per-square-metre that is contemporary Japan, one should not be so shocked to hear that I dropped a fat stack of the Yens on a new gadget.

2. This time, it the new Sony VAIO UX50, a proper full function PC that just so happens to be the size of an old cassette Walkman and weighs just half a kilo. It packs a punch as well, with built in Bluetooth, 802.11a/b/g, ethernet, two cameras, fingerprint scanner, backlit keyboard (which totally blows, but it’s better than not having one at all), built in MemoryStick and CF slot, 4in widescreen touchscreen display, and docking station. It’s powered by an Intel Core solo U1300, has 512mb of RAM and 30Gb hard drive. Not that exciting, but did I mention that it weighed a shade over half a kilo?

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