Why do I have so many blogs? Well, I realized I had a lot of opinions, well more like extremely accurate knowledge, on many topics. So the things I had enough opinions about to support a blog, I moved over to a new blog. This allows people who don’t care about dachshunds to read about design. And people who don’t care about design can read about technology. And people who only care about me can choose between all of them, or just this blog. NatalieTootie will become a more personal blog.

Both of these blogs are just babies, and one doesn’t even have any clothes on at the time of this writing.

So first off, we have sd sync. This is the blog all about technology. I love it. I love to talk about it. I love to watch it. That’s right, I like to watch.

sd sync

Next, we have Designoplasty. This is a blog about design, the business of web design, and the more technical side of design such as programming. I just wrote a post about version control software.

Designoplasty

Where sd sync is macro, Designoplasty is micro. Where sd sync is about other people’s business, Designoplasty is about my business. If sd sync is Donald Trump, Designoplasty is Martha Stewart.

You can play against friends, but the best is blitz mode. Where in four minutes you have to get a higher score than everyone else by making as many words as you can with the same tiles. Then you have a minute between games to chat with everyone, then the whole process starts again.

I am warning you, this is the most addictive game ever. It’s more addictive than Tetris because you have to think more so you don’t get bored. I had to tear myself away just to post this. I think I played for something like two hours last night. Don’t start if you don’t want to get addicted.

Right now it’s a little slow if a lot of people are on, but they’re working on it.

Well, improving performance is always good thing. And considering Windows is growing like crazy, it would be good for marketing to have OS X decrease in size. But while Apple is totally the type of company to do this type of thing, there is always more than one reason for any Apple move. So I’m going to guess at their motivation.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve seen there’s a relatively new trend toward ultra cheap small computers and laptops. From the OLPC dream of the $100 laptop, to the hugely popular (at least in idea) Asus EeePC which is priced as low as $299. We also know that Apple often makes software updates to take advantage of new hardware. Apple loves to use flash memory in its devices, and their cheapest laptop starts at $1099. So Apple’s next move is rather obvious, right?

I believe Apple will come out with either a new laptop or device priced around $500 using flash memory for storage and with a good processor, but with an emphasis on battery life over processor speed. Because of Snow Leopard Apple will be able to make up for the smaller storage (due to flash memory being more expensive) and the fair performance of the processor. It may even exceed previous fast models running Leopard even though they have faster processors and more storage.

I say “laptop or device” because a while ago one of the Apple executives gave some conservative advice and justified it due to an impending “platform shift”. This was after the Intel switch, and there hasn’t been a shift since. I honestly have no idea what Apple would have up its sleeve, but I think it’s going to be different. I don’t know about a tablet, and I don’t know about the “big iPhone” concept, because I can’t right now imagine any really good versions of those. But maybe Apple can. We’ll just have to wait and see.

l33tj3rk1: Why don’t you just spend a million dollars on a crappy overpriced Mac and go to Starbucks and write on your stupid blog.

c00lk1d4u: Maybe if Windows laptops didn’t weigh 800 pounds everyone could go to Starbucks!

And those comments would have been for an article on how computers are used to help develop biofuels.

It’s not that some of the comments are like this, they are literally all like this. Now I understand why we have a representative government.

Steve went over the “scale” argument in detail, but I think it’s just distraction. Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo to remove a competitor and if they can make it sound like increasing competition it’s going to be more likely to be allowed.

But the best part was this exchange between Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and their interviewers on the topic of Microsoft acquiring Yahoo:

[Microsoft CEO Steve] Ballmer: To accelerate scale it made sense for us to consider a Yahoo acquisition. The truth of the matter is, if nobody else gets scale except the current leader, what happens? … Some day all the ads for The Wall Street Journal Online might be sold by one guy and he’ll tell you exactly how much your editorial is worth.

Kara: Yeah, like a monopoly. Interesting.

Walt: That’s a great point. That’s exactly the sort of argument that was made against Microsoft.

Ballmer: Am I saying there’s something wrong? I’m just saying we are guys who will compete. That’s all I’m saying.

Gates: Guys like us avoid monopolies. We like to compete.

First of all, this argument doesn’t make any sense. Ignoring their spurious reference to “scale”: There’s no competition with Google, except for Yahoo, but only if we buy them. Right…

Second, did Microsoft just set a stretch goal of coming off as complete assholes for this conference? Why doesn’t the board of directors just stuff a dirty jockstrap in Steve Ballmer’s mouth already and call it a day. And hasn’t Bill Gates left the building yet? “We like to compete.” Indeed.

She was very good at keeping the food for herself, and even growled at Kody once. But then was more than happy to run around and play with him. Flex was a little nervous I think because he wasn’t quite sure what to make of a female. He would hide from her which isn’t like him at all. About a half hour in, Kody really started to pick up on the fact that she was a female and was fascinated by her. We had to keep an eye on them, not that anything much would have happened at their age. It made me think more about getting Kody neutered because I can see he would be quite the Casanova.

I am just loving the Mac folklore stories. It’s such an interesting look at tech company politics. It gets pretty juicy. I think it also tells a story that is going to be true in the majority of tech companies. The question is, once you accept that truth, what do you change in your choices or behavior to avoid the negative aspects of it? Highly recommended.

And it just relates back to what I said on my last post on the subject. Big companies are at such risk for bad decision making. All of the people with vision leave and it’s just the executives left to make a mess of things. Some of the stories have covered absolutely horrendous deeds by the middle management on the Mac team. It’s a testament to how great the ideas of the original people are that they can last so long though bad management. I remember Macs always being so expensive but apparently someone was buying them.

Around 1994 I helped my friend Tia buy one of the new Power Macs. And my friend Tara got one as a graduation present (I think.) They were somewhat affordable then, but I loved going to the ACC (Academic Computing Center) at the University of Washington and using the Unix machines or Macs or NeXT machines (or *gasp* PCs if I had to, PCs were horribly slow still back then). The ACC was open 24 hours which I thought was so cool. I didn’t want to own a computer because it was too fun to go there.

It’s interesting because the stores are first person accounts of the creation of some of the most basic computing concepts we use every day. There was of course some influence from Xerox Parc, but many of the ideas were new in form or new in general because they were made to fit the idea of an affordable personal computer. The thing is, these are all the same ideas we are still use today on our computers. It’s overwhelming to think that in a few short years, most of the ideas were done. And more interesting, many of the ideas actually regressed as Apple and Microsoft grew larger. Now Apple at least is finally getting back to them.

What’s clear is the importance of truly good leadership. Steve Jobs did what no one else would have been able to do. That’s not an exaggeration. He was successful in large part because he was actually leading. He had an idea of what needed to be done, he wasn’t just making decisions as situations came up. And the luck of who was on the team and what they brought was like a perfect storm. I’m just entranced by the stories.

Interestingly, most of the people left Apple or were bizarrely kicked out shortly after the creation of the Mac, including Steve Jobs! Basically the most significant event of personal computer history so far. It really makes you think about the way companies are structured and the inevitable ignorance of executive management that happens in every large company.

As a person who’s really looking to make a difference, I find this fascinating. Trying to figure out how to create an environment where amazing things can happen, profit can be made, and the whole thing doesn’t implode. I’m beginning to think the implosion is a very important part of the process.

Hardware and Operating Systems

There was a time when everyone was waiting for 32-bit disk access or 32-bit color or 64-bit floating point number math. When a company could just say, “look! color!” and everyone would gasp. Well this time is over. Modern computers and operating systems do basically everything that anyone reasonably needs. Faster 3D graphics isn’t going to impress the vast majority of people. Faster processors are barely noticed. Disks are plenty big.

Not to say that there isn’t room for improvement, it’s just that people aren’t desperate for the improvement and are happy to let it roll in as it will. Most computer software and hardware companies are not aware that this change has occurred. They are bewildered when their new graphics platform or new processor doesn’t have people running to the stores. They think they just made a few mistakes or didn’t communicate clearly enough. No, people get it, they just don’t care. If anything, people are starting to say, “Get the hardware and operating systems out of my way!”

The Web

The web has changed at quite a rapid pace. Therefore, the web people feel they’ve done quite a good job of things. More people are using it, so it must be successful, right? Well, not really. The web is moving forward so in that sense it’s successful, but content developers haven’t even become aware of the problems yet.

There is a large conflict still between what the content providers want and what the users want. Users want to read a “story”, some bit of content. But on most commercial sites, this content is surrounded by ads, branding, links to other content, and a whole mess of stuff to distract the user from what they actually want. Personal blogs are probably the best, but even on my site currently I have the tag cloud. I think the idea’s neat, but it’s probably not horribly functional. (In fact, I’ll remove it shortly.)

Neat but not horribly functional is exactly what the web is today. Much like operating systems, web content providers need to get out of the way of what the user actually wants. Sites like Wikipedia do a pretty decent job, but commercial news sites have like 5 columns and 15 boxes and all sorts of junk. How are we expected to be able to find or read anything with all that junk on the screen? They say, look at our snazzy layout! We say, looking at your site makes my stomach hurt.

The future lies in content providers making an honest straightforward deal with the reader or customer. I will tell you what you want to know, if you do this for me. But with information easily distributable, the customer isn’t going to be willing to do much anymore. Newspapers are going out of business, but new media better watch its back, they’re going to have a pretty tough time of it too once people start realizing that what they really want is a lot less junk in their face.

When Apple started selling the iPhone some people complained that it didn’t support SMS picture messaging. My response was, why would you use that when you can just email it and then get better quality pictures and have them on your computer or any other device as well?

The iPhone means no more lame “phone” technologies that pale in comparison to computer technologies. And the iPhone SDK is the final nail in that coffin. Oh, and the iPhone games look awesome!!! Spore and Super Monkey Ball look like so much fun, and just tilt the phone to play!

Flex is going to be spending four days with Kody and me. I’m looking forward to it, but my biggest concern is giving both of them enough love. (Awww!) I bought Flex a dog tag with my cell phone number on it for the visit. Should be fun!

One thing that really bugs me is that every time you see something interesting you have to “install” an “application”. I don’t want to install applications. I just want to do the thing… once… and then never again. I don’t have to install an application every time I visit a web page, and thank goodness for that.

Also, they need to have an indicator that tells you whether a poke was a spam poke (they poked 50 people at the same time) or a real poke (they only poked you and didn’t poke too many other people around the same time.) Not that I’m against spam poking to get more poke options, I’ve done it myself, but it would just be nice to know. And in a related note I’ve noticed that most of the apps are written more for the app writers’ benefit to promote distribution then to actually help users do stuff.

But I just don’t see why I would want to be on this for very long. Once it loses its usefulness, it becomes an online risk. Then I will have to delete my account potentially.

From AppleInsider today:

Meanwhile, the guys over at MacRumors have put forth a pretty thorough effort in recent days of tracking Leopard’s development progress internally at Apple.

They were first to report earlier this week…

From Apple’s web site’s front page today:

358bf0bd1f1024ed25fa69ced23dab90

For the non-techies who read my blog that is a number, it’s just in hexadecimal instead of base ten.

Anyway, basically third party developers are literally attacking the iPhone, and it will only help it. But Apple needs to accept that there will be no closed source software anymore and just open up the iPhone. This war is already over, it’s just up to Apple to realize it’s over.

The thing about Digg, though, is that it’s easy to cheat. If you have enough “friends” (employees) you can get any story enough diggs to make it to the front page. Making it to the front page also means the story is added to the most popular rss feeds, which is how most people get their digg news. If you don’t have “friends” or another source of diggs it’s almost impossible to make the front page. Lately I’ve been noticing that comments around stories about certain companies seem, well… odd. And the comment voting is off the hook bizarre. Especially the first day the story hits the front page. (When all the friends have been told to show up.)

Here’s the key to getting better information. First, ignore comment diggs, that is, feel free to digg comments yourself, but instead of viewing comments by most diggs, select “sort by date (show all)”. This way you’ll see everything. Once the story hits the front page, the corporation has done only half their job. The other half is digging down negative comments. Stories can’t be dugg down, but comments can, and comments with negative diggs are often hidden depending on how you view comments. After a few days the comment diggs begin to match what you would think general opinions are, but at first they often match what the corporation mentioned would want them to be.

On some recent stories about Microsoft’s Zune 2, which is Microsoft’s version of the iPod, some of the comments were almost comically positive. These are actual coments, the first is actually the first comment posted:

I want one right nowwww.

here we go. this is the time when the iPod market share drops immensely. the iPod classic has nothing on the new v2 Zune.

Looks like a pretty excellent spec, without having to associate with all the iSheep. Sorry fanboys, but it’s competitive, DRM-Free, a sexy interface, beautiful screen and includes an FM tuner. Beats the iPod classic hands-down.

TOO MUCH GOOD NEWS “There’s additional video codec support as well: h.264 and MPEG4. You don’t have to convert all your stuff to WMV” “The 30GB Zune actually isn’t being eliminated, and will be offered at $199. Amazon already has it for $165-$185 now. “

Here are some of the real comments:

Aww look, they have one in the same baby shit green as the olive XP color theme. Any takers? Didn’t think so.

i don’t even think too many people even know what a zune is, but they know what an iPod is.

• The iPhone does not support 3rd party development, therefore preventing innovative, useful, and fun apps from being created.
• The iPhone only supports ring tones if you pay Apple for them, even though everyone knows that it’s easy to do.
• The recent 1.1.1 update breaks all rogue 3rd party apps including iToner which allowed using custom ring tones and removes these ring tones from the phone
• The recent 1.1.1 update permanently bricks (makes unusable) iPhones that had been unlocked to be used by a carrier other than AT&T.

When these issues first started showing up, I wasn’t that concerned. None of them affect me because my iPhone is not unlocked and I don’t use any third party apps. Although I would like to use custom ring tones and I refuse to pay for them.

But now, after hearing more about the issues, I see that Apple has become unreasonably greedy. They need to open up the iPhone. Not only because users want them to, but because Apple’s key asset is their perceived niceness. This situation is well on its way to destroying that asset.

Apple encourages its developers with their own products by promoting good software design that’s beautiful and inspirational. But they take it a step further with the annual Apple Design Awards. Every year they give awards to the best applications and those that integrate best with the rest of the Mac services. Because of this, almost every photo related program made for the Mac plays nicely with iPhoto. Most apps support Automator scripting. There are a whole host of good things that come out of this.

Much of the great new software that’s coming out is coming out for Mac only. Developers who passionatley care about software only want to develop on a platform that can help them build more exciting products. These applications are not made at all for Windows and far outshine their Windows couterparts.

One of my favorite examples of this is the web site creation and maintenance program called Coda. Coda is Mac only and is also an Apple Design Award winner. I’m using a trial version of Coda right now and I love it. I think I’m going to have to pay the $79 cost to actually buy it. That’s another common theme of this new breed of applications. The developers don’t try to charge ridiculous amounts of money for them.

I recently found an upcoming piece of software that I’m definitely going to buy. It’s called Pixelmator and is a image editing and creation tool providing features many people would us Adobe Photoshop for. However, Pixelmator is newer, better designed, simpler, and most importantly, cheaper. The current version of Photoshop costs $999. Are they serious? How much will Pixelmator cost when it’s released? Get ready… just $59. I can’t wait.

PHP is a free (as in beer) product. I think it’s also open source (free as in freedom), but at the very least, you don’t have to pay for it. Because of that there’s documentation and information everywhere. The internet community is very into PHP. It’s totally a different experience than learning a Microsoft product where you first have to pay for the product and then pray the documentation is good. And then if it doesn’t work or the documentation isn’t good, you have to wait for a monolithic corporation to hopefully do what you want next time. Although I’ve believed it for a while now, this is a very clear example to me of how free software is going to eventually win.

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