http://patrickbgibson.com/

ilovemyleica: New York City by filip.molcan on Flickr.

Wed, 22 May 2013 23:18:42 -0700

New York City by filip.molcan on Flickr.

Apple in 2013

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:03:00 -0700

“And in the absence of facts, myth rushes in, the kudzu of history.” ― Stacy Schiff

For the first time in about 8 years¹, Apple has gone nearly 2 full quarters without making any new product announcements. They aren’t expected to make any until WWDC, another 6 weeks away. This is not to say they haven’t been busy — a quick glance at their press releases show lots of progress. Inroads are being made in China, a small processor bump for the MacBook Pro here, a capacity increase for the iPad there. On yesterday’s Q2 earnings conference call, Tim Cook was as chipper as ever about Apple’s performance and product pipeline, but was careful about setting expectations: “We have some really great stuff coming in the fall and across all of 2014.”

It seems the executive re-org at Apple has caused some product “bus bunching”: more products are being delayed and forced to launch alongside one another, rather than spaced out over the course of the year.

Given these known knowns, here’s what I think the product roadmap will look like for the rest of year:

June (WWDC)

Haswell MacBook Air: It’s unlikely the MacBook Air will get a Retina display this year, as the battery draw and graphics performance just don’t seem to be there yet. Performance is hard enough on the MacBook Pros and “Smaller and Lighter” is the motto of the MacBook Air product line, so I can’t see Apple doing anything which would add size or weight. Intel’s new Haswell chips will start to become available in June, and they would make a good fit for an incremental update.

New, Haswell (Xeon E3) Mac Pro: “Finally.” Tim Cook himself claimed a new Mac Pro was coming “Later in 2013” back in summer of 2012. A redesigned case is possible, but it’s questionable whether or not Apple would dedicate the resources necessary for that, especially given the state of the desktop PC market.

I doubt these machines would ship until July, given the constraints of the new processor ramp. Both computers wouldn’t be big enough updates to warrant major press coverage or ad campaigns, hence Cook’s downplay. However, both these machines are developers favorites, and would likely be well received at WWDC alongside the expected previews of iOS 7 and OS X 10.9.

“Fall” (September/October)

Haswell MacBook Pro: Not much more to add here, just a healthy bump to the MacBook Pro line. Depending on the pricing of the MacBook Air, the non-Retina version may be dropped entirely. It already confuses the product line and isn’t well differentiated over the Macbook Air.

New iPad 5: Featuring a next-gen A7X CPU and the case redesign rumored to look more like the iPad mini.

iPad mini 2: The big wildcard here is whether or not it will get a Retina display. John Gruber thinks not due to margin constraints, but I’m still optimistic. If not Retina, what would be the reason to upgrade? A faster processor and what else? Colors, perhaps.

iPhone 5S and Updated iPod touch: Likely a “tick” upgrade, as Samsung certainly hasn’t brought it this year. The rumored fingerprint sensor technology sounds interesting, but I’m not sure how it would play out.

iPhone 5/5S Dock: Finally.

“New Product Categories”

The iWatch is nonsense. 100 product designers, really? Watches are jewelry, they are fashion accessories, and as such they change quickly with the times. People who are willing to wear watches have already chosen one they love, and possibly spent a lot on it.

The iTV is also nonsense. Marco did a good job debunking it two years ago and his post remains accurate. In short, it’s too operationally complex to produce, is too difficult to sell in an already heavily commoditized market, has low margins, and low re-purchasability.

What isn’t nonsense is the emerging market of other types of wearable computing. Think Nike FuelBand, Jawbone Up, and FitBit. While these products are all currently centered around health metrics, there’s no reason they have to be. With a small display you could show information similar to what a smart watch provides: who’s calling, who a text message is from, what time it is, etc. But it could do so much more. With gyros, pedometers, and altimeters it could be a generalized tracking device. With NFC it could be a payment device. With other sensors it could be an interface device. It could exist not to replace your watch, but to live alongside it, maybe on the other arm.

The concept of wearable computing is certainly attractive, and I trust Apple to be more tactful in its design than some other companies.

2014 and Beyond

Regardless of what this “new product category” is, it seems unlikely to launch in 2013. It would make much more sense to launch in March or April of 2014, and give Apple back its spring / summer / fall product launch cycles.

It’s too early to speculate on what lies ahead in 2014 for all other product lines – We need to wait and see what happens this year.

Apple has always been a product company, and sometimes it’s easy to forget that the software is what makes the hardware so lovable. With the new leadership, iOS 7 and OS X 10.9 are sure to bring some very interesting changes. So in my opinion, the most exciting news is only weeks away.

Thanks to Christopher Clarko for reviewing a draft of this.

As far as I can tell, the last time this happened was in 2005: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Apple_Inc._products#2010s ↩

The Facebook Cloud

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 11:37:00 -0700

The word “cloud” is being thrown around in the technology industry with a lot of carelessness and marketing hyperbole, so it has quite a loose meaning these days. In the interest of clarity, I’d like to describe what I mean when I say “cloud” or “cloud services”: In this instance, I’m referring to user-facing data storage and sync platforms. For example, iCloud, Dropbox, Google Gmail/Cal/Drive, etc. What I’m NOT referring to is “cloud computing” platforms such as Amazon EC2, Joyent, or Rackspace Cloud. With that out of the way, let’s continue.

Facebook is set to make some kind of Android-related announcement next week, ostensibly a Facebook-branded phone. The company, for all its flaws, remains a very popular cloud platform, although its users don’t often think of it as such. People (a lot of people) use it not only as a living address book, but also for messaging, blogging, photo sharing, and event planning. There are even apps – but to be fair, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen any really popular ones other than spammy news apps or games.¹ For people who don’t have a problem with the blatant privacy issues, it’s an attractive alternative to the Apple and Google ecosystems.

With any given cloud service, it’s important to understand that the more data you put into it, the more useful it becomes. When you get a new phone or laptop, how quickly you sign in to iCloud or Dropbox is probably a good barometer of how much data you’ve got in there.

With Facebook, most of its users have been using it for so long that they don’t even realize how much data it’s hosting for them. While this may not be a desirable situation for the user, it certainly is for Facebook.

Facebook is one of the few companies, perhaps the only company, who can offer an extremely compelling out-of-box experience for new phone buyers. Turn on, sign in to your Facebook account, and the device comes alive: All of your friends, conversations, photos, and calendars appear and just work.

Besides being able to provide a great experience, there are other things pushing Facebook to have their own phone. The competitive handset market is creating an opening for another viable OS, as no one except Apple or Samsung is making much money, and there are many other players looking for options. Partnering with HTC makes the most sense, as HTC’s industrial design has typically been well regarded, and the company is undoubtedly looking for a new edge against its rivals.

Further, advertisements (which, let’s not forget, is what Facebook’s real business is about) are going mobile quite quickly. Facebook’s own quarterly earnings confirm this, as its mobile ad revenue increased from 14% in 2012 Q3 to 23% in 2012 Q4. Having deeper hooks into a mobile phone OS would definitely allow Facebook to collect more data, better target ads, and grow this revenue even more.

There are open questions. Given Facebook’s tremendous talent pool, building an entire OS isn’t out of the question – but is it worth it? Why bother when Google has already done the heavy lifting? If you’re going to rebuild the entire user-facing layer, why mention Android in your invitation at all? My guess is they will try to leverage the Android app ecosystem, much in the same way Amazon has done with the Kindle Fire.

The Facebook Phone has been rumored for some time, and with good and obvious reason. Whether this announcement is just a suite of Android applications, an Android “skin”, or something else entirely, we’ll find out soon. But when it comes to Facebook’s mobile future, the writing is on the wall.

The same could be argued of iOS, where games consistently dominate the top apps lists. I don’t think that’s true though: Apple goes out of it’s way to promote or feature non-game apps, many of which become (or already were) hits. ↩

socmoth: everything around you that you call life was made up...

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 20:45:36 -0700

socmoth:

everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you (via Steve Jobs: The Most Important Thing)

I had never heard this line from Steve before. Damn, does it ever make me miss him.

Glass Interrupted

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 15:07:42 -0800

Have you ever had lunch with someone who puts their smartphone on the table, face up, next to their silverware? When the phone lights up to display an alert – any alert – their eyes break from yours and their attention is stolen by the device. It doesn’t matter if it’s an urgent call or just their turn at Letterpress, this person has made a statement: In this moment, I am not willing to give you my full attention and I’m going to keep myself open to distraction.

If you were doing this during a first date, there is no way you’d get a second.

One of my questions about Google Glass seems to have been answered by Joshua Topolsky’s recent hands-on experience with the product. Can people see you looking at the Glass screen?

It’s not covered by the article so I could be wrong, but the direction of Joshua’s eyes in that photo seem to show the answer. With a glance like that, a person sitting across the table from you would have no problem noticing that you were checking your email instead of listening to them.

Glass has a mission to get “out of your way when you’re not interacting with technology”. I don’t understand how moving the location of the screen from the table to your face makes an interruption less rude.

I have high hopes for the future of wearable technology. I love my Fitbit. An Apple “smartwatch” sounds amazing. I think the anxiety caused by the alien-like aesthetic of Google Glass will disappear over time. But it’s impossible, at least with current technology, to engineer around human impoliteness.

Thanks to Chris Clark for his feedback on drafts of this post.

"We must do something great."

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 10:13:02 -0800

Question about the “Apple would never…” religion

The only thing we’ll never do is make a crappy product. That’s the only religion we have… we must do something great. Something bold, something ambitious. Something great for the customers, and we sweat all of the details.

Tim Cook, speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference. Great answer.

The NEX and Antarctica

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 22:30:00 -0800

I want to talk about two things: Antarctica and Sony’s NEX mirrorless camera line, specifically the NEX-5N and the NEX-6.

Mirrorless cameras are the fast-approaching future of consumer / “pro-sumer” photography. Like traditional DSLRs, they offer large sensors and interchangeable lenses, but thanks to the lack of mirror and prism, are smaller and thus more portable. As the cameras in mobile phones continue to get better optics and eat into the point-and-shoot market, it’s easy to see this new type of camera becoming the defacto choice for someone who wants more from their photos.

That being said, the market is still somewhat nascent. Early movers like Panasonic/Lumix and Olympus are on their 2nd or 3rd generation models, but the big players like Canon and Nikon only released their first offerings this past year. (To aplomb, sadly.)

Sony’s mirrorless system, the NEX line, was the one which pulled me in. Sony hardware is generally well regarded, and its cameras are no exception. While they doesn’t have the greatest history of UI design, they usually do better than Olympus or Panasonic, whose software and hardware design I find rather ugly. It turns out the UI on the NEX cameras is pretty bad, but we’ll get to that later.

The NEX-5N

I bought an NEX-5N to try out about a year ago. It’s a strange thing. I’d like to cover it a bit before jumping into the NEX-6 because they are so similar.

The camera body by itself is on par with, or smaller than, most point-and-shoots. It’s almost too small. The camera is practically all lens, but that’s kind of ok, since the lens is arguably the most important part of any camera. You end up with a rather awkward shape though, as some lenses are actually taller than the camera body itself, causing a tilt when you set it down. Other than setting off some weird OCD, this doesn’t really have an effect on use.

Fortunately, I have never found it awkward to hold. The grip fits well in my medium sized hands and the camera feels small, but not uncomfortable – exactly how I hoped a mirrorless would.

The image quality, especially with the kit lens, is fantastic.

The kit lens is not very fast: wide open, its f-stop sits at 3.5. This means it’s unlikely to capture ultra-low depth of field shots that many associate with high-end photography, but it’s still quite good in own right. Any decently lit scene comes out looking good, and daylight shots are really sharp.

The UI was the most lackluster part of the entire kit. Sony’s menu system, while good looking, is difficult to navigate because there’s hardly any information hierarchy, and the hierarchy they do have is practically nonsensical. For example, one of the top level menu options is “Camera” – as if I could modify settings for other devices?

Excuses

My dad has been lucky enough to travel to world twice-over throughout his life. One place he never got to, however, was Antarctica. He had always wanted to go, but never the time or means. This year, when he found them, he pitched the idea to my brother and I and we were sold. Both my brother and I are avid photographers, so we leapt at the chance to go take photos of one of the world’s most remote and beautiful places.

And is it ever remote. We flew to Miami, then Buenos Aires, then Ushuaia (the southernmost city in the world), totaling roughly 18 hours worth of flights. Then we had to travel by ship for two and a half days through the Drake Passage, the place where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Pacific and Antarctic Oceans. This gets you to Graham Land, the Antarctic peninsula, the most accessible part of the continent. The rest is another 2-3 days by boat, and is generally covered in ice anyways.

With all this travel ahead of me, it seemed the perfect excuse to upgrade to the NEX-6.

The NEX-6

Using the NEX-5N from day to day was good, but I really missed the viewfinder from my SLR. Taking shots through an LCD screen in front of your face and not a viewfinder is a very different — and not necessarily desirable — experience. The shots tend to originate from about a foot in front of you, and down by your chest, instead of near your own eye. Sony does sell a OLED viewfinder attachment for the NEX-5N, but it’s expensive, and being an attachment, cumbersome.

The NEX-6 has one built-in, so right away it seemed like a good upgrade for the price.

There are other bonuses too. It’s slightly larger and made of stronger, more professional-feeling materials, making it a bit nicer to hold. It also has a physical mode selection dial, and a manual control dial for whatever mode your in. This makes the entire thing much nicer to use in practice. No photographer wants to have to fiddle with menus or settings in the field.

The sensor is the same as the one in the NEX-5N, which I already know and love.

Through the Glass, Looking

Upon arrival of the NEX-6, I was sadly disappointed by the kit lens. The new 16-50mm “Power Zoom” lens is smaller and has a wider focal length than the NEX-5N, but it features an annoying electronic motor which controls the zoom and eats battery. What’s worse, and more important, is the image quality. Wide shots have noticeably bad blurriness on the right side of the photo, as can be seen in the cropped image below. (Retina readers, my apologies.)

Although I could have gotten along fine with the 18-55mm lens from my NEX-5N, I had only a few hours before my flight and in a moment of panic I decided to spring from the Sony 24mm f/1.8 Zeiss lens — a wide, speedy lens I knew I could count on. It was possibly the best panicked decision I have ever made.

Its sharpness and clarity was superb. I was so impressed with some of the photos, I wanted to compare it to a Leica. On price, the Sony Zeiss lens costs about $1,100. The comparable Leica 24mm f/1.4 Summilux-M lens is more than 6x as expensive. Given that, you may be surprised to find out that the Sony lens is as good as, if not better, than the Leica:

I have held the new Sony Zeiss e Mount 24mm to a very high standard. The 24mm f/1.4 Summilux is a world-class benchmark lens, one of the finest fast wide angle lenses made. It is of course a full frame lens, while the E mount Zeiss covers APS-C. Also, the Zeiss is an autofocus lens, so in some ways we’re comparing peaches and apricots. Also, there is more than a $5,000 price difference between the lenses.

Given all of the above, the 24mm Zeiss stands up to the Leica Summilux very well indeed. It bests it in some areas, holds its own in some, and falls slightly behind elsewhere. Overall this is a stunning performance.

That’s from Michael Reichmann at The Luminous Landscape, who ran exhaustive tests against the two.

Trial by Travel

The benefits of using a mirrorless system show up before you even leave the house. The NEX-6 fits so well in almost any carry-on, and USB charging meant I didn’t need to bring an extra charger; I knew from my experience with the 5N that the battery would last long enough to get me through a day of heavy shooting, at least. In the SLR days, most people would carry a dedicated extra bag for all their camera gear. Not so with the NEX — all I took was the camera itself, the charging cable, and an extra zoom lens, all of which fit easily in my messenger bag.

Because the flight to Buenos Aires is so long, we decided to stay a couple days to see the city a little bit and break up the travel. It’s a massive city, so we knew there was no chance to enjoy all it had to offer, but we did what we could. My favorite thing was El Avaneo, a bookstore converted from an old theatre.

The NEX-6 preformed admirably. Because of its unassuming size, it’s easy to take everywhere and it doesn’t attract much attention.

The viewfinder helps composition so much, it’s hard to believe I was ever trying to shoot without one. It was sunny and hot in BA, and trying to use an LCD in daylight is difficult even with the best of screens. The viewfinder totally alleviates all of that strain. It activates when you put your eye up to it (there was no noticeable lag, the proximity sensor is great) and the LCD screen shows the same thing. However, you can set the LCD screen to only show camera settings instead of a live display, which is very helpful.

The viewfinder would prove especially important in Antarctic, where, on a sunny day, it’s so bright you’d think were showing up to the Oscars with Anna Kendrick on your arm.

Lens Fun

One of the big appeals of SLRs and mirrorless systems is the ability to change lens to adapt to what you’re trying to shoot. I figured I’d want to take close ups of whatever wildlife we would encounter so I brought along another NEX lens: the 55mm-210 f/3.5-5.6 lens. It’s the cheapest of the Sony zooms, and it shows. It’s not very sharp, nor that fast, nor that zoom-y (other telephotos go to 300mm) but for the price, it’s also not a bad deal.

Ushuaia is the city “at the end of the world” — a small, very rural town supported primarily by Antarctic tourism. It’s not a beautiful city, but the surrounding landscape is. I couldn’t stop taking photos even before landing. Being from Canada, you may think I’ve seen my share of snow capped mountains, but I realized while there that I’ve never actually been as far north as I have been south. I wonder if this is what Yukon is like? Another trip for another day, I suppose.

The Main Event

Let me tell you about Antarctica. I could tell you what you might expect to hear: It’s beautiful, cold, and mesmerizing. All of things things are true. But there’s another word I want to use to describe it: Magical. I know it sounds corny, but stay with me.

The thing about visiting Antarctica is that doesn’t feel real. Your entire life, you grow up knowing there’s this massive white continent at the bottom of all the maps that no one goes to because it’s simply too challenging, too inhospitable. You don’t ever expect to see it with your own eyes, so when you do, and it feels like nothing you’ve ever experienced, it feels like magic. It feels like an optical illusion, like a trick is being played on your brain.

Antarctica has this quiet beauty that was accurately described to us as a “loud quiet”. Unless you’re near a penguin rookery, the only thing you hear is the wind, and the occasional calving of ice, which, depending on your distance, can be extremely loud.

Calving: Imagine your house, but made of ice. Now take 4 or 5 of those. Stack them vertically, and attach them to a much, much larger piece of ice. Then imagine it coming unattached, and falling into water below. The sound is like thunder, but longer and growlier. It’s magnificent.

Expeditious

Every day on our trip, we did landings to different parts of the peninsula or the nearby islands. On one day, the weather was particularly nasty, and our zodiac (the small boat you take from the big boat) had to deal with some serious chop. The wind whipped up the waves and got us soaked. Our bright yellow waterproof parkas meant this was a nonissue for our health, but the same couldn’t be said for the NEX-6.

I had hoped the stronger body would have also come with a bit of weather sealing, but that was not the case. While the camera and lens survived a bit of rain and unintended splashing, I found alarming amounts of water in the battery compartment shortly after. I cleaned everything diligently, and experienced no problems, but I felt like I cheated death.

The NEX-6 features wifi connectivity, for some crazy reason. It sounds good in theory (wireless photo transfers, finally!) but it falls apart in practice because the software is so bad. A downloadable app — yes, the camera has apps — allows you to directly upload photos to Facebook, which might be of interest to some, but the sign up process is so convoluted and frustrating, I doubt most people will even bother. Another app lets you send photos directly to your iOS device, which is actually pretty cool. Sadly, the implementation makes it unlikely to ever be used: The camera creates an ad-hoc network the iOS device must join each time, instead of just sharing a common network. Good for transferring in the field, but not much anywhere else. Further, the required iOS app is flaky at best. The Apple camera connection kit is still a much better option.

Surprise!

There’s one last (literally) hidden feature of the NEX-6 that justifies the upgrade: A built in, pop-up flash. The NEX-5N ships with a flash as an attachment, but you have to either leave in on all the time or remember to bring it with you. In other words, it’s a pain.

This little addition makes late night (or early morning — it doesn’t really matter when it never gets totally dark) party photos that much more fun.

Recommendations

Go to Antarctica. It’s cold and it’s hard to get to and you’ll be extremely disconnected, which is a good thing. You might need it. We all do, every now and then.

As someone with a lot of experience with various cameras, I used to get frequently asked for camera buying advice. Now that everyone has iPhones, I rarely get asked for that help. However, I know that I’ll have no issue absolutely recommending the NEX-6 to anyone looking to take higher quality photos. Despite its annoying menu system, it’s a beautiful and fun camera. It’s genuinely difficult not to enjoy, no matter where you take it.

Grab the body-only version of the NEX-6 and avoid the kit lens. Go instead for the standard 18-55m f/3.5-5.6, or the Zeiss if you’re willing to spend more.

Final Notes

I’d be remiss to not mention the new NEX-5R and the older NEX-7.

The NEX-5R is essentially a 5N with WiFi, a control dial, and faster focusing. It’s the most current version of the NEX-5 series of cameras.

The NEX-7 is much different. It has been out for about as long as the NEX-5N as the pricier older brother – Its generally $250 more than the NEX-6. It shares many of the same features of the NEX-6 (viewfinder, manual controls, etc), but the primary difference is the sensor. The added cost gets you a lot more megapixels – 24.7 to the NEX-5N’s 16.1. The body size is also significantly larger, to the point where it feels more like a small SLR. At the time, it didn’t think it was really worth it, but I could understand the appeal.

There’s also the lower-end NEX-F3, but it lacks important manual features that most serious photographers would probably want. I bet it’s a nice camera though, if you don’t mind the crummy UI.

The full set of photos from my trip can be found on my Flickr.

The Magazines

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 21:15:00 -0800

Craig Mod wrote an extremely important essay about the future of publishing called “Subcompact Publishing” that you should read if you haven’t already. In his follow up, there were the echoes of an idea I take issue with, care of Ryan Singer at 37signals:

“Tablets are waiting for their Movable Type”

I couldn’t disagree more.

Movable Type, Wordpress, and other blogging platforms were successful because they removed barriers between authors and readers. Their arrival marked the first time that it was relatively easy for authors to self-publish. This led to an explosion of great new independent content online. The idea that the same results would occur if only it were easier to publish to native is short-sighted: Even with better authoring software, there are still extra barriers between authors and readers that exist in native publishing.

The Drawbacks of Native Publishing

The crux of Singer’s idea is simple:

Wouldn’t it be awesome to publish my own magazine on the iOS Newsstand?

Singer implies the answer is yes, because he’s only looking at the benefits. In reality, things are more complicated. The benefits of native publishing are appealing to the reader:

Push notifications of new content
Background downloading for offline reading
Simplified purchasing

However, there are numerous disadvantages to the author:

Push notifications require a running a server which is configured to notify users of new events.
Native apps must be built, submitted to the App Store, and be maintained (should bugs be found or programming APIs changed).
Native content is subject to censorship by the controlling store.
Non-negotiable pricing terms.
Native publishing limits the readership to owners of the devices supported by the native apps.

Singer is advocating the creation of a “Moveable Type for Native” application or framework to alleviate these problems. As Mod points out in his follow-up, there are already companies like The Periodical Co. who are working hard towards this goal. Although I wish them well, they seem ill-equipped to do so, because they can’t control the last three of those big downsides. Software would definitely be able to mitigate the first two issues, but the others are much harder to deal with.

Let’s assume a best-case scenario: a platform owner like Apple is the one to improve the authoring tools and tackle these challenges. Apple already offers iBooks Author, a beautiful ebook creation application. It’s easy to see them expanding their foothold in publishing by offering a similar Newsstand Author tool, complete with a hosted push notification service. They could relax their stance on censorship of magazines – they already don’t censor ebooks or music. They may even change their tone on pricing, but I wouldn’t count on that. They’re still left with issue #5: Readers without iOS devices won’t be able to access the native content.

For authors, reach is a huge deal. One of the reasons web publishing was and is so desirable is because it levels the economics of reach: It costs the same to have 5 readers as it does to have 5 million. Compared to the web, native publishing only limits the number of people who can view the content and adds additional operating expense.

Given these drawbacks, authors like Singer must ask themselves: Is native publishing worthwhile? Even if a software solution existed, a non-trivial amount of overhead would be required to support it. (Implementation, dealing with subscriptions, customer support, censorship, etc.) Further, readers can already get similar features through existing technology like RSS, Instapaper, Pocket, or Safari’s built-in Reading List feature. Is native publishing really better than the web?

This is an open question that no one yet has the answer to, but I’m betting against.

Publishing for native has a very different set of requirements and cost/benefits as compared to straight web publishing. The balance of these costs and benefits probably isn’t good enough to justify the effort to most people, no matter how good the authoring software.

Bonus Alternate Ending

What do Heather B. Armstrong, Paul Ford, and Deadmau5 have in common? None of them want to configure a push notifications server. Probably. I don’t know any of them well enough to say for sure, but I do know this: People want to do what they want to do. Writers want to write, musicians want to make music. They don’t want to troubleshoot code compilation warnings or figure out ambiguous errors from iTunes Connect, the infamous App Store backend.

People also want to share what they make, and discover what others have made. With print ceding ground to the web, there are new opportunities abound.

Luckily, there are people like Marco. Marco had both the foresight to realize this and the skills to take advantage of it. He created The Magazine, a platform for the things he loves: Writing in and around the world of technology. The Magazine lets both authors and readers get what they want: All the advantages of native publishing with minimal overhead to the author, and with content being owned by the authors, maximal reach. (The fact that The Magazines publishes articles in their entirety on the web at a later time helps too.)

I believe there will be more people like Marco, and more publications like The Magazine. There will be a Magazine for short films, specially tailored to download large video content and play it. There will be a Magazine for Music, built as audio player with new playlists every week. There be lots of different kinds of Magazines. There will even be Magazines which compete with each other, and that’s OK.

Instead of individuals trying to self-publish on native, authors will rally around these new magazines. Magazines that are specifically geared to showcase their content and manage the technical aspects of implementation and support. This will be the way many authors get their content get published on native devices. Many other authors will remain happy with web-only publishing. For everyone else, there will always be sandals or sneakers.

While it will be a big shift, I believe digital publishers of the future will be a combination of talented engineers who know how to leverage technology and smart editors who can pick great content.

No matter what happens, 2013 is sure to be a banner year for publishing. I can’t wait.

Apple and Twitter

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 12:30:00 -0800

My friend and co-worker Tom has a thesis about Apple’s biggest problem: Google is getting better at design faster than Apple is getting better at web services.

I’m a long-time Mac user and a diehard Apple fan, and even I will admit that Apple’s approach to the web has been a clusterfuck. iCloud, née MobileMe, née .Mac, has only ever been adequate at best. I’ve heard (or been victim to) countless stories of duplicate or lost contacts, calendar syncing errors, or email downtime. Outside of sync services, Apple has other web problems. Here are a few examples:

Apple can’t update its online store without taking it offline first.
A popular Game Center game was able to bring down the entire network.
Apple requires you to re-friend everyone on Game Center, Find my Friends, and Shared Photostreams.
Notes requires an email account to sync.
The iTunes and App Stores are still powered by WebObjects, a mostly dead framework written almost 20 years ago.
iMessage for Mac lives in an alternate dimension in which time has no ordered sequence.
Ping.

Almost anything Apple does which involves the internet is a mess, save for their excellent web browser teams.

Meanwhile, Google, specifically Android, has been steadily improving its entire platform. To me, it still doesn’t have the same quality of polish and feel that Apple software does. However, it’s getting harder to argue that point, especially since their web services all tend to Just Work. Features like Google Now and near-instant voice commands are starting to give Android a serious leg up on iOS. Design is coming along as well. Android is still ugly, but it’s much less ugly than it was a few years ago. Google seems to be actively addressing this, and if Apple isn’t worried, they should be. Tom is the first friend I’ve had who has switched from iOS to Android, and he is unlikely to be the last.

Here’s what I’m getting at: Apple should buy Twitter, and they should do it now.

I’m hardly the first to suggest such an acquisition. Apple and Twitter have talked before and much speculation has already been made. Most, if not all, of this speculation centered around how Apple needed to buy a social network, because Apple needed “Social” – whatever that means. Owning a social network only solves one of the aforementioned problems (finding friends) and it only does so only partially: Both friends must already be a part of that social network for it to work. It seems ludicrous to suggest paying billions of dollars for half a solution to the symptom of a problem.

So that’s not that argument I want to make.

I would posit that the cause Apple’s lackluster web skills stems from their inability to recruit or keep talented web engineers. Historically, if you’re into databases, servers, or web application frameworks, then Apple was probably pretty low on the list of places you aspired to work at. Apple has always positioned itself as a consumer products company, and even killed off its server hardware over the years. Mac OS X Server remains, but who knows for how long.

Where Apple falls short, Twitter flies. Not only does Twitter use some of the most advanced web technology, they invented it. They own scale. They know how to send hundreds of thousands of tweets a minute. Further, Twitter is social network with values that (used to) reflect Apple: focus and simplicity.

Apple should buy Twitter not for its social network, but for its talent and technology. That talent and technology could undoubtably help bring Apple and iCloud into the 21st century. The social network is basically an added bonus.

Twitter is a company struggling to make financial sense. With over $1B in funding and over 1500 employees, they need to figure out how to stay in the game for the long term. Hence, the disappointing pivot and the user backlash. Exhibit A, exhibit B. While Twitter may make a lot of money for its investors, having many of your original users abandon ship isn’t good for your long term prospects.

Apple has boatloads of money, and although it’s extremely conservative with it – you don’t get rich by spending money, after all – I don’t think it’s out of the question for them to make a heavy strategic investment like this.

An Apple buyout of Twitter wouldn’t be welcomed by all. With so many Twitter employees, I imagine at least a few hundred of them are dedicated to Twitter’s advertising arm. Since Apple is unlikely to be interested in that aspect of Twitter’s business, many of those jobs would likely disappear. It wouldn’t be pretty. (Then again, maybe they could help turn around iAds?)

If it doesn’t happen soon, it likely won’t happen at all. The larger Twitter gets, the more likely an IPO, and Apple isn’t dumb enough to pay the grossly inflated market prices for a publicly traded social media company. Further, the more Twitter becomes a “media company” the less engineering talent it will retain. Anecdotally, I’ve already heard of quite a few key engineers leaving the nest.

All said, I think this is pretty unlikely to happen. Maybe I’m just jaded, but Twitter probably thinks of itself as being too big and too primed for money-making to be acquired at this point. Also, stomaching the layoffs of much of it’s staff doesn’t sound like something their leadership would be up for. Apple is probably too in denial about the failings of it’s antiquated approach to the web to consider dropping such a huge amount of money.

The fit seems so good, it’s hard to not wish for.

Update: A previous version of this article referenced a statistic about Twitter handling hundreds of thousands of tweets per second. This was an error, the rate Twitter quoted was 327,452 per minute. My apologies. Still, it’s quite an impressive number, considering the one-to-many nature of Tweets.

The Retina MacBook Pro 13"

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 11:15:00 -0800

Here’s your one-line review: Don’t buy this computer.

I initially had the same impression as Marco: A MacBook Pro with a similar size to a MacBook Air, but featuring a faster processor and a Retina screen, at the cost of only 0.5 lbs of weight and a few millimeters of thickness. There’s a significant price tag for this, but it’s worth it, right? No.

I upgraded from a Mid 2011 MacBook Air to the Retina MacBook Pro 13” and have been using it for about a week. The problems are starting to sink in.

Performance

I use my Mac for mostly web browsing, email, Xcode, Aperture, various music apps, and occasionally some light Photoshop work. The Retina MacBook Pro 13” has an Intel HD Graphics 4000 chipset, which is rather underpowered. Given my workload, I didn’t think this would matter for me, but I was wrong: It turns out this machine can’t smoothly scroll media-rich websites like The Verge without noticeable choppiness. As someone who spends much of his day trying to optimize scrolling performance on iOS devices, it hurts to see laggy scrolling on my Mac. Even though it’s not that bad, it’s simply not what you would expect from brand new hardware.

Screen Size

While the Retina screen contains something on the order of a trillion pixels (or so it feels like), the effective screen size is actually smaller than the 13” MacBook Air. The effective size of the 13” MacBook Air is 1440x900, whereas the Retina MacBook Pro is 1280x800. If that doesn’t sound like a lot, it isn’t, but it does make a difference. Since the Retina is – well – Retina, text is so much sharper and it’s easy to drop font sizes down to make up for the lack of screen space, but this only works if you’ve got good eyes.

It’s possible to run the display in different scaled modes for “more space”, and this is actually a good solutions for apps that are not yet Retina-ready. The small size of the UI elements hides their blockiness, and it’s wonderful to have a 1680x1050 sized screen crammed into a 13” screen. Unfortunately, running in any scaled mode has the hallmark fuzziness you’d expect from using a display at it’s non-native resolution. The tininess of the of the pixels helps hide this at the maximum scaled resolution, but it still feels wrong to me.

While the smaller effective screen size in normal Retina mode something you can adjust too, it feels like a downgrade.

Battery Life

I was blown away by the battery life in my MacBook Air 13”. I would easily get 5+ hours of normal usage, and it felt like more. Because of the faster processor, I expected the battery life of the MacBook Pro 13” to be a little worse, but not by much. Apple seems to keep bending the laws of physics to get more and more battery life out of every new generation of machines. Unfortunately, this is not the case with the MacBook Pro 13”.

In my daily usage, the battery life falls short of the MacBook Air by roughly 2 hours. It’s hugely noticeable, and made worse by running the display in any of the “scaled” options. Again, this feels like a downgrade.

~

All these shortcomings are in service to the bigger picture, the Retina display. And my, what a display it is. It really is beautiful to see all your icons and text rendered with impossible sharpness. When you look at it, it seems obvious that you’re looking at the inevitable future of all displays.

Which is why, unfortunately, I’ll be returning mine.

A $500 premium on the future makes sense, but the other trade-offs required just aren’t worth it right now. That’s not to say they won’t be in the future. In fact, I expect the Retina MacBook Pro line to turn out much like the original MacBook Air. The original MacBook Airs, while tiny, had terrible performance problems. They couldn’t play fullscreen flash video without stuttering or crashing. But Apple did what they always do – they iterated. They knew what they were building had a futuristic quality to it, and must be made better. And now, a few generations in, the MacBook Air is the machine of choice for most people I know, including myself.

I look forward to the next generation of MacBook Pros, but this one just isn’t for me, nor is it something I can see myself recommending to others. Roll on, Apple.

Update: Ars Technica reports that Apple has released a software update which improves scrolling performance, one of my gripes.

Health Gadgetry

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 11:20:00 -0700

About a year ago I was working at a startup and dealing with all the joy and stress that came along with it. I gained a fair bit of weight and fell into a pretty unhealthy routine. When the stress of the company finally dissipated, I decided it was time to focus on becoming healthier. Being the nerd I am, I sought out any technology I could find to help me with this goal.

Because I know many other people with similar ambitions, I wanted share what I’ve learned about the various gadgets I’ve used throughout the past year and my experiences with them.

The Fitbit

The Fitbit Ultra was the first piece of tech I used in my quest for better health. It’s a brilliant little $100 pedometer that syncs with your computer, recharges via USB dongle, and has a web UI which lets you see your step count for the day, when you were active, and when you were sedentary. It can also be used as a sleep tracker. You can wear it at night with the provided bracelet band, and it will tell you how well you slept the next day.

Part of what makes the Fitbit successful is that it’s so passive. It’s something you put on your body in the morning and can forget about for the entire day. It requires no effort other than remembering to put it on before you leave. I’ll come back to why this is important later.

The first and second generation (Fitbit Ultra) of hardware is mostly the same, with the exception that the second generation one includes an altimeter. This gives you the added ability to see how many “flights of stairs” you’ve climbed throughout the day.

The hardware itself is nice. Its built in a clip-like shape so you can have it pinch to the edge of your pants pockets, although I find it easier to simply leave it in my pocket. Lady friends of mine seems to like wearing it on a bra/dress shoulder strap as well. It’s small enough that I often forget whether or not I have it in my pocket, but it can feel a little thick at times – It might show awkwardly in your pocket in anything less than loose fitting pants. The battery lasts for almost a week, so it’s easy to leave it on you and forget about.

The software is also pretty nice. It has some great social features (I can’t believe I just wrote that) which let you compete against friends for step counts and distance, and the iPhone app and web UI are both easy to use. The software also features a surprisingly motivating achievements system which tracks both day-long and lifetime-long events, such as 100 floors in a day or 100 miles in your lifetime. By default, you get email notifications for these awards, which are wonderful reminders of your progress.

The software also allows you to get very serious. It offers the ability to add your meals, weight, and other data to give you a complete overview of your health. There is even a “Premium” service which offers more analytics, reporting, and a remote personal trainer to help with your goals. I have not tried this, but it sounds like it could be cool.

I also don’t use the sleep monitoring functionality of the Fitbit. My tests and reports from my friends seem to confirm that this feature is mostly gimmicky. I’ve felt great on days where it said I had a terrible sleep, and terrible on days where it said I had a great sleep.

The Fitbit syncs with the service via the USB dongle, but it does so wirelessly, so it you don’t need to plug it in every day. One of the neat aspects of syncing is that it will sync with ANY connected dock in range, not just your own. This leads to surprising moments when you get an achievement email at your girlfriends’ office.

Overall, my experience with the Fitbit has been extremely positive. It’s amazing how the simple act of passively tracking your activity throughout the day and being aware of that data can motivate you. I almost always take the stairs whenever possible, or walk instead of taking muni when I have the time. “Fitbit points” has become an often used term among my friends and coworkers, many of whom have also started using Fitbits as well.

Fitbit has recently announced their 3rd generation of hardware, which should be launching soon. They’ve split the pedometer into two separate product lines, the Zip and the One. The Zip is already available in Apple stores, and is MUCH smaller and lighter than the Ultra. It doesn’t include the altimeter, nor is it rechargeable (it takes watch batteries instead) but it is only $60. The One includes all the features of the Ultra, with the added ability to sync directly with your phone via Bluetooth 4.0. I’ve ordered one and can’t wait to try it out.

Nike+

Apple and Nike worked together to make some of the first really cool health gadget tech: Nike+. It’s been around since 2006, but it hasn’t changed much since it’s initial launch. A small pedometer goes in your running shoe, which talks wireless to your iPod or iPhone, and gives you data about your run.

The product works great, and the UI has changed a lot over the years, the Nike+ iPhone app being the best yet. There is also a Nike+ Running app on the App Store which uses GPS instead of the pedometer. Unfortunately, this product doesn’t really provide a complete solution to any health plan. Unlike the Fitbit, the Nike+ is a very active-monitoring system. You need to remember to bring the hardware (although you can and should just leave it in your shoe) and your phone with you. Then you have to turn the app on and off with every workout. It gives you great data, which can be helpful, but it doesn’t do anything to motivate you when you’re not working out.

That said, it’s still a good addition to your toolbox: The app will play audio encouragements during your run, which actually feel pretty good, even though they can become repetitive if you use the app a lot. Fitbit even offers a tool to let you sync up your runs, called fbitd.

I can’t help but feel like this type of active-monitoring technology is being eclipsed by passive-monitoring technology like the Fitbit and Fuelband.

Nike+ Fuelband

The Nike+ Fuelband is Nike’s response to the Fitbit. It’s a passive pedometer, and the major difference is that you wear it on your wrist instead of… anywhere else.

I was initially really excited for the Fuelband. It features Bluetooth syncing and a beautiful iOS app, things I would have loved in my Fitbit. Sadly, the Nike brand brought a $150 price tag along with it.

The screen on the Fuelband is beautful. It’s a dot-matrix-like grid of tiny LEDs with wonderfully smooth animations and colors. It lets you cycle through step counts, distance, time, and an arbitrary “Fuel” number that seems to be a combination of those things.

There were enough major downsides to the Nike+ that the software isn’t worth going into. The hardware feels fragile and plastic-y, which is terrible for something that you must bend to remove and put back on every day. Further, unlike the Fitbit, it’s not something you can hide – everyone you see or meet is going to see you wearing a thick, matte black, plastic bracelet. It’s sort of embarrassing.

Nike needs to improve the hardware, drop the price, or both. Until then I can’t recommend you use this little guy.

UP by Jawbone

This pedometer-bracelet was on sale for about a month in January 2012 before they were pulled due to battery problems. They have yet to reappear on the market. I’ve been wanting to try one out but it seems like I might never get to.

Although it suffers from same design issue as the Fuelband (you must wear it on your wrist) it has some interesting advantages:

It comes in colors and the design isn’t as ugly.
It features a vibration function which reminds you to move around if you’ve been sedentary for too long. This active reminder sounds wonderful.

Hopefully one day it will ship again and I’ll get to try it out.

The Withings Wi-Fi Body Scale

I’ve saved the best for last. There isn’t really much to this device – It’s a good looking, $160 scale with a bright and clear LCD screen, incredible battery life (mine has been going strong for a year now), and most importantly, WiFi connectivity.

Why is that important, you ask? Well, Weightbot is why. Although Withings has it’s own website with which you can check your weight and view cool chards and rolling averages, the Weightbot iOS app lets you view the same data (it syncs with the Withings website) with a much nicer UI. If you use Fitbit, you can also have it fetch the same data. (Thanks, @ryannielsen!)

Why do you want to check your weight, you ask? Well, progress is why. While the task of weighing yourself (especially if it’s the first time in a long time) can be daunting, the ability to see progress in the form of a dropping line graph is a truly wonderful and motivating thing. Getting into the habit of weighing yourself daily not only provides you with great data, it passively motivates you to eat less junk food, more healthy food, and exercise more. It helps keep your training goals in mind. This makes it much easier to say “No thanks” when offered cake at work because it’s the birthday of someone you hardly know.

Once you start to have a good base of data to see, you begin to realize that day-to-day variations don’t matter that much. Long term trends are more important, and the encouragement that you get after the first month or two is undeniable.

Because it’s so easy to use and the data has been so influential, I have to say that the Withings scale is probably the single most effective gadget I’ve used in my quest for better health.

The Fitbit Aria

Although I haven’t used it personally, a few of my friends have purchased and used the Fitbit Aria, which is Fitbit’s competitor to the Withings Wi-Fi Body Scale. It’s essentially the same thing – a good looking scale that syncs with a web service via WiFi. It’s also $30 cheaper than the Withings Scale, and a bit smaller.

The advantage with the Aria is that you get to stay in the Fitbit ecosystem. Your weight is reported to the same web service / iPhone app that your steps are (if you’re using one of their pedometers) so everything is in the same place. You can do this with the Withings scale, but the data needs to sync across, so there’s more likelihood of problems and the setup might be an annoyance.

The downside is that it doesn’t work with Weightbot. Well, it can, but it takes some hackery.

Advice

The world has no shortage of weight loss or health-related advice, so I’m going to avoid giving any more here. The most important thing is to find what works for you. For me, it’s been data-driven, and these tracking gadgets have helped immensely. The combination of the Fitbit tracker and service, along with the Withings Scale has given me the most joy out of all the devices I’ve tried.

It’s been a year since I started on my journey for better health, and so far it’s been extremely rewarding. Thanks to technology, I’ve been able to achieve and surpass some of my own goals: I can run farther and faster, lift more, and I have better flexibility.

If you’re considering getting healthier, consider adding some tech to your routine.