May Contain Nuts

Engadget has rumors of a new Apple TV product refresh that seems to play into a few of the ideas I had for the device after the iPhone OS 4 announcement.

Possibly the most interesting thing is that the report indicates Apple is ditching the Apple TV-specific branch of OS X for the iPhone OS. This is indisputably a good move. Apple TV’s software is still built on 10.4 Tiger, while the Mac has advanced to 10.6 and the iPhone OS branch of OS X is nearly 4 revisions along now. It always struck me as odd that Apple would put so much effort into maintaining a major product on such a legacy platform (by Apple’s standards, anyway) when the newer releases of both OS X and the iPhone OS are so much more capable.

Also interesting (and a point of pride given that I freaking called it! ) is that the Apple TV is moving to Apple’s A4 processor, away from the tremendously underpowered mobile Pentium-era chipset in the current model. Again, this makes considerable sense, because it reduces development expenses and complexity across Apple’s product line. Apple’s done a good job at demonstrating the power and efficiency of their custom silicon through the iPad (and presumably the new iPhone), and leveraging that hardware in another product seems like a given. Apple TV’s form factor and performance needs are much more suited to an ARM chipset than anything from Intel. Hopefully this will also bring the device’s power consumption down to more “environmental checklist”-friendly levels.

Given the paucity of onboard storage space (only 16GB SSD), I think this rumor also dovetails nicely with the rumors of an upcoming cloud-based iTunes service that have been floating around since Apple started building their new North Carolina data center, and which intensified after they bought Lala earlier this year. It’ll be interesting to see how this service ends up working, and whether it will allow users to upload their existing non-iTunes content into the cloud for universal access.

The thing that interests me most about this rumor, though, is the possibility that Apple could open up the Apple TV as a new platform for applications. Depending on how they approach this, it could be as simple as allowing services like Netflix and Hulu to stream their content onto the device through custom apps, or it could be as advanced as a full-on gaming console-type device. I think the “standard” approach would be to limit the device to audio and video playback, with the basic Apple remote for navigation, since that’s what most people would likely be buying one for. However, provided it had a Bluetooth radio in it (and why not?), it wouldn’t be difficult to expand support to more complex inputs such as dedicated controllers – or even iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad inputs – for gaming.

As I mentioned in my iPhone OS 4 post-mortem, Apple has a significant amount of support on their mobile platform for gaming (and now with Steam on the Mac, growing support for gaming on their desktop platform as well, hooray!). Major companies like EA and UbiSoft are developing major titles for the iPhone and iPad. Why not build on that support by expanding from the mobile space into the living room? With additions to the iPhone OS like Game Center, a robust platform for development, high-powered and highly-efficient hardware drawn from the mobile space, and serious support from major publishers, I think Apple could easily leverage their success with the iPhone OS into a major play for the living room by providing a familiar and broadly-supported platform to the masses who have already bought into Apple’s media ecosystem through iTunes.

The one potential sticking point in the gaming arena is the paucity of onboard storage. 16GB isn’t a lot for games designed for the TV, presumably complete with major-platform price points and gameplay length. I sort of hope that Apple differentiates the line-up with larger-capacity devices (up to 64 or 128GB) and supports cloud storage of apps and app data so you can swap out titles as you play them without having to worry about losing your games or your progress.

Will all of this happen? Perhaps, perhaps not. Regardless, the potential is there for Apple to swing straight from their success in mobile computing into a play against Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and now Google for control of the living room, using their experience with the “hobby” of Apple TV as a springboard. If nothing else, ideally the promise of third-party streaming services like Netflix and Hulu will come to pass. Given the rumored $99 price point, that may not happen as Apple may seek to make money off of this device through services rather than the actual hardware, but one never knows. I kind of hope this ends up being the “One More Thing” for the WWDC keynote despite Engadget’s assertion that it won’t be mentioned, because with the next iPhone essentially being a known entity already, it’d be nice if there were something like this to announce and flesh out to retain a certain level of interest and surprise. Assuming Apple plans to open this platform up to developers, WWDC seems like as good a place as any to get the word out – even if it doesn’t ship the product until later this year – so that the device can hit the ground running with a broad range of applications already available for it. I don’t think the iPad approach of scaling existing apps up to fit TV screens is going to work at all for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that TVs aren’t multitouch-compatible. There’s going to need to be a longer lead time on 3rd-party development to build apps that are Apple TV-compatible; existing apps simply won’t translate despite the commonality of the underlying architecture.

Hey, this tech pundit stuff is easy! Why can’t I get paid for it?

(Seriously, who names these products? Microsoft even lampooned themselves on their ludicrously overwrought names with their “Microsoft designs the iPod packaging” video, and yet they keep doing it!)

So, Windows Phone 7 Series. Phones. Yeah. I’ma just call it WP7 for short.

I have to give MS some serious kudos on this, actually. Despite the completely atrocious design-by-committee branding in the name of the product, they’ve taken a pretty damn bold step with WP7. Zero backwards compatibility with Windows Mobile 6.5 and earlier, strong emphasis on the retail consumer (to the point of tying media sync to the Zune software platform… will be interesting to see how this device plays out in corporate IT, given the holy hell that was raised about iTunes), minimal multitasking, and a complete and utter departure from the UI of not only Windows Mobile, but pretty much every other smartphone out there.

Conceptually, there is a great deal about WP7 to like, and I think Microsoft can easily position themselves to become a serious contender again in the mobile market that’s basically left them behind over the last 2.5 years (3.5 by the time Wp7 comes out, actually) since the release of the iPhone. Things like the live-updating, rich-content home screen tiles, the broad and deep integration with social networks like Facebook, and the concept- or task-oriented nature of the device’s software, rather than a strictly application-based usage model are things that are very interesting to me, and it’s good to see Microsoft intentionally differentiate itself from the rest of the market in such substantive ways. I think Windows Phone will live or die on this differentiation, rather than its branding as a Windows device (though as always, such branding is probably more beneficial than not).

I’m more ambivalent about the actual execution of the concepts put forth in the WP7 user experience though. The entire platform is built on the Zune HD interface model, and there’s no possibility of carriers overriding this interface as there was in the past with Windows Mobile (something I’m sure HTC is less than 100% pleased about), so I really, really hope you like the way the Zune HD behaves. I, personally, don’t.

Maybe it’s because I get a little OCD with my digital interfaces (having an uneven number of apps on one screen of my iPod is enough to annoy me until I “fix it”, even at the expense of my application grouping methodology… and don’t even get me started on the elaborate and complex maze of folders I use on the Mac to store everything), but the Zune HD’s UI just strikes me as lazily executed because of all the overflowing text and wasted space in many of the screens. I know large, thin, sans-serif type and bold, flat colors are “in vogue” right now, and they do make the device look very stylish, but I don’t think “hip” and “useful” necessarily converge all that often (I mean, have you seen Lady Gaga’s wardrobe?), and I kind of worry that MS is painting themselves into a corner with this UI being so closely tied to the branding of the platform. Chucker argued back at me that Apple’s Aqua interface has made considerable evolutions since its introduction in 2001 2000 with super-glossy buttons and translucent pinstripes, and I agree that Apple has done a very good job with keeping their OS’s interface fairly fresh and in-line with current trends. However, I think the changes Apple has made to Aqua in the past decade are largely superficial: tweaking gradients and transparencies more than anything else. At its core, Aqua is still very much the same as it was 10 years ago in terms of its appearance and behavior. The Zune UI, I think, faces a larger uphill battle against trendiness because so much of its UI is fundamentally not just trendy-looking, but trendy-feeling (again, overflowing text, large monochromatic iconography, whizzy spinny animations). Revamping that UI to keep up with the times without seriously altering the behavioral characteristics of the UI on a fairly fundamental level will probably be much more difficult for Microsoft than it has been for Apple, though I do wish them the best of luck.

My other gripe is related to the first, and it’s got to do with the design of the “hub” applications. I’m not personally a huge fan of the broad two-dimensional navigation in apps like Windows Media Center, because half the time a number of my options are invisible and inaccessible. Similarly, with the Zune UI, it can be hard to tell what all can be done in an application hub without first exploring it fully, which can take some time. This secretive UI concept also requires the user to maintain a much larger conceptual map of the application, as well as the navigational requirements needed to reach various far-flung regions, which strikes me as far more complex than the model which Apple has adopted for the iPhone. It’s bound to be a great interface for chic geeks, because Microsoft is pretty good at building interfaces that geeks and tech enthusiasts feel very comfortable with. I just wonder if the breadth of the navigational capabilities (and requirements) for some of the task hubs in WP7 will be off-putting to people who are less comfortable with digital devices.

As a furtherance to this point, I think Microsoft has misunderstood the utility of animation in a user interface. The WP7 animations are very slick, very intricate, and very dimensional, but they do very little to aid the user in visually navigating through the device’s software. Tapping a tile on the home screen causes the tile to angle away from your finger (which is a nice touch, assuming it actually responds contextually to where you’re pushing on it), but then everything spins off-screen and new content whizzes in seemingly from nowhere. There’s no real “physical” connection between these two layers of the interface the way there is when navigating through the iPhone. Tapping an application icon causes the program to “float up” to the surface, with the home screen UI proceeding out of the field of view. Movement within the application itself is generally very physical, both vertically (with inertial scrolling) and horizontally (with sliding displays). Exiting an application causes it to recede into the background, and the home screen UI falls back into place. These animations are very basic compared to those in WP7, but they also give the device a more physical and connected feel, whereas the WP7 animations just seem to be there because “everybody likes animation in their UI these days”.

I realize I’m doing a lot of complaining about a device which I said at the beginning of this post was a very good idea. The reason is, I think that it is a very good idea, just that the execution of that idea doesn’t fit my personal tastes.

I would love to see some of the more dynamic capabilities of WP7 come to the iPhone, and I think Apple should focus more on providing platforms for developers to build into, rather than just an operating system to build on top of. For example, the Photos application on the iPhone is very basic, and if you want to get photos from Facebook, Flickr, or MobileMe, you have to go into different applications to access them. Even the Apple TV does this better, with a Photos “category” where you can move between services with comparative ease. Better than even that model, though, is WP7’s, where photos just show up from wherever they’re posted, all collected in one place.

Similarly, the People hub is another great idea, which ideally third parties can build into to expand its functionality without adding full-blown applications to the system. Consolidating Contacts, Twitter, Facebook, etc. into one place is a really cool concept. I don’t think it would work quite as well for geeky folks who have multiple Twitter accounts (unless the UI got really creative and potentially overly-complex), but for the average Joe who may have only just figured out what Twitter even is, it’s a very slick implementation.

I also like the ability to pin pretty much anything to the home screen, from hubs to applications to individual items in a hub (like a person or an album). It gives the home screen much more utility for people than a collection of icons with numeric badges on them.

I think a lot of the initial development for WP7 is going to be oriented towards expanding the functionality of these hubs through plugin-style programs, rather than strictly fully-fledged application-based development. Given that the platform will also run whatever new applications developers create, it will be interesting to see how these two branches of functionality compliment or conflict with each other going forward. I suspect WP7 apps will be held to an even higher standard than iPhone apps because of the increased capacity for integration with the various content hubs, as well as the obviously unique and distinctive Zune-like UI. I just hope Windows Mobile developers are up to the considerable challenge after the past decade-plus reign of Windows Mobile’s often atrociously-designed and now-archaic-looking UI.

I’d also be interested in seeing what exactly Microsoft decides to do with the Zune from here out. Given that the Zune and WP7 share a pretty obvious commonality in their UI department, I wonder if they’re both running the same basic OS, with considerable efforts being made to expand its capabilities for the phone. If that’s the case, I wonder if Microsoft will attempt to do with the Zune HD what Apple has done with the iPod Touch: create a gateway product with a lower barrier-to-entry that people can use and get used to without the risk or expense of a phone contract or data plan. If they do, it will definitely be worth keeping an eye on, because Microsoft always plays to win, and while their efforts thus far in the MP3 player market have been pretty dismal at gaining any traction, coupling the Zune HD with a completely overhauled Windows Mobile Phone 7 to create a new Microsoft-controlled mobile computing platform could start driving greater adoption of both devices.

One last thing that wasn’t discussed at the reveal, is whether updates for the OS will be pushed to all users, either free or for a minor fee. This is something that the iPhone platform does pretty consistently better than anyone else, so hopefully Microsoft is learning a lesson from Apple and pressuring carriers and handset makers to allow OS upgrades without making people buy a new phone or resort to tech-nerd solutions like custom boot ROMs.

It will definitely be interesting to see where this goes from here. Unfortunately, I think the biggest problem Microsoft has now is that they’ve tipped their hand a full 8-10 months before their first product will hit store shelves, which gives the competition (especially the whenever-we-feel-like-updating-it Android platform) a considerable head start on getting their copy machines running.

Update: Chucker tells me I’m wrong about the intro date for Aqua being 2001. While I was going off of OS X’s general availability, it was demoed much earlier.

I’ve been ruminating a lot on the approach that various companies, like Microsoft and Apple, have taken to the mobile computing space, and have a few random thoughts that are way too long for Twitter, but not exactly coherent enough to be considered an article or anything, since I don’t really have an ultimate point here. Anyway, I’ll just ramble endlessly as usual and see if anyone cares .

Microsoft’s approach has been very similar to their hugely successful approach to the desktop (and laptop) computer market: provide a powerful, extensible operating system that can run on damn near anything, and set few or no minimum requirements for hardware. This gives hardware partners an enormous amount of flexibility in how they design their phones and other devices, which they love, and it gives the market considerable differentiation between products, which both consumers and manufacturers love.

On the desktop, this approach’s greatest strength is a developer’s ability to write an application and be assured that it will, generally speaking, work everywhere (or at least, on every machine that meets the minimum requirements). In the mobile space, this is perhaps its greatest weakness instead. Because phone manufacturers are very closeted when it comes to hardware specifications, it’s much more difficult to tell if you’ll be able to run a given application. The smaller display space and variable dimensions of the screen make it difficult for developers to build truly effective and intuitive interfaces for their applications, because unlike the desktop’s relatively spacious screen real estate, a phone has very little, and building to the wrong display size can make your app feel either over-crowded on smaller screens or vacant and featureless on larger ones.

Further frustrating Microsoft’s approach has been the reluctance from carriers and/or hardware manufacturers to allow users to upgrade the OS when new releases become available (I’m also aware of tech-oriented work-arounds to this problem, but the average user isn’t going to want to futz with custom boot ROMs). Often the only way to get the new OS is to buy a new phone, and this often comes with a re-extension of the carrier’s contract, which is an unpalatable option for many people. This makes it much more difficult to ensure that users are on a new version of your OS, so developers are hesitant to start using any new features that these new OS releases make available to them. As a result, those users who do manage to upgrade or get a new device see very little difference in the user experience, and this further demotivates people from getting new devices.

Google’s Andriod platform seems to be succumbing to the same pitfall, in that there are no clear rules to manufactureres for implementation or hardware usage, the application market is already starting to fragment because not every app will run on every device, and once again carriers and/or hardware manufacturers are reluctant to offer the latest version of the OS to existing customers. It will be interesting to see if Google’s Nexus One phone can serve as a good example to other manufacturers on how to build a first-class Andriod device, and if the platform can resist or overcome the fragmentation and poor application device compatibility issues that Windows Mobile has presently.

By contrast, Apple’s approach, while also very similar to their own desktop strategy, has been far more effective in gaining market share and mind share. Apple treats their desktop line-up like a consumer electronics line-up rather than an a-la carte buffet as most computer manufacturers do. As a result, they have easy-to-understand delineations between each product category, and it’s fairly easy to chart their machines in a straight line from least to most capable all the way up the price range. While this does make buying a new Mac easier for first-time buyers than staring at the (admittedly improved of late) sea of complementary options on a site like Dell’s, the lack of cheap, low-end computing devices does limit the reach of this strategy for many consumers.

Apple extended this approach into the mobile space with the iPhone, creating a single, simple product line-up of identical devices differentiated only by storage capacity, and varying in price along a single axis. The hardware line-up has fragmented slightly with the latest iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch devices because of the improved graphics performance, but generally speaking, the target market for an application built on the iPhone OS is “every iPhone OS device ever sold”. This makes things much easier for developers, because they don’t have to worry about market fragmentation and reduced sales as a result. It also makes things much simpler for consumers, because they can buy applications with considerably more confidence, and know that their device will be able to run them. The fact that the iPhone platform provides a built-in place for users to look for 3rd-party applications also simplifies the purchasing process and undoubtedly increases sales, which may explain why Apple’s app store model is being replicated on every other platform under the sun.

A lot of what this boils down to, I think, is the simple fact that people want different things from a mobile device than they do from a desktop or desktop-class computer. With the iPhone, iPod Touch, and now the iPad, Apple seems to understand this difference in usage. On the other hand, Microsoft and – to a much lesser extent – Google seem to be pressing onward with their “desktop in your pocket” usage model, which fits awkwardly into such small devices and creates considerable usability issues. A phone is – first and foremost – a phone, not something to write Word documents or build 3D models with. By and large it’s something that people use incidentally for short periods of time, as opposed to the desktop’s “sit down and stay a while” usage model. The iPhone OS seems much more suited to this sort of interaction than Windows Mobile, though with WM finally getting support for capacitive touch-screens, Microsoft is at least trying to move to a more incidental use-friendly input model.

I will be interested to see whether Windows Mobile 7 turns the ship around and starts pushing into more user-friendly waters, but I think that despite the comparatively paltry collection of offerings in Apple’s mobile product line-up, they are better served by their sales approach when it comes to the average user who just wants something with which they can make phone calls, check the weather, and play a game of checkers. Choice is good (as is competition, which is why I’d rather see MS get their mobile OS into the current millennium than tell them to quit while they’re still [slightly] ahead), but sometimes giving people choices they don’t need to make within a platform just creates problems.

(As an aside, I think it’s interesting that it wasn’t until the iPhone SDK was released that gaming on mobile phones really became a big, profitable deal… Nokia tried entering that market at least twice but their devices never seemed to get any traction, and I could probably count on one hand the number of games that exist on Windows Mobile.)

So it’s been more than a day since Apple’s big announcement, and I thought I’d weigh in on it with my own thoughts, for whatever they may be worth.

First off, I’m not sure if this will be the game changer Apple thinks it will be. I can see potential in it, but I don’t think it will change the computing landscape outside of the portable realm… The desktop and even the pro laptop have too many things that they’re better at than what can be accomplished on a mobile device, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. I also don’t see this replacing PMPs and smartphones entirely, since it’s just too big to be practical in those terms.

That said, I can see what sort of market Apple is targeting with this device, and it’s not the computer whiz population. Those of us willing to put up with poor performance and shoddy build quality in exchange for a mini laptop that can run a browser and an email client at the same time, and theoretically run the same applications as a desktop machine, are probably going to be ill-served by the iPad, and that’s fine. I think there is still plenty of space in the market for things like the Eee PC and the MSI Wind for those who want a familiar desktop operating system and the capabilities that go along with it. However, the poor market performance of tablet devices thus far seems to indicate that for the average consumer, the existing products are not the sort of experience they’re looking for.

I think Apple’s take on the mobile space has been vert refreshing compared to the offerings from Redmond. Microsoft wants to put Windows on everything, even when its user interface and complexity get in the way of accomplishing everyday tasks. Apple on the other hand has built an entirely new interface for their mobile platform from the ground up, with the explicit goal of making it user-friendly, touch-oriented (rather than simply touch-capable), and intensely intuitive to use. The key factor to their success with this platform, I think, is how spatially-oriented it is. The interface behaves like a physical object and responds naturally and intuitively to user input. It also provides considerable visual feedback when changing screens, so users have an easy time understanding how they got where they are, and how to get back to where they were. Apple has also done a great job of building an entire interaction system on 3 basic gestures: tap, swipe, and pinch. Without expanding their gesture library, Apple has built much more advanced functionality into the iPad OS, which is both incredible and praise-worthy. It would be easier to create all manner of new gestures for more complex tasks, but Apple has resisted this impulse and built on a simple interface language that their users are already familiar with.

Apple seems poised to capitalize on the ultra-portable tablet computing market by taking what they learned from the iPhone and scaling it up, rather than trying to pare down Mac OS X to fit in the confines of a tablet space. Again, this is a clearly different strategy from that of the rest of the industry, which seems intent on trying to put the familiar Windows desktop on even the lowliest and least-capable portable devices possible. I think Apple has the right idea, though. Desktop operating systems are needlessly complicated for everyday one-off tasks like checking email or browsing the web. The iPhone OS, on the other hand, is built to be always-on, highly responsive, and easy to directly manipulate with your fingers. For a device intended to be used for quick, light computing, that sort of OS makes much more sense than Mac OS X or Windows.

I’ve seen a lot of people decry the iPad as a giant iPod Touch, and while this is true on it’s face, it ignores the depth and richness of the iPhone OS app space, and what additional capabilities a large-format display like the iPad’s can afford developers in the future. In this way, the iPad isn’t really aiming to solve any specific problem; instead, it’s a vessel into which people can put their own problems to be solved.

I’ve also seen a lot of complaints about the lack of multitasking on the iPad, and to a certain extent, I can agree with this as being something that Apple will eventually need to address as the platform matures, especially on the larger-screen devices. Being able to run apps in the background like Pandora or Skype would be a huge boon to the device’s capabilities, and I think it will get here eventually. For now, though, Apple is focusing on making the OS do one thing at a time very, very well, and maturing the OS before wildly expanding what can be done via background processes. In terms of productivity though, a singletasking OS like the iPhone’s isn’t that much farther behind an underpowered multitasking OS on smaller netbook devices. iPhone apps remember their state far better than desktop apps, and in general they launch much more quickly than their desktop brethren too, so little time is lost swapping between apps.

People have also, bizarrely, been lampooning Apple’s decision to develop a version of iWork for the iPad. I think it’s a wonderful idea, and I think charging $10 per app is beyond reasonable considering how much power there is in the apps, and that the desktop suite sells for $80. I can’t help but wonder what Microsoft would charge for an Office suite on this device… (incidentally, I’d love to see Office on the iPad; competition is good!). I think folks who wanted to see iWork on the iPhone are reaching; it’s just not something that translates down to a screen of that size without becoming practically useless. The iPad screen, however, is much larger and the interface far more capable than the iPhone’s, and I think a productivity suite makes sense on such a device for light work that can be transferred to and completed on a primary work machine.

I want to close by presenting a theoretical use case for the iPad, since so many people seem utterly perplexed by who could possibly use it. I will be taking a few liberties by assuming the iPad-specific development of a few apps that already exist on the iPhone, and treating the iBookstore as a mature product, but I hope you’ll agree that none of the assumptions I make are out of the realm of possibility.

Assume, if you will, that I’m a college student with an iMac at home. I also have a 16GB iPad that I got for an educational discount at $479, and have been able to buy most of my textbooks on the iBookstore for a fair amount less than it would have cost at the college bookstore. I have a reasonably sizeable iTunes library, a handful of games, the iPad-optimized version of Notebooks from the App Store for taking notes in class, and the iPad and desktop versions of the iWork suite. While other students are lugging around 10 to 20 pounds of textbooks, an iPod, and a notebook full of paper (and possibly a laptop as well), I can grab my iPad and take off to class with nothing else. After class, I can go to the library to research a paper, taking notes and working on a preliminary outline in Pages while roaming the aisles. On my way home, I plug my iPad into my FM transmitter and listen to some tunes while I drive. Once I’m home, I sync my iPad and keep working on my paper on my iMac. The next morning, I sync it back to the iPad along with a Keynote presentation that’s due today and head back to class. To present, I just plug my iPad into the projector with the docking cable and get started immediately. Between classes, I can hop on the college wifi network to browse the web, or play a quick game of Star Defense while I wait for the teacher to arrive. For the sake of brevity, I will leave out the scene where I get mugged for my iPad in the parking garage.

I think this device will be most popular in the educational market, especially higher education, but its usefulness as a teaching and learning aid can be seen at almost every grade level. If Apple scores big anywhere, it will probably be there, especially with their aggressive pricing and educational discounts.

The iPad may essentially be a giant iPod Touch, but there is a ton of potential in such a device for people who want an appliance-like computer, not a car-like one. Apple is going after the 10,000-miles-without-an-oil-change “it should work like my microwave” crowd with this, not the gearhead crowd that replaces their car’s computer ROM or changes their own transmission fluid, and I know for a fact that there are more of the former than the latter in the consumer marketplace.

I have some more thoughts to expound upon, but it’s late and this post is already beyond long enough as it is.

So, Apple’s having another party next week to show off the plans for iPhoneOS 3.0. As the owner of a 1st gen iPod Touch, I have at least a marginal level of interest in the software updates, because while I won’t get all of the goodies, and will probably have to pay for the rest, I do hope to get something out of this update whenever it eventually hits the interwebs. What follows is a little bit of commentary and a wishlist more than anything else.

First, there are rumors of new organizational features on the SpringBoard application. Whether this is true folders or something more Stack-like, I’m all over it. I’m fairly anal when it comes to how my apps are currently organized, and buying new ones is always something of a pain because inevitably it breaks my awesome layout by putting one extra “social network” app in a row than there’s room for.

Second, Copy/Paste. While I have rare occasion to use it, I do hope it makes its long-overdue debut, because it is kind of annoying that such a powerful OS lacks such an obvious feature.

Third, Mail updates. For the love of Zeus, please give me a unified Inbox!

Fourth: Improvements to MobileSafari. It’s a great app as-is, but it’s a performance dog on the 1G iPod Touch. Granted this could probably be somewhat mitigated by buying a new 2G iPod Touch, effectively going from the lowest-specced device to the highest-specced one, but I don’t have $300 to throw at a new 16GB model. I’d also like to see the ability to open items in a new “tab” by pressing and holding to reveal a menu (like the one currently used for saving images). To go the Safari 4 route, adding the Top Sites feature in a CoverFlow format would be neat, but also largely unnecessary compared to some of the other “basic” requirements.

Please also give me the ability to sync remembered passwords, and have MobileSafari offer some form of auto-fill! Just because I have a full qwerty keyboard doesn’t mean I enjoy typing my username over and over again to log into sites like deviantART that are kind enough to log you out everywhere else when you log in using a different machine (and, frankly, this practice is asinine on anything but financially-oriented websites with sensitive personal information on them).

Next, I want Flash on the iPhone, if for no other reason than it would give me the ability to watch Homestar Runner while sitting in a waiting room or standing in line someplace. Set it up so you have to touch a Flash control to activate it (so Flash ads don’t utterly destroy MobileSafari) and I’ll be thrilled. However, I know this will never happen, so please move along.

Please give me the ability to sync notes to my Mac. This is stupid and obvious and it annoys me that it’s still not possible. Te $4.99 Notebooks app has mitigated this to a degree by giving me the ability to sync it with my Mac via Bonjour, but it’s something that should be built-in, for crying out loud.

iDisk support. Again, Apple would be horning in on the 3rd party market here, but that’s never stopped them on the Mac.  I’d love the ability to upload files from my camera roll to my iDisk (rather than going through the MobileMe Gallery), or save files there from Notes (or 3rd party apps), and open them for further editing later. This would be even more useful if I actually had an iPhone with always-on unlimited data, rather than a WiFi-dependent iPod Touch, but there are places in Spokane that I’ve nailed down as useful WiFi oases for this sort of thing.

On a related note, the Calendar app needs to be able to subscribe to web-based calendars (and on a related related note, MobileMe should keep my iPod and Mac calendar subscriptions in sync and display subscribed calendars in the MobileMe web app).

I say this with my tail between my legs given how absurd I found it when it was touted as a major selling point for the Zune, but wireless sync with iTunes would be really nice. Now that the computer room is separate from the bedroom (for the first time in my adult life), the fact that I use the iPod as an alarm (because it’s quieter and less stomach-twistingly annoying than our alarm clock) in the morning means I can’t have it auto-sync before I wake up like I used to back when I posted my counter-point to Zune’s wireless sync. The AppleTV is already 100% capable of this, which means that iTunes is 100% capable of it as well. It’d be nice to have it happen, since I leave my iPod plugged in beside the bed overnight, rather than plugged into the computer, and sometimes the sync process is slow enough (because there’s occasionally a big video file to copy over) that if I don’t get it started early enough, I have to leave it behind when I go to work. Reviving my auto-sync setup with a wireless connection at about 5:00 AM would be quite helpful.

Finally, the ability to run multiple apps at the same time. Again, this is something that may require migrating to new hardware (for two possible reasons: the need for a new hardware app-switching button, and the fact that, again, the 1G iPod Touch is the poorest performer in Apple’s lineup)

From AT&T, I’d love to see a rate plan that didn’t feel like a monthly sexual assault, because then I’d be totally willing to throw down for an iPhone 3G. As it stands, though, the monthly AT&T phone bill for my wife and I is almost $90, and that’s on a minute plan that no longer exists (450 minutes/month… of which we probably use maybe 100 on a busy month, plus text and a tiny bit of data in case of emergency), using RAZRs that we got for free when we signed up (and which I utterly despise using). Since the phone bill is due in the same pay period as rent, it’s not really an option to push it any higher.

From third parties, I want to see better consistency with Apple’s existing behaviors. For example, in 1Password for the iPhone, pressing and holding on an image doesn’t allow you to save it to the camera roll the way MobileSafari does (and, for that matter, NetNewsWire has the same problem). There’s nothing (that I know of) that says they have to wait for iPhoneOS 3.0 to make that happen, though.

Sadly, I don’t have quite the readership of Ursula Vernon, who tends to get unfathomable quantities of feedback when she asks questions far more obscure than the one I’m about to, but hopefully someone on MystBlogs will be able to point me in the right direction here…

I’m thinking about looking for a new printer soon, because the printer/scanner/copier we’ve got right now (an Epson CX-7400) sucks down ink like a cocaine addict in a sugar factory (or something), and tends to get its heads clogged at more frequent intervals than I would prefer (granted I’d prefer “never”, but I’ll take what I can get on the reliability front).

There are a few requirements for a new printer:

1. It needs to be able to print photographic prints with a reasonable degree of quality.
2. It needs to have large enough ink reserves that I’m not buying new cartridges every month at $12 a pop.
3. It needs to play nicely with Macs and PCs (this is largely a given, but as some animals are more equal than others, so do some printers play more nicely cross-platform than others… a Bonjour-compatible one would be ideal).
4. It would preferably be a multi-function printer, because we don’t have a lot of room for a printer and a scanner (or worse, a printer and a printer/scanner, since getting rid of the scanner in the CX-7400 in favor of a dedicated device seems unlikely).
5. For the purposes of this discussion, price is not necessarily an object, but keeping it below $300 would be nice, because then I’ll be able to afford it before the end of the world.

I have, in the past, had bad experiences with Canon printers just falling apart after a year or two, because Canon hadn’t evidently mastered the concept of selling an affordable, functional printer that runs forever but kills you with ink costs the same way that Epson has, but if that has changed, by all means point it out to me. I’m also hesitant to go with Epson again at the moment because of the aforementioned ink-sucking tendencies of our current printer, but if the higher-end models are less susceptible to this, again, please let me know.

I wonder if it would be worthwhile to buy a laser printer for the day-to-day document printing, and save the color printing for an inkjet… if you think such a split-responsibility setup is a good idea, what would you recommend in the way of laser printers, and would you still suggest replacing the current inkjet all-in-one?

It’s time for another one of my stream-of-consciousness “here’s what’s on my mind while I’m at work” posts.  Feel free to insert your own “and now, for something completely different”s between paragraphs.  The people responsible for sacking those responsible for these subtitles have been sacked.

Costco is a cool place to get movie tickets, apparently.  $15 for 2 adult tickets at Regal, which is better than even the matinee ticket prices… and like $5 cheaper than the evening prices.  There will be serious Prince Caspianage today, followed by even more serious Indiana Jonesing next week.  On that note, we also got the new box set of the Indiana Jones trilogy Wednesday.  Willie?  Still twice as annoying as I remember her being (Osc was ready to shoot her during the first scene at the Obi Wan bar [which amused her to no end] in Shang Hai).

It’s gonna be the future soon.

Apple is apparently expanding on their original patent application for location-based content delivery.  I think I mentioned back when they signed that deal with Starbucks that being able to get on-demand location-aware content delivered to you in places outside the coffee shop would be seriously awesome… ordering movie tickets without waiting in line, buying a soundtrack from a theater’s “now showing” custom wi-fi music store, getting maps of malls or airports… the list goes on.  The iPhone, iPod Touch, and other mobile internet devices are quickly approaching and even surpassing the absolute utility of concepts like Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  Seriously, Star Trek’s got nothing on this stuff.  Meanwhile, Microsoft’s taking the map angle in a different, more public direction (I think the smart whiteboard application is more useful then 4×6-foot interactive maps, personally).  Did I mention it’s gonna be the future soon?

By the way, I have serious respect for anyone who can sing and play an instrument at the same time with any degree of capability, because I simply fail at being coordinated enough to manage that.

Recently I gave up on the money management app I got in the MacHeist bundle, Cha-Ching, and ported the last month or so’s worth of financial stuff into another app called MoneyWell.  It’s a very different application from Cha-Ching, but it seems to have much better support, is a lot more stable, and makes it possible to really granularly control our spending, which is a really good thing.  It’s amazing what you discover when you actually sit down and plan out all of your finances in a really serious way, and with all of that information in mind, we can make better decisions about how to spend the money we make in the future.

Jonathan Coulton makes any work day better.  I blame linking to “Future Soon” for getting me started listening to him today.

I’m very seriously considering getting a refurbished AirPort Extreme so that we can get the Wii and our Touches hooked back up to the internet at home, because we’ve run out of unlocked networks elsewhere in the apartment complex to piggy-back off of, and I have a very serious need to play LostWinds.  I need to play it very seriously, in fact.

On a related note, I listed my G5 on Craigslist last night.  Hopefully I’ll be able to sell it in short order, but if not, I may need to look into alternatives (still thinking that the local reseller, Mac Odyssey, wouldn’t be a bad way to go if not for the 30% they take for finding a buyer and managing the sale).  I’m hoping to get enough for the G5 and the display combined to cover the cost of a refurbished iMac at $1599, with maybe a little left over for the AirPort Extreme.

So, as the rumors predicted, Apple has revved the iMac with some marginal processor, FSB, and RAM  speed improvements.  As a result, the brand new system I was looking at now comes with 2 GB of RAM standard, and has the option of being upgraded to a GeForce 8800 GS video card with 512 MB of RAM.  Total cost: $1949 + tax (with upgraded card… vanilla is still the same $1799 it was yesterday).

At the same time, these spec bumps have triggered a price drop on the now-last-gen iMacs that I was also eyeing.  The refurbished top-of-the-line 24″ system I was looking at last week has dropped from $1799 to $1599, with the added benefit of having a quad core processor over the newer one’s dual-core of the same speed (dunno how useful that is, but it sounds cool), a larger hard drive (500GB vs. 320GB), and the same 2GB of RAM standard.  It’s also got the same Radeon 2600 Pro card as the newer model’s base configuration.

Initially, I was torn over which system to get… new hotness is always better, but such is always the case, and if you wait for what you want to be cheap enough to buy, it’s not the new hotness anymore.  Given that I’m moving from a dual 2.3 GHz PowerPC G5 system with a gig of RAM, as opposed to fretting over a minor spec bump from an older Intel-based iMac, the improvements to performance will be considerable regardless of which system I buy, and the older one is still just as awesome as it was last week, only now it’s $200 cheaper.  So, I’ve officially decided to get a refurbished 24″ 2.8 Core 2 Extreme iMac.  Hooray!

Now, paying for it is the tricky part.  Obviously, I don’t have the means to go throwing what is effectively a month and a half’s pay at a new system.  However, I am looking into selling the G5 as a means to paying for the new system.  Based on estimates I got a few months ago from a local reseller (Mac Odyssey), I could expect to get as much as $1799 for the G5.  That’s completely insane!  $1799 for a 3-year-old system that’s been deprecated by Apple moving to a new processor architecture!  And these suckers are apparently in huge demand!  The mind boggles.  Anyway, I’ve also decided to sell my trusty, somewhat dusty, high-tech electronic light pen input device 23″ Cinema Display, since I don’t have room on my desk for two monitors (awesome as that would be), and since it’ll still fetch a pretty decent price (I’ve seen people asking as much as $650 for them on Craigslist) that I can put toward making sure I can cover taxes on the new machine.

Despite Mac Odyssey wanting to take a 30% cut of the sale for actually finding a buyer and handling the transaction, I’m still inclined to try and sell my G5 through them.  Putting my primary system and monitor out for purchase on Craigslist for a combined cost of over $2000 kind of makes me nervous.  I know the chances of getting screwed are relatively low if I handle things right, but I don’t want to risk someone managing to get my G5 without actually paying me for it first, because then I’d be effing screwed.  With Mac Odyssey offering to handle not only the financial end, but also finding a buyer in the first place, I could probably expect to have a much faster turn-around time on the sale, and have my new computer in-hand within days, rather than weeks, of getting started with the proceedings.

I had mentioned last week that I wanted to go visit the local branch of Mac Odyssey and discuss options and what I would be expected to do prior to giving them my G5 for sale, but I discovered that the location closest to me was closed recently.  I may make a trek tonight over to the Coeur d’Alene location and chat with them about what they can do for me.  I want to make this happen relatively soon, because the refurbished last-gen iMacs are only going to be available for a limited period of time, and the G5’s resale value is only going to get worse.  I’m just somewhat hesitant to get rid of my G5.  It’s been a trustworthy machine (heh, almost said “little machine”) for the past 3 years, and it’s almost like ditching a friend or giving away a pet, stupid as that sounds.  It’s also fairly mind-boggling that I can actually sell my older computer for more than it costs to buy a new one.  Granted, it’s a more high-end system than the iMac was, and Apple systems retain their resale value for stupid lengths of time, but still, having a $2500 system retain about 67% of its resale value over 3 years is just completely nuts, and I keep expecting to have this end up being some eleborate prank that leaves me without a computer.  Mainly, I’m so amazed by this because my family has a tendency to use computers until they can’t even be given away anymore.  My dad is still rockin’ the P2 400 that we bought to replace the family’s old 486 DX2 system about a decade ago for crying out loud.

I can’t do anything just yet, because I’ve got some stuff to take care of for the Mysterium committee that would best be kept safe from the upheaval of computer trade-ins, but once that’s out of the way (hopefully this week),  I should be free and clear to sell my old system.  Now I just need to come up with a name for the new iMac… (this may explain why I have attachment problems… I name my electronics.)

So I’ve been thinking, which is never really a good thing, because it tends to result in novel-length blog posts for you to have to wade through…

Anyway, I’ve been pondering an upgrade to my PowerMac G5 for some time now.  Now, while I could easily shove a couple more gigs of RAM into the G5 and get at least another year out of it, I feel like the more effective upgrade would be to box the old girl and trade it in for some new hotness, given the increasing atmosphere of Intel-targeted development in the Mac community (and the no doubt impending EOL-ing of OS X’s support for the PowerPC line).  Most of the productivity software devs are still releasing UniBi apps, but the gaming scene is definitely moving to Intel on the quick-fast.  So, trade-ins it is then.

Initially, I was drooling over the new Mac Pros and their utterly absurd base specs.  I even priced one out versus an Alienware box, and with the exact same specs, the Mac Pro came out cheaper.  However, I think it can easily be argued that a Mac Pro has more power behind it than I’ll likely ever need, and the upgradability isn’t really a huge deal for me, because frankly, I’ve never upgraded the G5 beyond cramming an extra 512 megs of RAM into the thing the day I bought it almost 3 years ago (cruising on a gig of RAM is cool, but quickly becoming inadequate).  The deciding factor against just going out and throwing my G5 up on eBay, Craigslist, or the local Mac reseller’s trade-in program for a new Mac Pro has been price.  Even discounting the percentage cut that the reseller would take for handling the transaction and finding a buyer for me, I’d still only be walking away with $1700 or $1800 by using Craigslist or eBay, which is considerably short of a new Mac Pro at $2299.  If I took it to the reseller, I’d see even less of that.

Recently, I’ve started looking at getting an iMac instead.  I don’t really deal with the sort of projects that require a behemoth of a machine like the Mac Pro… mostly I deal with Pages, iPhoto, and some light design / touch-up work in Photoshop.  Plus, it gives me the opportunity to sell my 23″ Cinema Display along with the G5 for some bonus cash to put towards the new system.  Seeing as how they still sell them new for $900 (refurbs are $500), I imagine I could get at least $300 out of selling it on top of the asking price for the G5.  The only consideration for me at this point is one of desktop worthiness, since the desk I have may not be ideally suited for an all-in-one machine (such are the perils of buying furniture that fits your needs at the time, I know…).  I really don’t see many downsides to getting an iMac over a Mac Pro though… it’s a simple matter of fact and technology that anything I buy is going to be leagues better than the G5, even if it is a dual 2.3 GHz machine.  Plus, a 24″ iMac recoups the loss of my Cinema Display plus some, and still obviously bests the crappy-ass Dell boxes we bought last year.  Finally, as I said, I just don’t need 4-8 cores worth of Xeon muscle for what I do with my computer.

Running on the assumption that I could sell the G5 for $1799 (which, if I go through the reseller, nets me $1199 back), and also running on the assumption that I could sell the Cinema Display for $300 (which gets me $210 back through the reseller), I could pick up a refurbished current-gen 24″ dual-core iMac for about $100 out of pocket (plus tax).  If I sold everything myself, I could get a new dual-core iMac and actually make money on the deal, or even get a refurbed quad-core machine and still come out about $40 ahead.  The challenge would be making sure I had everything on the G5 backed up to either the external hard drive or the Dell doubling as a crappy-ass media center / crappy-ass gaming console before wiping the drive and re-installing Leopard (which, incidentally, I might be able to charge a little more for, though I’ll be sad to lose the cool little box it came in).  Pretty much everything I’d need to take with me lives in my user folder, though, so that shouldn’t be a terribly huge issue.

I’m contemplating heading down to the reseller tonight and having a conversation with them about anything special they can do for me that might sweeten the deal with them handling the transaction for me.  There’s also the rumor that there’s new iMac spec bumps due next week, so I may even be able to get in on the ground floor of a brand new Mac for a bit cheaper by buying a show unit if that ends up being the case.  I’m inclined to go through them in any case, since it feels a bit safer than selling the thing through Craigslist (which I infinitely prefer over eBay, especially since we recently threw out the monstrous box the G5 came in), even if they do take a fairly steep 30% comission fee.

The final advantage to having an Intel Mac, of course, is the ability to run Windows on it, which would be great with VMWare or Parallels so that I don’t have to bounce between machines or try using RDC to do 3D modeling work for games and sundry the way I do now (which honestly hinders productivity).  Since I’ve already got a copy of XP Pro that’s no longer in use after giving Oscy’s old PC to her dad (at least, I think we kept the disc…), I don’t even have to worry about spending money on a Windows lisence, I can just get VMWare or Parallels and rock out.

Evidently someone else thought the memory necklace from Revelation was a cool idea.  Now it just needs a faulty clasp and a 10-year-old girl in jeopardy to go with it