Remember How Steve Jobs Made Apple Great Again

Remember how Steve Jobs opened every keynote presentation with a recount of his triumphant return to Apple. Remember how Steve Jobs constantly reminded us of the failed policies of his predecessors Gil Amelio and John Scully.

Remember how Steve Jobs said "We have to embrace this notion that for Apple to win Microsoft has to lose." Remember how Steve Jobs said "And if we screw up and we don’t do a good job, it’s not our fault. It’s somebody else’s fault."

Remember how Steve Jobs constantly announced great new products coming out real soon, that never came out ever. Remember how every time Steve Jobs said something about technology, it was apparent he knew nothing about technology. Remember how Steve Jobs was a visionary who took a hands-off approach to the design of his company's products.

Yeah, I don't remember any of that either.

Moving On

2014 marked the end of ten years of consulting with IBM. In that time, I learned invaluable lessons developing and maintaining three expert systems (one with CLIPS and two with JRules). Suffice it to say, there’s a huge difference between using a feature as a tool developer for a few weeks and using it as a tool user on a daily basis for years to develop and maintain a production system.

Moving forward, I want to see if there’s a market for inexpensively priced eBooks (see my prior Textbooks are Crazy Expensive post). I think the available CLIPS documentation compares quite favorably with other expert system tools, but compared to widely used languages such as Java or operating systems such as iOS, there’s a dearth of documentation and high quality examples.

To have a better understanding of the eBook creation process, my first project was to create an ePub version of the CLIPS User’s Guide (written by Dr. Joseph Giarratano many years ago). I used Apple’s Pages word processing app for a variety of reasons: I didn’t want to write the eBook in XHTML because I wanted to use a WYSIWYG editor that supported functionality for generating PDF files that’s not supported when generating eBooks (such as the ability to keep image captions on the same page as the image); I wanted to see if Pages was a suitable alternative to Word for my needs; since Pages can directly export to ePub, I wanted to see how well that process works; and I wanted to see if the ePubs generated by Pages could be easily converted for use with other eBook readers such as Kindle and Nook.

As I discovered, eBook creation is far more difficult than just formatting your content and pressing a button. The most annoying hurdle is that all eBook readers live in a reality where books on programming languages don’t exist. I understand why you shouldn’t expect a reader to support a specific font, but it should be dead simple to specify that one of three generic font types should be used: serif, sans-serif, or monospace. For a programming book, at the very least you need to be able to specify a serif or sans-serif font for the main body of your text and a monospace font for your code.

Pages should have been a slam dunk for Apple. They didn’t need to implement all the functionality of Word, they just needed to implement the most basic functionality and make it intuitive and easy to use. Sadly, in broad strokes, Pages doesn’t seem any better than Word, just different, and like Word, frequently annoying. That’s not to say there’s no reason to use it. It’s relatively inexpensive when compared to Word and you can store your documents in iCloud and access them from your Mac, iOS devices, or web browser. The ePub generation works pretty well, so if you only plan on offering your eBooks in the iBooks Store, using Pages to generate the ePubs appears to be a pretty good solution.

The jury is still out on whether using the ePub generated by Pages to create versions for Kindle and Nook is a viable option. I’m almost satisfied with the Kindle files I was able to generate from the Pages ePub. Hopefully, there’s just a few tweaks I need to figure out to be completely satisfied. Nook is another story. The Nook app for iOS appears to be optimized to display ePub files in the ugliest possible format.

Information on the free iBooks version of the CLIPS 6.3 User’s Guide is available at this link. At some point I’ll probably make a version available for the Kindle, but it won’t be through the Kindle store. There are some restrictions with offering public domain content on the Kindle store that the User’s Guide would violate. In addition, free eBooks can not be distributed through the Kindle store.

Revolutionary? The Day After

Apple kicked off their new hardware event yesterday with a bizarre live streaming snafu of epic proportions. It was so embarrassing that they’ve perpetually lost their rights to mock the Blue Screen of Death in any way, shape, or form.

After hyping the living daylights out of this event—including a countdown on their web site’s home page and an ABC teaser for a post-event exclusive interview on what was billed as an historic announcement—it was virtually impossible to actually live stream the live stream for the first half hour or so of the event.

And it wasn't just that you got that spinning circle of waiting while the content loaded. There was a bizarre collection of colored bars, error messages, and previously streamed video. And for the brief periods where you could get the live stream, it included a Chinese audio translation.

For a company that likes to meticulously orchestrate its media events, it was a fiasco.

Fortunately, there were no major surprises in what was announced: iPhones with larger screens, a payment system to replace credit and debit cards, and a smart watch. Many of the details had already been leaked, revealed, or rumored in the months and weeks leading up to the event.

Whether you view Apple Pay or Apple Watch as revolutionary depends upon whether you viewed the iPod, iPhone, or iPad as revolutionary. Apple was not first to market with any of these product categories, but arguably their entry into these markets redefined customer expectations. I happen to believe that creating a usable device—the innovation of how the parts are integrated and work together—trumps being first to market with a new technology embedded in a poorly designed piece of crap.

Predictably, there was the standard refrain for new Apple hardware. It's too expensive. It’s too big. Its battery life is too short. It’s already been done.

To be fair, a price starting at $350 is a lot of money to pay for what is essentially an iPhone accessory, and the battery life—never mentioned in the presentation—appears to be about a day. I think I’ll wait for the second or third generation before I consider buying one of these.

But that doesn’t mean we didn’t see the beginning of something big yesterday. If the design of the Apple Watch is significantly better than its competitors, then there will be no shortage of early adopters. Don’t forget that the cost of the first generation iPod started at $400 and the first generation iPhone at $499. If the first generation Apple Watch is successful we’ll see subsequent generations that are cheaper, smaller, more efficient, and more powerful.

I’ve never seen anyone making a purchase in a store by waving their phone or watch at a checkout device. Whether or not this becomes a common occurrence with Apple devices in the next few years will be the best indicator of whether we witnessed something groundbreaking yesterday.

Revolutionary?

Tuesday Apple will announce new iPhones and presumably their next big thing: the iWatch, iBracelet, or iWhatever.

I wore a watch for decades until the ubiquity of devices displaying the time and date made me realize I was wearing it more out of habit than need. At first it felt a bit weird not wearing it, like I wasn’t completely dressed, and I do occasionally miss being able to glance at my wrist to see the time, but I've now grown used to having both wrists bare.

So what would Apple need to announce in order for me to slap something on my wrist again?

In the immediate future, probably not much. My first iPod was a 2nd generation iPod Touch in 2008, seven years after the first iPod was available; my first iPhone was an iPhone 4 in 2010, three years after the original; and I got an iPad 2 in 2011, a year after the first model came out. I like and primarily use Apple products, but I’m not an early adopter (although my activities as an iOS developer give me an excuse to update my hardware more frequently than the typical user).

I can’t see spending a few hundred dollars on a smart watch/bracelet that displays text/email notifications from my phone, counts my steps, and/or monitors my blood pressure. No doubt there are some who would find these features useful, but we’ve already seen these type of features in smart watches from Apple’s competitors.

And I certainly don’t need another device that needs to be charged on a daily basis. I already have to carry a bag full of cables with me whenever I travel, so if I'm putting something on my wrist it had better stay charged for at least a couple of days.

Typically Apple doesn’t enter a hardware category unless it believes it’s created a superior or unique product that consumers will want. Perhaps what they’ll be announcing Tuesday is something that’s different or much better designed than anything we’ve seen before. Something revolutionary. A product that nobody knew they wanted until they saw it.

In any event, since Apple is perpetually doomed, it won’t matter whether what’s announced Tuesday is revolutionary or not.

Designed by Apple

Apple’s Designed by Apple video is a tad pretentious, but I largely agree with its theme. Good design, however intangible, adds value to a product whether it’s greater productivity from software seamlessly integrated with hardware or the delight of using a device that just works. I can’t tell you how much the comfort in a comfortable chair is worth, but I know it’s worth something.

To its credit, Apple has a pretty good track record of designing great products, but sometimes they completely blow it.

Take the Airport Time Capsule.

Seriously, take it; I don't want mine anymore. In fact, I wish Time Capsule had a feature that allowed me to go back in time and reconsider purchasing it.

After a recent upgrade mishap, I had to restore my computer’s data from my Time Capsule (which is basically a WiFi base station combined with a hard drive that allows you to wirelessly backup your computer’s data using Time Machine, Apple’s incremental backup software). After letting the process run overnight, this was the amount of progress that had been made:



Seriously? Five days to restore around 300 GB of data? And to make things even worse, there was another 200 GB of data that needed to be separately restored from Time Capsule. Even after a trip to the Apple Store for advice, it took another four full days to completely recover everything.

Five wasted days, all because of poor design decisions.

Apple’s biggest mistake was making this device in the first place. Wireless backup for the amount of data on a computer is just not fast enough to be practical without annoying drawbacks. Even Apple recommends that the initial backup of your computer be done using an ethernet cable because it “may take overnight or longer, depending on how much data you have.”

For the price of a 3 TB Time Capsule you can instead buy unobtrusive 1 TB USB powered hard drives, one each for up to four computers. Time Machine works significantly faster when directly connected to an external hard drive. So much faster, that after my own experience I draw a blank thinking of a situation where I’d recommend Time Capsule.

I thought I’d set mine up efficiently when I originally bought it. It was directly connected via an ethernet cable to my iMac, which I use daily for most of my work, and I planned on backing up my MacBook, which I use infrequently, connecting via WiFi.

I was wrong. Even though there was a direct connection from the iMac to Time Capsule, it was using a much slower WiFi connection to transfer data. Eventually I was able to configure Time Capsule to use the ethernet cable, but that was after four days of waiting for restores to complete.

It should have just worked. I don’t care how Time Capsule is configured, if it’s connected by a cable with a faster transfer rate, it needs to use the damn cable.

Time Capsule is both a WiFi base station and a backup device. If it fails as a WiFi base station, I can easily replace it with another WiFi base station. But if it fails as a backup device, I have no recourse. I can’t easily replace the data stored on the device.

The design of the device should have made creation and recovery of a backups fast and dead simple. Zero configuration. If that meant fewer options in configuring it as a WiFi base station, that’s the call that should have been made. Instead, I had to browse internet forums looking for hints on how to correctly configure the device. Even after managing to get my data restored, I still have no idea how to configure it properly for the manner I originally intended to use it.

Finally, even the smallest details matter in design. Time Machine warns you if it hasn’t been able to perform a backup for an extended period of time. It should also warn you if it detects a Time Capsule connected by an ethernet cable that it’s not correctly configured to use. I doubt that’s technically complicated, but even if it is, here’s something that’s even simpler. During the four days I was waiting for my data to be restored, this message should have been displayed:

Restoring “Giganto” via WiFi on the disk “Giganto”

Just two small words would have helped me to figure out why something that should just work wasn’t working.

Here’s what Steve Jobs had to say about design:

“That's not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” — New York Times, The Guts of a New Machine, 2003

Apple, the way your Time Capsule works sucks.

Fingerprints and the iPhone 5s

Senator Al Franken has some privacy concerns with Apple’s new iPhone:

I am writing regarding Apple’s recent inclusion of a fingerprint reader on the new iPhone 5S. Apple has long been a leading innovator of mobile technology; I myself own an iPhone. At the same time, while Apple’s new fingerprint reader, Touch ID, may improve certain aspects of mobile security, it also raises substantial privacy questions for Apple and for anyone who may use your products. In writing you on this issue, I am seeking to establish a public record of how Apple has addressed these issues internally and in its rollout of this technology to millions of my constituents and other Americans.

This is an important discussion, but perhaps the government should be answering privacy questions as well as asking them. Identify theft via fake fingerprints becomes an issue only if fingerprints, like social security numbers, become a routine method of identification. If fingerprint readers in consumer devices don’t work reliably, aren’t convenient, and aren’t secure, consumers simply won’t use them.

On the other hand, imagine how much say you’ll have in the matter if the government decides your fingerprints are a good way to identify you before you board a flight. If that seems far-fetched, consider that you already have to choose between being irradiated or molested every time you fly as part of the TSA’s security theater. Fingerprinting is already required for many jobs and in some states to obtain a driver’s license or purchase a gun.

If you’re worried about Apple opening a Pandora’s box, remember that it’s usually the government that creates a self-aware supercomputer and puts it in charge of all the weapons.

Grandeur is the Best Form of Delusion

Thanks, #Apple ;) pic.twitter.com/x4w3r8Ghcy

— Nokia UK (@nokia_uk) September 10, 2013

So Apple surveyed the entire mobile landscape and decided after careful consideration to imitate Nokia phone designs. That’s odd. Usually companies try to copy, you know, their successful competitors, not the ones on the brink of irrelevancy. Given that Apple provides color choices for their other devices (like the iPod shuffle, iPod nano, and iPod touch), isn’t it a bit less self-important to assume that they eventually would do this for the iPhone as well.