As you can see, I’ve already cooked up a new masthead. I’m ashamed to have left the last one up for so long, especially considering the fact that it was the default theme image. I purchased a copy of Aperture 3 which I’m really excited to get started with and yesterday I picked up a copy of Pixelmator for half price. I’m more than thrilled to pay just $30 for something that does pretty much every single one of the basic Photoshop functions. Not only that, but Pixelmator does it all following the standardized user interface guidelines for Mac and isn’t bloaty. (Imagine that, software that just works with both a streamlined price and hardware requirements list. Get your crap together Adobe.) For now this will more than sufficient to get me going.

I downloaded Steam for the Mac which was one of the reasons I wanted to get the iMac. I’m able to play mainstream games on my computer now! Woot! They were giving away Portal for free which I snapped up and have played and it is really fun. I was surprised how well Apple’s buttonless Magic Mouse performed while gaming. Right and left clicks registered perfectly and it tracked well. I look forward to pickup up Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. I remember playing that game as a kid on my family’s old 386, crammed in the office nook next to the washer and dryer. That game totally rocked!

This will be the beginning of a new era for me, creatively. Though notebooks have the upper hand with portability, they just don’t work for me when I’m trying to get a creative workflow going. Since 2001 I’ve been using notebooks. There was a brief three month stint where I used the iMac G5 when it first came out. (That was a ridiculously sexy machine back when it was introduced.) Unfortunately, at that time I just couldn’t use a computer which wasn’t mobile and immediately switched back to notebooks. With the introduction of the iPad I had a strong feeling I could finally move to a desktop machine again and I was right. The iPad takes care of my casual computing needs effortlessly.

The problem with notebooks isn’t power, it’s form-factor. At the ripe old age of 25 I now have severe RSD issues with my right wrist and some nasty tendonitis in both arms. I think that heavy computer use in general had a lot to do with that, but I honestly don’t think that notebooks helped. I’m a big guy and having to curl up into a hunched ball over a laptop was definitely not the most elegant ergonomic situation. Now that I’m all set up with my pretty new computer I’m really excited to be able to dig into a lot of projects and really work on some of my hobbies a lot more effortlessly. I’m already starting to see the fruits of this strategy and I’m really pleased.

Our father, who art in Apple
hallowed be thy name
Thy iPad come, thy will be bought
On Earth, as it is in Apple.

Give us this day, our daily Apps
and forgive us our shit talking
as we forgive those who shit talk against us

And lead us not in to temptation
But deliver us from Bill Gates

iMen

Papsky @ Gizmodo

I’m in love with the iPad. It rather neatly resolves the dillema I’ve documented in the past regarding my computing needs. I have always disliked the idea having more than one computer. I like elegant gadget solutions as I can’t afford to buy different devices frequently and I’m amazingly OCD so I don’t like overcomplicating things. I’ll be saving a huge amount of money getting an iMac and iPad instead of an iMac and MacBook Pro.

The vitriol about what the iPad isn’t has been unending and I think the haters are all just missing the bigger picture. iPad is great, people who don’t like it aren’t required to like it. The people who weren’t planning on buying one anyway need to shut the hell up already, obviously it wasn’t made for them. I had a huge post coming together about this and even I began to get bored with it so I will let far more eloquent and geeky people say it all for me.

TUAW’s amazing Erica Sadun, writer/developer/geek extrordinaire, wrote In praise of the iPad: A contrarian view. Jon Armstrong over at Blurbomat.com made an excellent case for Casual Computing and very clearly explains Who’s Gonna Buy That?

We are not apologists. (I’ve been clear in criticizing Apple in the past and just recently discontinued my subscription to MobileMe.) We are lovers of technology, geeks, who can see a device for what it is and it’s amazing potential as it has been realized.

P.S. Flash is the devil, HTML5 will save us from Adobe’s ever-bloating evil. I’m willing to wait for more widespread adoption.

P.P.S. The Hulett Plumbing Disaster Part II coming tomorrow!!!

The stats for this new iPod were staggering. It had a four gigabyte hard drive, could run for hours between charges, charged and synced data with one simple FireWire cable, and most amazingly you could transfer an entire album to it in 30 seconds. 30 SECONDS!!! Surely this was evidence that we were living in the future. I couldn’t believe what I was reading because it was just all too amazing.

I also remember feeling an overwhelming sense of sadness. It’s original price point of $399 seemed to be far to high for mass adoption rates. It only would work with Macs which I saw as a major shortcoming, though I was an amazing fanboy even then, as that also would immediately disqualify the vast bulk of consumers. I figured that I was looking at yet another beautiful Apple flop à la Twentieth Anniversary Mac or G4 Cube. I put the newspaper down and resigned myself to the idea that Apple was amazing, but might never have a product that would captivate the world or hold a majority of any market.

Several weeks later I heard of a student at my rural high school not just getting an iPod from his parents, but an iMac in order to use the new device. This would have been quite the revelation for the geeks, but the news had trickled down through the mainstream grapevine. The iPod was causing a stir and soon enough, it hit critical mass. Less than 10 years later, the iPod had become not just any device, but the device responsible for shaping the digital music revolution. It’s companion software iTunes being just as transformative to the process of buying music.

A similar feat, coupled with similar awe and just a hint of skepticism (even from me) was accomplished with the launch of the iPhone and eventually the App Store. Both have done a huge amount to shape how consumers view smartphones, expect to interact with these devices, how we view the Internet from the point of view of mobile, and location based services. The iPhone and App Store have even influenced how the tech industry views the process of development and distribution of software in general as well as how we define the the role and responsibilities (for better or worse) of mobile operating system vendors.

This brings us to where we stand today. On Wednesday Apple are launching a brand new device. What was originally referred to as just a “creation”, which could be interpreted on grand or small scales, was clarified today during Apple’s Q4 2009 earnings call by Steve Jobs himself as “a major new product.” The rumor mill leads us to be looking forward to an iSlate/iPad/iBook relaunch thingamabob.

This new “slate” class form factor, which is to netbook as tablet is to notebook, is hoped to find a solid foothold in the consumer electronics market. Tablet PCs, which were hoped to be a transformative product class, became a mainstream disaster. They managed to find a niche in the medical field and other specialist fields, but really failed to change the world as expected by the likes of Bill Gates.

That accounts for my skepticism which has always been a prerequisite for any awesome and successful Apple product launch, especially one expected to be so novel. The level of potential awesomeness is off the charts for what has been bandied about, but I won’t get into all the details as they are scattered and range so far and wide. I would refer you to my sources for the rumor mongering:

Gizmodo

The Unofficial Apple Weblog

AppleInsider

Mac Rumors

9 to 5 Mac

So here is hoping this new device, whatever it is, manages to be just as amazing, implausible, and ultimately successful as the iPod and iPhone. It’s been too long since I’ve had a new must-have gadget to lust over.

(As a side note, does anyone remember the Nokia N770 “Internet Device”? Not totally the same market, but similar enough to cause me to worry.)

Carrie:   Just talked to a lady at apple! She told me the tablets are launching the first week of February!

Eli:   Yay for your laptop! And did she really?

C:   Yeah. My laptop died again, it needs new ram. That lady just made me so excited. I’m bouncing.

E:   Lol. I’m really hoping that it will be good stuff

C:   She said it definitely is.
There hasn’t been that much excitement there in years. She’s been working there for 15 years or something like that.

As with all rumors and speculation surrounding Apple product releases, this could be any number of things.  It could be one of the infamous fabricated leaks which Cupertino loves to put out there, maybe they are using their customer support to spread stuff at random?  It could be some mis-information to throw us all off track, or a service representative who is just playing around.  But I think (and hope in my heart of hearts) that this is actually just the pure enthusiasm and honesty of one Apple fan in the know sharing it with other Apple fans.

I guess we will all see next Wednesday.

BeyondtheTech @ Gizmodo

The ability to be reading the thoughts and experiences and day-to-day narratives from regular people out there in the world with such diversity and a dash of bravery for sharing basically melted my brain.  I was hooked.  It was a liberating moment to find ridiculously creative people out there with wit and humor to boot!  And though these voices I kept coming across were older than I was, I felt connected.  I felt like I had found a tiny niche of my own in a world which was hurtling through so much conflict and confusion.

I remember my first recipe site which I was totally just tickled pink with.   Bitchen Kitchen just made my day with its playful colors and retro-influenced design.   It would still look quite snappy if it had survived past late 2005/early 2006.   I going through some crap at the time so I lost track of it and when I remembered it just this last year, it was dead and gone.  Apparently a victim of one of the less awesome parts of the web: the vanishing.  Domains can expire, interest and resources can wane, time moves on and things vanish.

mp3.com.  I found some of my first indie music there, which I loved, by The Secret Band.  The album was called “Special Little Devil” and I downloaded the four tracks that I liked the best with the hope of buying the CD eventually.  mp3.com was purchased by CNET and the catalog was dumped unceremoniously and I couldn’t locate any of their work again.  The Velvet Teen emerged from that group and I contacted a band member for details on where I could get a copy of their earlier work but he said he wasn’t sure they still had it.  My favorite song of theirs, Rivena, has a great sound to it and somehow over the years it was corrupted in the shuffle between computers and is now truncated awkwardly.

I also remember, quite fondly, Beth from Crazy Us and her stories about her sons Kyle and Eli.  I’m dying because I had printed out a short story she posted once regarding a conversation she had with her kids over breakfast which I may have lost in my last move.  The whole thing was just ridiculously amazing, but my two favorite lines which I think I have down to memory verbatim go: “I am a bunny rabbit!  A poisonous bunny rabbit.  I will poisonous you! Hisss!” and “We play animal friends simply every day!”  It was at that point that the concept of having children, which had been totally icky, gross and foreign to me suddenly popped into focus as something I may be interested in doing.  That was a landmark moment for me.

Crazy Us has popped in and out of existence since then.  It wasn’t a daily read for me but I checked it frequently enough to kindof put together that Beth had difficulty dealing with some of the feedback and criticism she would get from visitors to her site.  This particular issue has actually been always there in my mine.  There are the dooce’s of this world who have gone so far as to monetize negativity, but that takes a LOT of energy and a lot of patience and a lot of self-confidence. Then there are really awesome people like Beth who get worn down by it and I don’t blame her one tiny little bit.  I’ve always wondered how I would fare in the same situation.

I guess the moral to this story is that the internet is very much a living, breathing thing in its own way.  It evolves and grows and things are lost in the shuffle.  It’s a double edged sword.  The amazing ease with which content can be shared and people can connect with one another also lends itself to the rather quick loss of that same information if not actively maintained.  I think that is why I love physically published media.  It doesn’t go anywhere for the most part.  It’s a lot harder to delete and repurpose the constituent parts of a book or photo album or a handful of letters than it is to delete a website or flickr profile or email to free up space.  That being said, I love the power of the internet as it enables me to share what I can, unless you know of a publisher who is just dying to deal with me and publish my crap incrementally!

I’m reaching a point where I’m no longer able to look the other way when it comes to my primary computer’s performance.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my MacBook, in spite of the fact that it no longer functions without being plugged in and the fact that a small part of the wrist rest has chipped off.  I have one of the first generation black MacBooks with a Core Duo processor.  Not Core 2 Duo, the other one.  After three years it seems that even my routine 12-18 month computer colonics, where I just wipe everything clean and start from scratch, aren’t cutting it.

I think this situation has a lot to do with my iPhone 3GS as it so happens.  It’s fast.  Very fast.  It switches and flips between functions amazingly well.  I can go for weeks without rebooting it and the only time I generally run into errors are with early builds of independent applications which I download from the App Store.  I seriously adore my iPhone and it has become in many ways my primary computing device.  However, this speed has caused me to become impatient with my laptop.  It just isn’t quite fast enough.  I must also concede that small part of the problem also has to do with my Internet provider, but even after careful consideration, even Qwest’s hideously lacking service doesn’t quite explain what is going on here.

I need something which just works and moves faster.  But that isn’t my only issue.  I’m now faced with a moment where I have to take a long, hard look at the form factor of the machine I’m using.  I’ve long been a one-machine household.  I’ve had my MacBook and that is it.  I like the simplicity of this concept.  My computer is just that, a computer.  It’s not some fixture or installation which is stuck there at all times.  I’m not on my computer all the time, so it’s nice to be able to tuck it in a drawer when not in use.  That appeals to the minimalist in me.  As much as I love technology, I think that it should be easily tucked away and function seamlessly with the act of living.

That being said, I would love to have a larger, more vibrant, and much more accurate display to work with my photos.  It’s painful to me to be stuck with inconsistent output from my printer when printing photos as a result of the limited color gamut and accuracy of what is presented on-screen.  A nice iMac would be delightful, but at the same time, I think I’m the only one to complain that they are now only available in gargantuan and megamonster sizes.

A new MacBook pro would be nice, but the 13-inch screen is too limiting, though I could just get a larger external display.  I would also love a MacBook Air to be able to have an even more slight and effortless mobile computing experience.  I don’t need a ton of features, but it is lacking in the processor department which is my current beef with my computer now and would seal the need for a more powerful primary computer.

I’ve enjoyed the one-machine simplicity and I find that the concept of having multiple machines brings in the need for a NAS solution and thus far I’m hard-pressed to find one which really moves me, especially now that the Time Capsule from Apple seems to be emo and can die in sort of data-backup roulette at 18 months for unlucky winners.  I’ve been using a very simple machine in my living room for backups as well as Netflix duty, but it’s lone tiny Celeron processor doesn’t like to play nice all the time and is prone to gagging and sputtering.  At the same time, I really don’t want to invest much in that machine as I don’t want it to be more than a simple dummy box.  I don’t like the idea of using some set-top product not it not playing nice with any particular online outlet.

If money were not an issue, I would be able to very simply solve this problem, even if the solution weren’t as elegant as I would prefer.  I would have a MacBook Air for general puttering around the house and writing and stuff, a new 21-inch iMac in the office for heavy lifting and photo editing, and a Mac mini server in the living room for backups and streaming media.  But that seems to make it all much more complex and I’m not a fan of that.  It’s hard to balance the minimalist and the ubergeek inside of me.

Not to mention that as much as I would love to save my pennies and get a new Mac, I would love new furniture as well.  Oh and some new clothes.  Or a new lens for my camera.  Or a million other things I would just love to have.  It’s all so complex and muddled.  Anyhow, that is my awful, long, imposing, over-the-top geek dialog on new computers.  I don’t see why they can’t just magically be fast and amazing forever.  Thats not that much to ask for!

I haven’t posted because I ended up caving in and doing something stupid.  I knew this would happen after being so vocal about my dislike of the iPhone 3GS pricing.  I thought that I could be a good boy and wait for the next revolutionary change in the iPhone product line and pass on this evolutionary offering.  I even thought I might be able to leave the iPhone and to back to my Nokia roots and live happily with a Symbian smartphone…  Then my brother called and asked to buy my iPhone for a really fair price and the whole deal was off.  I went and bought a new iPhone 3GS.  I had convinced myself that I could live without it.

I was without my crackPhone for a week.  A single week.  After just 48 hours the deal was off.  It was like my right arm had been severed just below the shoulder.  I hadn’t realized that my day-to-day information was tied up in the stupid thing and I just couldn’t jump ship.  Apple’s advertising push of “there’s an app for that” really defines the struggle I had to a T.  The primary application which really brought the situation to light is an elegantly simple and free application called Balance which I use to keep track of my “fun money” checking account apart from my bill pay and savings accounts.  I love this application to little bits and pieces all over and I really couldn’t find anything on the two competing platforms (S60 Symbian on Nokia and Android from Google) which I liked.

I also enjoy the fact that my credit union partners with the vendor who powers the Mobile Banking application which I use to pay bills with a very simple, sleek interface.  In fact I have come to depend on the simple and sleek interfaces for most of my daily computing and communication functions including GPS, SMS, mail, scheduling, contact management, weather, social networking, news, reference, blogging (!!!), and last but not least (considering its an iDevice) media sharing and consumption.  I know that most of these functions are available on every other smartphone on the market, but the unified design aesthetic which has emerged among the applications, cultivated and encouraged by Apple, is a key selling point for me.

This just shows how Apple has, yet again, figured out a way and developed it carefully, to keep people hooked.  Unlike the original closed sandbox created with the iTunes Music Store  and DRM (which was forced upon them by the music labels to an extent) which fenced you within the iPod ecosystem, Apple benefits from the very nature of software development being so involved with a single platform.  They have provided a very powerful set of tools to lure developers, both brand spanking new and veteran developers, to develop some amazing (and some not so amazing) applications which now number in the tens of thousands.  This abundance drives competition and provides numerous choices which serve almost every need imaginable.

Apple originally stated that dynamic web applications and Web 2.0 would be enough to drive independent innovation through the browser and no one would need to develop applications to run on the iPhone operating system.  The sandbox was closed with a big sign nailed to the tree next to it saying, “No Independent Development Allowed!”  Two things changed this.  The first being the jailbreak community which started to grow, cultivating a market for unauthorized 3rd-party apps.  People were able to see just how much was possible with the iPhone and demanded open development.  The second issue being the new influx of smart devices which use the WebKit browser which powers Safari on the iPhone.  Suddenly all these dynamic web applications benefit every platform, some of which had faster radios and chipsets, outpacing the performance the first and second generation iPhones.

Now I have to say that I firmly believe Apple did intend to open the platform to 3rd-party development from the beginning.  I could spin numerous reasons and ideas as to why this wasn’t offered at the get-go, but I do believe that the situation evolved much more quickly and in more directions than Apple anticipated.  Their hand was forced to a great extent and but they didn’t just roll over. They pulled something very clever out of their hat in traditional Apple style.  They created the iPhone SDK and a simple, effective distribution model through the iTunes app store which took a lot of hassle out of the development, debugging, marketing, distribution and sales processes.  Regular developers with ideas for applications could publish them straight to the market and not have to worry about the business end of things.  There were still strings attached with limitations to the APIs available to developers and the sometimes cumbersome app approval process but it paved the way for hundreds and then thousands of developers to get busy.

Just one year later, with a store now packed full of tens of thousands of applications, Apple now has an effortless way of keeping people loyal while driving new adoption: a diverse and robust set of applications with compelling features and an easy way to keep consuming more.  With an average of 20 apps downloaded per iPhone, people build up a personal portfolio of sorts made up of their “OMG-I-can’t-live-without-this” applications.  The device becomes “sticky” or embedded into the daily functions of a person’s life.  It enables certain convenient behaviors and habits and is in every meaning of the word, an addiction.  Sure I could have lived without my iPhone, just like any one could technically function without internet access or a telephone.  But would I want to?  Absolutely not.