Google Reader is an RSS reader that can be used for RSS syncing. Bloglines used to have a very basic syncing API (maybe it still does). NewsGator had a syncing API. FeedSync is a way to use feeds to sync other stuff (as far as I can tell). Sync Services (MobileMe syncing API) is a generalized syncing system that might be able to do RSS, but works just between Macs.

WebDAV is cool. DropBox is super-amazingly-cool. But these are storage systems, not syncing systems for things like RSS.

Not one of the above is a really great system for just syncing RSS between apps.

(For people who remember NewsGator’s system with fondness: it had drawbacks too, including that it was limited to the past two weeks or 200 items for each feed.)

Now, that said, I think Google Reader is cool (both as app and API), and I’m very glad we can use it, and I totally appreciate the help we’ve had from Google. But I do also hear from NetNewsWire users who’d like an alternative.

With everything else I have to do, I don’t have time to create an alternative. But I could make NetNewsWire work with an alternative, if one existed and was worthwhile.

What is a worthwhile alternative?

There are a few criteria to meet, in no particular order:

1. It would have to be more like email servers — that is, not just one big server or cluster of servers somewhere, but the kind of thing people can run on any server. My web service provider might run one for me, the same way it runs an email server. (Or I might run one on my LAN. Or I might install it myself on my own website.)

2. It would have to be free and open source, so that it could be everywhere, so that it would be developed by people who just want to make RSS syncing work. (I’m a capitalist, totally, but there are times when free and open source makes sense.)

3. It would have to work over http and https. REST API.

4. It would have to not require that clients download the feeds themselves from the server. (This is the way Google Reader, NewsGator, Bloglines and others worked. Status info was added to the rewritten feeds. I’m saying this system should not work that way: clients would download feeds directly from their sources, just as they do when not syncing.)

5. The API should be as simple as possible and still get the job done. The job would be defined as syncing subscriptions lists and status of individual news items in RSS and Atom feeds. (And nothing else!)

6. It would have to be easy to configure an RSS reader to use a given server. No more than URL of server, username, and password should be required. (Less, if possible.)

7. It should not be limited to the last 14 or 30 days (like some systems) — it should have a much larger limit, like a year.

8. The server itself wouldn’t ever read any RSS feeds. It wouldn’t have to — it’s entirely just about syncing data between apps. It would only ever talk to client apps.

9. It should use as little bandwidth as possible, and be as fast as possible.

10. Authentication would use standard HTTP authentication. (Not cookies or anything else.)

11. There should probably a PHP + MySQL version, just so it can be deployed as widely as possible. (Though I know you’re thinking Rails.)

12. Despite its being open source, if someone did want to offer it as a for-pay service, they should be allowed to.

Notes about the API

There are some obvious things. Get subscriptions list as OPML-with-folders. (Feeds could live in multiple folders, which means folders are just like tags, so call them tags if you want to.)

API calls would support conditional GET, so getting a subscription list would usually result in a 304.

You’d probably add, delete, edit subscriptions by addressing into the tree. (That way you could delete one instance of a feed that appears multiple times. You could add/remove folders that way too.)

The other half is the status of news items. Most have a unique ID (always in the case of Atom) or a guid (usually, in the case of RSS). For items that don’t, an agreed-upon way of constructing a unique ID would have to be developed. (Pick things that don’t usually change but are enough to identify an item: pubDate in a specific format + link + feed URL, as a UTF-8 string, then MD5-hashed. Maybe. Something like that, something that would be largely reliable.)

You’d sync status incrementally: get all the status changes since a certain date (the last time you made the call). Status would probably be read, unread, deleted, starred, and saved. To set status, it would be great to address each item in individual calls, very RESTfully — but that would be a giant bandwidth waste. Better a single call that takes a structure of some kind (XML, JSON, whatever) with item IDs and status/value pairs, where you can update a bunch of items all at once.

As you can see, the server doesn’t have to do that much. It stores some small bits of data with timestamps. I don’t think it needs any cron jobs (at least not conceptually) — it just responds to requests. It doesn’t even have any idea what this data is about.

You probably have the database schema mapped out in your head already plus more specific ideas about the API.

(I don’t recall if I’ve said before, but a couple years ago we found that the average NetNewsWire user had 26 subscriptions. That should give you an idea of the storage requirements this would need. Obviously some people have hundreds or thousands, of course, but not most.)

Most of the time clients are just getting the subs list (usually getting a 304 back), and getting/setting news item status changes.

In other words, none of this sounds that hard. And it doesn’t sound like a taxing job for a server.

Invitation

If I had time, I would have written this years ago, offered it for free, made it open source, had NetNewsWire support it, and I’d have tried to get other RSS readers to support it too.

But I didn’t and don’t have time to write it.

However, if there are people who are interested in writing this, I can help. I have client apps, and I’ve been thinking about this for years, and I’ve written to several sync APIs.

If you’re seriously interested in writing some software that could end up deployed far and wide, and that would solve a real problem for real people, get in touch with me.

P.S. Here’s the business case

So you might want to make some money. That’s cool. Two business ideas:

1. Charge people money to use the service.

2. Collect information about popular feeds and popular news items. You could provide a real-time view into what people (in the aggregate) are reading. This might be interesting to sell, or it might be interesting as a website itself (where you could display ads). Given all the metadata in feeds, plus your user’s folders/tags, you might even be able to figure out categorization. You might even be able to provide trends, too. Certain topics are gaining/losing ground. Certain feeds are getting more or less popular. Etc. Don’t forget the pretty graphs! All of that stuff would be an add-on, of course, something you’d be able to build because you have the sync system underneath.

Compelling? I don’t know. Just what I thought of off the top of my head.

In October 2009, after 2.5 years of using Twitter every day, I wrote a piece that explained the limits of Twitter that we'll have to look past Twitter to see solved, because Twitter doesn't seem to be trying to solve them.

Tomorrow, we hear, Google will announce a product that aims to take on Twitter. If so, here's a list of features to look for. Any of these features would give Google a serious edge over Twitter. Maybe they thought of some things I don't have on my list. It's always nice to put your stake in the ground. I did it with the iPad with some hilarious results.

So here's the list of must-have features:

1. Reliability. Twitter still has trouble dealing with high-flow events like last night's SuperBowl. Lots of Fail Whales. So if Google is able to offer reliability, no matter how much of an advantage Twitter's installed base is, it won't matter. When Twitter goes down everyone will reassemble on Glitter.

2. Enclosures. Can you imagine if you couldn't enclose a picture or an MP3 with an email message? Why do we jump through so many hoops just to tweet a picture?

3. Open architecture metadata. Let developers throw any data onto a status message, giving it a name and a type, and let everyone else sort it out. It would result in an explosion of creativity.

4. Relationships with hardware vendors. I still want a one-click Twitter camera. If I can't have it from Twitter, I'll take it from Google.

5. No 140-character limit. I debated this one with myself. At first I compromised and said okay let's have a 250-character limit, or a 500-character limit. But I really don't want a limit. If I want to write short status messages, no problemmo. We've already made the cultural transition. We know how to do it. But sometimes a thought just can't be expressed in 140 characters. No one is wise enough to know what the limit is, so let's just not have one.

6. No URL-shorteners. I've explained this so many times. They're stupid and ugly and they hurt the web. I like it when developers take the time to craft their URLs so they make sense to users. That's all the shortening we really need and all we should have.

Those are some of my wish-list items. It seems likely Google will offer #1 and #2. Very unlikely they'll do #3 (they don't trust developers any more than Apple does). Probably not #4, though it would be easy to get some people from Kodak and Sony to come on stage with them. #5 would take a teeny bit of guts. It's a perfect way to throw some serious confusion at Twitter. I'd recommend going all the way, but if they can't, go to 500-characters. Get some editors and authors on stage to say how nice it would be. Because they're making a commitment to their own URL-shortener it seems unlikely they would outlaw them on their status network, but one can hope.

I usually don't subscribe to the idea that new products aimed at the user base of an established product are "killers" -- but it's been a long time since we've seen a product as ripe for killing as Twitter. (Lotus 1-2-3 was probably the last great example.)

The hubris of Twitter is the assumption that the product is unassailable because of the features they leave out. Sooner or later one of their competitors is going to test that theory, and I'm pretty sure it'll prove incorrect. And where they include horrendous features that a competitor might leave out (I'm thinking of URL-shortening) they don't seem to feel any pressure to take it out. Yet almost every user would enjoy a Twitter with real full URLs that didn't take up any of the 140-character space. Hard to imagine anyone objecting.

OTOH, Google is a big clunky Microsoft-like company with strategy taxes, and they don't trust the web or developers, or each other, and their internal politics drive most of the decisions they make. To compete with Twitter is an easy sell inside Google, but to actually have the will to be cut-throat about it, that's another thing. It'll probably have to pay homage to Google Wave (remember that?) and therefore will have some elements that are completely incomprehensible. Twitter likely won't get killed, because Google's product will likely fall far-short of what's needed to get us all to think they can be trusted.

The usual disclaimers apply. This is all tea-leave-reading, I have no actual information, and I'm usually way wrong with these prognostications, but it's still good to share the thought process.

Update #1: A commenter named Scott says: "If people were posting dissertations, I'd be much less likely to read." Tom Caswell says: "How about a 'more' button you could set in the preferences? I would set mine at 140 characters for old times sake." Even better, it could default to 140 for old times sake.

Update #2: Cesar Razuri: "also, make hashtags some sort of meta data in our tweets that doesn't add to character length" Good idea.

Update #3: Scoble weighs in. Even though Google's past efforts at social media have failed, he thinks this time they have a good chance of succeeding.

A brief note of congratulations to the City that Care Forgot.

It's so wonderful that the Saints won the Super Bowl!

This will go down as one of the big moments of sports history, imho.

As the 1969 Mets undid the betrayal of NY fans by the Dodgers, the Saints give hope to a city that was betrayed in so many ways.

From what I know of New Orleans, this victory will be the stuff of legend for a long time to come. It's a city with a great sense of history, and destiny. And humor.

Until 2005 its destiny was to be devastated by a monster hurricane and the failure of the rest of the country to come to its aid.

But tonight begins a new beginning for the Crescent City. From now on this is the city of champions!

Laissez les bon temps rouler!

I spent my first full day living in NYC since 1977.

Lots of observations, but I only have time to share one.

In other cities, the places you drive to are places you walk to in Manhattan. There's every kind of restaurant within a block of my apartment. In Palo Alto, you can get it all (but the pizza isn't as good) but you have to drive everywhere unless you live off University Avenue. Same in Berkeley.

And the walking in Manhattan is amazing. It's huge and has so much variety. And everywhere you go the buildings reach the sky. In every other city I've lived in, they might have had a few buildings as tall as the average tall apartment building in NY. And that's even in neighborhoods which aren't known for big buildings.

I live two blocks from the West 4th St subway station. From there you can get to every part of Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn. One change gets you to everywhere in Queens.

But I spent five hours walking today. I'm wiped, but in a good way.

Now on to the SuperBowl. Of course as a Tulane alum I'm rooting for the Saints!

David Weinberger asks: "After press conferences, what?"

Imho: A hybrid of newsroom and press conference. And it must be open, unlike newsrooms and press conferences of the past.

A few years ago I wrote about an idea called Hypercamp, a way of distributing ideas and news that I felt would come into existence in what we now call the "rebooted news system."

The idea became real for me at a Microsoft press event at the Palace Hotel in 2005. Ray Ozzie introducing himself as the new CTO. After the event we all went upstairs to a small ballroom where there was all kinds of food and refreshment and a mix of bloggers, developers, reporters and Microsoft execs. The party went on for a couple of hours with people reporting live from the event out through their blogs.

The coolest thing was the collaborative writing that happened, that usually doesn't happen in the blogosphere because we all write holed up in isolated cubbies.

It dawned on me that this was a hybrid press conference and newsroom.

So imho what happens in the rebooted news system are open newsrooms. I'm not talking about virtual (online) newsrooms. A couple in SF, one for tech and another for biotech (different people, different issues). In NYC, you'd have an open newsroom for tech, and one for finance, fashion, perhaps sports. In every geographic center, you'd have one or more such facilities.

The idea developed -- let's put two podiums at either ends of the room with vendors paying to make presentations. There's an EIC for each open newsroom who can also give time to open source projects in all these fields (open source sports and fashion -- interesting).

Big high bandwidth pipes emanate from the room, all kinds of video flow in and out. It's a work place and an event space.

I called these open newsrooms Hypercamp and drew a diagram to illustrate.



I'd love to start one in NYC and/or SF. It has to be operated by someone other than me, I'm strictly editorial. Not good at the logistics involved in putting these things together.

In the age of realtime networked news this is the new CNN, video would flow out of these facilities 24 hours a day. If you have an event to host, you'd pay to put it in the appropriate Hypercamp.

wilshipley: "Is there an iPhone app for adding your own subtitles to that famous Hitler scene on YouTube™, yet?"

Why it's the perfect tweet:

1. It's about a product from Apple.

2. It suggests an Apple slogan that's almost become a meme.

3. You know damned well there's no app for that.

4. But there totally should be.

5. We love Apple even though they turn us into couch potatoes and minions of Steve.

6. Consider it a feature request for Android.

7. It's about at the appropriate level of importance for the average tweet.

8. It's an application of Godwin's Law.

9. The Hitler videos are funny even thought Hitler himself was a monster.

10. You never know what Hitler is going to say next!

11. Think of all the new applications for Hitler.

Saw a link this evening in Danny Sullivan's feed to Bit.ly Pro. Not sure when this was announced, there are no references to the product in Google News.

Read over the FAQ. This is basically the service I wanted to create with Bit.ly when we started it up in the summer of 2008. But it's apparently missing one key component, the freedom to switch to a different service. Once you've chosen to map a domain to bit.ly, if you map it to another service, all the links you created with bit.ly break.

There is a way for them to provide the ability to switch, Joe Moreno at Adjix did it. Bit.ly could echo all your shortened URLs to an Amazon S3 bucket that you control (and pay for, btw). If you decide to switch, just change your CNAME to point to Amazon. Or give it to a competitive service that you like better. This protects your choice, and protects all of us if Bit.ly should fail.

8/19:09: How to Fix URL Shorteners.

Now I could be missing something, I hope I am. But I'd get the answer to the question before I bet my future on any URL-shortening service.

I'm in California, where it rains a lot but snow is pretty rare.

That's why a honkin winter storm is so interesting!

If you're getting dumped on in Washington or Baltimore or where ever, how's it going? Any accumulation? Pictures!

This is a networking experiment to see if I can connect with people in NYU's Computer Science department through the readers of this weblog.

Me: I'm a visiting scholar in the Journalism Institute for the next year; working with my friend Jay Rosen and his students on several interesting projects. While I'm there it would be interesting for me to catch up on how Computer Science is taught these days, and perhaps talk with some students about how I got where I am and see if there's any interest in working on some projects while I'm in NY in 2010 and 2011.

Here's my CV. To get in touch, please send an email to dave dot winer at gmail dot com. Haven't got my NYU email address yet (next week, I hope).

Update: NYU Computer Science Students Make Awesome iPhone Apps.

The wife and I have decided that we'd like to buy a recliner. Currently, I sit on the couch and Carey sits on the love seat for reading. I'll slide down and sit on the floor to use my computer, or use the couch table lamps for reading. She'll do everything on the love seat.

We'd like to add a recliner. I imagine I'll be using it primarily and Carey will move over to the couch on occasion. We'd like something that's incredibly comfortable - particularly for reading.

I've read some articles (like this one and ).

Budget is $600 to $1000 (fairly firm at the top of course). The couch and love seat are a microfiber/faux suede, and neither of us are dead set on any particular fabric or finish except that we're pretty sure we don't want vinyl. The recliner won't go against a wall and there's room behind it, so we don't need a wall-saver type. A rocker type that spins might be nice, and I think we'll want a footrest included so we don't have an ottoman.

It'll be a little while before we really get into it, but if you have any opinions or insight, please share.

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I have the latest version of Adobe Photoshop. I have the latest version of Mac OS X. And yet I can't copy and paste an image with transparency into Photoshop.

I often come across this problem after I "copy image" from Safari or when I hold down the control key when taking a screenshot to put the image on the clipboard.

Pasting into Photoshop turns this image:

Into this pile of garbage:

The only way around this is to take an actual screenshot and open the actual PNG file in Photoshop.

This bug has existed for quite some time - perhaps since 10.6 - and unfortunately I've yet to see anyone talking about fixing it. Is Adobe even aware of the issue? They should be. Searches reveal plenty of others complaining about it.

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WIthout any fanfare as far as I can tell, Google has unveiled one of the most signficant, far-reaching and basically good features in its core search product.

Now, in addition to presenting the pages ranked in order of algorithmic importance, it also shows you what people you know have to say about the subject.

How does it know who you know? Based on some very simple information you may have entered into your Google profile. (I called this two-way search in July 2009.)

For example, in my profile, I told it that I have a blog, am on Twitter, FriendFeed, run opml.org, have Flickr, Identi.ca, Picasa and YouTube accounts and OpenID. From there, it presumably either crawls or makes API calls to find out who I'm connected to and what I care about. There's a wealth of information about me just in the links on scripting.com.

So, when I search for "Michael Clayton" it includes results from my social circle. In this case it has a hit from Cody Brown who it knows (so they tell me) I know because I follow him on Twitter.

It's good for the web because it puts all the social services on the same open playing field. If I want to add another service, I can put it in the list, and I can tell them how important it is to me by moving it up or down the list. It also makes sense for Google to throw its lot in with the web because they aren't Twitter or Facebook, and they got their start by indexing the open web. No matter what their motivations, that's for God to judge. Good is good. And good is not evil.

If you have an account on Google, you can edit your profile here.

At first the results aren't blowing me away, but I expect over time they will get better.

Peter Hosey: “Welcome, new Cocoa or Cocoa Touch programmer. Here are some things you will need to know.”

Eoghan McCabe:

Given the crappy copy and links in the message, after a quick scan, it’s not difficult to miss a key line or two and be left thinking you can hit reply and continue the conversation. After all, they originally asked me to e-mail them, they just replied to my mail, they ask me to “write back”, speak in the first person and they sign with a staff member’s name. I typed “Hi Scott, there must be some confusion. There is no another e-mail add—” before I noticed the “cannot accept incoming e-mail” line.

Lukas Mathis: “Eventually, you will find yourself in a position where your application contains features it should not. Even if you’ve been vigilant, this will happen.”

I can list all the conferences I'm not going to this year because I didn't get an invite. A friend who's going to TED this year for the first time (I've never been) says he's pissed at himself, ironically.

I've never personally faced a life-and-death struggle as intense as Dana Jennings describes in a piece at the NY Times. When I read it I think how small my problems are, I more or less have my health. I have to work at being unhappy or scared. This man has to work to find something to be happy about. And he does.

Dana Jennings: "I was hospitalized for six weeks in 1984 with an acute case of ulcerative colitis, an autoimmune disease that attacks the large intestine. Before my entire ravaged colon was removed, my doctors let me peer through the scope and take a look at it as it died."

I also like the piece because it's beautifully written and uncomplicated. It represents a point of view that no one can say is objective. Its subjectiveness, written from the point of view of someone whose body is conflicted about living or dying, is what makes it so powerful.

It's been pointed out elsewhere that President Obama's meeting with Republicans was one of the best press events ever. But the press just covered it, it played no role. And that's as it should be.

We do learn from conflict, but real conflict, not the made-up kind that we read in the news and hear on radio, and see on TV.

I want the collective press to be like a microphone, a very accurate one, that simply tells us what was said or done, without spin or savvy. If a cat got caught up a tree and the fire department came to get it down, I'd like to know that, and what the rescue people thought, and the spectators, and the cat.

I've enjoyed my first experiences with the NYU students. It's a great thing for me to get back to those particular roots. To enjoy, vicariously, the point of view of someone who doesn't know all that decades of life teach you, and is smart enough to know that. But also people who will live to know things I never will know. Hey, we're all here now, people who are at TED and people who are not. People who were alive in 1955, and people who will be alive in 2055. People whose bodies don't need radiation and chemotherapy to have a chance at survival, and those who will be dead next week. We're all here now, so let's dig the moment and do it together, with respect.

Your first dividend from my NYU experience. Please check out nyulocal.com. It's a student-run news site, completely unaffiliated with the university. The kids don't get credit for it, they do it for love. One student, reviewing the study-abroad program in Paris (she had just completed it) said she couldn't wait to get back to NY to keep writing for the site. That's the kind of writing I love to read, and if you like scripting.com, I bet you'll like nyulocal.com too.

The only reason the last choice even exists is so that I could choose it.

You see, I hadn't planned to buy an iPad because, frankly, I had absolutely no need for it. None. I'm quite content to use my iPhone, laptop, and desktop and don't feel inconvenienced or put out in doing so, so I won't "invent" a need.

But Brad's going to buy me an iPad because we're going to release Cyndicate 2.0 for the Mac with syncing support for an iPad version of Cyndicate. Reading feeds on the iPad would be nice.

And since a good portion of what I do at night is to read some web articles I couldn't read during the day and to cruise the forum, an iPad with Cyndicate, the built-in Safari, and Tapatalk, perhaps I'll find myself using the iPad for more than development, bug testing, and feature suggestions.

I still hope magazines comes out, though, and in a big way. I want to stop getting paper magazines in the mail.

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Victoria Wang:

At this time, I suspect the closed nature of the App Store is not as worrying as it should be because it only concerns our smart phones. We can still develop anything we want for Macs, the “real” machines. However, what if the iPad starts to replace the Mac to such a degree that it no longer becomes profitable to write apps for the Mac? It seems that to be a Cocoa developer will eventually mean to have one’s business chained to the App Store. To be chained to the App Store means Apple makes the final decision on whether your apps can be sold the way you like them, or at all.

Webdesigner Depot (via Cathy Shive):

On February 10th, 2010, Photoshop turns twenty. To mark this anniversary, we’ve come up with an article that takes you through the evolution of Photoshop from its modest beginnings as a bundled program sold with scanners to its current version.

For each version and major feature listed, we couldn’t help but think “did Photoshop ever exist without that feature?”.

Cocoia posts the good stuff, as always.

As I just said on mailing list: Magazines could be the "killer app" for the iPad. I'd buy one if that's all it did. I'm not buying one now.

Me, earlier today. But hey, I've been saying the same thing for a whole week now.

There's also this and my friend Don's take on it.

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The February issue of ATPM is out:

• Cover
• Sponsors
• Welcome
• E-Mail
• MacMuser: Frozen in Time Machine
• MacMuser: And the Winner Is…Who Cares?
• Next Actions: Master List, February 2010
• Segments: Slices from the Macintosh Life: Back to the Beginning
• Desktop Pictures: New England
• Out at Five
• Accessory Review: Element iPhone Stand
• Accessory Review: SolarCharger 906
• FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions

Macworld: “For Apple, it’s not about killing off tinkerers, but ensuring that not everybody who wants to use a computer has to be a tinkerer.”

Tyree Apps: “I’ve created a little view controller that lets a TapLynx app offer the user a quick way to snap a photo and then email it to someone without ever leaving the TapLynx based application.”

One of my favorite parts of TapLynx is that it’s extendable: you can create new views with new features. (Note to programmers: TapLynx is a static library. You still use Xcode to build apps, though TapLynx makes it so you write code only if you want to.)

My mother, who has a WordPress blog, keeps telling me about posts that I haven't seen. This was starting to irk me, so I looked into River2 to see what's going on. Yes, it is finding her posts, but it thinks they're pictures. Why? Because the feed says they're pictures. Oy.

Digging in a little deeper. WordPress has a neat feature that I don't fully understand, called "gravatars." If you have one, as my mother does, it attaches it to every post, as an image. I'm sure she has absolutely no idea what a gravatar is, and I'm equally sure that WordPress created one for her automatically.

So, I want to fix this, so her posts (and those of other WordPress authors) show up where they belong in River2. Other than looking at the URL of the image, I have no idea how to do it. I'm hoping one of the readers of this blog does.

Here's an example from the feed.

<media:content url="http://0.gravatar.com/avatar/ed80e40fc7fa8d76b88e3e5d1079f429?s=96&d=identicon&r=G" medium="image">

They use the media:content element to represent the gravatar. I have a strong feeling this is very wrong. It seems to me that a gravatar is a bit of metadata. Why should it be represented as an image, why not as a <gravatar> in a new namespace defined for the purpose of representing gravatars?

The media:content element came into being to help Flickr attach pictures to items in feeds. It probably was a mistake, in hindsight, to try to make a general namespace for this, because it gets us into jams like this. Probably would have worked better if they had come up with a <flickr:picture> element. That way we might not have had this conflict in semantics.

<media:content url="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2785/4317723874_9ac5cf85e5_o.jpg" type="image/jpeg" height="1880" width="2816" />

I'm pretty stuck here. I really need to separate pictures from non-picture items (I subscribe to some awesome picture feeds, and they would completely swamp my news-oriented feeds). It looks like I'm going to have to check if the image comes from gravatar.com. That's a terrible way to parse metadata.

I launched Adobe Photoshop and was told - for the umpteenth time in the past few weeks - that Adobe Updater wanted to update Adobe Reader.

Instead, I deleted everything with "adobe" and "reader" in the filename. Let's see what problems that causes…

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Interesting collaborative post betw Gruber and Scoble. I'd like to get into the mix with a 90-degree turn -- in the form of a question.

1. Okay, Apple seems to be forcing a question. Can they force web site producers to kill Flash?

2. It's kind of hard to defend Flash because it's a company-owned thing, not an open standard.

3. Now the question. What if Apple were trying to erase something that's not company-owned? Either a formal or defacto standard?

4. Further, what if their alternative were something that was locked-down and owned by a company? Further, what if the company was Apple?

This may be kind of a toe-dip. Apple tries this. If it works, they try sticking their whole foot in. The end result may well be a networking environment owned by one company. Or two or more incompatible networking environments.

Users and website developers are practical people. We don't care about Adobe, says Gruber, and that's probably right (I don't have a single Flash document on scripting.com). But I very much care about an open Internet.

Yes, that opens me to ridicule from users with little experience with the other kind of networking, one that has huge Do Not Enter signs everywhere. Their naivete is no excuse for throwing out the engine that's been driving innovation. The question of where and how we draw the line should be part of the public discussion.

BTW, how lovely are open standards? I'm writing this post from an American Airlines flight from NY to SF. Do you have any idea how many open standards were necessary to make this work? Makes the mind spin. And it all works exactly the same if I fly Virgin America or Air Egypt. In an Apple-designed world how much of this would work? Imho, not very much.

PS: Adobe might want to consider, right now, very quickly, giving Flash to the public domain. Disclaim all patents, open source all code, etc etc. That would throw the ball squarely back into Apple's court and would frame the question right now in its most stark terms.

One recurring theme in defense of the closedness of the iPad is that it gives you access to the web and that's the most open thing around. Maybe, but if I want the web there are much better and less expensive ways to get it that don't compromise on flexibility and the ability to run other software. In other words, if you want the web and only the web, iPad would be a poor choice.

Yet I am concerned that it will get a flow of great apps from people who are willing to compromise on their freedom and users' freedom. They may say they're not doing it, but I don't see it that way. I wouldn't want to do anything to discourage them from developing cool apps for iPad, as long as they're not pumping their creativity into a platform that can't be competed with because of patents. If that's the case, it's a very unhealthy situation. Not one a developer should support unless they know for sure that other platforms can challenge Apple. I suspect there's a problem because Google is not releasing their multi-touch technology very widely.It could be that it's not ready, I hope that's the reason. But it may also be that Apple has a patent.

Another question that comes up frequently is why worry about limitations in a platform from Apple when we haven't expressed similar concerns re those from Nintendo, Sony, etc. The answer is obvious -- we depend on the Macintosh being one of two or three serious and open development platforms. At some point Steve is going to get up on stage and tell us it's the end of the road for the Mac, because the iPad/iPhone OS has sucked all the energy from the Mac. That's something he and Apple could seriously influence. Sony and Nintendo don't make the Mac, therefore there's nothing to worry about. One way Apple could alleviate these concerns and, at the same time, blast a big hole in the side of Microsoft would be to fully open source Mac OS. At that point, I'd be very happy to keep working on it, and wouldn't give a whit about the iPad, knowing as long as there's demand we'd be supplied with new versions running on the latest hardware, by someone, if not Apple.

Re the need for simplification, I've watched a close relative struggle with the multiple layers of user interface on today's computers, I recognize the need for a fresh start. Current GUI technology is 40-plus years old. Mac and Windows are equally confusing messes. User interfaces can be vastly simplified. I thought Apple would have done much more in this area by now. It's already been three years since the iPhone's introduction. And I don't think Android has the same commitment to a fresh start, it's more of a hodgepodge. And while Google is a patent offender just like Apple, so has no moral advantage, at least there's no barrier to what developers can put on the Android platform, so Google doesn't have the ability to control what goes on Android as Apple does with the iPad. In the worst case, you can route around Google totally because Android is open source.

Another thought occurred to me -- iPad looks rushed. It seems possible that Apple pushed it out sooner because it got wind of a competitive product. Could it be that Google has a DroidPad in the pipe? One thing's for sure, Apple's competitors are not scared of iPad. Let's hope they make some decent offers to developers. If any of them want my help, I'm here and ready to roll up my sleeves. I want to be sure there are lots of choices, the sooner the better. I can help get developers to pay attention to what you're doing.

The stakes are much higher than with the iPhone. No one should underestimate the potential of iPad. That's why I said, ironically, there's no doubt I will buy one as soon as I can. For the same reason I bought an iPhone. You have to understand this product if you want to stay current. But we, as an industry, must have choice. Now is a crucial moment for that.

It's truly horrifying how accurate this is.

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Y'know, I think I wish there was a setting.

The raw MP4 file uploaded to YouTube for this video is 9.2 MB.

The raw video as pulled from my iPhone via the sync cable is 71.2 MB.

That's just a wee bit more compression than I'm happy with… I think that, in the future, I'll pull videos off of my iPhone and upload them from the computer rather than this.

Oh, and I was using my home's WiFi, not AT&T's 3G. How about a variable compression setting based on your connection method?

P.S. YouTube needs a "replace video" feature. Vimeo has it.

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The Omni Mouth: “We want to bring all five of our productivity apps to iPad: OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, OmniPlan, OmniFocus, and OmniGraphSketcher.”

I’m especially a fan of OmniOutliner — and I want an outliner on iPad. This is great news.

Mike Ash: “Using a technique called method swizzling, you can replace an existing method from a category without the uncertainty of who ‘wins,’ and while preserving the ability to call through to the old method.”

This is interesting information that you should read and never use.

Fraser Speirs: “Those of us who patiently, day after day, explain to a child or colleague that the reason there’s no Print item in the File menu is because, although the Pages document is filling the screen, Finder is actually the frontmost application and it doesn’t have any windows open, understand what’s happening here.”

Macworld: “At the heart of the iPad lies a tiny sliver of silicon. A game changer within a game changer.”

Playing with Shapes: “I’m just as anxious as anyone else to start designing for the iPad. I always have to start with paper.”

UsabilityPost: “When you scroll, the content scrolls without any interruptions and lag — it’s very, very smooth. Why is this so important? It’s important because this level of responsiveness blends the borders between analog and digital media.”

Scripting News: “Is it possible to create an iPad-like platform that has none of the drawbacks of Apple’s offerings?”

Excellent question. I think that in ten years, most computers will be iPad-like.

I don’t know any developers that like the App Store review system. I don’t. But I’ve never seen even the barest hint that freedom of speech is otherwise limited. And I’m hyper-sensitive to that, completely allergic to anything that I think would hurt that freedom.

Joe Hewitt: “iPad is an incredible opportunity for developers to re-imagine every single category of desktop and web software there is. Seriously, if you’re a developer and you're not thinking about how your app could work better on the iPad and its descendants, you deserve to get left behind.”

chockenberry: “There’s an inherent benefit to only doing one thing at a time: the load of worrying about other tasks is lifted. Knowing that there isn’t anything else competing for your attention is quite liberating.”

Totally right on. It’s one of the reasons I could see myself using an iPad more than my laptop. (I use a desktop Mac for development.)

Mike Rundle: “Most people are not power users, they mainly consume content using their computer rather than produce it. When they produce content it’s more casual: posting to Twitter, updating Facebook, writing personal blog entries and notes, uploading photos.”

I have a MacBook Pro and an iPhone. Both are great, but—for me—I don’t feel as though there’s a gaping hole in the middle. It would probably be useful, though not essential, to have a digital reading device for light Web browsing, PDFs, and perhaps FogBugz. I’m less sure that the screen will tempt me from paper books.

I don’t want to speculate too much, since I haven’t used an iPad and it’s harder to judge something when you’re not really the target market. Nevertheless, I think the iPad is going to be a success and a big deal. For some people, devices like the iPad will make computing more accessible and traditional-style computers unnecessary. For techies, it signals that the “wild west” era of open, tinkerable computers for the masses may be on its way out.

Alex Payne:

The iPad was pitched by Steve Jobs yesterday as a response to netbooks. It is not a mobile device, per se. Rather, the iPad is competing with full-fledged (if small and ugly) computers capable of running arbitrary programs and operating systems. Play all the category games you want, but the iPad is a personal computer. Apple has decided that openness is not a quality that’s necessary in a personal computer. That’s disturbing.

John Gruber:

A car with an automatic transmission still shifts gears; the driver just doesn’t need to know about it. A computer running iPhone OS still has a hierarchical file system; the user just never sees it.

[…]

What I found interesting is that I’m very familiar with this resolution — for years I used PowerBooks and iBooks with 1024 × 768 displays running Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X. 1024 × 768 somehow seems very different on the iPad than on Mac OS — physically smaller but conceptually bigger. The full-screen concept, without Mac-style overlapping draggable windows, leaves the iPad free to use as many pixels as possible for display content rather than UI chrome.

Kevin Hoctor:

I’m a geek. I love this stuff. I even know all the keyboard shortcuts for switching apps and spaces and windows. I am a software developer with an engineer’s brain. I am not the person Apple was thinking about when they built the iPad.

William Van Hecke:

It’s easy to miss what the big deal is, especially if you’re the sort of person who already has an iPhone and a Mac and you are perfectly happy with the way they fit into your life. @benaar said that they should have just called it iPod Big, and on the face of it, he’s right. It is just a fricken huge iPod touch. But something subtly momentous happens when an iPod touch gets fricken huge.

Steven Frank:

Apple is calling the iPad a “third category” between phones and laptops. I am increasingly convinced that this is just to make it palatable to you while everything shifts to New World ideology over the next 10-20 years.

Fraser Speirs:

The people whose backs have been broken under the weight of technological complexity and failure immediately understand what’s happening here. Those of us who patiently, day after day, explain to a child or colleague that the reason there’s no Print item in the File menu is because, although the Pages document is filling the screen, Finder is actually the frontmost application and it doesn’t have any windows open, understand what’s happening here.

Right now, various constraints have kept software for the iPhone OS simple. There’s less to get in the way because it does less. It will be interesting to see what happens as devices like the iPad become more powerful, developers have more time to iterate their products, and users expect them to do more. Will things stay simple? Or will we slowly reinvent most of the features and problems that we currently see on the desktop?

Brent Simmons, Joe Hewitt and Miguel de Icaza all write that they look forward to developing on the iPad. I found their essays surprising, especially Joe's -- given his decision to stop developing for the iPhone because of the review process that Apple imposes on developers. I totally supported him in that, and since his decision (though not because of it) I have switched from the iPhone to Google's Android platform, as a user.

I don't develop for any of the new platforms because they don't run my software, though Google could. Apple would never approve anything remotely like the OPML Editor, and that makes it very unlikely that I'd develop for them, but also for some really important reasons, makes it equally unlikely that I'd use it. I found Joe's piece thought provoking (it provoked this piece). I hope he gives mine similar consideration.

First, after reading Joe's piece, I understood why developers find the iPad interesting. It's because while they liked creating apps for the iPhone, the tiny screen made some very difficult design choices necessary. While they could see the potential of the multi-touch interface and a fresh start (they don't have to live with a UI design that's 40 years old), the iPhone screen is so small, that they couldn't nearly deliver on the promise. All the while they're thinking "If only Apple would make one of these things that isn't so small." And that of course is exactly what the iPad is. I'm sure they can understand that we, as users, weren't having the same thoughts. Until I read Joe's piece I had not heard this idea in any of the flood of discourse on the iPad, pro or con. Since I don't develop for the platform I never had the thought myself.

So, if Brent, Joe and Miguel like it, it stands to reason that they will create software that users will like. So the success of the iPad is assured, in ways perhaps that the Asus isn't. Or perhaps even Android, because it doesn't have multi-touch enabled, just guessing that might have something to do with a patent. Which is a shame, because while Joe has the option to put some or most of the functionality that Apple won't allow on a Facebook-owned server, the user doesn't have any say in this choice. So the user's data will live where Facebook, or some other funded company, wants it to live.

While Joe et al have been thinking about great new user interface, I was too when I was their age, now I'm thinking about something else, that I believe is even more important -- keeping big tech companies from controlling what has become our primary means of expression and communication, computer networks.

When I was young, some of us envisioned the world we live in today, only we tended to think only of the upside of networked thinking, never the dangers. I guess that's human nature and the nature of youth. Won't it be great if everyone can access everyone else's ideas anywhere, we thought -- on any kind of device, all inter-connected and fast. Some believed, me included, that computers without networking interfaces were totally uninteresting. Everything I created was designed to communicate. I ached because early Macintoshes had such awful networking APIs. Eventually all that got sorted out when we got HTTP -- it was so simple, the big companies couldn't control what we did with it.

But ever since that watershed moment the big tech companies have been trying to get the genie back in the bottle. It's the nature of bigness and corporateness to do that. Facebook didn't exist when I started my work, but now they're here and they're huge, and they view the world the way a big company does.

The problem is this -- if Facebook goes away -- and it could, so does everything everyone created with it. Facebook investors and developers like Joe (who I respect enormously) probably aren't worrying about this, because necessarily everything they do is tied up in the success of Facebook. Now if Joe can show me, in his architecture based on the iPad, where all my work is mirrored in a service I pay for, like Amazon S3, in a simple format I and others can write software against, then I can relax and look forward to the future he, Brent and Miguel want to create. But if my work is tied up in their success, then the price is too high. I'll take the lower fidelity but open playing field of the netbook, and keep my own data on my own hard drives, and back it up as I see fit. And continue to exercise my First Amendment rights.

I know that "most users" aren't thinking like this, it's easy to be lulled into a false sense of confidence. But I don't trust these companies, and I especially don't trust Apple or Google with my writing work. I can see a day when what I write has to be approved by someone who works for Steve Jobs before it can be read publicly. That's a day when freedom is completely crushed.

All three of these men know that freedom is important. So what's the answer. You're all willing to give up some of your freedom to play in Apple's new ballpark. How much of our freedom should we be willing to give up, and is this the only way to get it? Is it possible to create an iPad-like platform that has none of the drawbacks of Apple's offerings? If not, why not?

Update: A must-read piece by Alex Payne. "If I had an iPad rather than a real computer as a kid, I'd never be a programmer today." Well put, even if it's not a sure thing. (I didn't have any kind of computer growing up and I'm a programmer.)

Steven Frank’s blog post will be on the syllabus. Critical reading, if you want to understand what happens next.

Some quotes followed by brief commentary.

My Box of Cruft:

Remember way back to January 2007, when the iPhone was announced? Oh Internets, you wailed and gnashed your teeth endlessly. No 3G network? No MMS? No apps on the iPhone? No replaceable battery? Oh, your complaints were endless. You were sure that the iPhone was doomed because it didn’t meet all your requirements.

And what happened? Well, Apple has sold 40 million iPhones. FORTY MILLION. They have become the largest mobile device company in the world.

So today, you moan on and on about all the features you expected and demand in the iPad. What no Verizon? No two-way camera? It’s not weightless? A full half inch thick? Only 10 hours of battery life? You make tons of predictions on the success and failure with scant details and without ever actually trying one.

Well, I am lucky enough to have been at the Apple Event today. Deep within the Reality Distortion Field. I saw the demo live, not snap shots on a web site. I got to use the iPad and see how it worked in person. I talked with other people that had tried it.

And you know what, just like Steve Jobs said, you need to hold it for yourself. It’s a different computing experience. It’s intuitive and simple. The device is blazingly fast and obvious how to use. It is a third kind of computing between a smartphone and a laptop.

3G, MMS, and apps came. That doesn't render the gnashing of teeth irrelevant. In fact, it does more to prove the opposite - that they were necessary features. And now that we have them, it seems silly to roll out an iPad that lacks some key features.

From Stephen Fry:

You know how everyone who has ever done Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? always says, "It's not the same when you're actually here. So different from when you're sitting at home watching."? You know how often you've heard that? Well, you'll hear the same from anyone who's handled an iPad. The moment you experience it in your hands you know this is class. This is a different order of experience. The speed, the responsiveness, the smooth glide of it, the richness and detail of the display, the heft in your hand, the rightness of the actions and gestures that you employ, untutored and instinctively, it's not just a scaled up iPhone or a scaled-down multitouch enhanced laptop - it is a whole new kind of device.

This is in response to those - like me - saying that it's just a larger iPod Touch. I've jokingly called it the "iPod Touch Pro" or "Plus" a few times.

It still is. I get the user interface. I get how fun and awesome it is. That's beside the (my) point.

From Gruber:

I would say that redefining mobile computing is exactly what happened. It is surprisingly, delightfully, iPhone-esque in many ways. But if you use it for just a few minutes, it becomes obvious that the iPad is not a big stretched-out iPhone, but rather that the iPhone is a shrunken stripped-down version of the iPad. The iPad is what they’ve been building toward all along.

The iWork apps are amazing. Totally usable. Totally new UI for office apps — there’s no menu bar. Maybe the best comparison is the Calendar app. It doesn’t look anything like the iPhone Calendar app. In terms of, say, style and UI grammar, yes, it’s the same vibe as the iPhone. But in terms of scope and ambition, it’s a far bigger thing.

John drank the Kool-Aid. I cannot fathom how using Pages or even Numbers on a smaller screen with a software keyboard to write a document of any size or length can compare to using Apple's smallest laptop with a real keyboard. Even when docked and using the physical keyboard the process isn't as smooth.

And who cares whether the iPhone is a smaller iPad or vice versa? The simple fact remains that the iPhone is small enough to carry with you, and makes phone calls (and has a camera), while the iPad occupies a very small niche.

Everyone (these days) needs a phone. Virtually everyone needs a computer (even the iPad needs a computer to sync to). Who needs an iPad?

That remains my single biggest issue with the iPad: it's not a needed product. It creates a niche that nobody thought even really existed two days ago.

John's right: it's not an iPhone. Given the choice between carrying my iPhone and carrying an iPad around, the iPhone will win every time. If I want to check the weather and I'm too lazy to open my laptop, my phone does just fine. If I'm at home and want to work on something, the laptop works fine. I get the best of both worlds: multitouch on the trackpad AND an actual keyboard, more power, the ability to print, to save and send files of different types, and so on.

I said before I might consider a tablet if it let me get rid of my magazines. No such announcements were made, and thus I have no need for an iPad.

A more beautiful calendar doesn't change that. (I prefer BusyCal anyway.)

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Cult of Mac: “I thought it would be interesting to find out what some Mac and iPhone developers make of the iPad.”

Say you’re Apple. It’s a few years ago. You make and sell computers.

You see the rise of web apps, and you notice people talking about how desktop apps are done. Desktop apps are done because, with web apps, people can login from anywhere, any machine, and get to their stuff. That’s cool, and you know it’s cool.

You make computers and operating systems, and you think to yourself: “How can I sell computers that are pretty much just web browsers? How is a Mac better than a Dell or a Sony in that case?”

I think the first thing you do is make sure you have a great browser. Faster and better than the competition. And keep at it, don’t let up.

Then you think to yourself: “What if people didn’t have to just use any machine they find? What if they have their computer with them all the time?”

I think you then work on making great laptops, so people actually can have their computer with them most of the time. You make the hardware and OS and software so great that people want these laptops.

Then you think to yourself, “People aren’t carrying their laptops to the grocery store! They don’t always have their computer with them.”

You decide to expand your definition of computer: you make iPhones. And then iPads. You make beautiful hardware and software — you create an experience so new and compelling that people lust for these things.

You open these up to developers, too, and hope a hundred thousand flowers bloom, since that makes these devices all the more valuable.

And it works!

You’ve avoided the bleak future where computers are nothing but web browsers, where user experience is struggling to hit 1995 levels of quality, where all you’re making is a dumb terminal that can show pictures and play video, where you’re back to being the “beleaguered” Apple, whose product is a commodity easily matched, or close enough, by other companies that charge less.

Instead you’re this Apple, the one that reports record sales and profits.

Good job, you!

I’m broken up with the news that Salinger has died.

Cocoa Is My Girlfriend: “...with Core Animation layers there is a simpler way to achieve the look you want without having to create an image.”

Hivelogic: “This chip is so important to Apple because it gives them greater control of the user experience … from the inside out, while allowing them to reach their goals — and more importantly — control their own destiny, by decreasing their dependency on outside, external companies.”

Red Sweater: “The error is in disregarding the many unmatchable attractions of ‘the desktop.’”

Adventures in Newfield (my Mom): “Most of the media reports don’t seem to get the new iPad — it’s not about how fast it is, or its lack of a camera or the flash to display video — it’s about using it just about anywhere and not needing a mouse!”

Mom wants one. Me too. :)

It may just be a temporary thing, hardware development pipelines are long, and Steve was out of commission getting a liver transplant while the iPad was being birthed at Apple. Presumably. Hopefully. If that's not true, and this is the result of a careful gestation, then Steve is no longer the master, he has lost his touch. This thing, the iPad, is a dog.

People who think it isn't comparable to a netbook are just plain wrong. It is, in every way because there are only so many points between an iPhone/Droid/Pre et al and laptops. As Adam Frucci in Gizmodo says so eloquently, where's the camera, where are the USB ports, where is the fracking keyboard? SD drive, removable battery, hard disk, etc etc.

When netbooks first came out they flirted with all-solid-state storage. This meant a $600 unit only had 20GB of persistent storage. Made it almost totally unusable. Then they put a 160GB hard drive in the things and the price came down to $350, and they hit the sweet spot and started flying off the shelves.

Okay the fanbois say this product is for marketing people, old people, one guy even said my parents would want it. My father isn't going to use it, no matter what, and we just bought my mom an Asus, which she thinks is cute and is having just a bit of trouble with even though she's a bit of a technophobe. What they're really saying is that it's the computer for idiots. I agree. Idiots with $500 burning a hole in their pocket. Like me. I'll almost certainly buy one. But unless I'm missing something, I'll still travel with the Asus that I'm typing this review on.

Now I was wrong about the iPhone, I bought one and used it for two years, saying goodbye to my Blackberry. But I ended up saying goodbye to the iPhone for the reasons I thought I would at its roll out. It should have been a Mac. Same with the iPad. They should have come out with a netbook-style product, price and feature-comparable to the Asus products but running the Mac OS and Mac apps. Because huff and puff all you want, this baby is going to have to look good compared to the netbooks, and now it looks like testimony to hubris. Finally, Apple went too far, and the emperor is totally naked for all of us to see. Ridiculous product. Absolutely completely ridiculous.

Apple hasn't added anything new to my repetoire of computer toys in a very long time. I bought a 13 inch MacBook Pro, but it's a battery hog running the same apps as my Asus, and unreliable. It stays home when I travel. I will probably move it to NY to be my main computer here. The iPhone also stayed home. My workhorse is the Droid, and I carry the Nexus One as the admiration platform. It has the SIM that used to be in the iPhone. Fred Wilson and I agreed (we had breakfast yesterday) that it's like carrying a girlfriend in your pocket. What could be better. This is an important point. Finally Google is presenting them with a serious competitor in the lust category. No, they aren't all the way there yet, but they don't have the prison mentality for users and developers. Continuing the girlfriend analogy, who wants an uptight control freak GF when you can have a.. okay I think you probably get the idea.

Also I don't care about the name. We get used to bad names. No one snickers anymore when you say Microsoft, but I remember when they did. I don't care that the name is a big gaffe. But I think the product itself is a gaffe, and that matters.

Finally, my prognostication piece missed wildly. I was way too ambitious on Apple's behalf. I figured it's been so long since they shipped something wonderful that they must really have something incredible and far-reaching in the lab, and here it comes. About the only thing I got right was #9. Steve still loves to delete ports. It would have been sort of cute if he had delivered on some of the potential in this category. But given the lack of imagination and execution in this product, it's a cruel joke that illustrates that all that remains of Apple's brilliance is Apple's arrogance. The art has to be there, following Doc Searls' famous 1997 analysis. This is just a jumbo Oreo cookie. The original classic model made sense. This bloated mess is just a bloated mess.

iPhone apps, and now iPad apps, have always reminded me of what I want Mac apps to be: focused, carefully-designed, with every feature carefully considered and usually thrown out instead of included.

Even more than the iPhone, the iPad will function as a laptop replacement. (Or, you may still have a laptop, but you’ll do more and more work on an iPad.)

I like what I’ve seen so far about iPad app design. It has the virtues of iPhone app design with just enough more space and new features to make doing real work possible. I think this is fantastic.

My concern, though, is that people may think that Mac apps should include every possible feature and preference. The reasoning would be like this: “It’s not an iPad or iPhone. It’s a computer. Therefore it’s for power users. Therefore it should be totally customizable and have every feature anybody might want.”

That would be a big mistake.

My hope, instead, is that Mac users and developers (all developers are users too, by the way) learn even better the virtues of focused, opinionated software that pays attention to experience more than to long feature lists and heavy preference windows. I hope we see even better Mac software.

You might think this is ironic — didn’t I just propose a Mac email app for power users and developers?

I did. But I actually picture an app that is simpler, in many ways, than Mail. No POP or Exchange support, no stationery, no to-dos, no notes. I’d like to see a programmable app, yes, with a design friendly to people who type for a living — but I also want a leaner app.

Here’s the thing about the power users and developers I know: they use a lot of apps. They manage a lot of complexity already. They often have a few powerful apps (Xcode, Photoshop, Final Cut, Excel, whatever) that they use to get their work done.

They’re not sitting around wishing for more complexity. Quite the opposite! But they do wish that some apps fit them better. And in many cases they wish for less complexity.

Too much complexity is for people who want to waste their own time. Who has time for that? Every day means a new world we have to create. Futzing and configuring and confusion — these things don’t help.

I like to host little group chats using the AIM network. Today's was in the "AppleTablet" room. If I had known what was to come I'd have told everyone to join the "ZzzzzzzzzzPad" room or something.

The full entry contains the text from the chat.

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #161b91} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica} p.p3 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #2730ff} p.p4 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; color: #178e00} span.s1 {color: #000000} span.s2 {color: #178e00} span.s3 {color: #161b91} span.s4 {color: #2730ff}

Charles: hey

Erik: Hi. Still waiting on my icon but he has another week or two before it's "late".

Charles: what site do you plan on watching for the announcement?

Erik: i have ars up in Chrome

Erik: i'm annoyed by the sounds though. it's 2 hours away. i don't want the sounds right now.

Erik: but that's the plan right now.

Charles: I'm hoping live.twit.tv will have good coverage

Charles: they're in reruns right now though

Daniel: Merry Macmus and Happy Apple Day!

Erik: I have http://theappleblog.com/live/ and http://live.gdgt.com/2010/01/27/live-apple-come-see-our-latest-creation-tablet-event-coverage/ up too. Unsure if they'll work.

Patrick: So, does anyone think @jason was pulling everyone's leg?

Charles: I'd be willing to bet on it

Damien: sounds like his own personal masturbation list

Patrick: yeah

Charles: that guy is such a duche

Damien: NMD

Patrick: HDTV and PVR? He lost me right there and then it got worse

Damien: New Media Douchebag

Patrick: Farmville?!? *That's* your killer app?

Nemo: http://twitter.com/fraserspeirs/status/8278056536 says it all really

Erik: nobody believes jason calcanis

Erik: I'd buy a Tablet (please don't let it be named iPad)

Damien: well some people do, but they don't count

Erik: if... http://nslog.com/2010/01/25/apple_tablet_for_magazines

Erik: I want it for magazine subscriptions.

Erik: Kindle sucks for that, and current "here's a bunch of paper we mailed you" sucks for that.

Patrick: I could see a large potential in magazines

Damien: my vote for the name in order of liklihood:  1) Canvas , 2) iPad,  3) Slate/iSlate, and 4) Tablet

Damien: but maybe I'm completely wrong

Patrick: iPad as a name will get slaughtered

Damien: Slate just sounds too Micosoftian

Nemo: I kinda want iBook to be resurrected, but there's no chance of that

Patrick: too. many. jokes

Erik: it can't be iPad

Erik: PowerBook, baby.

Erik:

Damien: yeah, I thought about iBook last summer and wrote about it a bit

Patrick: Newton FOREVER!

Erik: Galileo

Damien: but not enough time has passed

Damien: there's still be too much name/brand confusion

Nemo: patrickburleson: even less chance than iBook, Newton wasn't Jobs' child

Erik: Introducing…. the Apple Gutenberg

Erik: as revolutionary as the printing press.

Erik:

Nemo: Plausible.

Erik: (p.s. not that guy in Three Men and a Baby)

Patrick: nemo8686: yeah, but I can dream!

Damien: could still called iPad, despite the obvious jokes

Patrick: Going to bring my Newton 100 in tomorrow and say I have Apple's tablet.

Damien: remember that many thought iPod was a crappy name

Erik: my eMate 300 is a few feet from my head

Joann: I didn't have one but thought the Newton was cool

Charles: I had a newton 2000, and it was amazing

Nemo: MP130 here

Patrick: oh, the memories. 

Damien: I *still* have a Newton 2000 and it's still amazing

Charles: yeah MP 120 -> 2000

Damien: but it's been retired for years

Patrick: hooking up to the AppleTalk network and printing to the LaserWriter. 

Patrick: anyone remember when apps would offload PS processing to the printer if it was available?

Patrick: PS = PostScript

Erik: http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/27/is-this-the-apple-tablet

Erik: I'm surprised Gruber had to write the thing about Flash. Who thinks it'll have Flash? Seriously?

Charles: wow -- apple is letting third parties broadcast from the event

Erik: ? video?

Joann: goody.

Charles: yep -- according to live.twit.tv

Patrick: sweet

Daniel: i like the name "Apple Gutenberg"

Charles: maybe I got that wrong

Charles: they're letting them record it

Charles: but maybe not livestream

Daniel: T minus 75 minutes

Erik: http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/26/apple-tablet-book-revolution/

Erik: So Who Will Benefit?

Textbooks. Guides. Biographies. Novels. Pretty much anything that has previously been offered in book form, but has been handicapped because it was restricted to paper.

Erik: he forgot magazines. I don't care about the other things.

Erik: I can see myself using a Tablet for magazines and a Kindle-type device (my Kindle) for books.

Dave: 092936-engadget_tablet_iphone.jpg

Erik: they have a new, better image

Dave: can u share?

Erik: http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/27/is-this-the-apple-tablet/

Sean: where is everyone following along at?

Dave: i usually follow along at macrumorslive

Daniel: on books, consider this: it would be neat if the audiobook came with a book, so that you could switch interchangeably between them.  getting in car, switch to audiobook, at home, switch back to reading it.

Patrick: I'm going to go with Ars, Macworld, and Engadget

Charles: live.twit.tv and live.gdgt.com

Joann: I feel like I'm waiting for a NASA launch or something.  

Charles: puglover: that would be amazing

Daniel: joan - we are!

Daniel: cplater, considering apple, i wouldn't be surprised if we see that.

Patrick: publover: that has been something I've wanted...but you know, with my paper copy.

Daniel: also, consider something like The Davinci Code - interactive books where you could solve puzzles like what is described in the book.

Erik: i don't want to read books on a glossy screen on a device that lasts a few hours

Erik: reading on an iPhone is bad not just because of the small screen.

Sean: part of me is hoping for a letdown so i don't have to go immediately blow $1000 on one of these.

Erik: (okay, the few hours bit might not be accurate - iPhones last awhile when not using the phone, etc.)

Adam: Nothing's forcing you

Patrick: Erik: You have more than a couple of hours straight to read a book? Lucky!

Erik: I don't like reading a glossy screen for more than a few minutes

Erik: for a magazine, sure.

Erik: maybe.

Sean: maybe they will have a no backlight reading option?

Erik: glossy sucks in sunlight. i can look at a computer screen but i'm not gonna read a magazine at my desk.

Dave: i also dont like reading on a computer

Dave: just seems wrong

Daniel: i'm really hoping for matte.  glossy just doesn't work for reading.

Dave: if its just a giant iPhone, that will be a let down

Erik: i don't think you can do matte and touchscreen (??)

Dave: there needs to be a massive killer function/feature to it

Erik: you need that glass and oleophobic layer.

Daniel: dave, we will be amazed, i'm sure.

Erik: can OLED displays get dead pixels?

Zachery: the killer function is that it's a giant whatever-it-needs-to-be-right-now tabula rasa

Erik: or are they resistant to that?

Patrick: I think for Apple to have made the device, they have to have found the major selling point previous tablet failed to find

Patrick: beyond the "wizzbang" kind

Zachery: every tablet before was just trying to present Windows + a little pen-based input software.

Dave: true

Zachery: (or Linux + same) no one was audacious enough to reinvent the UI with fit-to-purpose

Charles: I've been trying to convince myself to buy a windows tablet for about 2 years

Charles: I just can't pull the trigger

Dave: i picture it being a very mobile online device: with the great features being able to access iTunes store, ebook stores, etc. anywhere...more of a mobile shopping centre than the iPhone

Zachery: Honestly, I'll be happy if it's a giant iPod Touch.

Sean: don't forget media

Dave: yeah

Zachery: people will make of it what they want

Dave: like buy movies at iTunes store, etc.

Zachery: "it's the software, stupid."

Erik: if the battery life holds up it'd be a great way to watch movies on a plane

Charles: I does not want a giant ipod touch

Erik: or in the back seat of a car

Zachery: an iPod touch is a general purpose computer that you can put in your pocket.

Erik: people would even sell hooks that attach to the back of the front car seat

Zachery: I want something like that, only larger.

Sean: they gotta have some not-so-obvious functionality that no one is expecting and that will blow everyone away

Daniel: zachery, Windows Mobile is the same thing, which is why it bombed and iPhone is taking off so fast.  Apple gets that they need a new paradigm, so that's what they did I'm sure.

Erik: yeah i don't see "a bigger iPod Touch" as being the way this goes

Dave: they also can't price point it around 1000....why buy the tablet when I can get a full fledged macbook

Sean: that will distinuish it from the iphone, ipods, netbooks, etc

Damien: how about just a decent way to read a magazine digitally?

Erik: that's all i want

Erik: though i just realized it recently

Damien: the Kindle is still B&W for crying out loud

Dave: yeah, the kindle is so ugly

Dave: i can't believe its BW

Erik: i have one

Charles: I wish Apple could have delivered on the Knowledge Navigator concept

Erik: it's great for reading books

Erik: you can't do eInk in color yet

Erik: hell, it's only 16 shades of grey

Zachery: but that's all software

Daniel: cplater, that may be what we see today - knowledge nav

Erik: which is _great_ for reading books. longer things.

Erik: though their mac integration stinks.

Damien: right so why would someone pay X dollars for a B&W version of a magazine like Sports Illustrated

Erik: that's beside the point

Erik: i'm not arguing that Kindle is good for Sports Illustrated. Duh.

Erik: Kindle is great for books. For everything else it sucks.

Erik: But I don't think a laptop or tablet is great for books. Maybe the tablet will be good for magazines.

Dave: what about it being a large mobile gaming device?

Dave: they really push the games on the iPhone/iPT

Sean: good call, i bet we'll see something along those lines

Adam: I think that's the winner, honestly.  Touch-enabled 10" games

Damien: but if there was a decent COLOR tablet that could display magazines and newspapers in an exciting way....

Dave: hey warren

Dave: we're chatting about the tablet

Adam: Honestly, I read web pages on my phone and the only thing that bothers me is the size.  This could be a great couch-surfing device.

Krewenki: goddamn tablet

Dave: ideas, concepts, etc.

Dave: picture how vibrant and large webpages would be on that 10" screen

Dave: it would be the coolest way to browse while sitting at a shop, etc.

Erik: uh… smaller than on my 23" screen?

Erik: and on a 13" laptop

Zachery: imagine all the blue cubes with question marks as your out shopping for cars.

Zachery: you're

Adam: Yes, smaller, but less bulky and just large enough to read clearly.  The sweet spot for casual poking around.

Zachery: stupid car manufacturer websites.

Adam: It's a Reddit machine.

Dave: LOL

Sean: maybe it will uspport Flash?

Erik: no

Zachery: I hope not

Sean: lol

Patrick: no

Erik: $800 to $1k for a couch surfing machine?

Patrick: hard to justify for just that purpose

Adam: That's the kicker, tho.

Krewenki: $800 would make it their cheapest portable

Erik: i doubt it'd be a portable though

Damien: I think it'll be $599 or $699

Erik: it's not gonna burn CDs or anything

Damien: and less if there's bundled Verizon, etc.

Krewenki: neither does the macbook air

Adam: Of course, couch surfing is one bit.  Then there's movies in the back seat on car trips (toss the kids the tablet).

Krewenki: but they’ve sold plenty of those

Dave: so is the idea that I am going to have to pay a Cell company in Canada to use this thing?

Erik: yeah, and how well does the air sell?

Joann: I just don't want another monthly wireless fee.

Erik: air at least runs mac os x.

Patrick: toss the kids a $1K device?

Damien: there may be two of them. One with a bundled data package and one without

Erik: yeah

Adam: The Air is the new TAM...

Damien: like the iPhone / iPod Touch relationship

Erik: here kids, don't spill your juice on it

Zachery: Lex has my old iPhone.

Charles: I know one thing -- i won't be buying whatever this is at launch

Zachery: he'll get my old iNewtSlate when the next version comes out.

Patrick: My son plays with my iPhone...but I mean, that's a far cry from $1K

Charles: I learned my lesson w/ the iPhone

Adam: As someone here mentioned, I'm sure there will be a third-party seat mount available :p

Adam: Hang it from the head rest or something.

Zachery: cplater944: I was first-gen iPhone, and the utility I got from it outweighed the 2-year wait for the 3GS.

Erik: if the thing does magazines, i just want it to be waterproof.

Erik:

Adam: Gallon zip-lock, baby.  Works for Kindle.

Zachery: I don't regret it, and I expect not to regret getting the iNewtSlate.

Patrick: I bought iPhone on day one and still think it was worth the $600...otherwise I wouldn't have bought it.

Erik: yeah that feels tacky. I just take the kindle in the tub.

Erik: I'm careful enough not to drop it.

Erik: but it costs less.

Charles: oh, I don't regret it, I just know I can wait

Erik: iNewtSlatePadBook

Adam: I've seen my bank account. I'm quite sure I can wait.

Zachery: *has never had a problem being an early adopter.*

Patrick: adamknight: exactly!

Adam: *never has a problem letting others be the early adopters. *

Zachery: win-win

Adam: bingo

Patrick: I've been an early adopter on lots of stuff...didn't bother me. I just can't afford this thing ATM.

Erik: i have too

Erik: some things i early adopt, others i wait. kindle I waited.

Erik: But I really like Kindle for buying books.

Erik: (though the organization on it sucks - I want folders and things.)

Michael: Howdy iacas. Long time no see. This seems to be working.

Jeff: I try to early adopt when I have a valid business reason for it, though sometimes the valid business reason is probably just an excuse. :-/

Patrick: Jeff: "Valid Business Reason"...I like that. 

Erik: yeah, jeff

Erik: it helps if you can write it off

Patrick: I can come up with all sorts of "valid business" reasons for the tablet.

Erik: I wrote off my PS3 and Xbox 360.

Patrick: Might have to see if my business can buy it 

Zachery: if you're a current iPhone developer, that seems to be enough of a business reason.

Sean: that's my reasoning

Sean: hahah

Patrick: that would be my reasoning 

Jeff: I actually had a valid reason for buying my iPhone 3GS for example - had to make sure the book source code worked on it. If tablet is really based on same OS as iPhone, then I might be able to justify getting one both for the books and for getting contracting work.

Patrick: Need to make sure my apps run well on it

Erik: Yep.

Sean: thoughts on it having a webcam?

Erik: you mean one you can position?

Erik: or one like the iPhone's?

Duke: i hope it has 2 cameras (or one that's dual-facing)

Watling: Front facing surely

Jeff: If Apple does add Magazines to iTunes, wonder if they'll have the same restrictions as the app store, because that would mean a LOT of apps wouldn't be eligible.

Erik: "position" could include one front facing

Sean: one like an iMac's

Erik: what do you mean jeff?

Watling: Apps can have ratings now, printed material could work the same.

Jeff: Well, for example, the app store has a strict no-nudity policy (despite a few apps that have gotten through), but think of all the magazines that, at least occasionally, use nudity - GQ, Cosmopolitan, Maxim, Sports Illustrated. Not to even get into "Gentleman's magazines" - just regular magazines have nudity, swear words, etc.

Watling: I like the thought they may release an authoring app

Jeff: Yeah, it just strikes me as odd that there's this divide between the app store and the movie/music store. Why can an unrated Director's cut be sold, but iPhone apps can't have the same material, even if properly rated.

Watling: There are some adult themed apps in store

Jeff: Yeah, find me one with actual nudity comparable to what's available in the movies sold through iTunes. Apple allows adult "themes" and languages, but the nudity ban is strict. Can't figure out why the divide - okay in movies, not in apps seems weird to me.

Erik: Seems to me they might view magazines more like movies.

Erik: or song lyrics.

Patrick: NSFW, if they haven't changed it, check the episode preview for episode one of Season one of The Tudors

Jeff: I agree, I still don't understand why the difference between media and apps. Why an ebook sold through iTunes would have different rules and an eBook sold as an app.

Duke: couldn't they even let a mag publisher rate individual articles, or advertisements within, for age appropriateness?

Erik: how about the ability to buy individual articles or not?

Erik: I'm not sure i'd be up for that.

Jeff: What they could do is another question altogether - the possibilities are endless.

Erik: but then again if I really want an article from a magazine I never want to read otherwise… is it worth $0.99 instead of $4.99 for the issue?

Ring: and who would drive the ads? the publisher or apple?

Ring: what about a free or lower cost but ad-driven magazine and a higher subscription one with no ads

Damien: look, there's a reason why Apple built in a micro-payment system into the App Store. Sure it was so App Devs could start to charge for additional content, but it's larger than that

Erik: don't forget too

Erik: that magazine publishers won't have to pay to print or to mail the things

Damien: remember that Apple has been building a GINORMOUS data center in North Carolina

Erik: so i wonder how much that costs that they could "save" for customers

Damien: which is certainly going to be used for delivery of content for this new tablet

Damien: and possibly also for a digital music locker (a la lala purchase)

Sean: maybe magazines will come as "apps" for the device with a subscription based model?

Dave: that would be neat

Dave: Sports Illustrated app

Dave: full monthly contents when u open

Erik: I don't want that.

Erik: I want to be able to keep back issues and stuff. I want them separate.

Dave: well what about opening the app

Dave: and then seeing the months listed

Dave: click a month to open that issue

Erik: nah

Erik: i want to be able to search and sort and do whatever i want.

Erik: that's forced sorting.

Sean: in app payments to extented subscription, or purchase additional content

Erik: and if you can buy one article from a magazine, etc. I don't think that method would work best either

Jeff: They could do it like the do TV episodes now - it groups them by folders in one view, but leaves them as line items in the library view...

Erik: yeah, that's fine

Erik: they're content, they're not "apps"

Erik: we already have a content model - songs in albums, tv shows in series

Erik: http://gizmodo.com/5458217/is-this-the-outside-of-the-apple-tablet

Sean: i'm not really interested in the hardware so much

Sean: not gonna be many surprises there

Erik: as light and portable as possible

Erik: that's all i care about

Erik: i mean, in terms of hardware.

Duke: a source says http://www.ustream.tv/channel/themegamactv is live from there, but i've not been able to get it to load myself.

John: it's saying off air for me

Erik: is there a thing that lets you ctrl-click a URL and choose what browser to open it in?

Zachery: you can get Choosy

Damien: ChoosyX

Zachery: and make that your default browser

Erik: well i want to do it optionally

Erik: not every time i click.

Erik: but they probably thought of that

Patrick: Erik: Yes, search for Highbrow

Patrick: from Helium foot software

Erik: oh yeah, option key works in choosy

Patrick: Or ChoosyX

Patrick: :_)

Patrick:

Damien: so no early leaks on the name of this thing?

Erik: iPood

Erik: for reading while you're on the toilet

Erik: plus it leverages the iPod name

Erik: btw, thank you human googles.

Erik: time to get your last trips to the bathroom in. void your bladder and all that. you won't want to move for the next few hours.

Damien: nah, it'll all be over by 2pm-ish

Andrew: Oh no! Lunch! brb...

Damien: EST

Patrick: isn't the schedule 2 hours?

John: 2 hours!!! Mmm much to talk about

Erik: My family still expects me to fulfill obligations to, y'know, spend time with them this evening. What's up with that??????

Zachery: luckily, my wife wants one more than I do, so I know what we'll be doing tonight.

Patrick: My wife has the same strange expectation.

Patrick: although I joked about it before, if @jason is right and there's Farmville on this thing, we'll have on one day one and it won't be for me.

John: sit by the TV with the laptop and every now and again say "yes" every now and again

Dave: hahaha

Dave: the ol' 'nod and smile'

Erik: we don't watch much tv

Erik: or else that'd work.

Erik: that plan works when the wife calls while she's driving somewhere though.

John: that's the one - just watch out for the - "are you listening to me?"

Erik: i'd never heard of farmville until today.

Erik: what is it, animal crossing for facebook?

Jeff: Doesn't work for me. My wife throws me with questions like "you're not really listening are you?" or "Are you just agreeing with everything?"

Patrick: My wife asks me specifics about what just happened on the show....

Patrick: especially if we're discussing the happenings on LOST or something.

John: Works for me until I suddenly think "what a minute what's she going about?" then I'm caught red handed

Jeff: Oh, the TV part of it doesn't work for me, we don't watch TV..

Zachery: since we have the kid, the way we watch TV now is each of us has our iPhones and we stream content from the iMac.

John: 10 minutes go folks

Dave: woooop

Erik: apple always starts fashionably late

Erik: y'know, 5 minutes

Dave: damn i wish this was live streaming

Jeff: Hope Steve looks healthy.

Daniel: jeff, no kdding

Joann: amen

Erik: my golf instructor (I may be one in a year, so we talk about these kinds of things) thinks it may be a great tool for on-the-range swing analysis

Joann: Steve likes Dylan. Maybe he'll close the show.

Erik: but you'd have to find a way to get video onto it.

John: Is it definately Steve?

Adam: If anyone could clone himself...

Jeff: No confirmation, I'm just assuming. People will read into it if it's not Steve, will be bad

Erik: 99.999% sure steve is doing this

Joann: We should find out soon.   

Andrew: if it's anything like the last several announcements, it will be Steve as the MC, and then the usual suspects talking about their part.

Zachery: apple store is still up.

Erik: they may not be taking pre-orders today even

Erik: i thought they'd do that even if it shipped in march

Andrew: i think the days of the steve-only announcements are over.  Too much depends on him when they do that.

Erik: too much depends on him?

Jeff: I don't remember very only "Steve only"

Erik: if he's well enough to do it he's proven to be dependable

Jeff: very many

Erik: the higher the steve:others ratio, the better the show

Jeff: Yes, they killed me at WWDC last year with the long trail of 3rd party devs.

Erik: *wishes I could make certain windows "unclosable"*

Erik: I'd set that to the ars page and this chat window

Adam: Anyone know offhand how long it's been since the first iPhone and the AT&T exclusivity deal?  Today would be a good day for Verizon to enter the game...

Erik: that deal was just for the iPhone

Erik: so any new product isn't bound by that

Adam: You've read the contract?

Adam: You're probably right, though.

Erik: that's what everyone's said

Erik: and it makes sense to me. so believe it however much you want.

Adam: Well, it'd be nice to have a joint announcement so I can get my iPhones off AT&T...

Erik: i don't see that happening

Adam: And you know, actually make calls from my house.  Imagine hat.

Adam: *that

JC: i'm betting that in a year's time, the tablet is the new AppleTV-style "hobby"

Adam: What's an Apple TV?

JC: exactly

Erik: derr said that on twitter i think

JC: <- Derr

Erik:

Erik: there you go

Jeff: Steve's on stage

Sean: i couldn't live without my AppleTV

JC: i love my AppleTV

Adam: Apple TV + background processes = Mac Mini.

Adam: MM++

Patrick: Steve!

Zachery: magical!

John: Me too - Apple TV is great

Erik: jacqui hasn't updated.

Jeff: engadget is keeping up well

Erik: k

Jeff: http://live.gdgt.com/2010/01/27/live-apple-come-see-our-latest-creation-tablet-event-coverage/

Zachery: reading that and listening to twit.tv

Zachery: I can hear Steve-o!

Erik: ah

Patrick: can't get to Twit

JC: eh. i have both a MM and an AppleTV in my entertainment center. i prefer the AppleTV. been thinking of liberating the MM and using it for something else. but it's just a core solo, so it's only other use is as a paper weight.

Erik: what's the twit url?

Zachery: live.twit.tv

Patrick: live.twit.tv

Jeff: Twit.tv appears to be overloaded, won't load for me

Scott: yeah, me neither

Erik: ya

Jeff: Engadget's live feed is holding up though

Jeff: 140k apps in the store, 3 billion downloaded apps

Erik: *blocks kellyosx. I knew there had to be a reason that username was blocked before.*

Erik: engadget's is impressive so far.

Patrick: engadget is handling it well

Jeff: Steve looks like he's put on a little bit of weight. Not a lot, but still...

Scott: I'm seeing nothing on MacWorld

Erik: he still has that alien head look

Patrick: Ars is a little behind..Macworld seems to be DOA

Jeff: Yes. But at least he looks somewhat better.

Patrick: I thought you blocked kellyosx?

Jeff: Probably only blocks for him

Erik: yeah, me

Erik: i don't control the room.

Patrick: crap, ichat isn't showing them in my participants list...can't block

Erik: larger than everyone, that's… interesting. surprising.

Erik: okay, that was a quick update

Erik: now on to the main thing. probably means it's lengthy.

JC: the best device would be a complete replacement of laptops

Jeff: Ooh, was that the PowerBook 100?

Patrick: LOL

Patrick: the moses slide

Erik: i love how apple denies even wanting to do shit until they do it.

JC: if the device can totally replace a laptop, it could escape AppleTV land.

Jeff:

Erik: someone wrote the pattern up a few years ago and it keeps holding true

Erik: ebooks mentioned

Erik: it's not hard to do better than browsing the web on your iphone

Erik: or any of those other things.

Jeff: Dangit, what's it going to be called!

Adam: ibook

JC: shut your whore mouth

Erik: they're just cheap laptops, ha

Erik: netbooks

Jeff: Me??

Erik: wow ars is sucking

Jeff: iPad

Erik: iPad?

JC: now adam with the ibook name

Erik: where's my hari kari sword

Jeff: Yep, there's the slide. It's iPad

JC: what was it?

Damien: called the iPad

Erik: seriously, pad? my hari kari isn't the only "bloodshed" joke

JC: blah

Patrick: ok, comedians now will have a field day

Joann: iPad. Really.

Scott: really calling it the iPad! OMG

Erik: it's got a silver metal backing

Jeff: It's running Springboard

Erik: good pictures on gdgt

John: the big question is will the iPad redefine the netbook arena - of course!!!

Jeff: a new version of Springboard, but...

Erik: little apps

Erik: see what whole page?

Erik: the whole web page?

Erik: yeah that's what he meant i guess

Jeff: Surprise the bezel is so large.

Jeff: Sorry, not bezel, border

Erik: that's that is odd

Joann: pretty.

Ring: yeah that is what I thought as well

Jeff: Place for fingers?

Scott: Border's probably big to hold on to

Adam: My bank account is safe.

Erik: you can hold it under it

Erik: google maps. so far yawn.

Erik: bigger iPod Touch.

Jeff: Not sure about that keyboard at all

Erik: if we can make phone calls from it, it'll be just like the EARLY cell phones

Erik: they were bricks too

John: merging iPhone and desktop is going to be crucial - it's looking good so far

Scott: windows at different layers!

Erik: the keyboard looks dumb.

JC: there needs to be a killer app. just being a better iPod Touch isn't enough.

Erik: that looks like a cover flow view

Jeff: Surfing dog? That's it, I'm buying one.

Erik: not really separate windows, kinda

Erik: (my guess)

Jeff: Screen resolution doens't look very high if those are standard Mac OS X control elements (may not be)

Erik: they have to be touchable

Erik: so i can see them being larger

Jeff: Yeah, that occured to me while I was typing

Erik: he's sitting in the chair. oh brother.

Jeff: Steve sitting for a presentation seems weird

JC: it better be cheap as shit if that's all it does.

Adam: And no flash.  Perfect.

Jeff: Beautiful.

Adam: apple-creation-0128-rm-eng.jpg

Jeff: Flash! We hatess it, my precious.

Erik: so, yeah, yawn so far.

Zachery: I'm in serious crush.

Erik: that's good or bad?

Patrick: it's certainly a beautiful device

Jeff: Solid, but not earth shattering so far..

JC: yeah

Erik: iPod Touch+ so far

Adam: iPod Touch HD.

Erik: ha

Erik: not using thumbs?

Erik: yeah, but does it support dvorak!?!? j/k

JC: I KNOW!

Jeff: That's not Scott Forstall's real e-mail addy?

JC: actually, i just abandoned DV this week

Jeff:

Adam: As a developer, all I see is that it's using some iPhone widgets and some Mac OS X widgets, and my head is scrambled.

Adam: Jer: Lies.

JC: I did.

Adam: You'll be back.

Patrick: I doubt that's Forstall's real address

JC: i have no doubt

Erik: it has a 1 in it

Adam: Then it's not "abandoned" :p

Erik:

Patrick: Dammit, I can't seem to properly block kellyosx

JC: i even re-did my keycaps in QWERTY

Erik: i don't know what you're talking about. and i use adium.

Jeff: It's not, dummy .mac account like steve@mac.com

Erik: photo scrubber is dumb.

Erik: but

Erik: he is blowing through these things pretty quickly, oui?

JC: how many companies have a CEO who can demand the entire media's attention while he fucking BROWSES THE INTERNET

Erik: scott's real email address isn't exactly a secret.

Jeff: True, but they wouldn't use it in a presentation I'm sure

Erik: right

Erik: it beats "David Chen" and "Jackie Woo" or whoever they use in the commercials though.

JC: listening to this, why do i suddenly have the feeling of Steve Jobs jumping the shark?

Erik: it's only been 15 minutes.

Jeff: I'm hoping this is build up for something really good. Hoping. Hoping.

Joann: apple store is still up. No ordering today?

Zachery: he'll be jumping the shark all the way to the bank

Erik: the shark is made of money

Adam: Joann: They have an hour or two to close it

Joann: thats true, I'm so impatient.

Erik: calendar is totally different looking

Jeff: Yeah, trying to decide if I like

Erik: i use busycal nowadays though

Erik: john mayer

Erik: last i heard from him he was telling tiger woods to masturbate

JC: heard someone on the audio feed say "wow" to streetview like they'd never seen it before...

Erik: i am 100x more likely to view youtube stuff on my computer than on my iPhone

Erik: wonder why they're promoting an abc show?

Jeff: Go leo...

Erik: hey, wait, so disney and abc and espn are all together

Erik: and espn had that video demo out about their new digital magazine format

Erik: right? or was that SI?

Debeez: also remember that Disney (ABC/ESPN) bought Pixar and Jobs is on their board, I believe

Erik: http://macblips.dailyradar.com/video/sports-illustrated-tablet-demo-1-5/

Erik: yeah, that's my joking point

Erik: look at that video.

Erik: 9.7" display

JC: 9.7"

JC: odd size...

Erik: 0.5" thick… same storage as iPHone?

Adam: Man, people thought the Air was a weapon.  This is a slicer.

Erik: 802.11n

Jeff: Their own chip?

Erik: that's nice.

Erik: yeah

Erik: they bought that semi company a few years ago remember?

Jeff: Is that going to be a new trend you think? Ending dependence on Intel and ARM

Charles: I hope not

JC: no. they'll stay Intel I'm sure

Charles: look where it got Sun

Charles: SPARC was the death of them

Erik: the side view picture doesn't make it look as curved

Erik: it loosk blockier

Jeff: Yeah, but to use as a bargaining chip against Intel and ARM...

JC: two desktop arch changes in a few years would cause a mass uprising among many devs....

Erik: but the side view it's curved

Erik: no 3G

Jeff: Had to get off Leo's Ustream, too much noise and lag

Charles: no 3g could mean that it ships today

Jeff: Let's talk about third party apps? Yes, lets.

Scott: runs all iPhone apps unmodded!

Jeff: nice

Scott: Pixel-double goes full screen - how does that work, that screen looks way bigger than double the iPhone

Jeff: Twice the pixels of the iPhone, or is "pixel doubling" used more loosely, I wonder...

Zachery: pixel-quadruple

Erik: hey, it's like the gamecube thing that lets you play gameboy games

Erik:

Erik: yeah, pixel4x

Jeff: So, 640x1060?

Scott: guess it must be

Jeff: or threabouts?

Zachery: in 2x mode, it doesn't seem to take the full screen

Erik: yeah

Zachery: because there's still room for the 1x button at the bottom

Erik: they still have room for a 1x button off the corner

Erik: d'oh, /me losed

Jeff: hard to tell with the black border, but yea,h...

Zachery: jinx

JC: i'm on the verge of officially consigning this to the AppleTV bin.

JC: now, mind you, I WANT ONE. but still....

Erik: it's a big iPod Touch so far.

John: if the sdk is out tonight i wont be sleeping - please

Zachery: I'll take two.

Patrick: Right now, it's just a gorgeous, huge iPod Touch

Erik: yeah, funny how zachery wants two and i can't imagine wanting one at all.

Erik: new sdk today

Jeff: New SDK today

Jeff: beat me

Jeff:

Erik: *winned!*

Jeff: Not posted yet

Erik: yawn. someone wake me when something interesting happens.

Erik:

JC: even if it has some kind of ereader, i have a kindle, and i use the iPhone Kindle.app, and reading on the real Kindle is infinitely better. i can't see preferring an LCD over eInk.... so i dunno...

Adam: Google for "apple event live" and there's a little auto-scrolling news box that comes up...

Michael: As a non-developer average user, I'd grab one if I had the $. Prefer desktops to notebooks, but this looks ideal for on-the-go for me.

Erik: great, developers on stage.

Erik: that always goes over so well

Jeff: Time for a potty break, then.

Erik: derr, an e-ink display sucks for magazines

Erik: color

Erik: so that's what i've been saying: if this can replace my paper magazines, i could use it just for that.

JC: color aside, i read several magazines on it

Erik: mine are photography and golf magazines

Erik: so pictures matter a bit more

Ring: graphic novels : )

Jeff: GameLoft is "larger" than EA?

Adam: Ring: ding ding

Patrick: maybe on the iPhone

JC: well, that'd be different. but i read mostly sci-fi rags and news mags. i read them for the articles.

Zachery: Glad I passed on both the Kindle and the Nook.

John: so much space to use - I can see some great apps coming this year

Erik: apple hasn't said the price yet

JC: i would rather wait for a color eInk than take an LCD now.

Jeff: Nope.

JC: i love my Kindle.

Erik: i don't think color eink is going to be that easy

Erik: look how long 16 shades of grey took them

JC: sadly, but the reading experience is so incredibly better, i'd wait. really.

Erik: well i love my kindle too. for text.

Erik: now the NYT

Erik: so at least we're off of games.

Erik: http://macblips.dailyradar.com/video/sports-illustrated-tablet-demo-1-5/

Erik: so doesn't that kinda look like an iPad

JC: he very clearly positioned it between iphone and laptop in the build up. it better be priced in the $500-750 range.

Erik: yeah. so the NYT is an "app" i guess.

Jeff: Yeah, so they better not swear

Erik: artists can produce countless paintings?

Erik: what kind of dumb phrase is that

Jeff: No way? Since when?

Erik: ?

Erik: i can produce countless combinations of characters!

Erik: i must get an iPad!

JC: it's totoro!

Erik: zzzzzzzzzzzz

Jeff: Do ordinary people really like this part of the presentations, because so far, I've hated it since they started doing it at WWDC 2008. Long strings of self-promoting third party developers

Jeff: yawn.

Debeez: second that Jeff

Ring: no kidding

Jeff: Not that I blame the third parties for jumping at the chance to go on stage.

Erik: i said the steve:other ratio is best when it's high

JC: i'm sure that it doesn't help that we're all jealous, would like to be there getting the press

Erik: nah, it's  just marketing

Scott: I personally get bored very quickly with these

Adam: At the same time, I ignore them and skip over them when I download the video, so I'm not sure much press it is.

Adam: It's more like advertisements on a DVR.  *bleep* *bleep*

Erik: we have to sit through it now though

Jeff: I'm okay when he passes off to guys like Schiller and Forstall, but...

Erik: yeah, not some schlub from MS's Mac Business division

Erik: what was her name?

Jeff: Electronic Ass on stage. I mean arts. arts.

Zachery: Roz Ho

Jeff: Gloria.. Wang?

Erik: oh yes, bad

Jeff: Roz, yeah, that's right

Zachery: well, I just felt bad for her with that speech impediment.

Erik: wallet safely remains in pants thus far

Jeff: Would love to see benchmarks on this "new" processor

Erik: mlb.com demo. zzzzzz.

JC: mmmmm baseball

Scott: ugh, baseball - couldn't be less interested

Jeff: What is their fascination with MLB.com??

Adam: Newsflash, it does full-screen video … like your portable.

JC: if MLB would join the 21st Century and not black me out from watching any games from any teams within a half continent of me...... i might subscribe

Adam: Jeff: People like applocity over there that'll pony up cash for it at every turn.

Jeff: Yeah, and I'm sure they need the free publicity

Debeez: I'm pretty sure MLB sold a LOT at a pretty decent pricepoint when it came out

JC: it's because baseball is paradoxically both at the pinnacle of sports technology...... and at the very worst in territorial rights...

Adam: OMG flying white balls and sticks!

JC: is that thing square?

Erik: 9.7" is all they said

Erik: the diagonal

Patrick: ebook reader!

Erik: steve's back. 

Jeff: Doesn't look square, but looks "more square" than iPhone

JC: ebooks...

Jeff: Ebook reader

Patrick: iBooks! ha!

JC: "standing on Amazon's shoulders"

Ring: lol

Erik: i don't want books

Patrick: Video at leo's stream: http://www.ustream.tv/leolaporte

Adam: I'd read books on it.  I love LCDs.  of course, I'm clearly a minority

Jeff: iBooks??

Erik: i want iMagazines

JC: iBooks. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Erik: that looks retarded.

Jeff: Whoah.. looks like Delicious Monster combined with Classics

Erik: zzzzzzzzzzz.

Ring: as long as you have wifi that is

Erik: heh

Adam: I knew they'd reuse the iBook name somehow.

Erik: iMag please.

Sean: $4.99 for a book, not too bad

Erik: ars said $14.99

Erik: i thought

Sean: screenshot says $4.99

Scott: screenshot I see says $14.99

Sean: http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/01/apple-creation-0309-rm-eng.jpg

Erik: iwork???

Erik: bah.

Debeez: is it me or was McGraw-Hill missing from the list of publishers? 

Jeff: $4.99 seems fair? What do Kindle books typically cost?

Debeez: just saw a slide on gdgt w/o their name

Adam: $10

Erik: ePub format, that's cool.

Adam: quite

JCO: screenshot of the ted kennedy book was 14.99, other screenshots showed at least one book that was $4.99

Erik: *still not caring*

JCO: Eclipse: The Twilight Saga was $4.99

Erik: i doubt you'll want to type a whole Pages thing on an on-screen keyboard.

Sean: prices seem to fall between $14.99 and $4.99

JCO: I'm still hoping for ability to use a bluetooth kybd

Erik: a) it'll take up half the screen, b) not be as easy to type.

Erik: yeah possibly

Jeff: Anyone know if it has a USB port?

Erik: it has the dock port

Jeff: Phil gets more casual every keynote.

Jeff: Just the dock?

Erik: 0.5" isn't much room for a usb port. see the macbook air

JCO: dock carries usb signals

Erik: it had to do it with a flip down door

Jeff: But only one thing connected at a time...

JCO: passive USB cable from dock connector

JC: everyone else in the industry is going towards mini- and micro-USB. Apple of course can't follow suit.

Erik: yeah the kindle has whichever of the two it has

JC: micro, i think

Erik: it's annoying that there are two so similar sizes

JC: whatever it is, it's opposite of all the cables i had

Erik: heh

Jeff: I wonder how typing on that thing really is...

Erik: not as good as a keyboard

Jeff: Obviously, but where between "OH MY GOD" and a real keyboard is it, i Wonder

Erik: it's not like we can compare it to a physical phone keyboard

Erik: yeah, how much of the screen does it take up?

Erik: half?

Jeff: apple-tablet-keynote_041.jpg

Jeff: Just about half

Erik: yeah. eh.

Jeff: Can't see me doing 75 words a minute on it, that's for sure.

JC: notice that the book store was only barely more than a passing mention?

Adam: The porn store is the One More Thing.

Jeff: heh... outside of an SNL sketch, I doubt it

Charles: The only way this thing will blow me away is if it's under $600

Jeff: Yeah, if it's in that price range, I'll pre-order 

JC: he clearly posititoned it as less than a laptop. it better be priced as such.

Jeff: Not really wanting one, but would like to see about developing or it 

Jeff: Wonder if there will be an iPad Simulator

Sean: yes

Sean: there will be

Erik: htey said that already

Sean: available today i think

Jeff: Really? All I saw was a new SDK, I'm wondering if there will be a separate App, or just a new mode to the iPhone simulator.

Erik: they said it, scroll back

Jeff: okay

Erik: i forget when or what it was called.

Erik: "simulator" doesn't show up on gdgt

Jeff: new SDK with iPad tools

Jeff: was how it was phrased

Jeff: You know, for typing, I think it's going to suck, but for layout, this might be kinda cool. Wish I could see the video rather than still pictures, hard to get a feel.

Adam: Leo's video is rather washed out :\

Patrick: So, I'm guessing there will be someway to get iWork docs on and off the thing?

Jeff: I gave up on Leo's, too much noise

Scott: don't see anything about a simulator

Jeff: Besides e-mail?

Adam: There has to be a simulator.  You can't develop without it.

Jeff: Wonder where docs will live?

Charles: on your iDisk

Jeff: Yes, I'm sure there will be a simulator, I'm wondering if it will be part of the current iPhone simulator apps, with skins like Android, or separate apps for the two devices.

Zachery: scott: 10:35AM

Jeff: If you have an iDisk.

Jeff: $9.99 for each of the iWork apps. Wonder if the Desktop version will stay at $99

Erik: are they $99?

Erik: i thought they were $69 or something

Zachery: thought it was $79

Zachery: or $129 for family pack

Zachery: or something...

Erik: amazon says $67.99

Jeff: $79, you're right

Erik: family pack is $80.40

JC: itunes: i wonder if it'll stream what you can't sync

Jeff: from Apple

JC: aha!

Erik: wireless now

Debeez: desktop iWork is $99 list price, I believe - but I've seen it for low (got it for 54.99 I think)

JC: 3G

Patrick: cell data

Zachery: 3G

Erik: so now 3g

Jeff: Oh, there will be 3g models

Erik: i don't care about 3G

Erik: cuz I don't care about iPad so far.

Jeff: I don't, but I think it's cool for people who want it. Some will.

Jeff: Especially if price is reasonable.

Erik: 250 MB isn't that much if you watch video.

Erik: $15. unlimited is $30.

JC: unlim $30

Erik: zzzzzzzzzz.

Erik: most people aren't gonna use this out in the wild

JC: AT&T........

Jeff: Not bad, I guess... not great, though. Who's the provider

Erik: they'll use it when they're in their homes

Jeff: AT&T? Figures.

Erik: with wifi

Jeff: Forget it.

Adam: AT&T hotspots.

JC: What. The. Fuck.

Debeez: AT&T?  so they can complain about iPad users ALSO crashing their network? 

Adam: Home activation again?

JC: well, at least there's no contract...

Patrick: no contracts!?

Adam: Oh, no contract. Well, that's better.

Scott: Wow, prepaid - that's cool!

Erik: wait, it's a dongle thingy?

Adam: It's just data.

Erik: but it's a dongle?

Erik: they show a little usb clip thing

Jeff: Yeah, was wondering about that.

JC: unlocked!

Zachery: I think that was talking about laptops

Debeez: I think the dongle was a slide showing how much other carriers charge for laptops

Zachery: running $60/month

Jeff: Wonder if VOIP apps will be allowed

Erik: oh, ok

Erik: yeah it's for laptops in that screen, the $60

Erik: duh. me.

JC: they're all unlocked. you can get service anywhere, it sounds.

Jeff: No CDMA...

Erik: i don't see people needing data. use it for wifi.

Erik: no iPad for me. Good. I can buy something else instead.

Jeff: On the train? Yeah, could use 3G at times

Jeff: Of course, iPad would never be my main machine, but for commuting, I could see people wanting connectivity outside of hotspots

Jeff: Too early for a wrap up. One more thing?

Erik: i won't buy one at $299.

Erik: so.

Jeff: Is that the price?

Erik: no

JC: no

Erik: 499

Debeez: WOW

JC: $499.

Jeff: $499? That seems fair

Adam: Quite

Scott: cool!

Patrick: 16GB for 499, that's going to sell some units

Patrick: (guessing)

Sean: reasonable

Erik: still 2x as much as i'd pay.

Jeff: I'd pay that. 

Erik: that said i may end up with one if we write something for it.

Patrick: 499 without 3G

Jeff: $130 for 3G? Interesting.

Adam: You sure no 3G?

Erik: yeah

Erik: $130 extra

Adam: meh

JC: for $499, i could see buying one and writing a webapp for it to manage my repair queue in the shop.

Jeff: 60 days

Erik: i'm not even going to watch the video when they post it later

JC: maybe.

Adam: And for $600+ you can take it on the road.

Adam: Literally just the roads, though, because it's AT&T.

JC: but im' mostly with iacas. i'm mostly consigning this to the AppleTV bin.

Erik: whoopty doo, a keyboard dock

Adam: I'd put it in the range of the Touch, myself.

Jeff: I dunno, at that price, I can see it moving. 

JC: adam: it's unlocked. so you can go elsewhere for data. but you won't get the sweetheart deal they have with AT&T.

Jeff: With the keyboard dock to be able to type, that's plenty of computer for many consumers.

Erik: that was internationally though only right?

Sean: shows promise for a 1.0 release. i'l probably wait for 2.0

Jeff: It's got a sim card slot, how could they stop you domestically?

JC: he said "every iPad is sold unlocked"

Erik: ok.

Erik: but not cdma

Erik:

JC: right.

Jeff: No CDMA, no Verizon

Adam: No Verizon and no Sprint.  But T-Mobile would work.

Adam: And I wonder if Cricket will get in on it with unlimited data.

Erik: the extras cost? they aren't sure on ars but guess yes.

Erik: apple's videos have jumped the shark

Erik: "you don't think about it… you just… do!"

Erik: c'mon

Debeez: lol - true  (sounds like the parodies people keep making)

Erik: "gold rush" used in the video

Erik: bah

JC: i wouldn't use the iPhone and the iPad at the same time. i wonder if my iPhone SIM would work.

Joann: no camera, right?

JC: of course, then i won't get any calls

Jeff: Didn't see anything about one

Zachery: still not on the app store.

Zachery: c'MON!

Erik: no camera mentioned, yeah, hm.

Scott: I think they said that the SIM is a new form factor

Erik: micro SIM

Erik: what'st he display format again?

Scott: no SDK yet!

Erik: not OLED but what?

Erik: IPC or something?

JC: blah

Zachery: IPS

Patrick: Low end model drops to $199 next year

Patrick: mayb $249

Scott: THat seems likely - so do I wait? :-p

Erik: i dono't know that this finds a market.

Erik: not the big one.

Jeff: that would be something, Patrick...

Erik: people still use a phone for a phone

Adam: Wait to see if they're going to make it a TAM or Cube, I'd say.

Erik: and it fits in your pocket

Erik: the apps you use on your phone are "good enough" to justify using it iwth your phone

Erik: i don't see the same thing holding here

Patrick: WiFi only model with a MiFi, that would be a good combo

Adam: patrick: That's right!  Clear!

Jeff: Depends on the person. I can see my Mom, who's never owned a computer, using this, for example.

Zachery: that would be interesting

Erik: yeah, but how many people out there "have never owned a computer"?

Zachery: then I could also ditch my USB EVDO dongle

Joann: I want the keyboard dock to work with my iPhone.

Patrick: did everyone catch the 3G models are in 90 days?

Erik: no.

JC: clear is a 4G provider. i don't think their equipment even falls back to 3G.

Debeez: yes patrick - thats what I heard

Erik: all done.

Scott: Patrick - me too

Debeez: 60 days for normal, 30 more for 3G

Erik: anyone have any objections if I post this?

Scott: nope

Jeff: Not me

Erik: i don't know if I want to. could be a massive mess.

Joann: fine by me

Adam: I require royalties.

Erik: just asking in case.

Patrick: no worries

JC: np

Erik: i'll obscure everyone's usernames

Joann: bye, it was fun

Patrick: see yeah!

Patrick: er, ya!

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© iacas for NSLog();, 2010. | Permalink

Well, I'm very close to getting my apartment in NYC -- in the West Village.

I've also noted that a bunch of people don't know that I'm becoming bi-coastal, splitting my time between Berkeley and NY for the next year.

I also have recently been appointed a Visiting Scholar at the Arthur L. Carter Institute of Journalism at NYU. I've updated my bio on the home page of scripting.com to indicate this.

I'm also walking a ton and loving it. This city is built for walking, even in cold weather, there's tons of eye candy, and places to stop and gawk.

And I keep thinking of people to connect with here.

It's the Big City, and I already feel right at home.

If you'd like to sign up to be considered for inclusion in the semi-public DSLRU beta period, which will begin on February 15, 2010, please head on over to http://udslr.com/ to sign up.

The official site is and will be at dslru.com, but for now udslr.com - the old name for the site - has a simple sign-up page.

We're working hard on this and think it's shaping up quite nicely.

Users in this beta will not only get a sneak peek at the site, but we'll ask three things of them primarily: a) point out any bugs you find, b) suggest possible feature enhancements, and c) seed and use the forum with some good topics and discussions.

We don't have well defined plans in place for any sort of "prizes" or "compensation" right now, but we'd like to take care of our "early adopters." It may not be in February or March, but sometime we'd like to thank them - particularly the good ones.

---

© iacas for NSLog();, 2010. | Permalink

Tomorrow's Apple announcements:

0. This is 100 percent speculation, not in any way based on actual information.

1. Of course like everyone else I assume Apple is unveiling their tablet.

2. AT&T will either lose exclusivity or will be dropped altogether by Apple.

3. The biggest innovation will be the touch interface. They will have a virtual keyboard that works amazingly well, and it will have other amazingly intuitive gestures that it understands. The touch interface will work on both sides of the device so you can wrap your hands around it and make stuff happen that way.

4. Apple will unveil a new cloud that connects all its devices together. The tablet will only cache your information locally, all data and content is stored permanently on Apple's servers. (Apple must learn to be Google and Google must learn to be Apple, though neither ever will.)

5. There will be a radically new iPhone and iPod using the same software as the tablet.

6. The new iTouch software will not only run on all the newer devices, but will also run on the Mac. They will demonstrate their app store running on Mac hardware inside the same environment that runs on all the other devices. There will be subtle hints that the old Mac programming model is "legacy" -- where they began -- will always be loved by Steve, but eventually will be deprecated.

7. Google will be on stage for the announcement proclaiming their support for the new device. Steve will say Google is a valued partner of Apple's. The body language will indicate otherwise.

8. Ditto for leading publishers.

9. Some ports will be missing on the new Macs. Maybe USB? Steve loves to delete ports.

That's about it for now in the tea leaves department. I might think of some other things. It's always good to get your stake in the ground to see how you do.

I made a stop at the main NY Public Library on 5th Ave and 42nd St.



Three notable things.

1. Free wireless Internet. 3.13Mb/s down, 9.24Mb/s up. (Not a typo, it's asymetric, not the usual way. Probably because there are hundreds of people using the free Internet and most of them are downloading, not uploading.)

2. Everyone in the main reading room has a laptop. There's power at every desk.

3. They have free blogging classes every Tuesday night.

I'm in NYC looking for an apartment again.

Did a Rebooting The News with Jay last night. It was done in a studio at NYU, which has advantages (you can hear us well) but also disadvantatges. I hear the podcast ends at exactly 45 minutes, cutting me off in the middle of a sentence. That really sucks because the last few sentences were the best. (Just kidding, but we seriously have to get this under control, we run a loose ship and intend to keep it that way.) It's been worse, once I lost an entire podcast due to a technical mistake. So shit happens. It'll be interesting to do it next week when I'm back in Calif.

There's a certain amount of giddy in the media about the expected tablet announcement from Apple tomorrow. There's this idea that Steve will save the free and professional press, because he values a free and professional press. Uncle Rex Hammock spills cold water on the idea. Remember what Doc Searls said about software developers when Steve returned to Apple in 1997. Can you imagine how the free and professional press feels when Uncle Steve and his minions fail to approve their writing because it isn't sufficiently flattering to Apple? Somehow this is a loop back to the lesson of this week's RBTN. Perhaps it's better to accept low fidelity in return for the ability to finish a sentence -- the way you want to finish it. Or at least let the mistakes you make be your own.

Meantime, Uncle Barack Obama is making those of us who supported him really sorry for having done so. Freeze budgets? Robert Reich says that could be bad for the economy. Paul Krugman isn't so reserved. Brad DeLong says his middle name should be "Herbert Hoover." My guess is that it's a lie, he doesn't plan to freeze the budget, any more than Uncle George W Bush meant to get us out of Iraq. He just wants to take the high ground from the Repooobs next election cycle, to deprive them of what he feels might be a very potent soundbite. Either way, pity us. I can't imagine we'd ever elect a president that we'd have higher hopes for than Obama. If he betrays us, well, who won't?

People ask what I think of Google's new synthetic feeds. Great idea, I'll subscribe in my own aggregator. Oh you say I have to use Google Reader? Not my cup of tea.

Joe Kissell:

In principle, the solution is simple. Your photo editing software should remove the profile, but then modify the raw pixel data to give the colors the same boost that they would have received if the profile had been present and used. If this process were carried out, and it worked correctly, then the result would be that the image would look the same in any program. The image wouldn’t have a profile, but it also wouldn’t need one, because all the information provided by the profile would be merged into the original image. That way it would be irrelevant whether a browser ignored the profile.