Year: 2012

The iPhone as a Personal Computer  →

Patrick Rhone:

In my recent emergency trip this past week […], my iPhone 4 became my most used and primary computer for many reasons. This despite the fact I had both my iPad and MacBook Air with me and close at hand. It was the one best fitted to almost every situation I found myself in. Unobtrusive, agile, and the one with a constant and reliable internet connection.

For those who travel, more and more the iPad and the iPhone are proving to be not just worthy companions but valiant work horses as well.

For my trip to Macworld this past January, I took my MacBook Air but didn’t even use it. Nearly all of the reading, writing, linking, emailing, and tweeting I did was via my iPhone, and the rest was on my iPad. And so, with a 4G-equipped new iPad en route, I see no reason not to leave the Air at home on my next trip to San Francisco at WWDC.

(Well actually there is one fear holding me back: what if something were to go terribly wrong with my site while I was away? Something that couldn’t be fixed from the iPad? Of course, the chances of that happening are slim to none, but still… what if?)

The iPhone as a Personal Computer

Regarding Benjamin Franklin’s Daily Schedule

You’ve probably seen this a hundred times. I have. And I love it. It’s Benjamin Franklin’s daily schedule:

Ben Franklin Daily Schedule

I regularly come back to my own daily schedule to re-evaluate it and see if it is serving me as well as it should be. Because schedules, like finances, make excellent slaves but horrible masters. I should be the one who sets my schedule and budgets my time just like I should be the one budgeting my finances. A schedule, like a budget, is there for the purpose of serving my goals so that the minutes don’t get away from me and I end up squandering my time.

What I like about Ben Franklin’s daily schedule was how open it was. It was a rigid routine but it was very forgiving for all the nuances and variables that each day’s tasks and priorities seem to bring.

He had only six blocks of time scheduled each day:

  • 3 hours for getting ready for his day (shower and breakfast, personal study, and prepare for work)
  • 4 hours for work
  • 2 hours for review of current projects and to eat lunch
  • 4 more hours for work
  • 4 hours for dinner and rest and wrapping up the day
  • 7 hours for sleeping

This is a similar approach that I’ve been trying to take with my scheduling as well. In that, I set a routine for my day of when I get up, what blocks of time are set aside for what types of tasks, when I should stop working, etc. And then, when it comes time to work I begin to go through my inboxes (Instapaper, email, and/or OmniFocus) or else I work on a current project or article that has arrested my attention.

One big myth about creativity is that it cannot be harnessed. It is silly to think a creative person should live without routine, discipline, or accountability.

Sure, inspiration often comes to us when we least expect it, and so by all means, let us allow exceptions to our schedules. But sitting around being idle while in wait for inspiration is a good way to get nothing done. And worse, it is also a way to let the creative juices get stagnant.

Michael Lopp wrote an inspiring article along the lines of scheduling, entitled “A Precious Hour“. He writes:

My deep-rooted fear of becoming irrelevant is based on decades of watching those in the tech industry around me doing just that – sitting there busily doing things they’ve convinced themselves are relevant, but are just Faux-things-to-do wrapped in a distracting sense of busy. One day, they look up from their keyboard and honestly ask, “Right, so, what’s Dropbox?” […]

Starting at the beginning of February, I made a change. Each day I blocked off a precious hour to build something.

Lopp’s aim brings to mind this convicting quote from Ray Bradbury at the intro of Martian Chronicles:

I did what most writers do at their beginnings: emulated my elders, imitated my peers, thus turning away from any possibility of discovering truths beneath my skin and behind my eyes.

If you don’t make time to shut off the outside world and think and build and create on your own then you’ll only ever emulate and imitate.

Regarding Benjamin Franklin’s Daily Schedule

Greater Than the Sum of Its Pixels  →

Ryan Block on why the new iPad’s Retina display is a big deal:

The core experience of the iPad, and every tablet for that matter, is the screen. It’s so fundamental that it’s almost completely forgettable. Post-PC devices have absolutely nothing to hide behind. Specs, form-factors, all that stuff melts away in favor of something else that’s much more intangible. When the software provides the metaphor for the device, every tablet lives and dies by the display and what’s on that display.

I haven’t even seen the new iPad yet, but I have no doubt Ryan is exactly right. Think about it this way: one of the key engineering feats of iOS is its responsiveness to touch input — it’s as if you are actually moving the pixels underneath your finger as opposed to pinching or swiping and then waiting. Inasmuch as that matters, so too does the quality and realism of the screen itself matter.

Those who care about software should make their own hardware.

Greater Than the Sum of Its Pixels

The B&B Podcast Has Moved to 5by5  →

Today’s episode of The B&B Podcast is our first one on the world-class 5by5 network. It’s an honor to join the ranks of my favorite nerds.

In this episode Ben and I talk more about the new iPads, retina Macs, big batteries, and more.

A note to all those who are already subscribed to the show via Instacast, iTunes, or something else: you don’t have to do anything. All the feed settings have stayed the same. Thanks for listening.

And a huge thanks to Dan Benjamin for inviting us onto the network and helping make the migration look easy and painless.

The B&B Podcast Has Moved to 5by5

AT&T, 4G, and the New iPad

From Apple.com, when you go to buy a new iPad and you click the link to AT&T’s coverage viewer, here’s the map you get:

AT&T 4G Data Coverage Map

On this map, AT&T makes no differentiation between their HSPA+ network and their LTE network. Both are simply classified as “4G”. Which means someone looking to buy a new iPad with 4G LTE connectivity, who clicks on the link from the Apple website, is taken to this map where they see that AT&T has 4G coverage all over the place. There is no reason for someone to assume that the 4G connectivity Apple is referring to on their website is different from the 4G coverage that AT&T is displaying on their map.

For example: the two cities that I want 4G LTE coverage in are Kansas City and Denver. I know that there is 4G LTE in Kansas City because I see the AT&T billboards around town and I get the junk mail delivered to my house. And, when looking at this map on AT&T’s website I can see that not only does AT&T have 4G in Kansas City but they also have it in Denver.

AT&T 4G coverage in Denver and in Kansas City

Based on the information in this map, I bought an AT&T iPad on Wednesday.

I chose AT&T because the pricing of their plans is better and for the times that 4G LTE is not available and the iPad falls back to their HSPA+ network, it is a faster data connection than Verizon’s 3G.

On the map’s legend is a link for “4G”, which takes you to a popup page describing terms used in the legend. The definition for 4G is as follows:

4G: The areas shown in darkest blue represent AT&T owned HSPA+ network with enhanced backhaul. AT&T’s HSPA+ network is capable of delivering 4G speeds when combined with enhanced backhaul. Learn more about 4G.

Clicking to learn more takes you to AT&T’s 4G LTE info page. (If this is starting to sound confusing that’s because it is.) On this info page there is another coverage map (click the “coverage” tab at the bottom) which lists the actual cities that have 4G LTE. Ugh.

AT&T Actual 4G LTE Cities

As you can see, a 4G LTE city is denoted by an orange dot. There are far fewer 4G LTE cities than there are “4G” areas. And so, according to this map, Denver does not have AT&T 4G LTE service.

It wasn’t until Thursday that I discovered this (thanks to Ben). I felt tricked and taken for a fool. I cancelled my AT&T iPad and ordered a new one that connects to Verizon. Because Verizon does have LTE service in both Kansas City and in Denver.

We already know that AT&T will not be changing their “4G” moniker for HSPA+. It is bad enough that Apple has given in to AT&T at some measure by now displaying “4G” as the connection type for AT&T iPhones running iOS 5.1.

But at the very least Apple should be linking to AT&T’s coverage map which shows AT&T’s actual 4G LTE cities. The currently-linked-to map is deceptive and misleading given the context. How many people buying a new iPad will purchase an AT&T model based on the assumption that there is AT&T 4G LTE coverage in their city when it’s actually just HSPA+?

AT&T, 4G, and the New iPad

Sweet App: Favs

Between Twitter and my RSS feeds I come across a lot of things I want to bookmark for future reference. Some are articles to read for later but some are actionable items (like check out such and such app). And so I’ve established this habit where I “favorite” or “like” something as my way of bookmarking it. I also “like” most articles in Instapaper if they’re something I want to link to later.

Favs (pronounced fayves, I presume) is a nifty little Mac app that collects all your “favorites” and “likes” and into one place. It’s interface is not unlike an RSS reader, and it pulls your favorites from nearly 20 different services.

The app was in public beta for a while and so I’ve been kicking the tires on it for the past several weeks and like it quite a bit. It hit the Mac App Store just a few days ago — it’s polished and useful and definitely worth 5 bucks.

For a more in-depth review, check out Federico Viticci’s article.

Favs is $5 on the Mac App Store.

Sweet App: Favs

Comparing the new iPad to the original MacBook Air  →

Horace Dediu:

The new iPad now exceeds the total display resolution, has similar speed and storage capacity while having twice the battery life of the thinnest laptop of four years ago. It also has very high quality cameras and GPS and cellular network connectivity which have yet to appear on mainstream PCs. It’s still a lot smaller and half the price and has a larger selection of available software titles at prices a fraction of its elder cousin.

This is simultaneously fascinating and telling.

Comparing the new iPad to the original MacBook Air

Andy Ihnatko’s Advice to Writers  →

This is a great interview with one of my favorite writers in the biz, Andy Ihnatko. His answer to “Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?” is stellar:

No. There have been times when I haven’t been confident about what I was writing; times when I’ve had no clue about how to continue something; certainly there’ve been days when I haven’t felt like writing and even a few days when I’ve felt like I’d already written my last thing, ever.

These are all tangible problems with workable solutions. I can deal with tangible problems. If I were to believe in “Writer’s Block” I’d be taking a fear that I haven’t explored and I’d be amplifying its paralytic power by giving it a name.

I also like how Randy Murray puts it: “Give yourself permission to stink.”

Andy Ihnatko’s Advice to Writers

Thoughts and Observations Regarding Yesterday’s iPad Event

Resolutionary

Apple is calling the Retina display the most advanced display you’ve ever seen. It has 3.1 million pixels — a million more than are in my HDTV.

I’ve had a Retina display iPhone since the 4 came out last summer and it is still amazing to me. I have no doubt the new iPad’s display will be absolutely stunning. My question though is if it will it be as stunning as the iPhone’s display? The iPad is a bigger display — 9.7 inches compared to the iPhone’s 3.5 — but also worth noting is that the new iPad’s display has less pixel density than the iPhone does. 264 PPI and compared to 326 PPI respectively.

Will a 66 PPI difference make a difference? I don’t know. And my guess is that it won’t. Ryan Block’s comments on the new iPad’s Retina display make it sound just as stunning as (if not more so) the iPhone 4/4S. Jim Dalrymple seems to agree.

I use my iPad for reading more than anything else. And so I’m greatly looking forward having a tablet device that sports a (nearly) print-resolution screen — as if reading Instapaper and Reeder, surfing the Web, and browsing Tweetbot on the current iPad wasn’t already great enough.

Moreover, for websites, breaking out of the standard Georgia and Verdana fonts means your site will look fabulous on an iPad.

4G LTE

My original iPad and my iPad 2 were both Wi-Fi-only models. In the two years I’ve been using my iPads I’ve never felt the need to have 3G connectivity. However, this time around I still chose to order the 4G version. I did so for two reasons:

  • In part because it’s a new technology for Apple — this is their first 4G LTE device — and I think 4G devices are a really big deal. Android phones with 4G LTE are a big deal but their battery life is abysmal. Apple touts that when using 4G data the battery life is only dinged by one 10-percent.

  • Secondly, I have a hunch that owning a 4G connected iPad will prove to be far more useful than I thought. But this is something I won’t know for sure until I’ve got it. Like Marco discovered when he went from his Wi-Fi-only original iPad to the 3G-enabled iPad 2:

I went Wi-Fi-only on my iPad 1 and regretted it, so I got 3G on my iPad 2. In practice, I found that I brought the iPad 2 more places and used it more because it was always internet-connected. This greatly improved the value of the iPad for me. If you see yourself bringing the iPad outside of your house very often, it’s definitely worth considering the 4G option.

Over the past two years, if and when I’m going somewhere to work and I have to pick between taking my Wi-Fi-only iPad or my MacBook Air then I take the Air. But if the iPad were guaranteed connected (with a speed that rivals broadband) then who knows if I’d take the iPad instead.

There is little left that I can’t do on my iPad that I can do on my Air. From my iPad I can read, browse the Web, answer email, check Twitter, even write and post articles and links to my website. But without an internet connection my iPad feels slightly less useful. It’s a device that is meant to be online.

When I went to San Francisco for Macworld I didn’t crack open my Air one time. I did very little writing on that trip, and nearly all the work I did do (reading, email, posting links to the site) I actually did from my iPhone. But if my iPad had been Internet connected then I would have done a lot more work from it instead. My next trip to San Francisco (for WWDC) it’s likely that I’ll leave the Air at home.

To sum up, though I’ve gone sans-3G on iPads for two years in a row, I bet that a few months from now I’ll be very glad I went with the 4G iPad.

Sans-Siri

Sadly the new iPad doesn’t have Siri. Though it does have voice dictation. This will making typing easier (I wonder how much you can dictate before maxing out the service?) I would love to see Siri come to the iPad.

On my iPhone I use Siri quite a bit (assuming it’s available), and it’s primarily to send text messages, and set reminders. As the iPad grows more and more into a work machine, it will be nice to have the ability to quickly create appointments, send an email, set up a reminder, create a note, search the web, etc. No doubt it is simply a matter of time until Siri does make its way to the iPad — if that will be with iOS 6 or with the 2013 model of the iPad I don’t know. Perhaps the only thing holding Siri back right now is that it’s a service with is still very much in beta, and Apple isn’t ready to expand to further devices.

The $399 iPad 2

This is a huge deal if only for the fact that now the entry-level price for an iPad is $100 less than it used to be. Apple is driving the prices down on a device that they don’t need to drive prices down on. As usual, they are going for mass market share. Could the iPad reach as large of a market-saturation point as the iPod has? Remember how iPod growth curve flatlined because pretty much everyone already owned one?

The Apple TV

In the Blanc house we have one of the current little black Apple TV boxes and we love it. We don’t have cable and so anything we watch is via Netflix or iTunes (or Redbox on occasion if we can get it on Blu-Ray).

But I ordered one of the new Apple TVs because to me it’s worth it get the upgrade to 1080p iTunes and Netflix content. For $99 I think anyone with a Mac and a television should own an Apple TV.

What I Ordered

Black, 16GB, with 4G via AT&T.

  • Black, because obviously.

(Though I do imagine the White iPad looks much better now with the new Retina display. Something I never quite liked about the white iPads was that the screen felt even further from the glass than on the black models.)

  • 16GB because I’ve always purchased the base model devices and have never once maxed out an iPhone or iPad. And I wanted to spend my extra money on 4G rather than getting the 32GB version.

  • 4G because of the reasons stated above. I went with AT&T because they have fantastic 4G and 3G data service in Kansas City and Denver (the two cities where I spend most of my time). Verizon has great 4G coverage here as well, but if and when the iPad doesn’t have 4G connectivity and it needs to fall back to 3G, AT&T’s network is much faster than Verizon’s.

Additional Miscellany

  • Apple is calling the new iPad the same thing everyone else is going to call it: “The new iPad”.

  • The new iPad has Wi-Fi, GSM, UMTS, GPS, CDMA, LTE, and Bluetooth connectivity. During the presentation yesterday Phil Schiller said, “This new iPad has the most wireless bands of any device that’s ever shipped.”

  • Being thicker and heavier is surely a direct result of the battery.

  • What is Condé Nast going to do with their magazine apps? Their current issues (which use images even for text) are going to look horrible on the Retina display and if they start making their files 4x bigger then the downloads will get even more ridiculous — growing into the ballpark of an 800 MB file. At that size, after few back issues of The New Yorker and Wired your iPad’s storage will be maxed out.

  • Since you can’t see the beauty of a Retina display if you’re looking at pictures of it on a non-Retina display, it seems the only real way to try and compare a non-Retina display against a Retina display is to pixelate the “non-Retina model” so it looks a bit blurry by design. This is what Apple is doing on their side-by-side comparison of the screens on the iPad 2 and the new iPad.

  • Phil Schiller said: “As you’ll remember, when the iPhone 4 went to the Retina Display developers didn’t have to do anything to make their applications run on the Retina Display. Everything will still look great, but if developers take a little time, as with the iPhone, they can do stuff that looks amazing and incredible on the new iPad.”

But that’s not true. Text will look sharp and native API elements will look sharp but the rest will look very grainy. Non-Retina optimized apps look worse on a Retina display.

  • In the presentation yesterday Tim cook called iOS, “the world’s most advanced operating system and the easiest to use.”

  • Also from Tim Cook: “Our post PC devices made up 76% of our revenues. We have our feet firmly planted in the post PC future.”

  • Yesterday’s was the first iPad event with no armchair on the stage.

  • It’s a bit hard to be surprised when you already knew something was coming. Yesterday’s announcement contained nearly everything we expected. We pretty much knew there’d be a new Apple TV, iPhoto for iOS, and all the main specs about the new iPad. However, being savvy to a spec sheet and feature list is much different than using a device.

If you’re like me, you too have yet to get used to the iPhone’s Retina display. And so, though it won’t be until next Friday that I am able to start using my new iPad, and it won’t be for another few months before I know how often I do (or don’t) use the 4G, I suspect this new iPad will be amazing for the long haul.

Could the new iPad end up being the finest device Apple has made yet? And it raises the question: what’s in store for the new iPhone?

Thoughts and Observations Regarding Yesterday’s iPad Event