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Life at Home Without Wi-Fi

On Saturday my 2-year-old Time Capsule had a melt down. If you own a Time Capsule you know how hot they can get. And for some models (like mine) the power components eventually begin to melt inside. Then one day the thing just shuts itself off and if you try to reset it and plug it back in you’re greeted with a high pitch squeal followed by the device turning itself off again.

I never buy AppleCare. But fortunately Apple is freely replacing mine and other certain Time Capsules which are experiencing this squealing melt-down effect. (Which, ironically, only affirms my resolve to not spend money on Apple Care.)

And so the past few days I have been without wi-fi at my house. I’ve actually been enjoying the simplicity of having just one computer connected to the Internet and not having the distraction of being able to get online at any time, in any room, with any device.

By plugging the ethernet cable directly into my MacBookPro it has been nice to have an instant network connection when waking my laptop from sleep. Some people plug in because it’s “so much faster” than Wi-Fi. Which is true. But unless I’m downloading big fat files I really don’t notice the difference in connection speed. I prefer to have less cables.

Syncing my Things apps across devices is even more arduous now because I have to create a network with my laptop and then join my iPad and iPhone to it. (I realize that I could use my MacBook Pro as a wireless router and constantly be sharing its internet connection, but that would defeat the experience of being without wireless for a few days.)

Now that I’m on the $15/month 200MB data plan with AT&T I am annoyingly conscious of my iPhone data usage. Without wi-fi, a casual check of Twitter or email on my iPhone means I’m paying for those bits of data.

But it’s not just my iPhone I’m using less. I’m using my iPad a lot less, too. I have always assumed that the 3G version would not be much better for me because I always have wireless internet wherever I am. Which is true. But knowing that I won’t be connected to the internet has made me less eager to grab the iPad. Even for non-Internet tasks, like reading an ebook.

Life at Home Without Wi-Fi

July 2nd

A few things you may not have known about today, July 2.

  • Today is the 183rd day of the year. It’s the middle day. There were 182 days before today, and 182 to go until 2011. (At noon today is the exact middle of the year.)
  • Today is the same day of the week as New Years Day was.

July 2nd in history:

People born on July 2nd:

July 2nd

From Five Bars to Four, to Three, to Two, to One

Fraser Speirs posted a video demonstration of the reception on his iPhone 4 dropping down, bar by bar, when holding it incorrectly. This is exactly what I’m experiencing on my iPhone 4 as well.

Cameron Hunt has created a website which documents the incorrect ways to hold the iPhone 4 as demonstrated by Apple itself.

John Gruber, who’s lucky enough not to be having any problems, guesses that “the issue pops up in areas with spotty 3G coverage”. But I experience the left-handed signal drop regardless of my location — well, anywhere I’ve been since yesterday: home, my office, and church — and Kansas City has fantastic 3G coverage. (I can count on one hand the number of dropped calls I’ve had with AT&T since June 2007.)

At home where I have full signal, holding the phone in my left hand will cause the bars to drop down to 1. Though I am still able to retain enough connection strength to make phone calls, browse the web, and even stream Pandora.

My office, however, has poor reception. And yesterday if I held the iPhone 4 “incorrectly” it was literally unusable as a phone. I never had this issue on my 3GS. Even with poor 3G reception at my office I could always establish a connection and have a phone conversation.

This morning I installed Marco’s antenna booster, and it actually does seem to help a little bit. Using it at home the signal only drops to 2 or 3 bars instead of 1. I have not been in to the office yet to test it there.

Also, here’s a chart of 11 consecutive speed tests I did on the iPhone 4. The drop in bars does mean a worse connection.

iPhone 4 left-handed speed test

From Five Bars to Four, to Three, to Two, to One

A Brief Review of iOS 4

iOS 4 is now available, and it is fantastic. But as a long-time iPhone user some old habits die hard.

The unified inbox is great. But I still find myself tapping the “Mailboxes” header on the Inboxes view in attempts to go back one more screen, despite the fact there is no button there.

Folders are great. But I now have to re-learn where my apps are. I used to know where on the screen they were located, now I have to remember which folder I put them in.

Multitasking is great. But double tapping the Home button doesn’t get me to Phone favorites anymore — a function I have used dozens of times a day for the past three years (I’m one of the few who uses my iPhone to make phone calls). In earlier iOS betas you could at least double tap and hold the home button to launch favorites. But alas, that function didn’t make it into the Gold Master.

But eventually I will acclimate and the above quibbles will be non-issues.

Apple’s new mobile OS is the most feature-rich and robust one to date. Just as the iPhone 4 is the biggest leap forward for the hardware since the original iPhone, iOS 4 is the biggest leap forward for the software.

iOS 4 is packed to the brim with features and functions we only dreamt about in 2007. Yet in spite of all the new, nearly everything about this OS is expected. Not because we’ve seen pre-release demos, but because the features are implemented so naturally. There are no new features that require much, if any, explanation. And, save but one, no new features do anything mind blowing.

That is exactly how Apple rolls. The implementation of a feature is just as much a feature as the functionality which it provides. Apple didn’t just add the ability to now create folders, they built the best possible user experience around that functionality that they could.

Current iPhone and iPod Touch users who are able to upgrade to iOS 4 will have no trouble using all the new toys found in iOS 4 without missing a beat. Even the most “hidden” of the new, highlighted features, fast-app switching via the Tray, is easily discoverable to the average user since activating the Tray is now tied to one of the most common functions of double tapping the Home Button.

The New Look

Every major update to the iPhone’s operating system has mostly only provided feature enhancements. iOS 4 is the first to sport a significant change in the look. And it’s beautiful.

Earlier this year I jailbroke my iPhone to install a different GUI and add a Home screen wallpaper and custom icons. But many of the graphical changes in iOS 4 negate my reasons for wanting to jailbreak. From what I’ve noticed, all of the new graphical elements are fantastic. Well, all but one: the default water drops wallpaper is bizarrely ugly. I’m currently using the fun but unobtrusive Pictotype Purple wallpaper from Veer.

I was never, ever, keen on the 3D Dock introduced in Leopard, but on the iPad and iPhone it’s great. For one, it’s much more open than the ‘grid’ Dock in previous iPhone OSes. This makes for a cleaner looking, more simple Home screen. Secondly, the square icons don’t look at all awkward while sitting on the 3D dock, which is not always the case in OS X.

Additionally, I’m a big fan of the scratched fabric texture which shows up in the background when drilling into a folder or when fast-app switching via the Tray. It’s a darker version of what you see behind the Google map if you click on the bottom-right page curl. And it’s the same background Reeder uses for its iPad app.

Folders

Folders are swell, but I suck at naming them.

Choosing a proper and usable name for a folder is proving to be more difficult than I thought. Also difficult is remembering which folder has which apps.

Thanks to folders, my first Home screen now has the apps which used to occupy my first two home screens. These are the apps I use daily or weekly. And the OCD in me decided it would be best to name each folder with names that were five characters long. So: Tools, Photo, Stats, and Sweet.

On my second Home screen, I have seven folders: Rare, Reference, Utilities, A Games, B Games, Misc, and Tools. But off the top of my head I couldn’t even tell you what apps are in each of those folders.

The Rare folder holds all the apps which previously lived on the very last Home screen wasteland. A Games and B Games are just that — except I hardly ever play games on my iPhone so I don’t really know which games are the more or less favorites. And the difference between Reference, Misc, Tools, and Utilities is (embarrassingly) a bit lost on me. I chose those names because I was trying to avoid having four folders with the same name, Utilities. But unfortunately my current solution is just as confusing as the alternative.

Once I’ve nailed down some proper names, my only gripe with folders will be the spacial arrangement of the individual apps. As Lukas Mathis points out, the placement of an app’s icon is in one location in the folder’s icon view, but it’s in another location when you open that folder. (Similar to the same spacial issues the iPad has when you rotate the device from landscape to portrait.)

The Tray and Multitasking

But Apple doesn’t really intend for users to navigate through folders for the apps they use regularly. Instead, they’ve given us the Tray and multitasking.

It used to be that when you were done using an app and you pressed the Home Button you were quitting that app. Some app developers were smart enough to build state persistence into their app. Which meant when you came back to that app, it would load itself at the same spot you left it, but it still had to load.

Now you are no longer quitting the app when you press the Home Button. Instead the app is put into the background and its icon gets slotted into the Tray. You access the Tray by double tapping the Home Button and from there you can swipe through all the apps you’ve recently used. But the computer-savvy geek in me wants to quit out all the apps that I’m not using. It pains me to see an app in that tray which I know I only use once or twice a month. That app is taking up precious memory.

Neven Mrgan wisely advises:

This is not the multitasking you’re used to. The sooner you accept this, the better.

And so I’m learning not to play the Tray because iOS 4 is clever and responsible enough to quit apps on my behalf. The least-recently-used app gets the boot once the system actually begins to run low on memory. And with iPhone 4 rocking twice the memory my 3GS has, there will be even less reason to manually monitor which apps are running in the background.

John Gruber explains the new multitasking quite well:

The new model [of multitasking], […] is that apps are not quit manually by the user. You, the user, just open them, and the system takes care of managing them after that. You don’t even have to understand the concept of quitting an application — in fact, you’re better off not worrying about it.

The Tray and its fast app switching are just one element of multitasking in iOS. There are also a handful of background APIs which 3rd-party apps can now take advantage of. The most heralded have been the APIs for background music, location, and VoIP. Respectively: Pandora can play music while in the background; GPS apps can give directions while in the background; and Skype can host a phone call while in the background. I don’t use Pandora, GPS apps, or Skype, so these new features, while great, do not really change my life for the better at the present moment.

The API which I am most thankful for, in that it affects my day-to-day usage the most, is task completion. Now I don’t have to wait while Twitter uploads my latest tweet or Simplenote syncs my latest note. But unfortunately, the other side of the coin to task completion, background updating, is not baked in to iOS 4. When you open apps like Simplenote, Twitter, or Instapaper, even if they’ve been running in the background, they will not have been able to update. They still have to wait until they are the frontmost app before they can download any new data.

A Brief Review of iOS 4

The Linked List is the Comments

Comments drastically change the tone, feel, and content of a website. I’ve never had comments on my site, and I can’t fathom how much energy I would have to spend to keep the tone I’ve established here if comments were enabled.

Even if every comment were kind and clever there would still be a different feel to shawnblanc.net. Each post would have extra metadata: who commented; how many total comments; who’s the most commenting commenter; gee I haven’t commented in a while, I guess that makes me a lurker?

Moreover, comments would affect my time. I don’t want to spend one minute unnecessarily moderating rude comments or robot spam. Nor do I want another incoming distraction of having to keep tabs on what content is being put onto my site.

So for one, comments don’t serve me or my heart for this website. But they don’t serve the reader either.

Having commenters does not necessarily make a community. Most comment threads I’ve seen are just a lot of people posting replies with no regard to the other comments. (And sometimes with no regard to the original post, even.)

When someone comments, they are giving a one-on-one reply to the author. This can be done just as easily via email. I love how Marco put it earlier today:

A blog post is a one-to-many broadcast. Comments are the opposite: many-to-one feedback. A true discussion medium would encourage more communication between the commenters, forming larger quantities of many-to-many interactions and de-emphasizing the role of the blog post’s author. In practice, that rarely happens.

If comments are behaving as many-to-one feedback, there’s minimal value to showing them to the world, because the world largely doesn’t read them. […] We already have a widespread many-to-one feedback medium that avoids this: email.

On my site, and many others, feedback from the reader is welcome via email or Twitter. And if the reader wants to add to the conversation in a public way, they are encouraged to write it on their own website. And this is where links come in — to keep this site from becoming an island.

Chairman Gruber describes it as a curated conversation. John posts his own thoughts, opinions, and commentary, but also links to other people’s. In a way, the DF Linked List is the comments. And it’s extremely moderated and painstakingly curated.

Instead of discovering new people and content through the who’s who list of comments on Daring Fireball, you discover them through the Linked List. This is how John maintains the quality of DF that he’s so particular about. But it’s also John’s way of encouraging people to put their thoughts in front of their own audience. Which is, in my opinion, the best reason of all to not allow comments.

What frustrated Joe Wilcox about the lack of comments on Daring Fireball was his inability to respond in context. But John’s goal of a curated conversation is not about keeping his writing protected from criticism. He is passively encouraging people to build their own soapbox, write something of substance, and to curate their own conversations.

The Linked List is the Comments

Which Device for Which Task?

With a cup of hot coffee, most work days begin with combing through email, scrubbing my to-do list, and prepping for any meetings.

No two days are alike. Sometimes it’s all I can do to keep on top of email and put out fires. Occasionally I’m in meetings back to back to back to back. And then some days I am able to do some work of my own. Unless it’s a meetings-only type of day, I need my MacBook Pro to get work done. But regardless my iPad and iPhone are usually close by.

And so I was curious to look at how frequently I use each device for certain tasks I may do on a given day. Secondly, if my preferred device isn’t around, how well do the others fare at completing that same task if and when they have to?

How Frequently I Use a Device for Certain Tasks

TaskMacBook ProiPadiPhone

Check Email Regularly Regularly Regularly
Browse Web Regularly Regularly Regularly
Check Twitter Sometimes Sometimes Regularly
Manage To-Do List Regularly Regularly Regularly
Text Message Never Never Regularly
Phone Call Never Never Regularly
Write Blog Posts Regularly Sometimes Never
Read an eBook Never Regularly Never
Read Instapaper Sometimes Regularly Rarely
Save to Instapaper Regularly Regularly Regularly
Check RSS Feeds Sometimes Regularly Rarely
Write Reports Regularly Sometimes Never
Graphic Design Sometimes Never Never
Listen to Music Regularly Rarely Rarely
Watch Movies Sometimes Rarely Never
Play Games Rarely Sometimes Sometimes
Take Meeting Notes Sometimes Regularly Rarely
Update Calendar Regularly Regularly Regularly
Access / Use Dropbox Regularly Sometimes Rarely

A good example of where quality has affected frequency is with RSS feeds. I rarely check my feeds on my iPhone anymore because checking them on my iPad is just so much better. The same goes for Instapaper — reading things later on the iPad is so fantastic that I practically refuse to use my laptop for it.

Now, if my preferred device isn’t around then how well do the others fare at completing that same task if and when they have to? Here is a chart rating each device’s ability to handle the task at hand.

Device’s Ability to Handle My Regular Tasks

Task MacBook Pro iPad iPhone
Check Email Great Good Good
Browse Web Good Great Good
Check Twitter Good Great Great
Manage To-Do List Great Poor Poor
Write Blog Posts Great Poor Poor
Read Instapaper Good Great Good
Read an eBook Good Great Poor
Check RSS Feeds Great Great Great
Write Reports Great Poor Poor
Graphic Design Great n/a n/a
Listen to Music Great Great Great
Watch Movies Great Good Good
Play Games Great Great Great
Take Meeting Notes Great Good Poor
Update Calendar Great Good Good
Access / Use Dropbox Great Good Good

The ratings are not necessarily based on the scope or limitations of the device. Some of the ratings are due to limitations of the app, or are simply because of my own established workflow.

For example, the only reason Things is poor at managing my to-do list on my iPad is because it doesn’t fully match my work flow. The iPad app, in and of itself, is fabulous. But I can’t map email messages to my to-do list like I do on my laptop, and there is not yet over-the-air syncing. Functionality issues like that make it difficult for me to easily manage my to-do list. (There are times when I email myself a to-do item from my iPad or iPhone because I need to remember it as soon as I return to my laptop.)

What the Charts Don’t Say

Looking at how regularly I reach for my laptop, and how well it handles nearly everything I do all day, it would seem as if my iPad were simply a luxury. Quantitatively, yes. But qualitatively, it’s a different story. Because the scope and feature checklist of the iPad (and iPhone) alone do not accurately convey the value added.

Perhaps a more accurate comparison of devices and tasks would not be based on tasks at all, but rather on context and use-case scenarios. My laptop is what I use at my desk. The iPad is usually with me when I’m on the go or in the living room. One device is not relegated to one type of task. All are for work and, and all are for leisure — the quantity and quality depends mostly on the context.

What the charts don’t say are things like how useful my iPad is on a day full of meetings because it is so easy to carry one place to the next, and its battery is a non-issue. Or how I’m less distracted when using it. Or that I read so much more now.

The only thing missing is how well the three devices work together. As my MacBook Pro, iPhone, and iPad learn to share the same information at the same time, their usage will become even less task-driven and more context-driven.

Which Device for Which Task?

iPhone 4 Miscellany

The Battery

With every other gadget I’ve owned keeping the battery charged is one of the costs of ownership. The iPad, on the other hand, has an incredible battery. It’s battery is one of the best features of the whole device, and usually is the first thing I say when people ask me what I like best about my iPad. “The battery,” I tell them. “This thing will run for 12 hours.”

The iPhone 4 boasts virtually the same battery life as the iPad. Imagine then what you can still do after the the 20% power warning. The 4 will still have enough juice for a 90-minute phone conversation, an entire movie, 2 hours of surfing the web, or to just be left sitting around for another two and a half days.

When the 20% battery warning comes up on my 3GS it means I go into iPhone survival mode, keeping usage to a minimum to prolong death before I am able to charge it next. But on the 4 a 20% warning will simply mean charge at my earliest convenience (the same way it is for the iPad).

The Glass

Putting glass on both sides is a great move. I have never put a screen guard on any of my iPhones, and I usually place my 3GS face down because the glass front is more scratch resistant than the plastic back.

The original iPhone was well-built. It felt good and looked good. But it was a bit slippery and had poorer cell reception compared to the 3G and 3GS. But what the 3G-enabled models gained in function they lost in form. The plastic back is not nearly as classy.

And so by putting helicopter-grade glass on both sides the iPhone 4 now gets the best of both worlds: a phone that feels good, looks good, and get’s good reception.

The Screen

I’m afraid of the 4’s new display in that it may cause every other device I use (Apple Cinema Display, MacBook Pro, iPad) to look like pixelated crap.

That Wallpaper

The water drops wallpaper which is set as the default in iOS 4 baffles me. I’m not running the iOS 4 beta, nor have I seen the wallpaper in display on an iPhone 4. But in the promotional shots of the new iOS and phone the wallpaper looks tacky to say the least.

My only guess is that the water drops image was used because it was an ideal image for being the Home Screen wallpaper and showing off the Retina Display hotness. Regardless, I expect to be using something more minimal.

Marketing FaceTime

The FaceTime commercial and its section in the iPhone design video both use classic, emotional music. The show all sorts of happy, real-life scenarios, and really pull you in to the emotion of watching real people connect.

Apple is telling a story about the iPhone through FaceTime. It’s not just a device for fun, games, and work. It is something which can add value to your real life. It’s a story wrapped with families and loved ones connecting like never before.

Gina Trapani says:

That’s the thing about Apple marketing. They don’t talk about how many gigabytes of memory or how many CPU cycles or how many apps (much). They aim for your heart, and show you how technology can make your life better during its most important moments.

It’s this feature alone that makes me want to buy my wife an iPhone 4 as well, instead of giving her a hand-me-down.

AT&T

I was with Verizon for almost 9 years before I bought an iPhone, and their service was great. But AT&T’s service in Kansas City (where I live) and Denver (where my family lives) is also great.

I can count on one hand the dropped calls I’ve had since June 2007. My phone always has solid 3G reception and very speedy data. Moreover, whenever I’ve had to deal with AT&T’s customer service it’s been easy and pleasant.

Two other things I love about AT&T: (1) They subsidize my iPhone upgrades more frequently than every 2 years; and (2) they let me change my plan for just a month or two (when I know I’m going to have a talk-heavy event) without making me renewing my contract for another 2 years.

iPhone 4 Miscellany

My AT&T Wireless Data Usage

My AT&T iPhone Wireless Data Usage

Here is a look at how many megabytes of data I have used in the last seven months.

I expected December to be high since that is when we host the onething conference. Everything gets progressively more erratic during the last few weeks leading up to onething, and flat out ballistic once the four-day event starts. But I am shocked to see October as my highest month of usage. That was the month Anna and I took a week-long vacation to the Ozarks and my phone was literally turned off for seven days.

Being able to tether my iPhone to my laptop, as cool as it is, is not worth the more expensive plan and the $20 a month tethering fee. So I won’t be keeping my current “unlimited” plan and will instead be downgrading to the 200MB for $15 plan. Even if I do need an additional 200MB on occasion it will still just be equal to the $30 I’m paying now.

Here is a roundup from Macworld on the new data plan changes. Here are directions for how you can create your own iPhone data usage report. And here is Neven’s report, from whom I was spurred to post my own.

My AT&T Wireless Data Usage

Diary of an iPad Owner

Saturday, April 3, 2010

7:00 am: Ben, Terry, and I are driving down to the Leawood Apple store to stand in line for an iPad. Well, technically it’s me who’ll be standing in line to buy an iPad — the guys are coming along because I convinced them it’d be fun.

7:30 am: We are here. Coffee in hand. And only 75 people in line ahead of us. I talked to the first few folks who apparently arrived the night before around 8:00 pm (a group of them, too, yet only one guy who’s actually buying the iPad). I guess the next group showed up around 2:00 am, and all the rest of us have been trickling in since 6:00.

7:32 am: A young guy and his mom get in line behind us. The guy is wearing a “WWSJD” t-shirt. I like to think that I’m less nerdy than he is, but the fact is I am ahead of him in line.

7:39 am: We are awkwardly interviewed by a young college student, and then a lady comes by handing out menus for breakfast pizza from California Pizza Kitchen. CPK will deliver to us while we wait in line. It’s a clever idea, but nobody orders (I know I’d rather spend that $10 on a few apps).

7:46 am: The WWSJD dude sends his mom to get Starbucks.

8:11 am: The couple in front of us share some of their donuts. (This would have been better 30 minutes ago when my coffee was still hot.)

8:55 am: The store is about open. There have been random bursts of cheering and clapping coming from inside for the past half hour.

Our line (which has grown to about 200 people by now) is directed to split into two groups: those who pre-ordered their iPads, and those who did not. Those of us who didn’t pre-order outnumbered those who did at least five to one. Yet those in the pre-order line were served by the Apple sales team about four to one versus those of us in the non-pre-order line. Considering I’m stuck in the non-guaranteed-to-get-one, slow-moving iPad line, this is seriously annoying.

And now that the line is moving rumors are running amuck that the store is already approaching sold-out status. All of us who came so early to share donuts and buy iPads may have to come back at 3:00 pm to share sandwiches and fight for the leftover iPads (if there even are any).

10:19 am: It’s been nearly three hours in line. The store is not sold out of iPads, and I am finally next to go in. I am equally excited to get out of the cold and into the warm store as I am to actually drop 500 bucks on the iPad. Linda, a nice older lady, greets me and lets me in. She helps me gather my order, charges my Visa, and then sends me on my way. I buy the 16GB iPad, Apple’s black fitted iPad case, and a bluetooth keyboard.

11:00 am: I am back home and ready to unbox. Terry and Ben went home — they had their fun playing with the iPad at the Apple store while I was spending money. Now it’s my turn. Just me and my iPad.

My wife loves me, so she humors me and joins me for the unboxing.

I love her too, so I humor her and let her be the first to click the home button. Hmmm… oddly the thing is already powered on. As Anna clicks the home button the iPad brings up the “plug me into iTunes” display. Well, okay then.

It takes me over an hour to sync it for the first time and fine tune the placement of the icons. But the wait is worth it. In the meantime I surf iTunes and spend next month’s coffee budget on Apps.

12:49 pm: Oh my goodness… my iPhone is so crowded and small and slow and tiny.

1:12 pm: My sister calls me asking what Anna’s and my plans are for Easter dinner and if she can join us.

“Of course you can,” I tell her.

She asks me what I’m up to today, and I tell her I’m playing with my new iPad. “What’s an iPad?” She asks.

2:04 am: My bout against the iPad’s battery has failed. I can barely keep my eyes open and this thing is still running bright.

Sunday, April 4

7:20am : Holy battery. Last night I plugged this thing in to my MacBook Pro with 11% battery life and five hours later it’s only at 62%. Clearly I need a dedicated wall charger.

8:25 am: I am so taking the iPad to church. What a great use-case scenario… I mean who needs a Bible, a note pad, and a pen in your pocket when you’ve got an iPad? It’s the future!

9:17 am: So I’m embarrassed to actually use the iPad for anything. I’m leaving it under my seat because I don’t want to attract any attention. This reminds me a lot of when I bought my iPhone. When the iPhone first came out they were so rare and exotic for the six months or so that every time I’d pull it out people would be like, “Woah! Is that an iPhone?!” And so using my iPhone in public felt like bragging.

11:29 am: I wish Amazon would gift me a free Kindle version of all the new, hard-cover books I’ve ordered lately. Instead of carrying Linchpin, REWORK, and Your Marketing Sucks in my backpack all at the same time it would be ergonomically glorious to have them on my iPad instead. I may never buy a physical book again.

Monday, April 5

7:00 am: The week begins, and I am spending my daily coffee and reading routine downstairs and on the couch this morning.

This is also when I scrub my to-do list and plan my day. And though Things for the iPad is beautiful, it is not nearly as robust as its Mac counterpart. There are so many features on the Mac desktop version that I use regularly. Such as linking emails inside of to-do items and re-shuffling tasks to another due date which I know I won’t get today. But Things on the iPad is more akin to the iPhone version and so a lot of this I can’t do.

But perhaps I don’t necessarily mind the division between work and play. It’s actually a bit nice to do my reading with coffee from the living room and then scrub my email and to-do list from the office.

And speaking of reading: the Wall Street Journal app sucks. It’s slow and will not relent in up-selling me to a subscription. I would consider a subscription if this non-subscriber’s experience were not so horrendous.

9:52 am: So I was going to bring only my iPad to work today, but I wimped out. I will try to do all I can to see if I can get by with just the iPad today, but I’ve got my MacBook Pro with me just in case…

10:19 am: Just met with Jono in a side room to show off our website’s glorious lack of video compatibility on an iPad. For some reason, seeing our website in 1024×768 instead of 480×320, the need to get a non-flash video solution becomes much more real.

12:00 pm: Combing through my email at work for pass number two today. Email on the iPad is easy and delightful, but my workflow and systems are kinda broke now. All the weekly reports that get sent to me on Monday mornings couldn’t be saved to their folders on my Laptop (which means I have to just delete those emails, or process them again later).

12:14 pm: An email from Isaac with the PDF mockup of this month’s Partners Journal. The Journal looks fantastic on this display. But the 12-page, 6MB file is not easily flicked around in quick view.

12:59 pm: I bring the iPad to our first meeting together. Other than passing it around the table for my directs to check out, it gets no use at all. I write my notes down on the meeting handout as I usually do, and when I do need some info that is digital it is resting with my MacBook Pro and not my iPad.

3:10 pm: Sitting down at my desk and thanks to the florescent lights in my office the iPad is virtually unusable in here. I plug in my laptop to my 23-inch cinema display and work as I have every other day — with a mouse and a keyboard.

7:00 pm: I am done for the day at the office and am heading home. The battery is still at 60% — looks like the iPad got more use today than I’ve let on.

Tuesday, April 6

11:55 am: On my way to a noon meeting. I stop at the coffee shop for a lunch-time Americano. Eddie is walking by sees the iPad under my arm as I head in. He jumps in line with me and I give him a guided tour of some apps: Pages, Sketchbook Pro, and others. The presence of the iPad commanded the attention of everyone in line, even the cashier and barista (I should have asked for a discount).

Noon: Just like yesterday, the iPad’s only use in this meeting was to it show the fellow attendees.

One of the iPad’s best apps is Safari — especially when showing the big touch-screen display to people. It’s a great demo app because it gives them a chance to see something they’re familiar with (a web site) but experience it in a whole new way. Even for iPhone owners it is great to watch people take some time and hold the Web in their hands. Unfortunately the wi-fi in this back office is lousy. So I show them Mail and iBooks instead.

2:51 pm: Back at my office I walk across the hall to show Phil the iPad. He says he’s not getting one for a while because he doesn’t like to buy first-generation gadgets (as he pulls out his first-generation iPhone).

Phil’s wife, Alison, comes in to pick him up while we’re chatting over the iPad. He slides it over to her so she can check it out. She opens up Notes and begins typing away with no trouble at all. “Alison is awesome”, she taps.

It is a tense event to let someone play with your iPad. There is nothing which i want to hide, but it is quite personal to freely let people look at your email inbox, read your notes, and see what web page you were last viewing.

3:21 pm: Just downloaded WeatherStation Pro. It’s a good thing apps are a tax write off I keep telling myself.

4:29 pm: I’ve got a meeting in one minute with Jarrod. I walk out to grab a print out and leave the iPad on my desk. As I walk back in Jarrod’s in my office waiting and perusing the apps on my iPad. Later I open the Notes app to discover a new note: “Jarrod is awesome, too.”

10:15 pm: Up until now it’s always been at my desk where I spend so much of my time. It is where I work and where I create. I write, design, pay bills, share pictures, and more. Something the iPad has really helped me do is disconnect work from play from entertainment from incessant nagging that all exists on my computer.

Unlike my laptop, the iPad is not a do-all, be-all device. Its limited scope helps me stay connected to news and others things which I enjoy but without the distraction of all those things I could be doing at that time.

Wednesday, April 7

6:00 am: My morning routine hits the iPad again. The iPad is great for reading and replying to email, but it’s not great at processing email. At least not the way I process it. I can’t send an actionable email into Things as a to-do item when I’m using the iPad. I can’t save a file from the email into a project’s folder in Dropbox. All this means that checking and processing email on my iPad is about as productive as checking email on my iPhone (though it certainly is a better experience).

Checking email on my iPad is, more often than not, an interim checking. I reply to conversations or other threads but can’t really do much else. And so I have to come back to many of some of those messages a second time when I am at my laptop so I can fully process them into my workflow.

7:00 am: The iPad should have shipped with fingernail clippers and a screen cleaning cloth made of denim.

8:19 am: It’s interesting how some apps, like Pages, require use of the devices orientation for certain functionality.

1:15 pm: Reading in Instapaper. Again. This app has become one of the most-used on my iPad (I use it much more than I use it on my iPhone). It’s a gift to guys like me who have a very hard time doing only one thing at at time. And I love it so much I’ve even started sending articles to Instapaper which I want to read right at that moment, but would rather read in Instapaper on my iPad than in Safari on my MacBook Pro.

1:32 pm I wish iPhone OS shipped with Menlo. But more than that, I wish there was an iPad-version of MarsEdit. Currently I’m unable to post links on shawnblanc.net with the iPad due to some lame limitations in the WordPress Web interface, and because the WP app does not support custom fields. And speaking of writing: All this typing and I have not yet used that bluetooth keyboard. Primarily I guess because it’s not with me most of the time (right now it’s sitting on a shelf above my home office desk).

9:01 pm: Ay caramba. I wish “spp” would auto-correct to “app” instead of “spa”.

Thursday, April 8

7:40 am: Today begins the first real-life, 4-day test of my iPad. I am fairly certain that my iPad can’t replace my laptop. But it could replace my iPhone as the new Command Central for times like today.

This afternoon begins a four-day conference which we are hosting. And so this weekend my normal work schedule and tasks all get put on hold while we host 2,000 conference goers. There will be a lot of communicating via emails (though not as much as through phone calls and texts), and a good deal of short pow-wows.

For the past three years I’ve used my iPhone as Command Central when running marketing at our conferences. This weekend it will be interesting to see if and how the iPad holds up as a replacement for my laptop and an addition to my iPhone.

8:38 am: Test failed: the Monoprice Power Station portable iPhone battery backup dongle does not charge my iPad.

12:15 pm: Sitting in the back room with the rest of the Web team. They’re updating the website, and I’m checking my email. Nick comes in to say hello. He’s my only other friend who owns an iPad and I haven’t seen him since last Friday. So I make him sit down and we geek out over our favorite apps.

I show him some of my embarrassing finger paintings from SketchBook Pro, and he asks me to help him figure out one of the puzzles in Labrynth 2. We’ve officially established ourselves as the nerdiest two in the room.

4:40 pm: I bump into Mark in the main auditorium. He heard I got an iPad and wants to check it out. I hand it to him and he wimpishly peruses it. And so I’ve realized that when showing the iPad to someone, it helps to walk them through how to use it. Or at least show them which apps to tap on, and what do do from there. A lot of people like to see it and hold it, but would rather that I demo it for them.

5:30 pm: So I’ve been thinking a lot today if this iPad could actually replace my MacBook Pro or not. There are certainly some great advantages to it. Like how small and lightweight it is, and the incredible battery life. Some other things I don’t mind:

  • The screen size: Perhaps it’s because i’m used to software like this running on a 3.5-inch screen instead of a 10-inch one, or perhaps it’s the single-app view versus my MacBook Pro’s multi-window view, but the smaller screen (compared to my 15-inch laptop and my 23-inch Cinema Display) really doesn’t bother me.

  • The software keyboard: It certainly takes some getting used to, but for casual use it is perfectly fine. In no way does the software keyboard make me want to chuck this iPad like a frisbee. Sure, I can’t type long-form papers or articles on it, but that’s okay. That’s what the bluetooth keyboard is for.

Friday, April 9

7:40 am: With my iPhone (or just about any other gadget for that matter) it’s not uncommon for the battery life to affect the workflow and interaction I have with the device. But it’s always a negative issue: crappy battery life interrupts and hinders my use of the device.

But with do to the iPad, this is the first time ever that incredible battery life has affected my workflow and usage of a device. Since the iPad’s battery lasts so long I rarely need to plug it in to charge it. Moreover, since it won’t charge through my USB hub, when I do plug it in I rarely connect it to my computer. Thus, I have to make a concerted effort to remember to connect my iPad to my computer and sync it. Why I can’t sync via Wi-Fi (like Cultured Code does with Things) is beyond me.

8:03 am: Every Friday morning Josh and I go get coffee at Einstein Bagels. He just got a new Audi so normally he drives, but today I do so he can play with the iPad. He teases me about the email in the Notes app that I sent to John Gruber pointing out some typos. It’s a little embarrassing, but not really. But clearly I am going to have to start using 1Password for notes that i don’t want other folks to see. People will fiddle around on your iPad and find stuff much more easily than they would if they were fiddling around on your laptop.

10:40 am: I comb through this morning’s fury of new emails related to the conference and yet I’m still thinking if the iPad could actually replace my laptop or not. The blaring hurdles for that to happen are:

  • To-do management: maybe I’m complicated, but it bugs me that I have no way to send tasks into Things. And I have no way to sync over the air so that my iPhone and iPad are in sync without needing my Mac as the mediator.

  • Blogging: Yeah, I still don’t have a way to post links to my website…

  • No Dropbox: all of the files and projects I am currently working on are kept in Dropbox. This keeps them backed up and secure in real time, but also makes them available for viewing and emailing if I’m away from my computer. No doubt the Dropbox team is working on an iPad app, which will be lovely (since this other app called GoodReader sucks), but even still it will only be a useful app for viewing files which are already in my Dropbox and not for syncing or transferring files to and from my iPad.

  • No file storage or management (I have to leave emails in my inbox if they contain files I want to save)

  • No document syncing: Well, no good document syncing, that is. I want the document I’m writing to exist on my Mac and on my iPad (and why not my iPhone, too?). Krikey… I am dying for Simplenote to make its way to my iPad (but even then, it would just be for plain text files). I spent $10 on Pages… really wish I could have some of those documents synced without the nightmare of USB and manual version control.

The size, weight, and battery life of the iPad make me want to leave my laptop at home forever. But the above unordered list necessitates that I don’t. My next laptop could be a MacBook Air.

2:08 pm: Watching a video in a sun-lit room… Oh yeah, this is why I hate glossy displays.

Sunday, April 11

8:39 am: I take the iPad to church again; my confidence to use it in public has grown. Also, Anna and I sit in a row occupied by nobody else.

I try to tap out notes from this morning’s sermon, but I can’t keep up — my tap typing is too slow. The iPad’s auto-correct turns my would-be notes into fragmented sentences less understandable than my own chicken-scratch hand writing. At least I can email them to myself for decoding later.

Diary of an iPad Owner

Network Speed Tests on my Three Devices

Sitting at my desk which is about seven feet from my wireless router I ran the Speed Test on my MacBook Pro, iPhone 3GS and iPad. My cable internet provider is Time Warner. I ran the test five times on each device and averaged the times. Here are the results.

Device Download Speed Upload Speed Latency (Ping)
iPhone 3GS 1.206 Mbps 0.452 Mbps 596.8 ms
iPad 3.256 0.462 223.4
MacBook Pro* 9.532 0.49 53.8

** My MBP is the early 2008 model with a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, “Penryn” processor and 4GB or memory.*

Since the above info is pretty unexciting, be sure to check out Craig Hockenberry’s iPad benchmarks for native app and website javascript performance compared to the 3GS and original iPhone.

Network Speed Tests on my Three Devices

An Initial Miscellany of the iPad

Early this morning I drove to Kansas City’s Apple retail store with two of my friends. One of whom is quite nerdy and the other who is quite not nerdy. We stood in line to buy an iPad. Well, technically I stood in line to buy an iPad — my friends came along because I convinced them it’d be fun.

When we arrived at 7:30am there were about 75 people in line already. The first few folks had arrived the night before around 8:00pm, the next group came at 2:00am, and all the others began trickling in around 6:00am.

While waiting in line we were awkwardly interviewed by a young college student, given the opportunity to order breakfast from the California Pizza Kitchen, and had awkwardly-geeky conversations with those in line around us.

The store opened at 9:00am and our line (which had grown to about 200 people by then) was directed to split in two: those who had pre-ordered their iPads and those who had not. Those of us who did not pre-order outnumbered those who had five to one. However, those in the pre-order line were served by the Apple sales team about four to one versus those of us in the non-pre-order line.

Once the line began moving rumors kept murmuring amongst our line that the store was already approaching sold out status, and that all of us who had come so early to buy our iPads would have to come back at 3:00pm to pick up the leftovers, if there were any.

After three hours waiting in line I finally made it into the store. A nice old lady named Linda helped me gather my order and she checked me out on her iPhone. I bought the 16GB iPad, Apple’s black fitted case, and a bluetooth keyboard. Linda had me sign for the purchase using my index finger, and the receipt was emailed to my Mobile Me account. Amazing.

I had a lot of people ask me why I didn’t pre-order mine. Well, three weeks ago I wasn’t entirely convinced that I wanted one on day one. Secondly, I knew that if I did want one I would have no trouble standing in line at an Apple Stores in Kansas City. And lastly, I did not want to hope in UPS to deliver an iPad to my home first thing in the morning.

After a day of using the iPad not only is the battery still not dead, but this thing is what I have always wanted my iPhone to be. The iPad is an easy, fun-to-use device for the day-to-day at my job (which on many days is comprised mostly of emails, instant messaging with my team, attending or leading meetings, and writing).

I am very much looking forward to how the iPad will affect my day-to-day life at work. Or perhaps, how my day-to-day will be affected by the iPad. This little tablet is so different than what I was expecting that really I haven’t found the words for it yet. That doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t have at least a few words to write about my experience with the iPad so far…

Setting it up (iTunes)

Unexpectedly, after unboxing my iPad, I found it was already powered on. Clicking the home button showed you the “connect to iTunes” image.

You can’t do anything until you connect it to iTunes on your Mac or PC. Once you do, you can then begin registering it in iTunes and simultaneously fiddling with the iPad itself.

I didn’t realize how persnickety I am, but I was more distracted with getting the right apps, songs, and photos installed first than I was to start fiddling with the actual device. Since I already knew what I wanted on there (practically down to what apps in what places), to fiddle with it before I had it set up felt like trying to ride a bike without the handlebars put on yet.

Thoughts on the Hardware

It’s what’s inside that counts, and the haters are wrong: this thing does have flash. It’s called Apple’s A4 processor. Oh. my. word. This thing is so smooth and so fast. Combine that with the longest battery ever for an Apple device and you’ve got a machine that was built to be used. Thank you.

But it’s not just the guts that make the iPad so fantastic. I mean, the shell is just as clever as the pieces it holds together. Although the form factor is smaller and heavier than I thought it would be, it feels just right. And yes the bezel looks large and awkward on all the pictures, but it is the perfect size when holding in your hands (if anything, there could be more bezel).

The aluminum back is beautiful, but it’s also that same slip-friendly metal that was on the first-generation iPhone. And since it’s a bit heavy, I am somewhat nervous about dropping the sucker. Though Jony Ive says the iPad was designed to be tossed around:

If it works beautifully, it should also work robustly,” he says. “It’s made for people to chuck onto the car seat and thrust into luggage without thinking. It’s not to be delicate with.

And so it’s true: the iPad is tough. And honestly, my concerns with dropping it have more to do with how it would interrupt my workflow than if it would break the darn thing.

My only quibble with the hardware is that I wish you could set the double click home button to more options. On my MacBook Pro i have multiple keyboard shortcuts to get to apps and settings that I frequently use. To be able to have a super-fast way to launch Mail or Notes or something would be lovely. (Perhaps this is a software quibble and not a hardware one. But regardless it’s a quibble.)

Accessories

I picked up Apple’s iPad case and a Bluetooth keyboard. The keyboard can be usable for much more than just pairing to the iPad, and the Apple case is useful for much more than propping the device up slightly for better typing.

The case is fantastic. I have never had an iPhone case or screen cover, but the iPad case is great. It allows for a better grip to the iPad, and makes it much easier to use when on a table or on your lap. And like I tweeted this morning, about 9 out of 10 folks coming out the Apple store had this Apple case in hand along with their iPad.

Thoughts on the OS and Apps

There is so much good on this device when it comes to software. I am looking forward to see what sorts of UI and UX settings from the iPad also end up in the next major OS release for iPhone and iPod Touches. For instance, home- and lock-screen rotation based on device orientation would likely be excruciatingly annoying on an iPhone.

What irks me the most is the springboard spatiality which Lukas Mathis wrote about a few days ago. Unless you have your home screen completely full with icons there will always a randomly-displaced app icon, and the only one ever in the same location is the top left one.

And the only bug I came across in the OS was that two times today I found myself “stuck” in an app. For instance in the photo album when trying to adjust the size and placement of a picture of my old Jeep, Champ, I got stuck in a spot where all i could do was pinch and zoom the image — no other controls were available and i had to quit out to get back in.

Similarly, when I clicked on a music video that came with a John Mayer album i got stuck on music videos section with no way in the UI to get back to the iPod main controls without quitting and then going back in.

Mobile Safari

My first thought was that the iPad actually is the best way to experience the Web. Safari is so fast, and navigating around with your fingertips is so natural.

As far as the UI of Safari, the thing I’m most thrown off by is the design of the navigation and address bar at the top.

It’s a logical choice to move the navigation, bookmarks and etcetera buttons to the top address bar area on iPad’s mobile safari, rather than having it sit on the bottom. In iPhone’s Mobile Safari the address bar disappears when you scroll down a web page. On the iPad it doesn’t.

I frequently found myself wanting to go to the navigation buttons based on where they would be on the iPhone. While many apps (such as the App Store app) maintain a similar navigation structure as on the iPhone some apps redo it altogether. Just enough to make sense in context, yet still be a bit confusing to a dude who’s been using his iPhone for nearly three years.

Safari on iPad includes a built-in bookmarks bar, just like the on you see in Safari on your Mac. But many of my synced bookmarks in the bookmarks are not usable on my iPad. Six out of the nine aren’t website bookmarks but are javascript bookmarklets, and two of them don’t work with my iPad (MarsEdit and Yojimbo).

Things (to-do app) for iPad

Things for iPad is, by far, the most attractive iteration of Things yet. It looks very much like an iPad app with the papery-texture added to the UI. And it acts very much like an iPad app: you can pinch open a project to peek at its tasks just like you would to pinch open a photo album to peek at its images.

And the latest update of Things on the Mac (1.3.3.) adds smart syncing if you have multiple devices (like an iPhone and iPad) all with a copy of Things on them. I tested it out by adding or checking off different to-do items on my iPad, iPhone, and MacBook Pro and then launched the apps all to sync. And it worked like a charm.

1Password

The genius of 1Password never sank in for me until I began using its iPad version today. It is like a pre-meditated version of Yojimbo for your iPad. You can safely slot all your vital info into it and have it available whenever you need it. There have been more than one occasions when I’ve need access to my license plate number, bank routing number, etc., but wasn’t at my computer and didn’t have the info committed to memory.

Many of those items are encrypted in my Yojimbo library but if I’m not at my laptop I’m out of luck. 1Password does way, way more than keep website login information. It keeps helpful and necessary information, and it keeps it safe. (Thanks, Dave!)

iCal

Once a meeting or event is added to iCal on the iPad then, just like in iPhone, you cannot change the calendar it’s in. This is always frustrating for me because in have a couple calendars that are synced to my assistant’s iCal and a few that are personal. If i make a meeting in the wrong calendar my assistant won’t see it unless I delete and start over, or remember to change it on my MacBook Pro.

NetNewsWire

Arguably the best feed reader on the iPad. Not that there are many, but NNW on the iPad is very much in its element. I adore NNW on my Mac and using its iPad counterpart feels like home.

Pages

Currently Pages is the top paid app in the iPad App Store. No doubt it’s due to promotion by Apple and simply from people wanting to know how a word processor works on a touch device. “If this tablet is going to replace my laptop I’d better have a word processor on it.”

I downloaded it. And yeah, Pages is a very clever and usable App. But the touch interface is not nearly as robust as having one hand on the mouse and one hand on the keyboard. Moreover, I’m a keyboard Junkie — I use keyboard shortcuts like they’re going out of style(!).

Something else in Pages which throws me off is that there is not a save function. By no means is this a bad thing; I’m just so used to saving regularly (and manually). While typing with my Bluetooth keyboard I kept hitting command+s regularly (Partly because I kept thinking I would get interrupted by a phone call (on the iPad).).

Universal Apps, HD Apps, and Standard iPhone Apps

You can identify a universal app by the little plus symbol (+) parked in the top-left corner of the price of an iPhone or iPad app. A universal app is one that has a working version of itself for both iPhone and iPad.

For example: Instapaper Pro is universal, so all you have to do is buy it once and install it on both devices. Things however has an iPhone version and an iPad version — if you want it on both devices you have to buy both apps (which I did).

It is these iPhone apps which have also been built for the iPad that are now the best version of themselves. Twitterrific for iPad is the best version of Twitterrific on any device.

If the next iPhone is going to be called the iPhone HD and ship with a 640×960 screen, what will the App Store be like with all these current iPad apps coming out with names like “Cool App HD” and combined with all the newly-designed-for-iPhone-HD apps which will also be called “Cool App HD”?

Yikes! I think “Cool App for iPad” is a better name — it tells you precisely what it is (an iPad app) and precisely what you’re getting (an app for your iPad). Say what you mean and mean what you say.

And finally, when using iPhone apps on the iPad there is a nice bezel around the edge of the app, and a bar in place where the status bar normally is. But that is just about as far as the joy goes.

Most of my iPhone apps (even many of my favorite ones in all the world) suck on the iPad. Especially when pixel doubled.

I get that the graphics would have to be pixel doubled, but text too? Is that really necessary? It’s the text-based apps that are totally unusable on an iPad. Some of my favorite iPhone apps, like Birdhouse and Simplenote, are virtually useless on the iPad.

There are some other apps though that survive pixel doubling just fine, like FlightControl. It looks a little pixelated but is totally usable and still quite addicting. And Canabalt looks great as a matter of fact. Its finely-drawn pixel art blows up quite nicely.

If an iPhone app doesn’t support landscape mode then it won’t rotate its orientation with the iPad. Even at 1x size they won’t flip to be right-side-up if you’re holding the iPad upside-down.

Additional Miscellany

  • Wallpapers: I love that you can set different wallpapers for the lock screen and the home screen.

  • The delete key is in a different place on the iPad keyboard than it is on the iPhone’s. It’s in the place it should be, but it throws me off.

  • My wife is going to steal this thing.

  • Reading an iBook: It is ingenious how you can see the ink through the back of a page as you’re turning it in an iBooks book.

  • Mute: Hold the volume rocker button down for two seconds to mute the iPad (Via Twitterrific.)

  • Setting the viewport for your website: In my site’s header I used to have the following code to get it to render properly on an iPhone:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=780, initial-scale=0.4, minimum-scale=0.4" />

But it wasn’t filling up enough of the iPad’s screen when browsing. So I updated it to this:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=800” />

  • “Multitasking”: I have never been frustrated by iPhone’s lack of “multitasking” and on the iPad I actually prefer to be restrained to one thing at a time. (It helps me focus and stuff.) Just so long as apps have state persistence.

  • Apps currently in my iPad Dock: Safari, Notes, Mail, Calendar, Things

The apps that were on the iPhone which have now been re-built and designed for the iPad feel as if they belonged on the iPad all along. Even the apps that originated on the iPhone (such as Instapaper) now feel much more native, and all around more fantastic, on the iPad.

The iPad is not a giant iPod Touch. If anything, my iPhone is now an iPad Mini.

An Initial Miscellany of the iPad

Mr. Hines and the Unpublished, Unfinished Interviews

A few months ago I was asked by Ian Hines to conduct an interview via email. Unfortunately that interview was never completed. I am a slow correspondent, and just recently Ian had to end the interview early because he was taking his weblog down for professional reasons.

Ian was a fantastic interviewer, and I was not the only person he was chatting with. He also conducted interviews with Pat Dryburgh, Kyle Baxter, and Jorge Qunteros. All of which had interviews that were never published to Ian’s now-dissolved weblog. So instead, these three gentlemen posted their interviews with Ian onto their own sites. And so I’ve been provoked to do the same.

The Interview

  • Ian Hines: Let’s start at the beginning: How long have you kept a weblog, and what made you get started in the first place?
  • Shawn Blanc: I remember writing that first post as if I published it yesterday. I so clearly recall the first time I felt the novelty of writing something combined with the adrenaline rush of publishing it. Even now, four years later, I still feel that same novelty and that same rush every time I publish a new article.That first post was written on January 27, 2006 during a trip to Colorado. I wrote it on my 12-inch PowerBook G4 and published it on Blogspot.

    (Back then, all my blogging friends used Blogspot. Randy had been publishing his weblog for like 6 years already, and Josh was going on three or four I think. About six months later I migrated it to WordPress (version 2.1 I think) because the WordPress WYSISYG editor seemed way better than Blogspot’s.)

    I have always considered myself a writer, despite the fact that until I began publishing a weblog in 2006 I had barely done any writing. (Funny how it works like that.) So perhaps that is why I still recall that first post so much — because I was finally writing.

    Publishing a weblog has been the best thing I could have done for my writing. It is a format that really works for me: I enjoy it, I’m challenged by it, inspired by it, and frustrated by it. I love it and I hate it. Some days I cannot wait to sit down at my keyboard, while other days I consider quitting altogether and spending all that new free time building furniture. And but so the blend of emotion is sort of my proof that I ought to keep growing and writing.

    But if I ever did quit, I know I would miss it. Blogging in its purest form — when I’m not being influenced by stats, etc. — is really enjoyable to me.

  • Ian: It’s interesting that you mention the tension between loving blogging and thinking of quitting; I gather that that is a common feeling among dedicated bloggers. I’m curious how your blogging influences your professional and personal life, and visa versa? Would you say that you continue blogging in spite of it’s impact on your offline life, or because of it, or… what?
  • Shawn: Publishing my website influences my home and work life much the same as any other pursuit would. Growing up and all through school I studied Martial Arts, and it effected my whole life. I trained five days a week, and everything I did or thought revolved around Tae Kwon Do. My friends were in Martial Arts, we only ever watched fight movies, I read books about weapons and Japan and ninjas (seriously), and I made sure to buy clothes that would be most appropriate in case I were to get in a fight in a back alley.After that it was playing the drums. From my senior year of high school, on through college, and for my first five years on staff with the International House of Prayer I was a full-time drummer. My best friends were my bandmates, I visited drum websites, watched drum-solo videos on YouTube, spent all my money on drum gear, and listened to a lot of Carter Beauford.

    It was in 2007 when I began transitioning out of my life as a drummer and into a life of graphic design, writing, and much higher interest in technology and software.

    Obviously it’s not as cut and dry as I’ve made it sound — I am still a Black Belt, I still own my drum kit, and I was writing and designing and being nerdy before 2007. But my point here is that there are seasons of my life which can clearly be earmarked by what hobby or pursuit I most had going at the time, and usually for a decade or more. Each of these pursuits had a profound impact on my daily life.

    So to answer your question, I write both in spite of, and because of, the impact on my offline life. I mean, of course it impacts my offline life. If it didn’t it would mean I wasn’t putting enough of myself into it. If I didn’t want my online writing to have an effect on my offline life then I suppose I ought to go find something which I would.

    The reason I sometimes consider quitting is probably just like anyone else who considers quitting something they do. There is always that feeling of the grass being greener on the other side. Will I be publishing my site 10 years from now? I don’t know. But I do know that for this season of life I have the time and the energy to write and I want to make the most of it so that when I look back it won’t be to see time wasted fiddling around on the internet.

  • Ian: Well said. But how about we flip it around: how does your offline life influence your writing?Back in early February you published a piece about titled “A Job Should Also Be an Education” in which you said:

     

    My uncertainties, struggles, and discoveries as the director of a marketing and creative team are something I’d very much like to talk about more here on shawnblanc.net, but I honestly don’t know where to begin.

    I started to briefly in “Marketing Shoes” and in my responses to Cameron Moll’s questions on leading an in-house design team. And posting my 1:1 form was another attempt at it.

    But talking about management, leadership, marketing strategy, and creative solutions from a corporate-feeling, non-profit organization’s standpoint is something I don’t feel very smart in. (And I generally prefer to only talk about things which I feel very smart in.)

     

    I, for one, would love to hear more about your work at the International House of Prayer, your hobbies, etc., but that doesn’t seem like something you’re inclined to focus on at SBnet.

    I guess what I’m really asking is: how do you decide what to — and what not to — write about?

     

  • Shawn: Well, I primarily decide what not to write about by wimping out — sometimes before I even get started. Or sometimes mid-way through.I think to myself: “Self, nobody cares about this crap. It’s not worth your time to write it, and it’s certainly not worth anyone else’s time to read. You and they both have something better to do.” Perhaps I’m being hard on myself at those times, or perhaps it truly is the voice of reason. We may never know.

    How do I decide what to write? No clue. I just write it I guess. There is no content strategy or research plan. I just write whenever I have a clear thought that I’d like to communicate. If I get stuck during the process of working out that thought then I’ll save it as a draft in MarsEdit and re-visit it later. More often than not I do come back to that post, finalize it, and publish it.

    And actually, I am inclined to talk more about my work on my weblog. Although that inclination has yet to translate into actual posts. As of this writing I have a handful of draft articles started which are not related to Apple or technology at all — they’re about marketing, the creative workflow, and management. Hopefully one or more of them will get finished and published soon and will pave the way for more of the like to follow.

  • Ian: Hmm… That leads me to an interesting thought: roughly how many draft articles do you have in MarsEdit right now? I tend never to have more than a few at a time, mostly because I find that when I get an idea it gnaws at me until I publish it.
  • Shawn: Roughly 30. The oldest dates back to February 2008. Some of the drafts are only one or two sentences, and are simply the start of a thought. Others are hundreds of words yet still incomplete, and a few are would-be links.
  • Ian: Do you find that — at least in your personal opinion — you write better when the idea pours out of you or when you take more time to write it in drafts?
  • Shawn: I guess it depends on the definition of writing better. If I have an idea that just pours out then yes, the initial foundation for what I’m writing is certainly much stronger than an idea I’m unclear on and trying to winkle through. But a piece that I were to write quickly and then publish would not nearly be as well written as one I took the time to write, edit, re-write, and then edit some more.In my opinion, my strongest articles are ones which I spend a significant amount of time on (sometimes several weeks) before publishing. Some of those articles started as an idea that just “poured out”, but some of them didn’t.
  • Ian: Makes sense. I’ve never really been much for drafts in any context; even major academic papers are usually just written in one go-through. I tend to edit as I go (for better or for worse).
  • Shawn: Yeah, I tend to edit as I go too. And I hate that I do that. It slows me down and I don’t think it leads to a better first draft.When I edit as I go I have too much focus on writing well and not just writing. That’s Natalie Goldberg’s big thing in her book Writing Down the Bones — she’s always saying to just write. Write. Write!

    The trouble with editing as I go is that I lose track of where I’m going because I focus too much on where I’ve been. Even now, as I’m typing this answer at this moment I’m editing it as I go. (!!) For me, it’s a habit I want to kick but it’s easier written than done.

  • Ian: You are, I’d wager, best known for your glowing and fantastically spot-on app reviews. In fact I feel like I’ve seen you refer to yourself as a software evangelist. How did you come to start writing those?
  • Shawn: Thanks for the kind words, though I can’t ever remember referring to myself as a “software evangelist”. I certainly do like the stuff though.How exactly I fell into writing those winded reviews I’m not really sure. Though I do know it all started with my review of NetNewsWire. I wanted to write something of length that had a storyline, yet was chock-full of nerdy content. A review of an app that I love seemed like the perfect solution. And it was.

    For me, writing a software review isn’t so much about giving the ins and outs of an application. It’s about telling a story and sharing a point of view from my eyes and then weaving the piece of software into that storyline.

Mr. Hines and the Unpublished, Unfinished Interviews

Attention, Trust, and Advertising

John Gruber, in his response to Jason Snell’s article regarding full-content RSS feeds, which was a response to Merlin Mann’s frustration with non-full-content RSS feeds:

If you’ve got a model where revenue is tied only to web page views, switching to full-content RSS feeds will hurt, at least in the short term. The problem, I say, isn’t with full-content RSS feeds, but rather with a business model that hinges solely on web page views. The precious commodity that we, as publishers, have to offer advertisers is the attention of our readers. Web page views are a terribly inaccurate, if not outright misleading, metric for attention. Subscribers to a full-content RSS feed are among the readers paying the most attention, but generate among the least web page views.

A reader asking for a full-content RSS feed is a reader who wants to pay more attention to what you publish. There have to be ways to thrive financially from that.

John’s 100% right: “The precious commodity that we, as publishers, have to offer advertisers is the attention of our readers.”

But it doesn’t stop there. If attention is the resource, trust is what makes that resource valuable. Because trust turns attention into permission.

Seth Godin:

Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them.

It recognizes the new power of the best consumers to ignore marketing. It realizes that treating people with respect is the best way to earn their attention.

Pay attention is a key phrase here, because permission marketers understand that when someone chooses to pay attention they are actually paying you with something precious. And there’s no way they can get their attention back if they change their mind. Attention becomes an important asset, something to be valued, not wasted.

The most effective ads are the ones placed within a permission-based content model, because it’s a model built on trust. One friend recommending something to another friend is worth its weight in marketing gold.

Here’s an interesting side note: In general, the months which generate the highest percentage of click-through rates for the Fusion Ads displayed on shawnblanc.net are not the months with the highest page views. Rather they are the months in which I write the most.

If, during a month, the bulk of this site’s traffic comes from external links to a popular article I wrote, click-through percentages are lower for that month. If the bulk of the traffic comes from regular readers visiting the site to read then click-through percentages are higher.

In short: Attention alone does not make the ads more effective. (Even though during those months with higher page views I had the attention of more people unacquainted visitors don’t click on the Fusion Network ads nearly as much as regular readers do.)

Attention alone does not create the most valuable opportunity for an advertiser. Interruption marketing is also based on attention, but it’s forced attention rather than volunteered. (When was the last time you bought something from a door-to-door salesman or a telemarketer?) If you, as a reader, don’t trust me, or John, or Macworld, or The Atlantic, or whomever, then you won’t give us your attention. And you certainly won’t give us permission to place ads in front of you so we can continue writing and still afford put food on our tables.

John’s RSS sponsorship model is not a new idea. Websites have been trying to use their RSS feed to monetize their site for nearly a decade. But much of it is based on the same idea that “impressions equal value”. Impressions do not equal value, impact does. And impact comes through trust. While Digg and Slashdot can generate page views, only the publisher can generate trust.

Attention, Trust, and Advertising