Instant-On MacBooks

One of the features I’ve wanted since the inception of the iPhone and iPad is instant on and off for my MacBook Pro. As solid state storage prices continue to plummet year-after-year, and as Apple continues to fine-tune OS X, we seem to be getting much closer to this being a reality.

The current generation MacBook Air is no slouch. It boots in a matter of seconds, and can go to sleep and wake up extremely quickly. There’s still more work to be done, and instant-on is a feature that needs to be across the board with all MacBook products. If Apple were to remove the optical drives from all MacBook Pros, fill that space with higher capacity battery, and move to the same small package SSD drive that the Air uses, this would be my ideal configuration.

On the subject of battery performance, the iPad has thirty days of standby time on a single charge. At some point we’ll get there as well on the MacBook line, however, there are far larger problems to deal with. First of all, on iOS devices, Apple doesn’t use x86 architecture. Macs are powered by Intel processors, and iOS by Apple’s own A5/A5X. Unless Apple eschewed Intel for Arm architecture on Macs, I can’t see huge strides being made by Intel on the mobile chip from as far as power consumption is concerned. Sure, every year Intel manages a die shrink and squeezes in an optimization here and there to improve power consumption, but they aren’t making improvements at the rate we need.

You can’t ignore the software. It’s unequivocal that developers need to work hard to ensure optimal tuning for battery performance on mobile computers. Release after release, Apple has continued to push forward on making sure each new version of OS X is optimized for the latest generation hardware, thus improving battery performance. This isn’t any different with OS X 10.8. Whilst I have yet to try Mountain Lion, I hear some people reporting that the developer previews — coupled with the latest generation MacBook Air — equate to much faster cold boot and sleep/wake performance. This is welcome news, and I can’t wait to see just how much better Apple can do with the imminent release these new MacBooks and Mountain Lion later this summer.

It Is Only A Matter of Time before Google Exerts More Control over Android

It’s only a matter of time before Google starts to feel that it should exert more pressure on its device manufacturing partners. In fact, this is happening right now (for reasons I’ll get into). I’ll posit that ODM’s (Original Equipment Manufacturers) need Google more than Google needs them (for now).

Presently it may seem preposterous that Google could continue to do well with Android if it didn’t have Samsung, or perhaps HTC to a lesser extent. When Google purchased Motorola mobility last year, they made a clear statement that they had no plans to screw over (obviously I’m not quoting verbatim here) their partners. The reality is Google needs to do something about the fragmentation of the platform. Most people seem to be cognizant of this as well outside of Google — be it third party developers or tech savvy consumers.

We may not see massive change overnight, but it feels as if things will incrementally change from here on out. First it’s an acquisition of a substantial mobile phone company (Motorola), and then it’s Google selling their own devices directly to consumers — sans carrier contract.

Amir Efrati reporting for the WSJ:

Google will work with as many as five manufacturers at a time to create a portfolio of “Nexus” lead devices that include smartphones and tablets, said a person familiar with the matter. Google also plans to sell the gadgets directly to consumers in the U.S., Europe and Asia through its website, and potentially through some retailers, this person said.

This strikes me as the smart and correct thing to do. Sure, this won’t solve the fragmentation issue overnight — quite the contrary, it will never be fully eliminated unless Google takes full control over the manufacturing of the hardware and software.

I’m sure Google in the present day loves their device partners, but this can change quickly. What Samsung has done to propel Android as a platform can’t be ignored. The sheer number of Android devices Samsung sells makes it one of the top mobile phone manufacturers. If I were at Google, I would be devising ways of how the company could slowly start to push third party ODMs out of the way. Envisage what Android could be like if Google fully owned the hardware and software experience, from top to bottom? Indeed some may be thinking right now that this would mean far too much control, and that Android wouldn’t be “open” enough. I posit that a fully owned experience by Google could still retain the more flexible nature of Android that the company initially envisioned and conceived. This could happen, all whilst keeping the operating system a complete and cohesive experience — sans carrier app bloat and third party skins messing around with the pure Android experience. There’s zero reason why having full control over the hardware and software experience means that Google would suddenly make Android less flexible to tinkering.

Another part worth citing from this WSJ piece:

Carriers also are sometimes slow to push through software updates to phones, and they preload apps of their own choosing on devices. By avoiding carriers, Google and its hardware partners can get devices to market faster, often by several months.

They’re sometimes slow to push through software updates? Try always. Carriers couldn’t care less about support existing customers. Instead of pushing out software updates, they would rather you just buy a new phone. This is the sad world many Android customers are facing today. This also isn’t just about Google being able to push out devices to market faster though. The much bigger picture is that Android users will be infinitely more happy with updated devices, rather than getting screwed on after sales support twelve months onward. And Google will no doubt love ensuring that these same people are experiencing Android the way it’s meant to be — to wit, with the latest and most innovative UI and UX to come out of their labs.

Small baby steps are needed to get Google to where they need to be. They know they can’t pull the plug on their partners right now — lest face their pure unadulterated wrath. But perhaps selling their own devices directly to customers, as well as owning Motorola mobility will put them in a position of power one day. Perhaps now it may seem foolhardy of me to think things will change in the not to distant future, however, I’d honestly love to see Android evolve in the right direction as a beautiful alternative to iOS. This is not a matter of Google not having enough talent to pull it off — after all, Ice Cream Sandwich was a massive step in the right direction. The herculean task Google is faced with right now is fully controlling Android’s destiny — something that seems slightly ambiguous to me considering the plethora of different devices with different versions of the operating system available today.

Instacast 2.0 And The Entitlement-Minded Morons

I love Instacast. It’s the best podcasting app that’s available for iOS as far as I’m concerned. I’ve been a fan of it since day one too, and this 2.0 release certainly does not disappoint. Here’s the thing: since Apple has no infrastructure in place to support paid app upgrades, developers are forced to either take massive profit loses by charging very little, or offer in-app purchases in an effort to recoup their some of their development costs. This is what happened with the recent release of Instcast 2.0 for iPhone (the iPad version will get updated later on). The developer, Vemedio in this case decided to drop the price of the app from $4.99 to $0.99 — though some features previously had were removed and added into a “Pro” in-app purchase for $1.99 — arguably this price is a pittance.

I’ve been involved in the software industry for a number of years, and have worked closely with developers, project managers, and designers. I know how hard all of these people work to ship a major new release. Shipping is not easy. You pour your heart and soul into the product, and hope that the pricing is right to sustain further development. Once you ship, the party doesn’t stop. You need to have a healthy dose of cash flowing in every month in order to pay people to continue to iterate and work on your app. If you’re just a one man or woman development shop, you may only need worry about yourself, however it’s even more important that you have a sustainable business model so you can remain self-employed.

It saddens me when I see a small development company like Vemedio release a great 2.0 product, but get rewarded with plenty of one and two star reviews — all people bitching about the pricing structure change. Look, I get that some people are pissed off that features they previously had, such as playlist management, were removed and then added as an in-app purchase. The thing is, $1.99 is such an insignificant price to pay for that plus a few other great features. Unlike what some believe, push notifications were never a feature in Instacast 1.0 (only local notifications were supported). I look at the in-app purchase as a way of funding the continued development of a fantastic product. Besides, if 2.0 were released as a completely separate product, you’d end up paying more for a major upgrade — likely $4.99, which was the original price prior to the latest release.

As soon as I installed 2.0, I happily paid the $1.99 for the in-app purchase. There’s no good reason why anyone should be upset by the new pricing structure of the app. Since the inception of the App Store and the $0.99 impulse buy, we have cultivated an ecosystem where incredibly powerful software is available for purchase for less money than what you spend at Starbucks every month. Unfortunately, some people have a huge sense of entitlement, and think they’re now owed something for nothing when developers decide to offer things like in-app purchases.

We simply can’t continue to foster a robust ecosystem of amazing app development, if developers themselves are constantly pressured into lowering the price of their apps — all whilst delivering more and more features to the end-user. This is beyond a shadow of a doubt, not sustainable, and it’s an unrealistic expectation for any of us to have.

If you enjoy beautiful, hand-crafted software on your iPhone, there’s zero reason why you should hesitate to buy the $1.99 in-app purchase. You won’t regret it, not to mention you’ll know that money is being funnelled back into the continued improvement of a truly great product.

Lest We Forget The Talented Designers And Developers

Everyone benefits from competition — both we the consumers, and technology companies — makers of our products. Competition means not only choice for everyone, but also keeps the makers of the products we use on their toes.

Companies like Apple are one of the rare examples that I can think of that have superlative industrial design and innovation on their own — without being influenced by other competing companies. Whilst I’m primarily an iOS user, I still yearn for solid competition in the mobile space. This is not because I wish Apple ill will, or wish them to be knocked off their proverbial throne, but because they need strong competition. Even the best companies that are filled to the brim with the best talent need solid competition. This is just a healthy way for the entire industry to operate.

Now well into 2012, everyone — including RIM — knows they’re struggling to keep afloat. I’ve discussed this before back in January, and the future outlook for the company doesn’t look promising — in fact I’d go as far to say that it’s down right depressing. That being said, I wanted to acknowledge something that RIM deserves credit for. Whilst the upper echelons of management are arguably bozos, the company has many talented developers and designers working underneath. It is easy for us to forget, or worse, dismiss these individuals. Worst case scenario, the company is sold off, and everyone loses their job. The sad part is the super talented designers, developers, and everyone in-between — except upper management — will lose their jobs without being paid out millions of dollars in severance fees. At big companies like this, the talented people that contributed to a product get virtually nothing, yet the people in charge running the business get millions of dollars for sucking.

Today news broke about BlackBerry 10, and by now you’ve more than likely gone through some of the screenshots that have been released. Judging purely on the screenshots that I’ve seen, there are some elements that I see borrowed from iOS, but there are also some elements borrowed from Android and even Windows Phone 7. I also had a chance to look at a quick video posted by The Verge on how the actual interface and elements interact with each other. I must say it’s not looking bad at all. Dare I say some elements kind of look webOS-ish. That’s only a good thing, as webOS had a lot of great things going for it — things most people will never experience.

I’m looking forward to seeing how BlackBerry 10 turns out when it ships. I’d absolutely love to play with a loaner model if I can get my hands on one. Let’s hope those devices actually ship this year.

Firefox: Not A Good Citizen on OS X Lion (Part 2)

Yesterday, I opined how Firefox on OS X does not behave like a proper Cocoa Mac app. That’s because it truly isn’t, however, I didn’t go into the technical details as to why — though this was for the sole reason that I assumed most readers are technical enough and already were aware of the reasons.

On that note, I received a very thoughtful piece of reader mail this morning, and Justin gave me permission to share his comments.

Justin cites:

To make a long story short, from what I currently gather and understand, Firefox doesn’t hook into the system-level UI toolbox in the Cocoa API the way conventional Mac apps are. As a result, Firefox doesn’t use NSToolbar for its toolbars, and the URL field doesn’t use NSTextbox, the way Safari or Camino do. Firefox instead uses a custom UI layer based off of XUL. This is what allows Firefox to be easily skinnable/themeable, and it’s what allows for Firefox to maintain some level of UI coherency among Windows, OS X and Linux (KDE/Gnome). Opera also takes the same approach, and it’s why in both cases, the developers had to rely on a UI designer to custom create a default OS X theme which approximated the basic Mac UI conventions as closely as possible. This means that Firefox is a poor Mac OS X citizen by design, to accommodate theming and cross-platform compatibility.

That’s why Camino was such a compelling alternative (and continues to be a compelling alternative to me). By essentially embedding Gecko in a Cocoa shell, they created a browser which has the same engine and the same power as Firefox, while at the same time obeying and using all of the Mac’s UI conventions and features (but it also is the reason why Camino never supported theming or plugins, one of the most heavily demanded features made for Camino). Sadly, with the Mozilla developers ending support for Gecko embedding, and with development of Gecko far accelerating past Camino, this is all coming to an end sooner or later.

Justin is spot on, however, I’ll also reference a great piece by Mozilla Gecko engineer, Josh Aas. This is worth a re-link, as it’s a couple years old, however still holds water in 2012 as far as Firefox is concerned.

Josh Aas back in November 2010:

We dropped ATSUI for text rendering and moved to Harfbuzz and Core Text. The move to Harfbuzz for many operations was done for security reasons and in order to expose advanced typographic features. Font handling is difficult in general, and even more so in web browsers. We’d prefer to depend on open source font code if possible because we can patch it quickly and participate in improving it.

And:

We also added support for the Cocoa NPAPI event model and the Core Animation NPAPI drawing model. These specifications are a big step forward for browser plugins on Mac OS X. They are easier to develop for, properly documented, and designed with IPC in mind. As of version 10.1, Adobe’s Flash plugin supports Cocoa NPAPI. Which leads me to the next improvement…

Firefox 4.0 marked a monumental improvement for Mac users. As Josh explains in his piece, many portions of the app that weren’t written with Cocoa APIs, were in fact re-written. That being said, the user interface is still by and large built from Mozilla’s XUL. For various reasons of good cross-platform compatibility and reasonably fast deployment, I can’t see Mozilla forking the Mac version of Firefox and rebuilding the entire interface using only Apple’s tools. This would be a massive undertaking, and I get the feeling that this isn’t something that Mozilla is willing to do at this point. I’m confident that the people working on the OS X version have absolutely good intentions to continue to improve it. One only need look at the Firefox nightly builds to see how much work is going into the UI/UX of the app.

As always, I will continue to try future versions of Firefox. From what I’ve seen in the latest nightly builds, it’s going to get a hell of a lot better real soon.

Firefox: Not A Good Citizen on OS X Lion

I’ve been a long time Safari user. In fact, I continue to use it today as my primary web browser. I’ve never been averse to trying other browsers of course — what good geek wouldn’t try new software? This is something I have and will continue to do.

One browser that I have never been able to use full-time is Firefox. On the Mac, it just never felt quite right — it felt out of place and never well behaved like a native Cocoa app should. For the most part, Firefox has come a long way over the years. Just in the last twelve months, Mozilla has ramped out their development efforts on the browser. They’ve committed to much speedier releases — opting for constant iteration and smaller, more palatable builds — rather than waiting a year or two for the next major thing. Along the way, they’ve obliterated hundreds, if not thousands of bugs, increased performance, fixed massive memory leaks, and even re-written large portions of the app in Cocoa.

So here we are in April 2012 with the new release of Firefox 12. This is certainly not the same browser you knew a year or two ago. It’s faster in every way you can imagine — from web page rendering to interface improvements. There are, however problems with this browser that really annoy me. Problems that haven’t gone away with every release since version 8.0 on OS X Lion.

With the release of OS X 10.7, Apple added full-screen support in many of its own native apps — in addition to an API to allow developers to build this functionality into their own apps. Versions 8.0 through 12.0 have yet to support this functionality.

Another important feature was the addition of iOS-style scroll bars. I personally happen to like the way scroll bars disappear when not in use. I love the clean look and focus of the content on screen. The problem with Firefox here is that they have yet to release a version that supports this.

Lastly, Lion introduced inertial scrolling. That fun and quirky rubber-band effect when you hit the bottom of a list or page view — borrowed completely from iOS. Once again, Firefox still ships without this support. Scrolling is not smooth in the browser — in fact it’s complete shit. To quell this complaint, I find myself having to dig through Firefox’s preferences to turn on smooth scrolling. Why isn’t this on by default Mozilla?

Lion is not a new operating system, so the people at Mozilla have had plenty of time to support some of these innovative features that other third party developers have long embraced. How many more versions of Firefox do we have to go until they build a proper Mac browser?

The Problem with iCloud and Instacast

I don’t blame developers for having a rough time with implementing iCloud syncing into their apps. Between Apples less than stellar iCloud documentation — not to mention issues with the service itself — building iOS apps that rely on the syncing itself is tough. In the end though, users end up suffering from poor experiences (in turn the developers suffer as well when they deal with angry customer emails).

Being on the user end of things, I know all too well how painful it can be to deal with syncing app states between various iOS devices. Just as an example, I use Instacast on both my iPhone and iPad on a daily basis. Many times I’m switching between my iPhone and iPad, depending on what I want to carry around me. It’s crucial that I be able to put down my iPhone in the middle of a podcast, pick up my iPad, and carry on from pretty much the exact point where I last left the episode.

Between switching iOS devices, one thing that seems to work more reliably than anything else is syncing your position in the timeline. I can’t remember the last time it didn’t sync this properly (though it’s not 100% perfect either, and not as fast as I’d like). This is great, as it means I won’t be annoyed that the episode I was listening to isn’t exactly where it needs to be.  Where Instacast seems to go wrong many times is re-downloading old episodes of various podcasts that were already marked as well. Without a doubt, this is indeed annoying. What makes this worse? On both of my iOS devices, I have Instacast set to sync both the episodes as well as the downloaded version as well. I always prefer Instacast to cache my episodes while on Wi-Fi so I don’t have to eat up my monthly allotted data in order to stream. Syncing downloaded episodes is a great feature in theory, however, more times than not I end up with already listened to episodes on more than one device.

The last glaring issue I’ve encountered seems to be with podcast artwork. On numerous occasions, I’ve had Instacast play the correct episode, yet display the wrong piece of artwork for that show (usually artwork belonging to another podcast that I subscribe to). Whilst my day isn’t ruined, nor is this an earth shattering bug, it’s still annoying to have to deal with. I’ve seen at least one other odd scenario where the app will decide to not only display the wrong piece of artwork, but display artwork for a podcast I had already unsubscribed from. To me this says that its caching mechanism is kind of borked. I’m not 100% certain it’s not directly attributed to some quirky iCloud syncing bug, but it’s just a theory.

Once again, I don’t necessarily fully blame the developer, and iCloud syncing has certainly gotten much better as of the latest release. There certainly are big constraints you need to deal with when syncing data to iCloud and to and from various iOS devices. Things to take into account are: network performance, such as how reliable is it to sync data between devices that are on different wireless networks? In my example, I’m not always on Wi-Fi, and my third generation iPad supports the immensely faster LTE wireless network, whilst my iPhone 4S just supports HSPA+. So when you have two different devices on two different wireless networks that vary greatly in speed, I’m not sure what more I can expect from iCloud.

With the release of OS X Mountain Lion on the horizon, I’m hoping that Apple finally beefs up their iCloud developer documentation. This will not only make developers lives less stressful, but it means they can build more robust and reliable apps — all on the solid foundation of Apple’s iCloud syncing services.

Static Images

I decided to try out Wired magazine on the iPad. Since I’m only familiar with their print magazine, I figured their digital version would be as nicely laid out as the print version. Clearly I’m far too naive. 

It seems like they got the pricing just right. At $1.99 per month, or $19.99 for a year, there’s no question that this is very affordable pricing. In fact, this pricing structure undercuts the print magazine at $5.99 per issue. Of course this is as it should be — paying the same or more for a digital only subscription is completely unrealistic today (sadly many publications have yet to figure this out).

After subscribing, I downloaded the gargantuan April issue at 789MB. The good news is it took less than five minutes to download over LTE (there goes my data cap). The bad news is the user experience is absolutely horrible. The size alone is bad enough, however what’s worse than the file size is what follows (I’ll talk about the implications in just a moment):

• Massive static images
• No selectable text
• No ability to share articles

When I first loaded the April edition, I started navigating through various articles. Every single article is simply a massive image, and thus needs to be rendered every time you look at it. There are many problems with this — the first and immediately noticeable being the page looks blurry for a second or two while it renders. The second major issue — this is a massive and glaring one — is there is simply no way to select any text inside an article. This also segues perfectly to the fact that you also can’t share articles via various social networks (or even email). Many times when I share an article I like, if I’m on any of my iOS devices, I like to select a passage of text and quote it, and then copy the link and share it on Twitter. The fact that I can’t do any of this is unacceptable in 2012.

I’ve known for a while that many publications have been releasing their newspapers and magazines as massive PDFs, however I figured this finally would have been sorted out by now.

Man, I was so naive.

Screens VNC

I decided to leave my MacBook Pro at work last night. Figured I could just use Screens VNC if I truly needed to remotely access resources on my Mac from home. Turns out, this works extremely well.

Screens VNC, like any other similar VNC app available in the App Store, does mouse emulation. My primary concern with mouse emulation was how responsive and smooth it would feel when interacting when elements on my Mac. The initial fears I had were quelled once I accessed my Mac for the first time. My initial tests were done over my very fast home Wi-Fi, however, I did briefly test over LTE and got excellent results as well.

The design of the app itself is quite beautiful, however it also manages to provide some excellent setup instructions for novices. There’s also a super handy automatic discovery of local network computers option — whereby it attempts to automatically populate the recommended settings you need to connect to that Mac.

Over the weekend, I did a little demo for my father who was really interested in being able to remotely access Windows servers. He’s been strongly considering replacing his laptop with an iPad, however, he said the deal breaker would be if he couldn’t find a good way to remotely access Windows servers on the iPad. I configured TightVNC on his Windows 7 laptop so we could try out Screens. After only a few minutes of playing around with the app, he was pretty much sold on the idea.

Screens VNC for iOS is a universal binary, so one only need purchase it once to get it on any iOS device. I should also note that Edovia also has a Mac version of Screens, however, I have yet to test this app. That’s something I’ll leave for another day.

Oh, and one more thing, the app supports iCloud for syncing your settings — something every iOS app should support.

We Need AirPlay Enabled Thunderbolt Displays

Let’s say your iPad has replaced your laptop. Let’s also say you replaced your iMac or Mac Pro with a MacBook Air. With incredibly useful wireless technology like AirPlay, wouldn’t be nifty if you could not only send a video or audio signal from your iOS device to an Apple TV, but also directly to any Mac or Thunderbolt display?

Apple’s Thunderbolt displays already have a pretty hefty premium over comparable LED backlit LCD panels — albeit with added Thunderbolt technology and sexier packaging — however I would love to see built-in AirPlay support. It seems only natural that at some point, you won’t necessarily need a Mac or Apple TV just to use AirPlay from your iOS device. I can envision my home with AirPlay enabled Thunderbolt displays in each room. If I wanted to lay down in bed and send a movie from the Netflix app to my display, it would be effortless — just a tap away.

Adding AirPlay support to Thunderbolt displays will no doubt add to the cost of the hardware, and naturally complexity in manufacturing, yet I’m sure Apple can figure these two things out.

A Veritable Piece of Art: The White iPhone 4S

Three weeks ago, I decided to sell my iPhone 4. After three weeks of living without a mobile phone, and after much deliberation, I decided to pickup a 16GB white iPhone 4S.

My entire life I’ve always purchased black electronics. It doesn’t matter if it was a phone or home theatre equipment — there’s just something so sleek about black hardware. Even with the launch of the third generation iPad — of which I stood in line in the pouring rain and cold for eight hours — I ended up getting a black iPad. It was not that I thought the white iPad looked bad, however it was my thinking that the white bezel would somehow be too distracting when reading.

Enough with the black hardware

I took a late afternoon break while I was at the office yesterday. I decided to go for a brisk walk down to my Apple store here in Vancouver. When I walked in and explained that I wanted to purchase a 16GB white iPhone 4S, I was escorted over to an iPad where I was to book an in-store appointment. As per usual, my Apple store was incredibly busy. After booking the appointment to speak with a sales person, I only had to wait about five minutes before I was greeted by a very friendly lady. I explained my situation that I was upgrading from an iPhone 4 and that I was already on a contract with my carrier. She quickly checked store stock to see if my white iPhone was available — sure enough it was. The nice lady explained that someone would bring the phone to the front of the store for us, so we had a nice conversation for a few minutes — mostly about the decision to go with the white 4S. She agreed with me that the white phone looked spectacular, and that switching things up by not getting yet another black device was a great idea. The conversation seemed longer than a couple of minutes, but I know it wasn’t longer than that. It only took another five minutes for her to process the transaction and send me on my merry way.

After I got back to the office, I removed the plastic wrapping and unboxed the iPhone from its thoughtfully designed packaging. What I was holding in front of me was a thing of beauty — a veritable piece of art. I popped in my new sim card and had my carrier activate it for me on the phone. The process was pretty painless.

In summation

The white iPhone 4S is blissfully breathtaking. I wholeheartedly recommend you get one — if only to add some variety in your collection of gadgets.

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Addendum:

A reader suggested I include a photo. Behold:

Thoughts on Instagram

I am super happy for the entire Instagram team. Being acquired by Facebook is obviously a huge deal for them, and it’s a brilliant exit strategy.

From a users perspective though, I’m sure many see doom and gloom in the future — even though those fears may have been quelled by Kevin Systrom when he claimed development will continue as per usual.

One would be naive to think that we won’t see some aspect of Facebook touch Instagram’s app. I’m sure Facebook connect will be added as an optional authentication system for logging in or creating a new account. I don’t see this as a bad thing, as Facebook has already become ubiquitous. So long as new users can continue to create accounts without having to own a Facebook account, I think we’ll be fine.

Let’s also remember that as users of a free web service, we don’t have a lot of say in what happens when we’re not paying for it. On that note, I’m not cancelling my Instagram account unless the app itself turns to shit in the coming months.

As a precaution, I’ve backed up my entire Instagram photo library to Dropbox. I recommend InstaBackup which is a great native Mac app for exporting your photos from Instagram.

The Disparity between Smartphones And Mobile Carriers

There’s a massive disparity between data sucking smartphones and data plans offered by carriers. Customers know this, and the carriers are fully cognizant of it. The problem is they make a ton of money from you already, and since you probably don’t have a lot of choice as far as competition is concerned, they can charge whatever they see fit.

In Canada and the US, I have seen numerous carriers adjust their data plans and pricing — typically for the better. As mobile device devices become ubiquitous with super fast HSPA+ and LTE connectivity — and as carriers commensurately upgrade their networks — carriers are slowly forced to offer better plans to their customers. Using myself as a prime example, just a few years ago I was paying — on average — what I am now, for less than half of the data that I currently am allotted.

Regrettably, the rate at which carriers all across North America have been adjusting their data plans does not keep pace with the ever changing landscape of mobile technology. Carriers are not stupid, they clearly see the benefits of the latest mobile technologies being offered to consumers, and consequently they upgrade their networks to support these new wireless technologies at a regular pace. Overall all, carriers across North America have been pretty good about rolling out HSPA+ and LTE, and coverage is getting better as the months roll by. With the benefits of ultra fast wireless technology like LTE, carriers are well aware their customers are going to naturally consume far more bits and bytes than what they could before on 3G. This is not to say it isn’t possible to stream video or audio or upload content via 3G today, however people will consume more data on LTE because it’s just so easy to do so.

You can quite easily compare what’s happening now in the mobile space with the transition from dial-up to broadband Internet over 10 years ago. I remember when we first got broadband, and our monthly data consumption more than doubled. Once again, I could do all of the same browsing and downloading I could over dial-up, but because broadband was that much faster, it was far easier and less painful for me to consume copious amounts of data. This is what’s happening today on LTE networks, and perhaps to a lesser degree on HSPA+.

The larger, and perhaps more onerous question is this: when will carriers come around and open up their data caps to a reasonable degree? I’m not one to argue that carriers need offer truly unlimited data plans, however, I posit that if they were to offer dramatically higher monthly caps, they might be able to attract new customers — not to mention keep existing ones happier, all whilst charging them a more reasonable rate. The problem now is that users are increasingly holding back from paying more, only because current data-to-price ratios are draconian. If carriers can get the data-to-price ratios just right, customers will be happier and more inclined to renew long term contracts.

Remnants of A Bygone Era

While I do not feel entirely sorry for the current situation RIM has allowed themselves to get into, I realize it’s easy to bash a company when they’re down. Lest we forget that an incumbent, no matter how successful they are now, could be disrupted by a newcomer.

I have zero concerns that Apple is in any danger for the foreseeable future. Quite the contrary, as they are currently an unstoppable force with the best products, brand, and market value.

No doubt, it’s rather sad to see a once great Canadian company now in complete shambles, the bottom line is RIM failed to quickly pivot and address the disruption in the mobile space that was happening with the iPhone release back in 2007. I don’t think we can pin it on any one person or group, but it certainly was a combination of many things — including poor vision, product execution, timing, and management.

Whilst Apple may be on top of the world at the moment, I believe they have smart enough people and are fully cognizant that anyone could potentially de-throne them if they don’t continue to put out truly great products. If you were a fly on the wall at Apple headquarters, I very much doubt the last thing you would hear is anyone on the executive management team poking fun of RIM — nor would you find anyone arrogant enough to insult or poke fun of any other competitors current situation. Apple seems like one of those rare companies that will stay laser focused on continuing to just make what they believe are the best products that could possibly be made today.

I really don’t see where else RIM could go from here, other than just selling the company and it’s IP. Though the important and rather sensitive question to ask is: who will have them?

32 Is The New 16

Last week I wrote about my decision to go with the 16GB Wi-Fi iPad. If you haven’t read that piece yet, I suggest doing that first and then coming back to this later.

On March 16, I had waited patiently in line for a new iPad. Long story short, I did end up with the 16GB Wi-Fi, however, after spending the weekend installing apps, I quickly discovered that I was filling up the device. With 58 apps installed, I had about 4GB of storage space left. I should actually preface this and state that I had zero video, photos, or music on the iPad at this point.

On Sunday, I quickly started to realize that I would probably need the 32GB model. I decided to return my iPad to the Apple store this week and exchange it. I made a last minute decision while waiting in line to swap it for a 32GB LTE model. I can’t tell you how much I’m loving the LTE speeds. It truly is useful to be able to have Internet access anywhere I am. Although 90% of the time I’ll be on Wi-Fi, that 10% when I’m not gets annoying when I actually need Internet access.

Speaking of LTE speeds, I’ve been testing my carriers network here in Vancouver — which happens to be Rogers — and I’ve been getting blistering LTE speeds. The fastest I’ve tested so far is 38Mbps downstream and 29Mbps upstream.

These speeds are faster than what most people tend to get for their home broadband! At home, I have a 100Mbps downstream and 5Mbps upstream connection. On my iPad with LTE, my upstream speed is five times the speed of what I get at home. Truly these are breathtaking results, although it remains to be seen whether or not these speeds will be sustainable as the network becomes congested with more LTE enabled devices in the future.

There are very valid reasons — which I can only guess — why Apple didn’t just introduce the new iPad in 32/64/128GB flavours. The most obvious thing that comes to mind is pricing. They probably haven’t been able to get the cost of solid state storage down to where they want it to be. Sure, they could have given us 32/64/128GB options today, but not without increasing the cost of the iPad. Apple certainly is not going to compromise pricing for storage space — period.

In Review: The Third Generation iPad

Preamble

I was a little bummed out on Friday night. After not sleeping for a day and waiting more than eight hours in the pouring rain for the new iPad, I was simply too exhausted to do any writing that evening. Initially I had hoped to start writing this review immediately after unboxing my iPad, with the expectation of publishing the same day. Had I attempted to do so, I can almost guarantee it would have been highly incoherent.

This is the first iPad I have owned. Yes of course I’ve used previous generations, but that was mostly for work and for short bursts of time. I initially held off from buying previous iPads as I felt spoiled by my iPhone’s glorious Retina display. Looking at a first or second generation iPad was very difficult for me for any long-form reading. Reading on my iPhone is akin to reading high quality print, whilst reading on previous generation iPads is like reading through glasses with the wrong prescription.

Sometimes you can make an educated guess as to what technology ends up in Apple’s next product. Case in point, the iPhone 4 received the high resolution Retina display first, then came the iPod touch — later giving way to the new iPad 2048-by-1536 pixel display. It took a while for Apple to perfect the display technology and make sure they had the right amount of processing power to handle it, all while keeping the component costs down. The last thing Apple would ever do is charge more for a new iPad. If they can’t sell the latest generation device at or below the previous model, then they won’t commit to the technology until they can. The same can be said for LTE networking in these iPads as well. Apple had to wait patiently until new low-power chips were available, as well as higher capacity lithium-polymer batteries so that their acclaimed 10 hours battery life would not be affected. Perhaps this is a portent for what the next iPhone may yield.

The display

No amount of exposition will sufficiently convey to anyone just how good this display is, so I won’t even attempt it. Needless to say, it’s going to change the lives of many — I know it has for me in just three short days of use.

This changes some things

Leading up to this piece, I wrote about how this new iPad will change how I consume written content. Things such as novels and comics no longer need to be purchased on paper. Gone are the days where I need to be concerned with storage space in my home. The laws of physics dictate I can’t keep acquiring physical items indefinitely, without the need to expand storage space. In the past, if I had accumulated too many magazines or books, I would simply have to give them away or sell them. Who wants to deal with that? I have some friends that are big readers, but they can’t bring themselves to get rid of old books they don’t read anymore. Inevitably either their home becomes a mess of boxes piled up to the ceiling in some unused room, or they end up paying a storage company to keep their stuff. I’ve never understood why they would want to deal with that hassle. Since I have no plans on putting myself through that, the obvious solution is to go all digital. It can be said that digital storage space is not infinite — of course it isn’t. The great thing about going digital is that if you run out of space, you can always delete stuff you haven’t read by the tap of a button. Do you feel inclined to re-read a great book you bought a few years ago? No problem, just open the iBook Store and restore your purchase in a matter of seconds.

This is just a quick summation of my digital lifestyle, and I’m sure my thoughts echo with how others feel. As legacy publishers continue to feel the heat as customers dictate future digital purchasing trends, the future looks pretty obvious where things are headed with e-readers and tablets such as the iPad. Just today, Apple announced the iPad on launch weekend sold three million units. This unequivocally blows out of the water last years weekend sales of 1 million units. Apple has their heart and soul in post-pc era devices like the iPad. As more people are equipped with devices like these, paper can only be relegated to a small niche.

Workflows

I’m finding that some of thing things I traditionally do on my Mac have become iPad only duties. For example: I’ve long had third party Twitter clients installed on OS X. I’ve all but banished my desktop Twitter clients and now just use Tweetbot on my iPad. I actually prop my iPad up in landscape mode — using the Smart cover — right next to my MacBook Pro. Since my iPad is always on Wi-Fi while at home, streaming support allows me to see tweets move by on my iPad while I do work on my Mac. Although I don’t read tweets on my Mac, I still send tweets from there using a custom extension for Alfred. On a tangential note, Alfred is far more than just an application launcher — with extensions you can do all sorts of cool things with it, just like the aforementioned Twitter extension.

The minuscule difference in thickness and weight between the newest iPad and previous generations is not even worth debating. I simply don’t notice the difference, and I really doubt most will either. I can sit in bed or on the couch and read for hours in Instapaper, iBooks, or ComiXology without the iPad getting warm and uncomfortable.

For most of the less intensive and casual tasks that I used to do on my Mac, I now prefer to do on my iPad. Does that mean I use my Mac a lot less? Sure it does, but that doesn’t equate to a bad thing. We’re moving into a future where our computing habits are changing. Things we have done — will continue to do, become more common place on devices like the iPad. This may scare some people, and that’s certainly understandable. Familiarity and habit does not lend themselves kindly to monumental changes in workflow. At some point, those that are still around will learn, adapt, and embrace.

I just realized that I’m already nearing the thousand word mark, and I haven’t really talked about the iPad in terms of hardware specs and how it compares to previous iterations. Other than the major breakthrough in display technology, talking about technical specifications is less interesting to me. Explaining how I use my iPad and how it changes my life is something that seems more tangible to people. Remember, most people don’t buy devices based on how many processor cores they have — those that do are in the extreme minority — thus it felt appropriate for me to share some of my experiences and how the iPad fits into my life.

Icing on the cake

Best of all, I wrote this all on the new iPad using iA Writer— without the need for an external Bluetooth keyboard.

iCloud Music Streaming on The New iPad

Ever since I picked up my new iPad on Friday, I’ve been testing iTunes Match and iCloud syncing. I decided to see how well it would stream music from iCloud, so that’s one of the first things I did when I got home. I know I’ve complained about the music app on iOS before, but I have not extensively tested the iPad version.

Connected to an 802.11n Wi-Fi connection, which is hooked up to a 100Mbps Internet connection, I began my streaming testing. For the most part, things went pretty smoothly. I could play any track and it would almost instantly start. There was certainly no noticeable lag between the moment where I tapped the play button, and when the actual music started.

It’s super convenient to be able to access my music library in the Cloud, with the ability to download any individual songs or albums that I want to store locally on my iOS devices. Things didn’t go 100% smoothly though. Unfortunately it seems that Music.app is not very stable in iOS 5.x. There were a couple times during the night where the app crashed after trying to skip forward a few tracks. Also, there’s one really annoying bug with displaying the wrong album art.

I present the example below. If you haven’t already noticed what is immediately wrong, you will find that the current track I’m playing is by Def Leppard. The album art that is actually being displayed is for another band — Kamelot in this case. This seems to happen with any track when I tap on the album in the player control bar.

I’m almost considering going to Rdio to stream my music, just so I don’t have to deal with these issues. It would be nice if Apple started ironing out some of the bugs in their core iOS apps.

The Wait for Updated iPad Apps: Supporting The Retina Display

Now the waiting begins for developers to push out updated apps with 2x image assets to support the new iPad’s Retina display. Of course, many have anticipated that Apple would be shipping a higher resolution display, so the prudent course of action for many was to include 2x image assets months ago. The problem that some didn’t anticipate is that you would need the latest version of Xcode in order to compile their apps against the latest SDK. Only once this is done would the app render the 2x images on the third generation iPad.

I’ve compiled a list of apps that I use that are in desperate need of updated graphics. These are listed in no particular order. I’m sure the list will grow as well, but I’m hoping many developers already have updated apps in the queue to be reviewed by the App Store team. I have no doubt big players like Facebook must have a pending app ready for release very soon.

• ComiXology

• Facebook

• 1Password

• TV Forecast

• Squarespace

• Penultimate

• Dropbox

• Imdb

• TextExpander

• Tapfolio

• iFixit

• Skype

• AppShopper

• Consume

• TuneIn Radio

• Netflix

iPad Launch Event: Live from Pacific Centre, Vancouver

As you all know, Apple is opening their retail stores at 8am on March 16 for the launch of the third generation iPad.

I have never been to any launch event or have ever had to wait in a line for anything. In the past, I would wait weeks, if not months, to get whatever Apple was releasing. This time, I wanted to do something different and wait in line with my fellow Mac nerds. I have never owned any of the previous iPads, although I have certainly worked with them for my daytime job. I have been waiting a while for Apple to get the technology just right so that a Retina display would be feasible on a 9.7” iPad.

I’m super excited and don’t feel like waiting weeks or months until Apple can catch up with the demand of the new iPad — thus I am staying overnight just outside the Pacific Centre, waiting for Apple to open its doors at 8am. I plan on taking lots of photos and will constantly update this post with how the line up is doing.

March 15, 11:00pm (PST): Did a patrol around Pacific Centre to see if there was anyone waiting outside. There’s no one around, so I’m walking up to Granville St. to grab a coffee and do some writing.

11:35pm: I’m already hearing there is a line forming at Pacific Centre. Seems to be on the Granville side of the building. Packing up my MacBook Pro and heading down there to investigate.

12:00am: There are about fifty people lined up. Already have some great conversations with people. I asked a few which iPad they planned on getting, and it was pretty unanimous that they were getting the 16GB black Wi-Fi model.

1:00am: The funniest thing just happened. This well dressed asian man walked up to a group of us and whipped out his Galaxy Note. He then spent more than thirty minutes trying to sell us on the Note and how awesome the stylus was. Oh, and get this, he flat out refused to call it a stylus. When challenged, he denied being on Samsung’s payroll. Who knows, maybe he’s just a huge Galaxy Note fan, but the scenario is all too familiar. Remember that ridiculous commercial Samsung made a few months back? You know the one where they make fun of people for waiting in line to buy an iPhone. I kind of feel sorry for the guy though. It took him several minutes to get the camera app to work the way he wanted when he did his little demo.

2:00am: As awesome as these people are, it’s getting really cold outside. It’s only four degrees celsius, but the wind chill is making it feel colder than it actually is. I’m heading to A&W to get something to eat and hot chocolate.

5:30am: A Starbucks just opened on Granville street, so I snuck in to grab a piping hot cup of coffee and warm up for an hour. I’m fortunate enough that it was easy to make friends with other like minds waiting for their chance to buy an iPad, so they’re saving my spot. It’s not so much the waiting that makes these kinds of events exciting and fun, it’s meeting new people who have the same interests in you — there’s a good chance they’ll be the same kind of people who can talk for hours about all kinds of nerdery. I’m going to try and warm up for an hour and then head back out there. We’re all hoping that mall security starts letting people in at around 7:30am. Anything to get out of the cold as soon as humanly possible would be fantastic.

7:00am We were told by Apple staff that coffee would be served to us, which was a nice gesture. They were hoping to start bringing people into Pacific Centre by 7:30am, so we’ll see what happens.

7:35am: Still no coffee. Everyone is really cold and a little miserable. Numerous body parts are number and they haven’t brought anyone into Pacific Centre yet.

8:05am: We all started to wonder what was going on, but we now have hot coffee and they have slowly started to bring people into the Apple store!

8:20am: Once I stepped into the Apple store, I had my 16GB black Wi-Fi model in my hands in less than five minutes. The sale process was extremely efficient and went without a hitch, so I couldn’t be happier!

Coda

It was a very unpleasant windy, cold, and soggy waiting experience to get my iPad. Although the weather was not ideal, I managed to suffer through it and make some new friends. I think I would do this again at another launch since chatting with other Mac nerds was a blast. If Apple fans were any different, I don’t think as many people would line up for these launches. The primary reason why many do this is to get a chance to talk to and meet new people. Many see waiting in line at the Apple store as an experience rather than mindlessly waiting for whatever new product Apple has put forth upon the market.

Addendum

I snapped a bunch of photos and thought I would share them. You can find crazy Galaxy Note guy in this gallery as well.

Deciding Whether Or Not to Get The 16, 32, or 64GB iPad

I’m sure there are some that may be disappointed that Apple didn’t drop the 16GB iPad and instead make 32GB the new entry level option. I can certainly understand that line of reasoning in 2012. We now have a display that is exactly double the resolution of the previous generation, which means many things.

For developers, it means including 2x image assists in their iOS apps, which I’m sure you realize by now are considerably larger PNGs, making the final build of your app in order of magnitude larger than what they used to be. For users, it means the average iPad app will be dramatically larger in size, which explains why Apple has updated the 3G download cap to 50MB — up from 20MB respectively. Where we’re going to see huge differences in app sizes is going to be games. There are already numerous A-list games in the App Store that are in excess of 1GB. These sizes of course seem tiny when you compare modern games made for your Mac that are in excess of 10GB, however on a mobile device there are size restrictions you need to work with. Of course, game developers are going to want to include much higher resolution artwork to take advantage of the Retina display, and not to mention the much faster quad core GPU.

Higher resolution artwork and more polygons in our iPad games means much larger downloads. We may not be there yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see some complex iOS games hit 2GB in size in 2013. So this begs the question, should one get the 16GB model, or perhaps splurge on the 32 or even 64GB models? This is a more complex question, and the answer depends on what exactly you plan on doing with your iPad. I can only give some suggestions and explain how I plan on using the device. Let me back track just a bit and discuss why Apple is still including a 16GB model. I don’t believe this warrants great exposition. I believe this really just comes down to the cost of flash storage. Even though Apple does have massive buying power with various flash storage companies, the overall general cost of flash storage hasn’t changed much in the last twelve months. This probably has a lot to do with various natural disasters that happened in Japan and Asia of late, but regardless, if Apple could have managed to give everyone 32GB of storage at the price of last years 16GB, certainly they would have done this by now.

While I deliberate over whether I’m going to wait in line this Friday for a new iPad, I have been giving equal consideration to how much storage space I’m going to need on my iPad. Since 2008, I’ve been using a various 16GB iPhones, and haven’t really filled them up to the brim. I don’t sync video or keep many games on my iPhone, or take a lot of video for that matter. I don’t think this will change with the iPad, even though it can take HD video, I really don’t want to be holding up a 9.7” tablet to take photos or video. Other than the standard things I will do, such as browsing, email, Twitter, Facebook, I can keep myself entertained with Netflix or Instacast for all of my podcasting needs. As for games, I tend to only keep a handful of titles on the device. I usually try to play games that have a story line that take anywhere from 3-10 hours to complete. I’m not such a big fan of the smaller time wasters like Angry Birds. The thing that would take a ton of space on my device is music, however, thanks to the absolute mess that is iCloud music, the experience is so horrendous that I don’t dare try to download music on my iOS device anymore. So, from now on I’ll probably end up just using a streaming music service like Rdio. Even though I have my own entire CD collection ripped, it’s just too much of a pain for me to deal with, and I don’t want to go back to syncing music with iTunes — you know just how much fun that is.

To summarize:

• I won’t sync my music
• I won’t sync video
• I won’t be taking photos or HD video
• I probably will only have a couple of big title games installed, which means maybe 4-5GB max of games installed at any given point.

I think it’s still going to be safe for me to get the 16GB Wi-Fi only model this Friday. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, I doubt my mind will change come March 16th.