Jonathan Brown

Day at Typhoon Lagoon

Jonathan Brown — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 22:13:56 +0000

Alex and I went to Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon for the day. I thought it was an excellent opportunity to put iPhone 4′s new cameras, video quality and iMovie for iPhone through its paces. The entire movie was produced on the iPhone 4. Not bad…for a ::cough::phone::cough.

No antennas were harmed during the production of this movie.

Posted from my YouTube account.

Apple’s War on Tech Specs

Jonathan Brown — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 17:58:03 +0000

I’ve been meaning to jot down my thoughts on Apple’s continued assault on technical specifications. There was a time where people really cared about *HZ (Hz, MHz, GHz, whatever) and RAM and cache size and blah blah. Because computers used to suck. Now they don’t. Apple knows that we’re reaching a point of computing where we are seeing nominal differences as technical specifications go up (or down, depending on what’s better). Until the next major commercial breakthrough in processing (maybe quantum computing?) there doesn’t appear to be a reason to continue publishing these statistics when trying to sell a computer, phone, etc. Apple doesn’t bother. They sell you the experience. What you can expect to get in return for using an Apple computer or cell phone.

I could go on, but I think Gina Trapani eloquently summed up my thoughts in just a few sentences.

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.

There you have it. Apple versus the rest of the computer, mobile handset, software world in a couple of sentences. Selling the why not the how or what.

Another House Photo

Jonathan Brown — Mon, 03 May 2010 14:12:49 +0000

This image is tone-mapped from three bracketed exposure shots.

Posted from my Flickr account.

No related posts.

My Abode

Jonathan Brown — Sun, 02 May 2010 22:57:52 +0000

After spending the afternoon working on the yard, I decided this was probably the best it was ever going to look with me doing the landscaping.

Posted from my Flickr account.

Griffey Jr. Goes Yard

Apple vs. Adobe (or Thoughts on Section 3.3.1)

Jonathan Brown — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:07:51 +0000

This post started life as a voice memo on April 13th, a few days after Apple announced the iPhone 4 OS and unleashed the much bandied about section 3.3.1 (“no 3rd party development platforms”) rule in the new iPhone SDK Agreement. Since Steve Jobs himself decided to weigh in on this point, I figured it was time to revisit my original voice memo to see if I was somewhat correct in what Apple was thinking. So here it is cleaned up and sensible for screen.

I don’t believe Apple’s decision to ban 3rd party developer platforms on the iPhone OS is about a lock-in advantage to the device or the App Store as many have written. It’s about where Apple wants to take the iPhone OS as a platform. Apple wants to avoid a middle-tier between the OS and the developer that may stifle the platform. If Apple allowed 3rd party development platforms, there’s every indication that the 3rd party platform will hold the developers hostage when Apple decides to introduce new APIs or deprecate older APIs.

Imagine getting an iPhone OS update and suddenly half of your applications no longer work. We experience this every so often on the desktop. And it sucks, doesn’t it? Now imagine it on your phone. How annoying would it be to hunt down fixes for every little application on your phone because the makers of 3rd party developer tools didn’t react fast enough to the latest OS upgrade and the developers themselves became trapped by their development environment, unable to respond to user complaints?

It would be a horrendous experience for users. Apple uses that excuse a lot, but I happen to believe it in most cases. However, it would actually hurt developers more than users. People would think twice about buying an application that may be susceptible to suddenly not working because of an OS upgrade. I don’t want to have to look to see what language or platform an application was developed in prior to purchasing.

Microsoft fell into that trap and because of it, the burden is on MS to be backwards compatible; down to the level of replicating old bugs so older software doesn’t break. Microsoft innovation is stifled because of decisions made in the 80′s about their application development. I’m not arguing it wasn’t a good business decision. The developers made MS who they are today. But with all that cash, MS hasn’t innovated anything that’s captured the mainstream mindshare. Sure, they do neat things with some of their enterprise offerings or side gigs like PhotoSynth, but let’s be real; these days the best the mainstream receives from Microsoft is another version of Windows or Office. Bing? Eh. Apple wants to avoid being Microsoft.

The bottom line is Apple wants to innovate. They want to continue to move the stick forward. They want to continue to change the game. They want to continue to roll out new computing paradigms. They can’t be hindered or tied down by legacy.

iPad Thoughts

Jonathan Brown — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 15:55:46 +0000

Yes, I got an iPad. No, I didn’t sleep out in front of an Apple store. No, I didn’t wait in line for hours. No, I didn’t plan on buying the wi-fi version on release weekend, but the videos and early reviews were too hard to ignore for someone like me.

Everyone has chimed in on iPad; everyone has glorified or bashed it. I’ve only read a few reviews where people seem to really get what’s going on here. Last night I was reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (a book I’ve been intending to read since it came out–and yes I was reading it on my iPad) and I came across this passage that I felt was exactly the computing paradigm shift that’s happening and how the iPad bashers sound:

“If you’re too old in nineteen seventy-five, then you’d already have a job at IBM out of college, and once people started at IBM, they had a real hard time making the transition to the new world,” says Nathan Myhrvold, who was a top executive at Microsoft for many years. “You had this multibillion-dollar company making mainframes, and if you were part of that, you’d think, Why screw around with these pathetic little computers? That was the computer industry to those people, and it had nothing to do with this new revolution. They were blinded by that being the only vision of computing. They made a nice living. It’s just that there was no opportunity to become a zillionaire and make an impact on the world.”

I’ll post more thoughts on this new device when I find time (and that time thing is another post as well, I’ve been busy to say the least).

And yes, I wrote this post on WordPress for iPad. And it was a lovely experience.

Alex’s Webkinz Contest Video

Jonathan Brown — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 23:03:57 +0000

Alexandra’s submission for the Webkinz Video Star contest. She needs views, people, so please help her out and pass along to friends.

Posted from my YouTube account.

Ladies and Gentleman… The Bartles!

Jonathan Brown — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 06:35:12 +0000

Each year on Christmas day my family gathers in the recording studio to record a Beatles song with intentions to reproduce the instrumentation, sounds and performances as closely as our talents allow. This year, we’re releasing our first album recorded between December 1998 and December 2008. We called it Crappy Road. Check out The Bartles!

Beatleween 2009

Jonathan Brown — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:05:21 +0000

For this year’s pumpkin, I wanted to take a stab (no pun intended) at a carving with some shading technique. After considering Alex’s choice (the boys jumping), I decided I wanted the band with their instruments.

This carving turned out to be quite involved. The carving alone took about six hours, but I was slowed by my side project–a stop motion animation of the carving. This added greatly to the time, having to clean and snap a photo after every cut.

Overall the project turned out pretty good if I say so.

Here’s the animation:

My New Guitar

Jonathan Brown — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:22:14 +0000

My First Guitar - Chiquita Travel

Believe it or not, I’ve been trying to play the guitar since I was six years old. After a few years of playing old school rock band—a baseball bat for a guitar and lunch boxes and dinner trays for drums (pots and pans are so cliché)—my older brother and I had perhaps the most awesome (early) Christmas ever. I received a Chiquita travel guitar, red, very much like the picture to the right—and equally as awesome as the one Michael J. Fox used to blow up Doc’s massive speaker in Back to the Future—and my brother got a practice pad drum kit. And we started our second band, or the first with real instruments, which ever way you want to look at it.

Fast forward twenty-six years…now I run an I.T. department and my brother still beats on pots and pans (literally) and anything else that makes a sound when you hit it, including real drums. And he gets paid! That’s crazy, right? I mean, people actually fly him around so he can play drums for an hour or so. Get a job, man!

Over the last twenty-six years I’ve owned quite a few crappy guitars. I’ve had a Silvertone acoustic (my Dad’s old guitar), Fender Squire II, Yamaha acoustic, Yamaha nylon string classical and an electric Epiphone Special. All of them equally tawdry, inferior touch and sound, but good enough for me to barrel my way through fake books and what not to amuse myself.

My Gibson ES-137c

I’ve always wanted that one good guitar. A guitar that excites me, that stares me down and messes with my head. A guitar that I can’t put down. A guitar technically well-built with good intonation, electronics that don’t flake out, nice action and a unique warm sound. A guitar that will make me want to practice scales!

After a little inspiration (a viewing of It Might Get Loud), I decided now was the time to go get myself a real guitar. My dream guitar is a Gibson ES-335, but even used they are still very expensive and more than I’m willing to pay for a hobby. I searched local guitar stores for other semi-hollow bodies that fit my budget.

My older brother found my next guitar at a local shop. I’m not going to mention the name, because quite frankly, I think they really suck. He SMS’d me a picture and price, so I researched the model and put it in the back of my head. I continued to research other guitars.

Then last Friday evening, after dinner, I visited the guitar shop to see if the guitar my brother found was still there. It was, so I asked to take a closer look. I plugged into a Fender Blues DeVille and began noodling. I was sold. The guitar felt really good in my hands. It had great action and a big silky warm blues sound. After thirty minutes of the worst guitar-store riffing you’ll ever hear, I bought it.

It’s a 2003 Gibson ES-137 Classic. Lisa asked me if I was going to name it. The first name that came to my mind was Maud because it has a big fat butt just like the elephant Alex and I saw at the zoo earlier in the day. But really, who names their guitar these days? That’s cheeky.