Jeff's Blog

On iOS 5 & Notifications (includes MobileNotifier review):

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 22:05:00 -0700

Notifications are the single worse aspect of iOS. The notification pop-up blocks what you’re doing until you dismiss it, there’s no way to see previous notifications, and it’s way less attractive and useful than notifications in WebOS or Android. Notifications become even more important when you factor in the rumored iOS 5 system-level integration with Twitter (and other services, like Facebook and Foursquare), which constantly need to keep you updated on the go without having to open a specific app.

For any iOS notification system revamp, I’m looking for a few core features: - Non-blocking notifications that remain on screen until dismissed - Ability to see the last few email messages (or calls, texts, etc) with sender and subject preview - Notifications grouped by type, so I can see emails, Facebook, Twitter, texts, voicemails, etc. - Notifications shown on the lockscreen - Unobtrusive status bar icon, displaying how many missed notifications (perhaps by type) and a slide-down tray to view them.

MobileNotifier Review: I recently jailbreaked my iPhone 4 for the first time in order to try out some Cydia apps, knowing that I’ll probably be doing a full restore on my iPhone anyway in the coming weeks in an upgrade to the iOS 5 beta. There have been many Photoshop mockups and actual working Cydia attempts to refine iOS’s notification system, which only shows how bad the existing notifications on iOS are and how much demand there is for an overhaul. I had read about MobileNotifier, a notification service replacement which is fairly highly rated. Furthermore, the UI looks good, and follows my preference by clearly taking design clues from the notification systems on WebOS (which I consider the holy grail of notification UI), and the Android tray. Additionally, it’s been widely rumored that the developer of MobileNotifier has been hired by Apple to work on notifications, so it seemed like perhaps MobileNotifier could be viewed as a proof of concept for things to come from Apple in iOS 5. I had to try it, and I wanted to really like it. Unfortunately, I don’t really like it, and have uninstalled and reverted to the awful standard iOS pop-up notifications. Here’s why, and where such a notification system would need to be improved upon for an Apple-release:

Positives:

I love the non-blocking notification bar at the top or bottom of the screen, ala WebOS.
Shows notifications on the lock screen (kind of - see below)

Negatives:

The MobileNotifier bar doesn’t show any info about the incoming notification, other than the app, without clicking on the notification bar. This greatly reduced it’s utility for me. I shouldn’t have to click it to see info at a glance. For an email alert from Boxcar, for example, it should at least show the sender and subject line so you know what it is. Even the standard pop-ups display more info.
The notification bar only displays one notification at a time, so if there’s an SMS or missed call, in addition to an email, you have to go into the “Missed Notification” tray view by double tapping the home button and then clicking the missed notifications bar at the top of the screen to expand the list. Too many steps. I’d like to be able to see and dismiss the notifications from the non-blocking notification bar, without having to enter a separate interface.
The non-blocking notification bar only displays for a few seconds, then disappears, and it doesn’t display at all on the lock screen! So if I’m not using my phone when a notification comes in, and I pick it up a minute later, there is no notification on the screen. I’d have to go to the missed notification tray to see what I may have missed, if anything. This is unnecessary, and greatly reduces MobileNotifier’s utility. There is also no status bar icon showing how many missed notifications there are. You have to open the tray by double-clicking the home button to see this.
Double-clicking the home button to see the tray isn’t as easy nor intuitive as a multi-touch gesture like for example, sliding two fingers down from the top status bar.
Having to clear the “Missed Notification” tray just becomes another hassle. I want to see the missed notifications, but don’t want to have to keep clearing something else to get rid of the absolute one. Suggestion example: if I check my mail in the Mail app, perhaps the missed mail notifications automatically get dismissed.
On the Lockscreen, missed notifications have to be expanded to view them, and then, you can’t do anything with them. You still would have to unlock the phone, double-tap the home button, and then interact with them from the Missed Notification tray. On the lockscreen, notifications should be displayed automatically (without requiring expanding a list), and should be grouped by type, displaying for example, the last missed call, SMS, voicemail, and last two or three email messages all at one time. The Cydia app Lockscreen Info has a good UI here.
I use Boxcar for email notifications, because Mail doesn’t support local notifications (fix this, Apple). With MobileNotifier, if I click on the incoming mail notification, it opens Boxcar - not Mail. This isn’t MobileNotifier’s fault, but decreases it’s utility.

Here are a couple good mockups demonstrating some notification UI concepts. I can’t say there is a single concept that is perfect and blows me away in all aspects. However, if Apple took the good bits and pieces from various mockups, and WebOS/Android, it could create a dynamite iOS notification and lockscreen information system, with a fantastic UI to boot.

I really like this one. The slide down notification tray & status bar icons here are brilliant, much better than the double tap.

Being able to see multiple notifications with a swipe in the notification bar is a good idea, especially if they were grouped by type/app.

Excellent lockscreen notification/info UI

My iOS 5 Feature Requests

Thu, 05 May 2011 19:40:50 -0700

iOS 5 is due to be shown to developers for the first time at WWDC this summer, and released to the public this fall. Here is my wishlist of features I hope make it into iOS 5. Things like a new notification system, social integration, improved file copy, wireless/cloud syncing I think are necessary, and the rest of the items in bold are my top requests, in no particular order.

New notification system (like WebOS)
Lockscreen Information (email, news, weather)
Multi-user support for iPad (with gesture or voice-based logins & individual app data profiles)
Over the air, delta updates (as long as they aren’t applied without permission - having to reinstall the entire OS for every update is ridiculous)
Improved file copy experience (outside of iTunes) & Ability to mount iDevice as a flash drive
Improved, system wide Voice Control and voice-to-text transcription
Selective App Data backup & restore (like game saves)
Cloud syncing (Non-mandatory) & Wireless backup/syncing with Mac
To-Do lists in Calendar
System-wide dictionary/thesaurus app (like OS X has, useable in any app. with custom dictionary and translation dictionary support)
Social: Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, etc. integration throughout the OS & APIs for developers
Mail: IMAP-Idle for Gmail; Local notifications for received mail messages; Gmail staring, tags, ability to delete Gmail messages instead of archiving them (in addition to archive ability); Editable Exchange drafts
AirPrint: Print to PDF creation & compatibility with additional printers & ability to print through a Mac or a PC
Rich Text support (iOS 4.x only supports Plain Text)
Background updating for app content (Twitter, Facebook, Instapaper, Reeder, etc.)
Official pull to refresh support
Safari: Stop bookmarks from popping-up when Safari is opened with no open tabs; Wireless bookmark syncing for free (sans MobileMe or a paid subscription); Ability to drag and re-arrange Safari tabs; Safari Autofill keeps auto-filling the wrong email (Should have an option to select what info we want to use from the contact card, like what email address)
Improved Photos app with features more like iPhoto (tagging, image editing, image rotation, custom Camera Roll folders, etc.)
Improved YouTube app (doesn’t log you out, can manage subscriptions, etc.)
GarageBand and iWork for iPhone
Ability to see previously-purchased, but not installed apps in the App Store
Ability to update apps without having to have double the space available on the iDevice
Dynamically updating weather app icon (with temperature and forecast)
Transcription and Forwarding of Visual Voicemail
Support for USB card readers & flash drives (for copying photos/files with no conversion)
Custom Audio Alerts (Custom email, calendar, and notification audio alerts)
Improved Camera app (more like Camera+)
FaceTime over 3G

2010 iOS Apps of the Year

Sat, 25 Dec 2010 15:07:00 -0700

About two weeks ago, Apple posted their iTunes Rewind 2010 - a roundup of the best and most popular Apps of the year. As I did last year, it’s also time for my 2010 Apps of the Year list, but this year, I’m also adding a boos & bravos section. Enjoy!

Games of the year:

Angry Birds & Angry Birds Seasons
Cut the Rope
Reckless Racing
Infinity Sword & Epic Citadel
Real Racing
Parachute Ninja
Osmos
Card Shark Solitaire
Wispin
Jenga

Game Honorable Mentions:

ZenBound 2
Plants vs Zombies (Apple’s game of the year, but still no retina display support though)
Flight Control and CroMag Rally (Updated with GameCenter multiplayer)
DoodleJump (for the free, frequent updates)

Apps of the year:

Reeder
PlainText / Notesy
Remoter
Navigon MobileNavigator (Traffic in-app purchase is great, panorama view is a bit of a rip-off)
TuneIn Radio
1Password Pro
Twitter (formally Tweetie - free)
DropBox (free)
AppShopper (free)

App Honorable Mentions:

Boxcar 2.0: for attempting to bring order to iOS’s horrendous notification system
VLC
Google Voice Apps (GVMobile + and Google’s official Voice app for finally being allowed into the App Store)
Netflix
Facebook
ReaddleDocs
Articles
TextExpander

Boos and Bravos:

ID and Epic/Chair - for pushing the iOS platform and hardware to the max
Gameloft - for updating many (maybe most) of their existing (popular) games (like N.O.V.A., Uno, Let’s Golf 2, Shrek Kart, etc) for the retina display (EA has yet to update most of their lineup)
Firemint - for being at the forefront of iOS game development, releasing updates for Real Racing (and Flight Control) to add support for the retina display and gyroscope very soon after the iPhone 4’s release (one of the first to support either), and GameCenter with multiplayer support.
Rovio - for continuing to bring new content to both Angry Birds and Angry Birds Seasons without requiring additional purchases.
Apple - for making Find My iPhone free for iPhone 4 & iPad owners and for relaxing/clarifying App Store rules (finally allowing Google Voice, for example). Boo for removing shared AirPrint functionality, making AirPrint practically useless (unless you have a new HP printer) and not bringing iWork to the iPhone.
Chase, USAA, and PayPal - for remote check deposits. Boo for taking so long to process them (7 days for PayPal)
Developers for making separate iPad “HD” versions, instead of bundling them as a Universal app.

CrashPlan 3.0 & Mac Metadata

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 21:19:00 -0700

Two days ago, Code42 released the long-awaited 3.0 update to their fantastic CrashPlan backup application. Among the new features and changes are the merging of their paid CrashPlan+ and CrashPlan Central services, backup sets, and what this blog post is about, full support for Mac HFS+ xattr metadata! I wanted to see just how well CrashPlan 3.0 performs with regards to Mac metadata, so I ran a Backup Bouncer (enhanced) test on it. The full results are below for those interested. While it’s not perfect, CrashPlan 3.0 in fact does a better job supporting Mac metadata than most Mac backup apps, including Apple’s own Time Machine. The only pieces of metadata not supported are HFS+ compression added in Snow Leopard (decmpfs xattr - the data is still good though, just not compressed) and non-inherited ACLs. Overall, I’m very impressed! Great job, Code42!

Note: My feelings are still mixed on combining CrashPlan+ and CrashPlan Central. I may want a CrashPlan+ account for a computer which I have no intention of backing up to CrashPlan Central. Granted, there are now cheaper monthly/yearly 10GB plans, but these could still be more expensive than buying the old CrashPlan+ license.

sh-3.2# bbouncer verify -d /Volumes/Src /Volumes/Dst

Verifying: basic-permissions … ok

Verifying: timestamps … ok

Verifying: symlinks … ok

Verifying: symlink-ownership … ok

Verifying: hardlinks … ok

Verifying: resource-forks …

Sub-test: on files … ok

Sub-test: on hardlinked files … ok

Verifying: finder-flags … ok

Verifying: finder-locks … ok

Verifying: creation-date … ok

Verifying: bsd-flags … ok

Verifying: extended-attrs …

Sub-test: [ on files ] … ok

Sub-test: creation time … ok

Sub-test: modification time … ok

Sub-test: [ on locked files ] … ok

Sub-test: creation time … ok

Sub-test: modification time … ok

Sub-test: [ on directories ] … ok

Sub-test: creation time … ok

Sub-test: modification time … ok

Sub-test: [ on symlinks ] … ok

Sub-test: creation time … ok

Verifying: hfs-compression …

Sub-test: decmpfs xattr … not preserved

Sub-test: UF_COMPRESSED flag … not set

Sub-test: file contents … match

Sub-test: creation time … ok

Sub-test: modification time … ok

Sub-test: hard link inode … ok

Sub-test: hard link decmpfs xattr … not preserved

Sub-test: hard link UF_COMPRESSED flag … not set

Sub-test: hard link modification time … ok

Verifying: hfs-compression_large …

Sub-test: decmpfs xattr … not preserved

Sub-test: UF_COMPRESSED flag … not set

Sub-test: file contents … match

Sub-test: creation time … ok

Sub-test: modification time … ok

Sub-test: hard link inode … ok

Sub-test: hard link decmpfs xattr … not preserved

Sub-test: hard link UF_COMPRESSED flag … not set

Sub-test: hard link modification time … ok

Verifying: access-control-lists …

Sub-test: on files … ok

Sub-test: on dirs … ok

Sub-test: on locked files … ok

Sub-test: on non-inherited acls … FAIL

Sub-test: on inherited acls … ok

Verifying: fifo … ok

Verifying: devices … ok

Verifying: combo-tests …

Sub-test: xattrs + rsrc forks … ok

Sub-test: lots of metadata … ok

Alan Quatermain: Farewell urftopdf, we hardly knew ye

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 23:04:27 -0700

Alan Quatermain: Farewell urftopdf, we hardly knew ye:

quatermain:

So I got an email from Apple Legal today. Long & short of it was that they were contacting me directly instead of just sending a C&D via courier since I’m a real developer working for a decent company. They told me that they believe my urftopdf implementation is derivative of theirs. I can’t…

Tumblr thoughts & issues

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 22:51:00 -0700

There were a number of things that influenced my decision to move jeffawaddell.com to Tumblr, rather than another blog platform, such as Wordpress.com. I like Tumblr’s iPhone app and being able to post by email. I really like the ability to use a my own domai and custom themes, and the ease of editing them. It seems as easy to use as Tumblr is on the surface, there is a lot of power available to those who want to hack it via custom themes. All and all, though, Tumblr just makes Wordpress’s dashboard seem exceptionally complicated and non-user friendly. I’d compare the interface and usability of Tumblr vs. WordPress to Apple vs. Microsoft. However for all of the good, I have come across some issues, peculiarities, and areas where Wordpress, for example, still reins supreme.

Text editing on Tumblr is limited. Why isn’t there an underline option? Granted, you can use HTML, but that requires you to go to a separate editor - you can’t intermix HTML and rich text in the editor. Wordpress’s editor is much better.
Rich text is all messed up when editing a post on the iPhone app - is shows up as HTML, and (to my eyes) the HTML looks messed up ( tags everywhere, between many, many words).
There is no way to import an existing blog (from say, Wordpress) into Tumblr - I don’t think. I ended up importing 60+ posts by hand, which was very tedious.
On the Dashboard, are not listed by date (annoying if you backdate a post, and it still shows on top because it was the last post you made). Also, there is no way to sort posts by date for editing purposes (in both the Dashboard and iPhone app).
Save as a draft should be a button, not an option in a drop down menu.
There is no easy way to specify a favicon, although I suppose I can do this through custom HTML. I haven’t tried yet.
There should be custom image and video host integration with Twitter, so a picture could be upped to Twitter from Twitter for iPhone (Tweetie) and create a new photo post on Tumblr at the same time (similar to the Wordpress plugin TweetPress by @brandontrab)
The amazingly talented Marco Arment had left Tumblr to focus other projects (such as his fantastic Instapaper service and iOS app). This can’t be good for Tumblr’s future development. Seriously though, if you don’t have Instapaper - get it - now!

I’ve already made a number of customization to the stock Ichi theme I’m using, and I’m sure there will be many more to come:

Add Twitter widget (and adjusting font)
Add Tag Clouds
Make post titles into links
Adjust spacing
Add header image (and menu option for uploading image to Tumblr)

On a side note, I’ve been trying to integrate my last few Tweets into my page, and came across Tumblr’s custom HTML docs where it talks about adding a {block:Twitter} block. This works, but it only shows one Tweet (my most recent). I’d like to show five tweets. Does anyone know of a way to do that?

Hello Tumblr...

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 18:11:00 -0700

Over the years, I’ve used a number of blogging platforms for hosting my website and blog. Most recently, I’ve been using a self-hosted WordPress installation, but before that I went back and forth between Blogger and Wordpress.com. Even though I’ve rarely posted thoughts to my blog since the advent of Twitter and meta-blogging, there are times when 140 characters are not enough to express myself, and I resort to writing a new post. I’ve really enjoyed the flexibilty I’ve had these last two years with Wordpress, and it’s ability to easily install custom themes (and the vast number of themes available) and tweak features to my liking through extensions. The limited customization available with Wordpress.com and Blogger are what drove me away to begin with.

Alas, the fantastic $14 for two years hosting deal I have with DreamHost is coming to an end, and I really can’t justify the expense of a hosting plan relative to my current needs. So, I once again began the search for my blog’s new free (or cheap) home. I again considered Wordpress.com, but quickly ruled out Blogger, as it’s been languishing for years. However, there have been a few newcomers to the scene during my Wordpress absence that I wanted to checkout, and which honestly, impressed me a bit more than Wordpress.com. These included Tumblr and Posterous. After experimenting with my options, I ultimately chose Tumblr (at least for now), and here I am. Hello Tumblr. Hopefully this will be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Thoughts on Apple's September 2010 Music Event

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:26:00 -0700

Earlier today, Apple held their annual music-related event in California and announced their new lineup of iPods (iPod Touch, Nano, and Shuffle), iTunes 10, and an updated Apple TV. Here are my thoughts about Apple’s latest announcements in easy to digest 140 character or less tweets:

On the new iPod Nano and iPod Classic:

The new Nano seems like a step-back. It’s touchscreen, but not iOS. Last years camera & all video playback completely removed!
I’m really surprised Apple has kept the iPod Classic, even though it hasn’t been updated this year.

On the new Apple TV and TV/movie rentals:

Apple TV looks interesting, but I’m not liking the rental-only model. Shouldn’t purchases be an option for those who want them.
How about users who purchased a TV show or movie in their Mac or iOS device? They can’t watch it on Apple TV, or can they with AirPlay?
Apple should allow the playback of purchases on Apple TV by streaming them from the cloud.
The new Apple TV is capped at 720p. Why? I want full 1080p, Apple!
$1 TV rentals are nice, but being only ABC & Fox makes its usefulness quite limited.
NBC will never go along, considering their previous disagreements with Apple over pricing, Hulu stake, and Comcast takeover.
Hmm, HDMI. How to connect the new Apple TV to an older HDTV without HDMI (component only)? I probably can’t.
$5 for a movie rental on the new Apple TV! No thanks! I’ll use RedBox for a buck or Netflix streaming!
If Apple had embraced the $1 a day RedBox movie rental model, then it could have actually been revolutionary!
I’m not sure why I’d want an Apple TV over a Roku HD-XR. Roku is cheaper, supports 1080p, component video, and supports MANY other apps besides just Netflix & Flickr, including Pandora & Amazon.
I wonder if Roku can play back .mp4 & DivX movies too, which the Apple TV can’t? If so, another advantage. I use my Xbox for this all the time. Indispensable.

On iTunes 10:

I can’t stand the horizontal close/minimize/expand gems in iTunes 10! Why, Apple, why? No respect for your own UI guidelines in iTunes?
I hardly use Facebook, so I can’t even imagine using Ping.
Ping would probably be more successful if Apple tied it into existing services like Facebook, Twitter, & Last.FM instead of building anew. Sort of like Facebook did with Geolocation, supporting existing services like Foursquare and Gowalla.

On the new iPod Touch and iOS 4.2:

Will iOS 4.2 bring wireless printing to the iPhone too, or is it just iPad? If it’s just iPad, then the OS isn’t truly converged.
How about AirPlay? Will iOS 4.2 on the iPhone get that too?
No surprises with the new iPod Touch, other than Apple mysteriously capping the camera resolution. Could it be to artificially make the iPhone seem better?
The iPod Touch uses email for FaceTime. I wish the iPhone would support email for FaceTime as well.
How will calling FaceTime users on an iPod Touch from an iPhone (or vice versa) work? Can a Touch user call an iPhone by email?

WWDC 2010 Surprises?

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Tomorrow marks the start of Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, which kicks off with a keynote from Steve Jobs himself. While an announcement of the next iPhone and release of iPhone OS 4.0 (originnally showed off back in April) is widly expected, there are sure to be a few surprises. Notably, an announcement of Safari 5 and Xcode 4 has been rumored over the last few days. I have my own little wish list, which I thought I’d share in hopes that the Apple gods (and maybe even Steve himself) are reading and want to grant me my wishes! Here they are: (Note: Updated with actual WWDC announcements & comments in bold)

It seems two of my wishes have been granted, with a third possibly partially granted. Apple made no mention of my twelve other wishes, which is extremely disappointing when it comes to things like a new notification system (my #1 gripe with the iPhone - I can’t see at a glance new mail senders/subjects without opening Mail!), free MobileMe (which Apple really needs to do in order to compete with Google’s free services), and areas where other OS’s like Android are kicking the iPhone’s ass (voice recognition, wireless syncing, social network integration, etc.). Of course, there’s always the lack of a Verizon or T-Mobile announcement too, although I have some hope that maybe, if the stars align the right way, we’ll see something by the end of 2010 here (especially with all the rumors regarding CDMA iPhones and the fact that the iPhone 4 now supports T-Mobile USA’s 900mhz 3G frequency. Coincidence? I hope not.)

MobileMe get’s enhanced and goes free to compete with Google in the cloud. (No announcement)
iChat brings VoIP & video calls to the iChat HD for free or cheap (and supported w/o additional fees on AT&T). (Video chats are a go with iPhone 4 and WiFi, but sadly, no support by AT&T for 3G. And, it won’t work with iChat on a Mac.)
A new notification/widget system for iPhone OS. (I’m extremely disappointed Apple didn’t announce something here!!!)
An Apple-provided, free turn-by-turn navigation app. (No announcement)
HD radio reception on iPhone. (No announcement)
Wireless syncing of data & Cloud-based iTunes service (which would still allow downloads). (No announcement - there’s always September!)
Safari extensions (also supported on iPhone - think a 1Password plugin). (Safari 5 with extensions is here, but sadly, no news on iPhone extension support)
The iPhone available on T-Mobile and/or Verizon. (No announcement)
Enhanced voice control for voice dictation throughout the OS (like on Android). (No announcement)
A built-in dictionary app (w/ support for international & translation dictionaries). (Dictionary lookup may be a feature of iOS 4 - I’m not sure yet. It doesn’t seem like it will have it’s own app or support international translation dics though)
New, cheaper iPhone plans from AT&T & the ability to buy the iPhone unlocked. (No announcement)
Improved file syncing w/o iTunes (using mountable drives & individual app folders). (No announcement!!!)
True push Gmail (w/o using Exchange) and/or IMAP-Idle support. (No announcement)
Internet radio integrated into the iPod app. (No announcement)
Social integration with Facebook & Twitter (that won’t conflict with Google/MobileMe sync). (No announcement - very surprised here too)

The Problem With Amazon (and Apple)

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0700

I’ve become quite annoyed with Amazon.com (and Apple) lately. Even though I’m enamored with their new cloud computing initiatives, like S3, their core business practices are increasingly making me cringe and question my future relationship with them. First, I’ll give a quick rundown. Basically, in my opinion, Amazon seems to be systematically withholding shipment of orders for customers selecting their free shipping option. I’ve thought this for a while, but as I don’t order a lot from Amazon, I’ve never been able to definitely decide if this was the case until this week. Additionally, Amazon has begun to play strong-arm tactics with music and book publishers as part of its ever increasing price and distribution war with Apple (granted, Apple does this too, which is wrong). First, there were reports of Apple demanding music labels permanently end their relationship with Amazon with respect to Amazon’s cheap $5 or so digital album sales. These were good for consumers, and if the labels are ok and willing to discount their products in any way, then no one company (whether Apple or Amazon) should deny their ability to do so. Today, it’s been reported that Amazon in playing roulette with various large publishing companies, pulling ALL of their paper and ebooks from sale unless they agree to a new three-year ebook contract with Amazon, which would Kindle availability of all ebooks and ban publishers from selling their ebooks cheaper elsewhere (read: Apple’s iBooks store). Apple started this by requiring publishers not to sell their wares for cheaper elsewhere, and Amazon is just following suit. Amazon used to sell Kindle ebooks at wholesale prices, which is how it should be. Again, these sorts of pricing decisions should be the sole responsibility of the publishers, not demanded by content distributers, stores, or legal contracts. Pricing and availability should be flexible and apt to adapt to the market environment, otherwise everybody suffers. That said, I vehemently dislike exclusivity deals among distributers - products should be available everywhere, and let the market compete over best price, just like in the non-digital world. You can read more about this in an article from the New York Times.

As far as shipping goes, here’s the story: Last week, I order a book & a DVD burner from Amazon. I select free shipping, ok with not receiving the items right away. In my opinion, it’s ok to wait for longer for delivery if the items are in shipment, using ground or some other slow and presumably cheaper delivery process. However, waiting just for the items to ship is not right, especially when they seem to have been deliberately held-back just to make me mad. In my case, no part of my order was packed or shipped until exactly a week to the hour from my original order. Then, only the DVD burner ships (out of a distribution facility in GA, on its way to AZ). The following day, the book ships separately from a distribution center right across town in Phoenix, AZ. That’s right, It took Amazon a week to pack & ship something out!!! If I had not selected free shipping, it apparently would have shipped out right away. It doesn’t seem like Amazon was moving things around internally to save costs, nor was anything out of stock, & they still ended up shipping in two separate packages. The only reason for taking so long, in my opinion, is to persuade people not to use free shipping and to upgrade to their Amazon Prime service (free 2-day shipping for aprox. $80 a year, which doesn’t make sense for infrequent purchasers). What other explanation could there be?

Honestly though, what is Amazon achieving by withholding shipment in such a maner? It doesn’t seem like they’re saving costs, because free shipping seems to be the exact same as standard paid shipping, and they’re shipping my order in two different packages. The only thing Amazon gains is the ill will of their customers for taking so long to ship when their competitors ship much quicker. For example, I’ve never had to wait more than 48 hours (usually 24) for items to ship with free shipping from competitors like Newegg, Buy.com, & Barnes & Noble. Honestly, with such a policy, why should I buy from Amazon & not their competitors? What’s amazing though, is I’ve found very little on the internet talking about this. Some people say they do, others say they don’t. At least for me, I’ve noticed witholding of various degrees the last number of times I’ve ordered from Amazon. Withholding shipment like this is simply unacceptable & is a great way to piss off the customers which Amazon depends on! Way to go!

Disclaimer: All statements and opinions in this piece are my own. I have no proof of Amazon witholding shipment of orders, only my personal experiences with their shipment times in relation to that of their competitors.

My Favorite iPhone Apps of 2009

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0700

With 2009 coming to a close, and a time for giving thanks, I thought it would be a good time to talk about my favorite iPhone apps of the year. These are all apps I’ve purchased (some are/were free), and which I really enjoy or use frequently. Hopefully this short list can be of some use to others, by introducing you to some fantastic apps.

My Five Favorite/Most-Used Apps:

Reeder & Byline - Two very good Google Reader/RSS clients. Reeder currently has the advantage, with built-in Instapaper/Delicious support.
Tweetie 2 & Twitterlator Pro- Two fantastic Twitter clients. I switch back and forth between them.
Instapaper Pro - Essential app for offline reading of articles and websites. I use it constantly!
1Password Pro - Synced with my Mac to access all of my randomly-generated website user name and passwords.
Facebook - Self explanatory; It’s a shame its developer Joe Hewitt has called it quits for iPhone development in protest to Apple’s App Store review policies. I understand & applaud him for his stand, it’s just the Facebook app is/was so good!

Note: Currently, Reeder & Twitterlator Pro have earned a coveted place on my 1st home screen.

Honorable Mention - Apps (in no particular order):

Dropbox - A great free little app to sync documents with my Dropbox account (which deserves special mention itself!).
GPush - Even though I use Google Sync (push Gmail via Exchange), I use Gpush to receive pop-up notifications of new emails as a work-around to Apple’s complete lack of an iPhone notification system. Hopefully Apple will implement email notifications, and I can drop Gpush.
Sportacular - Sports score app with a fantastic push notification system for score updates.
GVMobile - Available for free via Cydia for Jailbroken iPhones; Was on iTunes until Apple banned it in July, along with Google’s own client, for an unknown reason (probably competition)
Mint - An iPhone client for the personal finance site.
Wikiamo - A great free Wikipedia client.
Delivery Status Touch - A great way to keep track of packages, and syncs with the free Mac Dashboard widget of the same name!
Ultralingua French-English Dictionary - The most expensive app on my iPhone ($19.99), but one that comes in very handy for a French student.

My Ten Eleven Favorite Games (in no particular order):

Harbor Master - A highly enjoyable Flight Control clone with more depth.
iBlast Moki - The best physics-based puzzle game available for the iPhone.
Doodle Jump - A very simple, yet very addicting platform jumping game.
The Creeps - A great tower defense game with frequent updates.
GeoDefense & GeoDefense Swarm - Two of the most difficult, yet rewarding tower defense games on the iPhone.
Hearts Solo - Fantastic free Hearts game
Bejeweled 2 - A great implementation by PopCap of the now classic gem matching game.
StoneLoops! of Jurassica - A fantastic Zuma/Luxor clone; It’s a shame it’s been pulled from the App Store after a complaint from Luxor developer Mumbo Jumbo
Tiki Towers - A fun physics-based puzzle games involving monkeys.
MotionX Poker - One of the first iPhone games I purchased in July 2008, and still one of my favorites.
Monopoly - A last minute addition to the list, I haven’t been able to stop playing it since I purchased it a few weeks ago. The classic Monopoly is much better than the year-old ‘Here & Now Edition,’ with improved graphics and stability.

Honorable Mention - Games (in no particular order):

Rolando 2 - An original platformer made strictly for the iPhone!
Castle of Magic - A very good platformer. Perhaps the best on the iPhone.
Toki Tori - A puzzler involving a cute little chicken.
GloBall - A fun little puzzle game, which was a top seller over the summer.
Isotope, geoFighter, & PewPew - Three fun space shooters. Isotope is the best of the bunch, but geoFighter (a clone of Geometry Wars) and PewPew are also good for free.
Peggle - PopCap’s other classic. Fun until I finished it, but not sure about the re-playability factor.
Let’s Golf - A good, cartoony arcade golf game from Gameloft. Arguably better than the Tiger Woods game right now!
Sky Burger & Scoops - Two similar, fun games involving stacking items of food. Sky Burger has a little more depth than Scoops.
Fling! - A great puzzle game I was lucky enough to download when free. Still worth it at $0.99 or $1.99.
Eliminate - The iPhone’s free FPS king with a very interesting business model involving in-game power-up purchases.

And finally, I’d like to give a special mention to Google Sync, which provides free push Gmail, GCal, and address book sync via Microsoft’s Exchange protocol. It’s fantastic, and works great! My only complaint: There’s currently no way to map deleting a message to moving a message to the trash, as opposed to ‘archiving’ the message. Also, you have to live with Apple’s current OS limitations, such as lack of email notifications (why I use Gpush, but is a bad substitute) and support for only one Exchange account.

Converting a .mkv to .mp4, & watching it on an Xbox 360

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

I recently came upon a 720p .mkv Matroska video file I wanted to watch on my Xbox 360 and HDTV. This presents a couple problems. One, the Xbox 360 doesn’t support the Matroska container. Two, the video file itself is over 4GB, and the FAT32 file system on my flash drive only supports files under 2GB. So, I needed to find a way to transcode the movie over to a .mp4 container, and split the resulting files to be smaller than 2GB.

I started out by looking at the video and audio tracks of the Matroska file with Mediainfo Mac. I discovered that the video track was standard .h264, while the audio was Dolby Digital (DTS). I didn’t want to have to re-encode the video (and loose additional quality) during the conversion to .mp4, so I threw out some common tools like Handbrake, in order to focus on tools that offered video pass through. One option is to use Quicktime 7 Pro to pass-through the video to a .mov file (which the Xbox should play). The audio track, however, becomes a problem, because you can’t passthrough DTS audio to a .mp4 file or .mov file (you must re-encode as AAC, and loose the Dolby). This also doesn’t solve problem two (the size issue). For more on using Quicktime 7 Pro for this task, & streaming via the excellent Connect 360 tool (which I didn’t want to do), check out this tutorial.

So, I think I found a better tool, which happily solves both of the above two problems - MKVTool (unfortunately, not free). The first thing I did with MKVTool was split the original Matroska file into 5 smaller Matroska files. Then, I converted each one individually over to .mp4, using “pass-through” for video and AAC for audio. Note that selecting passthrough for audio results in a completely dropped audio track, as the .mp4 container can’t take DTS audio. I also tried creating a .h264/DTS AVI file, which MKVTool warned probably wouldn’t play, and it was right.

Success! Using MKVTool, I was able to split and pass-through my .mkv movie over to the .mp4 container, and successfully play it off a flash drive on my Xbox 360. The only downside is loosing the Dolby surround sound during the conversion to AAC, but the resulting audio still sounds good to my ears. I’ll keep looking for better/free tools, and a way to keep the DTS audio so if you know of any, feel free to leave a comment!

The iPhone sucks in the US, & it's AT&T's fault - & Verizon's, T-Mobile's, & the FCC's!

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The iPhone sucks in the US. First, however, let me preface this by saying the problem isn’t with the iPhone or Apple - it’s with AT&T (and Verizon, T-Mobile, & the FCC - read on for more). In fact, I believe the iPhone is currently the best mobile device in the world. The opposite could be said about AT&T - that it’s the worst mobile network in the world - and that’s where the problem with the iPhone in the US lies.

MC Siegler over at TechCrunch recently wrote a sharp rebuke of AT&T for it’s network problems and handling of the iPhone. It’s good reading, and I have to commend him on his well deserved public condemnation of AT&T. Others, including ComputerWorld, have also covered the problems. Now it’s my turn. As you can read in depth about the problems in that blog post, I’ll only highlight some here:

Visual Voicemail has been down for some for weeks, causing missed voicemail and no comment at all from AT&T
AT&T’s online iPhone activation fails (2 years in a row) on iPhone 3Gs launch weekend, causing Apple to give free iTunes gift cards to rectify the unhappy sentiment
iPhone OS 3.0 launches in US without support for MMS and tethering (2 of it’s big features) because AT&T can’t get its act together. Weeks later, these two features still are not available, and there’s no ETA.
iPhone 3Gs users everywhere [else] enjoy faster 3G access due to built in support for 7.2Mbps 3G - except in the US, because it’s not supported by AT&T network (and won’t be until well into 2010 or 2011).
AT&T ends iPhone pre-paid option, screwing both US customers and foreigners traveling within the US, who want local access, and are used to purchasing local pre-paid SIM cards wherever they go. The US is really the only country that doesn’t offer or makes it extremely difficult to do this. Read more here.
AT&T’s network coverage sucks, and frequently goes down completely, leaving iPhone users unable to connect. For example, during the SxSW music festival in Austin, the network just crashes. People can’t get signals in major cities, and I, as an example, get cut off conversations with many times more static and dead spots than I used to a few years back with T-Mobile. Why can other country’s mobile carriers have working networks in large cities, with just as many users, and without any of these problems, and AT&T can’t is beyond me. The blame has to be with AT&T.

All of these problems are truly reprehensible, and the blame lies entirely with AT&T. It also reflects poorly not just on AT&T, but also Apple due it’s exclusive arrangement. Unfortunately, it seems AT&t is just another example of an arrogant company that truly doesn’t care anymore! It makes no apologies for it’s failures, and makes no promises for fixes. AT&T should be doing everything possible to fix these problems in it’s effort to court Apple, and its not! This is just further proof that Apple should not renew its exclusivity contract with AT&T, or any other carrier.

However, I believe AT&T’s network and iPhone problems are just one piece of a much larger problem: the US mobile industry itself. Specifically, the fact that CDMA is used by half of the carriers, which decreases competition, and lousy foresight and steering by the FCC. Granted, AT&T is solely responsible for it’s own failures, but the fact that there is no competition (to force fixes & upgrades) is systemic in the US system (and furthered, of course, by AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity).

First, let’s examine the problem with CDMA. The US & South Korea are essentially the only countries using CDMA-based mobile networks. Every other country solely utilises GSM networks. GSM allows for cross-compatibility, global roaming, and increased competition at the network/service level. Thus, as CDMA carriers, Verizon & Sprint aren’t truly viable as competition to AT&T and T-Mobile. Then, there are the problems of varying GSM network bands in the US, which are often different from those used in rest of the world. T-Mobile’s 3G network band is all by itself - it’s the only network in the entire world on its band, making it entirely incompatible with AT&T and all other GSM networks, and like with CDMA, requires phone manufactures to create phones with specific support for T-Mobile USA (which is too small to matter to most manufactures to justify such a cost). This problem can be blamed squarely at the FCC, along with not mandating GSM and standardized network bands from the beginning. Then, there are anti-competitive business practices, like mandated phone exclusivity, long-term service contracts (even when a phone isn’t subsidized), and locked phones in general. All of these issues need to be corrected before the US mobile market is competitive and provides consumer choice.

In a globalized world, we can’t afford to be looking so internally, thinking that having an iPhone on Verizon would solve all of our problems. Likewise, we can’t look at the domestic-only compatibility of CDMA and not conclude it isn’t a huge liability. The GSM world standard exists for a reason, and it’s past time for the US to fully adopt it. People are too mobile, and phones manufacturers are too global-focused not to. For example, unlocked CDMA phones aren’t available; you can’t just switch out a card to change providers (in fact, you can’t change CDMA providers at all); and CDMA phone models are extremely limited (mostly to South Korean manufacturers), because a phone maker would have to build a phone specifically for the US market and a specific carrier. Indeed, Apple would have to build a version of the iPhone specifically for the US market and Verizon, which cant be used globally and can’t be used on any other network besides Verizon. This just isn’t practical! The only other GSM carrier, T-Mobile, isn’t really much competition because it’s 3G network sucks and isn’t even compatible with the 3G bands supported by the iPhone and 99% of other phones (leaving you with 2G only). However, Apple should end the AT&T exclusivity and allow T-Mobile to sell the iPhone, and leave it up to consumers which carrier to choose.

Surely, this lack of global compatibility is the largest overall problem with the iPhone in the US market. Just for comparison sake, consider Australia: There are four national GSM carriers, each carrying the iPhone unlocked (!), leaving consumers free to shop around for the best network and service prices. This kind of competition is what the US needs, and will only happen when the carriers all utilise the same network technology for cross-compatibility!

I, for one, refuse to even consider Verizon (even if it does have the “best” network) because I don’t want a phone locked to a legacy, isolated technology (CDMA), that won’t operate on any other network, or even globally. Besides, I want phone model choice and new technologies, and that only comes with GSM because it’s just not available with CDMA. Luckily, Verizon appears to understand, and is planning on migrating its network to GSM LTE 4G in the next couple of years (although I’m unsure what band). Unfortunately, that doesn’t help American iPhone owners now or next year. Until then, all we can do is light a fire under AT&T and hope they get there act together!

The New MacBook Pro 13" vs Previous MacBook

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

About a month ago, I recieved a brand new MacBook aluminum unibody, maxed out with a 2.4ghz CPU, 320GB harddrive, and 4GB of memory. I love it (except for a slight ding in the aluminum out of the box), although it did take some getting use to the smaller resolution after using a 15” PowerBook for almost 4 years. Fast forward to last Monday, when Apple announced that the MacBook aluminum model is being renamed a “MacBook Pro,” and gaining a few new features to go along with its new “professional” moniker. The upgrades over my last-gen version include:

Slight CPU bump (from 2.4ghz to 2.56ghz)
FireWire 800
SecureDigital card slot
Upgraded, non-removable battery
Upgraded display (higher color gamut)
Standard 4GB Ram (now supports up to 8 GB from 4GB)
“Pro” name designation
64-bit Bootcamp driver support
Removal of digital audio input
Cheaper price ($100 less)

That’s it! The rest of the system remains the same as the previous-gen MacBook - same GPU, same chassis, same display resolution, same multi-touch trackpad, same weight and dimensions, but at about $100 less than the previous-gen. At first I was a little upset, but then I came to the following realizations. Sure, I would love a FireWire port and built-in SD card reader on my MacBook, but I would only use the Firewire port with my old digital video cam(which I haven’t used recently - I actually only used FW on my PowerBook for Target Disk Mode). I can always use an external USB card reader for reading my SD cards, and my dSLR uses CompactFlash anyway. The small CPU bump isn’t going to make much of a difference, and while I guess it would be nice for my MacBook to say “Pro” on it, the name really makes no difference. That leaves the upgraded display and battery as the “upgrades” I would benefit most from, especially the display (a better display is always nice, although I should note that its the same resolution as the previous MacBook display, which I haven’t noticed any problems with. It also would be a moot point if you use an external monitor).

The new MacBook Pro comes standard with 4GB of memory, which I already have in my MacBook, but it now supports up to 8 GB (I don’t think I’d ever install more than 4GB, but its nice to have the capability. As there are no chipset changes, the previous-gen MacBooks also could support up to 8GB, but must be artificially capped via firmware. Apple could fix this via an upgrade, but I doubt they will.) Along with the “Pro” designation comes 64-bit Bootcamp drivers from Apple, allowing you to run a 64-bit version of Windows (which is required to take advantage of more than 2GB of RAM). This is one feature I would definitely take advantage of, and one feature my current MacBook is actually already capable of. That’s right, any Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook is capable of 64-bit, but Apple has purposely blocked their non-Pro computers from installing the Drivers. Hopefully, Apple will rectify this crazy software-only feature distinction with Snow Leopard, since 64-bit is useful to all users (although again, I’m not holding my breath).

As far as the battery, the new battery features new technology that supposedly allows it to last doubly long before beginning to degrade (from 500 charges to 1000 charges) and get more life out of each charge. Gizmodo has done some preliminary testing, and the difference appears to be about 40 extra minutes (see diagram below, and read thereview over at Gizmodo), which is pretty significant! However, there is a downside! The new battery is non-removable by the user, and must be replaced by Apple, where it will cost $175 for replacement rather than $120. Likewise, the longer life claim has yet to be proved in general use.

So, all-in-all, the upgrade is a great one for those needing to upgrade. I really have to applaud Apple for creating a really great computer! But at the end of the day, I’ve concluded that not having the latest and greatest “MacBook Pro” isn’t really that big of a deal. Sure, the new model has some great features, but my last-gen MacBook performs just as well in almost all areas (with the exception of the CPU, display, and battery), and so far, I can say I don’t have any complaints!

Diagrams from Gizmodo.

My iPhone 2010 and OS 3.x/4.0 Wishlist

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Now that the WWDC keynote has come and gone and all of the announcements have been sifted through, it’s time to discuss the iPhone 3GS. Most of the rumors turned out to be inaccurate. The 3GS doesn’t contain a front-facing camera or iChat app, nor did it drop the chrome bezel gain a light-up Apple logo, or a rubberized back (but it does have a new “oil and print resistant” glossy back, whatever that means). Likewise, the rumored FM radio support is nowhere to be found. However, the iPhone 3GS is not all disappointments. It’s 2x faster than the 3G, due to a memory and presummable CPU/graphics upgrade, but we’ll have to wait to see this new-found power taken advantage of by apps and the OS (bring on the multitasking!) beyond increased general snappiness. The 3GS does indeed have an upgraded 3mp camera with video recording, a compass, improved battery life, and answering one of my biggest requests, finally voice control (although I don’t understand why it’s not supported on older models). Additionally, the 3GS has faster 3G (which won’t be supported in the US until AT&T gets around to upgrading their network by “2011.” Finally, the price is right, at $199 for 16GB or $299 for 32GB with a two-year contract (unless you’re getting screwed by AT&T, which I’ll save for a later post). So, it’s time to cross off the features from my wishlist that came true and will be available on either the iPhone 3GS or iPhone OS 3.0, and which features will have to wait for the next hardware or software revision. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if I can wait a whole year or longer for some of these features (like smart notifications & push Gmail), so I hope Apple has some of them planned for a 3.1 or 3.5 update in the shorter term.

So, without further ado, let me present my ~~iPhone 2009 and OS 3.0 wishlist~~ iPhone 2010 and OS 3.x/4.0 Wishlist (Note: My absolute, must-have features are in red and I will continue to update this post as new feature requests come to mind, and features get added to the iPhone):

iPhone Hardware:

~~Faster processor and more internal RAM~~ - Feature included in iPhone 3GS!
Front facing camera (for video chat)
OLED display
Lacks chrome bezel; slimmer (like iPod Touch)
~~Higher resolution rear camera~~ ~~(with video functionality)~~ - Feature included in iPhone 3GS!
720p HD Video - iPhone 3Gs hardware is capable of this, just needs a software update!
FM radio
Wireless iTunes syncing (w/o MobileMe) and charging
Louder speakerphone - unknown whether included in iPhone 3GS?

iPhone OS 3.0:

Application multitasking w/ Exposé app. switching (true multitasking, not just push notifications)
Smart Notifications: No more obtrusive pop-ups! Use smooth slide-up notifications that appear on bottom of screen like Palm WebOS. Notifications for Mail, SMS, iChat, Calendar, iPod, etc. Developer API. iPod music control via slide-up notification bar as well.
~~~~Voice Calling/Control~~ - feature included in iPhone 3GS!~~
Easier way to turn on/off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, & Airplane mode (perhaps through menu bar dropdown menu toggles); usable from any app
Mail: IMAP-Idle for Push Gmail; multiple Exchange accounts; unified inbox (for multiple accounts); ability to select a different “from” address for sent mail; custom SMTP servers; attachments (multiple photos & documents)
iChat: Multi-service IM; video and audio chat; background support
Search: Searches Mail message contents; Internet searches (Google, Twitter, etc.); Developer plug-ins for installed apps
iPod: Create & Edit Playlists on iPhone; Easier update to all “subscribed” podcasts (w/o having to open iTunes app); Internet Radio
Calendar: To-Do lists w/ desktop sync; Built-in Google Calendar sync; Ability for apps to read/write cal data(ex. Movie app scheduling a show time in calendar)
Safari: Flash support; increased browser cache (to speed up reloads when re-launching app); additional search providers
Springboard: ~~Increase installed app limit~~; folders; improved icon organization (perhaps through iTunes); custom wallpaper
Maps: ~~GPS supported turn-by-turn direction~~s (through 3rd-party apps like TomTom); social friend-finding
Document Editing/viewer (with local storage & Office file support)
Camera/Pictures: ~~Improved autofocu~~s; digital zoom; ~~video recording~~; Tagging/Rating; uploading to Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, YouTube, etc.; Better way to manage Camera Roll photos on device (~~multiple delete at once~~, folders)
Social/Web 2.0 Integration: Built-in support for Web 2.0 services like Google address book/calendar, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr throughout the OS; allowing internet searches; automatic push synchronization of address book/calendar; status updates; picture posting, seeing friends in map via GPS, etc. (like Palm WebOS’s Synergy feature, but better!)
Spell checker with linked dictionary/thesaurus app (like OS X has, useable in any app.)
Combine iTunes & Apps store app into one “iTunes app” for all purchases
Built-in RSS app. with full Google Reader integration/sync.
~~Notes syncing~~ - included in OS 3.0!
~~Copy/Paste~~ - included in OS 3.0!
~~Voice Notes~~ - included in OS 3.0! (as a separate app, not integrated into Notes)
~~Internet Tethering~~ - supported in OS 3.0, but not by AT&T (and probably too expensive when finally supported “later”)!
More gestures to do neat things and make use of the iPhone’s multi-touch

iPhone OS 3.0 Wishlist (Old)

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Apple will be holding a special media event on March 17th to announce the next revision of the iPhone OS, and in order to stay competitive with up and coming OS’s like the Palm WebOS and Android, there are a few things I would like to see included:

Background Apps / Multiple apps. open at one time
Exposé - a way to switch between open apps without having to go back to the home screen
Notification area - interactive notifications (not pop-ups) like on the WebOS for incoming Mail, SMS, events, IMs, etc.
iChat - Built-in iChat client with voice and video chat support (utilizing the next iPhone’s front-facing camera)
~~MMS - I never use text messages, and if I do I don’t include a picture, but many people wish the iPhone had MMS from the beginning!~~
Multiple exchange accounts
Built-in web service integration (Google/Yahoo/Facebook contacts and events show up and sync to iPhone, etc. like with WebOS)
~~Notes syncing~~
Tasks/To do list support in calendar
FLASH!!!
~~COPY/PASTE!!!~~
~~More apps on switchboard~~ (perhaps through folders)
iPod: Edit playlists on iPhone; internet radio
PUSH GMAIL!!!
Document editing (a TextEdit mobile if you will)

Note: I updated this post after Apple’s media event, striking through announced features.

My thoughts on Safari 4

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Earlier this week, Apple released a beta of its latest and greatest version of Safari (4.0). Utilizing the latest WebKit, Safari 4 makes impressive leaps in standards compliance and speed, incorporating a speedy new JavaScript engine called Nitro and many HTML 5 features, such as client-side database storage. Safari’s interface also features a facelift, which in my opinion, is long overdue! Some of its new eye candy includes a revamped toolbar, which moves slimmer tabs to the top (à la Google’s Chrome), a “smart” address and search bar, CoverFlow for bookmarks & history, and a new “Top Sites” view, which displays your most visited sites in a 3D fashion (a version of Chrome’s “Recent Pages” page, with souped-up eye candy). I’m very thankful Apple is moving Safari forward, but I am a little concerned that with the current speed of Chrome and FireFox releases(and MS’s new-found intensity with IE 8 ), it’s taken the company almost two years to do it. Apple can’t expect to compete in the browser space (at least on Windows) if major Safari releases only come once a year - Safari needs to be constantly updated with new features. Like many people, I spend the majority of my time in front of my computer using a browser, so not surprisingly, I want my experience to be good, fast, and lightweight on resources. Now that I’ve made my rant on update frequency and browser usage, let’s look at some individual complaints I have about Safari 4 after a day of use, and my wish list of features for the future:

Safari 4 Complaints:

Speed/Performance: While Safari 4’s speed is touted as a major feature, and its render may be faster, the whole app feels slower - and this is ultimately what counts! On my PowerBook, Safari 4 uses more resources and feels at least 50% slower than Safari 3. On Windows, rendering common web pages and navigating the app in normal usage felt at least twice as slow as my current browser of choice, Chrome. I’m wondering if any of this has to do with the new eye candy - CoverFlow and “Top Sites” views - if so, it would be nice if we could turn them off. I don’t want to sacrifice speed for superfluous eye candy. Bottom line: Safari 4’s interface and the general app needs to be faster in order to compete!

Not Good - “Safari Webpage Preview Fetcher” using 90%+ of my CPU: This is not good at all, especially on a laptop. My PowerBook’s fan is spinning out of control, and I’m being burned (not to mention the battery is draining extremely fast). It’s been doing this all day, and luckily, I’ve been close to a power source. This in itself will make me ditch Safari 4 and go back to Safari 3! I mean, come on - I have about 5,000 bookmarks. This is ridiculous - I don’t need or want all of them cached or fetched, using precious system resources and capped bandwidth to do it!!! Bottom Line: Fix it! Allow us to turn it off! I don’t want this running all the time, fetching my bookmarks even if it doesn’t use resources like this.

No top bar for window management: On my Mac, there’s no top bar to grab an inactive window. If I click a tab at the top, Safari changes to that tab. I’m hesitant about clicking the top to move the window around as well. This hurts usability, and clashes with the Mac user interface guidelines. Bottom Line: Either there needs to be a little top bar (which even Chrome has a little of), or tabs shouldn’t change if the Safari window is in the background.

Grabbing a tab: With Safari 3 (and Chrome), you can grab a tab anywhere on the tab, and rearrange it or drag it to a new window. With Safari 4, there is a specific spot you have to click to drag it. This is a step backward. Bottom Line: Bring back the old behavior!

Top Sites: I like the idea, but I have mixed thoughts on the implementation. Off the bat, it’s a lot slower than Chrome’s version, no doubt due to the 3D UI. It looks cool, I guess, but I don’t think it works better. In fact, I feel it’s slightly more difficult to find the “Top Site” I’m looking for than with Chrome’s version (perhaps due to the roundedness?). I also like how Chrome integrates recent searches into this page. “Top Sites” also doesn’t seem to be refreshing the site thumbnails to the last loaded version - it’s still showing a log-in prompt from earlier on one site, and CNN from this morning which makes it even more difficult to tell what it is, and thus, less useful. It’s also slow to load the site after clicking a thumbnail - there’s a little zoom animation, where the thumbnail enlarges but remains dimmed for a few seconds until the page loads. Bottom Line: Fix the thumbnail, speed, & usability issues.

No way to turn off or hide the CoverFlow view: I’ve never found CoverFlow particularly useful in any of its various implementations (iTunes, my iPhone, in the Finder), and I don’t think I’ll find it useful in Safari. Instead, my initial experiences confirm my 1st thoughts - it draws a lot of resources to cache and display the web page previews. Additionally, and here’s my biggest gripe - it takes up a lot of room in the bookmark/history window, and there is no way to turn it off or hide it!!! Bottom Line: There must be a way to turn off or completely hide the CoverFlow view in Bookmarks (either by a “Show CoverFlow” menu item or a preference option).

Smart Address Bar, not so smart?: I’ve tried typing in both the names and addresses of some bookmarks and frequently visited sites into Safari’s version of FireFox’s ”Awesome Bar,” and it doesn’t show the expected sites. So, it doesn’t seem so smart or awesome, and it certainly isn’t very useful! I’ll keep testing, and report back, but the bottom line here is that it should work. If I type in Mint, it should return one of my bookmarks and frequently visited sites - mint.com (it didn’t). Another example, if I type “Wordpress” or “Blog Admin,” Safari doesn’t return my blog admin site (called in my bookmarks, “Jeff’s Blog Admin - Wordpress”). Useless!

Feature Wish List:

Bookmark Tagging/Starring: One of the features I love from FireFox 3 is it’s bookmarking system. I can easily star a page, which I use to mark temporary sites I want to go back to - the star amounts to a bookmark in an ”unsorted” folder, which I can later delete or file away. I can also easily add tags to a bookmark when adding, making it easier to find or sort later. One other nice feature of FireFox & Chrome is the pop-down bookmarking interface from the toolbar, accessed by clicking the star, which is a lot better than Safari on OS X’s roll down sheet or Safari on Window’s pop-up menu.

Bookmark Separators: Come on Apple, I’ve been wishing for this for years. Those little lines that make it easy to organize and divide your bookmarks. Please? Pretty Please?

Extensions: I’m sure I’m wishing for pie in the sky here, considering Apple’s legendary reluctance to allow outsiders to add or alter their meticulously designed user interfaces. Not to mention the fact that extensions could slowdown performance and/or stability and degrade the overall Safari experience. However, extensions are the one and only reason I come back to FireFox. When Chrome gets extensions (apparently by May), I may no longer have a need for FireFox at all. Bottom line: Safari’s lack of extensions only puts it farther behind the competition!

Custom Search Provider Plug-ins: Firefox and IE do it, so should Safari. By the way, why do Window’s Safari users get an option to choose Yahoo for the search box, but Mac users don’t? Strange!

Multi-process Windows/Tabs: For speed and stability, I’d like to see Safari use individual processes for each window or tab. This would help keep the entire app from slowing down when a single site is running slow due to a flash or a script (and I’ve experienced this more than I care to admit), crashing, and allow the app to release memory as a window is closed (and we all know how much of a memory hog Safari is).

Visual Indication of Private Browsing: I like how Chrome darkens the app UI to indicate a window or tab is in “Incognito” mode. Safari should offer something similar. There have been many times where I have forgot I had private browsing enabled, and wondered why site’s were complaining about cookies not working!

Note: This post will be updated as I think of more features I’d like to see added, and experience more annoyances!

How-To: Route internet traffic through an SSH Proxy

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Say you’re out somewhere (a wi-fi hotspot) for example, and you either want to access a site that’s blocked or you want a little more security, you can create a SSH tunnel from your computer to a remote computer. If you don’t have a UNIX box at home that you can connect to, a web hosting account works great! Here’s how to do it the quick an easy way, with a GUI, and then a different, slightly more complicated way.

The Quick and Easy, Automated Way:

Download a free utility called SSHTunnel
Fill in your SSH account info in the ‘Servers’ tab (note: SSH usually connects over port 22)
Go back to sessions, and select either Ethernet or Airport proxy (depending on your connection), select your server, and click on.
That’s it! SSH will turn on, and all internet traffic will be routed through the remote SSH host via an encrypted tunnel. (Note: SSH internet tunnel usage will probably count against your monthly hosting bandwidth - so, be careful!)

The More Advanced GUI Way (A little complicated, and unnecessary):

Use SSH Tunnel Manager
Setup your server, and enable it (see below for more) - For this technique, you have to set up each and every port redirect (HTTP, for example, is usually over port 80)
Setup your SOCKS proxy (see below)
Browse away!

The Down and Dirty CLI Way:

Open up the Terminal, and type ‘ssh -ND 9999 user@host.com’ (9999 is the local port to be forwarded - you can use whatever as long as its not already in use)
Enter your password when prompted (or set up SSH key exchange for password-less access)
It will look as if nothing has happened - the ‘-n’ flag cancels the SSH interactive prompt
Go into your browser, and enter the just setup SSH proxy info (Safari uses system proxies, FireFox has its own settings) - Select SOCKS proxy, and enter ‘localhost’ as the server and ‘9999’ as the port
Browse away!

For more, check out these posts:

Top Tech of MacWorld & CES 2009!

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Here’s a quick rundown of my favorite announcements coming out of MacWorld and the Consumer Electronics Show:

Palm Pre & Palm’s WebOS: Serious iPhone competition! Look for a future post.
MSI Wind X320: A fantastic copy of the MacBook Air (at only aprox. $800 too!)
Sony Vaio P: An incredibly thin and tiny netbook, but expensive for what it is.
Apple iLife 2009: Looks like there are some good updates to iPhoto and iMovie - Places will herald the arrival of GPS-enabled consumer cameras; Faces; iMovie image stabilization
Yahoo Connected TV Platform
Thin, light, pocket HD video cams: with USB 2.0 (in lieu of FireWire)

Amazon Kindle 2.0 Wish List

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 05:39:00 -0700

I’ve been looking at the Amazon Kindle for a while now, and have never been quite ready to take the plunge and purchase the device for its $350 asking price. Don’t get me wrong - the Kindle is a fantastic little device, I think truly heralds the forthcoming e-ink revolution. However, there is a lot of room for improvement, and with the recent rumors about a forthcoming Kindle 2.0 (next year) and a “Kindle for students,” I thought I would weigh in with some feature suggestions that would truly excite me:

Smaller, thinner, lighter - better design (Apple-like), black/metal (since white gets dirty)
Richer formatting: Perfect for textbooks, images, and those many newspapers & magazines
Native Document Viewer/Editor: Supporting .doc, PDF, rtf, etc., supporting direct copying via USB or wireless without having to convert the file or pay a “small fee.” Being able to edit (with keyboard)/annotate/highlight said documents would be an extra special touch).
PC Viewer Software: Lightweight PC/Mac viewer, allowing us to view our Kindle purchases on our computers in full color, synced over the air with all of our annotations,bookmarks, and highlights. Being able to view richly-formated color pages would be perfect for textbooks, with diagrams, and newspapers with vibrant images.
Multi-Lingual Dictionary: As a language student, consistently reading French novels and textbooks, a multi-lingual French and French-English dictionary would be a fantastic addition to the built-in English dictionary (as long as its quick/easy to lookup needed words) - great for when reading my Le Monde newspaper subscription as well!
Touchscreen
I don’t care about the media features, as I would listen to MP3’s and audiobooks on my iPod anyway - focus on books and document viewing, and maybe through in some internet features to take advantage of the Whispernet (at no or a very small fee), such as:
- Web browser
- Google Reader RSS integration
- Email reading (with push)

The Kindle gets a lot right, including cheap book prices and fantastic (repeat - fantastic) newspaper and magazine subscription options, at great prices. I especially like the international options, such as Paris’s Le Monde. Hopefully, Amazon can bring more non-English/international novels and material into the kindle universe in the future. With richer formating, multi-lingual dictionary, and a native document viewer, the Kindle would be a must have device - and I would be right in line among its first buyers!