Edit: phew! Well statistical anomaly or just a bad morning, I’m doing better now — just solved one in < 2x the best time so far, which is better than average for me. Slitherlinks are hard!
Comparatively, at least. PuzzleManiak is a collection of puzzles you can play on your iPhone/iPod Touch. It’s a great app, by the way, and if you’re at all interested in puzzles well worth the price.
I play one puzzle, Loopy, a lot. It’s the same as slitherlink. Normally I can solve the hard puzzles in reasonable time: anywhere from 2x to 3x as long as the very fastest solvers. Today I am slow: 4x to 5x. That’s depressing. Did I have a stroke in the night? Do I need to take up drinking coffee? Will it get better?
I’m setting the puzzle aside for now; I’ll try again this afternoon.
Edit: Caleb Elston gets it.
A lot of people have called the iPad revolutionary. Some say it will change media consumption. Some say it’s Kindle Killer; others say it isn’t. Others say that “The iPad itself was something of a yawn, but the implications of [the A4 CPU] are not.” Still others say it’s a laptop replacement. They’re all missing the point: the iPad is the first fundamental change in human/computer interaction since Apple introduced the mouse/pointer/GUI back in 1984.
Media Consumption
People are hailing the iPad (or reviling it) as a media consumption device destined to save the publishing industry — in other words, not a full-blown computer. Although nothing can save the publishing industry, I admit this is what I thought the iPad would be. Before the announcement I envisioned replacing my aging laptop with the new Apple tablet, but having a mac mini tucked away for when I wanted to do “real” computing. But I was wrong.
Apple made that clear by demoing iWork on the iPad. This device is not just for sitting on the couch and surfing while you watch TV. It’s for getting real work done. When Scott Forstall said there would be a new gold rush for application developers he wasn’t kidding, and he wasn’t hyping; he was putting developers on notice: every software niche is now up for grabs. Just as the migration from DOS to Windows and from the Classic Mac OS to OS X changed the software development landscape, so too will the expansion of the App Store, and developers with apps on the iPhone have a head start.
Kindle Killer
The iPad isn’t a Kindle killer but the notion is silly on the face of it: the Kindle is a single-purpose device and the iPad is a general purpose computer. It’s like saying the iPhone is a Motorola Razr killer. The Razr has a very limited set of functions, where the iPhone can accurately be described as a computer that makes phone calls.
Amazon doesn’t release sales figures, but estimate are that the Kindle so far has sold a total of a half million Kindles in 2009. All up they have perhaps sold “millions” since the introduction in 2007. Compare that to estimates for the iPad of four million in the first year, and it’s obvious that Steve Jobs isn’t targeting the Kindle with the iPad.
Which isn’t to say that the iPad won’t have an impact on the Kindle. The trend over time is obviously toward a single device that does everything, and the Kindle is no exception. The iPad will marginalize the Kindle, but the reader will likely hold out until display technologies converge, possibly with the Mirasol display.
The A4 CPU
Certainly it’s amazing. Consider that the iPad has a 25 watt-hour battery and is rated for ten hours of continuous use. That means that in practice the iPad on average uses only 2.5 watts of power for everything: CPU, storage, and display. That’s an amazing achievement, but it’s not going to change the world. Good hardware lives in service to good software. It’s important to remember that because there have
Laptop Replacement
Close, but misses the point. The iPad isn’t a laptop replacement, it’s a computer replacement. Every computer designed for human interaction is in the iPad’s sights. But it’s not just a question of hardware, as so many want to make it. Just as the mouse demanded a new interface to make it useful, so does a touchscreen. That’s why tablets have failed again and again through the last ten years: bolting a touchscreen onto standard Windows (or OS X) interface makes about as much sense as adding a mouse to MS-DOS.
At the bottom of every Apple press release is the statement: “Apple…reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh.” In a very real sense that’s true: nearly every computer in use today has a user experience that a Macintosh user from 1984 would understand immediately. Menus, a desktop metaphor, windows, all of these things have been in place for over twenty-five years. Apple hasn’t said it out loud right now, but the iPad is intended to be the next 1984; to replace every computer that isn’t a server.
Don’t Believe the Infographics
During the presentation, Steve Jobs showed a graphic that asked, is there room for something between a laptop and a smartphone? That implies that there will be some way in which each is better than the other two. Of course that’s true, otherwise why have a separate category?
For the iPhone it’s obvious: it’s a phone. Second, it’s pocket-able.
For the iPad it’s a combination of portability, affordability, the app store and the touch interface when compared to the laptop, and the fact that it will be a “real” comupter compared to the iPhone/iPod Touch.
But what is it for the laptop? At least initially there will be a need for the laptop (or a desktop): the iPad syncs to iTunes on another computer, for example. But doesn’t it have to be that way? Of course not. There is no reason the iPad needs to depend on its aging brethren. As the iPad progresses, the dependency will shrink, both because Apple wants it to and because users will demand it. Many people won’t own both an iPad and another computer, so any way in which those people are at a disadvantage initially will be a huge incentive for Apple to make the iPad independent.
Initially there will be whole categories of software not represented in the app store. But as the iPad gains traction, the software gap will shrink as developers leap to satisfy a market that within a few years will number in the tens of millions.
But, But…
There can be objections to this idea:
Every computer needs a physical keyboard. No, they don’t, and anyway, the iPad has one if you want it.
Every computer needs USB. Maybe, but there was a time when every computer needed a floppy drive. There was a significant outcry when the first iMac shipped without one, but it worked out. In addition, it’s important to remember that the iPad won’t replace regular computers overnight.
It doesn’t multitask. Well, it does, but only in limited ways. And the point is that, apart from playing music, how often are the apps on your computer actually doing something in the background other than waiting for you to bring them back to the foreground? Unless you’re applying complex transformations in Photoshop, or compiling code, or processing log files, or <fill in your special task here> you don’t need multi-tasking. Okay, maybe you do, but you’re special, and as the iPad matures there will likely be ways to meet your multi-tasking needs.
Any real computer needs a way for us savvy types to dig in to the tech. So do you perform your own tune-ups on your car? Do you drive a stick shift? Bringing it back to computers, do you program? In assembly? If so, good for you. Likely the iPad will adapt to meet your needs; if the iPad really is successful at replacing the current user experience then sooner or later people will need to be able to create iPad applications using the iPad. Remember that when the Mac was first released, you couldn’t program on it.
The app store is evil. Maybe, maybe not, but that won’t stop the iPad from being successful. And as its market share grows, so will the pressure on Apple to give up some control.
So if Apple is Playing the Part of Apple in this Re-enactment of 1984, Who’s Playing the Part of Microsoft?
It’s arguable whether it’s a good or bad thing that Microsoft ate Apple’s lunch through the 80s, 90s, and 00s. But they’re not likely to do it again; Microsoft has shown no talent at producing a compelling portable touch interface. Google/Android is the obvious candidate. There’s plenty of time for iPad competitors to arrive, although it has none at present. It remains to be seen whether Apple can avoid the mistakes that led to them not owning the desktop market in the 90s.
How Long Will It Take?
The mouse/desktop interface took somewhere around ten years to fully assert its dominance over the command-line. With replacement cycles being what they are, and the current lack of a full software catalog, it might take almost that long for the multi-touch interface to replace the mouse and desktop. It certainly isn’t going to happen overnight. There will be people for whom the iPad is their first computer. There will others for whom it’s a replacement, but that will take several years to move through the marketplace. Still others who buy it as a supplemental machine, and it’s anyone’s guess how long it will take those people to give up their mouse.
But make no mistake: the mouse is an endangered tech species:
There is a special place in hell for web designers who put white text on a black background
Bad designer! No biscuit!
It makes my eyes hurt just thinking about it. I get so frustrated I want to grab a knife…and spread cream cheese on bagels and then taunt them with it: “No bagels with cream cheese for you, bad web designers!”
Fortunately there is a quick and easy solution, on my Mac at least. Command-Control-Option-8 reverses the screen colors, turning white on black into black on white. All other colors reverse as well, but it’s a small price to pay.
And seriously, if you’re a web designer and you get the urge to put white text on a black background, don’t. Just don’t. If this keeps up I’ll have to sneak into your house at night and wipe vaseline on your eyeglasses every night for a month. And neither of us wants that.
An old link, but still valuable: the American Psychological Association writes about a study that shows that people who believe that intelligence is changeable instead of fixed perform better in school. Granted, that’s not a standardized measure of intelligence, but the results are valuable still. Also interesting is that in one of the studies cited the students involved received only three hours of a presentation on the subject. So if you simply read this post over and over for three hours, you too can be a genius.
It’s been about a year since I posted about how checklists can save lives, so it must be time for another entry, right?
There’s an article in the Financial Times on ‘Airline pilot’ protocols in finance. that talks about checklists. It cites a study performed in the late 90s on venture capitalists. It identified several different types of VC based on how they evaluated potential startups. Some came to snap judgments, others based their decision on the technology, ignoring the people, etc. One type — the so-called “airline pilots” — used checklists to help them decide. The study’s conclusion was that this type of VC was far less likely to have to fire the founders down the road: 10%, rather than the 50% average of the rest of the VCs.
The article above is an excerpt from this book (affiliate link warning): The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
Checklists are a way of making mistakes only once. In a very few fields that might not apply; I can’t imagine a painter running down a checklist that says:
- Use at least 10% red.
- Paint the subject in 3/4 pose if it is a woman, face-on if it is a man.
- The subject should cover 60% of the field of view
- etc.
But of course a painter might have a checklist for how to promote art: how to get it in galleries, how to encourage reviewers, how to reach customers.
In many circumstances people tend to have strong resistance to using a checklist, but in others most people have no problem with it. You probably don’t have a checklist for going to work, even though that likely has more than five steps (the number to put in a central venous catheter), and you’ve probably forgotten your gloves/keys/umbrella/paperwork more than once. But you’ve almost certainly followed a checklist when making dinner. What’s the difference between the two? For starters, you may have followed a checklist/recipe, but have you ever written one down?
In the end I think it comes down to convenience and ease of use. I’m going to look at the alternatives for the iPhone and see if any of them are up to the task.
Yesterday I read NYU’s Clay Shirky’s piece A Rant About Women, where he says men are far more likely to shade the truth, or just plain lie, in order to get access to opportunities, especially if they think they can back up their BS, while women are far more likely to simply state the truth, even if it limits them. He doesn’t so much argue the right and wrong of it as simply state it as a fact, with consequences regarding the relative success of men and women in getting ahead.
Today I read the perfect example of this: Personalized Porn by Hugh Mac Leod, cartoonist and author, about a friend of his who, when no one would give him a break in the movie/TV business, used the equipment he had purchased to make a living by filming personal, professional videos of people having sex. He did all the editing work on site so people could be assured that their, ahem, passion would never play on the internet.
Leaving spoiler space…
Under the headline
CES 2010: Apple Gets Trumped By Amazing Lenovo Table [sic]
Jim Louderback touts the new Lenovo Table(t) announced (but not released) at CES. He claims that it’s what Apple wishes it was announcing. Not to get all fanboy-ish, but I have to wonder what he was on when he made that statement.
Like everyone else, I have no idea what Apple is going to say in a few weeks, but I feel confident saying this:
- If it has a touchscreen, that touchscreen will respond accurately to input, unlike the device Louderback was holding, where the various screens lagged behind his fingers the way the ground shifts under the feet of cartoon characters as they walk.
- If it has no keyboard, it won’t dock into a laptop-looking thing, making it not a tablet, but a laptop with a detachable screen.
- And most importantly, it won’t run two entirely different operating systems. That’s right: the Lenovo runs Linux as a tablet, but Windows as a laptop.
That last one — I can only assume that they wanted a scaled-down operating system for when the device is used as a tablet. But every operating system has its headaches. Pile on two operating systems: twice the headaches.
And does that mean that documents you work on when the device is a laptop might not be editable, or even viewable, in tablet mode? That has to be the stupidest design decision since Microsoft decided “There are specific tasks that you can perform on a Microsoft Surface unit only when a keyboard, mouse, and monitor are connected to the unit.”
In Apparently I Write Like a Girl I described how The Gender Genie identifies my short fiction as being written by a woman. I’ve since run several of my general blog posts through it, and they all tested out as male. I’m not sure what to make of that.
Remember that old insult, “you [hit/run/throw/etc.] like a girl? Well apparently I write like a girl. I don’t mean that to be a criticism of female writers, it’s objectively true: there’s a site called The Gender Genie that analyzes your writing and identifies you as either male or female. I put in each of my pieces of fiction posted on this site, and all but one of them came back female, some decidedly so.
The female/male scores:
- Retcon: 1499/1253
- Field Trip: 2482/1976
- Upgrades: 3213/2508
- Anniversary: 1427/869
- Manuscript Found in a Boat: 1434/2555
So the only piece of fiction that was judged to be written by a man was the piece where I was trying to emulate Edgar Allan Poe. The analysis seems to be based on vocabulary, which is interesting.
The words are weighted, so around, what, more, are, and as are significantly masculine, while with, if, and not are significantly feminine, while was and to are roughly neutral.
I’ll follow up with an analysis of my non-fiction writing to see if the pattern holds.
Researchers have found two objects orbiting stars that have unexpected characteristics. As reported by the Associated Press, the objects are, “…too hot to be planets and too small to be stars.” The objects don’t appear large enough to be stars, but they’re hotter than the stars they orbit — 26,000 degrees Fahrenheit according to the article (that’s almost 15,000 degrees Kelvin).
The author gets into trouble when he/she tries to explain that temperature in terms the reader can understand, saying, “That’s hot enough to melt lead or iron.” There are so many things wrong with that sentence it hurts.
First, that’s like saying the International Space Station is higher up than airplanes fly. It’s true, but it’s a ridiculous comparison: everything melts at 26,000 F — Tungsten Hafnium Carbide has the highest known melting point at less than 8000 F.
Second, the two materials chosen for comparison have very different melting points. Iron holds out until 2800 F, but Lead melts at just over 600 F — that’s something you can achieve on your back yard barbecue, or with a fresnel lens.
Therefore the equivalent metaphor for height would be something like, “The International Space Station is higher than a 747 and a Cessna.”
So how should they have described the temperature? It may be boring, but it’s more than twice as hot as the surface of the sun.
