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This is an occasionally-updated list of what I think are the best articles I’ve written for this blog. The list isn’t based on popularity (though there’s a reasonable correlation), and instead reflects my own view of when I think I managed to make a point well, or express myself effectively.
All of Matt's writing is good. So the best...
With iCloud Drive, document sharing, a new document picker, and storage providers from third-party services, Apple is betting on a solution that combines aspects of traditional document organization with a more versatile sandboxing model designed for security and collaboration. It’s too early to tell whether the company may have finally solved inter-app document management on iOS, but – just like extensions – developers are excited, and I’m optimistic.
This is a major step forward from where we are in iOS and I can, sort of, understand why some are getting excited about this (Dropbox killer!) but there are some restrictions and limitations to the iCloud drive service:
As I mentioned above, the document picker will be the only way for users to access documents outside of an app’s container and developers will have to set the scope of their app containers to public. Furthermore, apps that decide to access a document from external app containers won’t simply bypass the sandbox to access the file: rather, apps will store a reference to the file, which will include a security-scoped URL that grants access to the file. The concept of security-scoped URLs isn’t new, as it’s the same technology that Apple uses on OS X to give apps access to files outside their sandbox across relaunches and system restarts.
..or in other words you won't be able to just drag an Excel file from one folder another and rename it - like a grown up.
On reading the excitement, I can't help but reflect on iDisk the service I used to buy from Apple as part of the .Mac package. As Wikipedia reminds us:
iDisk was a file hosting service offered by Apple to all MobileMe members that enabled them to store their digital photos, films and personal files on-line so they could be accessed remotely. With a standard subscription, MobileMe users received a 20 GB iDisk.
iDisk integrated with Mac OS X, appearing as a network drive. Mac OS X v10.3 through v10.6 could cache updates to an iDisk volume while off-line and synchronize updates later. Any WebDAV client could also access an iDisk volume.
Whilst many reported problems with mobile me, my iDisk kept all my key files in sync between multiple Macs and it even had an iOS client. When Apple binned the service in 2012, I was forced to run into the arms of Dropbox. Given the faultless service provided by Dropbox since then, I'm less keen to jilt them and run back into the arms of iCloud Drive. Partly through loyalty to Dropbox who saved my bacon when iDisk was arbitrarily scrapped and partly through the feeling I have of iCloud Drive still being designed to make life frictionless if you live totally in the Apple Eco system and a bit difficult if you don't.
In the years following the First World War a new generation emerges, wistful and vulnerable beneath the glitter. The Bright Young Things of 'twenties Mayfair, with their paradoxical mix of innocence and sophistication, exercise their inventive minds and vile bodies in every kind of capricious escapade. In a quest for treasure, a favourite party occupation, a vivid assortment of characters hunt fast and furiously for ever greater sensations and the fulfilment of unconscious desires.
Robert Peston, BBC Economics Editor and one of the most senior and respected journalists in the UK gave a lecture on the challenges facing journalists in a digital age which, despite its' length, is compelling reading:
All the growth in news readership is on the internet, on mobiles, on tablets. And an important cultural fact about those whose entire careers have been in digital, and have never had inky fingers, is that they don’t seem to have a fundamentalist’s hatred of news being infected by adverts and commerce.
...Now I don’t want to overstate the dangers, but what I would say is that we saw – with the phone-hacking scandal – how prone we are as an industry to cut corners in a hideous way when we face an existential threat, or indeed when there is money to be made. And to reiterate, what I see around the news media scene is the rise of a generation of managers schooled only in the etiquette of the internet, where the idea that editorial staff should be quarantined from marketing and advertising is seen as absurd.
...What I would conclude by saying is that we don’t yet have what you might call a stable ecosystem in news. The poll-tax funded BBC is one kind of news-media model. The loss-making Guardian, funded by vast private-equity capital gains, is another. The Daily Mail another still. And Quartz, Huffington Post and BuzzFeed something different again. There is diversity – which all ecologists would tell you is vital to long-term survival. But there is also pollution, from a dangerous elision between news that pays and news that matters. I am not confident that the Wheelers and Snows of this world aren’t an increasingly endangered species.
The lecture poses more questions than it provides solutions but it does adroitly summarise the concerns felt by many over the editorial independence of major sources of news.
I certainly don't have the answers, I guess no-one does yet. But, I suspect that ten years from now we will be more trusting of independent non 'monetised' sources of journalism than the traditional brands that we look to today.
How those independents will have the resources to do such investigation and reporting is the challenge - Nevertheless, I'm naively optimistic. For all the challenges that digital age brings, it completely re-defines the resource model in a way that 'traditional' journalists can occasionally fail to conceptualise. One good local man or woman on the ground with a $50 phone can sometimes achieve more than $100,000 foreign correspondent did in the days of portable typewriters and phoning in the copy. The prose won't be of Wheeler quality and the pictures might be a bit blurred but over time our new independents will co-operate, band together and form new networks and channels that citizen's social graphs will encourage them to trust.
In fact, I think in many places, this is already happening.
The CIA:
Whilst many have got a bit hot under the collar about this, I can't help but question - What's the point? We are not likely to see tweets saying - "Well done to our boys in (insert name of developing nation) for a good result last night." And, if we a see a toot along the lines of - "It wasn't us - honest", It's not going to carry a lot of weight.
The CIA needs a twitter account like a fish needs a bicycle.
Frantic zoo keepers in Tenerife rushed to call an ambulance after a vet shot a tranquilliser dart at a man dressed as a gorilla.
..to his horror, the vet - who had only been in the job for two months - realised that the creature was in fact an employee of the zoo, dressed in a gorilla suit, who was staging a mock escape to practise their emergency routines.
Whoops.
Dr. Drang on how design is more than skin deep.
As an engineer, I can’t forget that design is how it works. When I was in college, I took seven design courses: steel design, advanced steel design, reinforced concrete design, advanced reinforced concrete design, prestressed concrete design, timber design, and a “capstone” design course that was intended to pull together what I learned in all the others. Now, when I need to analyze a structure or a piece of equipment, I ask for the design drawings. In my world, design is what engineers do to make things work.
Thoughtful.
Tim Steven's post - Apple's Swift explained is the best I have seen in terms of putting the new programming language Swift into context.
The biggest announcement for developers by far was Swift, a wholly new programming language intended to not only make writing those apps much easier, but also faster and more stable, while creating results that perform better in the end. Basically, it's promising to be all things to all coders. Is that possible?
That remains to be seen, but from what I saw today, it looks like it has potential. Join me as I break down what Swift is and what it means. Trust me, I'm a developer -- or at least I used to be.
I wonder how many people on hearing of Swift will vow to themselves - "I never really nailed Objective C, but, I'm really going to master Swift."
It's quite cool that the playing field gets levelled from time to time.
Ben Brooks was one of the first out of the gate with his WWDC summary
I don’t typically do WWDC keynote wrap ups, but this wasn’t a typical WWDC keynote. You can find all the details of what was and wasn’t elsewhere, what I want to talk about is the things they announced which appear to be immediate game changers
It's a great summary, with almost every point spot on. There is one error and one omission.
When Ben eulogises iCloud drive:
This is effectively Dropbox, with far better integration in Apple products. You can’t beat this — you won’t beat it. And it’s on Windows. People like to dog on iCloud, but I’ve been using it seriously since it came out and I’ve yet to encounter any major issue — or even minor issues.
If Apple can scale iCloud Drive there will be no stopping it — and I really believe that.
This misses a key remaining downside - the inability to be able to save non-Apple files, which means iCloud drive is not 'effectively Dropbox'. Far from it. Without being able to save Word docs, Excel files etc. iCloud drive remains an addition to your file system rather than replacement for it. The file picker is a massive addition to iOS but it's still a walled garden with too much fruit on the wrong side of the wall.
The omission from Ben's list, which I think could be bigger than anything else in the keynote is the ability to add voice to messages. More than half the time I send a text or iMessage, I'm in a time compromised situation when I don't have the time or ability to type out a convoluted message, such as driving a car or rushing for a train. I can easily see most of my iMessages becoming short voice messages.
This will be huge and could be a game changer in the evolution of messaging.
Street banner on a festival bookshop
Over the past couple of weeks I have seen a few things that have got me thinking about analog and digital and why that statement often becomes analog verses digital with people taking sides in a fairly hardened fashion.
Poster in Hay book shop window
At the Hay book festival it's easy to see why book shop owners have an entrenched (but ultimately misplaced) hatred of e-books given the existential threat they pose to their livelihoods but the wider attitude of, 'books are good, technology is evil', that pervaded the event surprised me.
With the exception of a few eccentrics most of the authors probably wrote their books on PC's, researched their articles on the web, sold tickets for their show by e-commerce but still many of them struck or supported a terribly snobbish tone akin to - 'Books are for the intellectual elite whilst technology is for the uncouth and uncultured'
The inference in many conversations was, if you really loved books, I mean really loved them, then you had to have a disdain for modern technology - The two things were virtually mutually exclusive.
This rather one-eyed approach though is not the exclusive property of the book lovers. When Casey Liss casually mentioned on two podcasts, ATP and IRL Talk that he thought vinyl records sounded better than digital audio. The approbation of the digital community rained down. Many technophiles took to their blogs and twitter to post comprehensive rejections covering every attribute (Dynamics, frequency response, imaging etc.)
In terms of dynamics, vinyl is terrible and often our songs needed fairly drastic compression (the audio kind) and limiting to fit into what is acceptable for vinyl.
Not only does vinyl have a narrower frequency response, but that response curve changes based on side length and how to the center of the record the needle is.
Vinyl sucks. I can't think of any axis it wins on
The argument quickly became a binary, scientific, evidential one - with Casey ultimately having to almost publicly apologise for daring to believe that he preferred analog to digital when listening to music.
I find this as equally puzzling as the Kindle haters - Many got so wrapped up in the science that they missed the point. Music is an art not a science. I will always prefer to read my well thumbed, orange jacketed, Graham Greene novels to any e-book copy. The e-book copy will be more faithful to the authors original text (my old copy has got a couple of pages missing and a red wine stain that makes a paragraph illegible) but the romance, the tactile feel, the old book smell, the memory of reading this book in cafe in Berlin before the wall came down, makes the overall sensory pleasure of reading the book infinitely superior to reading the text on my iPad. If Casey Liss, or anyone, feels the same way about music then so be it. End of.
I posted a couple of years ago about how wandering through the web reminds me of the excitement and inspiration of wandering through the art of London.
..we would wander. Wander without destination or without a plan. We’d set off on the south bank of the river, walking and talking and we would see where the city took us. Maybe to the Jazz of the Barbican, maybe to the second hand books of the South Bank centre.
I get it more now in another place and that’s when I’m wandering through the almost infinite halls, corridors and possibilities of the web. I love having the time to lazily click from place to place, looking for the new, the innovative, the cool, the challenging, the inspiration.
I feel more strongly than ever that the digital and analog worlds don't just compliment each other but they enable each other. Both are so much stronger for the existence of each other.
I feel privileged to live in a time when both exist. I want to fill my day with both. I don't want to have to take sides or choose.
I want to write in pencil in my battered black note book but then file a picture of it in Evernote. I want to keep building my library of Penguin classics but I'll probably find them on the web. I want to consume more books than I would have time to read by listening to them in spare minutes on my iPhone.
Next time you feel your position hardening in an analog v.s digital debate or arts v.s technology - stop for a second and remind yourself - you can have both. You don't have to choose. It doesn't have to be a battle.
Browsing Booths book shop
p.s. Casey was right. Vinyl does sound better than digital.
Jim Smith's workshop on how to draw the right eyebrows.
Jim Smith at Hay
Eat your heart out WWDC attendees.
An insightful comment from Marco Arment on the back of John Gruber going solo, describing how the landscape of podcasting is maturing.
But as the medium and technology mature and hosting costs drop, being in a network becomes far less necessary and compelling, and it increasingly makes sense for people to go independent. The glory days of podcast networks are behind us.
This left me wondering if the same was true for revenue and the ways to make money from podcasting. Whether the sponsorship model that pervades right now will become squeezed and contract in the same way that ad funded blogging has become less lucrative over time.
If it does, then I guess a very smart podcast producer may want to be vertically integrated and own their own podcast client, in order to keep their options open for the future.
pencil note is scribbling at the Hay literary festival in Wales this week. An inspiring conference of imagination and books.
Anthony Horowitz holding court with some fabulous quotes:
All the teachers that taught me at my prep school have featured in my books as characters. I killed every single one of them. Some of them, twice.
Never ever trust a teacher that has more hair coming out of his nose or his ears than he has on his head.
I have very strong views about violence in children's books. There isn't enough of it.
I love writing. I love the scratch of the nib of a fountain pen on paper, the flow of the blue ink onto the blank page, the start of another limitless adventure.
The New York Times:
Apple, the company that turned digital music into a mainstream phenomenon, said on Wednesday that it was buying Tweets by Dr Drang, for $3 billion, in a move that will help it play catch-up with rivals over applescript solutions.
Tim Cook said:
Could Eddy’s team have built an applescript service? Of course. We could’ve built that blog ourselves, too. You don’t build everything yourself. It’s not one thing that excites us here. It’s the clown. It’s the service.
Many have expressed surprise at the price tag for this acquisition but I think they are missing the key point about how this purchase fills a missing demographic for Apple - Techie nerds, power users and those that like to spend their evening blogging.
"To a certain extent they're buying some brand equity, some positioning in the market with the middle aged, tech generation," said Van Baker, a Gartner research analyst. It's a demographic that has proven to be a tougher sell for Apple than the hip hop generation.
Time will tell, but the lean crew brand may just be what apple needs to break out beyond it's headphone wearing, music streaming, core audience.
At the time of reporting the role of the clown was unclear.
Looks like it might be a big one
Watch streaming video from this special event and learn more about our exciting announcements
If, following this uncharacteristic level of hype, Apple doesn't announce something significant - it will be a bit weird.
Matt Haughey's post on medium has picked up a lot of coverage and it's hard not to feel sympathy with his dilemma - that changes in Google's black box approach to search and ad funding is putting his 15 years old Meta filter site in peril.
In order to cut costs further, I announced our first ever lay-offs. At the end of May 2014, I’m cutting half our moderation staff to make up for revenue shortfalls. Starting June 1st, we’ll continue operating as normal, but with less staff with more of my time will be devoted to day to day moderation on the site.
Whilst the consensus of the coverage is, 'Another example of how evil Google has too much power', my reflection is different. I think this is a good example of how ad funded business models of this sort are being consigned to history. People are finally starting to wise up to the old adage of - "if you are not sure what the site is selling, it's probably selling you", and the world is moving on. Business models need to move with it.
Having never visited the site, I took a quick look. The first link on the page pertained to porn and the design does look like a spam link farm from the 90's. I fear more radical surgery than down sizing the moderators will be required to save the site.
Shawn Blanc has written an awesome (almost Siracusian) review of OmniFocus
This new version of OmniFocus is more feature-rich while also being cleaner, more organized, and more logical. The design brings a structured peacefulness to the wild animal that is my never-ending task list. And that’s quite a feat, because our to-dos are, by nature, neither structured nor peaceful.
My world lives in Evernote and, so far, I have tried to stay in that platform for my own GTD lite system but I keeping standing on the side of the Omnifocus pool trying to decide whether or not to dive in.
This review has just about convinced me.
Vodafone's recent price change announcement creates an opportunity for those tied into a contract to be able to exit mid-term.
"We really hope you decide to stay with us, but as these changes have increased your monthly bill by more than 10%, you can end your agreement without charge," Vodafone said.
The catch is, if you are still paying for your phone, you have to give it back to them. Your life isn't long enough to understand mobile phone tariffs and how best to navigate them but surely the BBC can't be right when it reports that it costs more than double to phone from the UK to the UK verses from the UK to Europe.
A standard UK call will increase by 5p per minute to 45p, but the cost of a European call will fall by just under 6p per minute to 18.7p
Can it ?
As I write this, my wife is sewing a skirt. Everything is laid out: the skirt itself, the fabric she cut the material from, the thread, the scissors, a measuring tape, some pins, the sewing machine and the pattern. It’s the first piece of clothing she’s made from scratch, and she’s thoroughly enjoying the process. I find the chatter of the sewing machine very comforting.
http://mattgemmell.com/thinking-slowly/
I am glad that I’m not the only one that finds the juxtaposition between my love of the minimalist, efficient, digital world and the comfort of the warm, organic, analogue world simultaneously fascinating and confusing.
It feels a fabulous privilege, missed by some, that you don’t have to choose - you can luxuriate in both.
SD
I queued for the first iPhone. I have never queued for any of the subsequent models but I have always had a new one within a few days of launch. Each new model introduction delivered a big enough leap forward that upgrading was, for me, a no brainer.
This means that I have paid full price for many phones bought out of contract in the second year of a 2 year UK contract. I have only once felt short changed. GPRS to 3G - worth it. 3.5 inch screen to 4 inch screen- worth it. Only the 4 to 4s felt wrong. There was no LTE in the UK at the time and (as we now know) Siri didn’t (and doesn’t) really work.
The 5s was the first iPhone that I decided to pass on. Partly, protest was my motivation. I, like many people, want a bigger screen. I know that I don’t need a 4 inch phone and a 7 inch iPad. I just want a 5 inch phone and then that, with an 11 inch MacBook Air, is all I need to take with me any where in the world. And partly, I couldn’t get excited about the 2 new features - the finger print reader was cool but I didn’t use a pass code so was superfluous and the improved camera was … meh… the old one was good enough. So, I decided not to get one.
Last week I was walking down Oxford street in London on my way to a meeting and my carrier store (EE) had a sign outside saying “iPhone 5s in stock - special double data bundles”. Turns out that I could reduce my monthly payment, increase my data allowance, give them £250 and walk out with a 64Gb space grey 5s. I bought one.
I don’t feel short changed.
I put the phone in one of the leather cases, for the first time - I had always gone naked before. The case takes away non of the functionality, adds no tangible volume and actually adds just enough weight to make it feel right again. The 4s felt solid and industrial -professional even. The 5 always felt a bit too light. In the case the 5s v’s an un-cased 5 feels like a Leica v’s a Samsung point and shoot. It’s a bugger to get on and off but once it’s on you never have to take it off.
The camera is cool and slow motion video is a real novelty (I am flying to Toronto today and took so some slow-mo video of people running through Heathrow airport, late for the plane - amusing) but I suspect like the panorama feature, I will use it a couple of times and then forget it.
The fingerprint reader works. If, like me, you couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of a pass code before, it is still more cumbersome than not having a code but not much. I will probably stick with it. It does have some cool side effects - for example, if you use your fingerprint to log on, then when you go into find my iPhone to find out what time your wife will get home, the phone doesn’t ask for your iCloud password.
Otherwise it’s pretty much exactly the same as a 5. iOS 7 is an amazing upgrade but (a) that works well on a 5 and (b) we’ve all had the beta since WWDC in June.
Why then, don’t I feel short changed? It is hard to describe. Let me try.
When I was 29 I got my first Jaguar car. It was a 3.2 litre XJ6 sport and it was a million times better than any other car I had ever owned or even driven. It was almost perfect. I had two in a row and then, 6 years later, I got promoted at work and my car was upgraded to to a 4.0 litre Jaguar. The 3.2L accelerated just as fast as I needed. The 3.2L had a top speed much faster than I’d ever drive on a British motorway so I couldn’t quite see how my new 4 litre car could improve on it in a way I’d appreciate. But, once I drove the 4.0 litre, it felt like night and day. It was the same car but every thing just felt so much more effortless. Using the bigger Jag, I always has this feeling that I was well within its capabilities, nothing was a strain. I had at my finger tips a machine that at 30/40% of it’s max could deliver every thing that I asked of it. That is such a powerful, engaging and relaxing position to be in.
And so it is with the 5s. It never hesitates or strains. It never pauses or over heats. It does everything you want without even breaking a sweat and for some reason that I find hard to understand or describe, it makes it a total the pleasure to own and use.
If you are lucky enough to be able to own one. Don’t hesitate.