Andrew’s Mac Tips Weblog

Interesting Times Ahead

“Ooo la la, what’s this? Apple filed a patent application for a “mouse with optical sensing surface.” That’s right, a multi-touch mouse building upon the touch-sensitive mouse patent app we’ve already seen from Apple. This beast would allow for a buttonless pointing device which could sense the position of your digits for a myriad of gestural and positional control. Whether this is a patent to safeguard a brewing idea or actual product in the pipeilne is anybody’s guess. Surely this filing, along with those for a backside touch interface and touch sensitive bezel give us a clue as to Apple’s product mindset. Multi-touch MacBook touchpads anyone?”

Engadget — Apple applies for multi-touch mouse patent

I really cringe when I see articles that say that it’s some kind off a rip off if Apple charges $599 for a phone that theoretically can be broken down into $250 worth of components.

Here’s the thing.

A Toyota Corolla probably costs around $2000 in parts — a famous painting probably costs $2.

You pay what you want to pay or you pass.

Apple spent years designing and perfecting the software that everyone is now finding so delightful. They produced hardware that is every bit as well executed as any fine wristwatch. Apple have 5 other equally amazing projects on the back burner that will be financed by this thing.

Finally, hundreds of thousands of people are perfectly happy to pay the asking price. If the retail price was $300 instead of $600: Yes, Apple still would have made a profit, but 6 million people would have lined up in the weekend, 5 million of them would have gone home empty handed and the AT&T infrastructure would have collapsed under the strain.

So, what if Jesus himself turned up next Friday? After the initial excitement there would be articles pointing out that: “Turns out he’s only the SON of God,” “he’s only regular flesh and blood,” “You have to sign up with Christianity…”

Rather than tapping on the SMS icon to answer any pending text messages, then the Phone icon to deal with missed calls, then the Mail icon to reply to your latest emails, perhaps iPhone 1.1 could add another option.

How about also combining them all under the context of your known contacts? In the Phone app you can right now view recent calls, and press the Missed button to filter to just the missed calls; there could be an extra button here (perhaps called All Media) that could show contacts, and icons to represent all the methods by which they are awaiting replies.

In this mode Ricardo Stuckey might have a Phone icon with a “2″ super-imposed representing two missed calls, an SMS icon with a “1″ and an Email icon with a “3″ and so on. Tapping on, say, the Email icon would show you only the pending email messages from Ricardo.

After reading, and optionally replying to his emails you would be taken to his other open messages, of all types, until you were squared away with Ricardo. Of course you have the option to back out of this contact-centric option at any time…

…But the option would be there, and folded into the existing interface; the only immediate clutter being one extra button, for whenever you’re in a people-centric, rather than a method-centric frame of mind.

If there ever comes a time when proper applications can be written for the iPhone — this is the first one I’d like to see. I don’t know the first thing about writing software; I’m just throwing this out there into the ether…

After tapping the Outliner icon on the home screen, you will be taken to the Outliner overview. Here you will see the first line of each entry; tapping on a line will cause the entry to slide into view from the right.

The entries are pure text. The first line of the text is the header of the entry — that appears in the overview, so an entry could be a large body of text with a descriptive first line — or just a few words, to be used as part of a list of bullet points to be dragged and re-arranged when in the overview screen; as in a checklist, or shopping list, or ideas list.

To make it easier to scroll through the text of a long entry one page at a time, a simple tap on the lower half of the displayed text will advance the entry one page. A single tap to the top half will take you back one page.

To edit the text of an existing entry, first tap the edit button, then tap where on the entry you want the insertion point.

Whenever you go back to the overview, or return to the home screen, Outliner will remember your position within the current entry.

Back in the overview, you can drag the headers up and down to re-arrange them. You can also nest headers within other headers; by holding, say, Get toothpaste over When shopping, a space will be made below When Shopping where you can drop the entry. Get toothpaste is now a child of When shopping, and a triangle now appears to the left of When Shopping. Tapping the triangle causes the new outline to collapse or expand.

Tapping on When shopping will reveal the When shopping entry on its own — tapping on the symbol to the right of the entry will reveal When shopping together with its child entries.

When you are typing within a entry, you can create a new entry, simply by starting the next line with a space. Press Return, then a space to start your new entry; pressing space twice will cause the new entry to be a child of the current entry.

Entries are synchronized between your iPhone and your Mac every time you charge the phone. Applications and context menus on the Mac have the option to Export as an Entry; placing a new entry in the Outliner Folder that syncs with the phone.

Opening the Outliner Folder on the Mac reveals an interface similar to that on the phone, for re-arranging and editing the entries. You could select the text from several sequential web pages and export them as entries, those entries can be found within the Outliner Folder, selected and combined into a single entry for reading.

Using Outliner:

You could simply use it as somewhere to jot down ideas and reminders, creating new one-line entries, then jumping back to the overview to re-arrange them or nest them within other entries, making those other entries into categories. It would be useful just for that.

You could use it to write a blog entry or an article. Write a header, then Return andSpace for each new paragraph; jump back to overview to re-arange or delete paragraphs before publishing.

You could take massive text files on your Mac and add spaces to the start of new paragraphs to create new sections and sub-sections — dropping the modified file into the Outliner Folder for export as a nested collection to the iPhone.

As described above, this app could be eminently useful — obvious and straight-forward, while at the same time adaptable to your imagination. For those who want more, an advanced version might enable the following features:

• A button to turn the text of an entry into an email message
• An Urgent button to color an entry header red, along with a way to filter the Overview to show only theUrgent items
• A Set Reminder button to set a due date and time when an alarm would sound and the Outliner icon in the Home screen would show the number of due entries

In store windows and on counter tops and on displayed products, there’d be a placard with the header: Add to iPhone Safari Bookmarks. Below the header is a barcode type of graphic with four distinct marked corners.

Line up the camera on your iPhone so that the graphic fills the screen and take a shot. The phone recognizes the image as a target and takes the information from the barcode to add a new bookmark to Safari, taking you to the website of the placard the next time you tap it.

The Apple website has a page in the iPhone section where anyone can enter a title and a URL for a new placard to be produced online; then they can simply print it out.

Magazines could include the placard in ads (if the camera is good enough to focus that close.)

Late this year, after the introduction of the iPhone, Apple will introduce the new Leopard OS. The all-new iMac will be introduced at the same time. As is usual for Steve Jobs, at some point in the presentation he will say: “So far, this year we’ve introduced the iPhone and Apple TV, and now OS 10.5 Leopard and the all new iMac—so how does all this tie together?” Then he’ll do that tight lipped smile that says, “Hold onto your seats,” and he will introduce some new technology that is in Leopard; that has been lying dormant until now in iPhone; and that is fully realized in the new iMac.

That technology will be a common file type that will bind together all the devices—a file type that you may already have been using on your phone without realizing its power, until now. That file type will be fully scalable from quick notes to giant documents, and it will visually scale to automatically look good on everything from the phone to a TV display from across the room.

Using the wireless keyboard from the new iMac you’ll be able to navigate this new type of document, as well as edit and create it from the couch—using your TV as the monitor; on the train—using your phone, or even with no monitor at all as the keyboard itself will include a small multi-touch display; once the keyboard or the phone come back within range of the iMac, all the devices will get back into synch and share the same updated documents.

For those who want the portability, but don’t yet want to upgrade their Mac, the keyboard will be available separately and will work with any Mac running Leopard. Later, there will be a tablet that will work as a pseudo notebook computer when combined with the keyboard. Even stand alone—the tablet will act as a document browser with limited editing capabilities, thanks to its own multi-touch interface.

Don’t be biased by the “document” moniker; these will be powerful files that can present text, images and even animations attractively. You don’t need to bother with the formatting chores as the smart folks at Apple will have already designed various style enclosures that will best show off the content, no matter what it may be.

To summarize: By Christmas OS X will the the operating system that you use to give you the portability that you now enjoy entertainment-wise with iPod and Apple TV, only this time it’s your email, books, articles, web pages, schedules and projects; that you can access and edit anywhere and everywhere—depending on how big your pockets are as you leave the house.

Starting with the full blown apps included in the desktop OS, each will have the facility to present selected snippets of its content in the new file type, and those snippets will automatically be copied over to the iPhone, the keyboard, the Apple TV, perhaps even to an online account. When you’re away from the desktop system and using any of the associated devices, any modifications that you make to those snippets will be stored and re-synched back to the desktop system; either through the online account or when the devices are next paired.

As with most Apple introductions, the initial feature set will seem rather simplistic (in the proper sense of the word), but as people catch on to the concept more and more innovation will be introduced. The genius in all of this will be presenting this new feature set in such a way that those who are savvy to it can run with the concept, while those who are half connected to it (like iPhone users who run PCs, and Tiger users) aren’t hampered and frustrated by features that are in their face, but not accessible through being grayed out, or worse-still, presenting an error message (the same way that cars used to have blank switches for all the options you didn’t order).

The slogan?

All of your Stuff, Everywhere You Look
Forget the Desktop. Think: The World

Funny thing about design: When it comes to cars, planes, computers, gadgets and clock radios I like things that have almost no detailing at all.

When it comes to bicycles, motorcycles, mountaineering gear (not that I’ve ever climbed a mountain), I like the detailing the most. They must bristle with exotic machined anodized expensive hardware.

Each philosophy has its distinct place.

I was reminded of a documentary about life on a submarine; a psychologist was explaining how, unlike an airliner where all of the technology is deliberately hidden behind plastic panels, earthy colors and subtle lighting to soothe the passengers, in a submarine all of the real hardware is laid bare. The arrows and labels and bright colors are all designed to make the crew member aware of the technology, and to be able to see when things are breaking down, and to handle with caution.

On some caveman-like level, we crave comfort and simplicity whenever we are helpless passengers. When we’re active participants — especially when danger is involved — it’s the other way around.

Right now though, in the general scheme of things, there’s a blurring going on in that design thinking. Take cars for a moment: with manufacturing techniques so well perfected, it was possible to really tighten up the gaps, crisp the edges, mix the materials — the result being more upscale classy cars; Cars, where the form — and the quality of the detailing, defined the identity of the different brands.

Then almost overnight, all that went out the window. It wasn’t the quality of the detailing, but the sheer amount of the detailing that mattered. Subtle was replaced by gnarly. The car as a submarine, but without the rationalization. As to the form: elegant was replaced by funky. Form followed funk instead of function.

Take BMW as an example. In a nutshell, they were generally handsome, and looked expensive. Put a Hyundai badge on one and people would laugh. Today BMWs are just plain stupid looking, and if you put a Hyundai badge on one, people would say: “Oh, the new Hyundai…”

Home stereo systems now look like Japanese cartoon robots from the ’60s; they shout at you even when they’re turned off.

Brand name computers now look like home made kits, with miss-matched panels and fuzzy blue lights…

On a personal level, I cringe at what’s going on. If I won the big lottery and could go out and buy any car at all, I’d walk past the new cars and choose a used model about two generations old. But that’s just me.

The rest of the world seems to love this new “Stupidness,” also known as “Lifestyle” design. The new BMWs sell like hotcakes; the Audi Q7 is a massive hit…

Which brings us to Apple, and why I’m nervous. Every brand has their heyday, or, sweet spot in time. Getting back to the cars it was 2000 to 2005 for Audi. At the time I was thinking: “I hope no-one poaches their chief designer, or all this could go out the window…” Then someone did, and now we have the Q7.

Apple is now in the middle of its heyday. Analysts recently put some enormous “billions of dollars” value on the contribution of Steve Jobs to Apple’s worth. I think Jonathan Ive, the man who defines the design, is right up there; Give him whatever it take to make him happy. Let him and Steve force their good taste on the buying public. They know what’s best for us. Don’t follow the crowd’s Stupidness fixation; what would they know?

I think the crunch will come with the new iMac. Will I say, “Yes!” Or will I say, “No, no, No!”

Apple is not the submarine — it’s the airliner. Have a smooth flight.

An excellent piece by John Gruber on Apple Inc.

In short — Don’t Panic. These are smart people, and so is he…

Macworld: Opinion: Apple’s computer, incorporated

A while back I was telling no one in particular (probably no one at all) that I thought it was OK for the iPhone to be a closed system; arguing that the phone appears to be an elegant and fool proof appliance right out of the box and why open it up to bugginess and unreliability.

I also argued that Steve Jobs, who secretly despises third party developers, finally had a product that encompasses his bicycle for the mind theory…

“Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. And Apple has been — well, first of all, one’s very fortunate if you get to work on just one of these in your career. Apple’s been very fortunate. It’s been able to introduce a few of these into the world. 1984, introduced the Macintosh. It didn’t just change Apple. It changed the whole computer industry…”

The iPhone is obviously a huge deal to him; such a huge deal that it would be the final real product where he can say, “Go ahead and enjoy it, but don’t tamper with it; a lot of really smart people have made it exactly what it is supposed to be…”

That’s great. What do I care? After all — it is a phone first of all — not a computer.

But, now there’s speculation that Leopard, the next version of Mac OS, will essentially lock down its included applications. No more third party tweaks that invisibly enhance existing applications such as Safari, Mail, iPhoto etc. Evidently (and it’s way too early to know for sure if any of this will in fact transpire) the reasoning is that it’s a security feature — another way to prevent malicious code from getting in the system.

Could be it’s Steve’s way of saying: “This whole system is starting to stagger around. Let us control the built in stuff. You stick with stand alone third party stuff.” Either way I’m very worried.

In my brief two-odd years of using Macs, I’d say that a good One Half of the enjoyment I get out of the experience, is derived from tools that hack right into the system itself. Tools like Butler, PithHelmet, Sogudi, Witch, et al.

So, now being potentially at the sharp end of this new Don’t Tamper policy — all I can say is: “I don’t like it! Not at all!”

Please, Steve, reconsider. The guys who write these hacks aren’t hacks themselves. This is subtle elegant classy seamless stuff; all done in the best possible taste. If all that is gone with OS 10.5 then I just might lock down the fine as-is OS 10.4 and be happy with that.

Leopard Axing Input Managers? - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

When the Newton was introduced, it was a great device that lacked a supporting infrastructure. It couldn’t really communicate or share files or information; there weren’t a whole lot of uses for it…

After John Sculley’s demo I thought “I’ve got to get me one of these. I hope it also does this — I hope it also does that.” It didn’t quite; but it eventually got close.

Now there’s the internet, cellular communications, web standards, MP3, MP4 etc. All waiting for a single device that’s ridiculously intuitive to use, and sexy. The iPhone appears to be all of those things.

What does Apple’s iPhone have in common with the failed Apple Newton of more than a decade ago? Nothing. Yet.
But I was reminded of the Newton lately and how, despite its current hot streak, Apple doesn’t have an unblemished record when it comes to introducing innovative new devices. And the company may well be making some of the same mistakes now as it made in 1993 when it introduced Newton.
Newton was the first serious attempt in the industry at a PDA. I took my old Newton out of the box recently and, while it’s very large by today’s standards, it also remains very powerful — by today’s standards. It was an excellent device…

Hey, Apple: Remember the Newton before releasing iPhone - Computerworld Blogs