Geek

Innovation.

Photo from 9to5 Mac.

Like many Apple users, I watched the latest keynote presentation from Apple last Thursday. The highlight of the event was the announcement of their new MacBook Pro lineup. I’m not in the market to purchase a new laptop, having just purchased a replacement for my stolen computer in July, but I’m always curious as to what Apple is up to so I blocked off my calendar and watched as I went about my work.

I have to admit that I was a little disappointed by what I saw and for the first time in my history of using Apple products, happy that I didn’t wait for the upgrade announcement before buying a computer.

The new MacBook Pro is a thinner, lighter version of what’s been around for years. The highlight is the new TouchBar, which is a miniature Retina touch display that lives where your function keys normally go. So the row of keys that has Escape, F1, volume, etc. is gone and now you have this dynamic area that presents what you need for the application you are currently using. At the right end of the row is a TouchID sensor similar to what is found in the iPhone and iPad. In addition, the MagSafe connector, along with all the other ports, have been removed and been replaced with up to four USB-C connectors. USB-C allows for data exchange and power charging all in one port. There’s also a bigger trackpad and a traditional headphone jack.

A few things immediately came to mind during the presentation:

You can’t purchase a brand new iPhone 7 and plug it into a brand new MacBook Pro without buying an adapter. The provided iPhone 7 cable requires an older USB connector. So you can’t sync or power up your phone without a dongle.
Programmers that rely on the Escape key for software used for writing code no longer have a physical button to hit, they now have to find the TouchBar version.
You can no longer carry one set a headphones to listen to music on your computer or your brand new iPhone without also carrying a dongle. Since the iPhone 7 doesn’t have a headphone jack, the provided headphones use the proprietary Lightning connector. The new MacBook Pro doesn’t provide a Lightning connector without a dongle.
If I were to buy this new computer, I could no longer take the SD card out of my GoPro or other cameras and insert it into the computer, since the SD card slot was removed. I would now either need a dongle or purchase a camera or SD card with wi-fi capabilities
The replacement of the function keys with the Touch Bar prohibits me from interacting with necessary functions when my laptop is closed and docked and I’m using an external monitor, keyboard and mouse (my daily work setup).
I can’t connect my Apple monitors to my Apple laptop without a dongle.

Thankfully, the folks on the stage did not go into some litany about “courage” for removing all of these ports. Afterwards I read that Apple has removed the classic startup chime so closely associated with the platform. The glowing Apple in the laptop lid has also been removed.

I feel like Apple has moved the Mac computing experience from a computer you interact with to a computer you use. Much of the humanity that older Apple products strove for seems to be drained from this latest generation. In a world where touch screens are becoming the norm, you still can’t touch the screen of your Mac and have anything happen but smudge marks. Touchscreens are becoming the standard on PCs and laptops. Other platforms are mimicking the touch ability found on our mobile devices. But Apple is determined to keep the two experiences separate.

I find this odd.

While I’m sure the TouchBar is an amazing piece of technology and will be useful, it seems small and a half-hearted attempt to provide touch capabilities to the Mac without compromising the revenue stream from iPhones and iPads. I would rather have the ability to nearly embrace my computer experience by touching the screen instead of hunching over my computer watching a miniature display do its thing and pecking at a dynamic button.

I’ve been fearing that Apple is losing its ability to innovate and is instead focusing on keeping revenue streams alive through the purchase of multiple devices with multiple dongles required to connect things together. In a perfect world I wouldn’t have a MacBook Pro, an iPad and an iPhone. Ideally I’d like an iPhone that can power a MacBook or iPad shell; one device with enough horsepower and smarts that handles everything and can be fitted to the appropriate form factor. That would be amazing. But it wouldn’t sell a lot of hardware.

Innovation in the tech industry has become stagnant over the past couple of years. We seem to be locked into a paradigm of phone-tablet-computer that needs a good shakeup. Unfortunately I don’t think that Apple is the company that’s going to do the shaking.

They don’t seem to Think Different anymore.

1 November 2016 by J.P. Geek 0

iOS 10 Mail

Like millions of other iPhone and iPad users, I recently upgraded to iOS 10 on my various devices. For the most part I’m happy with the upgrade; both my iPhone (6s Plus) and iPad (Pro) feel snappier, though my older iPad Mini 2 that I use solely for airplane use seems to be slower than it used to be. I actually upgraded my iPhone when the third beta of iOS 10 came out because I like to see how these things are developing and give feedback to Apple as they’re making their final tweaks to their software.

There has been one thing that has been driving me crazy about iOS 10 and that’s the way emails are ordered in the Mail app. I have two accounts for Mail, one through iCloud and the other through the host that supports jpnearl.com. Mail has worked the same for several generations of iOS; when you have an email chain going with several responses, the latest response is on top.

Until iOS 10. Now the latest response is either at the bottom or buried somewhere in the middle of the message. I don’t know if others have experienced this fun and frivolity but the OCD in me has been getting irked by this. So I went poking around in Settings and found this new entry

Once I turned on “Most Recent Message On Top”, sanity seemed to be restored in my little email universe.

Whew!

I have no idea why Apple made this change as it seems to run counterintuitive to every email program I’ve used since the year 1996 or so but nevertheless, they rethought something and luckily gave us an out for us curmudgeons that aren’t used to change.

The iTunes Conundrum.

This is one of my very first iTunes purchases. If you’re not seeing the image above, I’m referring to “What Did I Do To You?” by Lisa Stansfield. It’s the original album version, which encompasses the complete “vision” Ms. Stansfield had for the track. It was purchased in 2003 using my old iTunes username (I don’t think we called them Apple IDs back then). I’ve been looking for the track for ages and was deleted when I finally found it on a backup CD-R with “2004 backup” scrawled in Sharpie across the label side of the CD.

Eager to listen to this track again, I fired up an old iMac and imported the file into iTunes. I was prompted for the password of that forgotten account. Unbelievably, I remembered the password. The file was imported successfully but with a few caveats.

* iTunes Match wouldn’t recognize the track
* I couldn’t add it to a playlist
* The track would propagate to my other Apple devices. No iPhone, no iPad, No MacBook Pro.

I ended up copying the file by hand, using Dropbox, to my MacBook Pro. I imported it there as well after going through the password rigamarole.

Hunting around in Finder, I found the actual file and discovered that it was an m4p file, Apple’s old proprietary format that has DRM (Digital Rights Management) built into it. I converted all of my m4p files to m4a years ago using the iTunes Match service. The track is apparently not available in Apple Music today, as I can only find the edited down 7-inch version. Clicking on “Add to My Library” makes iTunes crabby.

I really want this song to be included throughout my Apple devices. It’s suppose to “just work”, right? Does anyone know how to get this song to become part of a playlist in iTunes? How do I convert it to a friendlier format without spending $40 on a piece of software that I’m going to use only once?

I know that I’m a huge Apple geek, but I’m at a loss on this one. If you have any suggestions (other than telling me to get Windows or something), please feel free to leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you.

25 September 2016 by J.P. Geek Macboy Music. 1

Clickity Click Click Click.

As a software developer I spend a lot of time typing of computer keyboards. Because of this I am rather picky about the keyboard that I use as my daily driver. Modern PC keyboards of the 2000s tend to be quite mushy and breakdown over time. The latest trend in keyboards has been those low-profile, nearly zero-travel chicklet type keys. This is a result of many PC manufacturers trying to follow the lead that Apple started with this trend. I guess most people forget that the old Atari home computers in the 1980s had similar chicklet keys. I didn’t like them then and I don’t like them now.

My full-sized, wired (the horror!) Apple keyboard start showing signs of a slow death last week so I was in the market for a new keyboard for my home office setup. I have a couple of Apple wireless Bluetooth keyboards lying around, but since I have a pretty robust setup for my home office, I’d like to use a full-sized keyboard for my full-sized needs.

Back in the day I loved the old IBM “Model M” keyboards. These are the ones that are really loud and clicky. The keycaps and the arrangement of the alphabetic keys are reminiscent of the old IBM Selectric Typewriters. The feel, the pressure, the response are all typewriter like. Those old Model M keyboards were fantastic to type on and I was always able to fly along at a rapid pace when placed in front of those keyboards. One of the best things my Mom ever did was allow me to type on her typewriter growing up, but with very strong encouragement to use the correct fingerings for typing. 40 years later I am still able to type over 100 words per minute.

Before buying a new keyboard I went into my technological boneyard and found a full-sized Apple keyboard from the early 2000s. This was from one of our old white cased iMacs. They keys are white and the whole keyboard has that translucent Apple feel to it. Typing on it is alright but it’s nothing to write home about. I can fly along pretty well but the response was mushy.

Still dreaming about the IBM Model M keyboards from days of past, I went searching on the Internet and found that Unicomp makes a variant of the old IBM Model M keyboard, including a model made specifically for Mac! I know, the horror, but having an IBM designed keyboard with an Apple layout would be quite cool and in my eyes would be the best of both worlds. The keyboards are fairly pricey, but they’re built like a tank and the keyboard should theoretically last me a long time. So I ordered one.

Today my Unicomp Mac Buckling Spring keyboard arrived. I was ecstatic!

Typing on the keyboard is a dream. I tested my typing skills on it this afternoon and I was able type at 109 WPM on it. Not too shabby. I have to admit there were a couple of issues when it arrived. The left corner Control key had popped off and the A key’s response was intermittent at best. I took the underlying key cap mechanism from F15 and swapped it with the A and I haven’t had an issue since. Still, for a keyboard clocking in at over $100, this is a bit disappointing. So much for “it just works”, but that’s why I usually buy Apple products.

Other than the two small hiccups, I am very pleased with the keyboard and I was able to fly through some coding I had to do this afternoon. The clickity click click of the keys allowed me to get lost in the moment and find my coding zen.

I guess I’m just easy to please.

19 September 2016 by J.P. Geek Ponderings and Musings 0

I Love NY. This Space For Rent.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a fan of advertising. Not only do I not like advertising, I actually despise it. I realize that in today’s economy advertising is basically what keeps the United States afloat, but I think that we, the public, are better than dancing purple pills, people screaming “Huuuuuuuuuge”, men that call themselves Crazy Eddie and long lists of side effects that usually include “explosive diarrhea”, even though the medicine being hawked is suppose to make us feel better.

New York State Governor Cuomo (I like to call him “King Andy”) looked around The Empire State, realized the economy was not doing well and decided to fix the situation by inviting tourists to come take a look at all New York State has to offer. He recently launched a $25 million ad campaign that involves celebrities saying how much they love New York and more importantly, signs telling everyone how lovely New York State can be.

Signs, signs, everywhere are signs.

Usually when one crosses a state border they are greeted by a sign of some sort welcoming them to the state they have just entered. “Welcome to Connecticut, Full of Surprises”. “Welcome To Pennsylvania, State of Independence.”

Crossing into New York State you are now greeted with a succession of FIVE welcome signs. But that is only the beginning of the frivolity, as the state border is not the only place you can enter the Empire State.

You’ll see the same five signs coming out of the airport as you try to figure out how your rental car works.

You’ll see the same five signs if you’re leaving the New York State Fairgrounds.

You’ll see the same five signs if you’re entering the New York State Fairgrounds.

You’ll see the same five signs if you’ve traveled more than 30 miles on the New York State Thruway.

You’ll see the same five signs in the geographic center of the state.

You get my point.

Yes, there are signs 200 miles from the closest state border welcoming you to New York State. Over one third of the bridges might be structurally deficient, we might have the only interstate exits in the country that are still numbered sequentially (for example, 20-21-21B-21A-22), you might lose a wheel or two in one of the wide selection of potholes we offer in any given mile, but by god, we have signs welcoming you to the Empire State.

Think I’m kidding? Here’s some screen caps of the signs, 260 miles from the state border.

Monotonous, ain’t it?

Please note that all the signs are encouraging you to download the ILoveNY app, apparently while you’re driving. At the very least, visit the website. Never mind that we spent a million or two a few years ago renaming all the Rest Areas to Text Stops (with more signs counting down the miles to the next “Text Stop”). Oh! And speaking of advertising, all of our Rest Areas Text Stops are now sponsored by Geico.

With more signs advertising this fact.

To keep with the theme of banging motorists over the head with advertising, there are now miniature versions of these signs mounted to the toll booths as you enter the New York State Thruway.

I was especially disheartened to see these new toll booth advertisements because I was kind of proud of the fact that we didn’t pimp out toll booth space for advertising like the surrounding states did. But apparently what’s good for the goose is good for the gander or the very least to get my dander up.

I wouldn’t be nearly as bothered by all these signs (and the money associated with them) if they were installed and left as is, but apparently they did please the aesthetic sensibilities of someone and they have been moved around (by a mile or two), replaced (because the color was off in the original version) and re-angled in relation to the roadway on the weekend, in the dark of night, during prime overtime hours. Driving home from a late flight into Syracuse on multiple occasions in the past couple of weeks I saw the crews installing, uninstalling and such under the cover of darkness.

Advertising is in it’s prime. In glorious overtime. I Love New York. Sigh.

12 September 2016 by J.P. Geek Why. 0

Technology.

One of the the things that I always enjoyed about the Steve Jobs era of Apple v2.0 was that Apple always seemed to have a sense of how their newest innovations were going to be used. Steve had a way of knowing what a user wanted before the user actually wanted it. Sure, he might not have been first with an innovation, for example, I think it was Xerox that first came up with the concept of the GUI, but Steve added that extra human touch that made using technology more comfortable.

This has crossed my mind for a couple of reasons over the past couple of days. As a proud Apple Geek and Fanboy, I wear my Apple Watch every day without fail. It’s always on me when I’m not in the water and I have found it to be very useful in my day-to-day life. Having the ability to pay for transactions at places like Subway, the local convenience store, the grocery store, etc, just by tapping my watch is amazing. I am less concerned about credit card fraud and the idea of swiping my card or, worse yet, giving my card to someone so that they can take it to a back room computer to swipe it (and possibly duplicate it or write down the credit card number, as has happened to me on a couple of occasions) seems downright medieval. I was at Best Buy not too long ago and upon paying the transaction with my watch, the clerk was surprised that the Apple Watch had that capability, even though he worked at Best Buy and he owned an Apple Watch. It was somewhat disheartening. Yes, there have been other companies ahead of the Apple curve with tap-to-pay and the like, but Apple has made it seamless and more importantly, frictionless.

Now if we could just stop our bank from merging with another bank every year so that we didn’t have to keep getting new debit cards we’d be golden.

The other reason I’ve been thinking about Steve Jobs and all things Apple is because I have been running the beta versions of iOS 10 on my iPhone 6 Plus. In previous years, I’ve jumped on the beta bandwagon early, which ended up in an exercise of frustration because Apple’s early betas are really unstable. Beta really means beta in the world of Apple. I jumped on board at Public Beta 3 and have been mostly happy with the improvements I’ve seen with the OS upgrade on my iPhone. However, there is one thing that I am really having a hard time adjusting to and that’s the removal of the “Swipe to Unlock” function. In iOS 10, swiping to the right brings up the enhanced “Today” view instead of giving me the opportunity to enter my PIN.

One of the big things that Steve Jobs proudly demonstrated with the very first iPhone announcement was the Swipe to Unlock feature. It became a very natural gesture and something that I have probably done thousands of times on the various iDevices I’ve had over the years. Not having the ability to swipe to unlock my iPhone now is really weird. I find the change irritating. It makes my iPhone feel a little more foreign in my hands.

Using technology should never a foreign experience.

Now, I understand why Apple has decided to make these changes in their latest iteration of iOS. They are trying to compete with all the gadgets and widgets and Google Nows and the like in Android so they’re basically bringing iOS, in my opinion, down a notch to appeal the the lower denominators in the societal equations of the 20-teens.

I find this unfortunate.

At the very least, there should be an option in iOS 10 allowing me to decide if I want to keep the Swipe to Unlock feature. Apple should consider how society wants to use their device. If swipe to unlock has been made a “handheld smartphone standard”, then that standard should be honored.

As a software developer, regardless of the project I’m working on, I firmly believe that software should be an extension of the natural thought processes, habits and mannerisms of the user. A piece of technology should be intuitive, feel personal and never impede on the intended experience with wasted thought to gestures and the like. Software should always make a user more productive and the experience should always delight the user. The “system” should never dictate the circumstance.

I’m hoping for the day that Apple gets headed back into that arena with that line of thinking. Delight the user by keeping the experience personal and natural. Bring quality, not chaos, to society.
Quick aside, props to anyone that can tell me why that screen cap of Joan Van Ark was selected.

26 August 2016 by J.P. Geek Ponderings and Musings 0

Innovation.

One of the frustrating things about the current age of technology is the number of devices we have. When I travel I carry my iPhone, my iPad and my laptop, though lately I have been trying to leave the laptop at home and work solely off my iPad. This arrange works rather well but not in what I would call an “awesome” way. To use my iPad as my primary computer while on the road requires a lot of fidgeting, finagling and pre-planning. I often feel limited, mainly because of Apple’s restrictions on what can and can not be done on the iPad. Apple wants me to bring along multiple devices because, of course, Apple sells hardware. Lots of hardware.

In an ideal world I would like to carry only a phone that is capable of doing everything. Let’s face it, the computing power is already there. I could sit down at a coffee shop and dock it with a mouse and keyboard if I so desired. If I wanted to take a phone call I could just talk on some sort of Bluetooth gadget in my ear. We should be able to do standard, everyday computing off of one device.

Enter the Kickstarter campaign for the Superbook. The Superbook is a shell of a standard laptop: decent sized display, a full-sized keyboard and a multi-touch touchpad, that plugs into your Android phone, using the computing power of your phone to run the “laptop”. All the data, all the apps, everyone on your Android device is compatible with the attached laptop-like accessory. And best yet, the laptop-like attachment charges your phone while you’re working on it.

This is the type of arrangement that comes close to what I would like to have! The problem is, and I assume it’s due to the walled garden that Apple loves to build, the Superbook works only with Android devices, there is no iOS compatibility.

I can’t wait to see one of these Superbooks in action. If it impresses me as much as the marketing says it will, I may have to jump ship to the other side and get onboard with an Android phone to power a Superbook.

15 August 2016 by J.P. Geek Ponderings and Musings 0

New.

Well, after losing my 2013 MacBook Pro to someone’s hot little hands last week, I spent a few days deciding what I wanted to do for a new computer. Last night I decided that I couldn’t live without a laptop, so today Earl and I trekked to the Apple store and I picked up a new 15-inch MacBook Pro.

It’s pretty tricked out and I am quite pleased with the purchase. I love the enhancements that I didn’t have on my lost computer: a slightly better keyboard and a “Force-Touch” trackpad. I also opted for a bigger hard drive and now I’ll be able to edit my flight videos again. You’ve been warned.

Unboxing a new Mac is always a great geek time in our MacInHouse. I’m like a kid with a new toy.

Because that is indeed the truth of what I am.

10 July 2016 by J.P. Geek 0

Chronological.

Like most folks, I enjoy life most when it happens chronologically. There’s a certain comfort in knowing that the sunrise comes before the sunset, that an airplane will take off before it lands and that when a group of people go out for a drink they start out sober and then get drunk. There’s an order that we humans have come to expect and I don’t believe it’s unreasonable that our history get documented in a such a way. Here’s what happened when we went from point A to point B.

Instagram recently brought their algorithmic, curated timeline to my user account. This means that when I open the Instagram app on my iPhone, I am now presented with what Instagram thinks I want to see first instead of a reverse chronological order of posts from the folks I follow. As a person that tries to exist in this chaotic world with just a touch of OCD, I find it incredibly frustrating to wake up in the morning and see posts of sunsets before posts of drunk people from midnight which are coming up before posts of airplanes taking off first thing in the morning. I don’t think it’s unreasonable but I want to see beautiful posts of sunrises in the morning and sunsets in the evening. One of the cool features of a chronological timeline is that you’re seeing life as it happens in Instagram, not as it happened. As a person that tries to live in the present, it’s important to me to see what’s happening now. I’ll review what happened then when I have time to muse back in time a little bit.

Instagram feels that users have been clamoring for this new curated approach, though several searches on different search engines (because life isn’t all about the Google) have turned up very little on anyone outside of Facebook and its Evil Empire touting how great this new curated approach is turning out to be. (Facebook owns Instagram, an incredibly unfortunate reality). A quick Twitter timeline search turned up over 100 tweets in the past two hours (not including mine) about users complaining about the timeline reconfiguration. I didn’t find any praises about it there, either.

Curating the timeline in this fashion encourages user habit learning, strategic placement of ads and ultimately more monetary opportunities for Leaned-In Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg, a lad that will eventually become Dr. Sivana in a DC Comics universe somewhere.

I just want to see photos from my friends. Facebook is a steaming pile of privacy hacking bits and bytes that frustrates me beyond no end. Twitter isn’t really photo friendly, though it tries to be (and they dink around with the timeline order from time to time as well). Flickr is, well, it’s owned by Yahoo! and it tries to be pretty but for all intents and purposes, it’s sailed into the sunset to join MySpace and other services destroyed by good intentions. The WordPress app on iOS prevents me from uploading photos my blog with any sort of ease. I’m at a loss on how to easily connect with people, share my photos and experience the experience of others in a chronological order.

If anyone wants to loan my a couple of million dollars, I’d build an Instagram crushing service in a minute. Or two.

29 June 2016 by J.P. Geek Let's All Rant. 0

The Power of Friends And Loners.

I’ve mentioned before that I have always been fascinated by this publicity photo from the 1950s. It was taken by the local power company at the time, Niagara Mohawk. When I see this photo I can’t help but notice the optimism this photo exudes, blue sky, well dressed ladies, the power of progress marching on.

I’ve always wanted to recreate this photo in modern times. It’s been around 60 years since the original photo was taken. It took some pretty geeky sleuthing to figure out where the photo was taken as there have never been any hints to the location associated with the photo, but coupling my obsession with our power grid with some fancy use of the satellite view of Google Maps, I’m pretty sure I figured out where the two ladies were standing that day.

Unfortunately, the spot I targeted (I’d rate my accuracy around 90%) is now very overgrown and surrounded by quite a bit of suburbia.

So while Earl and I were out on a drive today, I found a field with a similar run of powerlines that would help me capture the spirit of the original photo. I would stand alone in the field and at this location there would be only one set of towers instead of two.

When the original publicity photo is grouped with my new photo, I call the montage “The Power of Friends and Loners”.

And now for a couple of geek facts.

I believe the original photo and my assumed Google Maps view contains three circuits at 115kV each. The smaller towers (on the right) are older than the lines on the left. In the original photo the ladies are facing east.

In my photo I believe there are two circuits at 115kV each. Like the ladies in the original, I am facing east, though this is a completely different line around 70 miles from the location of the original photo. The towers shown in both photos are a relatively unique design in that I’ve only found that design (a ‘flat’ steel structure instead of one with four legs on the base) in Upstate New York.

15 May 2016 by J.P. Geek 0

Geek

Innovation.

iOS 10 Mail

The iTunes Conundrum.

Clickity Click Click Click.

I Love NY. This Space For Rent.

Technology.

Innovation.

New.

Chronological.

The Power of Friends And Loners.

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