US solar power employs more people than oil, coal and gas combined, report shows
Apple strategy in ‘smart home’ race threatened by Amazon
I don’t completely buy that narrative. The smart home world is young still, and Apple’s install base is orders of magnitude larger than Amazon’s. Wouldn’t you guess Apple will get into the speaker/AI/home hub game soon?
Apple Set to Join Amazon, Google, Facebook in AI Research Group
Top 10 Raspberry Pi Projects for Beginners
Maybe you picked up a Raspberry Pi for the holidays, or you’ve been sitting on one of the super versatile, palm-sized computers for a while now. If you’ve been wondering how to get started with yours, or what you could build that’s worthwhile, here are ten great ideas.
The ‘Impossible’ Veggie Burger: A Tech Industry Answer to the Big Mac
“The cow is never going to get better at making meat,” Mr. Brown said. “It was not optimized for beef. It did not evolve to be eaten. Our burger was. We’re always getting better.”
Apple Watch: The Pretty, The Bad, and The Pretty Damn Cool
Ed. Note: this is my first post in a series on the Apple Watch. I mostly wrote it in September, in the weeks after I first got the watch. My views have changed somewhat since, but rather than rewrite this whole damned thing I’m just posting it as-is. It’s still got some good points.
I sat out the first incarnation because it sounded bad. Slow, mostly; too fussy; unnecessary.
I started to change my mind with reports of speed and interface improvements in WatchOS 3. And with the new hardware announced at the event last September, I decided to pony up.
I got the “Series 1” model, because price is an issue, and I don’t need full waterproofing or GPS, not being a swimmer or a jogger. (What they’re calling Series 1 has the same processors as the Series 2 models.)
Pretty Things
I always liked the look of the things in the abstract, but was surprised at how striking the hardware is in person. My plan was to swap out the strap with third party (read: cheaper) ones anyway, so I got the rubber strap, which I really like. It feels and looks great.
The “rings”, the visualization of physical activity, are inspired design. They fit into a tiny complication, they can be understood at a glance, and they match the general iconography of timekeeping in a way a straight step or calorie count number doesn’t. Closing one’s rings feels like a physical act itself.
Bad Things
Pricey, sleepy, and needy. The three worst dwarfs, and also the problems with The Watch. It costs a lot. I think the numbers may not be that bad in the US but in Canada they seem really high for something that doesn’t really do anything your phone can’t do. They would sell a lot more if you could get in for like $200.
The screen doesn’t always stay on. I understand why, but I don’t like it. “Raise to wake” means you have to do a big, pantomime stage-acting I AM LOOKING AT MY WATCH gesture. Or you can tap it. But you can’t discreetly glance at it hoping to see how long the meeting is dragging on for. This makes it worse than a normal watch in a significant way. Hopefully at some point soon they can squeeze out enough power to let it stay on indefinitely, perhaps at low brightness.
Needy as in, this watch needs an iPhone to work. Things will get more interesting once it has its own cell modem and one has options to maybe not bring a phone, maybe to not even have a phone.
Pretty Damn Cool Things
This watch may be unnecessary, but it is still a pretty awesome gadget. Paying for things with your watch is strictly baller behaviour. Same goes for controlling your TV, lights and speakers with it. And people seem to love the idea that you can answer phone calls with it (more than I find it useful, certainly).
As a fitness tracker, and a fitness encourager, it works really well. Not having used a FitBit I don’t know which is better. But I know I like the way the Watch works for this.
Siri is a little bit hit and miss but I’m still using it and there is definitely something cool about responding to a text by speaking into your wrist, Kirk-style. Phone-siri doesn’t work properly in my car, so it’s nice to be able to ask wrist-Siri to play whatever song it is my kid wants to hear.
The Watch is in some ways the anti-phone. One of its greatest strengths – and one it is difficult for Apple to highlight in marketing materials – is how it saves you from having to fuss with your phone too much. This is mostly about sneaking a peek at incoming notifications without having to do anything more than look at your wrist. When you think about this it’s more useful the more active your are, as if you’re already looking at a screen at that moment it won’t help you. But when you’re out, active, and maybe holding groceries with your other hand, being able to triage notifications with a glance is a big help.
I love complications. Basically the idea is your different software watch faces have little areas for customizable data display slash quick links to open apps. A simple example is having a date display that when tapped opens the calendar app. The different faces have spots for three to five of these things.
What’s really cool is with the latest OS, it’s easy to switch between watch faces, which means you can set up different faces for different modes of your day. I have one face for the morning, which shows weather in detail, plus sunrise, the date, the next calendar appointment, and a link to a transit tracking app. Once I’m out of the house I have a moving around face that has activity rings, weather, the workout app and transit again. At work I have a different one that features OmniFocus, and for home later on I focus on a timer, the AppleTV remote app, and something to control the Sonos system. For timers alone this thing is really handy – I use them a lot when cooking and that’s also when I tend to have wet/dirty hands which makes using my phone a little awkward.
That’s it for now – next I’m going to write up how I’m currently using watch faces, and which apps I use the most. Beyond that – third party bands! Totally obsessed!
Apple reportedly wants hit TV dramas of its own
Starting a Netflix-style service that would be bundled with Apple Music.
Why Would Apple Release a 10.5″ iPad Air?
Testing
Robert Scoble – Exclusive news: Apple and Zeiss working on Augmented Reality Glasses
I mean, what are the odds that Apple ISN’T working on AR glasses?
Alexa: Amazon’s Operating System
I’m gonna have to get an Echo before too long. Do they work properly in Canada though?
Will Minority Report cybergloves ever make sense?
These days it sometimes feels like we are working out the details of the future
Apple has lost the functional high ground
Not about online photo storage really
I have been going through my photo collection on my computer because I was going to try out an online photo service and in the process write an article for my site about various photo storage problems and options. The service I signed up for costs $7 a month for 100 gigs. Turns out my library is 140 gigs. That would cost $15. I knew I could get it down. There are a lot of duplicates and rejected shots.
The collection starts in 2003 with the purchase of a digital camera. It was small and cost $700 for very little quality by today’s standards. The photos are sporadic. At first there are single tentative photos here and there, then – realizing the cost structure of digital photography – they blossomed, in fits. A night out, blurry and grainy. A day with visiting family members. Another night out.
They’re not from every day, but reflect conscious efforts to use the camera. A series of photos from a walk to work. Pictures of the condo I used to rent a room in. Pictures of the locations of the failed film I worked on. Of Lucy, my then-new girlfriend, now my wife.
They reflect my bizarre obsessions. There are quite a few of Toronto grafitti (all works which are now, I would assume, long gone). There are many shots of alleyways, signs, and abandoned things.
The years advance. Friends’ kids grow. A trip to Cuba, a couple jaunts to Ireland for a funeral and a wedding. Lucy cycles through various haircuts. There are shots of the first apartment we got together, and Christie subway station nearby, and the decrepit barber in between, and the tree that fell after a storm.
In 2008 I got an iPhone. The photos multiply. Many are mundane, fleeting images: a bruise I got after a bike accident. The serial number on my mom’s washing machine. A shot of a stranger on the subway. I delete a few but start realizing that these photos also tell little stories.
A year later another camera enters: the Panasonic GH1. The photos are all of a sudden much better. Some are beautiful, even. I bought the camera for its video capability as I wanted to shoot a documentary in Windsor. I took a ton of stills with it. The photos of abandoned things, of urban decay, explode.
I try to decide what to delete. I mostly delete only duplicates. There are quite a lot, as if the photos, left unsupervised, have been breeding like rabbits. But when it comes time to evaluate other photos I defer. Some of these I would have deleted years ago had I been paying attention, but now with the time passed, they seem much more interesting. Who am I to say what I will find interesting in another five, ten years?
A trip to Windsor, photos of the Detroit skyline. Around this time my dad was falling ill with dementia. There are only the occasinal photos of him. They are then followed by 40 pictures of my new Kindle. I was writing a review of it for my site.
Lucy’s parents’ cottage. My friends getting older. Abandoned buildings in Windsor. An image of my dad in the dark. I remember the occasion distinctly: he asked about my brother. I do not have a brother.
Then, 80 pictures from a shoot for work, with Star Wars characters. A trip to dim sum, with closeups of pristine teacups and chopsticks.
I start to realize I should not be writing about online photo storage problems and solutions. I start to wonder what reality my current urge to write such things obscures.
My dad is now three years dead and I have not written about it. I have but I have not shared nor finished it. But I am ok now with his absence. It does not seem as sad, or rather, the sadness has a character of beauty.
The photos continue unabated. Pics of houses for sale. A mortgage agreement. Our new house. Our new daughter. I do not want to delete anything.
I rethink.
iPad Pro?
Some rumours were going around that sounded silly:
[Evercore Partners analyst Patrick] Wang predicts that Apple wouldn’t just simply release a larger iPad — he sees the company using the additional screen real estate to create a hybrid-style device that could serve as both a tablet and a notebook, and would make the iPad lineup more appealing to business customers.
Apple’s never targeted the “enterprise”. (Aside: I know I’m a huge nerd but when I hear that word I always think of the starship rather than business people doing business things). Why would enterprise users need a bigger iPad anyway, and/or why would Apple feel the need to change strategies to compete with Microsoft’s keyboard-wanting Surface, which is not selling anywhere near as well as the iPad? Silliness.
But then I thought about “Pro” in an Apple context, which means creative professionals, and then I realized that Apple’s pro software products – Final Cut and associated apps, Aperture, and Logic – still do not have iOS versions.
In this context, a larger screen iPad would make a lot of sense. I once bought an 11” MacBook Air, hoping to edit a project on the go. It was too small a screen to edit on, however. Certain apps need certain elements on screen at all times. Video editors need a timeline, a clip selection window and a playback window, and when the screen gets too small, the utility of these elements is compromised. Step up to a 13” Air, however, and editing works much better.
It is by no means a given that Apple will release its pro apps on iOS. They may feel that the consumer creative apps – iMovie, iPhoto, and GarageBand – fit the bill. That the iPad is only for playing around, and when you need to do real work, you go to a computer. That doesn’t sound much like this pitch though, does it? Or, you could argue that Apple isn’t that interested in the pro market any more. And as an Aperture user, I can sympathize with that. Surely the pro market is a lower priority than their much larger consumer markets in different categories, but if they didn’t care about pros anymore they wouldn’t have just revamped Final Cut and redesigned the Mac Pro from the ground up.
You could also say that yes, Apple will eventually release Pro apps for iOS but no, that doesn’t mean there will be dedicated Pro iPads. Look at the marketing for the iPhone 5s first, though: “forward thinking”. “the most advanced technology”. “desktop class architecture”. Isn’t that very close to a pitch for pro hardware? Or look at the history of any of any Apple product line since Jobs’ return: start simple, and add an increasing number of models over time. I would expect a bigger, pro iPad, and maybe even a 10” pro iPad. I just wouldn’t bet on when.
Are there other distinctions this thing could have, hardware-wise? Besides the obvious (faster processors, faster graphics, more storage), I would argue for pressure sensitivity. Artists, designers, musicians and even photographers would benefit from it. Would they make a keyboard? I doubt it. When you think of these sorts of jobs – music, design, illustration, film & video, photography – a keyboard is not the tool that they need. If anything, different custom inputs depending on the role might be interesting; imagine a mixing board for music production, for example. But really the touch screen is the ultimate custom input, and is much more direct.
A 13” display isn’t the biggest thing in the world, but if the iPad Pro displays get any bigger – and one would guess that they might eventually – Apple would probably want to make a stand for the thing that would optimize its use on a desk. You would want to approximate the ergonomics of a drafting table; the stand might elevate the thing at a 15° angle and prevent it from sliding around.
The biggest thing holding back such a device isn’t really the hardware at all but rather the software. Apple has just last year completed the consumer-level iLife suite for iOS (do they even call it iLife anymore?). The pro apps would have to be a big upgrade from those. The OS itself may need substantial upgrades as well.
That’s it – some completely unqualified speculatin’ about an unreleased Apple product. Just what the internet needed.
The Social Network
The Social Network does what it does to perfection – it makes a thriller out of a heap of code. It pays attention to the details. It treats the characters even-handedly.
But it fails at one big thing. The big topic is of course Facebook, and the site is far from a main character in this story. We catch glimpses only; the odd screenful. The blue glow on Zuckerberg’s face as he writes code.
A few months back a few private IMs of Zuckerberg’s circulated. One contained the following:
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend’s Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don’t know why.
Zuck: They “trust me”
Zuck: Dumb fucks.
Another went as follows:
Zuck: So you know how I’m making that dating site
Zuck: I wonder how similar that is to the Facebook thing
Zuck: Because they’re probably going to be released around the same time
Zuck: Unless I fuck the dating site people over and quit on them right before I told them I’d have it done.
These show how restrained Sorkin and Fincher actually were in their depiction of the man. I mean, it’s just the kind of black humour all of us practise in private with our friends. But it’s the sort of thing that can become public all too easily nowadays, thanks to this brave new world we live in, thanks to services like Facebook.
Facebook and its ilk have changed how we communicate, what we mean by friendship, what we consider public and private, what we know about each other. They have changed our society fundamentally.
The film does not explore this at all. It does present the simple irony of a friendless man creating the world’s largest social networking site, but that’s it.
So it’s a real missed opportunity. The direction they did take this project – a docu-drama thriller, along the lines of All the President’s Men – also steers the ample public discussion of the film almost exclusively towards the issue of its veracity. Is that what the characters were like, is that the correct sequence of events, etc. There is some consideration of morals and ethics, but the techology’s impact on society gets next to no attention.
Does that make it a bad film? I’m not sure. On the one hand, I don’t believe you can criticize a film for not being something it didn’t try to be. On the other hand, if the significance of the subject matter is lost on the creators, how good a job did they do?