Breaking the Metaphor

In my last post I alluded to the biggest problem with the iPhone interface making its way over to the next generation iPod; the temptation to include all of the nifty internet features that make the iPhone such a great piece of technology. Clearly, the internet technologies of the iPhone have the potential to become the standard for portable phones and other handheld devices. Integration is slick and stylish, and with the advent of wider availability of higher bandwidth broadband, the power for Safari and even the iPhone Mail to become the “killer apps” in the next generation of handheld devices.

So why, do you ask, would bringing the power of iPhone without the telephony to iPod be a bad idea? It’s about metaphors. iPod is a media playback device. At first it was about the idea that you could carry your music with you. Adhering to the KISS standard of design, Apple knew that you could carry photos and video with you and there were people around who would want such things, but there had yet to be a great way to do any of those things. iMovie and iPhoto were years away and it seemed better to just keep it simple. So there was slow evolution, first the iPod Photo, which was just a version of the 4th generation iPod with a color screen and the ability to view photos. Then the video iPod of the 5th generation. Incremental steps towards a total solution for portable media playback. But in the most fundamental way iPod was and remains to be a device for playing all of those songs, showing off those photos, and watch those videos while you’re on the road.

There have been numerous wish-lists for the iPod since it was first introduced. AM/FM radio receivers, voice recorders, and most of all some kind of wireless capability. The allure of synching contacts and such with minimal interaction of a computer would be more useful in a device like iPhone, but the ability to buy songs on the iTunes Store, for example, would be something that could have some merit to it. Wireless music transfer done correctly, unlike squirting, would be something that could have some meat to it as well. But there is a problem with this whole approach.

It breaks the metaphor of iPod as a holder for your media, and becomes it self a medium for interactive fare. Even if Apple were to put wireless on iPod with the only the capability to buy from the iTunes Store, I can guarantee that many would wonder “Why can’t you put Safari on my iPod so I can do this and so I can do that?” It becomes a slippery slope in the way that could be detrimental to the market. However, John Gruber makes an excellent point. In the fall of 2005 Apple had a killer product in the iPod Mini. It was selling phenomenally. Then Apple killed it. It is better to kill your own product and replace it with something that there is genuine demand for than to let a product stagnate. Now I’m not saying that killing iPhone is in the pipes, but if there was a way to have your cake and eat it to, that is test the market for an telephoneless iPhone (call it Newton II if you must) this would be the way to do it.

The market is there. It might not be as great as those who want a smartphone that does it all, including the wash. I know that I would be much more interested in a Newton II that would play my media than an iPhone. There is no desire for a cellular phone on my end, but I don’t know if I want all that internet gunk on my iPod. The rest of those gorgeous iPhone music features? Yes. Wireless sharing? Maybe. Full-featured internet resources, IMAP email? Not so much. Not that I don’t think that there is a market for this, but I don’t want that kinda shit gunking up a clean experience on iPod. It creates too much confusion within the market and as good as Apple has been at keeping their product lines differentiated and separate I would hate for the bad old days of 5 kinds of Macintosh Performas to come hurtling back.

The 6th Sense

Everyone likes the iPhone. Having a little personal experience with one, I can tell you that the pre-launch hype is more than justified even after a short time using one. The interface is the one thing that all of the above reviewers enjoy above all and, with some minor caveats, note as the paradigm shifting experience. Not that I thought that I would ever use the phrase “paradigm shift” in person but I feel it’s apropos here. Yeah, I have watched the promotions and instructional videos from Apple so I knew a little more than average going into the local Apple store, but I can tell you right now the pinch function is nearly worth the price of admission. When I got back from the mall, I had the overwhelming urge to “pinch” the screen of a photo I was working on in Aperture to zoom in. Just fantastic. I can see why Apple will sell millions of these devices.

Of course the next logical step in any speculation would be other applications for this touchscreen technology. It works so very well in the mobile space, but could it be translated over to say a tablet PC? I have never seen the appeal in a tablet computer, but the only way I would use one would be if the user interface were as well designed and thought out as the one that Apple put on their iPhone. Others have speculated that a MacBook with a touchscreen to supplement the more traditional, and more accurate, interface dichotomy of mouse/keyboard. There needs to be some way for the user to enter text into the computer and there needs to be someway to interact with the GUI. As much as I like the MultiTouch interface of the iPhone, I just can’t fathom its integration on the traditional OS GUI interface of today. Maybe somewhere in the deep archives and bowels of the UseNet there is a post like this talking about how the command-line will never be supplanted by this little piece of plastic that you wave around on your screen, but I think that although the touchscreen brings a user closer to their data (be it music, web pages, or phone calls) it’s still a while before something usable can be implemented. This is why people are applauding the interface of the iPhone; it just works on such a fundamental level and for most of the people it works just as they would expect it to. Right away, the first time through. While this is the main exemplar as to why I’m a Mac user, it demonstrates the power of correctly implemented technology as a game changer.

So, while there is probably some fantasitc stuff socked away in the R&D section of Apple, (and other tech companies for that matter) there isn’t a 10-inch MacBook with MultiTouch and a deep-fryer coming next Tuesday. There is nothing that is useable in the iPhone interface that translates well to the big screen, so to speak. However, Apple already has a small mobile device and a brand that is worth billions of dollars that an iPhone-type interface would be perfect for: iPod. Not that I’m the first to speculate this. Even John Gruber who doesn’t normally pull himself in with the rumor monger crowd, states that Jobs’ comments about “OS X-based iPods” are really a no-brainer. CoverFlow, which was recently introduced to iTunes, seems very awkward and the implementation is not the best on the computer, works fantastically on the iPhone. By being able to tap an album and have the tracks appear on the back, one is instantly impressed on this functionality. Couple that with the iPhone interface ideas of touching a letter to jump to the artists with that letter and the fantastically bright and well-defined screen for viewing movies and TV and we have a winner.

There are some caveats though. I agree with Dan Frakes of Playlist Mag, there needs to be some kind of physical control ála an iPod Shuffle. I typically do not use an iPod in such a manner where physical feedback is necessary, but when it does happen (when driving for example) the feedback is so very nice. I think that such a control would be very academic to implement and I know that Apple has thought this out. The next bit is the hard-drive. I have a 4th generation iPod, the one with the click-wheel, and it just recently started showing its age. Today I had some trouble with the internal hard-drive and heard the dreaded and much published clicking noise coming from it this afternoon. After trying several times to restore it and even reformatting it via Disk Utility, I was convinced that it had given up the ghost. Suddenly I was very interested in the future of iPods and seeing that the current design was several years old coupled with the phenomenal industrial design of the iPhone I got very excited at the prospect of a new iPod. However, I smacked the iPod a couple of times on the corner of my desk and then somehow managed to restore it. I have no idea how that worked, but I do realize that maybe good old iPod is on its way out.

Back when iPod was first introduced the small hard-drive storing all of your music was something that was a novelty. People were concerned about carrying around a small bit of moving technology that has been historically prone to failure under adverse conditions. As it turns out people have had troubles with their iPod hard-drives. This is indeed the first time that I had any trouble with mine, but with the creation of iPod nano and iPod Shuffle, the flash bashed music player that could still hold a large collection of music became more of a possibility. Flash has several advantages:

It’s solid state so accidentally hurling an iPod against a brick wall shouldn’t impact that ability of the storage medium to hold any of your data; it might fuck up the control scheme or the battery, but the memory should be fine.

Flash disks have a much less demanding power requirements than a tiny hard-drive that has to spin-up whenever a file is accessed leading to better battery life in devices the same size and smaller devices.

Flash drives have been plummeting in price since Apple began to sell flash-based iPods. Larger drives and lower prices mean happy consumers

There is one major set-back however. For those who like to carry their entire music catalog with them and for those who would like to use the gorgeous new screen in their iPod to watch video, there aren’t really flash drives large enough to make such a thing feasible in an ideal sense of the word. Video looks great on iPhone and assuming that a 6th generation iPod would have some kind of similar form-factor it would look great there as well. For all the draw-backs of having a hard-drive based media player, the biggest good point is the enormous amount of space that one can have to store all that tasty video. I too think that there is new iPod based on OS X in the works, but I can’t fathom Apple going back a step and only including a drive smaller than current video iPods. Unless the drive is north of 40 GB, I know that I won’t get one.

The next problem is one of a metaphor for an iPod as a media device and not a communications device. This is a long and drawn out essay about how I think that including the connectivity options of iPhone in an iPod is a bad idea, both commercially and on a sort of geek metaphysical level. As you can see it’s really fucking complicated. However it’s nearly nearly 2 AM here and I think I shall retire for the evening. Keep tuned in for the conclusion to this mythic post…

The State of Mac Gaming

I remember not just playing games on your Mac, but there was gaming to be done. It was the mid-90’s (incidentally, about the time that Apple went to shit)I remember Warcraft II, SimCity 2000, and most especially Escape Velocity. EV was the game for me. I would spend hours upon hours playing that game. I remember one summer in 1997 when staying up late and watching the sun rise after not realizing that I had wiled away the wee hours of the night playing that fantastic game. I really didn’t have that much to do with a computer other than play games with it at that point. The internet was not popular enough for people in the rural Midwest to think that they needed it, and school hadn’t gotten difficult or advanced enough to require the papers and essays that would come to dominate my later scholastic career.

There is a point buried ever so deeply in some of this nostalgic tripe. I was about to get to the great wait for Starcraft for the MacOS. I waited nearly a year for Blizzard North to port a version of the game that would run on my parents impoverished Performa 6200 CD and it’s MacOS 8. It was an excruciating wait, but when it came it was glorious. This of course was near the “death” of the Mac platform not only for games but for regular computer users as well. Those were grim times for Mac users. Sure the great Steveness had returned to Apple and lead them to the light with iMac, but there was much uncertainty in the future leading to some damning comments from certain industry wags.

Mac gaming was another one of those casualties of that era of seeming lack of interest in the platform. Even though HALO debuted for the first time ever at MacWorld 1999 and there was a Mac release for the next big thing Unreal, things seemed to have not gone all that well for the Mac gaming community. Things were happening though. EV Override had just been realased and I spent another $20 and another small portion of my life trying desperately to conquer the whole of the known galaxy, which was now considerably bigger.

There were excuses abroad about the lack of Mac software and most especially games. After all this was the platform that brought you Myst and SimCity, two of the most popular games of all time, not to mention franchises that are still being milked for all they are worth to this day. One writer compared the Mac and the PC software pool to two ponds. One was much large compared to the other, but this writer contended that it did not matter because although the Mac pool was smaller it was filled with champagne. Even though the Mac pool of both software and games has enlarged considerably during the transition from Classic MacOS to OSX, I think that it still holds true. Albeit my experience with Windows is limited, but it seems as if there is much less effort on the part of PC software makers to make the functions intuitive and understandable to a first time user. Granted that a gamer will not mind one bit as he likes to tinker with software and user-interface to find the right balance that will not let have his fingers moving more that a few keystrokes in any direction, while still allowing for the hair-trigger insta-frags. But the average user has no interest in things like dynamic AI, inverted Y-axis, and programmable hot-keys.

Clearly the average OS X user has more in common with the average user than the gamer, but I contend that the two should not have to be antithetical. Thus I was elated by the support the Mac community has been receiving of late from the higher ups in the gaming. Fickle bastards like EA who have abandoned earlier and now only return with TransGaming’s Cider. Not that I bemoan the return of a gaming giant to the venerable Mac platform, but this feels like a half-hearted gesture at best. But others like Blizzard have learned from their mistakes. Starcraft was their last game to ship as two separate platform disks. Everything since then has been shipped as hybrids and I welcome it. Blizzard has been one of the few game companies to fully support Mac games in the past few years. Other games even ones that I like, such as Civilization IV and Empire at War have had lackluster and slow patching of Mac issues; particularly of that big PPC-Intel switch that happened last year.

I hope that EA’s big announcement at WWDC 2007 has breathed a little fresh air into the sails of Mac gaming. And Carmack’s id announcement had some smacking of MacWorld 1999 with Bungie, here’s hopin’ that they don’t get swallowed by the Microsoft games remora that seems to be feeding off the success of other game makers.

Link of the Day:
Mac gaming was never dead. The good people at Inside Mac Games kept the flame alive and became a great resource for those of us who clung to our Macs during the dark times. Though sometimes the software that they review is a little on the light side, they are serious about their mission to report about all kinds of games from the light piece of puzzle fluff to the intense action-adventure RPG/FPS. Simply the best place on the web for Mac games news, reviews, and insights. Updated much more frequently now that the pendulum of popularity in the platform seems to be on the upswing. ‘Tis a good thing, I say.

Welcome to Macintosh.

I Yield the Floor to Speaker

Ah lawyers. Where would we be without them? About three years ago, the American Bar Association published a survey which stated (Note: Link is to a PDF file) that overall in the United States there are, get ready 1,084,504 resident and active attorneys in the United States. That works out to be around 4 lawyers per 1,000 people in the United States circa 2004. That’s a lot of lawyers. Compare that, as of 1998 there are 2.8 doctors per 1,000 people in 1998. To quote my favorite fictional bounty hunter, “Does that seem right to you?”

Now why the anti-lawyer rant? Well it seems that several weeks ago, a young personal injury attorney named Andrew Speaker was diagnosed with tuberculosis. That’s right TB. The scourge of the 19th century and before. Apparently some places, like sub-Saharan Africa, still have enormous problems with TB. Of course the doctors told him not to travel anywhere. At this point in the whole debacle there is conflicting coverage of the ass, by both sides, but it is known that Speaker did travel on several occasions, to complete both a wedding and honeymoon on the Greek island of Santorini. According to the CDC, to complete his great international travel, Speaker flew on seven flights. There is a rather long and convoluted story which is best outlined here.

Of course there was the maligned and oppressed-by-the-system Speaker, who may I remind you was a danger to public health, who called himself abused by the media and the press for flying around the world while being knowingly infected with TB. He claims that he was never told not to fly, but looking into the matter, it is much harder to force someone into quarantine than we would think it would be. Still it does happen. Take the case in Madison Wisconsin earlier this season. So concerned about the potential for a contagion to be exposed to the city that they wanted a man who refused TB test to be held in contempt of court. He then fled from Madison to Sacramento to avoid being tested, when city officials swore out an arrest warrant for the man.

The gaul of the man to travel with TB! I know that if I was diagnosed with TB, I would seek treatment immediately. Then again I work at a public health laboratory and one of the things we do there is testing for TB. The fact that the tuberculosis is isolated from the building air supply and is extremely secure, always left me with the impression that this is not a contagion to be trifled with. The most appalling thing about the whole ordeal is the callousness with which Mr. Speaker treated his fellow human beings. He was told that he was not contagious, but as we know doctors are infallible. Apparently Speaker was under the impression that the CDC was trying to cover itself from any liability if he went anywhere, by telling him not to go.

In an effort to explain himself Speaker talked to the Health News Network, of course painting himself in the best possible light. It sounds even from his perspective that no one really knew the extent of what was going on. This is the most telling piece:

Its 11 at night and were sitting in the hotel room. I can either get locked up or I can get home and get treated. I was clearly told I was not a threat to anyone. But now people are sending me hate mail like ‘I hope you die or I hope your treatment is painful and as long as possible. You’re a terrorist who needs to be eradicated.’ I’m a good person. I’ve tried to live a good life. I would never intentionally put people at risk.

Speaker is talking about his decision to “run for it” and get home to get treated on his own terms rather than on the terms of the health care professionals. It seems to me that the whole endeavor was rather rash and poorly planned. There was not really a good reason for a person with a highly dangerous disease that is also highly contagious, at least potentially so, to needlessly put other people at risk of being infected. Presumably, Speaker is a reasonably intelligent person, and should know when to listen to his doctor and when to obey. He made some mistakes and the recent news about him having a less severe form of TB, shouldn’t vindicate him, it should humble him to show just exactly how close he came to years of intensive treatment and even surgery.

Link of the Day:
Just like Google Earth, there is now a Google Moon. While not quite as cool as it’s predecessor, I still think it’s fun to play around with.

The Music Industry Rages Against the Dying of the Light

So I was going to write about Michael Moore and his latest film, but having never seen a Moore film (no not even Canadian Bacon), I didn’t really feel comfortable dissecting his movies without having witnessed the reported jackassery that goes on in them. From what I have heard though, I doubt that I would like them and since I have little desire to write about something that would be excruciating, I don’t think that this will ever hit the light of day. Worry not though, the first part of the first draft is hidden away in the crevices of my hard-drive and may eventually see the light of day as soon as hell freezes over and I see a Michael Moore film. Either that or it will transform itself into a review for Canadian Bacon.

That said there is something else that is kinda newsworthy and has pricked my attention recently. This came to my attention. On the surface it seems ridiculous. Giving away your music is something that could potentially bring new and great attention to the idea. Plus the whole idea of record stores threatening Prince with being banned from their stores for distributing free music, also is ludicrous. However this comes at the realization that the music industry is changing in such a fundamental way and that they have been slow and unwitting in their own demise. Clearly the record labels are stuck in a corner and the old adage that a “cornered animals can be the most dangerous” couldn’t be more apropos.

It seems that during the beginning of the file-sharing and digital music craze, there was an opportunity for the big record labels to jump right on board with the burgeoning method of the distribution of music that the labels balked. In July of 2000 the CEO’s of the Big Four sat down to deal with the only player in the game at that time, Napster. Napster was apparently willing to play the subscription game. It was as if they looked over the edge of a cliff and ran hard and away. So they sued Napster and began the war against the consumer that has left over 20,000 music fans in legal trouble via the record labels’ watchdog, the RIAA.

And here we are seven years later, with no discernible effect on the “casual piracy” that the RIAA and the their clients so vehemently protest. Physical album sales have plummeted; last year alone the Tower Records mega-stores closed their doors to falling sales and revenues. iTunes Music Store recently announced they consider themselves the third largest music retailer in the United States, occupying over 80% of the legally downloaded music out there. But here is and interesting observation, the failure of the record labels to adopt this new paradigm breaking model of sales and distribution has not only affect the public image of the record company, which is now often seen in some circles as a lumbering giant flinging lawyers at hemoraging money streams (which they seem to blame on the aforementioned “casual piracy”), it has also dealt the employees of failing labels harsh blows. How many people lost their jobs when Tower Records folded? And in typical corporate American style it is not the higher ups that pay for the mistakes the have made (Edgar Bronfman Jr., I’m lookin’ at you.), no it is the underlings who lose their livelihoods.

The most reprehensible thing about the whole endeavor is that the RIAA and the Big Four have often had the gaul to call those who don’t want to pay $19.99 for a twelve track CD of shitty pop music that they are the ones who are destroying the music industry and causing the heartbreak of joblessness. Labels who had recognized that people want electronic distribution, have not quite realized that people will pay for content even if it isn’t copy protected. It is the whole impulse buy idea that drives much of internet sales. But with subscription-based music and other more odious copy-protection schema have turned off people who would ordinarily purchase from online resellers.

I will admit that iTunes FairPlay system is far from ideal and that this, as well as a general lack of funds, kept me away from the iTS for the first few years. Prior to the move to DRM-free music as well as higher encoding rates, I had about a dozen iTunes Music Store tracks in my library. Even though it is apparently much easier for them to be shared than the other DRM schemes, I really enjoyed the ability to share music amongst computers. With the advent of a partial catalogue being on iTS at higher bit-rates and DRM free such reservations have evaporated. The convenience of the system is just great. My only major complaint is that some of my favorite artists are not on the iTunes Plus system yet.

Clearly the game has changed for music resellers, retailers, and record labels. I would go so far to say that the advent of the internet as a medium for distribution is about as significant a technological change as the one that happened in the mid-1920’s when phonograph records replaced sheet music sales as the major income earners for the music industry. Oddly enough they were able to hop on that bandwagon and realize that this new distribution medium for the music that they wanted to sell was bursting with potential. It would be schadenfreude in buckets if it weren’t for the actual people who were being negatively affected by the stubbornness of the music industry.

Link of the Day:
So we’ve already been over that fact that I’m a geek. One of my favorite science-fiction shows in the world just finished the third season of it’s revival after some rather unceremonious cancellation in the 1980’s. I have found that the best place for all things Doctor Who is Outpost Gallifrey. Filled with lots of useful information and plenty of reviews, the Outpost is the first place that I go for information and rumors about upcoming shows and to relive the great days of my childhood by reading synopses for Classic serials.