As you probably know, Apple posted the first trailer for Spike Jonze’s new “Where the Wild Things Are” movie today. The music in that trailer excited me a lot more than the movie itself. I consider any new Arcade Fire song a big deal, since their last album came out 2 years ago, with only a few tidbits since then. “Wake Up” isn’t a new song, but you’ll notice the version in the trailer is different than the album version (acoustic vs. electric guitar, and the vocals are different). So it looks like Arcade Fire may have recorded a new track for the trailer & maybe for the movie itself. Maybe we’ll see a new album this year.
Apple
Fewer buttons don't mean better UI design
Apple touts their new iPod Shuffle as the ultimate in simplicity, as it has no buttons. However, having too few buttons doesn’t make it simpler, when each button has multiple functions and Apple needs to post a knowledge base article telling how to use all of the functions.
The new iPod Shuffle uses a controller built into the earphones to access all of its features. The controller only has 3 buttons, but the Shuffle has a lot more than 3 functions, so each button has to serve multiple purposes using various combinations of clicking, double-clicking, triple-clicking, and holding. Most people will need to carry around a reference card to remember some of the more obscure features.
The iPhone uses a single button on the earphones which serves to pause, resume with a single click, and skip with a double-click, with the volume control on the iPhone itself. That set of features was still manageable, but when a later software update added triple-click, it started the trend to unnecessary complexity.
Ideally, it shouldn’t be necessary to use any more than a double-click. Adding dedicated fast-forward & rewind buttons would make it much more usable.
For another opinion on the buttons, see Jordan Satok‘s post.
New Airport Extreme looks good
In addition to the new Mac Minis & iMacs, Apple also introduced a new Airport Extreme Base Station & Time Machine today. The new base station adds two very appealing features: the ability to use 2.4GHz & 5GHz bands at the same time, and ability to set up a guest network for internet access only without being able to access other machines on the local network.
I usually let my “snowbird” neighbor use my wireless network when he’s here, which is usually for a week every few months. I would feel a lot more comfortable setting it up without access to my local network, so I’ll probably get the new base station for that feature alone.
Apple – Steve Jobs = Apple
Apple is a lot more than Steve Jobs, and you can be sure that Apple has plans to go on without him. Don’t forget he’s still very much alive. It’s much too early to start writing his obituary.
The media craziness has reached epic proportions with people like Michael Wolff writing drek such as:
Indeed, the logical answer to what happens at Apple without Jobs is that it dies. What you have, demonstrably, is a company without any managerial wherewithal beyond Jobs; these are Stockholm syndrome people. The big guy is dying and his crew is ready to go with him (taking the shareholders’ money along).
Apple is in very capable hands with Tim Cook, who already had experience running Apple while Steve Jobs was out for his surgery. Apple still has other great people like Jonathan Ives, who is responsible for the design of most of their products. Enough of Steve Jobs’ vision has permeated every level of Apple that almost any Apple employee can ask themselves “What Would Steve Jobs Do” and know what to do.
Microsoft seems to be doing just fine without Bill Gates and I never saw any predictions that it would die when he retired. I can see a similar path for Apple and I’ll go out on a limb and predict that Steve Jobs will still be alive at the end of this year. I predict that Jobs will live long enough to go into a retirement similar to Bill Gates, probably in the not too distant future. In the upcoming months Apple’s leadership plans will be made clear.
My take on the Steve Jobs health rumors
Webomatica nails it:
Because Apple has managed other, daunting transitions expertly, I fully expect them to manage a “post-Jobs” transition with equal skill. Have a little faith, people. This is Steve Jobs we’re talking about, the stereotypical control-freak. There’s no way in heck he’d leave something like this up to chance.
I have no inside information, but just based on publicly available information, I don’t believe Steve Jobs is dying. Apple would be in big trouble with the SEC if they were holding back information or lying about his health.
I do believe Steve Jobs is planning to retire in the next year. He may make the announcement at Macworld Expo and pass the torch to Phil Schiller, Tim Cook, or someone else. I’m sure he has a transition plan in place, which he has most likely been planning for the last few years. If you watch any of his keynotes from the last two years, you’ll see that he has gradually started bringing other executives into the spotlight and giving them a chance to do parts of the presentation. This year’s Macworld is merely the final step in that transition.
Retiring doesn’t necessarily mean Steve Jobs is having health problems. It’s common for people who have had a health scare, like his pancreatic cancer surgery, to reevaluate their priorities and want to take time to pursue other interests.
Some people have suggested Steve Wozniak as Jobs’ replacement, which is a bad idea on several levels. Woz is a brilliant engineer who will always come up with amazing hardware & software solutions, but, like many engineers, he probably wouldn’t be happy in a management role. Woz also doesn’t share Jobs’ obsession over form & function – he’d rather work on nitty gritty implementation details than absolutely perfect usability. Woz is a left brain thinker vs. Jobs’ right brain. The leader of Apple needs to be a visionary like Jobs, not necessarily a brilliant engineer, although he does need brilliant engineers working for him to make his vision into reality.
End of an era
As you’ve probably heard, Apple announced today that this will be their last appearance at Macworld Expo and Steve Jobs won’t deliver the keynote address. Although Apple wasn’t an official sponsor of Macworld Expo, the event revolved around their announcements. This doesn’t mean that Macworld Expo will end, but I really don’t expect it to continue without them. Most likely the show will die in a few years, like the east coast Macworld Expo did after Apple stopped exhibiting there.
The timing of Macworld Expo soon after New Years was probably bad for Apple, since it meant they had to time their major announcements for January and miss the holiday shopping season.
TidBITS offers some good perspective on the announcement.
I already have my tickets & hotel reservation for Macworld Expo, so I’m still going and I’ll savor what will most likely be the last one I’ll attend. I probably won’t get up at 4AM to line up for the keynote, though.
I went to my first Macworld Expo in 1988, after I moved to Los Angeles, since it was a quick & inexpensive trip.
During Macworld Expo 1991, I got the news on the last day of the show that my father died and I walked around in shock the rest of the day before flying back to New York the following day.
After I left the west coast, I stopped going until a few years ago. Last year was one of the biggest shows, but this year was already showing signs of being a disappointment with Adobe and several other companies pulling out.
iPhone developers can now give free promotional copies
Apple now allows developers to issue up to 50 promotional codes for each version of any application in the store. The codes allow the recipient to download a full copy of the application. Currently they can only be redeemed in the US app store.
This makes it a lot easier for developers to send out review copies. Until now, it was necessary to build an Ad-hoc copy of any non-free application, which required providing the device ID of any iPhone or iPod it will run on.
XBMC on my AppleTV
I used atvusb-creator to install XBMC & Boxee on my AppleTV.
It’s very easy: create a patch stick with a USB flash drive, power down the AppleTV, insert the flash drive and restart the AppleTV. It will boot from the flash drive. You’ll see Linux startup messages and in a few seconds it will be finished. Shut off the AppleTV, remove the flash drive, and when you restart the AppleTV there will be a new menu item for XBMC & Boxee. You’ll probably need to run the update before using it the first time.
XBMC works beautifully. It lets you play additional media formats not normally supported by the AppleTV, including AVI, and adds some nice new features like weather & news.
Unfortunately I had some difficulty with Boxee – it won’t respond to the remote, so there’s no way to even log in.
Update: Restarting seems to have fixed it. I was able to log into Boxee, but now I found a different problem: it truncates file names on a SMB share, so it can’t open any files from my server.
LOLCats 1.1 is available
UPDATE: Minutes after I posted this, I got a notice from Apple that the update has been approved and is now ready for sale.
Apple still hasn’t approved my update to LOLCats. Still no response from Apple for the second update, which I feel is pretty urgent, since it reduces the possibility of inappropriate images appearing, which I’ve received several complaints about.
I’m now getting close to another update, which adds Zooomr support.
Meanwhile, I’m working on a second Flickr-related application. I had expected to share a lot of code with LOLCats, but it turns out I’ve only reused one class, my Flickr parser.
For this app, I need to support Flickr authorization, so it seemed easier to rewrite Flickr’s ObjectiveFlickr code, which already supports authorization. However, ObjectiveFlickr depends on XMLDocument, which isn’t available on the iPhone. I’m replacing the response handling code with my Flickr parser class. When it’s finished, I’ll release the Flickr-related code (not the entire app) as open source.
On a fun note, I purposely added the LOLCATS tag to this photo of Midnight to make it to appear in the application. As a result, the number of hits on that photo are about 100x the average for my similar photos.
Off to WWDC
I’m getting ready to leave for San Francisco early in the morning. My flight is at 6:45 so I’ll probably have to be up around 3AM. I change flights in Atlanta and arrive in San Francisco around noon, so I’ll have plenty of time to pick up my badge.