iPad

April 1, 2012 – 1:56 PM

My thoughts on and history with the iPad are complicated. That I would buy one was, I’d always thought, somewhat inevitable. But, after twice having the good fortune to test drive iPads — once when setting up one for my boss, and once when setting one up for my stepfather — I had difficulty seeing what use I could ever have for the device. Perhaps the most important thing impressed upon me during my time with iPads was how terrific they are for viewing imagery. So, my thinking went, if I were to ever get one, imagery would be my window into the world of the iPad.

Drawing
For some time I stopped thinking about iPads. And then one day, while I was making the thumbnails for a comic strip I work on, it struck me that the iPad would be a perfect compliment to my workflow.

See, when I make a strip I typically draw a quick thumbnail of each panel for layout and basic composition. This takes up precious and valuable paper in my sketchbook with drawings that are for reference only and which I often have no need for once the strip is complete. It’s a big waste of paper that will then take up much-prized shelf space in my small Manhattan apartment.

Pencils

Text
Also, when working on strips, I keep a text file with the strip’s words in it. This lives on my computer. So I am constantly running back and forth between computer and drawing table to check the text. Or sometimes I put my computer on my table, but this is often just as inconvenient, taking up way too much space and hindering drawing. The fact is, there’s really been no convenient way to reconcile this problem. Until now.

iPad
I’ve said before, when the iPad becomes a tool that’s creatively useful to me, that is the moment I will buy one. Clearly that moment has come. The iPad is a perfect compliment to my comic strip workflow, and an extremely useful tool for me. When I want to mock up a strip I simply whip out my iPad and mock it up. No paper waste, no pencil sharpening, and no pages unnecessarily filled with unwanted drawings. Just get out the iPad and go, anywhere, anytime, right from the sofa if I want.

Then, when it’s time to make the strip and I’m working at my drawing table, I can keep the iPad right there with me. I can toggle between the text and the drawing — which I do using the excellent multi-touch gestures — right there on the same device taking up minimal space on my table. It’s terrific!

Doodling
As you can probably tell, I’m a bit fussy over what goes in my sketchbooks. I know they’re for sketching, but they’re also a record of my thoughts and projects at a particular point in time. And I like to keep them nice. I want them to come out good. I don’t want them to be full of crap. A sketchbook, when done right, can be a thing of beauty in and of itself.

A Doodlebook

But I still want a place to doodle. Doodling is important too. Free drawing in which the finished product isn’t important, drawing with no end or purpose, is essential to the creative process. And I’ve been missing out. My anal retentive perspective on sketchbooks has largely prevented me from doing much doodling. The result has been that when I’m doing finished work it takes me a while to warm up and get comfortable. Drawing is like a sport. If you don’t do it every day you get out of shape. And I’ve been out of shape.

Made With Zen Brush

Since getting the iPad, though, I find myself drawing constantly in my spare time. It’s easy because I can do it anywhere or anytime now. So now, while I’m watching TV, I’m doodling the whole time. This has resulted in a much higher level of comfort and confidence when doing actual physical drawing. Because my brain and hands are so in the habit now of thinking about drawing, now when I go to do actual pen and ink work, it’s much, much easier. This is an unexpected but wonderful surprise. The iPad has made me a better artist.

Currently, the apps I’m using for drawing are: the minimal Zen Brush, my favorite for doodles; the full-featured ArtRage, as seen in the iPad commercial, great for more painterly works; SketchBookX; and Paper. But most of the time I use Zen Brush, mainly because it’s so simple and the brush is the most like a real ink brush. Zen Brush lets me work extremely quickly and with a minimum of friction.

Drawing Toolbox

Viewing
Not only is it fun to draw on the iPad, but images look great on it, especially with the Retina display. So now I bring my drawings and comics everywhere with me and I’ve got a great way to show them off. Showing someone a drawing on your iPhone just doesn’t compare.

Light editing is also possible with iPhoto for iOS, which, despite some interface oddities, is a terrific piece of software that I’m enjoying quite a bit.

iPhoto for iOS

More
I also took my iPad to work, just to see what that would be like. It was another one of those,”will it be useful?” moments. And I was surprised again to find that it has been. Immensely so, in fact, at least under certain circumstances.

It’s true that, when I’m at my workstation I don’t actually use the iPad much. But I’m not always at my workstation. In the past I’ve relied on my iPhone to get mail and the like while away from my desk. But I just happened to be working on a project where I needed frequent access to mail but I wasn’t near my computer. iPad to the rescue. I was able to keep the iPad by my side and check email much more comfortably than on my phone.

I also used to use my phone to look at diagrams and schematics when working on projects away from my workstation. This is much nicer, of course, on the iPad.

In short, the iPad has become a regular fixture and an incredibly useful tool at work as well.

Falling Down
There are still some things I’d like to do on my iPad that I can’t. Facebook for instance. The Facebook application for iPad is nice for reading, but there are a bunch of things you can’t do in it. You can’t share other people’s posts, for one thing. Also, posting your own content — particularly links to drawings, which I do all the time — does not work as well or in the same way as it does in the browser.

Mail, too, is still a bit limited. I really do need a way to mark spam. And it’d be nice if the Archive feature worked for Exchange servers like it does for Gmail. I also wish there were a way to not always have to look at an open email. I realize this probably doesn’t bother many people, but I usually much prefer to look at the iPhone-style (or Gmail-style, or even Mail.app-style, if you set it up that way) view of messages only, rather than the last read message. iPad’s Mail app is the only one that doesn’t allow this sort of view, and it always throws me.

Typing is also kind of a drag. I’ve gotten pretty proficient at it as long as I can set the iPad down and mimic touch typing, but the iPad is by far my least favorite device to type on. Fortunately, dictation works well, and this mitigates the typing issues to some extent, at least when I’ve got an Internet connection and no one is watching.

Oh, here’s a nit too, though one that permeates all of iOS: Why does sleep take the iPad to the lock screen? That’d be like if my computer logged me out every time it went to sleep. On iOS it just seems like and extra and unnecessary step. If I’m on the home screen when the device goes to sleep, it seems logical that I should be able to press the home button and be at the home screen, not the lock screen (unless, of course, I’ve set up a passkey). Right?

Finally, I do plan on getting a stylus for my iPad. While I do enjoy doodling with my fingers, it’s often a bit too limiting, and I feel I’d have more control with an input device. Also, I wish there were better simulations of pressure sensitivity. Paper and Zen Brush have done the best at this, but I really wish it could be better. I’ll probably start with Wacom’s basic Bamboo stylus, but I’m hopeful that a pressure sensitive stylus will make it to market. I know there’s at least one in the works. Fingers crossed!

Pressure Sensitive Stylus

iPad Love
I’m really very happy with my iPad. In fact, even more so than I’d anticipated. I use it all the time, to the point where my computer is really getting used a whole lot less. For reading and drawing the iPad is a great tool and a lot of fun. Do I need one? No. Am I glad I got one. Hell yes.

By systemsboy | Posted in iPad | Comments (0)

More Thoughts On Feedback

March 15, 2012 – 1:17 PM

It occurs to me, as I think more about the problem of interface feedback, and as I ponder the things in computing that drive me bonkers, that the problem of feedback — when to let a user know that something has happened or that something is happening — seems to be one that’s getting worse. I complained about it a lot in my criticisms of The Mac App Store, but it bothers me throughout a whole host of applications.

The browser, for instance: I often find myself clicking a link to a slow website — or maybe there’s some other network hiccup — and nothing happens. Or at least that’s how it seems. There actually is a subtle indication that I’ve successfully clicked, and it comes in the form of a pinwheel or a progress dial in the loading tab — what we used to call the Throbber back in the Netscape days — that tells me that, yes, I clicked and now the page is loading. But these subtle indicators are often lost on new users, or less tech-savvy ones. And, to be quite honest, they’re often lost on me as well.

Netscape Throbber

Links are small, and with the inaccuracies that tend to accompany touchpad use, I miss them a lot. This is especially true on pages like Facebook which often load new content just before you click said link, causing your link to shift position, thus causing you to miss it through no fault of your own and in a way that you might be completely unaware of. So it’s important to know simply that you clicked. That you nailed it.

Clicking in one spot and then having to look in a completely different spot to see if I successfully clicked is not only inefficient, it’s really annoying. It totally breaks my flow and it also doesn’t make much sense except within the historical context of the Netscape-style Throbber. Why not make the progress indicator closer to the link you just clicked? Or cover the page with some sort of translucent graphic? Or use some sort of Heads Up Display?

Chrome Throbber

The Finder is guilty too. The throbber for searches performed in a Finder window is a small radial line throbber in the status bar in the lower right corner of the window. By default, in Lion, the status bar is hidden, thus the throbber, too, is hidden by default. But even when visible, it’s nowhere near the search bubble, nor is it anywhere near where the search results begin to appear. Unless you know that the throbber is there — and I certainly missed it for a long time — you’ll likely be oblivious to its existence.

Finder Throbber

But, you say, search results appear so instantaneously, there’s no need for a throbber. Well, sure, except when they don’t. Say you’re searching a network volume, for instance. This type of search is much slower since it doesn’t rely on the local Spotlight database to perform the search, so results can take some time to appear. Also, without a throbber, how do you know when Spotlight has finished searching, particularly on a large volume with lots of results? Feedback, my friends. Feedback.

This should be the rule — and maybe it already is somewhere, but if it isn’t it should be. If I click on something I should get immediate feedback that tells me simply that I successfully clicked, that I hit my target, and it should be obvioulsy apparent. Details beyond this, like what’s happening now that I’ve interacted with my computer, should also be evident. But it seems like lately we’re really falling down on the, “Hey, you clicked something,” front. And it’s been bugging me. A lot. Because in computerland, clicking on something and receiving no feedback whatsoever has always meant one thing and one thing only: it’s broken.

Browser developers, OS programmers, you want to rethink an interface? You want to make a better mousetrap? Start there. Start with feedback. It’s quite basic, but feedback is so very important to the computing experience. And while I wouldn’t say it’s completely broken, it, like everything in life, can always get better.

Long live the Throbber!

UPDATE: One reader has decided to begin recording every instance of radial throbbers he can find. Check ‘em out at Samuel Henry’s Space!

By systemsboy | Posted in Applications, Interface | Comments (2)

Automation and Feedback

March 13, 2012 – 8:00 AM

One of my overarching problems with Lion, I’m slowly realizing, is that it’s trying to do too much for me. Don’t get me wrong, I think this is, in many ways, a good direction. I’ve long wondered why I had to save every document revision by hand. Isn’t this a job a computer would be way better at than a human?

Indeed.

But the problem with the computer doing too much for me is really an implementation problem, and in the end it boils down to one main issue: communication. I don’t mind the computer doing things for me, but I need to know about it.

Case in point: automatic spelling correction. Apple has rolled iOS’s auto-spell correct into Lion, and now I find myself making all the same sorts of word choice errors in my documents that I make in my text messages. Here’s the thing, though. In the past, when I’d make a spelling error, TextEdit would put a big red squiggle under my misspelled word. Later, when revising something, I’d easily spot the mistake and correct it by hand.



Now, with automatic spell-correct, TextEdit sees my misspelled word and corrects it, so there is no red squiggle. And with no red squiggle there’s nothing to tell me, upon revision, that there might be mistakes in my document — mistakes which take the form of incorrect words rather than misspellings, but mistakes nonetheless — mistakes made by the computer.

While I generally like auto spell-correct, I think it would be much improved with some sort of notification system. Perhaps a subtle highlight, or a blue squiggle, under every word that was corrected by the system. That way, when you go to revise your document, you can see where the computer has intervened and perhaps made an unfortunate word choice.

Extend that idea to Versions and I think I’d have a lot less to complain about with the versioning system as well.

Overall, I think there are some good ideas here in Lion. But there’s definitely room for improvement.

By systemsboy | Posted in Interface, Lion | Comments (0)

Securely Erasing a Mac SSD

March 6, 2012 – 8:00 AM

I’ve recently made the switch to an SSD for my boot drive. And, yes, it is good. Everything feels all buttery smooth now; I don’t feel like I’m waiting for my system to catch up to me as much. It was a bit of a hassle, but totally worth it. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

The Problem
If you ever want to, say, sell your now SSD-equipped computer, you’re probably going to want to erase its contents as securely as possible. Back in the HD days, this was very well-understood and relatively easy to do. You simply overwrote every bit of data on your Hard Drive numerous times with zeroes or random data or what have you. There are command-line tools that allow you to do this, as well as Disk Utility’s Secure Erase Options, which allow very secure and thorough erasure of a drive. But because of the way that SSDs work, all this goes out the window.

I’m not a Hard Drive or SSD expert, but, in a nutshell, in order to maintain performance and increase longevity, SSDs add another level of abstraction between the device and the filesystem that makes it impossible for the OS to accurately know the location of a given file on the actual device. This means that it’s virtually impossible to securely erase individual files. So the question becomes: How do I securely erase the entire drive?

We Want… Information (-ation, -ation)
The tools and procedures for securely erasing SSDs are not self-evident. I poured over a pretty hefty amount of literature before arriving at a method that I think will work fairly effectively. Since there’s no way to accurately erase individual files, this method erases the entire SSD. And since the best way to do this, while still balancing usability and effectiveness, is to use encryption, we’ll be enabling FileVault 2 in Lion, as well as, of all things, Find My Mac in iCloud. I’ll go over all of this in a bit, but let me first talk a bit about my thinking.

My Thinking
The most secure way to delete an SSD is to find a way to scrub the drive, to go through every cell on the SSD and overwrite the data, similar to how you would securely delete a typical hard drive, but at the hardware level. Out of the box the Mac has no way to do this. There are a variety of Linux and Windows utilities — some of which come directly from the drive vendors — that allow you to do this, but they require a huge number of hoops to jump through, not the least of which is creating a Linux LiveCD or Windows machine to boot from, as well as a significant time investment. Using this method, while perhaps a more secure deletion of the data, will be time consuming, difficult and error-prone.

As I mentioned, there’s a ton of literature on the topic of securely erasing SSDs, but the vast majority of it is theoretical. There are very few articles that actually tell you, practically, how to go about securely erasing your SSD. What got me thinking in the right direction was an article from Ars Technica that very broadly discussed the various difficulties with and methods for secure SSD erasure. In it, they talk about drive scrubbing approaches, but then they also mention using an encryption-based approach:

“The most popular option for protecting data, absent of robust secure erasing tools that scrub right down into the over-provisioned cracks, is to encrypt the SSD’s contents. This way, if someone’s coming after your data, the only thing you need to make sure is off the drive is the security key (128- or 256-bit AES is recommended) and your bits will be safe, unless whoever wants your data is up to cracking that code.“

This caught my attention, because it sounds very much to me like the secure erase procedure that newer iPhones use. If you’ve ever securely erased an iPhone 3GS or later, you may have noticed that it goes extremely fast. Older phones take a long time because they’re actually scrubbing the SSD clean of data, but newer ones are really fast because all they’re actually doing is deleting the encryption key, making the data virtually impossible to access.

Finding a similar procedure for an SSD-equipped Mac was no easy feat, but I think I’ve dug one up that may work for most typical users who just want to pass on their SSD-equipped Macs without worrying about someone accessing their private data. The thing that’s tricky about doing this is that Apple has provided no similar utility for erasing SSDs as they have for the iPhone. On an iPhone you simply go to your Settings and choose:
General->Reset->Erase All Content and Settings.

There is no such utility on a Mac.

Or is there?

Enter: FileVault 2
Mac OS X10.7, Lion, has a new feature called full disk encryption, now popularly known as FileVault 2. What FileVault 2 does is take all the data on your boot drive — which in my case is my SSD — and encrypts it. The encryption key is stored on the disk and is only accessible with your home account password (or any other user’s password that you allow). In and of itself, in fact, assuming you have a reasonably secure password, simply enabling FileVault 2 on your boot drive provides a pretty decent degree of security: No one can access the contents of your disk without your password.

Encryption key deletion, a la the iPhone, provides the final layer of security, but how do you go about doing such a thing? The Apple literature on FileVault 2 makes reference to something called “Instant Wipe:”

“With FileVault 2, instant wipe removes the encryption key from your Mac instantaneously, making the data completely inaccessible.“

Enter: iCloud & Find My Mac
I have yet to find a way to access this “Instant Wipe” from my Mac, nor is there any reference to it in the Help files. But with the addition of the Find My Mac feature, now freely available via iCloud, a Mac can securely erase a drive in a fashion quite similar to that of the iPhone. Find My Mac allows Mac users to remotely locate and lock, send messages and alert sounds to, and — most important for our purposes — wipe a lost Mac. Of course, this functionality works perfectly well with Macs that aren’t lost as well.

Sending the “Wipe” command to your Mac from Find My Mac (either via a browser logged in to iCloud or from Find My iPhone on your iPhone) will do the same thing to your Mac that Secure Erase does on your iPhone. It will erase the encryption key that protects the data on your SSD.

“The Remote Wipe command is, of course, a last resort, as it instantly destroys the boot drive’s contents by erasing the encrypted volume’s key, rendering the drive’s contents unusable.“

This means that, once the encryption key is deleted, even you will no longer be able to access your data with your password. Once this happens, the only way to access the data is to decrypt it, and without the key, this is a monumental task far beyond the capabilities of most users. The XTS-AES 128 bit encryption that Lion uses is extremely difficult and time consuming to crack. In fact, though there are more secure options out there, I believe this one has yet to be cracked at this point.

Also, once the encryption key is wiped, the wipe command apparently goes through and deletes all the data as well:

“Instant wipe removes the encryption key from your Mac — making the data completely inaccessible — then proceeds with a thorough wipe of all data from the disk.“

It’s unclear exactly how this wipe is performed. Does it happen at the hardware level clearing data from each and every cell of the SSD? Are the files overwritten multiple times with random data or are they just marked offline? It’s hard to tell from the scant online literature I’ve seen; even the developer docs seem to be out of date. But whatever the case, this is pretty durned good security for the average joe.

So, how to get all this working? There are only two things you need to set up: FileVault 2 and iCloud with Find My Mac

This article is already long enough, so I won’t go into FileVault 2 or iCloud setup here. They’re easy to do and there’s already plenty of information about the procedures. Here are some great links to get you started:
Set Up Filevault 2
Set Up iCloud’s Find My Mac

Suffice to say, once these services are configured, erasing your SSD, when the time comes, should be as simple as logging in to iCloud, locating the Mac in question using Find My Mac, and issuing the Wipe command. After a very short amount of time, the encryption key will be deleted, and some time later (how long depends on a number of variables, some of which we don’t actually know), your disk will, in theory, be wiped clean of data.

One caveat: I have yet to actually try the Wipe command. Oh, believe me, I intend to. But we’re talking about a day out of my life, and that’s a day I just don’t have to spare. And you know what they say about good intentions. Yeah.

If I do manage to get around to this, I’ll certainly post my findings here. I encourage others to do likewise in the comments section of this article.

MORE:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.ars/13
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Disk_Encryption

By systemsboy | Posted in Applications, Hardware, MacOSX | Comments (6)

iBooks Author

March 1, 2012 – 8:00 AM

I’ve been poking around a bit with iBooks Author. It’s something I find very interesting. See, I’ve actually been working on a book myself, though maybe not the sort of book you might imagine. It’s not a tech book at all. It’s actually a comic.

While I’m nowhere near ready to publish, I’m nevertheless understandably interested in digital publishing options. The ePub format is how I’ve envisioned digitally publishing my book thus far, but iBooks Author offers a whole new wrinkle.

The iBooks Author Format
Like a lot of folks, I was a bit irked when I heard that iBooks Author creates files in a proprietary format only accessible to iOS. It would certainly have been possible for Apple to make iBooks Author create standard ePub formatted content. And that would be nice, but the more I look at the tools, the more I realize that using the ePub format would completely miss the point of this platform. What Apple is trying to do here is change the standard. In the same way they want to revolutionize the world of textbooks, Apple wants to change the way books are made and read. By making them interactive. This is clearly the goal for iBooks Author. Sure, you can make non-interactive books with it, but that misses the point entirely. iBooks Author makes something no other tool can make. And that something is made to run on an iPad.

iBooks Author Beefs
You may note that I said iPad in that last sentence. That was no mistake. From what I can tell, iBooks Author content is not just iOS only, it’s iPad only. The Textbook category doesn’t even show up in iBooks on the iPhone. Nor can you export from iBooks Author to iPhone. In fact, it’s so iPad-centric that even vertical and horizontal orientation are authored for different appearances and behaviors. That’s right, a horizontally held iBooks Author product will appear and behave differently than a vertically help one. The iPhone doesn’t do this. This is pure iPad, folks.

There are two reasons I put this in the “Beefs” category. The first is that, well, I don’t have an iPad, so I have no real way to play with the full iBooks Authoring process. I hope to have this issue corrected eventually, when I finally do end up getting an iPad. I can tell you, iBooks Author is one more reason to do so, and I can see getting one soon.

The other reason is that, somewhat oddly, portrait mode seems to be geared toward reading text. In this mode, text dominates the page and images and other media are added to the sidebar. Tap one of these sidebar items and you’ll see the full-screen version, but this layout does not work well for making comics, which are single images on a vertical page. This may make iBooks Author less than ideal for making traditional comics digitally. (And actually, I should point out, making a traditional e-book from a comic is probably the easiest kind of book you can make.) To further illustrate iBooks Author’s landscape-centricity, there’s even a setting to disallow vertical orientation. But not the other way around.

But this just underscores the point I’m trying to make about iBooks Author. iBooks Author is not about making traditional books. It’s about making something new, something specific to the iPad, a new reading experience entirely. One that’s rich and interactive. And that’s got me thinking about my book in new ways.

iBooks Author Coolness
What ultimately is cool about iBooks Author is this: If you think about it, it’s a lot more than just a textbook creation tool, or even just a book creation tool; it’s essentially a media wrapper for building simple interactives for iPad. The confusion comes from the name. iBooks Author creates books, right? But again I say, Apple wants us to re-envision the book. This is a book in name only. And this new book lies somewhere between book and application.

What these “books” remind me of more than anything else are the interactive kiosks we have here at the museum. These interactive screens aim to educate and entertain simultaneously by creating an engaging personal experience. The visitor chooses and interacts with the content. They have a certain level of control and agency not afforded by static displays, nor by straight video. And I believe this approach, when done well, can encourage learning.

Using iBooks Author
iBooks Author is very much in the iWork vein. In fact, using it is very, very similar to using Keynote. Keynote projects — as well as Word docs and Mac OS X Dashboard Widgets, for that matter — can even be embedded right into iBooks Author projects. Essentially, as in Keynote, you have an outline on the left and a viewer in the center where you add and modify text and other media. Perhaps the biggest difference is that you’ll be authoring in iBooks Author for both vertical and horizontal views. But otherwise, it’s very similar.

Conclusion
I have high hopes for iBooks Author. I actually see it as a way to make interactive content that goes far beyond our typical notions of what books are. I suspect  a lot of people will find a lot to like with this tool and the potentially magical things you can create with it with ease and simplicity.

By systemsboy | Posted in Applications, Art | Comments (0)

Simple, Stupid

February 28, 2012 – 4:26 PM

Both iOS and — in Lion — the Mac OS, suffer from this stupid problem and need this simple correction.

 

via Ignore the Code

By systemsboy | Posted in Applications, iOS, Lion | Comments (0)

Things I Hate About the Mac App Store

February 28, 2012 – 8:00 AM

I don’t mean to imply with that title — or anything I’ve written, really — that I think the Mac App Store is all bad. It’s not. I like the idea of it quite a bit, and in some cases, particularly that of the Lion upgrade, and also in terms of license handling for individual users, the Mac App Store is quite good. But let’s be honest: as a piece of software it’s half-baked. It doesn’t even seem like a finished application, never mind a system service that will handle core functionality like system software updates. It’s sub-iTunes, and that’s pretty sub if you ask me. So what are some specfic things I hate?

Unresponsiveness
Launch the Mac App Store and be prepared to wait. Wait while the app loads. Click on a link in the Mac App Store and be prepared to wait some more while whatever you clicked loads. Search for something in the App Store and… Well, you get the idea. I typically wait anywhere from 3 to 10 — you heard me, 10! — seconds for the App Store to fully load on launch. On a new MacBook Pro with 8 Gigs of RAM, no less.

Uncommunicativeness
Not only will you wait after clicking a link, but there will be almost no indication that you’ve done anything at all. That’s right, during the wait time between clicking something and something actually happening, there will be very little to tell you that you’ve actually initiated an action. The only hint is a small throbber in the toolbar, and it doesn’t even always work.

Forgetfulness
Quit the Mac App Store and the next time you launch it it will not return you to your last visited page. No, instead you will see the Featured page, every time, even though Lion is supposed to remember the last state of apps, and even though App Store is a Mac app. This is not only annoying, it’s not conducive to shopping.

Unhelpfulness
The Mac App Store in general, in fact, doesn’t seem particularly conducive to anything but the most cursory and shallow of shopping endeavors. There is no way to look at more then one item at a time. There is no way to see a list of recently viewed items. There is no way to keep a list of items I’m interested in for perusal and possible purchase later. This is a piece of software that behaves very much like a browser, and, I believe, is even based on WebKit, but has no history or bookmarks. See something you like? Want to save it for later so you can shop around a bit or do some comparison shopping? Better get out a pen and some paper, ’cause this computerized shopping program can’t even make wish lists.

Unintentional Humor
I guess the final irony for me is this: How do you expect to sell software with such a shitty piece of software? That just seems like bad salesmanship.

By systemsboy | Posted in Applications | Comments (3)

Mountain Lion Sneak Peek

February 25, 2012 – 2:01 PM

I’m always excited to hear about new OS releases for the Mac. But that excitement is increasingly mixed with trepidation, and the Mountian Lion sneak peek is no exception.

 

Concerns
Count me among the “Pro” users who fear that the Mac and its OS are quite possibly headed towards an iOS-ification that would relegate lots of the professional functionality we’ve come to rely on to the dung heap. That’s what happened with Final Cut Pro X, it seems to be where the Mac Pro is headed, and I, along with some of my colleagues, worry that that’s where Mac OS X (now called, simply — and some might say, ominously — OS X) is headed. Take one look at the latest AirPort Utility — the most blatant example I’ve seen where Apple has actually removed key features from an app to make it simpler and more iOS-like — and you’ll see what I’m talking about. Maybe you’ll even start to get worried yourself.

Lion has had its fair share of clues that Apple is headed towards simplification in the OS and is becoming increasingly unconcerned with professional users. Some of the new features are great, or at least could be some day. I think the versioning system, while still problematic, could someday be transformative if a good deal of thought and effort are put into improving the UX. But little things, like the hiding of the user’s Library folder, hint at more totalitarian possibilities, ones which lock the user out of the OS to an unprecedented degree. The suggestion that Apple might someday get rid of filesystem access in the desktop OS sends shivers up my spine, but I do consider it a very real possibility. Personally, I don’t think this will happen any day soon. But some of my colleagues are less optimistic.

So it is against this backdrop of thought that I consider Mountain Lion.

The Worrisome
As with Lion, we see in Mountain Lion the iOS trend continue. This, in and of itself, might be cause for concern. iOS presents the OS in a simpler, more restrictive way, and more iOS on the desktop could be a sign of greater restrictiveness.

It’s certainly worth noting that Software Update will be gone in Mountain Lion, replaced wholly by the Mac App Store. I suspect that this means it will be even harder to save archives of application and OS updates, if we’ll even have the ability at all. And if you read this blog with any regularity you have a pretty good sense of how I feel about the Mac App Store in general (hint: it’s not good). I suppose if you like iTunes, you’ll be tickled pink that App Store will soon be handling core OS functions. But then, if you like iTunes, there is something seriously wrong with your brain.

I’m also a bit perturbed by the fact that X11 — the engine that powers numerous open source software projects, including GIMP and many of the OpenOffice ports — will no longer be included as part of the default install of the OS. It is still being developed and supported and will still be available, for now, from Apple, but as a separate download under the guise of XQuartz. Not a huge problem, per se, but, it could be argued, a sign of things to come.

Finally, it might also be of some concern that this year, for the first time ever, Apple decided not to announce this update with a big event. This year, instead, Apple chose to make the announcement quietly, to a select group of press members. It’s almost eerie, the lack of fanfare.

The Promising
For the most part, however, Mountain Lion seems to be less about restrictions as it is about bringing iOS features to the Mac. Less about limitations and more about integration. And that’s at least somewhat reassuring.

So mainly what we’re seeing in Mountain Lion is the addition of numerous applications and interface trends brought over from iOS to OS X. Messages, Notes, Notification Center, Share Sheets, Game Center and AirPlay Mirroring are all applications or features that are being brought to the Mac desktop from iOS. As a Mac user, this is the kind of cross-pollination I want to see. A cool feature developed for iOS making it into OS X just makes good sense. The fact that Apple is doing this is yet another sign that perhaps they haven’t completely given up on the desktop market.

I also think it’s very promising that Apple has decided to begin refocusing efforts on the desktop with a commitment to yearly OS X updates. Sure, if the direction they take is bad, this could be a huge negative, I suppose, but at least they aren’t letting the desktop languish; they see potential in the desktop market, and are developing for it. I take this as a positive sign.

Also, Gatekeeper, Apple’s approach to application security, hits, I think, the right note. Its default mode, which requires all apps to be digitally signed, is perfect for mainstream users. But Apple has given pro users ultimate control and freedom by giving them the option to bypass Gate Keeper. To me, that’s just the right balance between security and freedom. In fact, if Apple ever does choose the route of a hidden filesystem, I hope they do something like this, allowing pro users to see and access it easily, with a simple preference.

Final Thoughts
From what I’ve seen so far, Mountain Lion looks promising. I’m seeing less of the iOS restrictions hitting the desktop OS than I’d anticipated, and instead what looks to be happening is that a lot of iOS-only features are now getting integrated into OS X. I take this trend as a generally positive sign. So I remain hopeful.

If Apple follows a policy of integration and eschews the limitations of iOS on the desktop, I’ll remain a happy Apple customer. I hope that’s what they do.

By systemsboy | Posted in Apple, MacOSX | Comments (10)

Airport Extreme

December 30, 2011 – 7:09 PM

This year for Xmas I asked for and received an Airport Extreme. Some of you may recall my struggles with the numerous Airport Expresses I own. This is because of the way my home network has evolved over the years, which is to say, completely piecemeal and haphazardly.

A Piecemeal Network
My home network, like many, started simply with a wired router. It then progressed to wireless with my first Airport Express, which, at the time was plenty for me, living alone in my small studio apartment. My next apartment, however, was a duplex, so I extended my network with an additional Airport Express, one capable of 802.11n. Then, as wireless networks in the city exploded and frequencies grew more congested, causing problems with the wireless Netflix streaming I started doing a good deal of, I added yet another Airport Express and built out my network, creating one 5GHz network for my heaviest use-cases, and a 2.4GHz network for my phones and gadgets.

When all was said and done I had a wired router feeding three Airport Expresses, two of which were supplying wireless on 5GHz and one of which provided separate wireless access on the 2.4GHz frequency. It was a total mess: it took forever to set up (like when we recently moved to a new house); it broke often and was horrible to troubleshoot.

Cut To The Present Day
So this year one of my presents was an Airport Extreme. I just wanted to simplify everything. I suppose I could’ve gotten some LinkSys dealio that would’ve been faster, but frankly, this is about laziness, and the Airport Extreme is, for me, the easiest option available, if for no other reason than the fact that I already use and am quite familiar with the Airport ecosystem.

And easy it was! In fact, I was able to set it up and completely replace my existing network — a router and three Airport Expresses — in about ten minutes. That’s right, what used to take me hours to set up and get working just so took ten minutes with an Airport Extreme. And now, all those boxes are gone, replaced with a single — and quite attractive, I might add — wireless router. It’s fantastic!

I have to say, setting up my Airport Extreme was one of the best user experiences I’ve had in a very, very long time. I’m not used to calling network setup easy, but that’s exactly what it was. I entered my settings and it simply Just Worked.

Clearly a lot has changed since I first began building my home network. It’s nice to finally be using some current gear, and the Airport Extreme is a great box. Super simple to set up and use. Oh, and it’s fast too!

If you’re looking to upgrade an aging wireless network, want simplicity and ease-of-use, and don’t need a ton of tweakable settings, I highly recommend the Airport Extreme.

By systemsboy | Posted in Hardware | Comments (0)

So Bucking Fuggy

December 8, 2011 – 8:00 AM

If there’s one thing that drives me crazy about Lion, it’s the bugginess of the Finder. I’d mentioned the problem where Spaces clears the Desktop of icons in my initial review. But I’ve since found additional problems.

For years now I’ve kept my Desktop organized by file type. I like this because it groups all my files in a way that I find logical and easy to visually parse. One glance at the Desktop and I can find all the PDFs, for instance, and these will be ordered alphabetically. It’s a personal preference, and it’s worked well for me for years. But it’s broken in Lion.

In Lion, sometimes items of the same type group together, but sometimes they don’t. The other day, for instance, I downloaded four PNGs to my Desktop. Three of them were grouped together, but one was just put somewhere random. Restarting the Finder caused all the items to group properly. This little trick was repeatable on both my system and on other Lion systems in my facility.

Moreover, eventually the items will group properly, and I’ll see, out of the corner of my eye, my Desktop suddenly rearrange itself for no apparent reason.

But here’s the thing: without consistency, the feature that allows you to arrange your Desktop by file type is essentially useless. If I can’t rely on it to present me with accurate information all the time, then there’s no real point in using it anymore.

So I’ve switched to manually arranging items on my Desktop. That’s right, I’ve now abandoned the method of Desktop organization I’ve used for years because Lion has broken it. But here’s the kicker: manual organization doesn’t always work either. Even manually arranged items get disordered from time to time after, say, a logout.

Another thing that happens — less annoying, for sure, but indicative of the sad state of the Lion Finder — is that when I log in there is often one item on the Desktop that’s missing an icon. Again, restarting the Finder fixes the issue. But still…

And then there’s this:

From an item on my Desktop. Jesus.

At this point, for me, the Desktop is essentially completely broken; it’s nearly unusable. I’m not sure how the folks in Cupertino even use this OS without driving themselves up a wall. And I don’t know how they can allow these basic and obvious bugs to persist.

The sad state of Lion’s Finder really shows Apple’s level of commitment to the desktop version of their once great OS. It’s just tiresome to have to be wrestling, after ten years, with the most basic piece of Mac OS software: The Finder. But that’s where we are today.

By systemsboy | Posted in Interface, Lion | Comments (8)