Wednesday, April 22

Google Gone Carrier

I’ve read a few times in the past that one of the big ideas Steve Jobs (or someone at Apple) had about the iPhone was to release it without ties to any carriers. In other words Apple, ever wary of depending on a third party for core technologies in their modern incarnation, reportedly considered launching their own cellular network. While that seems like an endeavor that only current Apple could afford (pre-iPhone Apple wasn’t quite as flush with cash), I’d easily believe they at least considered it.

Fast forward to this week and now Google is jumping into the carrier game, though not quite in the same way. This week they officially announced what has been rumored for a few weeks or months: Project Fi. Project Fi is really an MVNO¹, piggy backing off of Sprint and T-Mobile’s network along with wi-fi calling and some other pretty nifty features to optimize network speed and strength based on where you are. And to top it all off, the service offers a very Google-y pricing model: pay for what you use, no really, even if you thought you’d use more. Ron Amadeo, writing for Ars Technica, lays out a perfect scenario for Google’s pricing model:

Project Fi is great for people with fluctuating data usage though. Take me for instance: most days, at home and at work, I’m on Wi-Fi, with barely any data usage, but there are those months where I travel a lot, and then my data usage spikes. Project Fi would give me money back for the low-data months, while flexing to a larger plan when during busy months. For a person like me, it’s perfect. I don’t need data all the time, but when I do need it, I need it to be fast and plentiful.

Who knows if Project Fi will project fizzle like some of Google’s groundbreaking projects or if it will soar into success like so many others. One thing is for certain, I’m glad we have companies like Google and Apple as the forward thinking companies of our time. They couldn’t be more different in how they approach new technology and initiatives, but having one without the other certainly wouldn’t be very exciting.

Mobile virtual network operator. Essentially they lease carrier towers to provide their network coverage. ↩

Sunday, March 22

A Touch of the Future

Apple announced a new trackpad, the Force Touch Trackpad as part of the details of its new ultrathin MacBook during its Spring Forward event last week. Highlights of the new trackpad are pressure sensitivity and haptic feedback, provided by what Apple calls its Taptic Engine. Both features, headliners in their own way, work together to provide click-like feedback from a piece of glass that doesn’t actually “click”.

Although early reactions seemed to indicate Apple nailed it, I was skeptical. After all, I use a Microsoft Touch Mouse every day at work, and every smartphone I’ve ever used with haptic feedback left me wondering what purpose it really served. So, I had to try it for myself and I did just that yesterday. I went to a local Apple Store, immediately found a 13 inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display and tried it. Color me fooled. I had to do a double take to make sure I was testing the right model. My honest first impression was that it felt like a click, but not quite as deep as the click feels on my 2010 MacBook Air. Taptic Engine fooled me but it isn’t that good.

I was about to walk out when an Apple store employee walked over to the MacBook Pro next to me with a customer he was helping. He started talking about the new trackpad and he directed the customer to press normally to feel the “click”. I couldn’t see the customer’s reaction, but it felt like “so what?”. Then the Apple employee told him to press harder. So I did it. WHOA. Like Joey Lawrence WHOA.

Not only does the deeper press activate the new force press gesture, it also registers the more familiar deep click feeling I’m used to with my MacBook Air and Magic Trackpad. Mind irrevocably blown.

So what does it all mean? Well there’s some low hanging marketing fruit that Apple will be quick to tout. If the previous click trackpad ever stood in the way Apple delivering its new MacBook in that super thin form factor, it no longer does. There’s also a new gesture that Apple can add (the Force Press) which, depending on the context, can perform a variety of functions like word lookups or varying the seek/rewind speed in QuickTime. The third and final piece of low hanging fruit is that the feedback and pressure sensitivity can be tuned to your specific tastes and clicky strength. Nothing revolutionary there, just fine tuning an already delightful experience.

But maybe gestures are the key. Except, maybe it’s not about adding more input gestures that our fingers perform, but instead gestures performed by the Taptic Engine that our fingers perceive? A recent update to Apple’s own iMovie hints at the future of such feedback, signaling the end of clip with a slight bump to the user through the new trackpad. On last week’s episode of The Talk Show, Serenity Caldwell posits that similar technology could be used for accessibility enhancements. Clever.

Windows PC trackpads still haven’t caught up to Apple’s venerable trackpad and, gimmick or no gimmick, the Force Touch Trackpad puts Apple that much farther ahead.

Friday, March 20

Requiem for MagSafe

When 9to5mac first broke the rumor of the single port MacBook, I too began lamenting the alleged demise of the MagSafe adapter. Though it’s only saved my devices a handful of times, it is one of those delight in the details features of a MacBook that makes the hardware such a joy to use. My reaction to the news spanned the range of denial, mourning, revelation and acceptance. The revelation and acceptance phases are best represented by Ben Brooks’ take a few days after the official announcement:

USB-C won’t cause more crashing MacBooks, just as long as you use the MacBook as it is intended: on battery power. That’s the direction computing is headed in: devices that only need to be charged while you sleep.

Some have been clamoring for the convergence of iOS and the Mac, but they don’t recognize when it’s right under their nose. That’s because they’re thinking about it in terms of software, when in reality the true innovation will come with the hardware convergence.

Tuesday, March 10

When Overrated Really Means Properly Rated

Mark Wilson, writing for Fast Company’s Co.Design blog, apparently has an axe to grind and it isn’t just with Apple. As proof, he takes a swing at the highly regarded Thinkpad:

Sapper’s design was unparalleled in 1992, but times have changed. We have touchpads and touch screens that can distinguish how many fingers you’re clicking with.

Wilson’s primary beef is with Lenovo’s insistence¹ of keeping the red nub around despite the proliferation and popularity of more modern pointer input methods.

First, the functional irrelevance of a particular feature of the design doesn’t necessarily detract from its timelessness. Being replaced by other, arguably superior, forms of input doesn’t retroactively dismiss the achievement of the original design or implementation. Second, I still find trackpads on non-Apple hardware to be “ludicrous”², so I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the value of the red nub on today’s Thinkpads.

I’m not a daily reader of Co.Design, but I’ve enjoyed checking in at least once a week or so. Lately, though, it seems like they’re just trolling for clicks.

I call it good stewardship. ↩
I’m borrowing a great word from Wilson here. ↩

Monday, March 09

The One That I Want

This is undoubtedly the one that I want, but I’m fairly certain it’s not the one I can reasonably afford. For now, I plan to resist the temptation to even get the Apple Watch Sport; but man if that thing ever gets GPS, watch out, wallet.

Tuesday, March 03

Cynical

I don’t care who did what first, if smartphones unify into a single design interpretation, I’ll chalk that up as a very cynical view by manufacturers and design teams of the unique and individuality of consumer tastes and preferences. Obviously, I’m a bit disappointed. Thankfully, we have Motorola and Microsoft¹ to help stem the tide of conformity².

That said, in terms of build quality, the S6 looks like a great improvement over its predecessor. The bad news for Samsung, I’m guessing, is that build quality comes at a cost. And even though I don’t like to put companies on blast for making $4.5 billion in profit, the media isn’t quite so kind.

For now, but maybe not for long for either of them. ↩
In all fairness to Samsung, I think Edge is an interesting take. It’s not the kind of must-have feature that would entice me to switch to Android, but at least it’s different. ↩

MacRumors: Google Reportedly Preparing Android Wear for iPhone and iPad →

Bravo, Google. I didn’t expect it, but I’m also not surprised by it. They’ve always been more open to cross-platform compatibility, a position enabled by their ad-revenue based business model. It will be interesting to see if this strategy works against the expected luxury pricing of the Apple Watch.

Monday, March 02

Understanding Apple Watch

I don’t know everything there is to know about the Apple Watch, but we’ll all know a lot more after Apple finishes telling the story they started last September at next week’s Spring Forward event. If you have even an ounce of interest in what they might announce next week, but you haven’t been following along as bits, pieces, and theories¹ emerge from the tech blogosphere, then there is something very important you need to understand in order to temper the sticker shock you’ll undoubtedly experience: the Apple Watch is not Apple’s entry into the wearables and smartwatch space, it is their entry into the luxury watch space and that entry just happens to include a heavy dose of smartwatch features. So much more could be written, but if you haven’t been reading up to this point then you probably don’t care.

The key take away is this – selecting among the various versions of the Apple Watch will be akin to selecting among a Timex, a Citizen, and a Rolex, except all contained within a single line of watches made by the same manufacturer. All three versions of the Apple Watch will have the same basic function – and nothing substantially more technologically advanced than anything that has preceded it – but they will vary widely in their materials and craftsmanship required to produce them. Accept that notion and let it sink in and it will help you absorb the impending shock that’s headed your way.

I included this one mostly for fun. Kudos to him if he’s right. Shame on him if he’s wrong for failing to realize that Apple just has to sell an Apple Watch to 1% of the people who bought an iPhone in the most recent holiday quarter in order to (supposedly) match all of 2014 Android Wear sales. ↩

Tuesday, February 24

Is Dell’s New XPS 13 Better Than the MacBook Air?

Is the new Dell XPS 13 better than the MacBook Air? If you trust AnandTech or Ars Technica, then the answer is a resounding “yes”. The Verge isn’t ready to hand the ultrabook crown over to Dell just yet, but kudos to Dell for making the race a whole heckuva lot closer.

The Verge highlights three big reasons why the XPS 13 isn’t quite ready to take the throne – battery, touchpad and webcam placement. Interestingly, AnandTech and Ars Technica both claim superiority for the XPS 13 in battery and neither had anything particularly negative to say about the touchpad – highlighting the shift to Microsoft’s Precision touchpad standard as a mostly successful endeavor. I’ll talk about the webcam in just a second.

One standout feature of the XPS 13 is what Dell is calling their ‘infinity display’, a 13 inch display packed inside an 11 inch laptop frame, thanks to a 5.2mm bezel on three sides of the display. Based on the reviews, it sounds like the display delivers beautiful pixels in a coolly slick and svelte package. I don’t think this feature alone makes the laptop the envy of MacBook Air owners everywhere, but it’s certainly something I wouldn’t be disappointed to see come to Apple’s ultraportables. One caveat is webcam placement. It seems that 5.2mm bezel wasn’t quite enough space to pack in a webcam, so the next iteration either needs to trade some chin space for the forehead or some sort of new behind-the-screen camera technology needs to hit the mainstream to help prevent awkward up-nose or knuckle shots.

I’m undeniably biased in favor of Apple’s software and hardware, but I’ve long felt like Windows-based PCs could make major leaps forward in hardware equivalence by concentrating on the touchpad and the battery. I’ve never personally used Microsoft Precision touchpad hardware, and I’m suspicious of the audacious battery life claims from Anandtech and Ars Technica, though I normally trust both sources. Regardless, it looks like Windows-centric ultraportable fans have some great hardware coming their way. My day job is a Windows-centric environment (and, specifically a Dell-only shop) and I certainly wouldn’t mind getting my hands on the XPS 13. Predictably, that’s not in the cards as we tend to use the business-friendly Latitude line. If you get to spend some time with an XPS 13, hit me up on Twitter and let me know what you think. I’d love to hear how the battery and touchpad fare for you.

Quotable:

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

— Steve Jobs

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