¶ A Year Without Flash

With today’s news that Adobe is killing Flash for Mobile, I thought it was a good opportunity to check in on how a year has been without Flash on my Mac.

This time last year John Gruber published his manifesto on going Flash-free on OS X, and how to cheat when necessary. I followed suit with his methods a few days later, and haven’t turned back.

I use Safari sans-Flash nearly all the time with little hindrance. The few places I tend to run into snags are movie or video game sites, Flickr videos, and the scourge of Flash-less browsers everywhere — restaurant sites. For these instances, I employ the use of Safari’s Develop menu. With the Develop menu turned on, I can simply click the menu, then select Open Page With Chrome. The page simply opens in Chrome. Boom.

I used to assign a keyboard shortcut to this menu item, but Apple decided to start including Chrome’s constantly shifting version number in the menu, which makes that practice cumbersome.

My only real annoyance with the Chrome fallback is for sites, like Flickr, that will feed HTML5 when viewing on an iPhone or iPad, but not on a Flash-less desktop browser. It seems asinine for a site to check specifically for which device you’re using when deciding to serve Flash or HTML5, instead of detecting whether or not Flash is present on the device. The site is already doing a check for Flash capability, it’s just checking the wrong aspect.

No matter what, though, running a Mac without Flash is very much achievable. I’ve been doing it. The Chrome fallback is a nice safety net, and Safari encounters far fewer problems than it did when I had Flash installed.

Until web development lessens its reliance on using Flash for video players and restaurant menus, this method works great. And remember, the less you use Flash, the more the web will become Flash-less.

¶ Predictions

It's the eve before Apple's big reveal on the new iPhone. I always like to give a few predictions, of which I am usually terribly short-sighted or flat-out wrong. So I'm going to try to be a little more conservative this year, and just give my gut feelings on the some of the rumors.

• We will see a new iPhone, and it will be available very soon.
  • It will not have a ridiculous 4-inch screen.
  • Everything else is fair game. My gut says A5 processor, more RAM (but that won't be disclosed by Apple), and a better camera.
  • Sprint will be a new carrier in the US. And they'll be offering sweetheart plans because they're desperate to sell iPhones.
  • The new iPhone will support a previously unannounced feature of iOS 5 that other iPhones will not.
• We will get a release date for iOS 5, iCloud, and OS X 10.7.2. I would wager a couple days prior to the release of the new iPhone.
• iCloud will have one more really awesome thing to make it that much more of a big deal. I have no idea what that may be, but I have a hunch. Come on, this is Apple's baby for the next decade.
• We'll hear some news about refreshed iPods for the holidays. Nothing major. The classic will be dispatched to its Great Reward.

¶ The New Kindles

There is no doubt that my favorite company is Apple. Amazon, however, is a close runner-up. One of the driving forces of that is their Prime membership. It’s a fantastic deal if you order often from Amazon. Since getting Prime, my wife and I order just about anything from Amazon that is cheaper than buying locally. Heck, I even get my razor blades off Amazon with the added bonus of frustration-free packaging.

But I like Amazon for more reasons, and one of those is the Kindle. My parents gave me a Kindle 2 a couple years ago and it has been a great way for me to enjoy books. My wife likes our Kindle for reading while at the gym. And recently, our local libraries have added support for borrowing eBooks via Kindle. The Kindle is to books what the iPod has been to music for me.

Now, wait, I have an iPad, as well. Surely that is good for reading books? Well, it is, but the Kindle has its advantages. John Gruber’s thoughts reflect my own:

I got a Kindle about a year ago, and I use it much more than I expected to. I like reading on e-ink. I look at glowing backlit displays all day, every day. I’ve been obsessed with computers my whole life. I love glowing screens. When I’m away from my computer for days, I’m happy when I sit down in front of it. There’s a certain feeling I get when I use any computer — a Mac, an iPhone, an iPad, my TiVo, even an ATM or the credit card slider at the supermarket. Cool, a computer.

I read books on my iPad, too, but reading on the iPad doesn’t have the same mental-mode-switching effect. When I read with the iPad I feel like I’m doing the same basic thing I do as I read on my Mac all day long — just with a different device. It’s more pleasant, in many ways, and definitely more personal. But I’m still in the same mental mode — fully aware that anything and everything is just a few taps and few seconds away.

E-ink feels peaceful to me. The Kindle doesn’t feel like a computer. It feels — not to the touch but to the eyes and mind — like a crudely-typeset and slightly smudgily-printed paper book. That’s a good thing. Battery life is un-computer-like as well: Amazon measures e-ink Kindle battery life in months, and they’re not joking. It’s a surprise when the Kindle actually needs a charge. I was a doubter until I owned one, but now I’m convinced that e-ink readers have tremendous value even in the post-iPad world.

The Kindle brings a different mood and mindset to reading. In a nutshell, I prefer web browsing and reading articles on my iPad (and my Mac). But when it is time to read a long-form book, I prefer the Kindle.

The New e-Ink Kindles

One thing I don’t care for about my Kindle 2 is the wasted space taken up by the physical keyboard, which rarely gets used. Amazon finally ditched the keyboard from their baseline Kindle. Instead, when you do need to type, you use the d-pad to navigate around an on-screen keyboard. Certainly not very elegant, but I would trade the physical keyboard for a more compact reader, and I think many other folks would consider it a fair trade-off. And at a jaw-dropping $79, I think a lot of people will be getting new Kindles.

The elegant solution, however, comes in the form of the Kindle Touch (3G variant). The Kindle Touch dispenses with most hardware buttons and relies on an infrared e-ink touchscreen, like Barnes & Noble’s Nook Simple Touch. At $99 ($149 for 3G), this is going to be the Kindle everyone actually wants. This Kindle has all the fantastic qualities about reading on an e-ink display, without all the clunkiness of previous Kindle models’ cheap-feeling buttons.

Needless to say, my Kindle 2 is in serious jeopardy of being replaced by a Kindle Touch.

The Kindle Fire

Amazon has dipped their toe into diversifying the Kindle family outside of e-ink readers. The Kindle Fire is a 7-inch LCD touchscreen tablet, playing to the strengths of Amazon’s music, video, app, and book offerings. All for $199. It runs Android, but you wouldn’t know it from the complete customization Amazon has done. In fact, the only mention of the word Android is in the Amazon Appstore for Android.

I’ve already seen many people saying the Fire will eat the iPad’s lunch, but I don’t think so. Marco Arment explains:

It’s definitely going to compete with the iPad for some customers, but I doubt it’s going to make a significant dent. It’s probably a high-end Kindle, not a low-end iPad. But this will almost certainly hinder the already negligible sales of other Android tablets.

What we’ll see with the iPad depends on why people buy iPads. My theory is that there’s an iPad market, not a “tablet market” — that people want the iPad and specifically seek it out without comparing it to other tablets.

The iPad was never positioned by Apple as just a “content consumption” device. The media did that. Apple kicked off the original iPad with the entire iWork suite, and on it’s first birthday added iMovie and GarageBand to the mix. And don’t forget the thousands of developers who have made fantastic creative apps for the iPad.

In contrast, Amazon demoed the Kindle Fire entirely as a device for enjoying content. They tacitly tack on at the end of the feature list that is has an email client — which is hardly much in the way of content creation.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the Kindle Fire will be a great device. In fact, I think it will be the first great Android device, and I think it will harm its fellow Android tablets more than it will the iPad. The iPad targets one aspect of the market, and the Kindle Fire targets a different one. Unfortunately for companies like Motorola and Samsung, they and Amazon are targeting the same market. And Amazon knows how to sell to people.

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If you’re thinking of picking up one of the new Kindles, I just wanted to let you know that all the Amazon links within the articles are my affiliate links. A purchase through one of those links helps keep the lights on for this site.

¶ The Serious Writer's Syntax

Just over a year ago, I decided to do a little experiment with the way I write. Not so much the style or voice of my writing — which is being continuously developed — but rather with the process.

Up until last September, I relied upon the WYSIWYG editor of whichever platform I was using. I had a fair understanding of HTML basics, but HTML is a bit messy to deal with when composing a written work. It can really derail a train of thought. Often, I would write out an article then go back and add links and such, but with a lengthy article, even that could be burdensome, trying to remember the exact phrases I wanted to have as a link.

Never mind the markup that WYSIWYG editors produce is fairly horrendous.

I switched to Markdown. Markdown is a simple markup language that converts plain text to valid HTML. It’s clean, easy to learn, easy to use, and — best of all — makes sense on its own if you were to print out a written work marked up with Markdown and hand it to someone to read.

Another advantage of Markdown is that it is just text. I store everything I write in Markdown as a simple .txt file. Plain text is probably the closest thing we have to an eternal and universal file format. Any computer has the capability to read plain text, and it is likely to always be supported.

The only tool you need to write in Markdown is a text editor, which every computer has. On the Mac there is TextEdit, Notepad on Windows, and heck, you could even use Notes on your iOS device. This are all very serviceable tools. However, there are other tools that can greatly enhance the Markdown experience. On the Mac I use the wonderful Byword, and on iOS I use Elements.

If you need more convincing, check out Brett Terpstra’s Two-Minute Explanation of why Markdown is amazing.

Markdown is an indispensable tool for the modern writer. Whether you write for print or the web, for fun or your profession, an article, blog post, or a book — Markdown simply gets out of your way and lets you write.

If you are a serious writer, I can’t see why you’d want to use anything except Markdown.

¶ The Lizard Brain Lobotomy

One of my greatest enemies is the lizard brain. That part of me — part of all of us — that chooses between fight or flight when fear is introduced. The part that sabotages my own personal goals, that sets myself up for failure. I often start a project with great ambition, but somewhere along the line I tell myself I am no longer capable of succeeding.

Amazingly, I go through this process with almost every single long form article I post to this site. Rare is the day where my drive to write and click publish overwhelms the lizard brain on the first shot. Thankfully, not every person has this magnitude of a battle with the lizard brain, but I certainly do.

If you are like me, constantly questioning your ability to succeed, I want to issue a challenge to you and to myself. Lobotomize the lizard brain. Find the courage to push through. Find someone to confide in to keep you accountable to your tasks. Recognize the consequences of succumbing to the heckler inside of you.

Now, a word of caution: the lizard brain, like an appendage on a lizard, will grow back. We're human, after all, and self-doubt will continuously rise up against you. There is hope though, that each time you defeat the lizard brain, each time you lobotomize it, next time it won't grow back quite as strong or quite as large. Your confidence will grow in its absence.

¶ We Believe

This is what we believe:

Technology alone is not enough.

Faster. Thinner. Lighter. Those are all good things, but when technology gets out of the way, everything becomes more delightful. Even magical.

That's when you leap forward. That's when you end up with something like this.

-Apple's iPad 2 Ad, We Believe

For my initial reaction to Steve Jobs' resignation as CEO from Apple, I made a conscious point as soon as I heard the news to read nothing else other than Steve's letter and Apple's PR statement. I wanted my reaction to be my own.

I have found that reading other writers' thoughts on a topic can sometimes sway my own, which isn't necessarily bad, but can sometimes leave me feeling as if I just regurgitated their statements with my own slight spin.

For my reaction, I focused on culture. It looks like I wasn't far off the mark from fellowwriters. The above video echoes this belief of changing the world. Technology isn't enough. It is a means to an end. And that end is to bring delight and magic to mere mortals.

John Gruber paints this culture in a fascinating way:

Apple’s products are replete with Apple-like features and details, embedded in Apple-like apps, running on Apple-like devices, which come packaged in Apple-like boxes, are promoted in Apple-like ads, and sold in Apple-like stores. The company is a fractal design. Simplicity, elegance, beauty, cleverness, humility. Directness. Truth. Zoom out enough and you can see that the same things that define Apple’s products apply to Apple as a whole. The company itself is Apple-like. The same thought, care, and painstaking attention to detail that Steve Jobs brought to questions like “How should a computer work?”, “How should a phone work?”, “How should we buy music and apps in the digital age?” he also brought to the most important question: “How should a company that creates such things function?”

Jobs’s greatest creation isn’t any Apple product. It is Apple itself.

Some get it. Others are screaming Apple will falter soon, just like it did in 1985. The big difference is last time Jobs left Apple he was forced out, exiled. He was a different man then. During his exile he learned a lot, found his footing. And when he came back he cleaned house and reshaped Apple. He surrounded himself with like-minded individuals.

Apple is not just Steve Jobs, it is the sum of the many parts of creative talent and thirst to change things for better.

This is why Apple will continue on and see its best years ahead of it. Steve is certainly one-of-a-kind, but we are Apple.

Just remember, Steve Jobs hand-picked Tim Cook to succeed him. Michael Grothaus shared his personal story of Tim Cook, in which he says:

No one can ever replace Steve Jobs, the man, the genius. But Apple is not only Steve Jobs, no matter what anyone thinks. Apple is the interns and executive assistants; it's the retail employees and the designers; it's the marketing and PR departments, it's Scott Forstall and Jonathan Ive; Bob Mansfield and Phil Schiller; it's the dozens of other names you see on all those Apple patents that we talk about every week. Apple is not any single one of these people. It is the sum of them all, run by a leader who possesses enough wisdom to know that everyone in the company matters, that everyone's concerns are valid and deserve attention. Tim Cook is such a leader.

Culture is one of the most important things for people. It defines who we are, and guides us on our future paths. Tim Cook believes in the culture Steve Jobs inspired. The people who create wonderful things at Apple believe it. We who use these tools believe it. I believe it.

We are Apple, and our greatest days are yet ahead of us.

¶ To The Crazy One

Steve Jobs

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people.

While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Apple's Think Different ad campaign from so long ago captures not only the culture of Apple and its community, but clearly paints a picture of the man who planted the seed, nurtured the initial growth of ideas, and even restored health to a withering orchard — Steve Jobs.

Today Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple.

I'm not even quite sure what to say yet.

How about we start with Steve's words:

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

Steve

Perhaps, a letter of my own is fitting.

Steve,

I'd be lying if I said that you hadn't changed my life. The fruits of your labor have been a near-daily part of my life since I was a small boy. The last decade has been a heck of a ride. I went from just being an enthusiast to being a believer in everything Apple stands for.

Some call me irrational, but I know that Apple is much more than a simple corporation. Apple is a forum where some of the most talented minds of this modern Earth gather in conference under the belief that we can change this world for the better. And that is something that transcends the walls of 1 Infinite Loop and into the hearts of those who use these artisan tools to create beauty in words and code and pixels and bits.

Everyone I've met that works for Apple believes this. Everyone I've met who sees more than a product in your tools believes this. It's an honor to be a part of this creative culture.

What Apple stands for is a part of me. It is one of the essential pillars of my identity. Ask my friends and family. There is rarely a day that goes by that I am not using these tools before me to make someone's day a little better, whether that is through words on this site, an encouraging note to someone, or connecting eye-to-eye with my parents so they can see their grandson from hundreds of miles away.

To put this simply — thank you. I wish you many years of health and enjoyment with your family.

-Chris

¶ Streamlining

Late last night Engadget scooped a story that AT&T would be "streamlining" its messaging plans. AT&T last did this about 8 months ago.

Back then, they offered 200 messages/month for $5, 1500 for $15 and unlimited for $20. Their first streamlining nixed the $5 and $15 plans in favor of 1000 messages/month for $10, and left the $20 unlimited plan untouched.

As of 21 August, AT&T will be streamlining further to just the $20 unlimited plan and then having pay per message at the rates of 20¢ per SMS and 30¢ per MMS.

Ben Brooks takes a fairly positive outlook:

…before the customer had to guess how many messages they will be sending, with the new plan the message is clear, “do you plan on sending text messages or not”.

And he's right, overall, that is a good thing. My wife and I each have the old 200 messages at $5 per month. We're light texters. Granted, I do come close every month to going over my limit (and have a few times in the past three years). And it sucks having to keep an eye on the meter.

Thankfully, Apple's iMessage service is just around the corner. I know that most of the people I text have iPhones, so those messages will circumvent AT&T's messaging service altogether. This should enable my wife and I to stay on the 200 message plan until AT&T eventually kicks us off.

I think what bothers me the most about this streamlining is the price. $20 a month has been and continues to be outrageous for messaging. And for two people, the $30 family unlimited plan isn't that great. If this announcement was accompanied by a reduction in the price of unlimited, it would look much better. Instead it looks a little greedy.

Let's face it, SMS takes very little bandwidth. MMS takes a little more. But at the end of the day, it is all just bits. Why isn't messaging lumped into our data plans by now? Seriously, we're on metered data plans now, 200 MB or 2 GB, depending on what you pay for. Why not just take our messaging off of that? That is essentially what Apple will be doing with iMessage if you aren't connected to Wi-Fi.

Simplification of choice is nice, and having the choices be per message or unlimited is great. But the cost of the difference is incredible. As for me, I'll be staying on my ancient messaging plan until I am forced to change, and I will be patiently waiting for iMessage to roll out.

¶ The AirPrint Monopoly

Last September, during Apple's annual music-focused event, they previewed iOS 4.2 as the pinnacle release to unify the iPhone/iPod touch with the iPad on a software level. Another feature that Apple touted was AirPrint, which would allow printing from an iOS device without needing to install printer drivers. The idea was that as long as a printer was on the same network as the iOS device, it would simply just be available.

The gotcha was that the printer had to have AirPrint technology baked into it. And Apple said that any manufacturer could do this, as they would be opening up the technology.

Apple also said that there would be a workaround where your Mac would make any AirPrint-less printer on your network available to your iOS device, as long as the Mac was currently running on the same network as your iOS device. I thought that was great, as my printer works fine, and if I am home, my Mac is usually on.

Well, a funny thing happened. All through the betas of iOS 4.2 and OS X 10.6.5, this AirPrint bridge for older printers worked — right up until the GM versions. Suddenly, when iOS 4.2 and OS X 10.6.5 made their public debut, the AirPrint bridge mode was gone, even from the website.

And the only printers available with AirPrint were a new breed of HP printers. I found that to be mostly understandable, for one manufacturer to have the first few AirPrinters. Others would follow soon, right?

Wrong.

Nine months after AirPrint's public debut, HP is the only manufacturer offering the technology. Why? Did Apple and HP make an exclusivity agreement? Did every other printer manufacturer find AirPrint to be too costly or cumbersome to implement? I don't know.

I don't know why this bothers me so much, as I rarely ever print anything. Maybe it is the realization of seeing a trend of broken promises from Apple for minor technology features. For instance:

• Time Machine via AirPort. When OS X Leopard entered developer preview at WWDC a number of years back, Apple touted that users would be able to attach an external hard drive to the back of an AirPort Extreme in order to use it as a wireless backup hub for the whole family using Time Machine. When Leopard was released, the feature was gone. A few months later, at Macworld Expo, Apple unveiled the Time Capsule, which was an AirPort with an integrated hard drive for Time Machine backups.
• FaceTime. Don't get me wrong, I love FaceTime. It's used weekly in home. But I remember Apple saying a year ago that they were opening it up as a public spec, so any manufacturer could integrate the FaceTime service. I really don't care that FaceTime is still only available to Apple hardware, as the people I want to use it with are able to, but it is another promise that has yet to be fulfilled.

None of these are earth-shattering. Nothing like RIM or HP shipping tablets with half-baked, buggy software and then promising to deliver updates in weeks or months. For all I can guess, maybe Apple decided features like Time Machine over AirPort or AirPrint didn't work well unless they remained largely closed system. And maybe they decided to keep FaceTime in-house as a competitive advantage. I sure haven't seen any other phones or devices that have implemented video calling as robust as FaceTime, not even those that use Skype.

I think, maybe, the thing that bothers me about these examples is that it is uncharacteristic for Apple to promise something, and then not deliver.

¶ One Year of iPhone 4

On 24 June 2010, many people stood in line for hours for the iPhone 4. I would have been one of them, but I was fortunate enough to get in on the pre-order, and I even received mine one day early. A year later, the iPhone 4 is still the absolute best piece of technology I have ever owned. As much as I adore my Mac and iPad, my iPhone is by far my most used and most personal device.

And I can't say that there is anything about the iPhone 4 that I find myself wishing it could do better. The display is amazing, the design and construction is spot on, it takes great pictures, and connects me with people I care about through voice, email, tweets, and FaceTime.

FaceTime. I know so many people who never use it and think it's lame. To me, it allows my parents and my in-laws to interact with my son. FaceTime allowed my wife to say goodnight to our son every night while she was on a trip. It is almost unbelievable that we possess these things.

And I'm obviously not the only one who is head over heels for the iPhone 4. In one year, Apple has sold more iPhone 4's than the original iPhone, iPhone 3G, and iPhone 3GS combined. It's a runaway success, despite the dramas of Antennagate, Locationgate, and the — until recently — elusive white iPhone 4.

I know the next iPhone will be even better than the iPhone 4, and the one after that will be really great. Though I have to say where I was able to find many things I wish had been better about the iPhone 3G when I was one year into my ownership of it, I can't find a fault with my iPhone 4.