Find Your Greatness

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I’m not one who likes to post many links to videos, much less two in a row, but this one is good, and — dare I say? — better than the Bond trailer in the previous post.

Nike has launched a new ad (I think it may even be an ad campaign) entitled Find Your Greatness. Now, most fitness ads show someone who is already in shape. As someone who is overweight and has been working years to change that, those ads don’t do a great deal to inspire me. This ad does.

This ad focuses on someone who is overweight, striving to better himself. This is the kind of inspiration needed for so many of us.

Good work, Nike. Keep it up.

Pat Dryburgh's ‘Preparing for John Siracusa's Review of Mountain Lion’

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John Siracusa is Internet famous for his massively exhaustive reviews of OS X releases. Last year, Pat Dryburgh made a video aptly named Preparing for John Siracusa’s Review of OS X Lion. It is hands-down one of the top five funniest videos I have seen.

This year, Pat called upon some fellow heavyweights in Mac culture to produce Preparing for John Siracusa’s Review of Mountain Lion. It is ridiculous and awesome. Ridiculously awesome.

Also, be sure to go read John Siracusa’s Review of Mountain Lion. It weighs in at 26,000 words, so you may want to send that to Instapaper.

¶ Ruminating on Updates

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Just a little late night ruminating on the eve before OS X Mountain Lion hits the App Store.

Gatekeeper

I’d say my Applications folder is pretty evenly split between App Store apps and non-App Store apps (hereafter referred to as direct apps), once you take away the system apps.

Of the direct apps, I honestly haven’t seen as many as I thought I would gain Mountain Lion and/or Gatekeeper support. Gatekeeper is Apple’s new security system in Mountain Lion that ensures a developer of a direct app is known by Apple. And, if a direct app does anything nefarious, Apple can shut down that app’s developer ID, stopping the spread of malware cold.

Here’s the thing: Gatekeeper is on by default. And if developers have not updated for Gatekeeper yet, users will either have to exempt each non-Gatekeeper app one by one, or disable Gatekeeper entirely, rendering this new layer of security moot.

That isn’t good.

If users disable Gatekeeper, they will likely never reenable it. I guess they compute at their own risk, huh?

The far greater risk, however, is users becoming used to allowing any direct app that asks to circumvent Gatekeeper to do so. If they develop a Pavlovian response to clicking Allow every time an app wants through the Gate, they will have a false sense of security if a malicious app does someday surface. The trained response should be to say no to such prompts.

iWork

Another thing that has been bugging me is Apple’s lack of showing off any truly significant updates to iWork — Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. We know iWork will be gaining iCloud’s Documents in the Cloud feature with Mountain Lion, so the apps will need to be updated in some fashion.

My concern is whether this will just be yet another bolt-on update to the current versions of iWork — which have been around since January 2009 — or whether iWork will truly get a proper update for 2012.

Furthermore, Apple only allows App Store apps to take advantage of Documents in the Cloud. Like I said, iWork has been around since 2009, well before the App Store existed on the Mac. My copy of iWork came on a DVD.

Now, Apple certainly has the right and the ability to give the non-App Store versions of iWork access to iCloud, much like my non-App Store version of Aperture can use Photo Stream. But I can’t help but feel like iWork has been deprived of a significant rethink for too long. I’d like to see iWork 2012 (or 2013, or just plain iWork) in the App Store tomorrow.

Transitions are always awkward. The transition to Gatekeeper will take some time. I just thought more developers would have been ready for it.

I’d also like to see Apple start wrapping up the transition from the apps that were sold on physical media to App Store versions by putting iWork ‘09 to rest, and giving the trio of apps a much needed update in this era of refinement.

OS X Mountain Lion to be Released July 25

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Apple CEO, Tim Cook, in a press release moments ago (emphasis mine):

"We’re thrilled with record sales of 17 million iPads in the June quarter,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’ve also just updated the entire MacBook line, will release Mountain Lion tomorrow and will be launching iOS 6 this Fall. We are also really looking forward to the amazing new products we’ve got in the pipeline."

End of Development

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Some high profile apps have ceased development today in the Mac & iOS ecosystem. Pulp and Wallet by Acrylic and Sparrow, the eponymous email client focused on Gmail. The companies were purchased by Facebook and Google, respectively.

I’m sure the developers are elated. Their users, however, can expect no further feature development (I wouldn’t count on bug fixes, either).

So, if you were a fan of Wallet, you should probably look into migrating to 1Password. And Pulp users may want to look at Reeder. And Sparrow users better get comfy with Apple Mail again.

I think Marco Arment puts it best today:

If you want to keep the software and services around that you enjoy, do what you can to make their businesses successful enough that it’s more attractive to keep running them than to be hired by a big tech company.

Honestly, getting free updates in the App Store all the time is nice on my wallet, but I’d rather have a frictionless paid upgrade path for major releases than to watch great apps fade away.

What is the Future of the iPhone 3GS?

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First, let’s set the tone for this little blurb.

Matthew Panzarino poses the question and initial guess:

I think it’s safe to say that, even three years later, the iPhone 3GS still has a draw, especially for ‘free’. And Apple is still very much looking to tap into the pre-paid phone market. Here’s a thought: what if Apple were to cut the iPhone 4 from the lineup, instead of the iPhone 3GS?

The iPhone ‘next’ would be the flagship, the iPhone 4S would offer Siri and take the place of the 4 in the pricing lineup, and the 3GS would remain ‘free’ on contract. But, if the prices were right, Apple could expand the 3GS from a contract device to an off-contract pre-paid model that might finally give the company a horse in the developing nations race.

Marco Arment weighs in:

I bet this is what happens. Apple probably wouldn’t have crammed iOS 6 onto the 3GS if they were about to stop selling it.

And John Gruber sees the bet and raises it:

My guess is that if the 3GS stays around, the lineup would work like this: new iPhone at the top of the market, the 4S slides down to $99 on contract, the 4 slides down to free with a contract, and the 3GS is sold around the world as a low cost (by iPhone standards at least) pre-paid device.

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The big thing to remember about the iPhone 4 is that it’s the first CDMA iPhone. No way it’s going to disappear from the lineup, because now Apple could offer a “free” iPhone on Verizon and Sprint, too.

If — if — the 3GS were to stick around, I see it happening in the way Gruber paints it. I don’t see the 4 going away at all.

I want to touch on why I greatly disagree with Marco’s logic, though. The reason why Apple would cram iOS 6 on the 3GS is because right up until the day iOS 6 comes out Apple will have been still selling the 3GS. Can you imagine how pissed off people would be if they just got an iPhone 3GS after signing a two-year contract only to have it receive no further updates the next day?

And this brings me to the idea that the 3GS will be riding off into the sunset. If Apple continues to sell it throughout the next year, won’t there be an expectation to try and cram iOS 7 onto it?