Thoughts from an iPad

You could do a lot of things. None of those have any real risk, except for wasting your time. But I bet you waste a hell of a lot of time doing stuff you know is pointless and know won’t bring you any satisfaction and know won’t advance you closer to the things that are meaningful …

… and yet …

This seems to relate to my previous thoughts about content consumption.

Daniel from AppleInsider:

Beyond lacking a camera, iPhoto and iMovie seem to work well enough on the original iPad, although it lacks the horsepower of the newer iPad 2, and the additional memory of the newest iPad. It also lacks a camera, so you obviously can’t use the recording features of the latest iMovie.

I could be wrong but I think the iPad 1 lacks a camera.

Paul Taylor, disappointed:

The new iPad will simply be called “new iPad”, maybe because the name is strong enough to carry its legacy unto another flood of eager Apploids, or maybe because there really isn’t that much new to it.

This makes sense. Apple called it the new iPad because there isn’t much new to it. Except, oh wait, thats not true at all. Not a single device has a screen resolution even close to the iPad’s retina display. And I’d bet they won’t come close for another year, at the least.

Martin Lindstrom:

When I asked them about happiness, they waved their hands in the air and laughed. They dismissed happiness as a Western thing, and suggested we stop talking about it and just get on with the business of living.

Home is where the heart is – or something like that. The idea that when you see all that you could achieve, you want more. You’re always wanting, you put yourself into a consumer position. And as we know, that’s no good. But then again, if we don’t strive for greatness, what is our purpose? If we’re content with not knowing, if we’re content with family and living the moment, how can we ever push forward? How could we achieve more than what’s already been thought of?

Happiness is not measured by the number of days you live but, rather, by the number of days you remember

Peter Scott:

Gods behave in many ways. Some are jealous and quick to anger, and others are inhumanly patient. Some forbid alcohol to their followers, and others get drunk and beat up giants. Some descent to earth in the form of a bull to conduct illicit sexual liaisons with mortals, and others lack reproductive organs altogether. However, without exception, one thing they all have in common is that they never conduct polite discussions of bitwise arithmetic tricks. And yet that is exactly what I see here.

It’s great to see people like Linus posting, writing about what they’re doing, documenting what they’re stuck on.

There’s a freedom to really let loose and be yourself when you live alone that a lot of other people may envy

No, there isn’t. The habits discussed in this article, for the most part, disgust me. Maybe it’s part of who I am. Every time someone does something I don’t like, something I say “I will never do that” to, I really mean it. I want my living environment to be clean, simple and elegant. The one thing just as important as my living environment meeting these requirements? My work environment exceeding them.

From a post in 2007:

A human being, looking at the natural world, sees a thousand times purpose. […] But what you see is not exactly what is there…

In the days before Darwin, the cause of all this apparent purposefulness was a very great puzzle unto science. The Goddists said “God did it”, because you get 50 bonus points each time you use the word “God” in a sentence. Yet perhaps I’m being unfair. In the days before Darwin, it seemed like a much more reasonable hypothesis. Find a watch in the desert […] and you can infer the existence of a watchmaker.

But when you look at all the apparent purposefulness in Nature, rather than picking and choosing your examples, you start to notice things that don’t fit the Judeo-Christian concept of one benevolent God. Foxes seem well-designed to catch rabbits. Rabbits seem well-designed to evade foxes. Was the Creator having trouble making up Its mind?

He goes on:

There isn’t an Evolution Fairy that looks over the current state of Nature, decides what would be a “good idea”, and chooses to increase the frequency of rattle-constructing genes.

An overall good read. I love articles that toy with the idea of evolution - articles that make you think and ask the question that drives human nature: ‘Why?’

Ronnie Evans:

When initially hearing Oliver Tank’s music it’s easy to picture him as a suave, posh gentleman who spends his days strolling the beaches of Sydney in a white tuxedo, flocks of ladies fighting to stand in his shadow. On the contrary, what you’ll discover is a young college student who divides his time partying, hanging with mates and making records in his bedroom. His lifestyle is unbelievably laid back, and both his lackadaisical attitude and style of living are paralleled in his music.

As a follow up to my previous post on Oliver Tank, this article provides some great insight to his lifestyle and the ambience surrounding his music.

His music, as he calls it, is comprised of “fairly accessible tracks in terms of listening to them, but disguised with more unusual instrumentation.” His ultimate goal is to make something original, yet not so far off that people can’t relate to it while also maintaining a personal interest in the product. His EP, Dreams, garners an almost overwhelming sense of introspective seclusion, achieving Oliver’s goal of originality while striking to the core of each listener’s either subconscious or as in most cases — uncomfortably vivid emotions. […] There is a feeling of calm that loiters in the shadows of the album, meandering in and out of each track with a subtle ambivalence. Built around chimerical harmonies, gentle beats and a shockingly refreshing use of auto tune, the EP manages to shout complexity while delivering itself with a marvelous simplicity

Just like last time: I couldn’t have said it better myself. I can’t wait for what he comes up with next.

There’s a fine line between originality and accessibility. The key is too get as close to that line as possible, but never cross it.

The runner discovers tranquility on the road, forgetting the pain. The writer gives in to the joy of playing with words, moving past the aggravation. The entrepreneur finds purpose in making something, and stops noticing the long days.

You can spend your life fretting about how healthy, interesting, or successful you are. In fact, a whole industry depends upon this, and is eager to help you make plans to change.

On the other hand, you might consider simply finding what you love, and letting the rest take care of itself.

Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

John Gruber:

Maybe the answer to the iOS address book situation is to require the user to grant explicit permission through a dialog box, but it’s not a slam-dunk decision. Every dialog box has a cost.

That’s one answer, sure. But I think you’re solving the wrong problem. I think theres an inherit flaw in how all of the APIs come together and the assumptions developers are allowed to make when it comes to privacy.

Marco:

When implementing these features, I felt like iOS had given me far too much access to Address Book without forcing a user prompt. It felt a bit dirty. Even though I was only accessing the data when a customer explicitly asked me to, I wanted to look at only what I needed to and get out of there as quickly as possible. I never even considered storing the data server-side or looking at more than I needed to.

When I had to access the address book I felt the exact same way. Most users, however, don’t care. Going back to Apple’s basic concept: it just works. Location, unlike address book, is time-sensative. There is a specific time associated with the location. Depending on how wide of a span worth of data you have, the creepier you can be (e.g. calculating speed, possible routes, destinations, etc). He goes on:

But Apple can, and should, assure users that no app can read their contact data without their knowledge and explicit permission. I don’t know why this hasn’t always been required, but it probably isn’t a good enough reason to justify the erosion of user trust in iOS apps that this could cause.

Come on. I’ll meet you half way: give users an option to decide this on an app-by-app basis, but not by default. A little toggle in Settings.app to lock down the address book with a bunch of on/off toggles for each app that pop-open below.

And he goes on:

Apple needs to change the Address Book API to require user permission first, like Core Location and Push Notifications do. I don’t care how many applications break as a result.

Consider this from a development perspective, oh mighty developer. Every application that uses a single ABAddressBookRef or any related function breaks. Except wait, they linked to AddressBook framework. So when AddressBook framework can’t talk to Apple’s hooks, AddressBook framework causes your app to crash. The only way to see this is to update your dev tools and realize none of the function hooks exist anymore. Or maybe they do exist, but Apple is blocking the thread so that it can popup the UI alert. The only way this is possible is to deprecate AddressBook framework as is, for the whole course of iOS 5.1, or even iOS 6. And provide the new alternative as the “go to” method. In iOS 7, they can finally remove it. Alright, sounds good. 2 years later.