Thoughts from an iPad

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.

Big problems are problems for a reason – they are problems that are hard to solve. If there was an easy solution, one of the thousands of ambitious, smart engineers out there would have solved them by now. So instead of solving big problems, the smartest, most creative brains in Silicon Valley are building apps to help us organize group lunches, share funny photos, or aggregate daily deals. I’m sorry, but these aren’t the big problems. In fact, most of these new startups are creating more problems than they solve.

Maybe the problem is that they can’t tolerate big problems, they can’t bother working on them. They want to be ignorant of the existence and play with cute scripts that create new problems. But don’t worry, I’m just sure someone else will solve them.

One of the examples brought up is dealing with medical records and how every time you go see a doctor you spend 30 minutes filling out the same paperwork. Luckily some startups are working on these “big problems”. I think they’re on the right track, too.