Lex, Briefly

I’m very proud of some of my more recent work at Macworld. I first started contributing to the magazine and website almost exactly two years ago. A few editors—all of whom I follow on Twitter—had posted at the same time, seeking help reviewing iPhone apps.

I wrote to the email address provided, and soon enough was churning out reviews of iOS apps every month. Later I branched out, helping out with some of Macworld’s blogging, too. And eventually, I began contributing opinion pieces and features. For whatever reason, they like me over there. Getting paid to write about Apple stuff still strikes me as more magical than even the iPad.

Anyway, some recent stuff I wrote there that pleases me:

• The customer is sometimes right: An analysis of how Apple responds to customer feedback
• A write-up on Tim Cook, in light of Steve Jobs’s leave of absence
• Thoughts on the iOSification of Mac software
• Remainders for the 19th and 20th

I’ll be at Macworld 2011 next week in San Francisco (my first Macworld conference). Writing for those guys has turned out to be a pretty sweet gig.

I like the new Mac App Store, and think will prove to be a huge success for developers and for Apple. (The Store scored one million downloads on its first day.) There are a few areas in the App Store itself that I’d like to see Apple address. Since the App Store is really a web browser, many of these fixes can be made on Apple’s end without an app update. 

1. Clearly, the INSTALLED confusion needs resolution. Right now, if you own apps that are for sale in the App Store, they’re marked as INSTALLED even though you didn’t buy them from the Store. That’s smart, in the sense that Apple doesn’t want customers to purchase apps they already own unintentionally. But it’s also stupid: Apps that you bought separately from the Store can’t be updated from the Store. This has already caused plenty of customer (and developer!) confusion, and Apple needs to treat these differently. I’m sure it will.

2. Quick: Have any apps been added to the Mac App Store since yesterday? If you’re like me, you have no idea. There’s a New and Noteworthy section, but that uses a loose definition of “New” on the iOS App Store, and skews more towards the “Noteworthy” anyway. If you browse the Store by category, and then click See All, you can sort apps by Release Date. But I’d like quicker access to see what’s new each day.

3. My biggest complaint about the usability of the Mac App Store is my biggest complaint about the iOS App Store, too. Confined as it is to a single window, the Store is decidedly unpleasant to navigate in a tabbed world. I want to open multiple apps at once in separate tabs to compare them, or just when I see a bunch that are interesting. I want to leave one app’s page open, click a link on Twitter to another app, and not lose my place. 

4. “Best Reviewed Apps.” Apple sorts the best-selling apps, the most-downloaded free ones, and the highest-grossing ones. I’d like to know which have the best weighted rating averages based on a metric that measures total downloads, total ratings, and average ratings. 

5. Loading animations. When you click on many things in the Mac App Store, there’s no visual indicator that your click has been noted or that something’s happening. Again, it’s a web browser—just one with no progress bar. 

I think the Mac App Store will be a defining achievement for Apple. I look forward to version 2.0.

Plenty of tech publications share 2010 roundups, like the 10 biggest Apple stories of the year. But that’s boring to me—we all just lived through 2010! I’m much more interested in a roundup of Apple news from next year. And thus, I’m pleased to present this roundup of Apple’s biggest stories from 2011.

1. The iPad 2. In April 2011, eager tablet fans around the world started unboxing their new iPad 2s. Some, like Andy Ihnatko, posted video of the process. The new iPad 2, as expected, included two cameras, a faster processor, more RAM, and an improved display. The surprising news was that an Apple-build Angry Birds knockoff—Angry Avians—now ships on the device.

The price on the original iPad dropped to just $14.

2. The iPhone 5. In June of 2011, April introduced not just the AT&T version of the phone, but also several other flavors: a Verizon edition, a surprising T-Mobile version, and in the biggest surprise of all, an unlocked version that cost just $34,000.

A white version of iPhone 5 was promised “soon.” It has yet to arrive.

3. In August 2011, Apple unveiled Apple TV 3. The device now includes a small handful of apps never released for other iOS devices. There’s an app that teaches juggling and card tricks, another for organizing stamps, and a third that creates a virtual train set. While Apple TV itself is no longer a hobby, it’s geared strictly toward hobbyists.

4. Oh, at some point, Macs received minor speed and design upgrades.

5. Steve Jobs stunned the tech press by appearing at an Apple event in a midnight blue turtleneck.

6. Apple released a crappy, subpar version of the iPad that was just 7” big. Wait, no, that wasn’t Apple. That was a dozen of its supposed competitors. None of them sold well.

7. In the biggest Apple news of the year, the company finally restored the proper orientation lock behavior for the iPad’s hardware switch.

Update: A bugfixed version of the app was just released. I’ll revisit the app soon. Perhaps at an even finer publication than this one.

I was pleased as punch when I read today that Sesame Street had released There’s a Monster at the End of This Book for iPad. The original story is adorable, and Sesame has a great track record with apps; Elmo’s Monster Maker for iPhone is an excellent iOS app for kids.

I’ll admit I made one rookie parenting mistake: I told my 4-year-old Anya that I had a new Grover iPad book to read to her for bedtime, before I’d taken the time to preview the app. She loves the mostly excellent Dr. Seuss apps for iOS, and we figured that Grover’s app would be similarly excellent.

We were wrong.

As we started reading the book tonight, my App Reviewer Brain started ticking off flaws. These flaws were initially minor, but they kept coming. You can’t turn pages until the animations and voiceovers finish. There’s no page turn animation. You don’t turn pages by swiping, the way you do in nearly every other e-book app for kids. You need to tap a tiny target area to trigger a page turn. You can’t go back a page. 

Some annoyances were worse. One of the app’s hallmark features is that it lights up the words in the book as Grover reads them, to help young readers learn. Too often, the highlights lagged behind Grover’s narration, rendering them near useless.

Worse still, with nearly every page turn, you land on a completely blank page. As the app loads that page’s animation, artwork, and audio, you sit staring at nothing but a blank, hand-drawn book—for many seconds at a time. Parents, you can imagine how much youngsters enjoy moments like these.

Sometimes, Grover starts talking before the animation starts—and before he appears. Then, things rush to catch up. It’s jarring, even to 4-year-olds.

But the worst flaw by far is the app’s general crashiness. Anya never got to see the damn monster at the end of the book, because we couldn’t get that far. The app repeatedly crashed at later pages. And when you relaunch it, the button for skipping ahead to other pages is often unresponsive, so you need to sit through every single animation, page reading, and slow subsequent page loading. It’s painful. It’s unacceptably bad.

There’s a Monster at the End of This Book is fixable. But as is, it’s not even worth the 99¢ discounted introductory price. Sesame Street can do better, and my kid deserves it.

I Am Toe-Pain

Angry Burps

InstaPam

FlipBored

Pants vs. Zombies

Farterrific

I bought the Kindle 2 in May 2009, and liked it a lot. My overall book consumption immediately increased, which was my chief goal. Well, that, and I figured chicks dig guys with new, button-laden hardware.

Just under a a year later, in April 2010, I bought the iPad. Beginning that day, the Kindle was relegated to my nightstand, where it sat neglected and unloved, feeling the way I imagine most Zunes do. Between the Kindle app and the iBooks app, my book-reading needs were well-covered by the iPad. 

I continued reading more books than I’d read in my pre-e-book days. At first, my numbers stayed pretty consistent between Kindle reading and iPad reading.

Slowly, though — no faster than Steve Wozniak’s approach on a Segway — my daily book reading on the iPad decreased. 

The iPad sports some distinct advantages over the Kindle. I love, love, love that I don’t need to use a book light with the iPad when I read at night. I darken the screen to almost pure black, and can easily read e-books without blowing out my retinas. (Come morning, I have to strain to see the settings to toggle the Kindle app back to normal brightness.) And I like that I can fit so much of the book on screen at once, since the iPad’s screen is so much larger than my Kindle 2’s.

But the iPad is overpowered as a book reader. It’s a bit like using a Mac Pro solely for vanity Googling. And my iPad knows about all the other things it — I — could be doing.

So as I read, I get occasional alerts. A tone signals new emails. A notification pops up for new Direct Messages from Twitter. Another appears when it’s my turn in Words With Friends. I could turn off all those notifications and mute noises whenever I launch into an e-reading app, but that’s not a trivial amount of effort when I try to use the iPad to read multiple times each day. 

With the release of iOS 4.2, Apple actually made my iPad-based e-reading habit — which was already slipping like a teen starlet’s blouse — less pleasant. That’s because of the decidedly unpleasant change to the iPad’s hardware switch behavior. I’m not a fan of the iPad’s software orientation lock, and tend to avoid it. That means I too often find myself doing the screen rotation dance as I recline to read.

Don’t be confused. I continued—and continue—to love my iPad. But I slowly became aware that I was reading books less and less. When I had reading time, I ever more frequently heard (and responded to!) the siren call of Instapaper, or Reeder, or The Incident. 

Then we went on a cruise. A cruise where Internet cost way too damn much, so we had no WiFi available. My iPad once again became a compelling e-reader, cut off from the world as it was. I read four novels on a 7-day cruise. (Unrelated: I also ate about 45 meals.)

My wife Lauren had brought along my old Kindle for the trip. As it turned out, she ended up spending more time playing with her (offline) iPhone than reading on the Kindle, but I kept seeing the device—and thinking of it fondly.

The iPad has advantages, and the Kindle does too. It’s dramatically lighter, and far more comfortable to hold in one hand. The battery life is awesome, and when that’s true compared to the iPad, you know it’s exceptional. And, though Amazon has tried rolling out a few games for the Kindle and it has its rudimentary web browser, I’m comfortable describing the device as distraction-free.

When we returned home from the cruise, I sought out the Kindle. I found the book I was midway through on the iPad and downloaded it to the Kindle, via the Kindle. And of course it ended up on the right virtual page.

I wish the Kindle 2’s contrast were a bit better. I wish Kindles had their own light source solution, instead of requiring that I use a book light, which in turn requires that I use a case so there’s something to clip the light to. I wish I could figure out how to turn off seeing what sections of a book other people highlighted.

But I am really enjoying rediscovering the Kindle reading experience. Despite iBooks’s page curl and sepia tones, and despite the iOS’s swiping vs. button-clicking to turn pages, the Kindle still feels more bookish. 

If I’m traveling, I think I’d still take just the iPad rather than both devices. But for at-home reading—or a day trip where reading is on the agenda and multitasking isn’t—I’m once again a Kindle devotee. 

It’s Apple’s App Store, and the company can reject any app it wants. That doesn’t make it suck any less when the app they reject is mine.

Last year, my friend Megan and I created a comedy website called The Snuggie Sutra. It’s exactly what it sounds like. More specifically, it’s a parody, a humorous imagination of comedically pitched sexual positions, all of them involving a blanket with sleeves. The illustrated pseudo-guide employs Megan’s hilarious drawings of cartoon figures, with all their naughty bits covered by hand-drawn Snuggies.

After scoring mentions on radio shows across the country — not to mention The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, the Huffington Post, New York Magazine, and Time — publishers came calling.

This past September, St. Martin’s Press published the book version of The Snuggie Sutra. In fact, the book is available in the iBookstore — along with the Kindle bookstore, all the major online booksellers, and fine brick and mortar bookstores everywhere. And Urban Outfitters, because, you know.

The book has since been discussed on TV shows like Chelsea Lately and The Today Show, sites like AOL and Yahoo!, and still more radio stations across the country, many of whose DJs make unfunny jokes about the Sham-Wow.

I enlisted the services of developer Marco Tabini to build a custom Snuggie Sutra app for the iPad. The app showcases unique, web-only positions, along with a few that appear in the book itself. You can page through the positions, and share them with friends via Twitter, Facebook, and email. Marco and I decided — out of an abundance of caution — to hold back on developing the more challenging but even more fun phase two of the app: letting you create your own Snuggie Sutra positions.

Unfortunately, our abundance of caution was seemingly well-placed. Per Apple’s email to me:

We’ve reviewed your application, however, we cannot post this version to the App Store because we are no longer accepting this type of app, as indicated in the preamble to the App Store Review Guidelines https://developer.apple.com/appstore/resources/approval/guidelines.html:

We don’t need any more Kamasutra apps.

To its credit, Apple offered me the option to appeal my rejection. Which I did:

Our book is a consistent Amazon top-seller in humor, parody, and (cough) sex categories. We add new positions to the website — the ones that show up in the app — every week. I challenge the assertion that an app full of Snuggie sex positions is truly “another kama sutra app,” since its focus is humor, and not prurience. Similarly, I think the app provides lasting entertainment value with its frequent updates featuring new positions.

I am happy to discuss this further at your convenience.

Early Wednesday evening, I received a phone call from Apple. “This is Steve,” the caller didn’t say. The kindly App Store representative whom I did speak with reiterated that “this kind” of app was no longer accepted.

Pressed to explain which “kind” of app she meant, the woman told me again that Apple didn’t want any more “kama sutra apps” in the App Store.

I maintain that while we bill ourselves as “The Kama Sutra — With Snuggies,” this app is not “another Kama Sutra app.” Rather, The Snuggie Sutra is a humor app. It’s meant to amuse, and not to titillate. This app isn’t a how-to guide; it’s jokes.

I have filed one final appeal with Apple, pleading my case. The Snuggie Sutra is not “another Kama Sutra app” — it’s something else entirely.

Many folks smarter than I am have already written about TSA’s ridiculous new airport screening policies, with the backscatter X-ray (the Porn Machine that shows agents your naked form, provided the clothing you’re wearing lacks creases) and the alternative pat-down (the Molestation), if you opt out of the Porn Machine.

Continental at my local airport (Newark) hasn’t implemented Porn Machines yet, so though I’m a frequent flier, I had yet to encounter the Porn vs. Molestation Sophie’s Choice conundrum — until this past Monday. I was flying back from Florida after a weeklong cruise. (Worth noting, of course, is that the cruise ship held about 4,000 people, and TSA didn’t screen a single one of us before we got on the ship. TSA won’t start screening cruises until the first time a terrorist tries to attack a ship, I guess.)

Lauren and I were traveling with our two daughters (a 4-year-old and a nearly 2-year-old). We saw that one of the four active security lines in Fort Lauderdale International Airport was indeed using a Porn Machine. By luck, we’d put ourselves into a separate line from the Porn Machine, so I figured we were safe.

Several unrelated events then occurred in tandem, as they so often do.

The first of our two car seats jammed the carry-on scanner. It wasn’t a huge deal; we’d placed it properly, and they just needed to give it a poke or two to get it through. But since I was waiting with our stuff to make sure it all went through — as the TSA requires — before going through the metal detector, the line adjacent ours was thinning out a bit. (That would be the line with the Porn Machine.) Lauren and the girls had already gone through our line, and thus escaped Porn vs. Molestation choice-free.

I pointed out to the TSA agents that I had a second car seat, and asked if they’d like me to do something different with it to prevent it from getting stuck in the X-ray machine. The agent took the second car seat and brought it around the scanner to the other side. That is, they never scanned the second car seat, since the first one had caused a 20-second hiccup. Terrorists, don’t read this post and get any ideas.

It was at this point that the whole charade of TSA’s security theater became useless, right? If they don’t even bother scanning an item (“oh, it’s just a second harmless car seat!”), then every other check becomes increasingly worthless.

So, all our stuff has gone through the scanner, and the woman from the now-empty adjacent line asks me to approach the Porn Machine. I tell her, “Oh, I’m going to opt out of that.”

“You’re opting out?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“I have to read you this statement, then,” she said, reaching into her pocket. She pulled out a laminated form that indicated that by opting out of the safe Porn Machine, I would be subjecting myself to a full pat-down, which would include touching me in “sensitive areas.” (Her statement mentioned “sensitive areas” twice.) Knowing that, would I prefer to stick with the Porn Machine? (She didn’t call it that.)

I stuck with my opt-out. They paged — three times — for whichever agent had drawn the short straw that day. He showed up eventually, and took me into a private room on the side of the scanning area. Oh, I should clarify: By “private room,” I mean a room that had a plexiglass clear front with full visibility between it and the screening area — Lauren and I made frequent eye-contact. It had a locked door on one side which twice tricked the agent, as he got stuck and couldn’t open it from inside the “room.” Of course, the opposite end of the bus-stop shaped room was open space, leading directly towards another metal detector, so he’d just walk out that way and go around.

He explained repeatedly that he’d be touching me in various “sensitive areas,” and that he’d always use the back of his hand when he did so. He put his fingers in my waist band, and his hands indeed went right up to my bits and pieces, and all over what he termed by buttocks, which rhymed with “nut rocks” when he said it. I tried not to moan softly during the pat-down.

Fortunately, I didn’t have any weaponry or explosives shoved up my ass or even taped to the front of my crotch, since those would have escaped even this offensive inspection.

The TSA’s laughable attempts at security won’t prevent a new attack. Americans shouldn’t sacrifice personal freedom — freedom from being groped or strip-searched included — to fly. As many have pointed out, the world’s safest airline, El Al, doesn’t waste time with these techniques at all.

As Timothy Carney writes, “In the past decade, terrorists on airplanes have killed just about 3,000 people — all on one day. Even if the Christmas Day bomber had succeeded, the number would be under 3,500.

Those are horrible deaths. But in that same period, more than 150,000 people have been murdered in the United States. We haven’t put the entire U.S. on lockdown — or even murder capitals like Detroit, New Orleans and Baltimore. While reducing the murder rate to zero is very desirable, we also understand that the costs, in terms of liberty and resources, are too great. But when it comes to air travel, 9/11 seems to have stripped away our ability to put things in perspective.”

My older daughter Anya watched on occasion as I was patted down. I don’t want to explain to my daughters (or unborn son) that besides their parents and doctors, government employees can also touch them in certain areas. 

If the next successful terrorist attack doesn’t involve a pregnant woman or car seats — both of which easily evade extra TSA inspection — I’ll be surprised.

I don’t remember the date of my first kiss. 

I do know the date JFK was assassinated.

I know the date of Pearl Harbor.

I know my birthday, and my wife’s birthday, and our anniversary. And our kids’ birthdays, too. 

September 11th is so iconic that we refer to it by its date.

But November 16th, 2010 is the one forever seared into my memory above all other dates. The Beatles are on iTunes. As Apple predicted, we will never forget.

</sarcasm>

My friend and former coworker Joel Downs got very excited about the newly-announced NookColor. He thinks its low price and iPad-esque functionality will make it a viable iPad challenger. I love Joel, but I think he’s dead wrong on this one.

Let me break down my disagreements with — and factual corrections to — Joel’s post.

[The NookColor is] a huge leap forward that should help them gain significant market share.

To me, it’s an Android-powered tablet. It might eat more Kindle market share — customers who don’t understand or appreciates the benefits of the e-Ink screen will likely value the Nook’s color as a key e-reading feature. But this thing isn’t going to touch the iPad’s market share.

Joel then writes that the NookColor will feature:

Its own app store, so presumably most Android apps will work with it, although B&N will  curate the offerings

Nope! Google only permits Android-based cell phones to access the Android App Store — tablets need not apply. When Barnes & Noble describes the NookColor as offering curated apps, that’s not a feature. It’s a limitation. You won’t be able to access apps from the Android App Store at all. Developers who are embracing Android’s “openness” would need to resubmit their apps to B&N and hope for approval, and of course update their apps separately for the different App Stores. Fun!

Of course, B&N hasn’t said that they’ll accept third-party apps at all. The apps you get are a reader and a browser. The feature list doesn’t mention any other apps. That means no email client, no Twitter client, no RSS client, and no Angry Birds.

If you read through that feature list above, it matches the iPad almost feature-for-feature, although it surely has a slower processor, and of course wouldn’t sync with iTunes.  

Wow. Joel, Joel, Joel. I don’t think you understand all the things the iPad can do. But that “surely” slower processor is far worse than you think. Behold, real live video of the NookColor in action. That thing where its response time is awful when scrolling or tapping? And that other thing where the demonstrator — a rep in place to show off the new Nook — keeps tapping unintentionally because of the slow response times, because she taps, sees no effect, and then taps again, and then the Nook catches up and screws everything up?

That kind of crap doesn’t fly over at Apple. 

The NookColor looks a little like an iPad, and it runs app a little like an iPad, but it’s no iPad. It’s a little too little of everything. The 7” screen isn’t helping.

Don’t get me wrong; it may well make a fine e-reader. But this is no iPad killer.

So the question is will people keep shelling out $600+ for Apple’s iPad?  If so, why?  The prestige?  The “cool factor”?  Because they’ll only buy Apple products?

I’ll leave aside the Apple-consumer character assassination. I don’t think folks will necessarily keep shelling out $600 for an iPad, since they can get one for $500 direct from Apple already. If they want a fancier version with more storage and/or 3G, then yes, they may get to $600. 

But they’ll keep buying iPads because they want a tablet, and not a standalone e-reader.

At their current pace, Apple may see the iPad get Mac’ed in the not-too-distant future.  Its cost and closed nature will relegate the iPad to a niche market of customers who will spend significantly more for the sense of style and status that Apple products bring with them, but the mass market will yet again pass Apple by.

In two quarters, starting in April 2010, Apple sold 7.5 million iPads. I’ll gladly buy Joel one of his own if combined sales of every 7” Android tablet on the market exceed 7.5 million devices by April 2011.

The purpose of the soon-to-launch Mac App Store is to sell (desktop) apps. Some developers and very smart pundit types are concerned that Apple’s strict Mac App Store review guidelines could keep many great pieces of software out.

My best guess, though, is that Apple will welcome most of the software you know and love into the Mac App Store with open arms. The company isn’t looking to make the Mac Crap Store. And it surely doesn’t want to alienate the many great developers making awesome, beloved Mac software already.

I agree with many criticisms about the currently-published Mac App Store policies. The ban on any beta, demo, or trial software is somewhat troubling. But I suspect some developers will surely make free demo versions of their software available as direct downloads from their websites, with links to buy directly from the developer, or from the App Store, within the app. That’s not an ideal solution, and folks who shop only in the App Store might never discover the free trial versions hosted elsewhere. But I bet that those particular buyers weren’t in the market for such software, anyway. Still, I remain disappointed that Apple hasn’t figured out a solution for the original iOS App Store that empowers developers to let potential customers try free or demo versions of their apps. The overabundance of “Lite” apps in the App Store today is annoying, and developers and customers alike deserve better.

I’m far less concerned — admittedly, perhaps naively — about currently-published restrictions on apps that violate Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, or that duplicate well-trodden areas already covered in the store. Multiple folks have pointed out that Apple Design Award winners, and Apple’s own software, could be banned for HIG violations. And there are many FTP, Twitter, and text editing clients available for the Mac today.

Apple’s intent isn’t to block any of those great apps from the Mac App Store.

My hunch is that, instead, the company’s erring by preferring to enforce its rules selectively, rather than get denigrated later for enforcing secret ones. That is, by banning HIG-ignoring apps, Apple can effectively block ugly-ass software from the Mac App Store by pointing to the rule. If a slew of developers release 99¢ desktop fart apps, Apple can start blocking those, too on the duplicate functionality technicality.

The Mac App Store is a clean slate. Apple felt its way along, learning as it went, with the original App Store. As I read the rules for the new Mac-focused one, the company’s aiming to avoid a lot more junk this time around. But there’s no way Apple blocks brilliantly creative, well-designed apps from the store.

Apple’s hosting various members of the tech press for an event titled “Back to the Mac.” The invitation, whose cover image sports a lion, indicates that the next version of the Mac OS — presumably Mac OS X 10.7 Lion — will be previewed, amongst other announcements. 

I have no inside sources.

What could Apple have up its sleeves for the next iteration of OS X? Sure, Steve Jobs & Co will tell us that it’s X times faster than ever before, that it packs more than100 new features, and that sort of thing. But what will the tent-poles be?

Cloudy With a Chance of Storage

One hypothesis is that Apple will finally embrace “the cloud” — the notion of Internet-based storage that’s always available — system-wide. What would that look like in OS X? The answer is easy, because it already exists, just via add-ons not baked directly into the OS.

Dropbox provides the single best cloud-storage solution around. You drop files and folders into your Dropbox folder, and they magically show up on all your other computers that use Dropbox. You can share files and folders with other Dropbox-using friends. It’s reliable, requires essentially no configuration or maintenance, and just works.

Apple currently offers a similar product, in the form of Mobile Me’s iDisk. iDisk works fine, but a Mobile Me subscription is $100 a year.So what could “better cloud computing” at the OS level mean? iPhoto automatically hosting your photos with Apple, with an option to avoid leaving the originals on your hard drive? I don’t see why such a change — or a cloud/subscription-based approach to iTunes — would require an OS upgrade.

If Apple’s going to better embrace the cloud with 10.7, I don’t quite see how it could, with one possible exception:  If Apple offers iDisk for free, or creates a full free tier of Mobile Me service, that could be a significant move. Like the iPhoto cloud concept, a free iDisk wouldn’t require a new version of the OS, but with free, ubiquitous iDisk storage for Macs, the OS could conceivably offer more and better hooks everywhere. 

Face It

Other OS upgrades seem inevitable: While I’d love to see a complete iChat makeover, I think integration with iOS’s FaceTime protocol is a gimme. I’d love to be able to “call” my family from my iPod touch and video chat with them as they huddle around Lauren’s MacBook.

Pie In The Sky

While I think it’s very unlikely, I’d love to see Apple revisit Dashboard. The concept — rip off Konfabulator, make attractive desktop widgets containing useful information — was solid. The implementation, though, remains laughable: Trigger the Dashboard, wait a couple seconds for the widgets to update, get the information eventually. I want my widgets right on the desktop without a hack. I doubt I’ll ever get it, but a man can dream.

I’d also like to see Safari not bog down the entire OS after running for a while. 

And I know we’ve debated the notion of true multitouch computers for a long time, and there’s currently no sane way to do it without leading to very tired arms. But there’s something there, and don’t be surprised when Apple figures it out first.

What Else?

Smarter, better-informed pundits than I have suggested that a MacBook Air revamp is coming on October 20th, too. There’s a lot of that Apple could do with that thin form factor and that concept. 

I remember some Mac rumormongers ended up disappointed that the original Air didn’t include free, “always-on” 3G Internet service, like the Kindle does. But let’s remember that no one surfs the web on a Kindle more than once or twice; you only use that 3G connection for buying books. Apple might subsidize a 3G connection if you could only use it to buy stuff from iTunes and the Apple Store, but that’s obviously not happening.

I can, however, conceive of some major re-imagining of multitouch on the Air. A bigger trackpad, new gestures, and maybe some touchscreen options? I’d drool over some Frankenstein monster hybrid between an Air and an iPad — a thin laptop that could also run iOS apps with a true touchscreen. I don’t know how to build it right, but maybe Steve does.

You love Twitter, right? You read tweets, you write tweets — you’re a tweeting fool. But you’re not always in one place, so sometimes you manage Twitter from your iPhone, and other times you Twitter from your iPad, and still other times you Twitter from your Mac.

I use Hibari on my desktop, Twitter on my iPhone, and rotate between Twitter and Twitterrific on my iPad. And the experience of Twitter client hopping sucks. That’s because when I switch from one to the other, no client has any idea where I left off in the other. I either skip chunks of tweets against my will, or need to scroll through oodles of tweets I’ve already read.

There’s a better way. And it shouldn’t be on the customer’s side to deal with. This is a problem Twitter developers can and should solve.

I’m proposing — and hosting — an API through which different Twitter clients could painlessly keep track of where users are in their timelines.

I envision a painless API with two methods — get and put — where any client could either ask “What’s the last tweet ID seen by this user?” or declare “Here’s the last tweet ID seen by this user.” That would solve the bulk of this Twitter client-switching problem.

There are weaknesses, of course. “Last seen” could be defined uniquely by different clients. To me, the most recent visible tweet in the timeline counts. But the nice thing is, there’s no risk that I can see here: A client can position you in the timeline at what it thinks is the “right” place, but you can of course still scroll to wherever you need if it’s wrong. When it works, it makes your tweet-reading experience better, and when it doesn’t, it’s the same as it’s always been.

Here’s a quick implementation I put together:

http://lexfriedman.com/lastseen/get
http://lexfriedman.com/lastseen/put

Both “get” and “put” take:

c: string, client name. In this case, TestClient.
u: user_id for the Twitterer
k: a unique secret key based on the client. For TestClient, it’s: f3254c1b6f9efc99eb52f5cb97a45890

On “put,” you add one final parameter: The ID of the last-seen tweet.

So, when I record your last-seen tweet, it’s:
http://lexfriedman.com/lastseen/put?c=TestClient&u=785133&l=25680758613&k=f3254c1b6f9efc99eb52f5cb97a45890

When I want to fetch the last-seen tweet for the user (on app startup), it’s:
http://lexfriedman.com/lastseen/get?c=TestClient&u=785133&k=f3254c1b6f9efc99eb52f5cb97a45890

For both calls, the API returns the numeric value of the last-seen tweet ID on success, and a text error on failure.

Obviously, this kind of approach would only work if numerous Twitter clients on multiple platforms all were interested in supporting it. My challenge, of course, is that I don’t know many Twitter developers personally.

But perhaps you do! I’ll gladly establish a secret key for any Twitter client that wants to support this. Tell your favorite Twitter developer to email me at my first initial (“L”) at lexfriedman.com.

Let’s make Twitter awesomer together!

Ping is Apple’s new iTunes-based social network. At this writing, it’s simply terrible. Here’s a sampling of what’s wrong with it:

1. The lack of Facebook overlap. The service offered Facebook Connect integration for a few hours, but that connection was then pulled. Like it or not — and frankly, as a web product guy, I like it, and as a consumer, not so much — Facebook powers much of the social web. Don’t make me re-add all the friends, with whom I’ve already established relationships on Facebook. Properly integrated, Ping could import not just my friends, but my favorite bands too.

2. Ping shares only my iTunes Music Store purchases. I imagine that the very vast majority of music libraries in iTunes only contain a fraction of songs from the Music Store; sharing only my purchased music history is ridiculously limiting. As Glenn Fleishman noted on Twitter, the current Ping setup benefits only Apple. I understand Apple’s thinking, but it’s no way to grow a successful social network. 

3. You can’t “like” or comment upon the song you’re listening to right now in iTunes. It’s hard to nail the stupidest design choice in Ping, but this one is pretty close. It’s an off-shoot of limitation #2. This should be Ping’s core feature. There should be a system-wide hot key for “Post a like and comment about the awesome song currently playing,” for crying out loud. The one benefit of squeezing a social network website into a fake web browser like iTunes is the tight integration it can offer. Instead, Ping ignores what you’re listening to. 

4. That Ping is limited to music only would make more sense if #2 and #3 weren’t already hampering the service. But if you’re going to make a limited social network — an approach to which I have no objection — I’d say you ought to embrace everything you can. The behemoth that is iTunes and the iTunes Store includes not just music, but TV shows, movies, podcasts, apps, and e-books. And as I said above, while most people’s music libraries skew heavily imported, vs. bought from iTunes, I’d wager that the vast majority of videos, podcasts, iOS apps, and e-books in peoples’ iTunes libraries are indeed direct from the iTunes Store. Across those media types, Apple’s forced limitation to socializing around store-bought content wouldn’t seem nearly so foolish.

5. The near-total lack of notifications. This is very easy to fix, but is frankly a “must-have” feature for launch. I want to know when someone follows me, without needing to turn on manual follower approval. Even more importantly, I want to know when someone comments on my posts. Even without email notifications as an option — which, again, are a must — Ping needs an “updates for you” page that shows you all the likes, comments, and followers you’ve scored. You know, exactly like Facebook.

6. You can only post if your post is tied to a song or album. I was initially on the fence about this one. In truth, I don’t need another place to share status updates after Twitter and Facebook. But if Apple wants me to “hang out” in Ping, I need to be able to create posts that aren’t intrinsically linked to iTunes Music Store content.

7. The wrong content is collapsed. Given the lack of notifications, the weird folding in Ping is entirely nonsensical. I sometimes see comment “threads” where only one comment is visible until I click “see all comments.” This might be useful were Ping overrun with conversations I didn’t care about. But the service is so new, and my follower list so small, that I want to see these exchanges in full without requiring extra clicks. It’s easy to miss comments completely, and this just makes that worse. What Ping should collapse is entries like, “Andy bought [song]” followed by “Andy liked [song].” Buying implies liking, and seeing dual entires like that over and over again is rather frustrating.

8. Finally, I think that not allowing you to surf Ping from within your web browser of choice is a very Apple-like decision, but the wrong one. Modern web surfers use tabs. iTunes doesn’t. On Facebook, I can click updates from multiple friends to open them in separate tabs, and respond to everything I’m interested in efficiently. Ping within iTunes eschews such efficiency completely, and I find it’s a constant frustration.

Can Ping be fixed? Absolutely. But I don’t know how much time it has before users write it off completely.

I was hoping to spend $100 yesterday on a brand spankin’ new Apple TV. If rumors were to be true, the device would be tiny, would include access 99¢ TV show episodes, and potentially run iOS, too.

All those rumors were true, but now, I don’t want the darn thing.

During Wednesday’s event, Steve Jobs said that customers don’t want computers connected to their TVs; they want entertainment. I don’t know that he’s exactly right on that. 

I have three computers connected to my TV right now: A TiVo HD, a Nintendo Wii, and a Mac mini.

The TiVo is the most-used device. It records all our shows for us, and it streams Netflix. (It can also stream from Blockbuster on Demand, Amazon, and other services.) The Mac mini is next on the popularity chart. We rip some of our kids’ shows to it, and it functions as our DVD player. It’s also our main interface to Hulu, when we or the TiVo miss shows on major networks. (We use the mini to stream Netflix when TiVo has issues, which hasn’t happened in many months.)

The Wii is used solely as a gaming device, though it could stream Netflix in a pinch.

But it’s not a stretch to call all three of those devices computers. The difference, of course, is the interfaces. It’s a small pain to use the mini to watch Hulu; I’ve got to launch Hulu Desktop first, and then use either the Apple remote (if I can find it), or my iPhone, iPad, or Mac to navigate to the show I’m after. 

The TiVo, though, is a computer too. It has an interface built for watching TV, a full-featured remote (not Apple’s goofy minimal shtick), and provides near-instant feedback that makes it feel anything but computer-ish.

What the TiVo and Mac mini offer that Apple TV can’t is access to free television. You know, exactly like we’ve come to expect from television all our TV-watching lives. TiVo can grab shows as they air, and I can start watching an hour show twenty minutes into it — thus getting to watch the show commercial free, and seeing the ending at the same time as everyone else watching live or nearly live. With Hulu, or with the iTunes store for Apple TV, I’ve got to wait an extra day — or for some shows, an extra week or more — for a new episode to become available.

At least on Hulu, it’s still free to watch. Paying $1 a show isn’t terrible, but if you watch just five shows per 22-episode season, now we’re talking enough money to buy another Apple TV. Or, perhaps, a Roku. (The Roku, of course, can stream from Netflix, Amazon, MLB.TV, Pandora, and a bunch of other providers that I doubt anyone ever watches.)

The new Apple TV has no storage; you stream everything, either from Apple, Netflix, or another computer in your house. There are some advantages there, but not enough. I can stream music and photos to my TiVo. I can stream those, and even video, through my Mac mini — or, as I actually do, from it.

Apple may one day allow developers to make third-party apps for Apple TV. At that point, it’ll become hard to resist: That would mean Hulu could have an app, along with ABC, CNN, and others. And maybe we’d start to see some Apple TV games using iPads or iPhones as multitouch, motion-sensitive controllers. (With the gyroscope in there, I imagine some Wii-quality gaming could be recreated on the Apple TV pretty impressively.)

But as an underpowered Netflix-streamer that can also access paid-only TV shows, the Apple TV leaves me wanting a lot more than it offers.