“…Part of the hardest thing about coming up with new products is to figure out a really cool set of technologies you can implement it with, and make it easy, but also figuring out something that people… want to do. We’ve all seen products that’ve come out that have been interesting, but have fallen on their face because not enough people want to do them.” – Steve Jobs at D2, 2004
I’ve been testing iOS 7 from the beginning, and though the UI took a bit of getting used to (and the new icon on the Photos app still makes me do a mental reset sometimes). Overall, I love the changes in it. I’d like to take a minute to tell you about a few of my favorite enhancements in the OS. Control Center – Control Center is easily one of my favorite changes – and it’s immensely useful. A flick…
For two weeks straight, I’ve seen prognostications that <application> from <competitor> will replace Microsoft Office. No. Nothing will ever replace Microsoft Office – at least for the time being for a huge chunk of business users. I know, I know… strong words – but let me explain. While a single user who needs to simply compose their thoughts for personal use, or sometimes share them with one or two other users might be able to do so with a third-party Office document…
For some reason, there appears to be confusion – still (even among some Apple press) – about why this year’s phone is not called the iPhone 6, and is instead called the iPhone 5s. Outside of the original year, a very predictable pattern exists – so far. In even-numbered years, a completely new phone arrives, with a redesigned chassis. In odd-numbered years, a revised “S” (now “s”) phone arrives, which carries over most of the chassis of the previous year,…
A friend was telling me the other day about his new Mac. He bought it, took it home, and said it was like Christmas; opening it up, the ease of getting started, and the look and feel of the hardware, as well as the software. Normally a buyer of PCs, he decided to buy a Mac. A few months before, another friend said the same about buying his first iPhone. What’s unusual is that these two, like me, are ex-Microsoft…
I happened to bring up the Clipper chip in a conversation with a colleague today, where we were discussing the latest NSA-related news, communication privacy, (and of course the Apple 5s). Looking back at it now, it’s fascinating how much advice the past gives us today. I encourage you to read the words of Whitfield Diffie in his testimony to the US House of Representatives on May 11, 1993: “I submit to you that the most valuable secret in the world…
“It is not enough that honest men are appointed judges. All know the influence of interest on the mind of man, and how unconsciously his judgment is warped by that influence. To this bias add that of the esprit de corps, of their peculiar maxim and creed that “it is the office of a good judge to enlarge his jurisdiction,” and the absence of responsibility, and how can we expect impartial decision between the General government, of which they are…
“That a system had there been contrived for deluging the states with paper money instead of gold silver, for withdrawing our citizens from the pursuits of commerce, manufactures, buildings, other branches of useful industry, to occupy themselves their capitals in a species of gambling, destructive of morality, which had introduced it’s poison into the government itself. That it was a fact, as certainly known as that he I were then conversing, that particular members of the legislature, while those laws…
Given recent events, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about metadata. The “Patriot”* act, signed in the hazy, fear-driven months after 9/11 was a piece of legislation that was so broad that even one of the authors now says the hoovering of telephone metadata was never the intent of the law. Law, like any type of contract, is a funny thing. It’s not so much what you say, it’s what you don’t say that matters. I was concerned about the potential…
Earlier in July, Microsoft announced OWA for iPad and OWA for iPhone. Available only for Office 365 subscribers for now (available for Exchange 2013 at an undisclosed point in the future), OWA for iOS originally left me a bit confused. You see, at a glance, there’s really nothing that OWA for iOS does that you can’t do with the built in mail app on iOS. The one benefit I arrived at upfront was that with Exchange’s autodiscover, configuration for novice…