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By Stephen, on September 10th, 2015% Apple announced, among other things yesterday, the iPad Pro with support for a stylus called the Apple Pencil. This has the Internet Cynics Brigade doubled over in laughter as they post meme pictures with Steve Jobs saying that if you see a stylus or a task manager, they’ve done it wrong. They’re also busy posting pictures of how the iPad Pro with its keyboard cover looks a bit like the Microsoft Surface Pro with its kickstand and Type Cover (and for the record, that’s what I’m writing this post on – a 2 year old Surface Pro with a Type Cover). And yet other geniuses are claiming that because Android has phones with stylus support (like the excellent Samsung Galaxy Note series), Apple is just copying.
To that last bunch, I’d like to remind them of the Newton, but that was probably before they were born. Apple had a stylus-based tablet back in the the late 90s. Yes really. I still have my Newton MessagePad 2000, and I really loved it. Until Steve Jobs killed it. But the Newton was great, despite Doonesbury and the press making fun of it. The handwriting recognition was pretty good, and the ability to take and file notes was terrific. Apple had to invent ways to copy and paste text using the stylus, so they did, and it was very clever and worked well. I could also mention the many Palm PDAs I had over the years that used a stylus. So for those that think Apple stole the idea of a tablet with a stylus from any current competitor, think again.
Now, on to the real question: Is an iPad with a stylus useful?
The short answer is maybe, but perhaps not right away.
I’ve been using tablets with a stylus for a long time, and I really like them. I bought a very early Tablet PC and loved it. I could take notes on it, give lectures by writing on the screen or marking up content while sending to a projector, etc. Microsoft’s handwriting recognition is great, and these days, OneNote is a terrific tool on a stylus-based PC. When my first Tablet PC died, I bought a new one and used it for years. Then I bought a Surface Pro and am still using that. I love being able to write on the screen with the stylus! Even my terrible handwriting is searchable in OneNote. And marking up research papers was so great on screen rather than on paper.
The difference between a Surface Pro and an iPad however, is twofold. First, the sensors in the screen are very precise on the Surface Pro so the stylus registers precisely, whereas the sensors in existing iPads (not the iPad Pro) are much more coarse, since they’re designed for finger tracking. I’ve used a stylus with my iPad, and it isn’t a great experience, as it isn’t precise enough to write well. Second is the software support. As I already mentioned, Microsoft has a long history of handwriting recognition, so stylus support is top-notch. Apple had excellent handwriting recognition support on the Mac (presumably inherited from Newton technology), but that hasn’t made an appearance in 10 years or so. So that means Apple will either have to resurrect that technology for iPad Pro or it won’t be a good note-taking device.
Since it looks like they are more intending it for artists and for “professionals,” handwriting recognition may not be a priority, in which case, it will be support from 3rd party Apps that will define whether the Pencil is a success or not. Since I’m not an artist, I can’t speak to drawing on a tablet with a stylus, but I could imagine it would be a good experience, and there’s no reason to believe Apple won’t get that experience right.
For all the people making fun of the $100 price tag of the Pencil, I too think it is a bit much. A stylus came with my Surface Pro, though a replacement lists for $50. I don’t know if the Pencil is twice as good as my stylus, but it probably isn’t outrageously overpriced if you have need of it.
In short, I can’t predict the success (or not) of the Apple Pencil, but I’m not their initial target audience. I can say that using a stylus with a tablet has its uses, and if the software support is there, the experience can be excellent, as it is with my Surface Pro. But I don’t think it is the huge joke that the Internet seems consumed with today.
By Stephen, on September 3rd, 2015% We live in a world that has more information available online than ever before. Granted, much of it is unreliable or useless, but even the small fraction that is valuable is more voluminous than most people could have imagined even a few years ago. But the problem is that a lot of local information that should be available in an information-based society is missing.
Last night, for example, a (presumably) law enforcement helicopter circled a canyon in our neighborhood for 10 or 15 minutes at 2:30 AM. Since I know the police don’t wake neighborhoods unless there’s a reason, surely they were looking for something or someone that needed to be found quickly. My first thought was wondering if there was a criminal on the loose and that we should be extra careful and re-check all the doors and windows. It could also have been that they were looking for a missing hiker or similar. But there was no way to know. And even this morning, there’s no way to know, because none of the local news outlets, nor the city’s website or Twitter feed, have mentioned the helicopter and why it was there.
Now that delivering information is trivially easy using Facebook or Twitter or even an events page that Google can index, it seems crazy not to report events that affect hundreds or thousands of people, like a helicopter searching and waking a neighborhood in the process. Whatever agency was doing the search could have tweeted or posted, and by morning, Google would have indexed it, so any searches for helicopter in my area within the last 24 hours would have produced the information. If the police are hunting a suspect and don’t want to give away clues, then I can understand deliberate delays in providing information, but it should be put out hours after the fact.
My point is that we need more information of a local nature on the Internet. Cities, counties, and agencies should be keeping their citizens up to date better. Once this flood of information is unleashed, we will need new smart agents to process it and summarize it for us This has already happened with traffic apps (just presenting the traffic that is relevant to us out of all the traffic data available), so there is precedence, and maybe even a market for smart personal assistant apps that aren’t as useless as the current crop (Siri, Cortana, Alexa, etc.).
By Stephen, on August 28th, 2015% I’m sure everyone who has an iPhone has asked Siri “Hey Siri give me a hint” after the announcement of the upcoming Apple event that will presumably announce new iPhones. If you haven’t, give it a try – some of the results are pretty cute.
If I were Microsoft, however, I would fix Cortana up so that if anyone asked “Hey Cortana give me a hint,” it would reply “No need to buy into all the hype” or something similar. Same with Amazon: “Hey Alexa…” You get the idea. I don’t know if Google Now has enough personality to give a snarky reply, but maybe something clever could be done.
I’m personally looking forward to seeing what Apple announces. I love my iPhone 6+, so we’ll see if they have anything compelling enough to want me to upgrade. But I think Microsoft Cortana and Amazon Echo are cool too, so they should be able to have fun with Apple’s Siri gimmicks.
By Stephen, on June 18th, 2015% I set up my (or rather my wife’s) Amazon Echo last night. I have a hard time not calling the Amazon “Alexa,” because that’s how you address it. You say “Alexa play some rock music” and it does so.
The Echo is a black cylinder that listens for commands and questions and sometimes does what you say. You can ask it about the weather or news, and it will tell you. You can have it read audio books to you. I think I even read it can be a speaker for your phone, but I haven’t tried that yet. It can play music from Amazon Prime or from music you’ve bought through Amazon. It also plays Internet radio stations from IHeartRadio and others. It can remind you of things and add things to lists (shopping and To Do are the defaults).
All these things can be done by your phone, of course, and with Siri (and presumably Cortana and Google Now), you can even use your voice to command many of them. But Echo seems more suited for people that are not as technologically inclined. I’d say Echo’s audience is the over-30 or even over-40 crowd, because anyone younger than that has their phone surgically grafted to their hand and doesn’t need Echo. For those that don’t want to spend time hunting for apps on a tiny screen or choosing playlists, Echo is great!
Last night, my wife was enthralled having it play music from one of her favorite bands (I won’t name it so I don’t shame her 8-). Even though we have CDs and MP3s from that band and she could access them from her iPhone, she never has. Now Echo makes it easy, and she was thrilled. She beamed that I had brought music back into the house, even though we have a fancy surround sound system with many ways of playing music (that she never uses because it’s too complicated).
Echo isn’t perfect. If you ask it a questions that it doesn’t understand, it simply doesn’t respond. At least Siri has the guts to says she didn’t understand something. I asked “Alexa what audiobooks can I play?” Since I have a few Audible audiobooks, and Audible is an Amazon company, this seemed like a reasonable question for Echo to be able to answer, but it listened to the question (as seen by the ring of blue lights as you speak and it listens), then didn’t bother responding. That’s disappointing.
Overall, though, Echo seems really great, particularly for people that don’t want to get music and answers via their phones. I got an early bird deal that made Echo $100, but now it is $200 (or $150 for Prime members), which I think is a little much. You really need Amazon Prime, too, because of the access to the music library, so it is an expensive gadget. But it is a nifty one.
By Stephen, on October 9th, 2014% My shiny new iPhone has shipped, so wanting to know more about when it should be delivered, I signed up for the UPS My Choice service. To verify me, UPS couldn’t text my cell phone for some reason (perhaps the prefix doesn’t match my current address, since I’ve moved without changing the number). So the UPS website offered me a quiz instead. This was a multiple choice quiz with one right answer per group. UPS asked about a street I lived on when I first moved to California more than 25 years ago. They asked about the location of a temporary delivery address we had for a short while during a move 14 years ago. They also asked where a particular prior address from 10 years ago was. This means that UPS has put together a profile of me that tracks back 25 years, yet I never sent them change of address notices or any other way of connecting the addresses. That’s impressive! I’ll refrain from using the word “scary,” which was my first reaction, because they are providing me a service, so keeping track of me doesn’t bother me too much. And, of course, we’re always happy to see the UPS driver because it means something we ordered is arriving!
It is a bit of a cautionary tale, however. If UPS has this kind of profile gleaned from years of delivering packages to me, what must other companies have? UPS may know I’m getting a box from Amazon or Best Buy, but the retailers know what is in the box, so they can develop an even better profile of me. Which leads to the question: Then why are the recommendations on most websites, including Amazon, so crappy? We’ve all heard amazing data mining stories where a retailer knew women were pregnant before their families did, etc., but so far, only Netflix seems to be very good at guessing what I want.
By Stephen, on August 8th, 2013% Now that I’ve had a bit more time to use the Surface Pro, my view of it hasn’t changed. It is nice hardware with imperfect software that has potential to get better. I have had some other thoughts, however.
I believe Windows 8 is a turning point for Microsoft. Microsoft is becoming more and more like Google and Facebook in that their product is not software and operating systems – their product is us. We are not the consumers anymore, but the product. Data about us is what Microsoft is gathering with Windows 8. I can’t quite say who the customers are or how Microsoft will profit from it, but it is pretty clear that we are being aggregated, profiled, and explored more than ever before by Microsoft products. And I don’t think our best user experience is the main goal.
To begin with, the account you use to sign into Windows 8 is a Microsoft web account (a Live account or similar). Since I created a new one to be able to buy the Surface from the Microsoft Store, I chose to use that one. I have another couple of Microsoft accounts, including one I use at work, but since this was a personal purchase, I didn’t want to use it. I’ll discuss issues with the other one later.
So, we log into the machine with our web-based username and password. Microsoft now synchronizes all our account info to the web so that data can follow us from machine to machine. I don’t have another Windows 8 machine, so I don’t know what is synchronized and what isn’t, but I can imagine IE bookmarks, for example. I assume that none of us mind Microsoft being able to store and read our bookmarks, right?
Even more interesting is that there doesn’t seem to be an official Facebook App for Windows 8. Yes, there are lots of 3rd party ones, but I trust them much less than I trust Microsoft. So what is the solution? There is a People App that will show your Facebook friends’ updates. Good, right? No. You can’t just login to Facebook from the App, but you need to associate your Microsoft web ID with your Facebook profile, essentially giving Microsoft access to your Facebook. That’s a showstopper right there, so I haven’t done it and don’t plan to, no matter how great the People App promises to be.
And then there’s the Games App. It will be happy to link up with my Xbox Live account, except my Xbox Live ID is not the same as the Microsoft ID that I used to login to Windows 8. Any way around it? Nope, I’d have to create a separate Windows 8 user for my Xbox Live account, thus fragmenting my identity on the Surface.
So Microsoft really wants to aggregate all our information in one place, under our Microsoft ID. They want our Facebook info, our Xbox info, and who knows what else. And the system won’t work without that info, so it is required to get the best experience from Windows 8. I think I’m just going to treat the Surface Pro as a fancy touch-enabled Windows 7 machine and avoid getting sucked into the Microsoft privacy-reducing ecosystem.
By Stephen, on August 7th, 2013% Because the Microsoft Surface Pro was on sale, I bought one, somewhat for reasons I will explain in a future post, but also because I am a gadget nut and wanted a tablet designed for Windows 8.
My impressions so far are that the Surface Pro is a very solid, speedy machine. The “Type Cover” with the real keyboard is essential and makes typing far superior to an iPad, even an iPad with a Bluetooth keyboard (I recently bought the AmazonBasics one and it works quite well with my iPad). The screen is great, and the pen is a nice addition that I’ve missed from the TabletPC days.
Sadly, there are lots of “almosts” too. The power connector is so similar to Apple’s magnetic power connector that I’m surprised Apple’s lawyers aren’t sharpening their knives, but it isn’t nearly as good. The Apple connector is foolproof and seats itself properly with ease. This one takes lots of fiddling to get it to engage, then usually isn’t quite in the slot, so a little sliding is needed. And that power supply brick is about twice the volume of my MacBook Pro’s one.
The Windows 8 interface is quite good, but some of the apps tend to get confused, particularly Internet Explorer. IE tries to touch-enable websites, particularly MSN, but I was trying to show my wife a story with a slideshow and the browser just stopped responding. I had to kill it (drag a finger from the top of the screen until the app detaches, then drag it to the bottom). IE also can’t seem to load my very generic WordPress website well. It stalls after loading the top of the page. If I hit the stop button, then usually the rest of the page draws and I can continue managing of viewing the site. (As a followup, a little debugging led me to discover that Amazon’s Send to Kindle widget was causing trouble for IE. I’ve disabled it for now.)
Other included apps are often quite finicky about touches of their supposedly touch-enabled buttons. These are minor complaints, but both Android and iOS have better behavior and consistency.
Windows 8 was able to find my printers and configure them without a huge fuss. The Surface Pro works well with my 5GHz WiFi network, which is more than I can say for my Nexus 4 (keeps forgetting to use the 5GHz radio) or my HP laptop which doesn’t even have a 5GHz radio, though it is only 2 years old.
Overall, the Surface Pro is pretty nice, and it should keep improving as Windows 8 is updated. I’m not quite sure I’ll be developing much code on the Surface Pro, but I like having the option to carry an Eclipse development environment around with me.
By Stephen, on March 21st, 2013% Amazon has come out with a nifty WordPress plugin that allows users to send posts from blogs to their Kindles. Of course since I love new tech things, I’ve installed it on this site, though I can’t imagine much demand for it! Sandly, the plugin does not seem to capture images, even though it shows them in the preview of what will be sent. Perhaps that is a bug or a settings problem…
I like my Kindles very much, so as this spreads around the web it should make them even more useful. I imagine recipe sites would be a great use for this functionality, and perhaps some tech sites, though the utility of saving news in a fast-changing environment may be questionable.
By Stephen, on January 17th, 2013% Having all our stuff stored in the “cloud” seems like a great convenience. We can access our movies and sounds via iTunes Match or Amazon’s Cloud Player. While I always download songs when I buy them, it is nice to be able to access them even when I’m not at home on my Mac that holds my iTunes library, so I appreciate these new capabilities. But there is a downside – you don’t control “your items” in the cloud.
The particular instance I am writing about is from the Amazon Cloud Player, but the same problem can and will arise with any cloud provider.
I buy lots of the 99 greatest song compilations when the go on sale on Amazon for $.99, so I’ve amassed a nice collection of classical music. And, as I said above, I always download the songs as soon as I buy them. This is a good thing, because when I looked at the Amazon Cloud Player yesterday, many of those 99 song collections are now closer to 80 or 85 songs. Yes, indeed, there are songs missing from the cloud versions of my albums. How is that possible? Perhaps a publisher decided to pull the songs or something, but the point is, we don’t own our data in the cloud and it can be taken away from us at the whims of the publisher.
Note: I can’t imagine Amazon would be responsible for removing the songs without some pressure from the publisher, because they need to make customers happy, and this clearly does the opposite. Publishers, on the other hand, are in the business of preventing customers (read: annoying likely pirates) from doing anything with anything, as far as I can tell.
The difference here is with virtual goods vs. real goods. Amazon and others can take away songs or movies (try to find Cowboys and Aliens streaming on Amazon or iTunes. Nope, it’s gone), but they can’t take physical goods from you. Steam, for example, can prevent you from playing a game you bought if you just have a Steam client logged in on another computer. Remember Amazon’s Orwell book fiasco? That doesn’t happen with physical books, CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, game discs, etc.
So we have a major disadvantage when paying real money for these virtual goods, in that their availability can be limited in the future without us having any say. We do this because of convenience of the network-based delivery of these items. For the most part, we pay the same price as we do for the physical thing, too, so we’re making bad choices and the publishers are making way more money because they don’t even need to ship a product.
And it is getting worse. How many games on physical disc now require you to register via Steam or Origin or their own web service, which then limits your rights to play the game where and when you want? Almost everything I’ve bought recently for PC is that way. The consoles are still mostly free of that oppression, but it is coming, so publishers can stop the used game market, since they don’t get any money from that.
So what do we do? First, we need to beware of virtual goods and be aware of their limitations. Second, perhaps we should push for more rights for consumers when it comes to virtual goods licenses. Transfer of licenses, as you can do with real property would be a start. Demands that services like Steam should be able to prevent simultaneous use of a single game while allowing different purchased games be played on different machines under the same account. We should get our rights back, rather than being treated like criminals by these publishers and virtual goods providers.
By Stephen, on April 1st, 2012% I gave my mother a new iPad yesterday in the hopes that it would get her back to reading email and possibly responding to it. Sometime I will write a rant about how lousy the iPad is for the elderly, but not today.
I read all the stories about how the new iPad gets hot, particularly when playing games. Based on my experience yesterday, it gets surprisingly warm when doing pretty much nothing. I set my mother up with email and a few other things and showed her how to browse the web, and before long, the iPad was noticeably warm. Not hot, but unpleasantly warm and uncomfortable. My iPad2 doesn’t do anything like that. So even when not playing Infinity Blade or other graphics-intensive games, the electronics and battery in the new iPad really heat up.
I put one of the magnetic covers on, so I am hoping that my mother folds it around back when she’s using the iPad and that will prevent her fingers from becoming too toasty.
I am curious if this is going to become a problem for Apple, because the heat is surprisingly excessive.
Anyway, I hope my mom uses the iPad and reconnects with her friends and relatives using it.
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