iPad innovation

Here’s one really cool thing I have noticed about the iPad. It seems like no big deal, but it is so helpful. And it’s one of those things that nobody would ever think of, but everyone should.

If wherever you are perching the iPad (a dock or stand, etc.) does not accommodate the charging cable, just simply turn the iPad so that the cable is up, and the top of the iPad is down. The screen should rotate with the changes so that it stays readable, and most apps should be readable as well. Simple, yet genius. This is why people are so fiercely loyal to Apple.

Google Voice not intercepting voicemail for iPhone

· http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/voice/thread?tid=06b28869a293df1b&hl=en

· http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/voice/thread?tid=56a6385ce48d6e5d&hl=en

· http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/voice/thread?tid=1cb861553cb65a33&hl=en

· http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/voice/thread?tid=0d3905d1eabcb546&hl=en

· http://www.knowyourcell.com/apple/apple-iphone-3g/iphone-3g-guides/479280/how_to_set_up_google_voice_voicemail_on_the_iphone_3g.html

· http://www.clicksandbits.com/2009/03/21/forward-iphone-to-google-voice/

I’ve had a problem ever since I got the iPhone, whereby sometimes voicemail ended up at Google Voice where I wanted it, but sometimes AT&T intervened, and callers were greeted with a message that I had not set up my mailbox, which I hadn’t. I figured it had something to do with whether the phone was on the network, out of network, powered off, etc. As I have Google Voice answering for two phones potential complications were doubled.

I don’t remember if this problem extends back as far as GrandCentral days. However at some point GrandCentral/Google Voice did something about this. They added some functionality in the Voice settings which walks you through forwarding Voicemail only to Google Voice. So now it doesn’t matter whose voicemail wins the race, they all point to Google Voice. I expect this will be quite a boon for my interpersonal relationships.

iPad WiFi issues appear to be fixed by changing screen brightness

http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/11/apple-promises-to-fix-ipad-wifi-issues-in-future-software-update/
http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/07/apple-confirms-ipad-issues-with-dual-band-wifi-routers-offers-f/

I have had an iPad WiFi issue since pretty much day 1. That is, WiFi is 1 bar, and very very s l o w. The bars appear to go back up when I drop and re-add the access point, but once out of the control panel app it goes right back down to one bar.

I should note I have 3 access points – two operating in bridge mode (where they use the same SID).

After I found these articles and did some reading up on the issue, I did go to the control panel and push the brightness bar up one click, while leaving it on auto. Since then, as best as I can tell, I have had full bars for WiFi, and speed more like what I am used to and would expect. I need to use it more and keep track of the bars to really be sure, but at this point it seems like there is something to these claims.

The more things change, the more they remain the same

I had a strange feeling when the Cold War ended. Something like being lost. Sure it was great that we weren’t going to be blown to bits any second, but man what a change.

I had the same feeling as the tech landscape has changed the last couple of years. When I first became aware of the computer industry, the titans were raging - Apple, IBM, Oracle, and Sun and their iconic leaders aligned against Microsoft in a battle royal, an epic struggle. Talk about haters – Sun’s McNealy, Apple’s Jobs, Oracle’s Ellison slung some memorable comments in the press.

But that battle petered out. Microsoft is no longer the feisty newcomer trying to teach big iron how to play their own game. Now the tables have turned and they are the entrenched monolith trying to survive obsolescence, frequently called the “new IBM”. McNealy and Sun have both retired from the game. Ellison has gone underground, Oracle becoming if anything stronger and bigger, but no longer boisterous.

But the quiet was eerie. The tech industry needs personality. It needs drama. It needs events to record passing time against. It’s like how the national news will find a key picture or two of a family or a person and show it over and over, to help everyone identify with a disaster like a flood. Sure tons of people are effected, but that one are two are the landmark we use for remembrance.

Well now all of a sudden we have it once again, and in spades, in the mobile computing space. Mr. Jobs, some would say last man standing from the initial conflicts, is taking all the new kids out behind the woodshed for some schooling. He’s got Adobe over his knee on Flash and dev kits, though some are saying this is pure spite over a slight to the Mac platform from a decade ago. He’s calling his ally Google, who had the best apps on the iPhone and a member on his board at one point , some really nasty names. One of his disgruntled ex-employees has doppelganger-ed Palm and now HP into facing off against him. And he’s even found time to take the battle to juggernaut Amazon’s home turf in the book category with the iPad. It’s the wild wild West.

It’s tough to say what would be best for consumers here, competition or cooperation. I’d really love to see some standards develop around PIM (contacts, calendars, etc.), syncing, mobile web-browsing. On the other hand, these guys are going to duke it out by throwing billions of dollars into one-up-man-ship. Look at the acceleration of development of mobile phones going on right now, and compare it to the years RIM Blackberry and Microsoft CE let the market languish.

I’m going to go pop some popcorn.

iTunes 9.1.1 update and Windows 7 – fails again

http://iponderus.com/2010/04/itunes-91-update-failed-on-windows-7.html

Today brings another iTunes update. Once again I tried to use the updater, downloaded the ~90mb of files, and had it fail close to the end.

At least I remembered what had worked last time, as it wasn’t so long ago. I went to Apple’s site and downloaded the full 64bit iTunes installer. I ran that. It did throw the error below 3 times, but I was able to get past it by clicking retry.

This makes the 3rd time the iTunes update has failed for me.

Next version of Ubuntu in two days

http://www.ubuntu.com

Ubuntu 4.10 LTS is due 4/29/2010.

iTunes 9.1 update failed on Windows 7

I just noticed I never wrote this up. The bummer is I have lost the information on the error and the fix. I’ll try to muddle through anyhow :).

This was the iTunes update for the iPad. Well no matter how I tried to install it, it kept failing.

I googled it a million different ways, and though there were a lot of hits on “iTunes update failed to install”, nothing really matched my syptoms, nor did any of the fixes people recommended fix my problem.

I think what I ended up doing was going to Apple’s main site and just downloading the regular download of iTunes/Quicktime, and running that.

I never did find out what the problem was, however I should note this is the second time I have had it. I don’t remember how I got out of it the first time either.

But I did want to post this anyhow, just to add it to the pile of hits to validate that yes, there’s something wrong here.

[Update] I did find the error description, “errors occurred while installing the updates. if the problem persists, choose Tools > download only and try installing manually”.

Buy Technet instead of Windows 7

http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/totw/technet.asp

If you need two or more full copies of Windows 7, then you can save money and get lots of other software thrown in, by getting TechNet. Wow. Paul has all the details.

Zune subscription - Error C00D0BBE - Zune software can't verify usage rights

File under “I hope you can learn from my mistakes”

I had downloaded 3 or 4 albums for a certain band using the Zune subscription. I noticed that the release year was all the same for the albums, and it was not the year that most of them came out originally. There are several possible explanations for this, for instance reissue. I didn’t even bother to track that down. However I wanted to listen to them in order, so I changed the release year in the Zune media player, which is as simple as clicking on the picture of the album and choosing edit from the resulting context menu. I would guess this probably affects the mp3 file properties as well as the Zune metadata database.

Unfortunately I didn’t start to listen to them right away, thus it took me a really long time to connect the error message I got when I tried to play them later, “Error C00D0BBE - Zune software can't verify usage rights”, with the fact that I had changed the album/song properties.

Once I did I just deleted the albums and re-downloaded them, which fixed the problem right away. It’s possible just changing the year back might have fixed them but I doubt it, and didn’t want to mess with that.

Even though I understand what caused the problem, I still consider this a bug or a shortcoming.

The main reason why you should get an Ipad and/or an iPhone

…or iPhone 4.0 versus the JooJoo pad

• http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362393,00.asp
• http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/09/ensos-zenpad-is-vaporware-get-refunds-while-they-last/

Here’s the thing about Apple. They understand that just like you use your car to get to work, your kitchen appliances to make food, and your tv for entertainment, your computer is there for a reason.

That’s not to say that they can’t be expensive and elegant. You can get in your car on the weekend and just drive for the pleasure of driving. Or you may wash your toaster just because you like to see it shine.

But when the tv goes on the fritz right when you favorite show comes on, you don’t get any enjoyment out of flipping through channels of snow, just because you have 500 channels. Much less are you even going to pry the back off the thing to fix it, just because it has screws.

The fact that the Apple mobile OS is tightly controlled and carefully limited, compared to Android or Windows Mobile, is by design. They see that while that thing is a computer, it’s also an electronic appliance like a car or a toaster or a tv, and you didn’t buy it so you could tap on it, you bought it so you could do something with it.

What I’m trying to get at is philosophical. For 99% of the human population, a computer is not it’s own reason for being. Sure us geek developers love open platforms. But they are a horrible user experience.

The iPad, and the iPhone before it, exist totally in a class by themselves. They do what they effortlessly and smoothly. All of the gimmicky animations are actually calculated to make the user feel confident about what is happening. It’s a feedback loop. Yes they don’t deliver multitasking until the 4th gen. But everything they did deliver worked like butter.

Compare the iPad to the two tablets above, in terms of polish and finish. These things matter folks, because they help your computer feel like the stereo or the microwave. You may love your microwave, but you don’t want to program on it in Pascal, you want to heat something. You don’t expect your oven to come missing two out of four burners.

And that’s one thing I saw in the iPhone OS 4.0 preview that everyone seems to be missing. Touches like the utter simplicity of the taskbar for running programs. My grandmother could figure that out in two seconds. The amazingly-focused animations for the folder functionality. Clearly they spent a lot of time and money getting that just right so that anybody can see what is happening when they create a folder, and when they open a folder. The visuals are somehow an analog to what we do with physical objects like paper folders in the real world, not an exact duplication, but you feel like you clicked in a button or turned the page of a paper.

If you are complaining about this or that missing feature still, or if you don’t understand why they implemented background apps the way they did, then the iPhone and the iPad are not for you. Go ahead and get a half-broken open platform device. I’m no Apple devotee, but I applaud them for their priorities.