“if I were to run a publication, I’d have a few rules… just avoiding stuff that’s stupid, but that lots of publications do.”
Brent Simmons - 23 November 2011
“I know my father would have understood it. But his father? I don’t think he would have had the language for it. That’s how fast our culture is evolving.” — Dave Winer
“We lacked the ‘benefits’ of age and experience. We didn’t know we couldn’t do it.” —
Ed Roberts, who DID invent the first personal computer
“For most people, every other computer in their life feels like work, and they don’t need another one.”- Marco Arment on Amazon’s Kindle Fire
A Facebook friend is curious why Steve Job’s life has gotten so very much attention, with his untimely death. This was my personal response:
As a lifelong student of history and technology, I’m fascinated by Jobs, because historians yet unborn will be writing about him (and school children will read about him) the way we still study Edison or Ford. Although human advancement is a collaborative enterprise, some individuals have the vision and drive to advance the quality of progress for all of us. The rest of us are drawn to such mojo, wanting to grok (or even glimpse) the mechanism of greatness. It’s a mystery on par with “What is love?”
Engineering Flowchart
#universal #troubleshooting
“Apple undertakes major new initiatives only after figuring out a new way that shows that everyone already in the market is doing it wrong.” — John Gruber
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I can’t think of any reason to teach little children to use a Windows or Mac computer. Introduce them to the future with a truly personal computer: iPad.
Why not teach them to use a “real” computer? Well, why not teach them to use a typewriter? Looking at the combination of hardware and software which we’ve come to think of as a normal computer, I think it will feel like an IBM Selectric typewriter, by the time today’s toddlers graduate from college.
At this point, some of you are shaking your head thinking, no way is that cute little iPad gonna replace the powerful computer with which I do real work. People who think that way are just one of the reasons the change I’m predicting will happen gradually, while today’s 3 year olds are growing up. A bigger reason is we’ll have to wait while tablet computing hardware and software evolves and realizes its potential. It’s still early days; for years after the first desktop computers had become available, most desks were still dominated by a typewriter or blotter pad.
iPads, iPhones and Android smartphones are already selling by the tens of millions, every quarter. It’s taken Apple 2 years just to catch up with the demand for iPads. You already see executives using these to work, on the road and at home. At first, many entered the workplace via the backdoor and personal purchases, not the IT department. That’s exactly how it happened with the first personal computers. But I also know of IT departments issuing these tablet and pocket computers, to do real work, often replacing traditional business tools, like laptops and Blackberries.
Think how few typewriters you see in the workplace, today. That’s the future of desktop computers running the Windows or Mac operating system. If Microsoft is still selling an operating system named “Windows” in a couple decades, I bet it will resemble Windows 7 about as much as Windows looks like MS-DOS (Microsoft’s first operating system, for those of you who didn’t use computers 20+ years ago).
To be clear, I’m not predicting that products from Apple will dominate all computing in the next 10-20 years. The computers we use are going to change radically, but it’s too early to predict with certainty which company will sell most of them to us.
I am predicting that keyboard & mouse based operating systems, like Windows and OS X (or their successors), will gradually become more rare, like typewriters. Of course, some tasks will still be better done with ol’ skool tools. Some of us will need a more complicated interface to do what we do. Just as many businesses and some individuals need trucks; but most people drive a car.
And most of us learn to drive a car first, before a few of us learn to drive an 18-wheeler. Which is why I say, if you want your young child to learn to drive the computer of tomorrow, today, you give them an iPad. It has redefined what personal computing feels like, and more closely resembles the future than any other device yet available.
All these thoughts stem from a conversation with Glenn Tucker, last night, about his (cute!) 3 year old. And from remembering how and when my son first learned to operate a computer (without a mouse, nor a graphical interface) and Nintendo (with complex combinations of button clicks) — and which of those early skills remain relevant two decades later.
BTW, I am predicting that I will be one of those people still using the “typewriter” in 20 years. But most of my non-technical friends will be relieved that they never need to drive a big truck to do their work or manage their life. In fact, they won’t even have to use a stick shift.
If you’re already using QuickBooks for your business accounting, it may interest you to know that Intuit is about to release a new version for Mac (as others have reported).
It’s too soon to see actual reviews of this application, but I haven’t heard anything about Intuit fixing the biggest problem with QuickBooks: lock in. QuickBooks provides no real export option for your data. QuickBooks doesn’t even share data between its Mac and Windows versions! This means that when your business accounting needs change in the future, switching to better tools is going to be very difficult and time consuming. This is exactly the kind of automation that computers should do better than humans; but Intuit forces you to do it manually. (Alternately, you could hire a geek, like me, to create a customized export tool for you; but this gets expensive.)
However, those of you already locked into QuickBooks might want to upgrade to a more comfortable cage, when this new version comes out in a few weeks. You’ll need a relatively new Mac running the current (Lion 10.7) or previous (Snow Leopard 10.6.7) version of Mac OS X.
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“It isn’t until a technology becomes boring that it becomes truly useful. Because it’s the things people do with tech that are interesting… you want the stadium to be boring — so the players can be exciting!” — Dave Winer
“If you care about your online presence, you must own it. I do, and that’s why my email address has always been at my own domain…” — Marco Arment
Who’s Google’s customer? You? Really? When’s the last time you paid Google for anything?
Advertisers are Google’s customer. What do they sell to advertisers? They sell you. Or, at least, they rent you out, or provide access to you.
If you aren’t paying for it, you aren’t the customer. You are the product. Keep this in mind, as you use and rely on free services like Facebook, Google or Twitter.
(Reminded of this by John Gruber.)