Nobody Wants A Stylus

Fusion Ads

Saturday April 10, 2010  

I was quite surprised to recieve several emails about the removal of the Fusion Ads from my website a few weeks ago. It surprised me for two reasons:

1. I haven’t posted here for more than a year, so I was touched that folks still had me on their feedreaders at all, and
2. that you not only still read this site, you read this site in a browser and cared enough about the ads I was running to comment on them.

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, because I always knew my readers were awesome people with an eye for detail. This just proves it.

But I was honestly touched that people wanted to know where the ads had gone. It speaks a lot towards the quality of Fusion’s product that folks noticed their absence.

I took the ads down out of respect for the Fusion team and the great business they’ve built. It’s honestly that simple. Nobody Wants A Stylus has always had a small readership – hundreds, not thousands – and I was very flattered to be invited to be part of their launch. Honored, even.

Unfortunately, life happened and I haven’t posted here very much. Maybe someday I’ll be free to tell the whole tale, both the good and the bad. But the bad is best forgotten, and the the good things are testaments to themselves.

I’d rather dwell on the good things. My son, who you may remember broke my phone many years ago, is now in preschool. He has a baby sister, 8 months old. My indomitable father is now a cancer survivor.

All good things. But not things to write about on an iPhone site.

Throughout the dwindling pageviews, the Fusion guys were great and supportive. Not just great business partners, but great human beings too.

But I’m in business too, and I know that farming old content is not the Fusion way. Quality matters. And since this is, even with recent posts aside, a dormant blog, I pulled the ads.

That’s it. No drama. Just mutual respect and an acceptance of the situation.

So I said this privately on Twitter, but let me say it here, publically: it was an honor running Fusion Ads on this site, and I hope we can work together again some day. The Fusion team is a class act and I’m terribly proud of their success.

And as for you, faithful reader? Thanks for sticking with me. It means more to me than you know.

Commonplace

Thursday March 11, 2010  

At some point in the last three years, something strange and wonderful happened. The iPhone went from being a miracle to being mundane, from a device that legitimately transformed the way we interact with other through the internet to a best-of-breed device.

The plaything of the technical elite, of the early adopter, of those who were crazy enough to get a phone that didn’t support MMS (gasp!) to a very good phone. Best out there? You betcha, by a longshot. But other manufacturers are finally catching up, realizing that design does matter.

I’ve watched how the members of my family have changed their interactions with the iPhone, as well. My son will be 5 this year, and he’s an expert at using the damn thing. He can navigate to his favorite movies or games without any issues. No big deal, right?

It is a long, long time since he smashed my iPhone to bits.

In the time since the iPhone was launched, I have bought… a lot of them. For family and as replacements. I’m currently using a black 32gb 3GS. It’s not a big deal, it’s still an iPhone, right? Just with enough room for a lot of movies. A lot of movies! It’s a constant companion, much like yours is, I suppose. I’ve taken to blogging a lot on it while feeding my baby at 4 in the morning – not that you’d know it from here, cough, cough, sorry about that – and it’s a vital lifeline to the outside world.

It’s not that there’s no sense in wonder in the iPhone anymore. Far from it. I see it every time someone picks up one for the first time and finally convinces themselves to make the switch. But it’s there for other phones, too, now — the Droid is a worthy challenger, even if I don’t like it personally. Having phones that do more for you than just take calls is the norm, not the exception.

But it doesn’t leave a lot to write about.

There are an absurd number of apps in the App Store now. I don’t use most of them. Sometimes there are specialized apps that catch my attention, but really — I don’t need them. I need a web browser, email, maybe a twitter app, maybe a blogging app… but really not much more than that. Friends recommend apps, sometimes they’re really good, sometimes they’re not so good. Apps are traded around by word of mouth, and sometimes they’re the right fit, but often they’re not.

That’s okay. There might be an app for that, but you probably don’t need it — unless you really do need it, in which case, bravo!

I’ve given up on trying to argue with people about the merits of the iPhone. There isn’t any point. It’s not a fledgling phone, trying to break a million units, leaving everyone wondering if it could possibly succeed. It has succeeded, in a huge way. When people at work ask me about it now, it’s just a one-line answer: “this is the single best phone I have ever owned, and I have no intentions of switching.” Ooo! Sometimes it’s a two-line answer: “I have owned one since it was released and have never regretted the choice.”

Which is true. I have never regretted owning it.

It sits with me now, never far from me. I took a vacation with it recently and captured great shots using the new camera. The video capabilities are great. The best camera you can have is the one you bring with you, after all.

But there’s nothing earthshattering about this, no great revelations. The iPhone does its job. It does it well.

It is a commonplace item that does what it is supposed to do very, very well.

I (obviously) don’t have much to say about the iPhone these days. Still have it, still use it, still love it, just don’t have much to say about it. Sorry about that.

So.

What’s new with y’all?

The Future Is Now

Monday May 25, 2009  

So I went to see Star Trek this weekend — I know, you’re totally shocked, right? — and found myself marveling once again at my iPhone. It’s been a while, not because the phone is any less amazing, but it’s now an old friend, and I sadly take the amazing for granted.

See, there’s a great scene in Star Trek involving an antique corvette and the Beastie Boys’ Sabotage. It’s a great use of the song for the soundtrack and a welcome step forward for the Trek universe.

But the amazing thing was that, having the song stuck in my head for the better part of two days now, all I had to do to buy it was fire up the iTunes store on my iPhone and buy it. I don’t know why I didn’t have it before, but I didn’t, and it took all of 20 seconds to find it, buy it, and put it into my playlists. When I sync back with my computer it will go into my general library.

Simple, but very cool. Isn’t living in the future great?

iPhone Copy and Paste

Tuesday March 17, 2009  

I’m not going to make any predictions about today’s iPhone 3.0 Special Event. Not only is my track record at such things is abysmal, but I’m also a wait-and-see kinda guy. In a few hours we’ll know what all the hullabaloo is about.

That said… there’s a persistent rumor that the iPhone will get cut and paste. (Finally, some may say.) I’m really of two minds about this.

On the one hand, there are times I would really like to copy text. I’m not sure how it will work cross-application, but it if it’s anything like the (funny but thoughtful) mockup Adam Lisagor put together after the original iPhone was released:

iPhone Copy and Paste from lonelysandwich on Vimeo.

… then I think it will satisfy a lot of the people who have been asking for it since 2007.

On the other hand… I’ve gotten along fine without copy and paste for two years. I don’t want to start yelling CHANGE IS BAD OH NOES from the window, but if there’s a tradeoff between more functionality and performance, I know that I’ll take performance. I’ve not been happy with the responsiveness of the 2.x codebase on the 1st Generation hardware, and I don’t expect 3.0 to improve it. (2.x seems faster on the 3G hardware, but I suspect that’s my observational bias. Anecdotes are not data.)

Anyhow: Cut and Paste on the iPhone.

I guess we’ll all see if it’s there in a few hours.

(Video via marco.org.)

Update: Well, Cut, Copy, and Paste is in 3.0, and it looks nice. Let’s see how it works out.

On Profanity and App Store Rejections

Tuesday March 10, 2009  

Apple rejected Loren Brichter’s Tweetie 1.3 today for containing offensive words in search results. In the comments on the linked picture, we find out that another new app, Human Weather, was rejected for the same reason.

Human Weather is now available because they implemented a profanity filter. Which is beyond ridiculous when you think about it, given how much vulgarity and porn you can find with Mobile Safari.

Don’t get me wrong. Most everyone involved loves the app store. This isn’t a fundamental flaw with the model, or suddenly the one piece of evidence that turns the App Store into an evil, scary thing.

But seriously, Apple. Fucking knock this shit off.

(Via @tj on Twitter.)

Update: Looks like Tweetie is in!

A Simple iPhone

Monday March 2, 2009  

I love a simple iPhone. I wish I still had one.

Here’s the thing: with the evolution of the iPhone platform and the introduction of web clips and the App Store, my iPhone has gotten cluttered. Very cluttered. There are screens full of applications that I haven’t used in months — including some very good applications!

That’s the thing about clutter. It’s not about the quality of the thing that takes up the space, it’s the utility.

I had the opportunity to play with my mother-in-law’s iPhone 1.0 last week. That’s right, the original software from 2007, with the blue camera tint and original Calculator icon. Core Location? App Store? iTunes Store? Dream on. Just three rows of icons, a black row, and another row of icons.

Were there things I missed? Sure. Core Location and decent camera coloring would have been nice. But, surprisingly the phone was even more a joy to use than my own. Perhaps it’s the nostalgia talking, but the lack of clutter made the phone feel more useful.

I realized how much I needed to declutter my iPhone.

Decluttering your iPhone is much like decluttering your closet. To steal a page from Peter Walsh, if I don’t use it, or it doesn’t ‘fit’, then it doesn’t matter how good of an app it is — it’s clutter. And it needs to go.

I resisted on a lot of the applications. There are some that I thought would be useful in the right situation, like Easy Wi-Fi for AT&T iPhones or Night Camera. But that situation never comes (I have never used the Easy Wi-Fi application) or is so rare that it’s really just a waste of mental space on the screen.

So out they go (with a nice high rating, naturally.)

If you’re having trouble letting some of these utilities go, just remember — you have the App Store on your phone now, and can download it again in a few minutes.

There are other apps that I know other folks adore, but just aren’t right for me. Pandora Radio is a good example of this. It’s a great application, but I don’t listen to a lot of music on my iPhone (or in my car). Pandora has sat on Screen 6 since I downloaded it, and I’ve launched it exactly twice.

Unless those hypothetical other people are using your phone too, these kinds of apps need to go, too.

(Oddly, I find that I do use Shazam to identify songs I hear in passing. It’s one of those applications that works like magic, and I love trotting it out as part of the dog-and-pony show.)

Web clips are just as bad as native apps in contributing to iPhone clutter. I haven’t read the excellent 538 since November, so why do I still have it on Screen 3?

Also, why did I have both Amazon Mobile and my Amazon wish list bookmarked? Or Twitterrific, Hahlo, and Mobile Twitter on a single screen? Don’t get me wrong — these are all good apps, but in most cases the website is sufficient.

It’s unfortunate that the managing the layout of the iPhone Springboard is so difficult. It’s maddening to get everything the way you like it on the device, only to have iTunes add deleted applications back on your next sync. I quite enjoyed the App Sorting in iTunes concept video:

The only constructive thing I have to add to that idea is that I’d love to be able to remove some of the default applications. These aren’t bad applications, they’re just not what I want on my phone. Stocks, Notes, and Contacts: it’s not you, it’s me. I’m just not that into you.

Decluttering anything is tough. It requires you to envision how you want your life to be, and how you want to interact with your environment. It makes you look at those 7… 8… okay, 9 screens full of icons and ask, do they really add any value to my everyday life?

Because face it: you deserve tools that make you happy to use them.