Maybe this resemblance makes me see the mouse cursor as something that does not belong there anymore. Swiping, tapping, page-scrolling and so on are the enemies of the cursor. When migrating to a gesture based UI you lose the focus of a cursor and concentrate on areas, tabs and apps. The spot goes out, the zone comes in.

The only place a cursor is irreplaceable is in-app usage: when dealing with fonts, lines, dots, pixels and millimeters you cannot use zones, but spots.

I know Jobs is very found of his invention (the mouse), but migrating to a gesture interface should imply the cursor to be repositioned as precision instrument instead of a main interaction denominator.

You may be thinking the cursor could be dethroned by gestures and touch in iOS because in iOS you touch where and what you see. But having no better ideas never stopped Apple.

Using a touch pad instead of a touch screen can be much easier if correct markers are defined.

There’s an old joke about the Albanian virus. This virus was just an email message reading: “I’m an Albanian virus, so I can’t do any harm to your computer. Please be so kind and delete some of the important system files on my behalf. Thank you for understanding!“.

The idea is that, within hacking relation, there shouldn’t really be such a big intellectual or financial difference between the hacker and the “hackee”.

As John Gruber pointed out, there’s a plethora of Albanian viruses in Apple’s history. The last scam is more of a mass marketing tool than a software one: your Mac might get attacked, therefore you have to worry. What can Apple do about it? Well, there is a thing they can do: build an “Apple antivirus”.

What should an Apple antivirus do

It should be just a very nice a popup message saying: “You are completely out of trouble if you keep the system in our administration instead of any other app’s. We cannot guarantee its good functionality otherwise, therefore we strongly advise you not to manually remove any of the system files after purposefully suppressing our administrative control“.

This message is not new, Apple sent it when they had to declare the iOS’ jailbreak legal. There is no jailbroken iOS that is 100% risk free, as much as there’s no virgin iOS at any risk. (The main reason legalizing the jailbreak was a bad news for Apple was that moment away they had to manually foster the user)

“You might…, therefore you have to…”

That’s the usual bullshit the pharmaceutical companies are using for selling their drugs since the beginning of time. “If you feel an itch, there’s a (infinitesimal!) chance you have a terminal disease, therefore you have to use this medicine, which we happen to sell for a huge discount and for a very limited time. Hurry up, tomorrow you might be dead!”

Although you may not be in their target, you won’t believe how efficient this message can be! The immediate effect is a lot of people exposed to this message feel that specific itch in less than 20 seconds. The prophecy starts fulfilling! This the most important step after which you’re starting to feel the urge to have that medicine.

Let’s see what “at risk” means

I can think of two meanings of this word.

First, you can say “I discovered this unknown open door to your system that could be used for malicious code insertion”. Windows users are very well aware of this type of risk, it’s become a day-to-day risk. Google found the other day its Android users were exposed to the same type of risk, too.

This is, let’s say, a natural risk: you see the hole, evaluate the risk then patch the hole. That specific risk is specifically addressed, then it just stops existing. The most important trait of this type of risk is somebody has already discovered the hole in the system, documented it and assessed it. The hole exists.

A second meaning of the risk is the one used in the example with the pharmaceutical companies: “There may be a risk (read: there is nothing that would logically forbid its existence), therefore you’re already exposed to it (read: be very afraid)”.

In this case, “your disease” has not been diagnosed and it does not exist, although there is a logical possibility to get it in the future.

From this second perspective, the systems devide in two: those that should consider this secondary risk as a threat, and those that shouldn’t. (This is a distinction between the system that have to be built flawlessly and those which just have to be “not flawed”, but not necessarily built / born flawless.)

What kind of systems should consider a theoretical flaw as a threat

The answer here is very simple and I won’t digress: only the systems that are built incapable or can become incapable of feedback, that is, only the systems that lack any internal regulatory procedures, the static systems.

For example: a diamond should be flawless (static), while a dog shouldn’t (although a no-bad-habbits dog is better- dynamic).

Any static system that is unable to assess a risk and take specific actions should be built flawless, therefore the potential holes need to be considered before its creation and their appearance. (The humankind exposed to aviary flue is a good example of a static system, while a single person is a good example of a dynamic one; humankind is a system without feedback, yet).

For the sake of your sanity, let’s conclude that most of the complex systems like a human being or a computer OS are not static systems, but dynamic, which is, they have the inner capability of assessing risks and take appropriate actions (no matter these actions are predefined or adaptive).

So, where’s the bullshit?

When the pharmaceutical company addressed you, it treated you as a part of two different systems while it knew only one system part is capable of acting and understanding.

It treated you both as an element of the humankind (when it showed you the statistical risk of an irreversible diseases or death) and as an individual, when it expected an action from you and not from the whole humankind.

To say it simpler it’s like this: “We all suffer from hunger, therefore we have to eat you, Jim“. Can you feel this incorrect “therefore”?

This is only the first half of the bullshit, though. The other implied half says that your risk as an individual is equal in quality to the risk of the humankind.

The humankind, as a static system, cannot take any risk when considering a global vaccine, for example. But if that vaccine is meant to prevent some local Amazonian flue while you never left, say, Russia, there’s no much sense having that vaccine, is it?

Equalizing the risk potentials of a dynamic system to a static one’s is the second mistake. It’s like saying “the risk of drowning in the sea is the same for both humans and dolphins”.

Back to our business, the human body as well as a computer OS are complex systems that only have to not be flawed in their lifetime, without having to be flawless by design.

Mutatis mutandis, “your Apple OS might be at risk” should never be considered a threat to the OS integrity unless the flaw already exists and the risk is quantifiable, as the OS was not build as a static and inert system, but as a dynamic one.

À quoi bon?

If you are unable to correctly measure a risk or keep it enclosed in its proper category, you’re life will be uglier.

But this has nothing to do with my story; I just wanted to tell you the joke with the Albanian virus.

Bloomberg Businessweek +

“Bloomberg Businessweek +” for iPad is a real treat to the eye! Extremely friendly, simple, readable and, gush, you actually don’t have to be a rocket scientist to pay for it!
I hope Murdoch will fire the guys doing The Daily’s UI and NYT will learn some product placement. It’s just a hope.

They managed to build a device that you can easily forget about, especially when you are using it heavily. The paradox is the hardware is working so fine compared to user’s expectations, thus you can dive deeper into what you were doing, i.e.: into your favorite apps.

The main user focus is on the app utility and beauty, and not on the device; the second one disappears, letting the developers to do their magic, in a direct connection to the end-user.

Speaking of magic, what’s undeniable magic about iPhone or iPad is their apps and how well they’re running, and not the devices. The devices have a single scope: to let the user dive and be captured by magic, novelty and high creativity which are the result of thousands of professional, hard working and sometimes genius developers, willing to please, help, amaze and bewilder the user. If they don’t succeed in any of those, they don’t make money, therefore they starve.

Apple’s magic is just a word Jobs’ using to prepare the user for what’s beyond the hardware specs: the real magic of the beautiful, extreme designed, addictive apps.

Going back to beginning: when diving into an app, the only task the device should be taking care of, is to let you do whatever the developer lets you do within the app’s universe, not limited by the device. In front of the user, the relation between the app and the hardware (or OS) is one between the master and the slave. Of course, this is the last mile to the user, and there are many other types of relation between the devs and Apple, but this is not our concern. All I need to know is that in front of my eyes, the app has to absolutely rule over the device and make it do whatever the dev intended, never ever less. Should anywhere in this journey to me the device fail or should the app ask too much from it, or should they not communicate well enough to know from each other’s limitation, then my user experience is ruined.

The real magic of Apple is, mark my words, to make the iPhone disappear just in front of your eyes thus clearing the path from the dev to his user.

Guys, are you stupid?! Google is building all the results! placing a result anyware in their own structure is a fucking decoy!

Yeah!

Well, that’s a bit exaggerated:

1. Fragmentation means letting everybody hack and mod the Android OS until it looks and behaves cool enough to be sold (read “until it resambles iOS”).

2. Being able to hack and mod an OS means that OS is open.

Conclusion: “fragmentation” means “open”.

Now, Google says they are closing the OS to avoid fragmentation; this is “they are closing the OS in order to avoid letting it open”.

Yeah!

Compared to Apple’s outrageous 30% from the same service, Google approaches the issue in a much more humane and thoughtful way.

You should also remember it’s only around 50k of the total apps in Market that are paid apps (compared to AppStore’s 200k!), therefore Google puts a lot less pressure on the devs and service providers…

Amazon, Netflix (if it actually starts working on Android), all the online news services, like NYT, BBC, The Daily and everybody else providing in-app purchase for Android will find this small fee benign and suited for their common objectives.

I’m also confident this is the correct approach Apple should have taken some months ago when they decided to cut the wings of all the publishers, editors and developers that were misleadingly attracted by Apple’s initial proposition of free in-app purchase; instead, Apple went for the unattractive, show-stopping, devs-ruining 30%.

chipotle:

I’m increasingly irritated by the way Google uses the word open. When I think of open I think of Linux and FreeBSD, but that’s just one sense of open—the open source, or if you prefer, “free software” sense.

There are also open standards, like TCP/IP, ASCII and USB: published, openly available…

“Let me be clear, as I have long said, my problem with Google is not that it discriminates against content in its ranking process, my problem is that it has consistently and blatantly misrepresented to the public that their search results were objective and unbiased when they knew they were not objective or unbiased — all to build up trust of an unsuspecting public.”

and

“The largest subjective bias in Google’s search engine is that it is based primarily on the prevalence of web-links, not on objective external assessments of authority like audited subscriber audience size numbers or objective surveys of brand recognition”

roboteti:

As you may or may not know, this is my 8th grade year. My school goes to 8th grade, so this is my gaduation year. It would be worth mentioning that I don’t have any nerdy friends at school. I’m the only nerd in the whole 8th grade. I have an iPad. I’m the only person in my class who has one (at…

90wpm:

I’m an iPhone junkie. And, until recently, I had little to no use for the iPad. Thankfully, I’m not required to check mail on my mobile devices. I’m at my laptop for most of the day, and on the subway I usually stick to Reeder, Instapaper , and NYTimes on my iPhone 4, since after using the…

Competitor company CEO: “How come Apple makes so much money?”

Competitor company Marketing Director: “They’re building innovative products and these products are very well marketed”

CEO: “What’s the most innovative device they’ve built?”

MD: “iPad”

CEO: “Let’s make iPads then!”

This is where everything is already lost.

There are 2 huge mistakes here:

1. The CEO should have known his / her company needed to follow how was Apple doing, not what was Apple doing. Apple could had built machine-guns.

2. The Marketing / Sales Director should have taken position against such a mistake and should have not committed to produce iPads, as the company they ruled wasn’t Apple.

How are these mistakes possible:

1. Confusing “how” for “what” is equivalent to not knowing “where the puck is”. The CEO lacks in-depth view of his or Apple’s strategy.
   If not this case and the competitor company CEO sees Apple strategy, than (s)he misses the relevant point of Apple’s approach: innovate and re-iterate until the product is perfect from both outside and inside.

2. The Marketing Director not holding a strong position against the CEO’s: this is possible as corporates no longer care about values and principles, but only about revenues. Therefore they hire people that can only make money, no matter how.
   The MD is silenced by his / her lack of principles (read “lack of spine”) and by any accountant saying that copying “how” is much more expensive than copying “what” is Apple doing. Which brings us to:

3. Accountants are ruling the companies instead of their managers. ( I wrote a detailed post here )

It goes without saying that for many of the iPad-toting toddlers Apple’s iOS devices and Macs will be a natural fit as they enter childhood and teen years. It’s the Apple brainwash and it works like a charm. Apple gets them while they’re young and rivals must be pulling their hair because they’re missing out on the entire generation of kids raised on Apple’s mobile gear and computers.

You know what’s worse than being stupid? Being only half smart.

This guy is only half smart and thus his damage doubles.

I imagine this is common sense, Apple brainwashing kids, for half-smarts out there… Was the invention of the wheel a brainwash?

You lack perspective a lot, my friend.

I just don’t get the pricing, and I find it hard to believe there are many people willing to pay $455/year for digital access to a newspaper, no matter how good the newspaper is.

NYT’s big secret is that such a pricing structure usually is only a marketing fuckup, nothing more.

The problem is not the price being too high (who are we to judge that?), but the whole product structure being too stupid. Their marketing team has no clue on market segments, customer behavior or product positioning.

Yet, what do you know: that’s America, it might even work!

Virginia Postrel at WSJ published an article on what’s making the iPad magical.

Something bothered me at the end of the reading, but I couldn’t say what.

She goes like this:

Apple has long had an aura of trend-setting cool, but magic is a bolder—and more provocative— claim. In a promotional video, Jonathan Ive, the company’s design chief, explains it this way: “When something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical, and that’s exactly what the iPad is.” Mr. Ive is paraphrasing the famous pronouncement by Arthur C. Clarke, the science-fiction author and futurist, that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

The main idea here is iPad being a ghost in the machine: if machine becomes too complicated, it becomes impossible to be grasped, therefore it alchemically turns into a new category device: it transforms into a magical device, from a technological one.

This idea causes another one: because the machine is so complicated that it’s easier to be communicated as “magical”, the machine becomes “opaque” to its users:

So in celebrating the iPad as magical, Apple is bragging that its customers haven’t the foggiest idea how the machine works. The iPad is completely opaque. It is a sealed box. You can’t see the circuitry or read the software code. You can’t even change the battery.

Therefore, Paul Rosenthal writes in comments:

I’m not particularly happy that we seem to be encouraging this sensation of ‘magic.’ Promoting the practice of ignorance never bodes well for the future, and the less people understand about technology as it evolves, the less people have the opportunity to control it.

Wrong. There’s no ignorance in knowing your limits. Am I an ignorant I don’t start tinkering my Ferrari or my cat when she’s ill? I go to Ferrari and / or to the vet. I never start opening any of these two because of their complexity and not because I don’t posses them or because I don’t have enough rights over my possessions.. Knowing your limits usually comes with refraining yourself from going beyond them.

The confusion between “magic” and “tricking”.

Apple don’t trick us as a magician would by pulling rabbits out of the hat; they amaze us as in “this nature view is magical”.

The difference is even bigger when it comes to possessing things: while you are artifficially forbidden to possess a magician knowledge, you’re also forbidden to possess a tree by carving into its bark. You can ruin magic in both instances, but it’s only one of them that Apple wants to protect. And it’s not the tricking part, as all Apple products can be dissected and described thoroughly.

The wrong kind of “property”

Coming from “magic” versus “tricking” and their issues, the next logical confusion concerns property.

The most commonly used argument against Apple closing the doors to tinkerers is this: “We have bought the device but we are not allowed to even change its battery. This is against the idea of “property””.

Although it may look like a sound argument, it’s a mere mistake. “Property” is a very large word (as also is “magic”) that always comes in pair with “responsibility” or even “liability”, in a more or less apparent way: I may own a computer, but if I plug it into a wrong power outlet, I’ll lose the warranty without legal repercussions. On the other hand, if I own a cat, I can also start open it up when it looks ill, but I might be legally convicted. The highest liability that comes with some sort of property is parenthood. As parents, we usually say “I have a kid”, but our liability massively overcomes the property. “I have a kid, which is mine” never means I am allowed to do whatever I want to him / her. (You may find strange, but Apple is in a parent position.)

We also use the same word when buying music or movies: we have the DVD, although not its content. We may have thousands of Gigs of music and movies and not even one bit of these to be our “property”. We are not allowed to duplicate, resell, modify or edit in any way this content. [REVIEWED: A friend of mine says “Also consider the maps!”; he’s damn right]

While owning a PC may have the strongest meaning of “property”, owning music has the weakest meaning of “property”, from responsibility point of view.

Now, why do we buy music if so restricted its property proves to be? Because we like the music, we like its authors, we like its message and so on. Therefore, the more we like a thing, the more inclined we are to renounce our liberty degrees over it.

Why do we have kids? Because we love them, although they’re not our material property, but our greatest responsibility and liability.

Why do we buy iPads? Because we like them! As in music, or pets, or even kids. Not as in tools, cars or PCs.

The wrong kind of liability

We, as owners, are used to be made liable for a lot (or most) of the things in our “property”, from cars to music, pets and kids. For us, as we’ve seen, it’s an active and continuous balance between possession and liability / responsibility.

As strange as it may sound, the same strong balance between possession and liability is in Apple’s actions and products.

This is the missing feature most of Apple’s competitor have irreparably lost: their own liability towards their customers and towards their products.

Most of the tech industry builds products in “best effort” quality and capacity; this is the way things have become (it doesn’t matter now why). They build features on paper, service their customers in an arbitrary way, lack in innovation and always research and develop only when they have more than enough money, which, for a couple of years, is “rara avis”.

Apple built the iPads; they were surprised how well the product was tolerated by the market. So well, that people overlooked the weak sense of the property iPads are bearing: “you cannot even change a battery”.

Therefore Apple turned this up-vote into a responsibility problem, this time their own responsibility towards their customers and their products: we restrict the meaning of your property over your iPads as a cost for building them in our most responsible way. I.e.: we build products that you’ll never be responsible for, because it’s us who’s bearing this responsibility.

So, Apple’s message is “if you ever need to change the battery, we’ll do it for free, but not you”. Have you ever needed to change iPad’s battery and was it a show stopper not being able to?

I’ve written about this issue one year ago, and now I find it, sadly, still actual.

Instead of conclusion, I’d say Ive was dead wrong, in a pure sense of the word; iPad is not magical because it’s such a complicated and complex machine, not in a thousand years, but because of its hardware and software interface, on one hand, and because of thousands of developers that are able to make use of this interface, on the other hand.

Apple’s iPad is a common sense machine, the very same way Smart Covers are; what new horizons is Apple opening and how are you using its devices to reach to these horizons – that’s magical.