new version of Safari feels faster

I've got nothing to compare them with, but here's my SunSpider JavaScript results (late '08, 2.4 GHz MacBook, running Mac OS X 10.6.4).

breaking Windows dependency, a stepwise approach

Apple is beginning to invest in outreach to small businesses, but for this initiative to enjoy maximum success they'll need to understand the constraints that keep businesses dependent on Microsoft's inferior Windows platform.

Mainly it's a matter of time, or the lack of it; Windows keeps IT personnel too busy to investigate alternatives. Ironically, some IT departments still have a Windows-only rule, to avoid having to spend the extra time to learn to support other platforms, even though doing so might pay off in the long run, through reduced need for support.

Of course, time is just another word for money, and money is perpetually oversubscribed in any small business, the upshot being that it takes an iron will to consider total cost of ownership above initial price. Support somehow becomes a separate issue, subsumed under the necessity of having an IT department at all, and is effectively rendered a non-issue by (mainly voiceless) repetition of "that's what we pay them for."

So how to break into this circle of nonoptionality?

The first step probably has to be taken by the company (or IT department) itself, rescinding their Windows-only policy in principle. Until that happens, the best arguments in the world fall on deaf ears.

Once they've taken that step, other platforms can compete for their business on the merits, and once that's true new opportunities appear, as if by magic. Many of those opportunities will take the form of workstations that can easily be replaced by something else (a Mac mini, for instance), either because their users have no need for specialized software or because what they do need happens to be written in Java or some scripting language that will run just as happily on other platforms, or it runs on a web server and they can access it through any modern browser.

Those are the easiest sales, but there's another category that doesn't involve substitution but rather the insertion of a new layer, workgroup servers, into the company's network. I can say this with confidence, because Windows Server is so expensive only the most successful small companies will have seriously considered providing a dedicated machine running Windows Server for each workgroup. Others might be aware of the potential benefits that groupware running on workgroup servers can bring, but for most the cost of Windows Server will have proven prohibitive. Not so with other platforms. Apple's Mac mini server, for example, costs $1000, no matter how many client machines you connect to it, and it comes with the basic categories of groupware already installed.

Another selling point (for Macs) that shouldn't be overlooked is the relative ease of development of custom applications, presenting the possibility of crafting what you really need, whatever it might be, in-house, rather than making do with what you can find elsewhere. Microsoft has made the creation of simple databases and automated spreadsheets fairly easy, but beyond that you're pretty much on your own. Anyone with the skill to create an automated spreadsheet of more than trivial complexity can learn to build practically anything on the Mac, and well written Objective-C is self-documenting, so if they leave someone else should be able to pick up where they left off.

Of course, for the really tough cases, Macs run Windows just fine.

wisdom regarding the value of failure

a notion regarding Apple TV

A strange thought just crossed my mind. What if Apple, rather than combining the AppleTV with the the Mac mini, were to instead combine it with the Time Capsule? The result would be an AirPort base station, plus a largish, reliable hard drive, plus video hardware and ports to allow wired connection to your TV or home theater setup. One product, three complementary uses. Make that four complementary uses, as such a device would surely also run iOS Apps, including games.

The hard drive could automatically be divided between maintaining a media library and preserving Time Machine backups. The AirPort functionality would work equally well to stream media to another device, or to allow you to connect controller hardware for games, or enabling your laptop or desktop to send incremental TM backups, or simply as a means of connecting to the internet.

Really, if your starting point is the AppleTV, all that's needed is a faster CPU and GPU, something adequate for games, a larger hard drive, and the software in a Time Capsule. The A4 chip is probably an adequate CPU, although a dual-core variant or something based on the next generation ARM design might be preferable given the need to drive a 1920 X 1080 display, but these parts shouldn't be prohibitively expensive.

Hmmm...

a quiet suggestion regarding the rebranding of Mac OS X

As viewed from the perspective of iOS, what is Mac OS X, really?

Is it the supercharged, full-featured version? That was more the case before the introduction of iOS4 than now, following that milestone. There is probably still an argument to be made for this view, but not as strong an argument as before. The biggest remaining difference is that Mac OS X handles a multi-window environment and full-blown multitasking. On the other hand, it doesn't yet handle touch events out of the box.

Is it the parent, with legacy issues? Parent, maybe; legacy issues, not so much. Most legacy issues in Mac OS X have already been dealt with. The biggest remaining one is probably the file system, HFS+, which dates back to later versions of the original Mac OS.

Is it the older, bigger brother? As a metaphor, this one actually works pretty well. Mac OS X has been around longer, is quite a bit more massive, and optimized for completeness as well as for performance, as measured both from the interface-response perspective of the user and with regard to battery life.

Being optimized for completeness means, among other things, that it supports a wide variety of hardware. A single installation disk can be used to install Snow Leopard on any of dozens of Mac models, with varying CPUs, GPUs, support chips, monitor resolutions, etc.

It also means that new features that aren't tied to a touch interface, or to one of the special capabilities built into the iPhone and other members of the iOS family, are likely to appear in Mac OS X first, especially if they involve a large amount of code/resources, or place a significant burden on the hardware.

So you could think of Mac OS X as being the extended version of iOS, or, given that it runs on more powerful harder, maybe the extreme version.

To come back around to the question of rebranding, "iOS Portable" (or Mobile), "iOS Desktop", and "iOS Server" works very nicely, except that it might begin to be confusing if you have laptop computers running "Desktop" and desktop computers or set-top boxes or tablets too large to carry around running "Portable" or "Mobile".

On the other hand, "iOSx", with a small 'x', no longer a Roman numeral, would also work, unusually quietly as such things go. Combined with separate versioning (iOS 4.x being contemporary with iOSx 10.6.x), it sufficiently distinguishes the products, while making it very clear that they are fundamentally variations on the same basic design.

a truck is in the eye of the beholder

Update: Jason Snell, writing on MacWorld.com addresses the angst of Mac users regarding its possible obsolescence. In a nutshell, he says not soon.

I just want to say that, here in Boulder, trucks, mainly SUVs, are rather common.

That said, I'd like to point to Patently Apple's piece on The Next OS Revolution, and leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Architosh on AutoCAD on the Mac

They've been leading the wishing section for years, now it's their turn to crow!

Adobe's founders fume mindlessly in public

The biggest problem with the open letter released by Adobe's founders is there's no there there, no substantive argument.

They warn against the web fragmenting into closed systems, but in fact the exact opposite is happening, the web is unifying into an open system with a common language; it's reaching maturity.

One Adobe creation, the Portable Document Format will constitute an important part of the new web reality, in no small part because it is no longer proprietary. When Adobe turned PDF over to the ISO, all objections against its use disappeared. Had they done the same thing with Flash, the result would likely have been the same, and Flash would now be joining HTML5, the DOM, CSS, and Javascript as part of the emerging standard. In that alternate reality, even Apple would likely be happy to support it because they would be writing their own implementation to their own high standards, and Adobe, having had a huge head start, could continue to dominate the market for tools to create Flash content.

Instead Adobe chose to keep Flash a proprietary format. They should not be surprised that others' reactions run from lukewarm acceptance to outright rejection.

That Flash can be made to run acceptably on mobile devices, and that some web developers would prefer to keep using it rather than learn to use the open standards, doesn't even remotely constitute evidence that the future of the web is at risk unless every platform vendor were to allow it on their systems. Flash is common, yes, but its percentage of installation has already peaked and is beginning to dwindle. It is not and now will never be part of the standard, even if Adobe were to finally see the light and turn it over to the ISO or W3C; it's too late for that.

Simon Sinek at TED

This speech was delivered last year at a TED conference in Washington state.

Click here for full frame.

using physical brushes with touchscreens

Bill Gates says pen-based tablets will beat the iPad, at least with students.

Something like a decade ago, one of my favorite rant topics was ‘where oh where is the electronic brush?’ I was referring not to brush gadgets such as are common in drawing programs, but to a physical brush that could be used in conjunction with an electronic display. At the time I imagined a brush composed of optical fiber, along with some internal electronics to detect the hotspot of a CRT as it passed beneath the bristles, and more electronics in the computer itself to correlate the signal generated by the brush with a position on the screen.

Well, CRTs are hard to find these days, and LCD screens don't have hotspots. On the other hand, touchscreens have become quite common, and at least those used by Apple are good enough to use for drawing.

The trick would be to find a bristle material, or the combination of a bristle material and the internal design of the brush, that would sufficiently mimic the capacitance of a finger to be detected as such. You can use as fine a brush as the touchscreen will reliably detect.

The difference between such a brush and a pen-input system might appear negligible, to the casual observer, but would be far more pronounced to the person actually using the device, due to the difference between the gradual contact of a brush and the sudden contact of a pen. Moreover, a brush would provide pressure information directly to the device, via the touchscreen, without need for a Bluetooth connection, and clues to nuanced movement via the rolling or rotation of the triangular area contacted by the tip, so you'd be able to use it to move sliders or rotate dial gadgets using very small motions of your fingers.

Also consider that the written language used throughout east asia is traditionally drawn with a brush, and is still more legible done by brush than with with a pen.

Besides which, there's an elegance to brushes that no pen can match, and the main reason for using a hard pen, multipart forms, simply isn't a consideration on a touchscreen.