Why I will miss Steve Jobs

This week, the world said goodbye to Steve Jobs. I first heard about the news via Facebook. Over the next couple minutes, everyone started posting about it and how sad they were to see Steve go. My siblings and I posted about it as well, and we were all shocked at how sad we felt. I spent the rest of the day trying to identify what I was feeling. He was a person who I never met who made great products. That much is obvious. But there seemed to be more to it than that. After a while, I think I figured it out.

Steve was a hero to me.

I don't mean a "hero" as in, "I love my iPhone, thank you for creating it" or "Wow, you created Apple and I love Apple products, I wish I could be you." To me, it's not just about the products. It's about the person.

Courage

One thing that Steve Jobs has always been known for is his unfailing confidence. His confidence is legendary and borders on, or crosses the line into, arrogance. His confidence in presenting, his confidence in negotiating, his confidence in creating his products. In order to have confidence, you have to have courage. Steve's courage allowed him to make tough decisions.

He had the courage to say "no" to crappy ideas. He turned down the netbook craze, when everyone else was jumping on board to it.

He had the courage to leave behind what was familiar, in order to strive for something better. The Apple iMac was the first computer to get rid of the floppy drive, and instead came with USB ports. More recently, they have given up the DVD drive as well, in exchange for the iTunes Store and sharing via the Internet. Old Mac OS applications eventually, after a transitional period, no longer run on newer machines. Similarly, old Mac hardware, after a transitional period, no longer runs the newer OS's.

He had the courage to try these bold new ideas, without guarantees that they would succeed. And if they didn't succeed, he had the courage to stop them sooner rather than later. For example, the G4 Cube was killed off just 1 year after it was shipped.

He even had the courage to give up a great thing, in exchange for an even better thing. The iPod mini was probably the best selling iPod in 2005. Everyone was buying it. People were even buying it as a fashion accessory. Apple killed the product, and replaced it with the iPod nano, which took up the reins as the best selling iPod.

He had the courage to say "no" to low quality. It's well known how much attention Steve paid to even the smallest details, to make sure everything was right. His products and services are polished and well thought out.

Keeping "me" in mind

The other way that Steve was a hero for me was he always seemed to have put the interests of the user ahead of everything else. Some examples.

Did you ever notice how iPods come out of the box already charged? Maybe not fully charged, but enough that you can open the box and start playing with it? That probably costs some money and effort for Apple to do. But they do it. Why? Because it's annoying to the customer if they open their shiny new toy and then can't use it. Compare this to a new electric razor I just bought that needs to be charged 8 hours before it can used.

Have you ever seen an Apple device in one of those plastic blister packs that are impossible to open? I haven't. "But that packaging helps stop theft!" No, it's a pain in the ass and it punishes your good customers. Don't do that.

Apple computers come with enough RAM to actually get work done. "But if you cut the amount of RAM, it'll be cheaper and you can sell more!" No, you'll just end up with customers who wonder why their computer is so slow, and are annoyed that they have to upgrade them. Don't deceive your customers, give them a good experience.

If there were cases where he would have to trade off the interests of the customer for the interests of Some Company, it felt like he would side with the user. But he didn't do it naively. He would do it in such a way that both sides would be happy, but the user would not be punished.

Customers like being able to download digital music. But music companies are scared of piracy! Okay, you can get songs with DRM but allow the entire household to play them. Same with movies and apps, you can watch them on all your devices, just don't try to share them with the universe.

Why does this matter so much to me? Because so few people have that courage. Because I don't have that courage. Have you ever stayed for too long at a job, because you were scared to make the leap for something better? I have. As a software developer, I have seen first hand how we can be asked to accept lower quality in the interests of expediency. Have you ever been hesitant to make a change in your life, because of the level of effort involved, even though you knew things would be better in the long run? It could be a relationship, it could be an exercise program, it could be a new house project, it could be a hobby.

It makes sense that us normal people have difficulty summoning up that level of courage. After all, Steve was a CEO! Okay. How many CEOs have that level of courage? How many companies have you seen that are clinging on to their old businesses, too afraid to try to push the envelope? Have you ever been at a company that wasn't willing to try out new ideas, because they might fail? How many products have you seen that have cut corners, to save on cost or effort? How many leaders do you see that have the courage to do what is good for the long term? Do our leaders in Washington have the courage to stand against the oil companies and invest in renewable energy sources?

And about his "standing up for the users"? Replace the word "users" with "everyday people". Look at the recent fights in Congress over the debt ceiling. Do you think those people had the best interests of people in their hearts? Or do you think they were concerned with their own well-being and being re-elected into office? Did you hear that thing about how part of the FAA got shutdown and 74,000 people had their jobs put on hold because Congress couldn't come to an agreement in time? And not only that, Congress then went home on vacation for a month?

Some of you will point out that Steve is rich and powerful, that he can afford to be courageous. And that Apple is huge and powerful, they can afford to put the users first. Well, what do you think allowed Apple to become rich and powerful? And what do you think allowed Steve to become the CEO? It was the courage to be bold, try new things, and keep moving forward. In my mind, Apple itself is a product of Steve's courage and his willingness to do the right thing. Combine that with a ton of hard work and a large amount of luck, and you get what we have today.

My Dad once said to me "Character is fate". A man's character is what allows him to shape his own future. Steve Jobs shaped not just his own future, but the future of our generation. His successes help me believe that having the courage and conviction to do what is right can lead to our own successes. For that, I thank him.

-J

Why the iPad is going to change the world

I think the iPad is going to change the world. It's going to change the face of computing as we know it today.

Yes, that's a bold claim, and I admit a fair amount of hyperbole, but I say it that way to indicate how big I think the iPad will be.

Computers today aren't super easy to use. I mean, they're not too bad, but they could be easier. The apps themselves are okay. Browsers are pretty straight-forward. Email is okay. Word processors, well, over-featured, but straight-forward.

It's the rest of the stuff that's unnecessarily complicated. The stuff that you don't actually want to do, but you have to spend a lot of time doing.

Finding software. Buying software. Installing software. Managing your documents, pictures, music. Updating software. Uninstalling software. Dealing with your computer slowing down over time. Figuring out which of your apps is going crazy and slowing down all the other apps. Let's look at these one by one.

Finding software: browse the inifinite web, or buy it at retail. If you know where to look, you can find app catalog sites or app review sites, which help organize the info. I'm pretty technical, and I don't really know any of them by name.

Buying software: pay at retail, or pay at each website's own shopping cart, where you re-enter in all your credit card info.

Installing software: Why should we have to choose what directory to install a piece of software? Especially when all the OS's have a default place where probably 99% of the software expects to be installed (/Applications for Mac OS X, C:\Program Files\ for Windows).

Managing docs: You have to choose where to save those things. Everything is a file: your photos are files, your word docs are files, your mp3's are files. You have to mentally map between the file icon, and between what the icon represents.

Updating software: Each program has their own "check for update" menu item. Some update the software directly. Others send you to the website to see if there's anything new.

Uninstalling software: Do you trust software to uninstall itself properly?

Computer slowing down: Why does Windows slow down so much over time? No one really knows, but I'm guessing it's because software doesn't uninstall itself properly.

Multiple apps: Running multiple apps means you have to make sure they don't interfere with each other.

Techies, like myself, are used to dealing with stuff that like. Techies pay attention to even the tiniest detail. We notice everything that changes on the screen. We remember what things looked like last time we ran the program, so we instantly notice changes. Heck, we even get used to the sound of the computer when it's chugging along and think "hm, the hard drive is making more noise than usual, something must be going on."

What about people who are, well, just normal people? Have you ever seen someone have 50 windows open, because they lost track of what windows they had open? Have you seen people on Mac OS X who don't realize that they have 10 apps open because the only on-screen indication is that the top-screen menu looks different. The menu is 22-pixels high; that's a small fraction of the resolution that monitors can do nowadays.

What about the mouse? It's not that hard, but it requires a certain bit of hand coordination. Left click, right click, click and drag. Have you ever ctrl-dragged a file to copy it, and had to pause a second to make sure you released the correct finger first? If you release the left finger from ctrl before releasing the mouse button, you've just moved the file instead of copying it.

What about people who have never used a computer before? My dad once had to train an elderly woman to use the mouse. She would gingerly move the mouse until the pointer was over what she wanted to press. Then, she would take her hand off the mouse, and use her index finger to press the mouse button, which would of course then shift the mouse enough that it wouldn't click on what she intended.

Now, all these things, you eventually learn how to deal with them. You have to, in order to effectively use a computer nowadays. But it shouldn't be like that.

Let's look at the iPad. Or rather, let's look at the iPhone first.

Finding software: use the app store.

Buying software: use the credit card you have on file.

Installing software: It installs itself, and puts an icon on the screen. No prompting, doesn't ask the location.

Managing docs: Docs are stored within the programs themselves. You don't deal with files, you deal with the objects themselves. In a word processor app, you have documents. You browse photos by, well, looking at the photo.

Updating software: Update them all at once in the app store "Updates" screen.

Uninstalling software: You press and hold, and see a little "X" show up. Click it, and the app disappears, all traces of it gone.

Multiple apps: Can't do it, so not much to worry about!

Mouse: If you think about it, the mouse is really an abstraction between what you want to do, and how you actually achieve it. You shouldn't have to move an object to move a pointer to point to the thing you want to click on. You should just be able to click on the damn thing. And with a touchscreen, you can.

Using an iPhone just throws out all the fiddly annoying things that you shouldn't need to do, but have to. Wouldn't it be great if you could throw all that stuff out on your normal computer as well?

Well, the iPad is, after all, a really big iPhone. (It's more than that actually, but it's also a very big iPhone). So all these benefits also carry over to the iPad. The iPad has a nice big screen, so you actually get close to the real estate of your normal computer.

Now, are there things that the iPad can't do? Sure, of course. It can't do video encoding, can't video conference, can't do Photoshop. Do you do that all the time? If so, then you probably have a honking powerful computer that is great for that.

Given those limitations, how can I say that the iPad will change the face of computing as we know it? My answer is, it will make computers more accessible to the majority of Normal People than the current computers. It does away with the management of the computer for the people who really don't care about that part. The iPad is great for the 80% of people out there who like to read and send email, browse the web, shop at Amazon, watch youtube and TV, listen to music, look at photos. It's the Computer for the Rest of Us.

Even us techies, we probably spend a fair amount of our time doing those things as well. And if there are things that you can't do on it, you use your other computer. And that other computer can have a different user interface, different input devices, multiple monitors, extra hard drives. The two models can co-exist. I don't think the iPad is intended to be your only computer, but for some people, it may be.

The iPad is just the first device. I anticipate that this approach to simplicity, this "new face of computing" as I call it, will come to other devices. Apple won't have a strangehold on it. We'll see other tablets that do similar things. The concept will carry over in some way to desktops and laptops, especially if Google's Chrome OS has a say. But the iPad is first, and by introducing this model, it's going to change the world.

-J

Brain Crack

I got this domain name 9 months ago to start a blog.

This is my first post.

Why did it take so long? I'm not sure why. I've always had ideas that I wanted to share with people, but I wasn't sure how to start, and I also wasn't sure how well it would go. Would people read? Would people care?

I was on Brain Crack. See video below. (He rambles a bit in the beginning, but eventually gets to the point. You might want to cut away around 1:30, when the singing and swearing start.)

But I'm trying to get rid off the Brain Crack and start Getting Things Done. This first post is a small success.

And now... this blog is started.

-J