Month: November 2011

The computers near you are gateways to the clouds.

Scaling Down the Mac Pro:

Marco Arment:

It’s impossible to significantly change the Mac Pro without
removing most of its need to exist.

But I think it’s clear, especially looking at Thunderbolt’s
development recently, that Apple is in the middle of a transition
away from needing the Mac Pro.

Jon Gruber: “I concur.”

[I want you to look at the bit below and put that together with the one above.]

Mark O’Connor Swapped His MacBook for an iPad and Linode:

Fascinating, really. What enables him to work solely from an iPad is that he does all his work in Vim. So it’s the fact that he’s a code-writing Unix nerd that allows him to use the seemingly least-Unix-nerd-friendly computer ever as his sole work machine.

[And while this won’t work for everything, it will become common for the computer near you (whatever the form factor) to seamlessly reach out to computing resources in the cloud when you wish. Big photo file needs editing? No problem—the original image is already in the cloud. Now run your image editor of choice on a whomping multi core rocket ship of a virtual machine with a a bunch of RAM. The file is saved back to the cloud (versions anyone?) and you release the resources until the next time you need them. Pay as you go? Sure. Why not. Need some resources all day every day? Pick a monthly plan. The computers near you are a gateway to the clouds.

There are fewer cases where we need all those compute cycles and storage local to us. And while there are some, and there will be always be some, for most of us, this will not be necessary any longer. Even the small computers available today like phones, pads, and small notebooks are very powerful machines. The stumbling block is the serious lack of infrastructure that ensures access to the cloud at all times. (It’s getting better, but it ain’t where it needs to be). Screen space is an issue, having just spent the better part of 5 days with real work to do and nothing but a phone to do it (nope, nothing rose to the level of running out and spending money on an iPad or a MiFi or the like, but another few days might have done it.) I was almost at the point where I was going to get a AppleTV to stream the screen of my phone to a large TV screen, and reattach the wireless keyboard, but I wanted to embrace this limitation knowing I’d go back to my normal routine as soon as connectivity was restored. It is amazing how well things worked overall (network speed was the number one issue). Generally it’s not more computing power that I need, but a faster connection and larger screen (in that order).]

iTunes and iPhoto fail pretty quickly to help me

I’m stating my problem with these apps to help me later. I need to craft a solution to this problem.

My laptop has relatively limited storage space. I want to keep my photos in a single library and my music in a single library. I want to keep the photos I love and music I’m currently loving in front of me as it were, and everything else out of the way. Multiple library’s don’t work… it’s too hard to know where some music or a photo might be, and then I can’t find anything.

So in short a I need a subset of photos and a subset of music that are part of a larger library. New additions (photos taken, or music recorded or purchased) need to be added to the one true library. The one true library does not need to be accessible at all times, it just needs to add new content when it is available.

If any of you have solved this problem, let me know :)

See also JDD’s writing on the photo side of things as well. Here and here.

★ Apps Are the New Channels

★ Apps Are the New Channels: Why not the same thing for TV channels? We’re seeing the beginnings of this, with iPhone and iPad apps like HBO Go, Watch ESPN, and the aforementioned Bloomberg TV+. Letting each TV network do their own app allows them the flexibility that writing software provides. News networks can combine their written and video news into an integrated layout. Networks with contractual obligations to cable operators, like HBO and ESPN, can write code that requires users to log in to verify their status as an eligible subscriber.

[Righteo, on some level. Whether or not that means an AppleTV is another question, but I agree with the direction.]
Source: Daring Fireball

Ambitious iOS Apps

Ambitious iOS Apps: Anyway, to capture these, I set up a free-to-edit Google Spreadsheet. Feel free to add apps you think should qualify. Please don’t just add your favourite app – do explain why you think the app qualifies as “ambitious”. I reserve the right to prune the list as I see fit. Note, too, that I’m not just asking about “education” apps – I’m looking across the entire platform.

[Nice. A great source for inspiration as well. (Good things done well)]
Source: Fraser Speirs

Why I stand up for Stallman

Why I stand up for Stallman: A few years ago I met Richard Stallman, in Berkeley. It was arranged by my friend Sylvia Paull, who was his publicist (she might still be, I’m not sure). It was amazing, because one of his associates there (whose name I don’t remember) was teasing me just like people in workgroups on the net were. I looked at him, and asked him if he seriously was going to do this, in front of Stallman. Yeah, he kept at it. That’s how pervasive this culture of disrespect is. To Stallman’s credit, he not only stopped it, but dug in. He wanted to understand what was at the root of this. I told him I had GPL’d my life’s work. And this is the kind of treatment I was getting fairly widely. It wasn’t a long conversation, but I could see in his eyes the empathy that Sam had been looking for so many years ago. People think Stallman is oblivious, but my feeling is he’s a lot more aware than most people.

[Anil Dash in the comments on the above story: “using that power to cow conference organizers and academics into submission to an arbitrary set of whims, the same as a rock star refusing to eat certain colors of M&Ms. Just make good music, and ignore the unwelcome M&Ms in the bowl. And be thankful someone wants to hear what you’re singing.”

Here’s where I step in… most people get that story wrong and Anil does here. And I think it helps make a point, I’m simply trying to be pedantic about a often mistold story.

The “no red M&Ms” (or whatever color) wasn’t about arbitrary control and power but about trust. Setting a venue for a show requires a lot of technical work. There’s an awful lot of voltage flying around those lights and plenty more in the audio systems. Cross connect something by mistake, lift a ground in the wrong spot, etc. and you greatly increase the chance that someone will get electrocuted and seriously harmed (if not killed).

The remove one color of M&M while it seems arbitrary was a test. For something that the venue or promoter might feel is bullying or a power trip, if they attended to the detail of it, chances are that they’re attending to the details that really matter as well. It’s a litmus test for attention to detail.

While I had no problem pointing to a story about Stallman’s inconsistency’s, that’s not a reason to jump on him. It doesn’t smack of power trip to me. It simply seems like the a “possibles bag” of collected things that have gone wrong in the past, and an attempt to improve things in the future. Anyone who has done even some of what he does knows that expectations aren’t ever clear enough. You arrive to give a talk and suddenly “could you just” do this event or something. And a million other assumptions that may or may not be true. That document rings true to me, although some of it might seem odd. So what.

So while Anil has a point in the “you must call it” section, you might want to consider that most of this has probably happened and is there to prevent it from happening again, if at all possible, and is no more a power trip than saying “These things have gone wrong in the past”.]
Source: Scripting News