tech

Hypercritical: The Case for a True Mac Pro Successor

Hypercritical: The Case for a True Mac Pro Successor:

Halo cars also push car makers to their limits. Engineering teams must use all their skills and all their powers to create the very best car possible. This exercise inevitably leads to the exploration of new technologies. The failed experiments are forgotten, but the winners eventually find their way into more prosaic cars from the same manufacturer.

[Apple was never in “halo” product business. The MacPro used be the machine you needed to run big screens. It was the machine you needed when you were doing stuff like ProTools with a bunch additional processing cards, or large image Photoshop with giant screens. Of course, for most of us those things can be happily accomplished with the *laptops* Apple produces. Now I think it entirely possible that Apple can create a desktop machine that is priced for meer mortals but is extensible enough for that sliver of true high end that still exists. Whether or not that will add to a halo type device is in the eye of the “car guy”.]

The Google Glass feature no one is talking about — Creative Good

The Google Glass feature no one is talking about — Creative Good:

And this is where our story takes a turn, toward a ramification that dwarfs every other issue raised so far on Google Glass. Yes, the glasses look dorky – Google will fix that. And sure, Glass forces users to be permanently plugged-in to Google’s digital world – that’s hardly a concern for the company or, for that matter, most users out there. No. The real issue raised by Google Glass, which will either cause the project to fail or create certain outcomes you may not want (which I’ll describe), has to do with the lifebits. Once again, it’s an issue of experience.

The Google Glass feature that (almost) no one is talking about is the experience – not of the user, but of everyone other than the user. A tweet by David Yee introduces it well:

There is a kid wearing Google Glasses at this restaurant which, until just now, used to be my favorite spot.

The key experiential question of Google Glass isn’t what it’s like to wear them, it’s what it’s like to be around someone else who’s wearing them. I’ll give an easy example. Your one-on-one conversation with someone wearing Google Glass is likely to be annoying, because you’ll suspect that you don’t have their undivided attention. And you can’t comfortably ask them to take the glasses off (especially when, inevitably, the device is integrated into prescription lenses). Finally – here’s where the problems really start – you don’t know if they’re taking a video of you.

[Mark nails it.]

Pain of the New

Pain of the New:

I predict that on each step towards increased realism new media take, there will be those who find the step physically painful. It will hurt their eyes, ears, nose, touch,and peace of mind. It will seem unnecessarily raw, ruining the art behind the work. This disturbance is not entirely in our heads, because we train our bodies to react to media, and when it changes, it FEELS different. There may be moments of uncomfort.

But in the end we tend to crave the realism — when it has been mastered — and will make our home in it.

The scratchy sound of vinyl, the soft focus of a Kodak Brownie, and the flickers of a 24 frame per second movie will all be used to time-stamp a work of nostalgia.

[Rings true to me.]

Source: The Technium

Welcome to “Learning by Shipping”

Welcome to “Learning by Shipping”:

As engineers we are trained to find the right solution(s) given a set of constraints.  Product development is about the inherent uncertainty of business and customer needs and desires, and those change depending on the context.  There are no right answers, only varying success in the marketplace at a given time.  The pendulum of ideas swings back and forth depending on the context–the availability of underlying technologies, the acceptance of different business models, or the solutions most valued by potential customers.  The same holds for approaches used by organizations building products–the right answer depends on the context and can change over time.  These choices and the pros and cons of different approaches are interesting topics that occupy many of us as we search for the right path for our development efforts.

[A really clear explanation.]

Source: Learning by Shipping

U.S. Internet Users Pay More for Slower Service – Bloomberg

U.S. Internet Users Pay More for Slower Service – Bloomberg:

Meanwhile, the U.S. is rapidly losing the global race for high-speed connectivity, as fewer than 8 percent of households have fiber service. And almost 30 percent of the country still isn’t connected to the Internet at all.

To fix this problem, a new approach is needed.

The first step is to decide what the goal of telecommunications policy should be. Network access providers — and the FCC — are stuck on the idea that not all Americans need high-speed Internet access. The FCC’s National Broadband Plan of March 2010 suggested that the minimum appropriate speed for every American household by 2020 should be 4 megabits per second for downloads and 1 Mbps for uploads. These speeds are enough, the FCC said, to reliably send and receive e-mail, download Web pages and use simple video conferencing. The commission also said it wanted to ensure that, by 2020, at least 100 million U.S. homes have affordable access to download speeds of at least 100 Mbps and upload speeds of at least 50 Mbps.

Such rates wouldn’t be difficult. Comcast Corp. is already selling its 100-megabit service in the richest American communities, though it costs $200 a month. In a sense, the FCC adopted the cable companies’ business plan as the country’s goal. The commission’s embrace of asymmetric access — slower upload than download speeds — also serves the carriers’ interests: Only symmetric connections would allow every American to do business from home rather than use the Internet simply for high-priced entertainment.
Other countries have different goals. The South Korean government announced a plan to install 1 gigabit per second of symmetric fiber data access in every home by 2012. Hong Kong, Japan and the Netherlands are heading in the same direction. Australia plans to get 93 percent of homes and businesses connected to fiber. In the U.K., a 300 Mbps fiber-to-the-home service will be offered on a wholesale basis.

[snip -ed.]

How much would it cost to bring fiber to the homes of all Americans? Corning Inc. (GLW), the American glass manufacturer, and others have estimated that it would take between $50 billion and $90 billion.
The Internet has taken the place of the telephone as the world’s basic, general-purpose, two-way communication medium. All Americans need high-speed access, just as they need clean water, clean air and electricity. But they have allowed a naive belief in the power and beneficence of the free market to cloud their vision. As things stand, the U.S. has the worst of both worlds: no competition and no regulation.

[Now this is something I’d like some tax dollars spent on. Anyone paying attention in Washington? Anyone at all? See also here and https://turnings.phrasewise.com/2013/01/02/no-toilet-or-running-water-or-no-internet-easy-decision-right/%5D

Source: Daring Fireball

No toilet or running water or no Internet? Easy decision, right?

The Post-Productive Economy:

Everything changed, however, when computers married the telephone. This is when ordinary people noticed computers. They could get online. Everything went online. Retail changed, production changed, occupations changed. This communication revolution accelerated change elsewhere. Processes and gizmos got smarter because they were connected. Now the advantages of personal computers made sense because in fact they were just local terminals in something bigger: the network. As the Sun Computer company famously put it: the network is the computer.

[snippage, realignment, etc. -ed.]

The farmers in rural China have chosen cell phones and twitter over toilets and running water. To them, this is not a hypothetical choice at all, but a real one. and they have made their decision in massive numbers. Tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions, if not billions of people in the rest of Asia, Africa and South America have chosen Option B. You can go to almost any African village to see this. And it is not because they are too poor to afford a toilet. As you can see from these farmers’ homes in Yunnan, they definitely could have at least built an outhouse if they found it valuable. (I know they don’t have a toilet because I’ve stayed in many of their homes.) But instead they found the intangible benefits of connection to be greater than the physical comforts of running water.

[Like I said in the previous piece, Internet inequality due to weak or nonexistent connections is a far greater problem than people realize, whether here in the States, or around the world. And communities recognize that in significant ways.]

Source: The Technium

What is Silicon Valley?

Thread: What is Silicon Valley?:

Yet the Net is not equal everywhere, and that will be an issue for Silicon Valley in the coming decades. Because doing what’s best for the Net hasn’t been a top priority there, with one notable exception: Google. But with Google, the exception is actually in Kansas City, where Google Fiber is being deployed. Right now it looks like yet another cable+internet boxed services play. But that masks a different agenda: attracting new business, new uses and new innovation in boundless variety.
Today, while Big Data gets the big buzz, few talk about how little that data is worth if the pipes it travels are biased as one-way sluices for “content” mills, which is what most cable connections are optimized for. It will take a few years for the tech world to smell the coffee brewing in Kansas City, Lafayette, Chatanooga, and a few dozen other enlightened places that have troubled to get ahead of the curve. Here’s a new years toast to them.

[It makes a far greater difference than one would expect.]

Show Us Your Production Code

Show Us Your Production Code — Alexander Zaytsev:

So, I hereby challenge the Ruby community: the next time you want to tell the world about the right way of doing things, start with showing your production code.
That’s right, the dreaded ‘production code’.
Don’t make up examples. Show us what you actually do.
For example, instead of using the notorious ‘create a record and send an email’ example, David could show a similar but more complex controller from Basecamp. A piece of code that actually made the team argue about the right way.

[A good thought. I hope I have the courage to do so next time.]

Larkfarm: Random Bits: Twitterless and Happy

Larkfarm: Random Bits:

Rather, it’s a simple reflection of one fact of life: the payoff from Twitter does not, for me, justify the time investment.

I’m coming up on 52 years old in less than two months. I’m acutely aware, in a fashion that was not true in my twenties, that everything I choose to do uses up some of my dwindling supply of hours on this earth. As life goes on, I find that this makes me ever pickier about what I’m willing to spend time on. Some things – like earning a living and supporting my kids – are simply not optional. But for many others, the question is simple: is this the most enjoyable and fulfilling thing that I could be doing with these hours?

[I hear that. Been in the back of my mind as far back as I can remember.]