tech

“iCloud Backup”

“iCloud Backup”:

It wouldn’t be the first time a technology expert lacked empathy for a customer, or made bad assumptions about what would be fast and easy for the customer to do on his own — especially when deciding to perform an easy, predictable, cure-all “restore”.2

And the iPad wasn’t the first personal computer, nor will it be the last, that we all proclaimed to be finally easy enough for everyone to use. Sure, it’s easy to use when everything’s working and time stands still, but that’s about as useful as when a developer says, “It worked on my machine.”

We, all of us in technology, can do better than this. And we have a long way to go.

[Yeah. lots of truth here, and not just for grandparents. Context is king, and most people have none.]

Source: Marco.org

To Map Or Not To Map

To Map Or Not To Map:

However, for Google that makes all its money from advertising, being able to harvest spatiotemporal user data to triangulate purchasing intent must be priceless.

Every time an iOS user interacts with Google Maps, directly or through other apps that use its API, Google gets extremely useful data that soothe its search and advertising pangs, tens of millions of times a day around the globe. For Google (and now Apple) maps are an input modality to discover user intent, perhaps only rivaled by command line search and social network affinity graphs.

But direct financial contribution is not the most important rationale for Google Maps on iOS. One of the key reasons why Google has better data than Apple is the fact that for many years users of Google Maps have been sending corrections to Google, which has improved its accuracy significantly. So by not submitting Google Maps to the App Store, Google would not only give up a very significant portion of its mobile revenue, but more importantly, it would self-induce a debilitating data-blindness on the world’s most lucrative mobile ecosystem.

[And has been asked many times, why is this data not open? Why can’t we all share this to our collective good?]

Source: counternotions

Browsers should have been cars. Instead they’re shopping carts.

Browsers should have been cars. Instead they’re shopping carts.:

Google once aspired to give us access to “all the world’s information”, which suggests a library. But the library-building job is now up to Archive.org. Instead, Google now personalizes the living shit out of its search results. One reason, of course, is to give us better search results. But the other is to maximize the likelihood that we’ll click on an ad. But neither is served well by whatever it is that Google thinks it knows about us. Nor will it ever be, so long as we are driven, rather than driving.

I think what’s happened in recent years is that users searching for stuff have been stampeded by sellers searching for users. I know Googlers will bristle at that characterization, but that’s what it appears to have become, way too much of the time.

But that’s not the main problem. The main problem is that browsers are antique vehicles.

See, we need to drive, and browsers aren’t cars. They’re shopping carts that shape-shift with every site we visit. They are optimized for being inside websites, not for driving outside them, or between them. In fact, we can hardly imagine the Net or the Web as a space that’s larger than the sites in it. But we need to do that if we’re going to start designing means of self-transport that transcend the limitations of browsing and browsers.

[Brilliantly put. As usual form Doc.]

Source: Doc Searls Weblog

Apple makes the left turn at Albuquerque

Apple makes the left turn at Albuquerque:

Yes, yes, you’re not going to stand around appreciating the finer details of the map application if the data is wrong. I get that. Pointing out that the vast majority of the data in the maps application is very clearly correct is small comfort if you need some of the data that’s wrong. But the vast majority of the data really is correct. When you’re talking about a data set the size of the entire world, then a 99.9% correctness still means hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of incorrect data points. Google Maps had very similar problems, and their most valuable resource has been users who reported them. This will probably work for Apple, too, at least if we actually report the problems rather than just creating Tumblrs mocking them.

For the record, Apple Maps knows exactly where that teriyaki place in Livermore is, and it’s the first hit on teriyaki livermore ca. Google still has no idea what the hell I’m talking about.

[Good points. More curious to see how quickly the app improves than anything else.]

Source: Coyote Tracks

Apple’s Magic Is In The Turn, Not The Prestige

Apple’s Magic Is In The Turn, Not The Prestige:

While it lacks the pomp and circumstance of a Prestige on stage at some big event, this interaction is much more intimate, and as such, much more powerful. You may not perceive it directly, but the care and craft of The Turn percolates through your hands and eyes. Within minutes or even seconds, you just know this is something different. Something far beyond what others are doing with their false magic. You want this. You need this.

That’s why Apple is now the most valuable company in the world. And that’s why you will buy an iPhone 5. And an iPhone 6. And beyond. You’re upset about The Prestige, or the lack thereof. But it’s all about The Turn.

[Great piece. At work I’d really like to get to the point where I can spend time carefully researching and redesigning our work. It won’t be for a while in larger sense, but in a smaller sense we do it every day.]

The Next Big… uh, Slightly Taller Thing

The Next Big… uh, Slightly Taller Thing:

Please, enough with the “iOS is not for power users” argument. Don’t tell me that the ability for a word processing application to open any RTF document in your iCloud document storage rather than just the ones assigned to its sandbox must be forbidden on the grounds that it might confuse Aunt Tillie. Don’t tell me it would create unnecessary user confusion to let FireFox for iOS ask “Make Firefox your default browser?” on first run, and to have that as a dropdown somewhere in Settings. Aunt Tillie has figured out manual transmission cars, child-proof pill bottles and digital alarm clocks; she will not be reduced to sobbing existential despair when presented with a few more toggles on her phone’s configuration screen.

[Smack on. Yes, I believe that design is making choices, but the choice to not allow you to customize this behavior feels wrong to me as well.]

Source: Coyote Tracks

★ Amazon’s Play

★ Amazon’s Play:

Om Malik argues that Bezos is the inheritor to Steve Jobs’s crown. I agree. Not because Bezos has copied anything Jobs did, but because he has not. What he’s done that is Jobs-like is doggedly pursue, year after year, iteration after iteration, a vision unlike that of any other company — all in the name of making customers happy.

[Why is it so hard for folks to remember this? Making customers happy is all there is.]

Source: Daring Fireball

What to obsess over

What to obsess over:

The reason is that these numbers demand that you start tweaking. You can tweak a website or tweak an accounts payable policy and make numbers go up, which is great, but it’s not going to fundamentally change your business.

I’d have you obsess about things that are a lot more difficult to measure. Things like the level of joy or relief or gratitude your best customers feel. How much risk your team is willing to take with new product launches. How many people recommended you to a friend today…

What are you tracking? If you track concepts, your concepts are going to get better. If you track open rates or clickthrough, then your subject lines are going to get better. Up to you.

[Agreed. Now that measuring things is getting easier, deciding what to measure is important. In world where people espouse “measure everything” that firehouse quickly needs some arbitration.]

Source: Seth’s Blog