So, my boss got an iPad for the office. I told him it'd end in tears, but we had credit to use up and he thought it'd be good for some stuff. Secretly I was concerned that having the thing in my hands I would be taken over by it's fiendish glamour and I would mutate in to just another carbon-copy iPerson. I needn't have worried.
First, let me declare my loyalties; I am ideologically a linux user - open-source is for me where we are going, regardless of what happens before that. However, since I use a great many specialist software packages, I am practically a windows user. Would love to be 100% linux, but it just isn't viable. Not that I haven't tried Apple products, but precisely because I have tried them! Two events really rammed it home; 1) someone had an eMac to learn from home. We wanted to add music from a folder to iTunes and we spent hours working it out! Just works my arse! 2) When the same computer had a fault with the HDD changing it was approximately a millions time more difficult than any other kind of computer... Bit like the iPhone battery I suppose...
Anyhow, my fear was that my appreciation for the slick technology would overcome my abhorrence of the business model. Never fear.
First let me say some nice things; it is a very nice, very sophisticated, piece of tech. Well designed GUI, stylish case and easy to follow start-up. Smooth interface with a slick auto-rotate animation/transition. App icons do a cute little jiggle when you're editing the desktop. Unfortunately these are no longer the preserve of Apple and I can get such eye-candy other places - Apple lost the uniqueness of their GUI idea as soon as Microsoft released windows, so now there needs to be a bit more substance than this.
So, rather than talking about it abstractly, let me talk about what I was actually doing. There is no mobile device that can actually do the kind of specialised lighting calculation or run the lighting software we use, but we do need to show our models and designs to our clients. Normally we would take along a laptop (normally also with a laptop operator - yours truly) and 'walkthrough' the model, with much pausing and fussing and fiddling to get the correct views. Often there will be presentations in Powerpoint with hardcopy for the client. One of the recent improvements to our lighting software has been to include a video option. I will not go into detail on the pros/cons of the system, but the bottom line is we can export a video of a walkthrough. Along with associated material, this can all be read on a small, easy to use, tablet type device. No laptop. No laptop operator. My boss looks like he has his finger on the pulse and our clients are suitably impressed.
I started with the video; I already knew that the primary way to put 'content' onto iStuff is through iTunes, but I didn't want iTunes on my PC - if only because I was worried about accidentally cocking up the 'pairing' of the devices and deleting some of the stuff on the iPad (I have heard of people accidentally doing this). I don't really understand how it works and really I wanted a way to get files on it without resorting to integrating iTunes into my life. Dropbox! I thought it'd be the solution! Set up an account, downloaded the App, set it all up, synced videos in some of the folders, BANG! I can access the videos.... but wait, there is no 'save to drive' or similar option. I am expected to stream the content from the server pretty much every time (it does hang around for a little while after loading, but not long). Fine if you have a wifi connection fast enough, or a 3G connection and time to waste, but my boss (who is likely to be using this) can barely get his head around closing a window after he's finished 'in case he needs it later' and often has his computer crash when he has the maximum number of PDFs open that Adobe will allow. Is he really going to be able to set up wifi connections all the time? Let's hope so. Is there always going to be a wifi connection? Not necessarily.
So, I thought, what about the iCloud I've heard so much about? Surely I could just upload the video to the iCloud and access it from there. Apparently not. I appears that the iCloud is not quite what I expected; I had imagined an online storage folder tree with multiple ways of accessing and uploading files. I went to the iCloud website to see how to upload something, expecting to sign in and maybe browse a file through an online uploader, maybe download an uploader program, maybe having a sync folder (a la Dropbox). What I was actually faced with was a bland blank catalogue of uploaded documents in three flavours; Keynote, Pages and Numbers. Each flavour had a page to itself with very large buttons to buy the appropriate iOS programs. It had very few instructions, but I finally found the upload option in the top-right of the screen in the drop-down menu of of the 'settings' icon. Brilliant.
The other thing I would like to point out is that it seems that the iCloud only works with three Apple software packages and is not some general cloud-computing solution, but I guess this may change. Either way, not so good for accessing a video - unless I want to have it as an insert in a presentation....
Dropbox, although this is less than perfect. There do appear to be a couple of other options that I haven't tried out; apps that network and access files that way and (the most hopeful) drag'n'drop into the only system folder accessible on the USB connection - the DCIM folder. Hopefully this last will work, but we shall see....
I expect that there are some that might wonder why I have ranted about a file transfer problem that is really a problem I've created for myself by not using iTunes. But for me, this is the fundamental flaw of the iCrap range. A tool is to be used as the person using wants to, usually in a way designed, sometimes in some unusual way. At no point does the person selling you the tool have a say as to how you use it after you have paid money to own it; imagine if you had to buy iHammer that could only be used on iNails in certain circumstances, unless of course you mess around with a range of different third-party attachments. You just want to be able to grab a nail and hammer, not mess around with the iLoader to prime the iNails that will only work on iHammer approved walls. There is no actual reason to restrict how a consumer transfers content to a device they have paid money to own, but they do.
But I can see the person who all this is designed for. It is the person for whom browsing through folder trees is too techy - they like all their stuff laid out in simple categories and until recently always viewed their folders with extra large icons. The person for whom actually learning about the technology they use is somehow below them - they are more important than this, it is a waste of their precious time, they want it to 'just work'. For them it just might (for a while at least). All this seems to be designed for the iPerson; the person with a PowerMAC at home, a MacBook Air, an iPhone and now the iPad - which is essentially just a hardware GUI extension of the rest of their Apple universe. This person will enable iCloud on everything and never go anywhere without wifi or 3G and so find all their documents ready and waiting, there on their device, without ever having to learn how to sync folders or transfer files. It's all organised to be a sleek, interconnected, but (most importantly) isolated island in the sea of technology. It is not cross-platform compatible. It isn't meant to enable wide and interestingly divergent development, but to keep developmental direction in the hands of Apple - take it or leave it. It all links together out of the box and the consumer never need worry their pretty little heads about how any of this actually works - it just works. Right up to the point that is doesn't, and then you're screwed...
......
All this wouldn't be so bad, but selectively breeding people who can operate computers without understanding them is most certainly a large step in the wrong direction. There were two news reports in a 'Digital Literacy' series this week that caught my eye, first was this one that talks about a new cheap programmable computer (should eventually cost around £20ea) called 'Raspberry Pi'. The part that caught my eye was:
We need to have computer literate people in our work places, from the boardroom to the mailroom. How many hours, how much money, is essentially wasted because people do not really understand their technology even at the most basic levels? This is a joke (source - XKCD):
First, let me declare my loyalties; I am ideologically a linux user - open-source is for me where we are going, regardless of what happens before that. However, since I use a great many specialist software packages, I am practically a windows user. Would love to be 100% linux, but it just isn't viable. Not that I haven't tried Apple products, but precisely because I have tried them! Two events really rammed it home; 1) someone had an eMac to learn from home. We wanted to add music from a folder to iTunes and we spent hours working it out! Just works my arse! 2) When the same computer had a fault with the HDD changing it was approximately a millions time more difficult than any other kind of computer... Bit like the iPhone battery I suppose...
Anyhow, my fear was that my appreciation for the slick technology would overcome my abhorrence of the business model. Never fear.
First let me say some nice things; it is a very nice, very sophisticated, piece of tech. Well designed GUI, stylish case and easy to follow start-up. Smooth interface with a slick auto-rotate animation/transition. App icons do a cute little jiggle when you're editing the desktop. Unfortunately these are no longer the preserve of Apple and I can get such eye-candy other places - Apple lost the uniqueness of their GUI idea as soon as Microsoft released windows, so now there needs to be a bit more substance than this.
So, rather than talking about it abstractly, let me talk about what I was actually doing. There is no mobile device that can actually do the kind of specialised lighting calculation or run the lighting software we use, but we do need to show our models and designs to our clients. Normally we would take along a laptop (normally also with a laptop operator - yours truly) and 'walkthrough' the model, with much pausing and fussing and fiddling to get the correct views. Often there will be presentations in Powerpoint with hardcopy for the client. One of the recent improvements to our lighting software has been to include a video option. I will not go into detail on the pros/cons of the system, but the bottom line is we can export a video of a walkthrough. Along with associated material, this can all be read on a small, easy to use, tablet type device. No laptop. No laptop operator. My boss looks like he has his finger on the pulse and our clients are suitably impressed.
I started with the video; I already knew that the primary way to put 'content' onto iStuff is through iTunes, but I didn't want iTunes on my PC - if only because I was worried about accidentally cocking up the 'pairing' of the devices and deleting some of the stuff on the iPad (I have heard of people accidentally doing this). I don't really understand how it works and really I wanted a way to get files on it without resorting to integrating iTunes into my life. Dropbox! I thought it'd be the solution! Set up an account, downloaded the App, set it all up, synced videos in some of the folders, BANG! I can access the videos.... but wait, there is no 'save to drive' or similar option. I am expected to stream the content from the server pretty much every time (it does hang around for a little while after loading, but not long). Fine if you have a wifi connection fast enough, or a 3G connection and time to waste, but my boss (who is likely to be using this) can barely get his head around closing a window after he's finished 'in case he needs it later' and often has his computer crash when he has the maximum number of PDFs open that Adobe will allow. Is he really going to be able to set up wifi connections all the time? Let's hope so. Is there always going to be a wifi connection? Not necessarily.
So, I thought, what about the iCloud I've heard so much about? Surely I could just upload the video to the iCloud and access it from there. Apparently not. I appears that the iCloud is not quite what I expected; I had imagined an online storage folder tree with multiple ways of accessing and uploading files. I went to the iCloud website to see how to upload something, expecting to sign in and maybe browse a file through an online uploader, maybe download an uploader program, maybe having a sync folder (a la Dropbox). What I was actually faced with was a bland blank catalogue of uploaded documents in three flavours; Keynote, Pages and Numbers. Each flavour had a page to itself with very large buttons to buy the appropriate iOS programs. It had very few instructions, but I finally found the upload option in the top-right of the screen in the drop-down menu of of the 'settings' icon. Brilliant.
The other thing I would like to point out is that it seems that the iCloud only works with three Apple software packages and is not some general cloud-computing solution, but I guess this may change. Either way, not so good for accessing a video - unless I want to have it as an insert in a presentation....
Dropbox, although this is less than perfect. There do appear to be a couple of other options that I haven't tried out; apps that network and access files that way and (the most hopeful) drag'n'drop into the only system folder accessible on the USB connection - the DCIM folder. Hopefully this last will work, but we shall see....
I expect that there are some that might wonder why I have ranted about a file transfer problem that is really a problem I've created for myself by not using iTunes. But for me, this is the fundamental flaw of the iCrap range. A tool is to be used as the person using wants to, usually in a way designed, sometimes in some unusual way. At no point does the person selling you the tool have a say as to how you use it after you have paid money to own it; imagine if you had to buy iHammer that could only be used on iNails in certain circumstances, unless of course you mess around with a range of different third-party attachments. You just want to be able to grab a nail and hammer, not mess around with the iLoader to prime the iNails that will only work on iHammer approved walls. There is no actual reason to restrict how a consumer transfers content to a device they have paid money to own, but they do.
But I can see the person who all this is designed for. It is the person for whom browsing through folder trees is too techy - they like all their stuff laid out in simple categories and until recently always viewed their folders with extra large icons. The person for whom actually learning about the technology they use is somehow below them - they are more important than this, it is a waste of their precious time, they want it to 'just work'. For them it just might (for a while at least). All this seems to be designed for the iPerson; the person with a PowerMAC at home, a MacBook Air, an iPhone and now the iPad - which is essentially just a hardware GUI extension of the rest of their Apple universe. This person will enable iCloud on everything and never go anywhere without wifi or 3G and so find all their documents ready and waiting, there on their device, without ever having to learn how to sync folders or transfer files. It's all organised to be a sleek, interconnected, but (most importantly) isolated island in the sea of technology. It is not cross-platform compatible. It isn't meant to enable wide and interestingly divergent development, but to keep developmental direction in the hands of Apple - take it or leave it. It all links together out of the box and the consumer never need worry their pretty little heads about how any of this actually works - it just works. Right up to the point that is doesn't, and then you're screwed...
......
All this wouldn't be so bad, but selectively breeding people who can operate computers without understanding them is most certainly a large step in the wrong direction. There were two news reports in a 'Digital Literacy' series this week that caught my eye, first was this one that talks about a new cheap programmable computer (should eventually cost around £20ea) called 'Raspberry Pi'. The part that caught my eye was:
What [Eban] Upton realised was that schools weren't teaching pupils the basics of computing any more – they were just teaching them how to use software. "Children were learning about applications, which are pretty low-value skills. They weren't being properly equipped to think about how computers are programmed, about how they're built and how we make them work."The other article was this one on how generally our Computer Science courses in this country aren't up to scratch, with game design oriented courses having only 12% of graduates finding work within six months.
We need to have computer literate people in our work places, from the boardroom to the mailroom. How many hours, how much money, is essentially wasted because people do not really understand their technology even at the most basic levels? This is a joke (source - XKCD):
But shouldn't be. This should be common sense, but is not (else this joke wouldn't work). And the way the iCrap is going it won't be anymore - either it will just work or it won't and there will be no menu items to try. Things will either work together or they won't, and there will be no route for a person to configure/adjust/meddle with the way their devices/programs work.
What I would like to see is a few steps backwards in some directions; flashy GUIs (which I will go into in more depth sometime), single use devices, cross-compatibly, upgradability/repairability. Apple is going the wrong way (IMO) on all points. It is an evolutionary pressure towards dumbing-down our ability to comprehend how the technology we use works. It is undoubtedly doing the devil's work of making us into more compliant, more cattle like, less thinking, iPeople. That is why Steve Jobs is now repaying his debt for the inspiration for the Apple business model sucking his scrotum.
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