Bill Gates laments the loss of Windows Phone to Android and so do I! →

Engaging the time machine back to 2006 I quickly see a very different world. I thought that Apple barely made Macs and the newer “iPods”. There’s rumors swirling that Apple is working on a phone. But why? This makes no sense to many in 2006 but those people didn’t have the vision to see what these devices would become.

Most of my pre-iPhone work life was at organizations obsessed with Blackberry, which I avoided like a common plague. Microsoft was easily gaining speed and battling back against Blackberry and Palm devices. Google bought a company that developed software called “Android”.

I had high hopes for the Windows Phone platform as a second competitor to iOS. Microsoft was doing some amazing things and the partnership with Nokia on the early hardware back in 2012 was truly magic (no sarcasm). I’m a proud Nokia Lumia 920 owner! I seldomly spend my own money to buy non-iOS hardware to test but I truly enjoyed the Lumia.

Quote from Gates, “There’s room for exactly one non-Apple operating system and what’s that worth? $400 billion that would be transferred from company G to company M.” I’d much rather M have that money (and our data) than G.

Microsoft couldn’t shake the problems with the app ecosystem and as much as they tried to throw money at app developers it was too late. Apple was dominating and Android was taking over the remainder of the world. As users we have suffered due to Microsoft’s failures in mobile, sure wish they’d give it another try!

Verge Article

Google and OEM-based attack vectors →

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On paper, Android conceptually seems like a grand, world-bettering idea. Common OS shared by a world full of hardware manufacturers, self-monitoring through it all. In execution, however, it seems to have been a nightmare. From the horrible slowness of new OS adoption to malware to “XYZ” skins to maintaining security….a nightmare.

From the Ars article, “"One of these security tests scans for pre-installed PHAs [potentially harmful applications] included in the system image," Google officials wrote in their Android Security & Privacy 2018 Year In Review report. "If we find a PHA on the build, we work with the OEM partner to remediate and remove the PHA from the build before it can be offered to users."“

This is indeed some complicated stuff but even a layman could see the challenge here.

Ars Technica Post

New Hampshire's Basic Historical Marker →

Funny to see a local newspaper story perspective on this, great read! My favorite line, “Everybody who has ever typed a GOTO command can feel proud.” It’s certainly an interesting idea to have New Hampshire identified as a geeky state.

My second computer was a Commodore 64 (Apple IIe was first). I fondly remember spending a ton of time heads down with the ol’ 64 and my Basic friend. I still have a copy of some of the programs I wrote back in the 6th grade and even a school project where I wrote out the code on a yellow legal pad and turned it in as a school project. My instructor was kind but admitted that she had no idea what she was looking at.

The biggest project in Basic was to write my own banking software. My Father worked in banking and his bank had recently gotten their first computer system, unix based terminals. I thought I could make it better so I created my own version in Basic. I even had a mechanism for a user to log in. Eventually the program got too big and I started hitting limitations of the hardware, mainly the insane and often-horrid tape drive. And yes, I did NOT have a disk drive because I couldn’t afford it!

All Hail Basic - Concord Monitor Article

Tim Cook's Stanford Commencement Keynote →

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Tim Cook recently spoke at Stanford and it’s worth the time to watch. I wonder how often these graduates will go back and reconsider Tim’s comments. There’s some deep, tough talk here.

“Crisis has tempered optimism. Consequences have challenged idealism. And reality has shaken blind faith,” he said. “Our problems – in technology, in politics, wherever – are human problems. From the Garden of Eden to today, it’s our humanity that got us into this mess, and it’s our humanity that’s going to have to get us out.”

Direct link to Stanford’s story.

Silicon Valley's Unofficial Nerd Heritage Trail →

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Came across this article a while back and discovered again when I was clearing out some “saved for later reading”.

Rediscovering this article, I think about the risks and pure magic that you find on this trail. I long for the days where simple discovery was valued without immediately being squashed by VC-influenced metrics.

Maybe there is some glory is revisiting this trail and carving out some time in our lives to take chances!

Skift artcile

Tycho - we interrupt this program to share some exciting news @iso50 →

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Years ago I began following an incredible, photography focused Instagram account named @iso50. After following for a short time Scott posted about some music he was working on and shared the accompanying art work. I took a listen and was hooked. Instantly hooked. I had never heard anything like it and was immediately changed.

I’ve only had a few events like that in my musical life. Speaking to the randomness of my musical tastes I recall the same emotions when hearing the album “Leftoverture” by Kansas, “Soldiers Under Command” by Stryper, and “Days of Thunder” by The Midnight. However, Tycho was the stronger. I’ve had the honor of seeing them live twice and have tickets for The Greek show later this year.

Tycho’s newest album sounds amazing and Scott ties it all together with amazing visuals.

Check out the newest release and video, “Japan”. Wonderful!

A taste of life with Google

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Spending most of your life outside of Google’s reach tends to lessen ones perception of the horror that is being a product, rather than a consumer. The “Apple way” attracts me not only because they sell high quality products but also because they are crystal clear that they’re selling me a product, and I am the consumer.

Google intrigues me for many reasons, chief among them is their ability to convince millions of people that they should enjoy free services while blindly ignoring what happens with their information or why they would be allowed to use all of these products for free. Deep in my soul is a nostalgic longing for “Alta Vista” or maybe even “Dog Pile” on a crazy day.

Back in 2005-2006 personal email was quite the challenge for many. Google’s search engine had already become the defacto synonym for the phrase “internet search” but email remained a challenge. Friends would change their email address on a regular basis as they switched ISP’s and existing solutions like Yahoo and Hotmail were subpar at best. Storage became a problem as was the ability to scale and provide these services at levels of exponential growth. Queue Google….all hail Gmail. Gmail came with the promise of large amounts of storage and free email. As a 1990’s part-time PC user who rode the Netscape train all the way to H-E double hockey sticks and refused to use IE I knew what was going to happen next.

Speeding up the story…I couldn’t sign up for MobileMe fast enough and even tolerated it’s failures (my personal email still ends in @me.com). iCloud has grown to do a wonderful job for me but internet search is the wildcard, pun intended, with Duck Duck Go as my default for several years. It’s not Google, but it does the job.

A recent curioristy-induced purchase of a cheap Chromebook brought me to terms with he current reality of consuming Google’s services. I dove head first into the Chromebook and all associated services. The Dell hardware was underpowered but not horrible, especially considering the price point.

Rather than bore you with an in-depth analysis of Google’s services and what it’s like to use them I found it more humorous to share three screenshots of my first attempted creation of a new email message, my first attempt to watch a youtube video, and the resulting first seconds of viewing a youtube video. How do people deal with this?

WWDC - still reeling in the years →

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We used to complain that WWDC keynotes had become victims of a successful formula - Tim’s opening with a stock market inspiring message about innovation and retail sales, some new products, vast majority of time to iOS along with a light mention of OS X (I’m still challenged by calling it MacOS). Thankfully 2019 was vastly different than recent experience.

As an Apple fan from the midwest these keynotes were something of an event for us. We would gather together 10 or more of us at a local restaurant with wi-fi for lunch, order our food, and get ready for the 12 PM CT broadcast. We would have multiple tables full of people watching a live blog of the event, this was pre-live video stream by Apple. Some would read twitter feeds while others did both. Throughout it all was deep passion and excitement for what was shared.

When Steve’s journey ended I admit that these events felt different. I vividly remember the Fall 2011 event and Steve’s absence where we later found out that the team was well aware of Steve’s health status. Having visited Apple’s campus and heard of the depth of Steve’s impact on Apple’s spirit I believe there was a years-long impact that continues to ripple out on these events.

This past June 3, 2019 event felt different, more alive, more proud than any event in recent memory. I saw a team running at full speed, executing at a high level, and revealing a masive amount of transformational technology that I’m still trying to wrap my head around. Will hold off on commenting on the individual reveals and only say that I was very, very proud to watch the hard work of so many awesome people be received so positively and know that I’ll have lots of awesomeness coming my way.

More soon!

MacWorld did a great job of summarizing everything from the keynote as it was released.

Stops and Starts

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Attempting to maintain a web presence with a family, church responsibilities and a stressful full-time job is intersting. Nevertheless I’ve excited about the possibilities to learn from others and grow both as a writer and fellow human on this brief journey from cradle to grave.

For those that come across the site and stay for a while, thank you! I hope to earn a return visit from time to time.

Cue Apple - please come home →

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Like Rene I continue to hope that Apple will step back in to the home wi-fi market to augment the strength of the HomeKit platform. I was a proud AirPort user for many users. While I’ve enjoyed my Eero it’s led to a crisis of sorts that I’m now using an Amazon product to connect and type this.

Check out Rene’s take on this, great as always!

Teaching Twitter to play nice →

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Nice read. I’ve long pondered the aging nature of Twitter and it’s continual lack of new feature innovation. The challenges with threads are one example. I opened my first twitter account in May 2008 with such joy and excitement for the platform. Looking back I can see the damage it has done.

While it’s good to see them consider options I wonder how close they’ll come to addressing the true “incentives” of the platform which encourage much of the bad behavior.

Buzzfeed article

Tesla - come on, Morty, make up your mind! →

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in the 1979 film Meatballs there’s a scene where Bill Murray’s character says “Come on, Morty, make up your mind”. That phrase immediately popped in my head as I was reading this news. As a Tesla owner I am sincerely thankful for the vehicle and it’s engineering. It’s a joy to own and drive. However, I’m also thankful that missed out on the crapshoot that’s been the last 4 months of horrific decision making.

I also remember the scene from the movie airplane where they had Johnny a weather report and ask him what he makes of it. He then rattles off a list of things such as a “broach or a hat…”. Tesla is like that right now!

Great cars and value but let’s make up our minds and stick with it!

Tesla changes

Speaking of Apple...Disney announces Disney+ →

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The most mysterious release at Apple’s March 25 event was Apple TV+. While the endless parade of celebrities was moderately interesting, the complete lack of details regarding this service was certainly NOT interesting. This is in stark contrast to Disney’s announcement this week of their $7 a month service.

I think there’s a virtual line around the world already queued up for this, me included.

9to5 Mac has a good summary.