Ben Skelton's Blog

WWDC Roundup

The WWDC keynote was a bit of a snoozefest, but there were a couple of interesting announcements....

iPhone 3G
There were no real surprises with the iPhone announcement other than the price and the fact that Apple hasn't included a better camera. It is too bad that Apple is getting rid of iTunes activation, it was one of the more innovative features of the phone. It sounds like iPhones will now have to be activated the old fashioned way (in the store). Perhaps it was just too hard to work with all of the different carriers to make online activation work. I'll wait a couple of weeks before calling our Rogers rep to figure out how I can get one that works with our business plan.

Snow Leopard
Yes! More software companies should focus on performance and stability. I haven't had many problems with Leopard, but many people have found it to be the buggiest release of OS X to date. From what I can tell the only new feature is that Mail, Address Book and iCal will natively support Exchange 2007. Apple seems to be courting enterprises more and more, which is great. Perhaps this announcement will give the Entourage team a big kick in the ass to turn Entourage into the best Exchange client on any platform, and not just a medocre version of Outlook.

MobileMe
The other big announcement of the day was MobileMe, which impressed me more than I thought it would (based on the rumours). Some thoughts:

• The messaging is simple and clear — "Exchange for the rest of us". This should have been released a year ago from Redmond as Windows Live!
• The web applications look well designed, simple and elegant
• Hopefully Apple has sorted out all of the reliability problems that have plagued .Mac
• Where is the ability to use your own domain name with the service? When I stopped using .Mac I decided to get my own domain and use it for everything. I never want to have to change my personal email address again

MacBook Air Impressions

I’ve had my MacBook Air for a couple of weeks and thought I would jot down a few thoughts about the new machine…

• Pictures don’t do the machine justice. It is so incredibly light and thin that I sometimes forget that it is in my bag. As an added bonus the power adapter is a hell of a lot lighter then the gigantic MacBook Pro one, which significantly cuts down on the weight I have to lug around.
• The machine is really comfortable to use on your lap as it is light and it doesn’t get very warm. The MacBook Pro got ridiculously hot.
• The display is gorgeous. Although I probably would have chosen a matte screen the glossy display is growing on me.
• The keyboard is really comfortable. Although I like the new mapping of the function keys for play / pause, Expose and Dashboard I miss having a function key mapped to toggle display mirroring / extended desktop.
• I was surprised how well the USB Ethernet dongle works. All you need to do is plug it into the USB port on the laptop and the network is available. As someone who has used Windows in the past this is probably the most impressive part of OS X — no dialogs, no warnings, no alerts — just a working network!
• The lack of ports doesn’t bug me until the Ethernet dongle is connected to the computer. Apple should have made it a splitter with both Ethernet and USB. The USB port has enough power to drive an external SuperDrive, so perhaps it could drive both Ethernet and a USB port at once.
• Everything seems as fast and responsive as my first generation MacBook Pro. I spend most of my day in Entourage, Word, Safari, NetNewsWire and Keynote and this computer has no problem handling any of ‘em.
• I have 31GB left on the hard drive, but haven’t installed the Adobe Creative Suite yet. I think I will be a little more selective this time around and only install Fireworks. It is the only part of the suite I use somewhat regularly.

This laptop is by far the best laptop I have ever owned (high praise) and I have no qualms about it being my only computer. In fact I couldn’t imagine going back to lugging around the MacBook Pro.

iTunes Customer Service

The iTunes Music Store has the best online customer service I have seen in a long time. A couple of days ago I purchased a DJ compilation and it didn’t seem to want to play. I tried purchasing it again to see if the second download would work, no dice. I filled out the online form and within a day I had the following email in my inbox:

Dear Ben,

I hope this email finds you well. Your issue has been escalated to me and I will be happy to help you from now on until I am sure everything is resolved.

I'm sorry to hear that "Kitsuné BoomBox (Mixed By Jerry Bouthier) - Single" doesn't seem to sound correct. I have posted the missing item to your account. Please follow these steps to download the item:

From the pull-down Store menu at the top, select Check for Purchases (if you're unable to upgrade and are using iTunes 6 or earlier, you'll find this option in the Advanced menu). If you can't find this option, you can also click this link to Check for Purchases:
https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/checkForPurchases

Enter your account name and password, then click the Check button.

The missing item should begin downloading and appear in your Purchased playlist. If you receive an error message while downloading, try again after turning off any firewall or web-accelerator software that you may have installed. If the download process is interrupted for any reason, it should resume once you reopen iTunes.

Please let me know if your third download has the same problems. I will be happy to refund you for your duplicate purchase as soon as the transaction clears. I would, however, like to know if the third download works for you before I refund you for the duplicate purchase. I may need to refund you for both purchases if the content is still not up to par.

I appreciate your patience Ben and truly wish you nothing but the very best. If you have further questions concerning this issue please reply to this email and I will be happy to assist you.

Fascinating... Not only was the email actually helpful, but it was also written in a way that didn’t make me feel like the customer service representative was selecting a canned response from a list. The third download worked great and I emailed the representative back to let her know that it worked. Within a day I had the following email in my inbox:

I'm pleased to hear that "Kitsuné BoomBox" downloaded properly.  I hope you enjoy your purchase.

I have also reversed the charge for the duplicate purchase. You will see a credit of $5.99, plus any applicable taxes, in three to five business days. If store credit was used for this purchase, you should see the credit after you sign out of the iTunes Store and sign back in.

In the unlikely event that you receive a download error in the future, please remember that it is not necessary to repurchase items when downloads are interrupted, because the items should still be in your account, waiting to be downloaded. To learn more, follow the steps in this article:

How to resume interrupted iTunes Store downloads
http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n93015

I hope you continue to enjoy using the iTunes Store.

This level of customer service is really impressive, especially when compared to organizations like CIBC and Air Canada. I have sent CIBC a number of emails within their online banking system and generally I receive crappy responses that do not have anything to do with the issue I contacted them about in the first place. Air Canada often tends to solve that problem by not responding to your email.

On a related note the album I downloaded from iTunes wasn’t very good… It would be great if iTunes allowed you to preview more of a song, especially for long club mixes or DJ compilations… Oh well, you can’t win ‘em all!

A little bit of Entourage news

The MacBU just updated the Mac Mojo blog with a sneak peak on Entourage 2008's calendaring functionality aptly called "It's about time." The changes look great, especially for those of us that are using the current version of Entourage with Exchange. No information is provided about how the new version handles browsing a coworker's calendar or trying to find availability when you have a number of different participants and resources... Hopefully more information will drop soon.

After reading this post I have a bit more faith that the new version of Entourage is going to be a big leap forward!

I (heart) Keynote!

I downloaded the 30 day trial of iWork yesterday which includes Keynote, Pages and a new spreadsheet application called Numbers. I haven't spent any time in Pages or Numbers yet, but fired up Keynote right away to see what was new. I am obsessed with Keynote — it is one of those pieces of software that make using a Mac so compelling and something I use for work all the time.

Apple has really cleaned up the UI in Keynote! All of the iWork applications now feature a Format Bar that appears right below the toolbar. The Format Bar provides contextual formatting controls, depending on what type of object you have selected. Sound familiar? It should as it looks like it was inspired by the ribbon in Microsoft Office. This is an awesome addition as I have always hated all of the different palettes for text, color, etc that littered your screen (and would get lost behind windows). Microsoft should probably get the credit for this one and not Apple though!

There are a few new transitions and effects that I am likely going to overuse in the next little while. Color Planes and Swap are pretty sweet and Sparkle is a nice way to call attention to text. When Keynote first came out the Cube transition looked pretty hot, but now seems really dated.

Something I didn't expect but am very happy with is that all of the iWork applications can open documents saved in their respective Microsoft Office 2007 file formats. Awesome!! This will make looking at documents sent in the new formats much easier until the MacBU actually manages to ship Office 2008. Only six months or so to go :(

The iPhone — Sweet!!

I had some time to kill and the lineup wasn't very long at the Apple Store in Santa Monica (around 9pm) so I decided to check out the iPhone. It is sweeeeeet. The version of Safari included with the device is freakin' amazing. All of the demo phones were connected to the Apple Store Wi-Fi network which is nice and fast. My guess is that it wouldn't be as pleasant to use over EDGE, but the browsing experience is pretty much perfect. The phone is very responsive and there didn't seem to be any lag or delay when accessing any of the applications on the phone. The phone's UI is incredible — hopefully this will give Motorola a huge kick-in-the-ass to actually spend some money on UI. Nokia has always had pretty great user interfaces, but the iPhone definitely raises the bar.

I came very close to walking out with one, but decided against it. Yes, I am known for my iron clad will :)  I was one of the few — pretty much everyone walking out of the store had a little black iPhone bag. Now it is off to Sara's birthday party / Canada day party!

The iPhone and AppleTV

Yesterday wasn't a very productive day for me. Twice a year (during Macworld and WWDC) I try to concentrate but actually spend the morning reading the second-by-second transcripts from the keynotes, the next couple of hours looking at the updated Apple site and reading various Apple and Microsoft-related blogs, and the afternoon watching the official keynote stream online. Yesterday was no different. I should probably take these days off from now on!

My thoughts on the products introduced in the Keynote:

AppleTV (B-minus)

If the AppleTV had a DVD player I would give it a A-minus. Incorporating a Blue-Ray or HD-DVD player would make it an A-plus. The lack of any sort DVD/Blue-Ray/HD-DVD player in the iTV is a bit of a buzz-kill for me, as I would love to get rid of my DVD player and just use an Apple device to play all my content in the living room (including content stored in iTunes). The AppleTV is also a lot less compelling if you live in Canada, as there isn't much content you can purchase from iTunes up here.

Perhaps the next version of the Mini will ship with an AppleTV-like version of Front Row. This would be the box I would want in my living room. For the time being I'll wait this one out...

iPhone (B-plus)

I would have rated the iPhone an A after the keynote, but after the reality-distortion field has subsided I realize this is a B-plus product at best... There are too many negatives which include:

• No removable battery — This isn't a big deal for an iPod, but is a MAJOR deal for a $500 cellular phone; 
  
• Lack of BlackBerry Connect — There is no way Apple could pry my BlackBerry out of my hands without providing some type of integrated BlackBerry Server support. BlackBerry knows how to do mobile corporate email right, which no other vendor knows how to do; and 
  
• Lack of a development API — The lack of commitment from Apple to providing a development API which would allow companies to create and sell software for the device sucks. Who cares if the device runs a variant of OS X if it is not open for development. The iPhone might as well use a weird proprietary OS if you can't develop software for it.

Other negatives (that aren't as big of a deal for me) include the fact that the device is EDGE and not 3G, that Apple is not selling unlocked versions that can be used with any GSM carrier and that it doesn't include a version of iTunes that will let you purchase tracks over the air (and sync them with your computer later). In addition Apple's lack of respect for Cisco and their iPhone trademark is über-hypocritical. Isn't this the same company that is requiring everyone who uses "Pod" in their company or product names to change it? This post from Mark Chandler (Cisco's General Counsel) sums it up nicely.

The Keynote itself was spectacular though! Nobody introduces a product like Steve Jobs. It will be interesting to see what the iPhone looks like in a year and a half in its second iteration. Now, where is iLife, iWork, Leopard, and all that fun Mac stuff we are still waiting for?

Running in Argentina

I have been in Argentina for about a week and a half now. I promised myself that I was going to get back into great shape on this trip. I know, a month-long holiday in South America is probably not the best time to focus on fitness, but I figure it is as good of a time as any. December is coming fast and furious, and I like to eat — a lot!

I've always found working out while traveling a pain in the ass. Hotel gyms are mediocre at best (the worst was an empty room with three pieces of equipment on the smoking floor of a hotel in Cambridge). The only hotels I have stayed in that consistently have great gyms are Four Seasons and various Westin hotels.

I used to run a lot in high school and have felt in the last year that I should get back into it. It doesn't take a lot of time as you can leave from your house and return to your house and you don't have to rely on a gym. On a whim (and a love for everything Apple) I purchased the Nike + iPod kit a couple of months ago.

The kit is a little sensor that goes in your Nike+ shoes and a little receiver that goes on the end of the iPod Nano. I have always used top-of-the-line Asics shoes as Nike shoes haven't been too kind to my feet in the past. I stuck the sensor in the shoelace eyelet that the laces are supposed to be put through half-way up the tongue of the shoe. The sensor squeezes in perfectly, and the kit works great.

I think this is one of the best products I have seen in a while. I love tracking my runs and progress, and because the iPod is keeping track of the distance, I can just run wherever and it will tell me how far I have gone (perfect for cities that I have no idea where to go or how far I have run).

That said, Buenos Aires isn't the best city to run in. The pollution from the cars, crazy drivers, loose sidewalk tiles, slow pedestrians and enormous amounts of dog crap lead to a pretty challenging run. I have been pretty good and have gone out for a run most days I have been here.

The only downsides is that the kit doesn't actually run for you :) I forgot how exhausting running is when you first start. It does get easier though...

Hopefully they will come up with a little Nike +iPod badge for my blog so I can share my running progress with y'all!

And the MacBU Drops the Funk Bomb

The biggest announcement this week at WWDC didn't come from Apple, but from Microsoft who announced that the next version of Mac Office will not support VBA. {Insert a lot of bad language here}...

Why do I care? Many organizations use Excel (and Word) as an application development environment. Now many companies that conduct sales forecasting, time tracking, inventory analysis and employee resourcing in Excel spreadsheets will not be able to collaborate with their Mac users. In one announcement Microsoft has made the next version of Mac Office completely impotent in the enterprise. (I might be inclined to reword this slightly if the next version of Mac Office allowed one to save, open and browse files in SharePoint libraries like the Windows version does, but I'm not hopeful).

Gotta say, this is one of the worst decisions I have seen in a while. Mac Office is already the worst application on my Mac — it is slow, bloated, crashes and has compatibility issues. It sounds like the next version won't even make it on to my desktop. I am not sure why the MacBU has so much trouble writing software. Apple has shown with Keynote that there is room for competition in the Office space and Keynote is now the only presentation tool I use. I wonder what would happen if Apple started to get serious about the spreadsheet and word processing space.

The worst part about the state of Mac Office is that when I use Beta 2 of the new version of Office for Windows (in Parallels) I drool. The Windows Office team has created a beautiful, innovative product — too bad the Mac Office team can't say the same (although to be fair they haven't shown us what the next version will look like).

I am not sure what the MacBU really does anymore. It has been approximately a year since Apple has announced the move to intel and the Mac BU still hasn't been able to get Universal Binary versions of tiny applications like Microsoft Messenger (already feature-crippled compared to the Windows version) and Remote Desktop Connection out the door. I wonder if they are slowly becoming less and less relevant in today's Mac world (through their own doing)...

--

Note: A couple of the developers on the MacBU have written postings about the VBA decision and the reason behind it.  Very interesting read, but the end decision is still incredibly disappointing.

• Saying goodbye to Visual Basic
• Virtual PC and Visual Basic

WWDC

Steve Jobs should be on stage in a couple of hours talking about all the cool new toys at Apple's WWDC. Hopefully we will see some cool new stuff from Apple today... 

In pre-WWDC news WMware announced that they will have a virtualization solution for the Mac later this year. Nice! It will be interesting to see the difference between their solution and Parallels. Parallels is an awesome product (all the new intel Macs at Habañero have it installed)... Solutions like this make Apple's switch to intel all that much smarter.