BigZaphod

My boy has been playing with touch devices literally his entire life. It started as a baby when we let him hold our iPhones. He learned to unlock them very early - I can't remember how old he was. Maybe around age 1 or so. Not long after, he learned how to adjust the volume, mute, and sleep/wake it intentionally. Then we got an iPad 1 around the time he was 15 months old. He immediately translated what he already knew from the iPhone to the iPad and only had trouble with the slide-to-unlock which, on iPad, doesn't stretch edge-to-edge and so he had to learn to be more accurate.

A few months after getting the iPad 1, he had pretty much fully figured out the iOS interface and was getting into everything including apps like Mail and Twitterrific and deleting and modifying things he shouldn't have been. So in the interest of not losing data but still allowing him access to the iPad, my wife and I basically stopped using the iPad for anything but casual games we didn't care much about and removed our accounts from all the apps. Then we loaded a bunch of toddler-focused apps and let him claim the device as his own. (Within reason.)

Since then he's become a pro at the iPad. When the 4.2 update enabled multitasking, I was pretty sure he'd be confused by it. He had come to learn that he could just push the home button when he got lost in an app and then restart it (since the app would relaunch fresh). Within a few days he learned instead to attempt to work his way out of confusing parts of apps without relaunching them. (Sometimes asking for help.) After a few more days, he accidentally discovered the double-tap on the home button and started using that to switch between apps!

The iPad has taken a serious physical beating in this time. We have wood floors and it was not uncommon for him to drop the iPad off the couch or push it off a table just to see what happens. He has also attempted surfing on it. The metal is riddled with little dents and huge scratches. It was a bit painful to see such a beautiful device abused, but it was also fascinating to see just how rugged the thing is. Eventually, though, he managed to drop it on some concrete and cracked the top corner of the screen. The crack is outside the touch area, though, so we taped it up and got a case that wraps around the corners a bit to try to avoid it getting worse. The screen is almost perpetually a little sticky and a little dirty (like his face) but it doesn't deter him.

He's remarkably adept with it now and he's only 27 months old. He navigates Netflix to find things he wants to watch by their cover art (he obviously cannot read yet), he can count to 20 thanks to a math app, knows maybe 1/3rd of the alphabet and can kind of draw some letters thanks to an alphabet app, can do 10+ piece puzzles thanks to a couple puzzle apps, and more. His daycare teachers are frequently amazed at his abilities at physical puzzles, counting things, and controlling any sort of gadget he might get his hands on (like their CD players or two-way radios) relative to his peers.

The iPad is now integrated directly into our nightly routine. During "quiet time" we enable airplane mode and let him play any non-internet apps (read: anything but Netflix) for about 30 minutes before we put the iPad away and read a story from an actual book, sing some songs, and finally go to sleep.

I'm not sure if there's ever been such a great single educational tool for toddlers as an iPad and I'm thankful that Apple manufactures such well-designed (and surprisingly tough) products.

Wow. That description fits me almost exactly.

Or, rather, it fits what I wish I could feel free to do as life cycles between these phases. What usually happens is I have to keep going to work and slogging through stuff even after I finish a productive frantic stage, and it's really really hard to do that. I get very slow. I feel down/demotivated/depressed during the down phase. Then the next frantic/excited stage hits (randomly as far as I can tell) and I work on the currently interesting feature/framework/whatever with all my waking energy until the phase suddenly fades on me. Rinse, repeat.

Do apps prior to the official SDK count? If so, I'm at 30+. :)

If Apple puts you on the new and noteworthy or featured lists, app sales go way up. I think it is safe to say that a lot of app sales are driven by discovery on the store itself. As to if it is the majority of sales, well, I have no way of knowing. :)

I'm a huge Apple fan, but I admit there's something about this which doesn't feel entirely... right, and that's concerning.

That said, however, there's decent and non-evil reasons for them to think like this - at least in terms of subscriptions, IMO.

One issue is that subscription-based apps are almost always free in the app store. Apple loses money on free apps that don't include iAds. If the subscription fee itself is also outside of Apple's control, they're hosting your app, getting you "shelf space", driving people to your app, etc. and they get nothing in return. With such an app, the content is basically replaced every month (or week or day or whatever) which makes the process a bit like a scheduled purchase of a new version of an app - hence the 30% cut.

On the surface, I disagree that Apple should get 30% forever for a subscription - especially if the publisher is providing all the infrastructure necessary to deliver that content. What if, though, the subscription system allowed publishers to upload the content once to Apple, and Apple hosts and distributes it to the apps and users? Now the 30% starts looking a bit more reasonable. If indeed it works this way (or will eventually work this way), you could be a very small shop and still manage to support thousands or, indeed, millions of subscriptions with virtually no support infrastructure of your own. That's certainly worth 30% IMO.

The flip side, though, is if you already have your own content delivery mechanisims in place, Apple taking 30% each billing cycle seems unfair. IMO, they should offer the subscription products in two flavors - one where they host and distribute your content, and another where you are doing that work. In the second version, Apple could easily take 30% of, say, the first billing cycle and take diminishing amounts for as long as the subscription remains in effect - perhaps even going all the way down to something like 2% just to cover the payment processing. That would seem a lot more fair to me than taking 30% forever.

Sadly, though, I haven't yet seen anything that suggests that either of these situations are even true. For all I know, Apple might not be offering any distribution or hosting services and might not even have an API to allow apps to easily take delivery of subscription content, and if that's the case, taking 30% forever seems excessive.

Oh.... he'll be leaving, I think. Perhaps not in one piece, though. :/

They probably will. AT&T seemed to spend a lot of time and effort promoting other non-iPhones. The people who want iPhones are probably already sold on them. Apple is also advertising it, too. The networks likely still feel a need to reach out to the people who don't care about the hardware itself and just want the services they offer, so they can use the other phones for that purpose.

Could it perhaps have been supplied by Verizon instead? They'd be the ones with the most to gain right now in terms of PR - get all the bloggers to talk about how much better the network is since the hardware itself is a non-story (which is exactly what the ones I've read have said so far).

UPDATE: The footnote in Gruber's article actually says "supplied by Apple" so... guess not. :)

I'm hoping there's more to this than meets the eye right now. Sadly, I suspect we won't know until Thursday.

I can think of a couple of scenarios that might fit what we know so far:

1) Apple might simply declare that they want 30% of all in-app purchases. Amazon will likely freak out. This, to me, would seem to be a seriously dangerous move on Apple's part.

2) Apple may drop the 30% cut entirely on in-app purchases. That'd be pretty disruptive but aside from adding a technical hoop to jump through for content providers to link content with Apple's in-app purchasing system, I don't think they would be quite so upset about it since they wouldn't really be losing money on each transaction. Of course this is still pretty harsh on Apple's part, IMO, but it's better than #1.

3) Apple simply requires developers to link purchased digital content with an Apple ID via the in-app purchasing system, but not necessarily requiring that Apple be used for the actual money transfer itself. The purpose of this would likely be to ensure that purchased digital goods are always linked to an Apple ID - even if they were purchased externally. If that's the case, then this is much less of a big deal, IMO, and a huge win for users. For instance, if you restored your device, you could be assured that all your digital content you bought via the Kindle app itself would be restored with a single tap - no need to login to Amazon again or anything like that. Thus Apple can help better ensure that the user will actually get their content back when the device restores which is required of all other in-app purchased content using the in-app purchase API.

This is more of a meta question/comment, but so far in my entire professional programming career (10+ years), I've never been interviewed in a way that required any programming tests or proof of ability. Instead I've always been hired by reputation or referrals and thus skipped past such things. Is that common or unusual?

Not that this is "universal", but I believe anon (from 4chan, etc) has been using them for the occasional public protest/event/whatever.

Works great for me in the US. I've been watching it off and on the last couple days from different locations and different ISPs.

I doubt it. All it'd take to shut down a satellite is to take over the control room on the ground and transmit a "power down" command or something.

Perhaps a better approach is to work to decentralize as much of our existing infrastructure as possible. Eliminate DNS. Fundamentally change how routing occurs to become more organic. Etc. Non-trivial, to be sure, but possible, IMO, and I think it needs to happen.

The goal should be that any internet-enabled device can mesh with the internet from any other internet-enabled device. Example (contrived) would be my cell phone talking to your cell phone with bluetooth, your phone talking to your laptop with a wifi connection, and your laptop talking to another device via ethernet, etc... and that ultimately, packets flow and end points can find each other all without central routing tables or artificial hierarchies, etc.

Only on the Mac. I guess Apple feels the memory and/or performance cost is still too high for mobile.

The only people who care about this are tinkerers and hackers and those with an agenda. I find it odd that people will bitch so much about this, and yet spend hours/days/weeks/whatever digging into the internals of stuff and poking around where they weren't meant to be just for the fun of it. So Apple changed their screws, huh? Instead of bitching about it and trying to turn it into an evil conspiracy plot, how about putting those tinkerer/hacking skills to use finding elegant and creative ways around it if it's so important to you?

For typical repairs, Apple offers very good warranties and one of the best return/repair services I've ever seen. It's not like you're going to save yourself a ton of time and money ordering iffy parts off eBay and tearing into the hardware yourself. If you're not doing this stuff for fun, why are you wasting your time with it in the first place?

This isn't about them trying to take away your right to modify your own hardware. There's still nothing (and likely will never be anything) stopping you from taking a hammer to it, drilling out the screws, x-raying it, or whatever. I'm sure Apple doesn't care if you want to see what's inside something you own. What they do care about is people modifying or attempting repairs and then breaking it and then trying to convince Apple it was their fault. Or passing off a broken/modified device as a legit Apple product and causing customer confusion. Or perhaps these new screws simply work better in their machines, jam up less, can be screwed in faster, whatever.

And before (I think) those, they released some kind of experimental app that dealt with large photos or building a bigger picture from smaller photos or something like that. I can't remember what it was called right now, though. :P

In answer to the headline: Of course - just not every day. :)

In answer to the actual situation behind the headline: No. It's time to find a new boss.

The gesture is remarkably natural to use. I was surprised.

The iPod nano could be seen as a prototype for an iPad without a home button. It still has physical volume and sleep/wake buttons, but everything else is gestured.

Fingers still need somewhere to go when holding it. It's not just the button that defined the size of the border. However there's no reason to expect the border couldn't be a bit more narrow without a button. They could also possibly do something tricky with touch zones extending beyond the screen and into the border so perhaps they could detect when fingers are wrapped around near the edges and filter them out.

Possibly, but the iPod nano doesn't have a home button and instead uses gestures for everything. Perhaps the nano was partly an experiment to see how well that concept worked in the wild.

Zooming isn't necessarily defined as a system-wide gesture, but more of a convention. I believe the rules say that your app will get rejected if you use a pinch gesture for anything but a zoom-like operation, but it isn't enforced by the system because there could be other valid reasons for having two fingers on the screen moving in a way that might seem like a pinch gesture if viewed out of context.

These new iPad gestures cannot be overridden by your app because the OS will cancel touch events out from under your app and take them for itself when it detects the gestures are in progress.

For VoiceOver (which I've not spent a ton of time investigating yet), it seems the app doesn't even get the touch events until a VoiceOver action is "committed" in some way. VoiceOver basically overlays the entire screen with an invisible window and intercepts all touches, so it basically redefines how apps work and defines a set of its own gestures regardless of what you might have defined in your app.

Correct. At least, that's the info that's currently available. :) If you try fitting 4/5 fingers on the phone, it's way too small to work well anyway. I don't expect them to show up there. If they do remove the button, I'd expect to see it only removed from the iPad.

I believe 3 finger gestures are used by VoiceOver so there's a possible conflict there, but VoiceOver is a system wide on-off setting so I don't know if that'd be a good enough reason not to use them as shortcuts. VoiceOver more or less redefines how you interact with apps anyway, so I'm not sure it'd bit a big problem, but Apple may want to avoid having too many different actions for different combinations of fingers.

A note of caution: If you choose to read the actual suicide note as I did, be prepared for a rather intense emotional trip. I don't mean to say that to dissuade anyone from reading it, but just that... I was not expecting what I ended up reading and it really made me sit back and, I dunno, just be sad for awhile. Such a shame.

This hypothetical struggling middle class family makes almost 3x what mine does. I'm soon to have a family of four as well (one toddler now, new baby in March), and yet somehow we survive with a house, car, daycare, no credit card debt, etc. and still manage to afford luxuries like new laptops, iPads and iPhones on a reasonably regular basis.

I'm of course aware that different areas are a lot cheaper (and being in Iowa, I certainly live in a much cheaper area than most of the examples calculated for the article), but for comparison: My house payments are less than half what they quote for this family, and my full time daycare costs with one toddler are less than half the number they're using for the year. They also apparently have a house cleaner that's $5k per year. Again, if we had the money, it'd cost us about half that on a yearly basis (I've priced it.. house cleaning is the bane of my existence). (Using a cleaner is pure luxury, though, IMO.) Dry cleaning? Thousands in new clothes each year? Geez. I guess I have no idea what it's like to be "average" as we certainly don't spend much at all on that sort of stuff. Their budget for holiday gifts is also something like 3x what we tend to be able to do, their yearly college funding is in the realm of fantasy compared to us, etc.

It seems to me like this "average" family is living a life of relatively decent luxury compared to what I can afford, but the article would have me believe I should feel sorry for them barely being able to me make ends meet? Of course I'd love to make more and if I did make more, I'd find ways to spend it - no doubt - but isn't that always the case? If they're uncomfortable with their financial situation, they can cut back and live like those of us who don't have a big house on a cul-de-sac, a cleaner, huge college savings, and fully funded retirement accounts.

"I can't see any reference to underachieving in the lyrics"

This is what I see as a kind of reference to under-achieving by calling out and insulting people who work harder: "Let’s have a toast for the jerkoffs / That’ll never take work off." It seems to me that the voice is therefore showing contempt for over-achievers and, by taking the rest of the lyrics into account and the fact that I've met a lot of people who despise fellow employees that work harder than they do, I leap to the assumption that the voice himself must be like one of those under achieving dicks.

"The main speaker is most definitely talking about being a high-achiever."

Others have said similar. I think the voice thinks he's "all that," but in my opinion someone who feels a need to say things like this are decidedly not and therefore I don't agree that the voice is actually a high-achiever. It seems more like the speaker in the song is trying to justify his bad attitude by just declaring that he's the smartest/best person in the room and everyone else are idiots (as if by virtue of him saying that, it makes it true - because after all, he's so damn much better than everyone else!) - but that is not the mark of a truly intelligent person, IMO, and that's probably why I interpret the speaker as just being a dick. If he tried harder, tried to teach and support and didn't attempt to chase the girl away, he could be the smartest guy in the room. Instead, he just chases people away to make room for his ego.

Anyway, you could be totally right. I'm just trying to clarify where I was coming from. I would posit that in the case of interpreting art, there's no one truly "right" answer anyway, so it doesn't really matter - and maybe that's the point. :)

"In the lyrics, the hard-worker is the person singing the lyrics."

I just don't get that at all from the snippet quoted, but I can imagine how the larger context of the song might flip the meaning of things around - but I don't know the rest of the song and was going only based on the words in the article with no way of knowing how those words were performed. :)

I suppose the use of "toast" could be a clue that he actually means some kind of respect, but then why respect "douchebags" and "assholes" etc? So my reading put large quotes around "toast" in the way you might "toast" someone sarcastically who just made a giant mistake or something.

If the greater context of the song established that the voice was being sort of facetious here, then I can see how my interpretation could be almost exactly backward - but again, without some grander context, I really feel I had no way to know that if that is indeed the case.

Side note: Over the years I've noticed that either, A) I just suck at interpreting song lyrics, or B) song lyrics are often purposely designed to be ambiguous. I suspect some of both is at work here. :)

"She" probably came from some attempt at political correctness. There's been a rise in recent decades to use "she" when speaking about an unspecified person. Historically, it was common to use "he" for that task. Unfortunately english doesn't have a gender-neutral pronoun and until/if one becomes accepted this will probably continue to be a confusing issue...

edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun

This is probably OT and maybe even rude... but that lead-in with the Kanye lyrics is just strange.

My reading of the lyrics snippet (and I'm certainly no expert in these things) suggests that the character is telling a girl to run away from him because he knows he's a dick. Specifically, he's a dick that's especially good at criticism and spreading negativity and of the list of targets, one group happens to be people who work a lot which implies to me that the character's less-than-hardworking nature looks bad by comparison.

So not only is the character a dick, he's a self-professed underachieving one and perhaps even proud of it. He might even be worried that the girl is one of those kinds of people he hates, or maybe he kinda cares for her and knows his personality is toxic on some level, or he just can't have nice things, or there happens to be a hotter girl one table over so this one has to go...

Anyway, it's just odd because it seems like the character that is "speaking" in the song is exactly the sort of guy who might bitch about how troublesome smart people are because he's always got to be the smartest guy in the room but refuses to put in the work required to remain the smartest guy in the room when there's other actual smart guys in the room. So the best solution in that case is to get rid of the others by telling them to "run away as fast as you can."

In summary, it seems to me like the lyrics are actually speaking more as a person who hates over-achievers and/or smart people than as a person who is one of those troublesome smart persons who hates average folk and therefore would appear to, well, not really support the author's actual argument. Or something?

I don't know. I'm probably not one of the smart ones. so... :P