Hey Steve!

Miscellaneous Improvements - September Edition

2009-09-07T16:52:00.000-07:00

Hey Steve -

see if any of these proposed improvements strike a chord. Just a few that have been bouncing around in my head for a while.

Bookmark Ratings: I think you should be able to put 1-5 star ratings on Safari bookmarks. If you are researching some topic and you rack up a lot of bookmarks, it would be great to be able to rate them as you see fit in order to help sort through them later. Going further, the ability to view a pile of bookmarks just like you view a lot of songs in iTunes - and be able to filter or sort on rating level.

Artist Lists: iPod and iTunes let you pick out songs on the go and make a playlist from them. But, it doesn't let you do the same thing for artists. So it's difficult to tell the iPod "I would like to hear Metallica, Enya and Beethoven" the same way that you can make an On-The-Go playlist of certain songs. I tried it and what is amusing is that the artist name flashes when you hold down the button, but nothing happens beyond that. In iTunes it would be nice if you could make a playlist that contains artists instead of songs (probably something that can be done manually using a Smart Playlist, but the OTG iPod limitation remains.)

AppleTV power switch or sleep mode: I had to relent and connect my AppleTV to a power bar so I can switch it on and off. While I didn't go so far as to measure the current being consumed, it was getting hot enough (and I was using it infrequently enough) that I couldn't bring myself to leave it powered up all the time. But now I have this vague fear that when I turn off the juice, that it might corrupt the disk or cause some other class of disorderly-shutdown problem. The device sure makes it easy to get shows and music on my TV, but its power consumption and lack of control in that area are not best of breed. Have I overlooked something?

The Missing Links

2009-07-13T12:06:00.000-07:00

Hey Steve -

Here are two ideas for iPhone / iPod Touch that have (IMO) some real cool factor to go with them.

First off, there are plenty of internet radio apps for iPhone, but they can't run in the background, so you can't listen to streaming radio while doing anything else. The logical response to this deficit would be to introduce an internet radio tuner panel to the iPod app, bringing it to parity with iTunes on the desktop. Especially if you could search for keywords in station titles or descriptions, which is still lacking from desktop iTunes.

Going hand in hand with this idea, why not bring across the capability to stream audio output from iPhone to an Airport Express ? This might have uses beyond just listening to music, and it would fill what looks like an unsightly gap in the iPhone's wi-fi capabilities.

Put a few guys to work on these and it would probably be done in less time than it takes to demolish and rebuild a Palo Alto mansion.

Cheers!

Dust to Dust

2009-06-12T11:17:00.000-07:00

Hey Steve,

As much as I like the slim design of the iMac, there's a problem, a problem that most other computers being sold today do not have. The problem is that you can't open them easily, and the internal design has not yet evolved to the point where that flexibility can be dispensed with.

"What do you mean?" you might ask. "RAM upgrades are done through the access panel, and that's the extent of the end user upgrade ability on that design."

Setting aside the radical notion that an end user might ever want to upgrade or replace their hard drive without special tools and removal of the entire display, there actually is an issue which comes up from time to time, and isn't addressed in any of the Apple documentation I can find.

If the machine was truly a sealed unit, the issue would go away. But they have not yet evolved to that point, and so the issue remains. How do you make sure the heatsinks are not clogged with dust?

"Well our internal thermal management system is very advanced, there should be no need for an end user to look inside or do any kind of cleaning."

And yet, these machines do inhale dust and hair from their surroundings, and it does clog up the cooling system, and it can make the machine malfunction or die. Case in point, the X1900XT boards that shipped in the 2006 Mac Pros.

That "stack of fins" heat sink design is one that turns up in a lot of Apple products. Is it in the iMac today? I don't know, since I can't see it or clean it without an involved disassembly process.

IMO there are two reasonable design points - one where air cooling is employed and the end user has a reasonable, simple set of steps to follow to both inspect and/or clean the cooling path, or one where non-air cooling is used, the AppleTV appears to be in this category.

The people with the Mac Pros and X1900's acting funny, at least they could pop the lid off and take a look. The family with the iMac sitting in their living room for a couple of years, what steps do they take? They can't even check to see if there is a problem!

If the machine had a removable case lid on it, or if end user maintenance and cleaning was given significant thought during the design process, this problem wouldn't exist.

Air cooled machines need cases that open for inspection and cleaning. Just like cars.

Some fine day we will have processors that give off no heat and then the truly sealed machine will make complete sense. Before then, it's premature to design them this way.

Food for thought.

Taking it too far: keyboard labels

2009-06-10T21:53:00.000-07:00

Hey Steve,

I have one of the Model A1243 thin aluminum Apple keyboards in front of me. While admiring its clean lines and slim design, I also noticed that there are several key shortcut symbols which show up in the OS X application menus on-screen, but only one that is actually labeled in the same way on the keyboard.

The ones on screen are

Shift - upward hollow arrow

Return - a sideways U-Turn arrow

Caps Lock - represented by an upward arrow with a separated base

Option - represented by the railyard switch symbol

Control - represented by a caret-like symbol (^)

Escape - represented by a circle with an arrow pointing to 10 o'clock

Command - represented by the familiar cloverleaf / attention symbol.

Mystery bonus key - an upward-left-pointing arrow, seen in Xcode's "Mini Debugger" command. Not to be confused with Escape which has a circle around it.

The Xcode 3.1 "Run" menu has almost all of these in various combinations, up to three modifiers per command!

... but that's a topic for another post.

So, you look at the menu in an effort to learn the shortcut key, then you look at the keyboard to see what keys those might be, and you can't do it reliably, unless you know the folklore, or you were fortunate to have chosen a command that just uses Command as the modifier.

IMO, the physical key caps should match the menus. If you want to have graphic shorthands on the menus for the various modifier keys, then print the same symbols on the key tops! This is one of those times where the familiar accusation of "choosing form over function" carries some perceptible weight.

Fortunately this one is really easy to fix. Can your key-top design team have a look at it?

Time Machine

2009-06-08T23:11:00.000-07:00

Hey Steve,

Here's an easy one. Have a look around the inside of the iMac and see if you couldn't put a second hard drive bay in there, especially on that huge 24" model.

If I am going to set up an iMac as my digital hub and keep all my critical data on it (songs and especially photos) - it would be nice if I could use a simple second HD, on a fast SATA connection, to keep my files backed up with Time Machine. Time Capsule is available but now I'm paying more money for something I might not need, on a slower connection, with a separate power supply.

While you're at it, see if you can get the UI wizards to come up with a way for the user to express when they want TM to back up and how often. I shouldn't have to use Bing.com to find a third party utility just to tell my Mac "hey, don't subject me to a burst of clattering HD seeks once an hour.." If I could just say "any time between midnight and 3AM" that would really put the finishing touch on it. (I haven't seen Snow Leopard yet, maybe it fixes this, though I suspect it doesn't magically spawn new drive bays.)

Life on the Edge

2009-06-06T22:45:00.000-07:00

Hey Steve,

I know there is a lot of enthusiasm and pride at Apple when it comes to the design of the enclosures that your products go in. I have a few of them around the house and they generally look great.

I have noticed though, there's one in particular that could use maybe just a *bit* more of Mr Ive's time. And it shouldn't be a big deal for the fabrication people to figure out, maybe you could ring up a few of them on iChat and say "hey guys, I think we missed the boat here, let's take a look at this and really inspire and amaze folks on the next go-round".

If you have a 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 or 2009 G5 or Mac Pro around - any one of them will do - pick it up and carry it around for a while. After a few dozen feet you might notice a couple things:

"Wow, these machines are heavy, sure glad we designed in some carrying handles! ...oh, but the handle edges aren't rounded or beveled where you hold them. Hey, this hurts!"

I can see how it might be considered petty to be grousing about the unbeveled edges on that case design, but let's look at the big picture.

The G4's had fantastic handles on them, molded curved plastic (you may have picked up some awards there?)

This G5 / Mac Pro case has been around for six years - that's like 3 or 4 OS releases! - and it's still the same way it's always been. So you have to wonder just a little bit, you know, why even have the handles on it if they're going to be crappy ones.

It's generally observed that Apple takes a lot of pride in perfecting every possible detail in its designs, yet this one eludes capture and resolution year after year after year. It seems like if you can build a water cooled laser drilling CNC system to make laptop bodies out of, maybe you could take a quick look at those tower handles at the next Monday morning exec meeting.

For extra credit - have another look at the front edge of the MacBooks, as in where your hands might rest when using the trackpad for an extended period of time. It's not much better.

(So this is the general idea here - specific, rational, fixable stuff, it's not a rant or a flame.)