In the process of doing a thorough audit of my photography gear and workflow, I'm starting to seriously reconsidering my photo managing and editing program. For about six years, I've been invested in the Aperture environment, and I've been running the latest Aperture 3 since it was introduced in 2010 (so long ago!).
I increasingly believe that post-processing is perhaps the biggest feature of digital photography. Don't get me wrong. It is highly respectable for photographers to try to get everything as perfect as possible in camera, and it is definitely something every photographer should strive to do. But there is so much more to digital photography than just traditional photography. I feel that not taking advantage of what could be done on the computer during post-processing is a shame. When I said this, I don't mean to take a reckless approach to Photoshop and image manipulation. Rather, tastefully use the computer to correct or enhance color, tones, distortion, etc.
In this regard, I'm taking a serious look at switching from Aperture to Lightroom. While I personally agree with Aperture's style of photo management and editing more than Lightroom's, as an outsider, Lightroom 5 looks incredible. So incredible, in fact, that it's worth disrupting my current system and workflow.
A potential switch to Lightroom isn't necessarily going to make my photos look better, but at the very least, it will allow some new potential and provide lot more flexibility, I think. I've been trying to hold out for Aperture 4 to see what new features will come of it, but it's getting harder and harder to wait on the sidelines. Lightroom appears so much more integrated and rich in new features; Aperture looks stagnant and a bit ordinary. Must investigate further.
Showing posts with label apple. Show all posts
Showing posts with label apple. Show all posts
Steve Jobs
I finished reading the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Issacson earlier this week. It was worth it, and I recommend anyone who is remotely interested in modern technology to read it. A great writer is complemented by an extremely fascinating life story. (I hope I don't come off as too biased because I am, just a little, but it'd definitely one of the better Steve Jobs biographies I've read so far.)
Here are some quotes I wrote down as I was reading the book...
"Reflecting years later on his [Jobs's] spiritual feelings, he said that religion was at its best when it emphasized spiritual experiences rather than received dogma. 'The juice goes out of Christianity when it becomes too based on faith rather than on living like Jesus or seeing the world as Jesus saw it,' he told me. 'I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don't. It's the great mystery." (p. 15)
"'He was an enlightened being who was cruel,' she [Brennan] recalled. 'Thats a strange combination.'" (p. 32)
"The calligraphy course would become iconic in that regard. 'If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.'" (p. 41)
"This fusion of flower power and processor power, enlightenment and technology, was embodied by Steve Jobs as he meditated in the mornings, audited physics classes at Stanford, worked nights at Atari, and dreamed of starting his own business." (p. 57)
"It was Sunday, June 29, 1975, a milestone for the personal computer. 'It was the first time in history,' Wozniak later said, 'anyone had typed a character on a keyboard and seen it show up on their own
computer's screen right in front of them.'" (p. 61)
"'His [Markkula] values were much aligned with mine. He emphasized that you should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Our goal should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last.'" (p. 78)
"'I got a feeling for the empowering aspect of naďveté,' Atkinson said. 'Because I didn't know it couldn't be done, I was enabled to do it.'" (p. 100) "'You did the impossible, because you didn't realize it was impossible.' (p. 119)
"Before and after he was rich, and indeed throughout a life that included being broke and a billionaire, Steve Jobs's attitude toward wealth was complex. He was an antimaterialistic hippie who capitalized
on the inventions of a friend who wanted to give them away for free, and he was a Zen devotee who made a pilgrimage to India and then decided that his calling was to create a business. And get somehow these attitudes seemed to weave together rather than conflict." (p. 104-105)
Jobs: "I never worried about money. I grew up in a middle-class family, so I never thought I would starve. And I learned at Atari that I could be an okay engineer, so I always knew I could get by. I was voluntarily poor when I was in college and India, and I loved a pretty simple life even when I was working. So I went from fairly poor, which was wonderful, because I didn't have to worry about money, to being incredibly rich, when I also didn't have to worry about money. / I watched people at Apple who made a lot of money and felt they had to live differently. Some of them bought a Rolls-Royce and various houses, each with a house manager and then someone to manage the house mangers. Their wives got plastic surgery and turned into these bizarre people. This was not how I wanted to live. It's crazy. I made a promise to myself that I'm not going to let this money ruin my life." (p. 105)
"In various interviews, Jobs had been referring to computers as a bicycle for the mind; the ability of humans to create a bicycle allowed them to move more efficiently than even a condor, and likewise the ability to create computers would multiply the efficiency of their minds." (p. 115)
"One day Jobs came into the cubicle of Larry Kenyon, an engineer who was working on the Macintosh operating system, and complained that it was taking too long to boot up. Kenyon started to explain, but Jobs cut him off. 'If we could save a person's life, would you find a way to shave ten seconds off the boot time?' he asked. Kenyon allowed that he probably could. Jobs went to a whiteboard and showed that if there were five million people using the Mac, and it took ten seconds extra to turn it on every day, that added up to three hundred million or so hours per year that people would save, which was the equivalent of at least one hundred lifetimes saved per year. 'Larry was suitably impressed, and a few weeks later he came back and it booted up twenty-eight seconds faster,' Atkinson recalled. 'Steve had a way of motivating by looking at the bigger picture.'" (p. 123)
"When the design was finally locked in, Jobs called the Macintosh team together for a ceremony. 'Real artists sign their work,' he said. So he got out a sheet of drafting paper and a Sharpie pen and had all of them sign their names. The signatures were engraved inside each Macintosh. No one would ever see them, but the members of the team knew that their signatures were inside, just as they knew that the circuit board was laid out as elegantly as possible. jobs called them each up by name, one at a time. Burrell Smith went first. Jobs waited until last, after all forty-five of the others. He found a place right in the center of the sheet and signed his name in lowercase letters with a grand flair. Then he toasted them with champagne. 'With moments like this, he got us seeing our work as art,' said Atkinson." (p. 134)
"Eve thirty years later, reflecting back on the competition, Jobs cast it as a holy crusade: 'IBM was essentially Microsoft at its worst. Hey were not a force for innovation; they were a force for evil. They were like ATT or Microsoft or Google is.'" (p. 136)
"So the '1984' ad was a way of reaffirming, to himself and to the world, his desired self-image. The heroine, with a drawing of a Macintosh emblazoned on her pure white tank top, was a renegade out to foil the establishment. By hiring Ridley Scott, fresh off the success of Blade Runner, as the director, Jobs could attach himself and Apple to the cyberpunk ethos of the time. With the ad, Apple could identify itself with the rebels and hackers who thought differently, and Jobs could reclaim his right to identify with them as well." (p. 163)
"'Each one thought he was smarter than the other one, but Steve generally treated Bill [Gates] as someone who was slightly inferior, especially in matters of taste and style,' said Andy Hertzfeld. 'Bill looked down on Steve because he couldn't actually program.' From the beginning of their relationship, Gates was fascinated by Jobs and slightly envious of his mesmerizing effect on people. But he also found him 'fundamentally odd' and 'weirdly flawed as a human being,' and he was put off by Job's rudeness and his tendency to be 'either in the mode of saying you were shit or trying to seduce you.' For his part, Jobs found Gates unnervingly narrow. 'he'd be a broader guy if he had dropped aside one or gone off to an ashram when he was younger,' Jobs once declared. / Their differences in in personality and character would lead them to opposite sides of what would become the fundamental divide in the digital age. Jobs was a perfectionist who craved control and indulged in the uncompromising temperament of an artist; he and Apple became the exemplars of a digital strategy that tightly integrated hardware, software, and content into a seamless package. Gates was a smart, calculating, and pragmatic analyst of business and technology; he was open to licensing Microsoft's operating system and software to a various of manufacturers. / After thirty years Gates would develop a grudging respect for Jobs. 'He really never knew much about technology, but he had an amazing instinct for what works,' he said. But Jobs never reciprocated by fully appreciating Gates's real strengths. 'Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he's more conformable now in philanthropy than technology,' Jobs said, unfairly. 'He just shamelessly ripped off other people's ideas.'" (pp. 172-173)
In 1985, Jobs: "Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get struck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them. / I'll always stay contacted with Apple. I hope that throughout my life I'll sort of have the thread of my life and the thread of Apple weave in and out of each other, like a tapestry. There may be a few years when I'm not there, but I'll always come back.... / If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you've done and whoever you were and throw them away. / The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, 'Bye. I have to go now. I'm going crazy and I'm getting out of here.' And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently." (pp. 189-190)
"He [Jobs] later claimed it was mainly out of curiosity. 'I believe in environment more than heredity in determining your traits. But still you have to wonder a little about your biological roots,' he said."
(p. 254)
"For all of his willfulness and insatiable desire to control tags, Jobs was indecisive and reticent when he felt unsure about something. He craved perfection, and he was not always good at figuring out how
to settle for something less. He did not like to wrestle with complexity or make accommodations. This was true in products, design, and furnishings for the house. It was also true when it came to personal commitments. If he knew for sure a course of action was right, he was unstoppable. But if he had doubts, he sometimes withdrew, preferring not to the about things that did not perfectly suit him." (p. 315)
"At times Jobs displayed a strange mixture of prickliness and neediness, he usually didn't care on iota what people thought of him; he could cut people off and never care to speak to them again. Yet sometimes he also felt a compulsion to explain himself." (p. 316)
"One of Jobs's great strengths was knowing how to focus. 'deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do,' he said. 'That's true for companies, and it's true for products.'" (p. 336)
"One of the first things Jobs did during the product review process was ban PowerPoints. 'I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking,' Jobs later recalled. 'People would confront a
problem by creating a presentation. I want them to engage, to hash things. out at the table, rather than show a bunch of slides. People who know what they're talking about don't need PowerPoint.'" (p. 337)
"After a few weeks Jobs finally had enough. 'Stop!' he shouted at one big product strategy session. 'This is crazy.' He grabbed a magic marker, padded to a whiteboard, and drew a horizontal and vertical line to make a four-squared chart. 'Here's what we need,' he continued. Atop the two columns he wrote 'Consumer' and 'Pro'; he hobbled the two rows 'Desktop' and 'Portable.' Their job, he said, was the make four great products, one for each quadrant. 'The room was in dumb silence,' Schiller recalled." (p. 337)
Ive: " Why do we assume that simple is good? Because with physical products, we have to feel we can dominate them. As you bring order to complexity, you find a way to make the product defer to you. Simplicity isn't just a visual style. It's not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of a complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep. For example, to have no screws on something, you can end up having a product that is so convoluted and so complex. The better way is to go deeper with the simplicity, to understand everything about it and how it's manufactured. You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential." (p. 343)
"Design was not just about what a product looked like on the surface. It had to reflect the product's essence. 'In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer,' Jobs told Fortune shortly after retaking the reins at Apple. 'But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers.'" (p. 343)
Jobs: "The older I get, the more I see how much motivations matter. The Zune was crappy because the people at Microsoft don't really love music or art the way we do. We won because we personally love music. We made the iPod for ourselves, and when you're doing something for yourself, or your best friend or family, you're not going to cheese out. If you don't love something, you're not going to go the extra mile, work the extra weekend, challenge the status quo as much." (p. 407)
"So he [Jobs] had the Pixar building designed to promote encounters and unplanned collaborations. 'If a building doesn't encourage that, you'll lose a lot of innovation and the magi that's spared by serendipity,' he said. 'So we designed the building to make people get out of their offices and mingle in the central atrium with people they might not otherwise see.' ... 'Steve's theory worked from day one,' Lasseter recalled. 'I kept running into people I hadn't seen for months. I've never seen a building that promoted collaboration and creativity as well as this one.'" (p. 431)
Apple core values, by Cook: "We believe that we are on the face of the earth to make great products, and that's not changing. We are constantly focusing on innovating. We believe in the simple not the complex. We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products that we make; and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution. We believe in saying no to thousands of projects, so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us. We believe in deep collaboration and cross-pollination of our groups, which allow us to innovate in a way that others cannot. And frankly, we don't settle for anything less than excellence in every group in the company, and we have the self-honesty to admit when we're wrong and the courage to change. And I think, regardless of who is in what job, those values are so embedded in this company that Apple will do extremely well." (p. 488)
Jobs, on liberal arts and technology: "It's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough. We believe that it's technology married with the humanities that yields us the result that makes our heart sing. Nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices. Folks are rushing into this tablet market, and they're looking at it as the next PC, in which the hardware and the software are done by different companies. Our experience, and every bone in our body, says that is not the right approach. These are post-PC devices that need to be even more intuitive and easier to use than a PC, and where the software and the hardware and the applications need to be intertwined in an even more seamless way than they are on a PC. We think we have the right architecture not just in silicon, but in our organization, to build these kinds of products." (p. 527)
After Jobs gave his son Reed one of his bicycles: "When Reed said he would be indebted, Jobs answered, 'You don't need to be indebted, because you have my DNA.' A few days later Toy Story 3 opened. Jobs had nurtured this Pixar trilogy from the beginning, and the final installment was about the emotions surrounding the departure of Andy for college. 'I wish I could always be with you,' Andy's mother says. 'You always will be,' he replied." (p. 540)
"He got Apple back on track by cutting all except a few core products. He made devices simpler by eliminating buttons, software simpler by eliminating features, and interfaces simpler by eliminating options." (p. 564)
*****
And other pages of interest to me: P 112 quote on managing, ideas, and stealing. P 310. Apple is like a ship with a hole. P 350-351. iMac handle's design rationale. P 512. Jobs quote to destroy Android. P 544-545. Advice to Obama, and about education. P 563. "Future of the Internet and How to Stop It," and the harm of integrated argument.
Here are some quotes I wrote down as I was reading the book...
 |
| Steve Jobs cover. |
"Reflecting years later on his [Jobs's] spiritual feelings, he said that religion was at its best when it emphasized spiritual experiences rather than received dogma. 'The juice goes out of Christianity when it becomes too based on faith rather than on living like Jesus or seeing the world as Jesus saw it,' he told me. 'I think different religions are different doors to the same house. Sometimes I think the house exists, and sometimes I don't. It's the great mystery." (p. 15)
"'He was an enlightened being who was cruel,' she [Brennan] recalled. 'Thats a strange combination.'" (p. 32)
"The calligraphy course would become iconic in that regard. 'If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.'" (p. 41)
"This fusion of flower power and processor power, enlightenment and technology, was embodied by Steve Jobs as he meditated in the mornings, audited physics classes at Stanford, worked nights at Atari, and dreamed of starting his own business." (p. 57)
"It was Sunday, June 29, 1975, a milestone for the personal computer. 'It was the first time in history,' Wozniak later said, 'anyone had typed a character on a keyboard and seen it show up on their own
computer's screen right in front of them.'" (p. 61)
"'His [Markkula] values were much aligned with mine. He emphasized that you should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Our goal should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last.'" (p. 78)
"'I got a feeling for the empowering aspect of naďveté,' Atkinson said. 'Because I didn't know it couldn't be done, I was enabled to do it.'" (p. 100) "'You did the impossible, because you didn't realize it was impossible.' (p. 119)
"Before and after he was rich, and indeed throughout a life that included being broke and a billionaire, Steve Jobs's attitude toward wealth was complex. He was an antimaterialistic hippie who capitalized
on the inventions of a friend who wanted to give them away for free, and he was a Zen devotee who made a pilgrimage to India and then decided that his calling was to create a business. And get somehow these attitudes seemed to weave together rather than conflict." (p. 104-105)
Jobs: "I never worried about money. I grew up in a middle-class family, so I never thought I would starve. And I learned at Atari that I could be an okay engineer, so I always knew I could get by. I was voluntarily poor when I was in college and India, and I loved a pretty simple life even when I was working. So I went from fairly poor, which was wonderful, because I didn't have to worry about money, to being incredibly rich, when I also didn't have to worry about money. / I watched people at Apple who made a lot of money and felt they had to live differently. Some of them bought a Rolls-Royce and various houses, each with a house manager and then someone to manage the house mangers. Their wives got plastic surgery and turned into these bizarre people. This was not how I wanted to live. It's crazy. I made a promise to myself that I'm not going to let this money ruin my life." (p. 105)
"In various interviews, Jobs had been referring to computers as a bicycle for the mind; the ability of humans to create a bicycle allowed them to move more efficiently than even a condor, and likewise the ability to create computers would multiply the efficiency of their minds." (p. 115)
"One day Jobs came into the cubicle of Larry Kenyon, an engineer who was working on the Macintosh operating system, and complained that it was taking too long to boot up. Kenyon started to explain, but Jobs cut him off. 'If we could save a person's life, would you find a way to shave ten seconds off the boot time?' he asked. Kenyon allowed that he probably could. Jobs went to a whiteboard and showed that if there were five million people using the Mac, and it took ten seconds extra to turn it on every day, that added up to three hundred million or so hours per year that people would save, which was the equivalent of at least one hundred lifetimes saved per year. 'Larry was suitably impressed, and a few weeks later he came back and it booted up twenty-eight seconds faster,' Atkinson recalled. 'Steve had a way of motivating by looking at the bigger picture.'" (p. 123)
"When the design was finally locked in, Jobs called the Macintosh team together for a ceremony. 'Real artists sign their work,' he said. So he got out a sheet of drafting paper and a Sharpie pen and had all of them sign their names. The signatures were engraved inside each Macintosh. No one would ever see them, but the members of the team knew that their signatures were inside, just as they knew that the circuit board was laid out as elegantly as possible. jobs called them each up by name, one at a time. Burrell Smith went first. Jobs waited until last, after all forty-five of the others. He found a place right in the center of the sheet and signed his name in lowercase letters with a grand flair. Then he toasted them with champagne. 'With moments like this, he got us seeing our work as art,' said Atkinson." (p. 134)
"Eve thirty years later, reflecting back on the competition, Jobs cast it as a holy crusade: 'IBM was essentially Microsoft at its worst. Hey were not a force for innovation; they were a force for evil. They were like ATT or Microsoft or Google is.'" (p. 136)
"So the '1984' ad was a way of reaffirming, to himself and to the world, his desired self-image. The heroine, with a drawing of a Macintosh emblazoned on her pure white tank top, was a renegade out to foil the establishment. By hiring Ridley Scott, fresh off the success of Blade Runner, as the director, Jobs could attach himself and Apple to the cyberpunk ethos of the time. With the ad, Apple could identify itself with the rebels and hackers who thought differently, and Jobs could reclaim his right to identify with them as well." (p. 163)
"'Each one thought he was smarter than the other one, but Steve generally treated Bill [Gates] as someone who was slightly inferior, especially in matters of taste and style,' said Andy Hertzfeld. 'Bill looked down on Steve because he couldn't actually program.' From the beginning of their relationship, Gates was fascinated by Jobs and slightly envious of his mesmerizing effect on people. But he also found him 'fundamentally odd' and 'weirdly flawed as a human being,' and he was put off by Job's rudeness and his tendency to be 'either in the mode of saying you were shit or trying to seduce you.' For his part, Jobs found Gates unnervingly narrow. 'he'd be a broader guy if he had dropped aside one or gone off to an ashram when he was younger,' Jobs once declared. / Their differences in in personality and character would lead them to opposite sides of what would become the fundamental divide in the digital age. Jobs was a perfectionist who craved control and indulged in the uncompromising temperament of an artist; he and Apple became the exemplars of a digital strategy that tightly integrated hardware, software, and content into a seamless package. Gates was a smart, calculating, and pragmatic analyst of business and technology; he was open to licensing Microsoft's operating system and software to a various of manufacturers. / After thirty years Gates would develop a grudging respect for Jobs. 'He really never knew much about technology, but he had an amazing instinct for what works,' he said. But Jobs never reciprocated by fully appreciating Gates's real strengths. 'Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he's more conformable now in philanthropy than technology,' Jobs said, unfairly. 'He just shamelessly ripped off other people's ideas.'" (pp. 172-173)
In 1985, Jobs: "Your thoughts construct patterns like scaffolding in your mind. You are really etching chemical patterns. In most cases, people get struck in those patterns, just like grooves in a record, and they never get out of them. / I'll always stay contacted with Apple. I hope that throughout my life I'll sort of have the thread of my life and the thread of Apple weave in and out of each other, like a tapestry. There may be a few years when I'm not there, but I'll always come back.... / If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you've done and whoever you were and throw them away. / The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, 'Bye. I have to go now. I'm going crazy and I'm getting out of here.' And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently." (pp. 189-190)
"He [Jobs] later claimed it was mainly out of curiosity. 'I believe in environment more than heredity in determining your traits. But still you have to wonder a little about your biological roots,' he said."
(p. 254)
"For all of his willfulness and insatiable desire to control tags, Jobs was indecisive and reticent when he felt unsure about something. He craved perfection, and he was not always good at figuring out how
to settle for something less. He did not like to wrestle with complexity or make accommodations. This was true in products, design, and furnishings for the house. It was also true when it came to personal commitments. If he knew for sure a course of action was right, he was unstoppable. But if he had doubts, he sometimes withdrew, preferring not to the about things that did not perfectly suit him." (p. 315)
"At times Jobs displayed a strange mixture of prickliness and neediness, he usually didn't care on iota what people thought of him; he could cut people off and never care to speak to them again. Yet sometimes he also felt a compulsion to explain himself." (p. 316)
"One of Jobs's great strengths was knowing how to focus. 'deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do,' he said. 'That's true for companies, and it's true for products.'" (p. 336)
"One of the first things Jobs did during the product review process was ban PowerPoints. 'I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking,' Jobs later recalled. 'People would confront a
problem by creating a presentation. I want them to engage, to hash things. out at the table, rather than show a bunch of slides. People who know what they're talking about don't need PowerPoint.'" (p. 337)
"After a few weeks Jobs finally had enough. 'Stop!' he shouted at one big product strategy session. 'This is crazy.' He grabbed a magic marker, padded to a whiteboard, and drew a horizontal and vertical line to make a four-squared chart. 'Here's what we need,' he continued. Atop the two columns he wrote 'Consumer' and 'Pro'; he hobbled the two rows 'Desktop' and 'Portable.' Their job, he said, was the make four great products, one for each quadrant. 'The room was in dumb silence,' Schiller recalled." (p. 337)
Ive: " Why do we assume that simple is good? Because with physical products, we have to feel we can dominate them. As you bring order to complexity, you find a way to make the product defer to you. Simplicity isn't just a visual style. It's not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of a complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep. For example, to have no screws on something, you can end up having a product that is so convoluted and so complex. The better way is to go deeper with the simplicity, to understand everything about it and how it's manufactured. You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential." (p. 343)
"Design was not just about what a product looked like on the surface. It had to reflect the product's essence. 'In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer,' Jobs told Fortune shortly after retaking the reins at Apple. 'But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers.'" (p. 343)
Jobs: "The older I get, the more I see how much motivations matter. The Zune was crappy because the people at Microsoft don't really love music or art the way we do. We won because we personally love music. We made the iPod for ourselves, and when you're doing something for yourself, or your best friend or family, you're not going to cheese out. If you don't love something, you're not going to go the extra mile, work the extra weekend, challenge the status quo as much." (p. 407)
"So he [Jobs] had the Pixar building designed to promote encounters and unplanned collaborations. 'If a building doesn't encourage that, you'll lose a lot of innovation and the magi that's spared by serendipity,' he said. 'So we designed the building to make people get out of their offices and mingle in the central atrium with people they might not otherwise see.' ... 'Steve's theory worked from day one,' Lasseter recalled. 'I kept running into people I hadn't seen for months. I've never seen a building that promoted collaboration and creativity as well as this one.'" (p. 431)
Apple core values, by Cook: "We believe that we are on the face of the earth to make great products, and that's not changing. We are constantly focusing on innovating. We believe in the simple not the complex. We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products that we make; and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution. We believe in saying no to thousands of projects, so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us. We believe in deep collaboration and cross-pollination of our groups, which allow us to innovate in a way that others cannot. And frankly, we don't settle for anything less than excellence in every group in the company, and we have the self-honesty to admit when we're wrong and the courage to change. And I think, regardless of who is in what job, those values are so embedded in this company that Apple will do extremely well." (p. 488)
Jobs, on liberal arts and technology: "It's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough. We believe that it's technology married with the humanities that yields us the result that makes our heart sing. Nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices. Folks are rushing into this tablet market, and they're looking at it as the next PC, in which the hardware and the software are done by different companies. Our experience, and every bone in our body, says that is not the right approach. These are post-PC devices that need to be even more intuitive and easier to use than a PC, and where the software and the hardware and the applications need to be intertwined in an even more seamless way than they are on a PC. We think we have the right architecture not just in silicon, but in our organization, to build these kinds of products." (p. 527)
After Jobs gave his son Reed one of his bicycles: "When Reed said he would be indebted, Jobs answered, 'You don't need to be indebted, because you have my DNA.' A few days later Toy Story 3 opened. Jobs had nurtured this Pixar trilogy from the beginning, and the final installment was about the emotions surrounding the departure of Andy for college. 'I wish I could always be with you,' Andy's mother says. 'You always will be,' he replied." (p. 540)
"He got Apple back on track by cutting all except a few core products. He made devices simpler by eliminating buttons, software simpler by eliminating features, and interfaces simpler by eliminating options." (p. 564)
*****
And other pages of interest to me: P 112 quote on managing, ideas, and stealing. P 310. Apple is like a ship with a hole. P 350-351. iMac handle's design rationale. P 512. Jobs quote to destroy Android. P 544-545. Advice to Obama, and about education. P 563. "Future of the Internet and How to Stop It," and the harm of integrated argument.
[Hawaii 2011] Day 3: Sightseeing
 |
| View of eastern Oahu. |
 |
| ATV riding. |
 |
| Pyramid-building, again. Smaller, but better. |
One of Each, Please
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| Apple.com Menu Bar |
After the latest announcement, I had to do it. My iPhone 4 comes in tomorrow. Oddly enough, the number one feature I want on my phone is not multi-tasking, or voice search, or even the gyroscopometer (or whatever). I just really want the 5 MP camera and HD camcorder. Automatic HDR! That in itself sold me the phone.
I need one of each thing on Apple.com's menu bar. iPhone > iPad > Mac, in order of importance to me. My iPhone 3G is already more than two years old. My MacBook Pro is going on its fifth year. iPad with multi-tasking is amazing. And iPhone 4 just completes the set somehow. No more iProducts for at least two years, I promise.
50 Months with MBP - $1.80/Day
2.16 GHz Core Duo, 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, 100 GB HDD
While it was covered under AppleCare two years ago, I had two batteries replaced, the power charger replaced, the logic board replaced, the LCD inverter replaced twice, the screen replaced, 1 GB RAM replaced, SuperDrive replaced, among four or so incidents. (I might be forgetting some.) All for free! Thank you, Apple. In all honesty, there was only two situations that really required service: 1) when the power charger cable burned, and when my screen was buzzing. Everything else, I must admit, was a little superfluous and only prompted action because I kept complaining. I'm pretty sure this is more indicative of really good customer service as opposed to shoddy Apple products. (P.S. I forgot that I got my entire MBP replaced the third day I got it back in August because it overheated and died. Shoddy Apple products? Maybe. Maybe it's just me.)
~$2500, including a free HP printer and an iPod nano 1G.
At about 50 months of use, that comes out to about $50/month, or $1.80/day in cost of ownership (assuming I stop using it this month). Compare this to a ~$800 Dell Inspiron E1505, a popular computer that 2006 high school graduates like myself get for college. It's used for only two years and is replaced by another, better computer. That becomes about $33/month or about $1.20/day for the Dell over two years. A typical user will then spend about $1000 on his next notebook computer. Bring these two computers to the 50-month time scale, we get $1800 (= $800 + $1000), over 50 months, i.e. up to the present. That comes out to $1.30/day for these two computers, about 50-cents cheaper than owning a Mac. So why even get a Mac? Seriously.
50-cents is an eighth the cost of buying coffee everyday (at an average of $4/cup/day). The daily cost of having a texting plan is about $0.57/day (at +$20/month for unlimited texting, via Verizon). 50-cents isn't all that much. I think it's worth the cost.
Now, I just need to dig up $2000 to get myself another MacBook Pro.
iOS 4 and iPhone 3G (Jailbroken)
Speaking strictly from personal experience, after upgrading to Apple's latest iOS 4.0 and 4.0.1, my iPhone 3G, originally on iOS 3.1.3., was unusably slow. It was disappointing to see the iPhone 3G become something I hated to use. After looking up several tips and tricks to speed up the iPhone, including disabling all my Spotlight search results and double hard resetting the phone (which didn't seem to work very well), I decided to give jailbreaking another chance.It turns out that the jailbroken iOS 4.0.1 , even with multitasking and the background wallpaper service turned on, was noticeably faster than the official iOS 4.0.1 from Apple. I found this a bit strange. I instantly noticed it being slightly faster right after jailbreaking it. I still resorted to rebooting my iPhone a few times a day to keep it in working order. I used the jailbroken version with as full a feature-set my iPhone 3G can physically support for about a week, after which it begun feeling a little too sluggish for practical use.
Last night, I decided to re-jailbreak my iPhone 3G, this time disabling multitasking (because quite frankly, it was impractical on such a slow device) but keeping the background wallpaper settings (because I have grown used to having a non-black background). So far, so good, sort of. It definitely feels zippier than both iOS 4.0.1 by Apple and the jailbroken iOS 4.0.1 with mutitasking. Still, compared to the good and familiar 3.1.3, there is a no contest. (The only thing keeping me on iOS 4 are the folders and unified mailboxes.)
Supposedly, Apple's investigating this issue. I wait impatiently.
P.S. There's definitely some power issues that I've noticed with iOS 4, at least on iPhone 3G.
Apple WWDC 2009
This time around, I was not in front of the computer trying to furiously keep up with the three to five live-blogs open side-by-side on my screen. I was sitting in on a meeting for EGO/D's (Electric Generation Operations and Distribution) now-quarterly "roadshow" meeting. I only took glimpses of Gizmodo on my iPhone near the end of the meeting that talked about the typical "good-job this year, but sorry no bonuses" and other corporate pep talk in a time of recession.
At least my iPhone 3G 16 GB is not yet obsolete for another year. How kind of Apple!
Summary of WWDC announcements:
1. New iPhone 3GS, with hardware improvements, coming June 17th (my sister's birthday).
2. iPhone 3G 8 GB still available, now $99. iPhone 3GS at $199 for 16 GB and $299 for 32 GB.
3. Mac notebooks refreshed and their prices lowered. 13" MacBook becomes 13" MacBook Pro. Cheaper white plastic still exists.
4. Mac OS X 10.5.6 Snow Leopard coming in September.
5. Safari 4 available.
At least my iPhone 3G 16 GB is not yet obsolete for another year. How kind of Apple!
Summary of WWDC announcements:
1. New iPhone 3GS, with hardware improvements, coming June 17th (my sister's birthday).
2. iPhone 3G 8 GB still available, now $99. iPhone 3GS at $199 for 16 GB and $299 for 32 GB.
3. Mac notebooks refreshed and their prices lowered. 13" MacBook becomes 13" MacBook Pro. Cheaper white plastic still exists.
4. Mac OS X 10.5.6 Snow Leopard coming in September.
5. Safari 4 available.
Playing Monopoly in 2008
Last week, I had purchased the official Monopoly Here & Now: The World Edition game for the iPhone and iPod touch. It currently sells for $7.99 and probably will for some time to come. I don't see a major discount to be likely, so get it now! It's worth it. (App Store Link.)The game's biggest features, according to Touch Arcade:
Give your iPhone/iPod touch a shake to roll the dice or animate the movers
Use your touch screen to flick and drag property cards and simulate real-life game experiences
3D view of the board and movers
Select full-board view or zoom in for a close-up
Play solo against the computer or Pass n’ play for 4
Wi-Fi Multiplayer Mode allows 4 players to connect via the same router on a Local Area Network
Automatically replaces players who leave with AI
Besides being an amazing time killer at work and fun game during the commute, the game was something very interesting. Having been familiar with only the original Monopoly as Charles Darrow had intended, with Ventor Avenue and Reading Railroad, I was excited to see the "Here & Now" world edition of this classic game. Check out the Wikipedia page on Monopoly for a very insightful read. In 2006, the "Here & Now" properties were decided with an online voting process. Wikipedia outlines the results. (I'm glad to see that Taipei made it on the map!)
What makes this edition of Monopoly interesting is that its scope covers actual world cities (albeit, superficially) as opposed to neighborhoods of Atlantic City or fictitious places of themes in other editions of Monopoly. And playing this game in one of the worst recessions in recent history is an attempt to bring this game back to its roots. Or at least, to get you thinking about money and what it means not to have it as you traverse the playing field, a kind of metaphor for life. When money comes into the picture, events and people's decisions can change drastically. In the game of Monopoly, the goal is not team building and not reaching out to your peers. Its premise: bankruptcy of others through competition. Its goal: to win and to cheat one's way to victory through any legal means necessary. The next time you sit around a table in a dimly lit room playing Monopoly with your friends, try to experience Monopoly for what it is and for what was meant to be.
I have dug up a few more interesting articles on Monopoly. (I do not necessarily share the opinion of their author.)
Before the October 2008 "Crash": Is The Monopoly Game Teaching You To Go Broke?
During the October 2008 "Crash": High Anxiety: We went from playing inflation-era Monopoly to playing depression-era Monopoly in mid-game.
After the October 2008 "Crash": The Economic Crisis Hits the Markson Family Monopoly Board
My iPhone Home Screens
These days, there are so many quality iPhone application in the iTunes App Store that it is so hard to keep up with. I try to follow up with the new releases day to day just to know what's out there. Typically for paid apps, I wait until about 1000 reviews or an overall rating of 4+ before considering buying them. I have wasted spent so much money on applications and games already. But sometimes, especially with the smaller developers, they deserve my money. Hah.
Recently I have found a few iPhone applications that have come in very handy for me. Some of these will probably not work well for iPod touch users without wi-fi. In case anyone's interested, I have attached screenshots of my iPhone home screens.
Home Screen 1: Homepage
Continued from my original iPod touch days, keeping all the native iPhone apps together.
Home Screen 2: Daily Readings & Apps
Apps I use almost daily. Before the App Store, this page had been reserved for web apps that I had bookmarked.
Home Screen 3: Games & GPS
This page has changed a lot since Day One. I generally remove the bad games or those I have already completed. This page changes very often.
Home Screen 4: Reference & Utilities
This page has evolved from being the spill-over page, when I didn't use Text, YouTube, iTunes, App Store much. This, however, is no longer the case; it has become the place where I store essential reference applications.
I'll write more about the special-er ones in the next post. Please share your favorite applications in the comments if you'd like.
Recently I have found a few iPhone applications that have come in very handy for me. Some of these will probably not work well for iPod touch users without wi-fi. In case anyone's interested, I have attached screenshots of my iPhone home screens.
Home Screen 1: Homepage
Continued from my original iPod touch days, keeping all the native iPhone apps together.
Home Screen 2: Daily Readings & Apps
Apps I use almost daily. Before the App Store, this page had been reserved for web apps that I had bookmarked.
Home Screen 3: Games & GPS
This page has changed a lot since Day One. I generally remove the bad games or those I have already completed. This page changes very often.
Home Screen 4: Reference & Utilities
This page has evolved from being the spill-over page, when I didn't use Text, YouTube, iTunes, App Store much. This, however, is no longer the case; it has become the place where I store essential reference applications.
I'll write more about the special-er ones in the next post. Please share your favorite applications in the comments if you'd like.
Birthday and Gifts
I have received my computer back from Apple's Texas repair center in Houston last Friday night. This is the second time I sent the MacBook Pro (first generation) to the Genius Bar covered by AppleCare. The first time, they replaced my LCD inverter and that got rid of my problem with the buzzing.
The buzzing returned more consistently every day, and this time, I was expecting the service to be somewhat the same. I was surprised to learn that the Apple technician not only replaced the LCD inverter, the LCD panel was replaced, the logic board was replaced, as was the Super Drive and a 1 GB DIMM of RAM. Wow!
When the computer was turn on, however, I noticed the display was rather blue. It was not only a little cooler, but it was noticeable cooler, as if there was another layer of blue-tinted film in the display. Using the built in color calibrator for ColorSync did not yield any nice results. My eyes have been strained by trying to calibrate this LCD this way.
I am waiting on Ricky's color calibrator, held hostage by Adrian. I hope it'll fix it. Otherwise, Apple's going to be hearing from me a third time...
As a result, even after a week and a half of the computer being in the shop, I'd rather not use the blue-ish MacBook Pro for now. I will still use the iPhone as my primary device. My photo work will have to be put on hold because of this. While I am glad Apple was able to help make my notebook run like new (for the most part), the LCD has made me very frustrated.
"Gifts" received at this time of this post:
1. MacBook Pro repair replacing nearly all components with refurbished parts, by Apple.
2. Ricky's Pantone Huey, from Adrian. (pending)
3. Crumpler's 'The Considerable Embarrassment' bag from my sister, but really from myself.
4. A box of Entenmann's chocholate chip cookies, from my train buddy.
5. Fieldrunners from the iTunes App Store.
Edit:
6. Lysol for my cubicle.
7. Dinner with the family.
The buzzing returned more consistently every day, and this time, I was expecting the service to be somewhat the same. I was surprised to learn that the Apple technician not only replaced the LCD inverter, the LCD panel was replaced, the logic board was replaced, as was the Super Drive and a 1 GB DIMM of RAM. Wow!
When the computer was turn on, however, I noticed the display was rather blue. It was not only a little cooler, but it was noticeable cooler, as if there was another layer of blue-tinted film in the display. Using the built in color calibrator for ColorSync did not yield any nice results. My eyes have been strained by trying to calibrate this LCD this way.
I am waiting on Ricky's color calibrator, held hostage by Adrian. I hope it'll fix it. Otherwise, Apple's going to be hearing from me a third time...
As a result, even after a week and a half of the computer being in the shop, I'd rather not use the blue-ish MacBook Pro for now. I will still use the iPhone as my primary device. My photo work will have to be put on hold because of this. While I am glad Apple was able to help make my notebook run like new (for the most part), the LCD has made me very frustrated.
"Gifts" received at this time of this post:
1. MacBook Pro repair replacing nearly all components with refurbished parts, by Apple.
2. Ricky's Pantone Huey, from Adrian. (pending)
3. Crumpler's 'The Considerable Embarrassment' bag from my sister, but really from myself.
4. A box of Entenmann's chocholate chip cookies, from my train buddy.
5. Fieldrunners from the iTunes App Store.
Edit:
6. Lysol for my cubicle.
7. Dinner with the family.
MacBook Pro in for Repair
A little rant:
Yesterday, my admiration for Apple and its products has diminished slightly after dealing with an Apple Store SoHo Genius (whose name isn't James). I realize how easy it is to get captured by the Apple media and propaganda, but I also realize how easy it is to dislike Apple for its practices of simplicity at the expense of control. For example, there is no reason an Apple-branded USB to Ethernet adapter can be used only for the MacBook Air.
How Apple does things, it does very well. What Apple does, though, sometimes doesn't sit well with even the most die-hard of Apple fans.
I feel like saying Apple does not genuinely care for its customers (most big and successfully companies don't). But I would have to remind myself that Apple, Inc. is a company after all and in it for the engineering, design, and business.
Yesterday, my admiration for Apple and its products has diminished slightly after dealing with an Apple Store SoHo Genius (whose name isn't James). I realize how easy it is to get captured by the Apple media and propaganda, but I also realize how easy it is to dislike Apple for its practices of simplicity at the expense of control. For example, there is no reason an Apple-branded USB to Ethernet adapter can be used only for the MacBook Air.
How Apple does things, it does very well. What Apple does, though, sometimes doesn't sit well with even the most die-hard of Apple fans.
I feel like saying Apple does not genuinely care for its customers (most big and successfully companies don't). But I would have to remind myself that Apple, Inc. is a company after all and in it for the engineering, design, and business.
Cleaning the MacBook Pro
Today, Apple announced the next-generation MacBook and MacBook Pro. Being envious of the new slick look and usability designs, I started to clean and polish my first-generation MacBook Pro. This is kind of like having your car feel and run better after a simple car wash. Haha. Silly psychological schemes.
Apple Retail Comes to China
From my favorite AppleInsider:
Ahead of the summer Olympics, Apple on Saturday will open the doors to its first retail store in China, a glass-enclosed high-profile shop situated in Beijing's newest retail development: the Village at Sanlitun.And also from AppleInsider, proof that Chinese people use Macs:
Wall-E, with Friends
Today, I went out (with a few former summer camp counselor friends) to see Pixar latest feature film and short animation. Both were phenomenal.
Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 96%, and I whole-heartedly agree. As always there are a bunch of Pixar Easter Eggs, and a number of Apple and Mac product placement, sort of. For example, among Wall-E's personal collection was something that closely resembled an iPod, and Wall-E's boot up sound paid tribute to the start up sound of the Macintosh, since 1984. Plus, the Eve character was said to have been designed by Jonny Ive, the father of the renouned iPod and iMac designs.
As usual, Pixar created a film that was fit for viewing by both children and adults. In fact, I feel this movie came out at the best time possible, in the middle of Apple's ascent to supremecy (maybe?) and the human realization of global warming and the downfall of the human spirit.
Also as typical of Pixar films, there is action, suspense, comedy, ominous times, sadness, and downright great story-telling. I highy recommend Wall-E. At first, I doubted how Pixar can play a movie with two robot leading-role characters with the majority of the dialogue limited to clicks and whistles, and "Wall-E" and "Eve", at least for the beginning half of the movie. They pulled it off really, really well. (There was robot love between the two.)
See here for great high resolution Wall-E images.
Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 96%, and I whole-heartedly agree. As always there are a bunch of Pixar Easter Eggs, and a number of Apple and Mac product placement, sort of. For example, among Wall-E's personal collection was something that closely resembled an iPod, and Wall-E's boot up sound paid tribute to the start up sound of the Macintosh, since 1984. Plus, the Eve character was said to have been designed by Jonny Ive, the father of the renouned iPod and iMac designs.
As usual, Pixar created a film that was fit for viewing by both children and adults. In fact, I feel this movie came out at the best time possible, in the middle of Apple's ascent to supremecy (maybe?) and the human realization of global warming and the downfall of the human spirit.Also as typical of Pixar films, there is action, suspense, comedy, ominous times, sadness, and downright great story-telling. I highy recommend Wall-E. At first, I doubted how Pixar can play a movie with two robot leading-role characters with the majority of the dialogue limited to clicks and whistles, and "Wall-E" and "Eve", at least for the beginning half of the movie. They pulled it off really, really well. (There was robot love between the two.)
See here for great high resolution Wall-E images.
WWDC 08 Predictions
Based on rumors, personal experience, and what I know about Apple:
SOFTWARE / SERVICES
1. iPhone/iPod touch App Store launch.
2. .Mac update and refresh.
3. Mac OS X 10.6 Announcement.
HARDWARE
1. iPhone with 3G announcement.
2. New Cinema Displays refresh.
SOFTWARE / SERVICES
1. iPhone/iPod touch App Store launch.
2. .Mac update and refresh.
3. Mac OS X 10.6 Announcement.
HARDWARE
1. iPhone with 3G announcement.
2. New Cinema Displays refresh.
Back with my Mac
It turns out that the AppleCare's 'Next Day' service with DHL took two days. When I posted the previous entry: DHL to the Rescue ... Maybe, the package was actually still in Houston. Go figure ...The repair slip (all of which was of no charge to be because of my trusty AppleCare Warranty), indicated that a few components were switched out. Indeed, it does feel a bit different, but the second I cracked open the computer and turned it on, it started to buzz again, albeit, not as loudly. I was disappointed, but at the same time, I am extremely glad I got my computer back safely. It came with a free carboard box and foam packaging as well, which is always a plus.
Edit: Check out the box from yesterday's POTD.
DHL to the Rescue ... Maybe
I have no idea where the Bethel Grove came from, and I don't know if the computer will arrive. I do not know what to expect, but I'm still hoping for the best. I have called both Apple and DHL about this decrepency but the address is right: 14850.I will wait it out.
Mac-less
After the Apple Store visit, my first time to the new-ish West 14th Street Apple Store, I was somewhat disappointed that they will not replace it for me right off the bat. I was fortunate (or unfortunate) that they took it for a repair.
That means I will be computer-less for the better part of two weeks. And that I will have a better Mac than when I left it ... hopefully.
As a result, POTD will be limited, and blog posts will be limited as well. How sad ...
That means I will be computer-less for the better part of two weeks. And that I will have a better Mac than when I left it ... hopefully.
As a result, POTD will be limited, and blog posts will be limited as well. How sad ...
Preparation for the Trip to the Apple Store
I will do a final back up of my entire computer via SuperDuper! and Time Machine right now. Afterwards, I will not modify anything on my computer so that the back ups are as up-to-date as possible. I will limit my computer use to web-based applications and services only for now. (Same goes for the iPod touch, of course. No more syncing is to be done until after the Apple Store visit.)
Now's the best time to put Google to the test. Haha.
Appointment Scheduled
My appointment with the genius bar is scheduled. It should be fun. While I am very proficient with speaking with AppleCare consultants over the phone, it will be my first time speaking with an Apple Genius in person.I'll keep you posted.