Entries from September 2008 ↓

Michael Mistretta just published a thoughtful article on his misgivings with Android, and he makes two excellent points.

First:

An open platform may have worked had there only been a single device. But Android is a multi-year project that will encompass a wide scope of devices with hundreds of varying user interfaces. Touchscreens to trackballs to keyboards to accelerometers. How can 50+ different phones made by different companies with different interfaces possibly function with apps in the Android Market?

Mark my word, three years from now, the Android Market will be a mess. Users will download—or even worse, purchase—an app, only to find that they have no way to interact with it because their phone lacks a touchscreen. Think there are a lot of flashlights and tip calculators in the AppStore now? Wait till you see the Android Market in 3 months.”

This illustrates a central problem with Android as a platform in the sense an iPhone is a platform: the “Android Market” is tacked on. Android’s intent is to be flexible enough to run on a multitude of devices with widely varying hardware. But this diversity of user interfaces, as Michael points out, is why an application store on Android phones doesn’t work that well: how do you account for applications with specific hardware requirements (e.g., “this app only works on phones with a touch screen,” or “…only works on phones with an accelerometer”) in the application store while still retaining a simple store design? I don’t want to wade through long lists of applications which aren’t even compatible with my phone — I only want to see applications that work with it.

One solution is for the application developer to specify certain criteria phones must meet, and if the phone doesn’t, its store will not display the application, but think about the upkeep involved in maintaining this system. The developer must specify explicitly what their application requires, and the Market must keep and update profiles for each phone of what it is and isn’t capable of. It’s begging for a poor user experience.

An OS which is designed to be run on a variety of devices with different configurations simply doesn’t work that well with a unified application store. That’s a trade off being made, and a rather large one on a handheld device, where ease of use is ultimately more important than features.

Second:

The iPhone was marketed as an iPod, a smartphone, and an internet communicator. Now, third-party applications can also be seen as a major selling point. With the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack, dedicated video player, and desktop syncing, the G1 is hardly a media-centric device. It barely compares to the iPod. Surprising for Google, the G1 has a significantly laggy web-browser with a clumsy UI that leads to a lackluster mobile internet experience. That leaves the phone side of things, which I haven’t seen a single screenshot published to date.

The G1 — and any Android phone, really — is not a media-centric device. Period. As Michael points out, the G1 lacks a 3.5mm headphone jack, a built-in video player, and desktop syncing.

Google is betting on developers to make up for Android’s inadequacies, but the experience will be poor, because it isn’t integrated. It isn’t just that the audio application is poor and it has no video application. The issue is media wasn’t a focus in developing Android, so its support is a half-hearted attempt.

In contrast, the iPhone is a very simple concept: a phone, an iPod, and an Internet communication device. It has three functions, and it does the last two really, really well, and the first good enough. Just consider the music experience on the iPhone. The user can buy music, TV shows and movies, and subscribe to podcasts on their computer, and buy music on the iPhone, too. All of this media stays in sync effortlessly. All the user does is sync it whenever they have new media, and iTunes transfers new media to the iPhone and vice versa.

Once the media is on the iPhone, it is all accessible through one application, the iPod. Users can listen to music and podcasts, and watch movies and TV shows, all through this one application. And because this application is one of the device’s main focus, it’s very well-designed. It’s a joy to use.

To put media on the G1, however, users must enable mass-storage in the phone’s options, then hook the phone up and manually load media onto the micro-SD card. After they’re finished, they must disable mass-storage — because if they don’t, the G1 will not be able to access the card. Then they have to hook up a USB-to-3.5mm adapter and use separate applications for audio and video, all in a subpar user interface.

With the iPhone, you drop it in its dock and let it sync. It’s as close to seamless as anyone has ever gotten.

And with an Android phone, we’re back to the pre-iPod and iTunes days for managing our music collections. If there is one single reason I will not own an Android phone, this is it.

Here is a video ofPelosi’s speech today, where she attempted to shift blame for the financial crisis entirely to the Republicans, right before voting on emergency legislation that required bipartisan support. This, apparently, is how Pelosi works: rather than try to get something done, she’d rather make a terribly partisan speech.

Shameful.

Paul Krugman has posted a YouTube video of a panel lecture on the financial crisis, and it is excellent. If you are at all interested in the crisis (and you should be), I suggest watching the lectures.

My favorite was by Professor of Finance Harrison Wong. He gives a detailed, but not overly complicated, explanation of why the investment banks bought up mortgage securities so heavily.

John Gruber is a smart guy. He consistently provides some of the best Mac, iPhone, web and general geekery analysis. Whenever he publishes an article, I read it, and 9 links he publishes out of 10, I read, too.

He is an opinionated guy, and that is a good thing™, so he has also made his opinions known on the upcoming election on Twitter. I am a libertarian who tends toward the Republican party, so of course I rarely agree with his political tweets, but that’s the nature of politics. Disagreement is another good thing.

What has disgusted me since I began following politics and current events, though, is partisanship. Partisanship in this sense is not supporting one party over another, but rooting for one party like it is a sports team, where you condemn whatever your “opponents” do and try to pin anything bad that happens on them.

There is no discussion in this kind of politics, no learning — and ultimately no progression. We sit stagnant, doing our best to help “our” party take control, but only ruining our country.

That is not politics, and it is much too rampant on both sides. Which is why I was dismayed to see one of Gruber’s tweets today:

To Republicans who tell me they’re tired of me writing about politics. I say let’s call it even, I’m tired of you fucking up the country.

Let’s be clear: there is nothing wrong with talking politics on your weblog or on Twitter. They both exist to explain your views and do whatever else you decide.

Gruber here is basically saying: fuck you, I don’t value what you have to say, because you’re a Republican, and all Republicans can do is fuck up the country.

That’s the attitude which denies discussion and poisons politics as a result. Because someone is a Republican or Democrat, they are automatically unworthy of discussion. It brushes over complex issues, like the Iraq war, or the current economic crisis, which defy easy answers and emotional slogans. Neither are as simple as “war for oil,” or “it’s all Bush’s fault” — but when we make it our attitude that anyone from the other party is wrong, is “fucking up the country” and thus not worth listening to, we are fucking up the country.

Gruber is a smart guy, and from what I can tell, a good man who usually keeps a cool head. We all get wrapped up in politics sometimes, all of us, but I only hope that we can unwrap ourselves enough to really discuss what’s going on sometime, other than yelling “you’re fucking up the country.” If we can do that, we’d all be better off — liberal, conservative, libertarian, socialist, apathetic.

Cultured Code has published their iterations for Things for iPhone. Things for iPhone’s UI looks rather simple, so it’s interesting to see the initial sketches and iterations that went into its design.

(Via Via Daring Fireball..)

Wil Shipley wrote today probably the definitive article on Apple’s App Store censorship, but I found this part particularly interesting:

The App Store needs to think of itself as two different parts - it already implements these parts, but the people who run the store need to understand that these two parts are fundamentally separate:

• Part one is a giant warehouse, where every piece of software that is not actively harmful is kept in case someone wants to buy it (remember, users can always get a refund). This warehouse can be searched with titles and keywords or an item can be directly linked.

• Part two is like a traditional storefront, with limited real estate, so only the best or coolest applications are highlighted. It’s a recommendation engine, that highlights popular, highly-rated, or innovative applications.”

(Via the Ranchero.)

This is an issue that has bothered me, too — how does the App Store scale? — and this is the first solution I’ve heard. I like the idea of having a “back room” where the majority of software titles are housed, and the storefront, where Apple displays the applications which deserve exposure.

Oddly, part of the reason I like this is it brings company website marketing back into the game. If your application depends upon traditional marketing, like word of mouth and advertising, you must build and maintain a well-designed website for your company and application.

This hasn’t been true thus far — with a few notable exceptions, like Tap Tap Tap and Cultured Code, companies have relied on their application’s iTunes store page to market the application, and that’s disappointing. Part of the Mac community’s magic, at least for me, is the excellent websites independent developers build for their applications. Panic’s website, Shipley’s Delicious Monster, Checkout’s website, and Cultured Code’s website all provide great inspiration for web designers. And, frankly, I love finding a new Mac application in part to see its website — the company’s website design is an important part of the application for me.

If Apple models the App Store around Shipley’s model (and even if it doesn’t, as the App Store is developing in a similar way, anyway — paging through certain categories is impossible), then application developers will have no choice but to create these websites again, and I will be a happy man.

Apple has denied another iPhone app, MailWrangler, because it duplicates functionality of the built in Mail app without adding “sufficient” new features.

MailWrangler uses WebKit to access Gmail’s iPhone web interface, which users can do through Safari. MailWrangler’s added functionality is that users would not have to log in each time to access separate Gmail accounts like they do when using the web interface.

Granted, its added utility is not that great, and MailWrangler being denied is less egregious than Podcaster, but what is Apple’s criteria for what is and is not sufficient added functionality for duplicate applications? Apple needs to make these guidelines more clear, and I have a sneaking suspicion that they are, so they can avoid this mess every time they deny an application because of duplicated functionality.

David Brooks of the NYTimes:

This observation is then followed by a string of ethereal gottas and shoulds. We gotta have smart regulation that offers security but doesn’t stifle innovation. We gotta have rules that inhibit reckless gambling without squelching sensible risk-taking. We should limit excesses during booms and head off liquidations when things go bad.

It all sounds great (like buying a house with no money down), but do you mind if I do a little due diligence?

In the first place, the idea that our problems stem from light regulation and could be solved by more regulation doesn’t fit all the facts. The current financial crisis is centered around highly regulated investment banks, while lightly regulated hedge funds are not doing so badly. Two of the biggest miscreants were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which, in theory, ‘were probably the world’s most heavily supervised financial institutions,’ according to Jonathan Kay of The Financial Times.

(Via Marginal Revolution.)

Threats, bribes, and shameless corruption. The Washington Post has a long-ranging story on Fannie Mae’s business — securing special favors and winks and nods from government oblivious, or all too knowing, of the monster it created.

This is what happens when government is allowed to intervene in the economy to further its goals:

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac enjoyed the nearest thing to a license to print money. The companies borrowed money at below-market interest rates based on the perception that the government guaranteed repayment, and then they used the money to buy mortgages that paid market interest rates. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan called the difference between the interest rates a “big, fat gap.” The budget office study found that it was worth $3.9 billion in 1995. By 2004, the office would estimate it was worth $20 billion.

As a result, the great risk to the profitability of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was not the movement of interest rates or defaults by borrowers, the concerns of a normal financial institution. Fannie Mae’s risk was political, the concern that the government would end its special status.

So the companies increasingly used their windfall for a massive campaign to protect that status.

The company is not subject to market forces, because the government will bail them out. Instead of focusing on sound business, they focused on receiving special favors from the government. The Clinton administration allowed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to become this corrupt because they provided affordable loans, which fulfilled Clinton’s agenda of increasing home ownership, even if it meant complete and utter corruption in Fannie Mae and government.

The Bush administration fell into the same trap with their “Ownership Society” goal. The ends for both administrations justified the means, and now we are seeing the results. This is what happens when government is allowed to intervene in the market so forcefully.

Crooked Timber writes on perhaps the most dangerous effect of this financial crisis - the discrediting of free-markets, even if they are not to blame:

Very roughly speaking, when a crisis occurs that is difficult or impossible for the prevailing wisdom to explain or deal with, intellectual entrepreneurs have an opportunity to create a new (partly self-reinforcing) collective wisdom. We’re most likely in just such a crisis now. Which set of intellectual entrepreneurs are going to succeed in reshaping a new collective wisdom – economic nationalists like Sarkozy and Putin, social democratic globalizers like Dani Rodrik, or some other crowd entirely – I have no idea.”

Unfortunately, whether the free market is to blame or not (and in this case, although partially at fault, companies were encouraged by law to give risky loans, and interest rates were too high in 2003), it tends to receive all of the blame. Even if government involvement played a large part in crises, people tend to respond that we need more government power, effectively calling for more poison that lead to the sickness.