“Reminders” on iOS 5.0
Posted: October 16, 2011 Filed under: regular | Tags: iOS, User Interface Leave a comment »This week Apple released the pretty much expected iOS upgrade to 5.0 together with Mac OS 10.7.2, a really big overhaul of their desktop and mobile platforms. After using it since it was officially released here in the Netherlands, the feature I liked most so far is the new “Reminders” application.
“Reminders”, other than the new name for iCal’s existing—for ages—tasks, is a well thought solution for the calendar and tasks integration problem. iCal had tasks integrated with the calendar—as I said before, for ages—but wasn’t present on iOS before version 5.0. This is a major problem for 80% of the users—myself included—that had to rely on third-parties to provide task management applications for them. Apple, once more, solved the problem for the majority of their users with this new feature.
When you add a new “reminder” in your iOS powered device, it is immediately sent to the cloud and synchronized with your other devices and desktops. One interesting twist Apple made in iCal at Mac OS 10.7.2, is a nice but somehow hidden configuration:
This configuration will ensure that reminders set for a given due-date won’t appear in your iCal until it is time to. This is a major improvement—even if technically minor—on un-cluttering your iCal’s daily view. If you have, like me, been trying to use unsuccessfully all kind of GTD applications to manage your small reminders list, you’ll enjoy this a lot.
Another welcome feature in the “Reminders” application is what we call “geo-fences”. When you create a new reminder, you can ask “Reminders” to remind you either when you arrive at some location or when you leave some location. Let’s say that I’m planning my trip to Paris, and I can’t forget to buy my tickets for the Eiffel Tower as soon as I arrive there. The reminder will look like this:
As soon as you reach to the “Tour Eiffel” in Paris, your iPhone will remind you to buy your tickets! Another interesting usage patterns could be:
- Put your groceries list in a reminder’s note, and let your iPhone remind you of that when you leave your work.
- Organize your holidays trip, reminding you of doing random things when you either arrive or leave some location.
Some improvements I’d like to see in future improvements from Apple, both in Mac OS and iOS are:
- Ability to setup reminders with geo-fences in your desktop, and then synchronizing with the iPhone; and
- More natural and complex ways of reminders, for scenarios such as: “Remind me to go to the gym every monday, wednesday and friday when I leave work”.
I really like to see how Apple is improving the platform for the “regular users” out there.
Celebrating Life
Posted: October 11, 2011 Filed under: regular | Tags: Death, Encouragement, Steve Jobs 2 Comments »Everybody knows at this point that Steve Jobs has died. I can’t say he was an idol for me, but I can say he did lots of things I wish to have done.
More importantly, he showed he lived his life the way he wanted. Maybe he wasn’t entirely happy, but at least it seems he chose his path. And this is the way I want to live my life.
Here am I, making an agreement with myself, stating that I’ll do, at least, one thing I’m proud of everyday.
In the end what it counts is how proud you are about the way you lived your life.
Frankly Mr. Stallman
Posted: October 7, 2011 Filed under: regular | Tags: Richard Stallman, Steve Jobs, Utopia Leave a comment »Richard Stallman had a chance to stay quiet, but couldn’t:
Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.I know Mr. Stallman did a lot for the free software movement, but every time he opens his mouth to say things like this he’s digging his own grave. […] Nobody deserves to have to die – not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs’ malign influence on people’s computing.
Don’t even start with how bad is trying to justify paying for software is “malign” for the mankind. Of course, we don’t pay for clothes, food and other basic needs, right? It’s a pity most people that keep parroting your words never read any kind of business or economy books to know that some things you pray are utopia.
Come on Mr. Stallman, when you talk about how “malign” the people you just listed are, remember they’re doing something for the mankind, in one way or another. While you’re there vomiting those unnecessary comments they’re either including people to this digital era or trying to find the cure for the cancer.
And you, Mr. Stallman, is going to conferences without paying a dime and charging from people that for some reason care about you to take pictures with you.
Frankly.
How Steve Has United The World
Posted: October 7, 2011 Filed under: regular | Tags: Apple, Steve Jobs Leave a comment »Yesterday I tweeted:
@isutton: Jobs did what every leader in the world wanted: united all the people in the world, no matter their color or religion. #ThanksSteve
I really think he did it. Basically he changed the world into what we have today. I’m typing this text on a personal computer because Jobs pushed it forward, because he challenged the status quo. Look back and try to imagine a world where Jobs and Woz have given up when IBM didn’t want to buy their company?
If there’s such a reality, it’s certainly boring as hell.
As Apple’s “Think different” slogan stated:
[You can] disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.
You can spend the rest of the day arguing that the only thing Jobs wanted was to sell expensive gadgets to people. That’s an opinion and I respect it.
But remember: Jobs had his first hundred million dollars in his early twenties. He didn’t work for money. He wanted to change the world, make a difference. And he did. Certainly, a picture is worth thousand words. I’ve found other pictures as well, showing how people cared about Jobs. He’s changed their lives. In the way they perceive perceive technology. The way they perceive the world. One thousand songs in your pocket. The internet in your hands.
He wanted a better world, where doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, your ethnicity, your gender, anything. The same iPhone Barack uses is the iPhone I use. The same iPad some random company’s CEO uses is what I use. We’re the same. No boundaries, no differences.
He wanted to make the difference. And he did.
What Am I Doing?
Posted: October 3, 2011 Filed under: regular | Tags: Freedom, Life, ROWE Leave a comment »David Whatley, of Tiny Heroes fame, discussed about ROWE at 360iDev, and how it changed both his company and his employees lives. This made me think on how diminished the most important asset we have in life is by the corporate environment.
Thought about how many times someone asked me to do some activity that didn’t have any value at all. To do some project that nobody would even look when it’s been finished, even if it was set as “high priority” by someone.
I thought about the time I spent doing it and didn’t spend changing someone’s life for the better. And also about the time my wife had to be alone because someone decided something non-sense was priority.
With my baby boy on the way, I started to ask myself: Does he need to pay as well?
The answer to that question is pretty simple, but what is not that straightforward to answer is how do we embrace our freedom.
First, you have to choose either the blue or the red pill. This is the hardest part of embracing deciding how you want to live the rest of your lives, since what you’re really deciding to either keep yourself comfortable living the life you already know—with all the good and bad things you were hard-wired—or the uncertainty of driving your own future forward.
But don’t lie to yourselves: the uncertainty lives in both choices. You’ll never know what’ll happen to you tomorrow. You don’t know: if you’ll start to panic when you go to your office; regret your past choices when you haven’t participated in your children’s development; or how your spouse feels about having lunch alone after all those years.
The only certain thing you know is what you want. At least for now.
Apple and Its Online Presence
Posted: October 3, 2011 Filed under: regular | Tags: Apple Leave a comment »Today I was chatting with Drew McCormack about Apple’s expertise on web based services (or “cloud” to imitate what the cool guys), and I think I wasn’t clear about my point in this conversation (in chronological order):
- @drewmccormack: What is @siracusa on about this week? Claiming that the company with the World’s largest digital store has no experience in cloud/internet.
- @isutton: @drewmccormack They need something to sell. How can you say someone has or not experience on building something that was never built before?
- @drewmccormack: @isutton You can’t run the world’s biggest digital store with no XP in this stuff at all. They have lots, believe me.
- @isutton: @drewmccormack I know how these things work, and I’m sure they know their thing. But once you achieve that level, there’s no experience.
- @drewmccormack: @isutton They’ve got XP, because they are been doing it for 10 years. They aren’t starting right now.
- @isutton: @drewmccormack We both know systems designed for 10, 1K and 1MI can be and are totally different between them.
- @drewmccormack: @isutton But you seem to be denying Apple has ever built a system for more that 10 users. They have a massive online presence, and it works.
What I meant in this conversation—sorry if I made myself unclear—was to point there’s no way for companies to have expertise on systems that are yet to be built. Every step Apple takes to improve their online presence, specially with services like those coming along with iOS 5, don’t exist thus no-one can have experience on building it.
When I pointed that systems “systems designed for 10, 1K and 1MI can be and are totally different between them”, I meant that architecturally they can—and usually are—completely different. They have different features, technical requirements, infra-structure and so on.
The bottom line of my message is: expertise is made of repeatable actions. One can be expert on creating web sites using, let’s say, Ruby On Rails. It’s repeatable. Build infra-structure to scale Apple does, is all about experiment and count on its engineers craftsmanship.
First Time Attending 360iDev
Posted: October 3, 2011 Filed under: regular | Tags: 360iDev, Denver, iOS Leave a comment »360iDev 2011 was a great conference. The first iOS conference I attended, and certainly not the last one. The whole community caused me a pretty good impression. I’ve been involved with several different open source communities along the years. Some better than others. I always felt something was missing, but never figured out what it was.
Now I know.
Andria Jensen from Appsolute Genius said in her presentation:
Don’t be JUST a developer.
Of course this is a good advice, and I probably heard that several times during all these years. The gold question for me is: if you shouldn’t be just a developer, what else should you be?
And this is what I missed from all the other communities I’ve been part of.
Most communities praise you if they perceive you’re a good coder, how good is your .vimrc file, or how many projects you’ve contributed in github. Not this community.
This community wants you to be yourself. It wants you to be awesome and deliver awesome products. It wants you to feel awesome.
It’s not all about code quality. It’s not all about how pretty or fast your app is. It is all about how you feel with regards to what you’re doing.
Our Appsterdam’s mayor Mike Lee said (something along this lines) in the ending panel:
It’s like an artist that sands a piece. He sands, then removes the dust, look at it from a perspective, and repeat until he feels it is finished.
The true lesson: pay attention, and more importantly, respect what you feel. You don’t want to waste your (finite) time here with bullshit.
