Rene Ruiz

• A government trying to impose geographical jurisdiction to the Internet is a really hard thing to do. One of the features of the Internet is how it abstracts geography and makes connecting with other humans on Planet Earth invisible and easy.
• We can argue that Hollywood and the giant media companies are out of touch, but it's actually defensible. Torrent sites often cite the physical locations of their servers as a defense. This is their response. 
• Computers and the Internet have created a dichotomy of people who understand these things, and those that don't. It's like no technology that's ever come before it. Ever try explaining the Internet to your grandmother? It's really hard. 
• The loose wording and gross-generalization of website categories that exist in these two acts should be instant red flags that the drafting party doesn't understand the Internet.
• Adding STOP SOPA to your Twitter avatar is preaching to the choir. Chances are those that follow you already share your interests and are already aware.
• It's true that piracy is a problem on the Internet, but the solution should be baked not microwaved.

Portamento by the Drums

A Different Kind of Fix by Bombay Bicycle Club

Loverboy by Brett Dennen

Kiss Each Other Clean by Iron & Wine

In Search of Elusive Little Comets by Little Comets

Hurry Up, We're Dreaming by M83

This Modern Glitch by Wombats

21 by Adele

Angles by the Strokes

Cults by Cults

Beautiful Imperfection by Aṣa

Robot Learn Love by Kyle Andrews

James Blake by James Blake

Geeks love Pull-to-Refresh. They love it. It started with Tweetie (now Twitter) but it has found its way onto, not only iOS apps, but also Android ones.

It's a delightful mechanism that leverages touch-screen technology and is dead-simple to pull off. In the iOS community, it's been adopted as the go-to method for a Refresh command.

I love Pull-to-Refresh, but it's been misused. At least, a bit.

In Twitter, the default scrolling direction is bottom-up. Successive tweets were viewed by scrolling upwards. So Pull-to-Refresh is there neatly hiding & waiting for you at the top of the Timeline.

The brilliance lies where scrolling upwards and Pulling-to-Refresh is the exact same motion. The gesture is so natural you could potentially find & trigger it without even knowing about it.

But now we see Pull-to-Refresh on apps whose content begins at the top and is oriented towards the bottom in order to see more.

Boxcar, an app that manages your notifications, is an example of this.

Here, the new content shows up below the point where you initiate the gesture. So you're forced to switch directions to see more.

Now, I'm aware it's not terribly confusing or even a critical flaw, but its use in this way demonstrates how Pull-to-Refresh works as just another way of performing a task, rather than the perfect case for it. It's purely functional.

Great care should be taken when selecting design patterns. It helps us ensure we're choosing the right tool for the job, not just the most novel one.

Yesterday, Apple sent out invitations to their annual Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC). Jim Dalrymple at The Loop suggested that we should expect the event to be software-only.

But if the iPhone 5 breaks the summerly release, when would it get pushed to? MG Siegler of TechCrunch reported having heard hearing rumors of a "surprise" fall event/launch, after John Gruber of Daring Fireball set off the Apple buzz machine with his iPad 3 prediction. But the "surprise" in the fall doesn't have to be limited to an iPad. My guess is not only is the surprise a new iPhone, but an LTE (4G) flavor of it.

First, here's why an annual iPhone in the fall makes more sense to me:

• Apple's events & launches have gotten top-heavy on the calendar. Meaning, all the fun stuff comes out between January & June: iPads, iOS previews, WWDC, & iPhones. The second half was left to iPod, AppleTV & Macbook refreshes.
• A fall iPhone release is close enough to Christmas that the hype machine can roll smoothly & crescendo into the shopping frenzied season, but one that also provides a comfortable cushion of 3 months to get into manufacturing shape for the holiday rush.

The downside to a "delay", of course, is that those who are now waiting for an iPhone 5 might be disappointed and go elsewhere. That is, unless, Apple can provide some holdover. Holdover in the form of a white iPhone 4, perhaps? For those who don't know, Phil Schiller is a top-exec at Apple, and his Twitter account is verified.

Onto LTE

MG Siegler also broke news this past weekend, that WWDC was going to be a preview of iOS 5, and thinks that it means the software is going to see a huge change in the way of cloud-syncing integration. But cloud-syncing would almost surely generate more traffic. Heck, iOS 4 with multi-tasking tripled my monthly data usage from 250MBs to 750MBs.

What better way to make a cloud-based iOS release shine other than pairing it with an LTE iPhone? John Gruber has disagreed with me in the past over a 2011 LTE iPhone, but as I responded, I hold that competition is more fierce now than it was when Apple opted safely for EDGE over the then-new 3G with the very first iPhone. Moreover, 4G or 4G-ish has been made available to Android phones for close to a year now. Even a 2011 LTE iPhone would put them at least a year behind, but Apple waiting until 2012 would just be a bad move.

Concern's been expressed over LTE's infrastructure being too new to support iPhone demand, and that is potentially valid. Remember, though, that Verizon has been at their LTE rollout for some time, they'd have a healthy headstart by the fall. Even if LTE service weren't to be available in a given region, rollback to CDMA/3G would be expected, not unlike how current 3G to 2G rollbacks work in poor coverage.

I hope my guesswork comes to fruition, I'd personally be in line for an LTE iPhone as dealing with 3G has grown to be frustrating. More to the point, Apple has shown to be aggressive, the iPad 2 announcement was a very aggressive one, less in release, but more in tone. You have to bet that Apple wants to show everyone how serious they are about retaining their lead.

• YouTube to learn pronounciation of brands, names, and/or places.
• Wikipedia to catch up on important plot points in-movie if I were to get distracted.
• Google Maps to scout neighborhoods during apartment hunts.
• Amazon to read product reviews with no intention of purchasing through them.
• Google Images to look up restaurant menu dishes.

Not long ago, I was asked what the biggest problem was with Apple. Without thinking deeply, my response was off–the–cuff and had more to do with something that had been bothering me at the time. Lack of support for Xvid. And just as randomly, the question's made its way back into my mind. This time, I gave it more consideration.

The philosophy and culture of Apple has always been characterized as "arrogant" or "righteous." It's rubbed a number of people the wrong way. They speak boldly and make bold decisions. Some recent examples would be their war against Flash, speaking out against 7 inch Android tablets, and beginning to phase out optical drives from their notebook lines.

No this isn't their flaw. Bear with me.

Apple posits that consumers pay them to make these decisions on their behalf. When Cupertino designs a system it leaves little in the way of customizability. The reasoning goes that they do not wish people to use their products in any other way than what was intended.

It's this model that geeks interpret as "Closed."

Choice can empower one user to improve the experience for themselves. It's why jailbreaking has remained a constant among a subset of the iOS userbase. But jailbreaking can lead to bricked iPhones, security vulnerabilities, and incompatibility with apps.

Of course, Apple isn't the only one to take this position. Consider Facebook versus MySpace circa 2006. Facebook was closed and MySpace was open. MySpace, unintentionally, allowed people to dress up their profiles, add music to play on load, and even adjust the order of information. It also exposed the people that were customizing their profiles, that shouldn't have in the first place. Facebook was much more uniform and strict. They handled the design site-wide, and users focused on the important details about themselves.

Apple integrates their products very well. An iPod is only a component of the digital music ecosystem. Another component is the iTunes application that extends itself with the iTunes Store. Apple guarantees that the everything works harmoniously across the system.

Well, what's the alternative? The "Open" model, it is told, doesn't lock you down. Android, the Poster Child, lets you modify everything from the Task/Process Managers down to the software keyboards, all on the fly.

This is also a form integration where the user becomes the system-integrator. A "Choose–Your–Own Experience", if you will. The power, trust and responsibility is allowed to the user.

Apple's approach is more top-down where experts integrate the system on your behalf. 

But what if these experts make a mistake?

Exhibit A. The Mute/Orientation–lock Switch on the iPad. When iPad was debuted, everyone loved the Orientation Lock Switch, as it was known then. But for the sake of uniformity, they re–appropriated it's function to muting sounds, not unlike the iPod Touch and iPhone. With no option to switch it back, some put off upgrading the OS, but more often, people took to Twitter and personal blogs to complain.

Although not crippling, this exposed something at the time. That expert-centered system-integration works well, until it doesn't. Because there was no option to switch it back, the feeling of lock-down intensified and becomes glaring, when otherwise invisible.

An iOS 4.3 update promises to add choice because of the negative feedback. And due to the nature of software, a fix, however late, is possible. While it's hard to quantify the cost of such a mistake, it shouldn't be overlooked.

So to answer your original question…

When users have control, they can remedy these sorts of things very quickly. Android ships a crappy keyboard? No worries. Swype to the rescue.

But when you ask your users to give up a little control, your margin for error becomes razor thin.

There's been a lot of guesses as to when Apple would announce the successor to the iPad. Last year, Apple made the announcement at the end of January. They told us to wait until April before getting our hands on them. So I can understand why people are hoping for an announcement & release date between now and April.

I'm not quite sure this will be the case.

When the iPad was shown off last year, it debuted an updated version of iOS. It was iOS 3.2 an iPad-only branch of the software platform. It debuted new UI elements like Splitview & Popovers. The Homescreen could be rotated into Landscape—a feature I hope is added for iPhone use. iOS 3.2 was effectively new.

And it made sense. Apple's always dropped new hardware alongside a new software update. Even the AppleTV, the third iOS device, has its own new branch of software.

Methinks this is the component that people are overlooking.

It's possible Apple ships the new iPad—let's drop the numbered suffixes, please—without an accompanying software update, but I think it's unlikely. Why wouldn't you want to use the software to distinguish the new iPad from its predecessor and competitors, as much as possible?

But this would mean Apple would lock themselves into two large iOS milestones a year. One for iPad. One for iPhone. It just doesn't sound like a precedent they'd want to set, as it would water down the annual unveil.

My guess is Apple will push back the iPad launch to drop alongside the new iPhone. That way they both ship with the shiny new iOS 5.0 when people eagerly get their hands on them.

Apple's always campaigned hardware and software being siblings to their mother experience. It's how they've released things traditionally.

I think I've run out of reasons to justify keeping Facebook around. I use it all the time, mostly out of habit. A 6-year old one, at that. My Facebook habit would be starting first-grade this year.

I often catch myself perusing the Newsfeed, aimlessly, without actually realizing I ended up there. Several times in a 5 minute span. It's bad.

I also frequent Twitter, but I find much more utility and relevant content on that side. In fact, I'll probably use the service to document my experiment.

So in an exercise of some self-control. I'm going to deactivate my Facebook account for exactly two weeks. And then on September 22, I will or won't make it a permanent decision.

By now, the iTV rumors have hit an all-time high. Everyone is all but expecting Apple to re-release their AppleTV device with the now-abstracted iOS, formerly known as iPhone OS, and give it a more fitting product name.

What has me more interested is how Apple plans on providing interaction for the rumored device.

I've been excited with the recent paradigm-shift in computing interaction. Three years ago, Apple showed the world that touch-based interaction was a viable alternative to hardware keyboards and mice/trackballs. Manipulating on-screen elements was more direct and intimate. It was more intuitive for a number of scenarios.

The year before, Nintendo also introduced something new. The Wii. Gesture-based interaction was an alternative control scheme to the Classic controller. Video games, also a form of computing, had traditionally relied on remote controls because the distance between the user and his/her screen was much larger. For lack of labels, we'll call this remote-control computing.

The iPhone and, more recently, iPad have benefitted greatly from touch interactions. Apple surprised a lot of people by not simply porting a simpler version of Mac OS X to the original iPhone, or even the iPad. iOS was built, mostly, from the ground up with touch UI in mind.

So if you've been following so far, you might start to see why I find this situation so interesting. Rumors have Apple refactoring iOS for iTV, a remote-control computing device. While, I don't doubt that they can pull it off, I want to see what the folks at Cupertino have concocted.

There are those that say enabling a cursor-control seems obvious, but I cringe at some of the potential usability problems. We would go from dead-simple intuitiveness of an iDevice, to something that would require a little more dexterity. It would also appear regressive, and a bit of a step backwards. And then there's questions about text-entry.

I usually have a pretty good idea what Apple plans on doing, but I think a lot of people are overlooking that, a set-top box device, is unlike any of the other personal or handheld devices that iOS runs on. The distance between the user and the screen/device is what this all hinges on. I have a lot of faith in Steve Jobs & company, but this one bears watching.

UPDATE: It seems Apple took the Boxee remote app approach. For those that haven't used the Boxee app, you navigate the screen with an app that controls the same way you would a small joystick.

I don't think it's a great control scheme because it's too likely that users will end up looking down at the software buttons a bit more because they've lost their place.

Not bad for a $99 package, though.