Lex, Briefly

I was hoping to spend $100 yesterday on a brand spankin’ new Apple TV. If rumors were to be true, the device would be tiny, would include access 99¢ TV show episodes, and potentially run iOS, too.

All those rumors were true, but now, I don’t want the darn thing.

During Wednesday’s event, Steve Jobs said that customers don’t want computers connected to their TVs; they want entertainment. I don’t know that he’s exactly right on that. 

I have three computers connected to my TV right now: A TiVo HD, a Nintendo Wii, and a Mac mini.

The TiVo is the most-used device. It records all our shows for us, and it streams Netflix. (It can also stream from Blockbuster on Demand, Amazon, and other services.) The Mac mini is next on the popularity chart. We rip some of our kids’ shows to it, and it functions as our DVD player. It’s also our main interface to Hulu, when we or the TiVo miss shows on major networks. (We use the mini to stream Netflix when TiVo has issues, which hasn’t happened in many months.)

The Wii is used solely as a gaming device, though it could stream Netflix in a pinch.

But it’s not a stretch to call all three of those devices computers. The difference, of course, is the interfaces. It’s a small pain to use the mini to watch Hulu; I’ve got to launch Hulu Desktop first, and then use either the Apple remote (if I can find it), or my iPhone, iPad, or Mac to navigate to the show I’m after. 

The TiVo, though, is a computer too. It has an interface built for watching TV, a full-featured remote (not Apple’s goofy minimal shtick), and provides near-instant feedback that makes it feel anything but computer-ish.

What the TiVo and Mac mini offer that Apple TV can’t is access to free television. You know, exactly like we’ve come to expect from television all our TV-watching lives. TiVo can grab shows as they air, and I can start watching an hour show twenty minutes into it — thus getting to watch the show commercial free, and seeing the ending at the same time as everyone else watching live or nearly live. With Hulu, or with the iTunes store for Apple TV, I’ve got to wait an extra day — or for some shows, an extra week or more — for a new episode to become available.

At least on Hulu, it’s still free to watch. Paying $1 a show isn’t terrible, but if you watch just five shows per 22-episode season, now we’re talking enough money to buy another Apple TV. Or, perhaps, a Roku. (The Roku, of course, can stream from Netflix, Amazon, MLB.TV, Pandora, and a bunch of other providers that I doubt anyone ever watches.)

The new Apple TV has no storage; you stream everything, either from Apple, Netflix, or another computer in your house. There are some advantages there, but not enough. I can stream music and photos to my TiVo. I can stream those, and even video, through my Mac mini — or, as I actually do, from it.

Apple may one day allow developers to make third-party apps for Apple TV. At that point, it’ll become hard to resist: That would mean Hulu could have an app, along with ABC, CNN, and others. And maybe we’d start to see some Apple TV games using iPads or iPhones as multitouch, motion-sensitive controllers. (With the gyroscope in there, I imagine some Wii-quality gaming could be recreated on the Apple TV pretty impressively.)

But as an underpowered Netflix-streamer that can also access paid-only TV shows, the Apple TV leaves me wanting a lot more than it offers.

First, let’s get a couple key points out of the way:

1. I own shares in Apple.

2. I think Steve Jobs is an excellent, inspiring and inspired CEO. His job is not and should not be in jeopardy.

3. I would be simply delighted if Steve could live and lead Apple forever.

4. He won’t.

Look, even without Steve’s health issues — the pancreatic cancer, the weight loss, and the liver transplant, all of which are surely correlated — statement #4 remains true. But Steve’s health issues do ultimately press the issue a bit more.

When the inevitable happens, and Steve Jobs leaves Apple either by choice or necessity, I fully expect those shares I referenced in key point #1 up there to take a massive dive. Investors will inevitably be spooked when one of the most lauded CEOs of all time is no longer at Apple’s helm. That’s reasonable.

What surprises me, however, is the minimal efforts Apple appears to be taking to groom, publicly, Mr. Jobs’s replacement.

When Steve took his multi-month, health-related leave of absence, Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook was left in charge. That’s great. By all accounts, Cook is exquisitely talented. But beyond a few public statements of praise for how Mr. Cook handled things during Jobs’s time away, Apple in general and Steve Jobs in particular haven’t done much to present him — or anyone — as the next genius ready to guide Apple after Steve.

I imagine there are competing perspectives in play here. On Apple Inc’s side — the side of its Board of Directors, its shareholders, etc. — knowing that the company can succeed without Steve Jobs, and even more ideally knowing precisely whom is being groomed for that role — would provide welcome peace of mind and reassurance about the company’s longer-term future. From Steve’s own perspective, though, I doubt the issue holds nearly as much importance. Steve’s focus, I’d imagine, is on building great stuff, on continuing to enhance his already impressive legacy.

Cynically, it’s easy to think that Steve doesn’t worry too much about Apple’s future without him, because it’s largely inconsequential to him. What Apple does after Steve’s retirement or death really doesn’t affect Steve too much.

But Steve isn’t cynical. And neither am I.

If Steve Jobs ever thought himself immortal, I imagine his recent health scares wiped such overconfidence away. What, then, would prevent him from more enthusiastically and publicly building up his eventual successor?

Is Tim Cook, in Steve’s view, not the guy? Is there no one Steve thinks could take the helm? 

I don’t envy the task before the person who one day needs to step into Jobs’s sneakers. While I certainly believe that Apple will continue to be successful after Steve leaves, I’m also realistic: The company may stumble a bit more often, or a bit more visibly. iOS devices might get a few more buttons. With any luck, though, we won’t see any more Performas.

Most companies don’t ceremonially crown a new CEO while the current one still comes into work each day. But quick: Name five other big companies whose CEOs so directly embody public’s view of the companies’ visions, esthetics, and philosophies. Google is Google with or without Eric Schmidt. 

Apple’s in a unique spot. So I’m stumped as to why it hasn’t tackled this obvious question more aggressively.

Apple doesn’t like when developers sneak stuff into the App Store. I get Apple’s perspective on flashlight apps that secretly enable tethering and the like. And I understand Apple’s strict opposition to App Store apps accessing private APIs (that is, accessing features of the iPhone that Apple’s not willing to share with third-party developers, whether for reasons of security, lack-of-stability, or other, more nebulous roots). But I neither agree with nor understand Apple’s recent decision on the saga of Camera+.

In brief: Camera+ is an app that aims to help you take better pictures with the iPhone’s camera. As with Apple’s built-in Camera app, you tap a button on the screen to take a picture. Fans of the app asked the developers to offer a clever, hackish, sneaky way to take pictures without tapping the screen: Repurpose the volume buttons—which are obviously of little use in a camera app—so that they act as pseudo-shutter buttons. The theory is that tapping those hardware buttons is far less likely to bump the iPhone at the moment you snap the picture.

Fair enough. Whether you think the feature is a good idea or not, it’s a fine request, and the developers decided to implement it. Apple didn’t accept the upgraded version into the App Store, suggesting that the volume button hack would cause “user confusion.”

The developers resubmitted the app with the feature removed—sort of. In fact, by visiting a secret URL in Mobile Safari, which would in turn launch Camera+, you could unlock a hidden preference to access the volume button-as-trigger feature. Once the developers leaked word of the Safari hack, Apple pulled the app.

I get that Apple’s miffed about the chicanery, but pulling the app makes no sense to me. Well, let me rephrase. I respect that Apple pulled the app because the developer’s snuck in a feature that Apple had already rejected, but I strongly disagree with Apple’s initial decision to reject the app because of the volume button option. I think Apple should amend its rules, even if for a very narrow use case (e.g., when taking pictures in apps without sound).

I have no idea how many people are asking for the feature. I know that I tried it (via the Safari hack), and I liked it. So at least some people want this feature, and the developers implemented it. They eventually implemented it in such a way that only those who really, truly, even desperately wanted access to it could enable it. You couldn’t turn the feature on accidentally, and in fact could probably only turn it on if you knew exactly what to expect when you did so.

That’s what makes Apple’s decision so head-scratching. If folks want a feature, and go out of their way to get it, is Apple really still worried about “user confusion” here? The volume buttons retain their standard functionality outside of the app. There’s always a mute switch if you need instant volume control. And, at least in my experience, you can take better photographs with the volume button trick enabled. It seems to me that Apple is more concerned with owning the experience and maintaining the “purity” of the volume buttons, goofy as that sounds. It’s not confusion, it’s wanting to maintain that through-line. I get that, I understand it, and it’s important to Apple products. I just think they need to loosen up on this specific issue.

There’s the great joke about why Steve Jobs always wears turtlenecks. (It’s because he hates buttons.) I appreciate the iPhone’s almost-buttonless design. But Camera+ offered a clever way for interested photographers to make the best use they could of the iPhone’s hardware setup. Apple’s blocking it—particularly on the grounds of confusion, but even for other reasons—seems stubborn and persnickety. 

Apps that hack-in tethering cost Apple and/or AT&T money. App Store apps that access private APIs (like, cough, iBooks) certainly deserve extra scrutiny, although Apple lets other developers (like Google) get away with it some times.

Arbitrarily blocking an app for accessing a feature that users want—particularly when they must go out of their ways to unlock said feature—when it doesn’t cost Apple any money just seems wrong. 

It’s Apple’s platform, and it’s Apple’s store. If you want to play, I get that you must abide by Apple’s rules. So again, I do get why Apple pulled the app after the developers’ trickery. But the core issue isn’t that Apple pulled an app for sneaking in a feature; it’s that the developers snuck the feature in because Apple rejected it when the feature was exposed. Apple may well feel that the iPhone doesn’t need a shutter button. 

Let me rephrase: Apple clearly thinks that the iPhone doesn’t need a shutter button—otherwise, it would have one. But Apple also didn’t think that the iPhone needed third-party apps (remember when Steve Jobs suggested you could just rely on building fancy web pages?). I respect that Apple can have and enforce an opinion.

I’m just suggesting that this one needs to change.

I’m a big fan of Safari Extensions. I’ve written several of my own, some of which I share with the Internet public. But because I’ve built those extensions, I’ve realized how easily a malicious developer could harvest all sorts of information about you, using a method that could sneak in and evade immediate detection.

First, a very broad primer on how Safari Extensions work: Like webpages, extensions consist of Javascript, CSS, and HTML. My “Affiliatizer for Safari” extension, for example, uses Javascript to pull all the links on a page. It then checks each link in turn to see whether it points to Amazon, and tweaks the URL that link points to (adding in an affiliate code of your choosing, if one isn’t already present) — all via Javascript.

Installed extensions can add any HTML to any page you surf to. And that’s where the danger comes in — and that danger is actually even worse than it first seems, which is already pretty bad.

Check out my new (actually harmless) extension, which I’ve dubbed The Evil Extension. Instead of searching the page you’re on for links, or tweaking its fonts, this extension creates a new chunk of HTML called an <iframe>. 

An <iframe> is used to include an entirely separate webpage within another one. Basically, if I create a webpage called “Lex’s Page,” I can use an <iframe> to embed “John’s Page” somewhere inside it. Web developers these days tend to avoid <iframes>, but <iframes> are still around, and all modern web browsers support them.

The Evil Extension creates an <iframe>, using Javascript, on every page you navigate to. That <iframe> points to http://lexfriedman/extensions/evil.php, with one caveat: I append the URL of the page you’re currently visiting to the URL. With my Evil extension installed, when I go to Google, an <iframe> is added to the page that points to http://lexfriedman.com/extensions/evil.php?url=http://www.google.com/. 

Now, my extension is, as I said, actually harmless. All my evil.php script does is output the URL you were just visiting, and the IP you came from if it can tell, without saving or storing any of that information. And it shows you what it finds out:

But it could be eviler: It could make that <iframe> invisible, instead of being so obvious. It could pass along the entire contents of the webpage you visited — which could be troublesome if you didn’t want me, say, reading your Gmail messages, or checking out your bank account balance.

Even worse, though, it could disguise itself as something useful — and even start out pure.

Safari can update your extensions automatically. Included in the extension is a URL that the developer may optionally provide, and Safari checks that URL on occasion to see if a new version of your extension is available. If it is, Safari will install that new version silently.

Thus, the mythical A Decidedly Un-Evil Extension, which could provide the definition of any word you double-clicked on, could seem noble and safe. After a few months of swelling popularity, the extension’s nefarious creator could update the extension with <iframe> evilness, and start gathering personal information about you, from the webpages you visit. Unless you regularly check your Safari Extensions’ versions number, you might never even know that the extension had been updated, and therefore never even suspect any change had occurred. 

My short-term solution to this problem is that you should, at a minimum, disable automatic updating for Safari Extensions by unchecking the box:

I realize, though, that you could manually install upgrades to your extensions, and still get tricked by a nefarious attacker. Short of decompiling every new version of an extension and inspecting its code, which is neither scalable nor accessible, there’s no way to know at a glance whether an extension is performing <iframe> (or other, fancier versions) of this sort of privacy invasion.

Sadly, there’s no easy solution for Apple to implement, either. Certainly Safari could block various elements of what makes this hack work, but to block every means of gathering this data would necessitate artificially limiting what Safari Extensions can do. The only other alternative is to rely on Apple’s own Extensions Directory, on the (potentially erroneous) assumption that Apple inspects the extensions it includes there for just such trickery.

Now, let me be clear: I know of no such Safari Extension that’s doing evil stuff like this. I also have no doubt that such evilness is possible with Chrome and Firefox extensions, but I’m a Safari man, and that’s the browser I know. I’m not suggesting you avoid extensions or fear each new one you install. Rather, I’m suggesting that you should be aware of what extensions can do, make sure you trust the developers who make the ones you use, and stay informed.

Another day, another new Safari Extension.

Affiliatizer For Safari rewrites Amazon links around the web so that they include the affiliate code of your choice. (Affiliate codes let folks earn tiny kickbacks from Amazon when they refer buyers to the site.)

Affiliatizer only rewrites an Amazon link if it doesn’t seem to contain an affiliate code already. And, of course, you get to set what affiliate code it uses.

As noted on my new, barebones Safari Extensions page, if you don’t enter in an affiliate code for Affiliatizer to use, it will randomly pick either mine (thelexfiles05-20), John Gruber’s (daringfirebal-20), or Jason Kottke’s (0sil8) Jason Snell’s (intertext) — once per pageview. 

If you or someone you love has an Amazon affiliate code, install this extension to earn them a little extra scratch when you buy stuff.

Update: I swapped Jason Snell for Jason Kottke, because I had the former’s explicit permission, and Jason K. is on vacation and thus unable to give his blessing.

Over the weekend, I created a few new Safari extensions. Some of them, I just can’t share. But there’s one — still nascent, yet already useful — that I’m ready to let others enjoy:

Facebook Improved, unsurprisingly, improves Facebook: It removes stuff I never look at (the otherwise ever-present call-out to create events, certain ad units). It converts the font to Helvetica, and bumps up the font size in various places that Facebook weirdly leaves it too small. And it attempts to improve line-height and font layout, too.

Update: Version 1.1 is out, though I have no idea if I’ve implemented auto-updating correctly. The new feature included is one that Facebook should definitely do on its own, but doesn’t. When you’re on a friend’s profile, instead of simply saying “Write something…” in the text entry box — you know, the one that looks exactly like the one you use to update your own status, but is in fact for writing on your friend’s page instead — will say “Write something on [Friend’s Name]’s wall…” You’re welcome.

Update 2: Version 1.1.1 changes the name to “Facebook Improved,” since a separate tool called “Better Facebook” already exists.

I already vastly prefer Facebook with the extension. 

Check it out, and of course let me know your thoughts.

The DODOCase—which I’ll refer to as the Dodo for the rest of this review—is a $60, handmade case for the iPad. The Dodo is made from faux-leather and bamboo, using a fabric and wood process that closely emulates traditional book binding.

The case weighs just over a half a pound, and includes a single, attached elastic strap to secure it closed when you’re not using the iPad. The hand-carved bamboo features cutouts precisely where you need them; you’ll be able to plug in your headphones, charge the iPad, adjust the volume, and wake/sleep the device while it’s in the Dodo, without difficulty.

Your iPad is secured by pressure alone. You gently squeeze it into the Dodo’s bamboo shell, and four pads near the corners help squeeze the iPad snugly. The only situations where I can imagine your iPad getting jarred loose from the Dodo involve events that would likely be tragic for the case and the iPad alike—steep, significant drops onto hard surfaces.

The case feels densely solid and sturdy. My concern when reading about the case online was that its natural materials would make it feel a bit fragile or delicate, and thus perhaps less well-equipped to suffer the rigors that my heretofore-Apple iPad Case-clad iPad routinely endures. Those initial concerns have been somewhat allayed with case in hand. The case doesn’t feel malleable or on the verge of sudden destruction, which is good. But I do try to treat it with the same level of careful handling that I give my iPad itself; the Dodo’s heft in hand and obvious quality seem to require sensitive treatment. 

On the inside cover of the Dodo case is bright, firebrick red stitched fabric. It’s my favorite color, and it looks great. It’s got a traditional texture that I don’t love the feel of, though. The number one reason I use an iPad case is because I find the naked iPad a little slippery, and a little awkward to hold one handed. My preferred in-case use scenario for the iPad is with the back of the case folded over—i.e., with that red inside cover folded onto the back. I haven’t yet adjusted comfortably to the feel of that red fabric against my hand. I’m cautiously optimistic that I’ll get used to it over time, but right now, I occasionally get a little goosebumpish from the feel of that fabric on my fingers. This may well be my own weirdness.

When you’re holding the iPad with the case’s lid flipped around back like that, it can’t lie nearly as flat as Apple’s case. This isn’t a huge deal, but it too requires a period of adjustment.

Depending on the surface it’s resting upon, the Dodo can prop your iPad up in a variety of ways. You can stand it up in landscape mode, if your surface is a less slippery one, but since it lacks the slim locking pocket Apple’s case has, the precise angle may vary depending on the Dodo’s balancing needs. It’s even easier to find a comfortable standing position for portrait mode.

The Dodo’s chief weakness to me is its typing angle. Compared to Apple’s case, the Dodo’s level of incline for typing seems laughable. I’ve mastered typing (as much as is possible) on the iPad primarily when it’s in Apple’s case, at that delicious level of incline. The Dodo’s props the iPad up by about an inch, and it’s nothing like typing in the Apple case. Frankly, typing with a Dodo-clad iPad is about as tough as typing on a naked iPad: Unless you find another means of propping it up more, you’re very nearly typing on a purely flat surface, which is an ergonomic challenge when touch typing on a virtual keyboard.

On the whole, though, I like the Dodo a lot. It looks terrific, holds the iPad securely, and feels solid in my hands.

I do, however, have concerns: The stance the Dodo needs for landscape movie watching can be more than six inches in some situations, which is a far larger footprint than Apple’s case requires. I’m worried about the case’s stability in that position when propped up on a cramped airline tray table. (To be fair, Apple’s case isn’t perfectly stable in this position either.) My biggest concern remains that typing angle, and only time will tell if I’ll be able to adjust to typing comfortably with the Dodo. I hope I do, because on the whole I really like how my iPad looks and feels in the case.

There are many things wrong with Henry Blodget’s Business Insider piece “This Android Chart Should Scare the Bejesus Out Of Apple.” 

First, the chart that Blodget cites isn’t an “Android chart” at all. Rather, it’s a Silicon Valley Insider chart titled “Percent Of Developers That Have Developed For Each Mobile Platform.” So let’s start with the obvious: Calling this an “Android chart” is sloppy, yet an impressively accurate foreteller of the piece’s overall quality.

The chart purports to reveal that 60% of developers surveyed have developed for Android, while only 50% of developers surveyed developed for iOS. Blodget doesn’t spend any time revealing how this supposedly Apple-terrifying data was gathered, but I looked into it. This data comes from a survey of 400 developers spanning 290 companies, according to this report. That means, of course, that this survey—which, again, attempted to figure out how many developers worked on popular mobile OSes—surveyed multiple people from the same companies. That may be accurate for getting a headcount, but it doesn’t really tell me how many companies focus on iOS vs. Android. It may well indicate that Android development requires more developers per company than iOS development does, but there’s not enough context provided to make that sort of analysis.

Even a minimally more-detailed look at this supposedly-damning chart reveals its overall lameness: As survey producer VisionMobile writes, “Android stands out as the top platform according to developer experience, with close to 60 percent of developers having recently developed on Android, assuming an equal number of developers with experience on each of eight major platforms. iOS (iPhone) follows closely as the next most popular platform.” (Emphasis mine.)

I got a 5 on the AP Stats exam, but that was more than a decade ago. But let me see if I have this right: If you normalize the data so that you account for equal respondents across platforms, and if  you then measure platform success by how many developers in your small-pool survey with an average of more than two developers pulled per company reported recent experience with a given mobile operating system, Android pulls out ahead?

Here’s my favorite part of Blodget’s analysis: He writes that, “As you look at [the chart], remember that, two years ago, Android was nowhere.” Also remember, of course, that it was almost two years ago to the day that the App Store first opened. So in that sense, third-party iOS development was also nowhere two years ago.

Look, I would love for Android to score glowing success, attract developers, and sell phones (like the Incredible and the Droid X) at volumes like Apple’s recent iPhone 4 juggernaut. Android improvements force iPhone innovation, and I’m all for that. But suggesting that Apple should be fearful based on a lousily-researched and even more lousily-analyzed report is simply insultingly stupid.

Yesterday, Macworld published a piece I wrote expressing my unhappiness with the implementations of folders in iOS 4 for the iPhone. That piece now has more than 40 comments, and at this writing more than 35 people have taken time to give the article a “negative recommendation” — that is, express that they think the article is decidedly not worth your time. (In fact, my readers may note that the Macworld piece is far less ranty than my original post that inspired it; thanks to Dan Moren and Jason Snell over there for asking me to lessen the snark factor. I can only imagine the vitriol the piece would have generated if published as initially written here.)

Very briefly, my complaints about iOS 4 folders were these: Their arbitrary maximum of 12 apps is overly constrictive, and the folder icons are needlessly unhelpful. Macworld commenters who disagreed with my arguments — the ones who needn’t merely dwell on my idiocy and incompetence, that is — made the following points:

1) Having anything more than 12 items in a folder would be useless, since you couldn’t keep track of all the contents in that folder anyway at that point. Some even suggested that 12 was too many, and that they were self-imposing limits of 9 apps per folder.

I’m not buying that argument. I have many, many folders on my Mac with more than 12 items in them. It’s true that I don’t always know a full list of what’s in a given folder, but I always know which folder to look in to find something. I don’t remember every app I’ve ever reviewed for Macworld, but I’m certain that I’ll find it in my Macworld Reviews folder.

I’d prefer a much higher limit on apps per folder, coupled with vertical scrolling per folder. I have about 60 games on my iPhone (thanks to all those reviews I write). I don’t mind splitting them into folders for puzzle games vs. strategy games, but I don’t want to need Puzzle Games 1 and Puzzle Games 2. 

2) There’s no better way to design the folder icons (which currently include at most 9 icons from the folder’s contents). There’s no way for designers to indicate when a folder is full. Folder icons on the Mac don’t reflect their contents. Lex, you’re a moron.

I’m just kidding on that last point — the commenters who called me out by name exclusively referred to me as Friedman. Zing!

The truth is, I don’t buy any of these arguments. Let’s take them individually:

There’s no better way to design the folder icons.

Okay, I do agree that it’s neither possible nor sane to expect to represent every icon that’s inside a folder on the outside of said folder. (Were it not for my need to break up Puzzle Games 1 and Puzzle Games 2 arbitrarily, that would be fine anyway.) But I agree wholeheartedly with several commenters who suggested that Apple should provide a way to put custom icons on your folders. If you put multiple folders side by side on a home screen, it’s tremendously difficult to distinguish them visually. Custom folder icons make visual memory and recognition far simpler. That would be a far better way to design the folder icons.

There’s no way for designers to indicate when a folder is full.

As you now know, I don’t think “fullness” should be an iOS 4 folder concept anyway. But if it must be, there are certainly ways to indicate visually when a folder is full. I’m no designer, but think of the differences between your empty and non-empty trash can, or the alias arrow added to icons, or oodles of other icon treatments we’ve seen in OS X. It’s absolutely possible to convey a folder’s fullness, rather than letting you drag items onto it only to have them rejected because the folder was secretly stuffed to capacity already.

Folder icons on the Mac don’t reflect their contents.

Agreed. But this is a bogus argument given our earlier points. Mac folders don’t have harsh content limits. They can have custom icons. And, of course, they can contain other folders, too. 

Separate from all this, there’s a Spotlight change I’m longing for. One commenter pointed out that Spotlight doesn’t search folder names, which I agree is a fixable oversight. But I’ve long wished that when Spotlight listed apps in its results, it could somehow indicate which home screen those apps are on. I always use Spotlight to launch Kindle, because I can never remember which screen it’s on. If Spotlight could tell me it’s on page four, that’d be excellent. And if it could tell me it’s in the Reading folder on page four, that’d be beyond excellent.

I agree wholeheartedly with the commenters who suggested that this is the first phase of folders, and that updates will undoubtedly improve the offering. I never meant to suggest otherwise. My goal was simply to share just what improvements I’d like to see. 

I’m a fan of Apple’s iOS 4.0 upgrade for the iPhone and iPod touch. I installed it on my iPhone 3GS within minutes of its becoming available, and the Mail and multitasking upgrades are well worth the price of admission. (Okay, true, the price of admission in this case is actually nil, since the software upgrade is free, but let’s not be pedantic.)

Also new in iOS 4.0 is folders. You can now drag one app onto another app to create a new app collection. This is welcome news to people (like me) with many screenfuls of apps; by grouping similar apps together, you can clean up your many home screens and spend less time swiping. 

But there are two elements to folders that are — to use the technical term — really, really stupid. 

STUPIDITY #1. iOS folders can only hold 12 items. That’s dopey. 

Ignoring the dock at the bottom of each home screen, you can store 16 apps per page on your iPhone. And while I recognize that app-crazy iPhone users like me may not be the most common use case, we still exist, so I imagine I’m not the only person on the planet who, prior to the launch of the new folders feature, organized apps by screen. My first home screen was devoted to the apps I use the most often, a few screens were devoted to my favorite games, and one screen was devoted to apps for my kids.

The common factor on each of those screens? They all included 16 apps. I understand the design thought process that apparently led folks at Apple to conclude that 12 apps per folder was the maximum that could be fit, but it was most decidedly the wrong decision. Look at this “full” folder:

Are you seeing what I’m seeing? Namely, that nearly 80-pixel-tall region at the bottom of my screen where all you can see is my cobblestone wallpaper? You know what would fit just perfectly there? 

Four more apps, that’s what. I’m thinking that Apple feared putting any “non-dock” and non-fast-app-switching apps along that bottom row could confuse folks, but I disagree. As is, even if you’re not a former adherent of the “organizing by screenful” mentality, this folder layout employs a bizarre use of wasted space. 

I can even explain further why it happened, though that doesn’t excuse the move. Look what happens when your folder is in, say, the second row:

A-ha! Since this folder was in the second row, the iOS bumps it up a bit to make room to display the full contents, splitting the just-under-80-pixel difference between the top and bottom of the screen. Now there really isn’t enough room, sucker!

Except, of course there is. I’d much rather see folder icons always slide up to the very top or very bottom when opened to allow space for 16 apps than settle for this approach.

STUPIDITY #2. Quick! How many apps are in this folder?

If you guessed nine, you’re an idiot. Well, no, of course you’re not an idiot. This is a bigger challenge to solve than STUPIDITY #1, but Apple’s good at solving tough problems. 

Here’s the full, open view of this folder:

Since the folder icon only shows a 3x3 grid of the apps it contains, it’s currently impossible to distinguish visually from a folder’s icon:

a) whether that folder is full (i.e., contains Apple’s current and foolish maximum of 12 apps, and thus will ignore any more apps you attempt to drag into it), or

b) precisely how many apps that folder contains if that number is greater than or equal to 9.

Dragging apps into folders feels a bit imprecise. If you’re not careful, you can end up rearranging apps instead of dropping them into folders. When a folder is full, it still darkens as you drag another app over it, as if to indicate that you’re about to add that app to the folder. But since the folder is full, when you release your finger, the app just slides right back to where it was, and nothing changes.

It’s thus imperative that folders reflect their fullness. I’m no designer, but I’m sure Apple could come up with a visual cue to indicate whether a folder is full or not. And again, I’d prefer that fullness only be reached when your folder hits 16 apps, which may only make the icon challenge tougher.

THE STUPID CONCLUSION

Look, overall, I’m happier with folders than without them. But I don’t actually feel that my folder critiques are especially picky. Clearly, Apple needs an overall slicker approach to iPhone app navigation, and folders are meant only as a temporary assist in a world fast approaching a quarter million iOS apps. Even as a stop-gap solution, though, this implementation of folders feels half-baked.

Both on the iPad and the iPhone, some apps work better in landscape mode. Some work better in portrait mode. That’s fair, and that’s fine.

But sometimes, I’m holding my iDevice one way. Perhaps it’s in the iPad Keyboard Dock. Perhaps I just launched an app and then picked up my greasy slice of pizza, and thus can’t touch the device again until I’ve cleaned my hands.

If I have my iPad in landscape mode and launch Words With Friends, I shouldn’t be stuck staring at a sideways game board. Same goes for Strategery. And if I’m holding my iPhone in portrait mode, I shouldn’t be stuck staring at, say, Monkey Preschool Lunchbox on its side.

Developers, I know it’s no small request, but your app should rotate. Apple’s own (lamely iPhone-only) Hold ‘Em app sports two completely different views: In portrait, you see video shots of your opponents as they choose to fold, bet, or check. You can even catch visual tells from time to time. In landscape, you get an overhead view of the table and see only the players’ moves, not their facial tics. 

Knowing that the iPad or iPhone has been rotated and ignoring it seems rude. Let me decide how I’m holding it. I don’t mind if the experience of Words With Friends horizontally is crappier than vertically — maybe I can just see the board, but not my tiles or the score. But if an app doesn’t respect the device’s orientation, it doesn’t respect me. Don’t betray my hands.

If the guitar had never been invented, would Eric Clapton still have become a legend in some other artistic pursuit? Would The Beatles have rocked with an upright bass and, say, a lead accordion? 

Or, would those artists have ended up like this bizarro-world’s Robert Zimmerman, amateur poet and harmonica enthusiast? Sometimes, it takes the invention of a tool (the guitar) or medium (television) for artists to discover how they can best exploit their talents.

Without the iPad, we would never have seen Silvio Rizzi’s Reeder for iPad. Reeder isn’t merely the best RSS client for the iPad that I’ve seen — though it is that, and by a mile. But like Twitter (née Tweetie) for the iPhone, which is the best Twitter app on any platform, Reeder is hands down the best RSS client available on any device. And to think, without the iPad, we wouldn’t have seen Silvio’s artistry in creating such an elegant, intuitive, and powerful RSS reader.

And make no mistake: Software design is art, and if you don’t think so, then quite frankly you’re doing it wrong. Silvio’s Reeder for iPad is a thing of beauty, an RSS reader the exudes qualities like elegance, grace, and tremendous respect both for the content it represents and the reader to whom it caters. It, more than even the iPad itself, is magical.

Some background: I fell in love with RSS, like so many Mac users did, thanks to Brent Simmons’s NetNewsWire. The desktop app very simply defined what RSS was all about, and I continue to use the software to this day.

Whenever feasible, though, I now prefer reading through my feeds with Reeder instead. Touching my feeds, like Steve Jobs said about surfing the web with your fingertips, does certainly feel “right.” It’s closer to the visceral reaction one gets from holding a book than from reading off a monitor. I tap on the article that captures my interest, and instantly I’m reading it.

Now, to be fair, that’s how essentially every iPad reading app works. What makes Reeder deserving of my lavish praise?

I’m a bit ashamed to admit that it’s hard to put into words. But I’ll try. The sepia-toned app is very visually pleasing, while being devoid of extraneous visual flourishes. It’s simple, sepia, and understated — which serves the content it showcases quite well.

Tap to see an article. Slide content in and out. Explore with your fingers. Reeder wants you to touch the content you consume, and though you may need to discover some of its remarkable UI concepts, the app is clearly on your side, working to help you uncover its interface.

Unfortunately, Reeder’s been ensnared in that 5% of apps that don’t get approved within their first seven days. So you’ll need to wait a bit more to try it out for yourself. But once it’s there — do so.

Without the iPad, we’d miss out on a lot of great apps. And that would be a shame. But no app that I’ve used on the iPad is as beautifully, poetically artistic as Reeder. I’m simply delighted that Apple gave Silvio his guitar.

You can buy a 1 terabyte hard drive for about a hundred bucks these days. (Pause while you consider just how amazing the steady drop of storage costs really is.)

Once you have a backup drive, of course, the next step is actually using the damn thing. You’ve got to ensure you’re regularly backing up your files to your hard drive, or it’s a functionless paperweight.

I’m great at this with my desktop; I leave several backup drives connected, and regular recurrent processes (like Apple’s Time Machine and Shirt Pocket Software’s SuperDuper) handle the necessary backup duties. 

But I recently switched to using my MacBook Pro as my main machine. It’s more powerful than my 2006-era iMac by a large margin. With my laptop, though, constant backup is more annoying. I don’t want a pricey Time Capsule (Apple’s wireless backup drive), and I don’t love needing to continually mount and unmount external drives to the laptop to keep my backups current.

So, instead, I signed up for  CrashPlan.com. (It’s one of many companies in the cloud-based backup space, competing with Mozy, BackBlaze, and others. I picked it first because it was Macworld’s favorite, and second because it best matched my exact needs and pricing preference.) For $50/year (since I prepaid for three years in advance), I can backup any computers in my home, or in my immediate family’s ownership, with unlimited amounts of storage.

Software on the computers keeps the backups fresh. (Obviously, the initial backups are the biggest/slowest, but once you’ve completed that multi-day process, CrashPlan’s software only backs up changed files, so the data transfer decreases dramatically.) I can login to the website and verify that the backups are still chugging away, or launch the desktop client to confirm the same thing.

I like knowing that I’m backed up remotely, externally, and above all: Regularly. CrashPlan’s own redundancy and security is better than I can provide on my own by a large margin. 
And I really like paying just $50/year and never needing to worry about my own hard drives again.

I don’t have a 3G iPad. My iPad only goes online when there’s an accessible wireless network within reach. 

Earlier this month, I spent a week in the Bahamas at my father-in-law’s timeshare. WiFi there is spotty at best; it’s available only in the lobby, not in the units themselves or elsewhere around the resort. So, how does the iPad fare when it can only get online at rare intervals?

My answer: Impressively well. Obviously, I could read Kindle books and play Strategery regardless of the lacking Internet, and the iPad worked great as expected in those contexts. 

I didn’t want to spend hours in the lobby while I was vacationing in a tropical paradise. Luckily, most of my favorite Internet-hungry apps work pretty well offline once they fetch the data they need.

I would head to the lobby every other day or so. Apple’s Mail app would pull down my new messages for all my accounts; NetNewsWire would update my RSS feeds; Twitterrific would pull in my timeline. That took just a couple minutes at the most. Then, I could cheerfully walk the iPad to greener or bluer pastures — say, poolside, the balcony, or a seating area just off the beach — and enjoy the Internet without being connected to it.

Sort of.

Mail would complain, too often, that it wasn’t connected, especially if I marked messages for deletion. Still, I could get through my inbox, and even type out replies which would get sent the next time I visited the lobby.

NetNewsWire caches the text of all the posts it pulls down, but not the images. Often that didn’t matter one iota, but sometimes it mattered numerous iotas. Posts with screenshots became useless to me. (And since NNW for iPad still lacks a “mark as unread” button, I was forced to star those stories I couldn’t quite digest properly on the iPad, or at least on the iPad whilst offline.) I did note that the app doesn’t cache the favicons for feeds either, but that wasn’t particularly important to me.

Twitterrific worked similarly. I could read all the cached tweets, though obviously links in tweets weren’t usable.

The bigger bummer, though, was that neither NetNewsWire nor Twitterrific would let me queue up “send to Instapaper” requests. Had they offered support for such a feature, I could send image-heavy or overly-length stories, interesting-seeming Twitter links, or even full posts when all the iPad had pulled down was summaries (for truncated feeds like Macworld’s). Obviously, the apps couldn’t actually complete the Instapaper-sending-process until they went back online, but if I could queue those requests, it would have made my limited-Internet experience far better.

On the whole, though, that my iPad lacked an always-on connection was at worst a minor nuisance, which I found pretty impressive.