The Page of Thoughts

Recently, there have been rumors about the next iPhone not having a home button. Gruber thinks that the home button isn’t going anywhere, as does Benjamin Brooks. I disagree. iPhone 5 will look like this:

And you might be saying, “But how will you get to the home screen if there’s no home button?” “How will you take a screenshot?” “What if I need to reset my iPhone?” “Gestures are not discoverable!” etc. etc. etc.

See, the home button is there and not there at the same time. That bottom area where the home button used to be will now become a gesture area, sort of like the Magic Trackpad. You’ll still be able to press the bottom area of the iPhone, hear an audible “click,” and get to your homescreen. But with a gesture area, it opens up a world of possibilities. Imagine swiping up with two fingers to access the multitasking tray instead of double clicking the home button.  Swipe left and right to switch apps. Tap with two fingers to pause and play music. Nice, no? And since the gesture area functions just like a home button if you want it to be, all those complaints that people have been lodging are taken care of.

The Scenario

Millions of Mac users are probably confused on how the App Store detects already installed apps and marks them as “installed” in the App Store. They believe that because the App Store detects it, they will get updates from the App Store. This is not true. The App Store only updates apps in the “Purchases” tab. The App Store marks apps as installed so as to prevent you from accidentally repurchasing apps.

The Fix

Here’s how Apple should fix it. Only apps that you install via the App Store should have the “Installed” text instead of the Buy button. Simple. If the user attempts to download an app from the App Store that they already have on their computer, the App Store should ask them if they would like to repurchase the app from the App Store or to leave things as is.

The first launch of an application is arguably the most important. It’s the first impression; it’s when the user decides if they like your app or not. The app should have an immersive first-run experience, and here’s where Firefox does it wrong.

Once you’ve dragged Firefox to your Applications folder, ejected the disk, and trashed the disk image, you probably want to open the app. You are greeted with this:

An import wizard! How fun. Nice seeing a “Go Back” button, even though this is the first screen and there is no way you can go back. Let’s pretend I choose to import stuff. Then I get:

Oh look, I get to select a home page. Except not really, because there’s only one radio button. Let’s continue, shall we?

Cool, thanks for telling me that the stuff has been imported. All I want to do is browse the web.

Firefox now asks to be set as the default browser. How am I supposed to decide now if I haven’t even tried it out yet? Mozilla should show this dialog after the fifth or tenth launch, with a friendlier message like: “Like Firefox? Set it as your default web browser.” In any case, we dismiss the dialog box.

The user is now ready to browse the web. But wait! As soon as we dismissed the last dialog box, a new notification bar slides down, telling us that Firefox is free and open source. Gee. I bet 99.9999999% of users do not care. Also notice that the default window size is totally wrong: there’s a horizontal scroll bar. Seriously, it doesn’t take much effort to change that default window size.

Contrast this to the first-run experience of Apple’s browser, Safari. The first time you launch Safari, the browser plays a beautifully done animation of an Apple logo and a spinning compass. It then redirects to your Top Sites, a gorgeous grid of webpages that you can click on. There are no dialog boxes to click through and no interruptions.

Guess which browser I want to use?

I got an iPod touch 4th generation for Christmas. This is a huge upgrade (previously, I used an iPod touch 2nd generation). Here’s my mini-review.

Pros

• Multitasking! Finally!
• The Retina Display is amazing. I used to think it wasn’t a big deal, but after actually looking at it for a while, I changed my mind. This blows every other display away. Now, when I look at my iMac, I actually notice the pixels.
• Performance is much better than the iPod touch 2nd generation, but once in a while animations lag. This is especially noticeable when opening/closing apps.
• Battery life seems very strong. I’ve been using it since last night, playing games, reading, and browsing the web. Still about 80% remaining. So if in one day it drops 20%, this should last for about 5 days.
• The flat back is a plus. When I place it on a desk, it doesn’t wobble. Although @kevinchen says that it will scratch easily…
• The camera supposedly is only one megapixel but the mere existence of one is an upgrade. iPod touch 2nd generation has no camera.

Cons

• Not a huge fan of the lock button placement. It’s on the right side now instead of the left. Also, since the profile of the iPod is so thin, the button is practically on the back. Locking the device is now a fun finger dexterity exercise.
• The home button feels really cheap. The old one had a “clicky” feel to it; this one is like plastic. I wonder when it will break.
• I was looking through the Crash logs at ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice and found a ton of crashes and low memory warnings. Multitasking really puts a strain on the device. And when the OS quits apps that you haven’t used in a while, it doesn’t do it cleanly.
• When I upgraded to iOS 4.2 (it came with iOS 4.1), Music.app said that I had no content. Luckily, there was an easy fix.
• Non-retina apps are an eyesore. I’ve deleted most of them. Unfortunately, I need a Spanish dictionary and SpanishDict, which isn’t Retina ready, is one of the better ones. Seriously, search the App Store for “spanish dictionary.” All of them are ugly.
• It’s really hard to complain about this device.

Bottom Line: If you don’t want to pay $1400 for an iPhone 4 ($200 + $50 service for 24 months), the iPod touch ($230) is for you.

Oh and happy almost new year!

A few years ago, I was running Windows XP.

A few years ago, I was gushing over Windows Vista’s UI.

A few years ago, I was still using Office 2000.

A few years ago, my PC had 768 MB of RAM and a Celeron processor.

A few years ago, Chrome wasn’t even at version 1.0.

A few years ago, I got my first iPod. The 3rd generation Nano.

A few years ago, I was using something called “ZoomBrowser EX” to manage photos.

A few years ago, I stored all my passwords in a Word document, and used the highlight tool to redact the passwords.

A few years ago, I used Photoshop 5.0.

A few years ago, I sucked at design.

A few years ago, I hadn’t heard of Twitter.

A few years ago, I had the Flash Player plugin installed.

Times change.

Arguably one of Gmail’s best features is the archive button. Instead of throwing messages away, we can take advantage of Gmail’s vast storage and keep them. Hit the “Archive” button and the message disappears from the Inbox, but it remains searchable and can be found in the “All Mail” folder.

If you’re using Apple Mail, there is no archive button. But we can repurpose the delete button to be an archive button. Here’s how:

Navigate to Mail > Preferences > Accounts > [Your account] > Mailbox Behaviors. Then uncheck “Move deleted messages to the Trash mailbox.”

You’re all set! Now when you hit the “delete” button in Mail’s toolbar, the message will be archived instead of deleted.

Today a guest speaker told us the incredibly moving story about Rachel Scott.

Rachel Scott was and still is the most compassionate human being on Earth. Throughout her life, she performed small acts of kindness that had a huge impact on others. For example, one day at school during lunch she noticed a girl sitting in the corner, all by herself. Rachel went out of her way to sit and talk to her, and dragged all her friends over, too. Rachel stood up for the disabled, the bullied, and the victimized.

On April 20, 1999, two gunmen stormed onto the Columbine High School campus. Rachel was the first to be shot. She was eighteen years old. The gunmen then went into the library, where Rachel’s brother Craig and many other students were frantically scrambling for cover. The gunmen approached one of Craig’s friends, one of the few African Americans at the school, and started calling him every racial slur they could think of. Then they murdered him. They turned to Craig’s other friend, who was hiding under the desk. They shot him too. They pointed their barrels at Craig but were momentarily distracted by the ringing fire alarms.

Thirteen people died that day.

Later, Rachel’s father discovered an essay Rachel wrote for fifth period class, titled “My Ethics, My Codes of Life.” In it, she stated, “I have this theory that if one person can go out of their way to show compassion, then it will start a chain reaction of the same. People will never know how far a little kindness can go.”

Rachel left more than just an essay behind. When she was thirteen years old, Rachel traced her hands onto the back of a dresser and wrote that those hands would touch the lives of millions of people. In her diary, she wrote that she would change the world. And indeed, her story has touched millions of people and changed the world.

Rachel challenges us to be unprejudiced, compassionate, and to reach out to others.

Do you accept that challenge?