Cabel Sasser of longtime Mac and iOS software developer Panic recaps 2014 and reports some good news:
Panic is a multi-million dollar business that has turned a profit for 17 years straight. It just hit me, typing those words, that that’s a pretty insane thing to be able to say. (And, sure, we barely qualify). Believe me, I know it won’t last forever — but wow, what a kind of crazy deal.
This is a great look into the business of software, from revenue challenges to technology decisions to problematic issues regarding Apple’s App Store policies.
I took long, moody walks on the dirt roads near my Vermont house. I passed my neighbor’s farm. One of his beef cattle stepped up to the fence and gazed at me. My eyes traced his well-marbled flanks and meaty chest. ”¨I stared into those bottomless brown eyes. “I can’t quit you,” I whispered to him. But I did. Not because my willpower suddenly rose beyond its default Lebowski setting, but because a box arrived at my door and made it easy.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
My God, it’s full of stars! (Photo by Tech Cocktail.)
[Philip Michaels is the former editor of TechHive, has been to many editions of CES, and is currently available for your freelance writing and editing needs.]
This week, the eyes of the tech world will focus in on Las Vegas, as companies, journalists, and every PR person living or dead descends upon the annual CES show. CES (which stands for C’Mon, Everybody—Stuff!) is the largest gathering of the tech industry outside of a 4chan chatroom, with companies both large and small hoping to grab headlines with their latest gear and gadgets.
How important is CES? It’s the launching pad for such innovative, disruptive products as the MySpace TV, Lady Gaga’s Polaroid sunglasses camera, a transparent washing machine from Haier, and GlassUp smartglasses. That none of these products ever actually came to market is beside the point. Tech journalists got to see demos of them, and if you ever caught a glimpse of a unicorn, wouldn’t you want to tell people about it?
And now it’s time for a new slate of products to join the ranks of memorable CES hits like that thing that did stuff and the device that made those noises and the car that was able to… I don’t know… park itself or something?
The cream of the tech reporting crop is in Las Vegas to tell you about every last product announcement as well as how far they’ve walked and how crowded it is. After all, CES is a massive affair—it takes place in a convention hall that’s the size of 3600 football fields with only one working restroom and no potable water. Attendees are encouraged to maintain a brisk pace as they walk the show floor, with smiling ushers swinging truncheons at any stragglers and saying “Move along, more to see” in a pleasant sing-songy voice. Anyone who doesn’t make it to one of the marked exits by the time the show floor closes is locked in for the night, for a first-hand look at the near-mythic CES show floor wolverines that roam the aisles from dusk til dawn.
Frankly, you don’t need to bother with any of that, not when you have a definitive guide on what to expect at CES 2015. We’ve scoured our sources—Google searches, basically—and rigorously fact-checked each claim with an “Eh… seems plausible” to produce this list of what treasures and surprises lay in store for you this week. It’s almost like being at CES, without all the hustle and bustle and nagging sense of futility gnawing at your soul.
Meet the Press
When you’ve got the world’s tech press all in the same place with no visible means of escape—doors lock from the outside at the Las Vegas Convention Center, and you’ll find the moat surrounding the facility quite impassable once the drawbridges are raised—you take advantage of the situation. No, not by releasing the gas and finishing off the publishing industry once and for all; instead, you hold a press conference. Here’s what you can expect some of the major tech players to announce.
Samsung: It will be hard to top last year’s presentation when movie director Michael Bay perfectly articulated Samsung’s vision for its products.
And yet, rumors abound that Samsung will look to build on that momentum with a parade of directors and auteurs to unveil the company’s plans for 2015. J.J. Abrams will reveal the latest Samsung TV sets through a series of ever more elaborate lens flares. Oliver Stone will talk about the vast conspiracy trying to hide the truth about Samsung’s new smartphone lineup. (“These are the selfie features the government doesn’t want you to know about,” he’ll hiss.) David Chase will discuss home appliances in great detail until the lighting goes black right as he’s about to reveal pricing and availability. And Woody Allen will mill about in the background uncomfortably until attendees, sensing the awkwardness of the situation, get up and leave.
Sony: President and CEO Kazuo Hirai will look to get 2015 started on the right foot for his company by proclaiming his great admiration for North Korea. Yup, North Korea’s got it going on, Hirai will insist. And that Kim Jong-un? Not the kind of guy to hold a grudge. “Yes,” Hirai will conclude, “it will be a great year for Sony and for Sony products that will please the peace-loving and virile people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea if only someone, and I’m not making accusations here, stops hacking our email.”
Intel: Intel CEO Brian Krzanich will detail his company’s elaborate roadmap for how to properly spell his name. “The z comes after the r,” he will insist. “Seriously, a child could grasp this.”
Apple: You may think that Apple avoids CES altogether, but that is because you are a know-nothing dummy. We can report, thanks to EXCLUSIVE SOURCES, that Apple will in fact be making a major announcement at CES 2015. It will take place at 2 a.m. outside the parking lot of the Crazy Horse Too Gentlemen’s Cabaret on Industrial Road. Tim Cook will be wearing a disguise, so reporters are encouraged to walk up to any patron entering the building and demand to be given a closer look at their wristwatches. Your persistence will be rewarded!
Wearables
Wearable devices didn’t take off in 2014 the way manufacturers had hoped, with consumers failing to see the value of wristbands, monitors, and other gadgets that logged data about their every activity. Look for wearable makers to get more agressive this year: Anyone entering the CES show floor will be fitted with an electronic wristband—the process will go much more smoothly if your body goes limp and you don’t resist. Then, all you have to do is remark every hour that “2015 is going to be the year that people start buying wearables in my opinion” to avoid a sharp, sudden shock administered by ever watchful observers. You’ll be able to remove the wristband once wearable sales improve.
The Internet of Things
We’ve been hearing for years about the Internet of Things—a vision that involves smart appliances, mobile controls, and interconnectivity. Well, 2015 is the year that space-age vision becomes a reality. And who better to usher in this new era than actor Michael Chiklis, who played Ben Grimm in a series of increasingly entertaining Fantastic Four movies? “The Thing may tell you that it’s Clobberin’ Time,” Chiklis will tell CES attendees. “But the Internet of Things will tell you it’s Connectivity Time.”
“Get it?” he will add, after pausing awkwardly for several minutes to make sure that the joke sinks in.
Chiklis will then invite numerous tech executives on stage to share their thoughts on a world where appliances, mobile devices, and computers will talk to each other, learning your behaviors, sharing your data, plotting against you as you marvel at the convenience of programming your thermostat from your smartphone completely unaware of the diabolic trap your refrigerator and washing machine have set up for you. “Run,” Chiklis will conclude the session as he’s dragged backstage by uniformed CES personnel. “Warn the others! Fight the future!”
Drones
Stroll outside the Las Vegas Convention Center at past CESes, and you could usually spot drone makers demonstrating their wares by putting their flying machines through a series of death-defying stunts. This year, the drone demos move indoors, as we embrace our new drone-centric future. From high above the CES show floor, drones will swoop down on the attendees below, giving people a bird’s-eye view of the sights and sounds of CES while also capturing the up-close reactions of surprised onlookers and unaware passersby.
There will be no survivors.
[Philip Michaels has been writing about technology since 1999, most notably for Macworld and Tom’s Guide. He currently finds himself between jobs, so if you need someone who can string a few sentences together (or make your sentences read a lot better), drop him a line.]
For a couple of months one of the items in my future-story list for Six Colors has been more about apple and software quality. This topic—that Apple’s software quality isn’t up to snuff and keeps getting worse—has been floating in the ether for a while now, but last night Marco Arment made it fresh again.
This is a complicated issue, and one difficult to assess without knowing the facts about what’s happening inside of Apple. An avalanche of bug complaints and misty water-colored memories about the stability of Snow Leopard aside, I do think that there’s a problem here.
But what’s the cause? What are the possible solutions? Do the powers-that-be at Apple believe this is an issue? Do they think it’s one that will ultimately affect their business as a whole, or is this stuff that most people just don’t notice or care about?
This one’s still on my to-do list. In the meantime, I encourage you to read Marco’s piece.
This week on my pop-culture podcast The Incomparable, we take a look back at our favorite things from the past year, and then talk about favorite moments from the podcast itself. My guests this week are my six most frequent panelists from 2014: John Siracusa, Dan Moren, Steve Lutz, Erika Ensign, David J. Loehr, and Monty Ashley.
This week’s Incomparable is sponsored by:
Squarespace – Make beautiful websites easily, with new Getty Images integration, 24/7 tech support, and much more! Use code SNELL at checkout for 10% off.
Loot Crate – A monthly box of delight for geeks and gamers like us. Use offer code SNELL to get 10% off of a new subscription. January’s box, featuring Star Wars & Voltron and more, must be ordered by January 19 at 9pm PT.
This week’s feed sponsor is the Black Eyed and Blues Music Show with Brian Lee & Brian Parker. Host Brian “T-Bone” Lee showcases music from blues, roots and funk in a 90-minute weekly podcast. If you’re a lover of the blues, or just blues-curious, check it out.
And thanks to Brian Parker of On The Horn for asking me to include the phrase “we love @jsnell” in his sponsorship. I appreciate his support of me going indie. Here’s to a great 2015.
I want to make the case Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) is important and worth your time in 2015, and I want to suggest about 40 hours of Star Trek viewing that will cover all of the great episodes.
This is a great piece, written with love. When you’re done reading it, might I suggest dipping into the back-episode archive of Scott McNulty’s Random Trek podcast?
While traveling over the holidays, I was still working—especially on a bunch of end-of-year podcasts. For The Incomparable, I was putting together a little five-minute teaser for next year’s series of radio plays that we’re doing. While we were in Southern California, I realized that I needed an outtake from one of our previous sessions. The problem was, that clip was stored on my iMac, which was powered down in my office back home.
I’ve written a bit about how I use Dropbox to move my files around, but I’ve only been using an iMac as my main system for a few weeks, and I’m out of the habit of making sure all my files are accessible from my laptop as well.
Digging up year-old podcast files in the CrashPlan mobile app.
So there I was in Orange County, without a specific audio file I needed. And that’s when it hit me: I back up my iMac (and all my other computers) using an online backup service. Which means all of the files on my iMac are also backed up in the cloud. So even though my Mac at home is shut down, the files on it should be accessible to me.
Sure enough, I was able to log in to my backup service and restore the files. If you use CrashPlan, you can restore directly within the CrashPlan app, and files are saved right to your desktop. If you use Backblaze, you log in to the Backblaze site to specify files, and the company emails you a link with a zip archive containing the files you selected. (I prefer CrashPlan’s approach here.)
Both Backblaze and CrashPlan offer iOS apps, as well, letting you access all your backed-up files from your mobile devices. So if you forgot an important presentation or document on your computer, and you couldn’t connect to that device remotely, you could still open a copy from your backups.
When you think about this approach, it seems obvious—but the trick is, you need to think about it. It’s easy to write off your online backup as a mysterious blob of data that’s only there in case you have a disaster, but it’s there all the time, and the tools to access it are getting more convenient all the time.
Marriott is fighting for its right to block personal or mobile Wi-Fi hotspots—and claims that it’s for our own good.
The hotel chain and some others have a petition before the FCC to amend or clarify the rules that cover interference for unlicensed spectrum bands. They hope to gain the right to use network-management tools to quash Wi-Fi networks on their premises that they don’t approve of. In its view, this is necessary to ensure customer security and to protect children.
Of course what hotel chains really want is to eliminate your choice and protect their expensive in-hotel Internet access by usurping a band of radio spectrum that’s intentionally been left for public use. It’s despicable, but unsurprising.
Moltz has a red light on his Drobo (drobo.com). But it’s gonna be OK.
Then we discuss the rumors about a 12-inch MacBook Air.
http://www.slashgear.com/macbook-air-2015s-killer-feature-may-be-a-lack-of-click-22360353/
Rumors often don’t pan out, like the one about them removing the headphone jack on iPhones.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/06/06/lightning-enabled-headphones-could-let-apple-ditch-the-headphone-jack-on-future-iphones
Then the podcast ends forever when Dan says he keeps trackpad tapping on on his MacBook Air. So long, been nice podcasting for you.
OK, back to headphones, Moltz has these Bose jobbies — http://www.amazon.com/Bose-MIE2-Mobile-Headset-Black/dp/B007WQ9LSC/ref=sr_1_1?s=wireless&srs=2529061011&ie=UTF8&qid=1420181104&sr=1-1&keywords=bose+headphones — which, eh, are OK.
Dan has Koss PortaPros: http://www.amazon.com/Koss-PortaPro-Headphones-with-Case/dp/B00001P4ZH
Lex has Sony MDRV6s: http://www.amazon.com/Sony-MDRV6-Studio-Monitor-Headphones/dp/B00001WRSJ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1420182061&sr=8-2&keywords=sony+mdr
If you’re having trouble hearing from your MacBook’s speakers, you can use Boom and, well, maybe blow your speakers out.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/boom/id415312377?mt=12
Seems like you could get some completely acceptable podcasting equipment for certainly no more than $200. A Yeti isn’t the best microphone in the world but it’s fine. Hindenberg Journalist is about $100. For $100 more you can get Logic Pro.
Yeti: http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Microphones-Yeti-USB-Microphone/dp/B002VA464S/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1420182267&sr=1-1&keywords=yeti+microphone
Hindenberg: http://hindenburg.com/products/hindenburg-journalist/
Logic Pro: https://www.apple.com/logic-pro/
For video, if iMovie drives you berserk, you could actually edit video in Screenflow.
http://www.telestream.net/screenflow/overview.htm
Finally, Lex tells the story of the PowerBook 540c that got away. By being stolen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_500_series
As we turn the corner on a new year, I’ve decided Family Sharing is not ready for my family. I have to admit it is not entirely my decision. There is, generally, an uprising in my house over Family Sharing and I’m half-expecting my wife and kids to come at me with pitchforks over these challenges.
Family Sharing is not ready for the Sparks family. I’ve spent way too much time trying to make this all work and this weekend I’m officially throwing in the towel on Family Sharing until it gets better.
The story is much the same in the Snell household. Family Sharing is a good idea, but between the limitations and the bugs, it’s making my family agitate for a return to sharing a single Apple ID.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
Despite the complaints–and there are no shortage of legitimate ones–over recent versions of Apple’s iTunes software, it introduced at least one feature that I’ve come to love: Up Next. It supplanted the old Party Shuffle/iTunes DJ feature, letting you choose songs for playback and reorder them, all on the fly.
As someone who tends not to create playlists, I love the ability to rely on shuffled playback and then insert songs as I go. I tend to be an associative listener, finding that a particular song reminds me of a different track. In the olden days of yore, long, long ago, that meant searching my iTunes library and selecting the next track, then remembering to hit play when the current song ended. Up Next did away with that bit of manual dexterity, and it’s been greatly appreciated.
But it’s not on iOS.
That aforementioned sleight of hand, selecting the next song you want to listen to, is even more annoying on an iOS device, since you can’t really “select” a song in the Music app–and it’s even more frustrating when the device an iPhone that you primarily keep in your pocket. The best alternative these days is to summon Siri when the current track finishes and then request the next track you want to hear. But I’d deeply love for Up Next on Apple’s mobile platforms too.
If the conversations I’ve had are any indication, the Music app on iOS isn’t particularly beloved. I don’t dislike it as much as many seem to, but nor do I find it particularly compelling–I use it because it’s what’s provided. Despite being part of the core functionality of the iPhone and the iPod before it, it hasn’t gotten a lot of attention in recent versions, outside of a graphical refresh for iOS 7/8.
So I’m hopeful that Up Next will make an appearance on iOS in the not too distant future. There are some third party apps that provide similar features, but given the low level at which Music is tied into the operating system, an Apple provided solution would be welcome.
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His next novel, the sci-fi adventure Eternity's Tomb, will be released in November 2026.]
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
In case you’re not familiar with UltraViolet, it’s the movie industry’s attempt to deal with the popularity of digital video. On the face of it, that’s a good thing, because it means that the studios are taking piracy head on, rather than sticking their fingers in their ears and humming “la la la la la la” as loud as they can.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t translate into a system that is particularly consumer-friendly. Allow me to recount the steps I had to take to redeem the free digital copy of Lawrence of Arabia that came with the 50th anniversary Blu-ray I received for Christmas.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
As I write this, I’ve been to one New Year’s party (hosted by English friends, so the celebration was in GMT) and am about to head to another, more Pacific Time-focused party. (Though presumably we will stop and acknowledge the ball dropping in Times Square at 9 p.m. Such is life in one of the last populated time zones to celebrate the new year.)
2014 has been a year of dramatic change in my life. Thanks to everyone out there who has offered their support and encouragement as I embark on the next phase of my professional life. It’s appreciated.
Note: This story has not been updated for several years.
The Incomparable’s multi-blog system is complicated. The one running this site is pretty straightforward.
On this week’s episode of The Talk Show, John Gruber and I talked about—among many other topics—Movable Type. The venerable blogging platform was once the go-to tool for making your own blog, but the rise of WordPress along with some questionable product and company directions ended up leaving it largely1 by the side of the road.
This is notable not just because of the tech nostalgia—there’s a lot of that in the episode, too, which is what happens when you hang around an industry for 20 years—but because Gruber and I both run our websites on Movable Type. As John says in the episode, I may be the last person to launch a brand-new website on Movable Type 4. I doubt that, but point taken!
One of the things I hope to document on this site, in addition to my coverage of Apple stuff, is my own use of technology. So I might as well tackle what the site is built on. I used Movable Type for a few reasons, including the fact I’ve been using it for years and I know its template language backward and forward. While I’ve used WordPress a little bit, setting up a site using WordPress would have required hours, or days, or weeks of setup. I launched Six Colors less than a week after I left Macworld, so the lack of a learning curve was vitally important.
Then there’s my friend Greg Knauss, who administers this site. Last year we set up the new web site for The Incomparable, and we used Movable Type for that. Similar reasons applied: Greg and I know the software by heart, and even better, Greg is a Perl programmer who can edit the code and whip up Movable Type plugins when necessary. (Which he needed to do, because Movable Type 4 doesn’t really support podcasts, so he wrote a plugin to parse podcast files for their size and run time.) The Incomparable’s implementation of Movable Type is pretty wacky, with five separate blogs that interconnect to each other like a relational database.
Again, we used it because we had some very specific features we wanted that existing CMSes—including those used by 5by5 and Relay FM—just didn’t offer. And we knew we could implement that fairly easily in Movable Type. So we did it. That was the first project I had really used Movable Type for in years, but when the time came to deploy Six Colors myself, it was sitting right there.
If Six Colors doesn’t look like a Movable Type site, that’s because I didn’t use any of Movable Type 4’s included (and out of date) templates. I built site templates2 with the help of Panic’s app Coda 2—and, yes, by carefully considering what I liked and didn’t like about the sites that have been my inspiration for this entire thing, including Daring Fireball, MacStories, Very Nice Web Site, and The Loop—and then converted them into templates and template modules. I used to do that sort of job all the time in the 90s and early 2000s, but it’s been a while. My skills were rusty. They’re slowly coming back, but I am woefully behind the times on JavaScript and CSS.
So does it matter that I use Movable Type on this site? Probably not, since the entire point of the site is the content on the pages, not how it was made. It strikes me, though, that the analogy of software being like pop music is even more apt than I thought. In the App Store, we see apps that become hits and climb the charts. Is this because it’s a natural way to think of software, or because the iTunes infrastructure was built for music sales and then adapted to cover software too?
Regardless, it turns out that software can also be considered uncool, even if it still works. Not only is Movable Type uncool (the equivalent of ’80s hair metal), but the language it’s written in, Perl, is supremely uncool. Like, New Kids on the Block uncool. The razzing John Siracusa takes about being a Perl developer isn’t really because Perl is old, or bad, but because it’s just not what the cool kids are talking about. The world has moved on.
And yet, sometimes that old stuff still works, and is still the best tool for the job. And that’s why, at least for right now, this site is built on software that was initially released 14 years ago and given its last major update five years ago. We’ll use it until it doesn’t make sense to use it anymore.
Version 6.0.5 is available and I believe still being actively developed.↩
I am not a designer. What you see here is what I’d call “not designed.” I hope to hire a designer one day to make it a bit prettier.↩
Leave it to Captain Kirk to publicize another way Twitter is monetizing its user base—in this case, by displaying accounts who aren’t being followed in follower lists.
In this week’s episode, Christopher Breen of Macworld joins us to watch in horror as Philip Michaels takes over the podcast and turns it into a new edition of the Tech Pundit Showdown!
Clockwise is sponsored this week by:
Dash: Create beautiful dashboards with a few clicks. Sign up now to get one free private dashboard.
This week on the tech podcast that likes to give out awards, Myke Hurley and I discuss our favorite things of the year by giving them awards. Favorite gadgets, games and podcasts of the year, among many other categories, are in the mix. Grab some popcorn, put on your best evening wear, and settle in for a monumental podcasting event!
This week, Upgrade is sponsored by:
lynda.com: An easy and affordable way to help individuals and organizations learn. Free 10-day trial.
Squarespace: Start Here. Go Anywhere. Use code UPGRADE for 10% off
Mailroute: a secure, hosted email service for protection from viruses and spam. Go to mailroute.net/upgrade for a free trial and 10% off, for the lifetime of your account.
[Update:The next three weeks are now sold, but there are plenty of openings in Q1 2015. Please get in touch if you’re interested.]
The Six Colors readership is smart and passionate about technology. If you’ve got a product or service that these people should know about, please get in touch about sponsoring the site.
Currently many slots for Q1 of 2015 are open, including next week. Drop me a line at jsnell@sixcolors.com or check out the sponsorship page for more information and a testimonial from a past sponsor.
And as I mentioned last week, I am trying to find a way for readers to contribute to the success of this site as well. It’s at the top of my to-do list for when I return home from my holiday wanderings.
