Editorial

The Problem with Twitterrific 6….

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is likely this.

Seriously speaking, it’s the developer’s rights to switch to a subscription service, but one would have thought that after what happened to Textexpander developers would think twice about taking the scorched earth approach, by taking away what you sold to your customers previously and forcing them to either stop using your app or

Yes, Twitterrific 5 might have been out for 7 years, and there were (probably) many updates during this period of time, but the only changes that I (and probably many others) have noticed are the inclusion of the dark interface (or was it there all along?) and the fail attempt to charge for changing app icons.

Now its primary competitor, Tweetbot, have since gone through more updates and charged increasingly higher prices, but Tweetbot’s loyal customers have always gone back. Not to mention that one can still access older versions of Tweetbot even if they chose not to buy the new one.

Twitterrific, however, have stayed at version 5 for many years, and while there was a change from outright selling the app for 3 dollars to giving the app away with ads and charging 5 dollars to disable them (always a bad idea, people tend to get used to the ads if they downloaded the app with ads in it in the first place).

So imagine everyone’s surprise when their app was suddenly updated, now littered with arguably more distracting ads and have no way to disable them except to pay 10 dollars per year or 30 dollars to buy the app outright. How will you feel if the McDonalds breakfast you have been eating for years and paying 5 dollars each time suddenly tells you one day that their new price is 50 dollars? Extreme price increases usually don’t work, especially if the goods in question are not necessities. ]

The sudden huge increase in pricing and the misleading “forever” wording to indicate the full app purchase pricing does not inspire confidence in customers, who, even if they are willing to fork out the money, are unsure if version 6 will last another 7 years, or just another year. It does feel like the developer suddenly needed a lot more money than before, even though that is probably not the case.

I have always been using Tweetbot as my main Twitter client, and paid for most prior versions of Twitterrific because it was always a good Twitter app, and sometimes Twitterrific is faster at adopting new OS features, even if it is never my first choice. Now I guess I will just delete it.

Happy Birthday iPhone

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The iPhone.

It was the one device which the world needed.

It was the one device that changed the world.

Everything we do in our daily lives today will not have been possible without the introduction of the iPhone in 2017;

Taking uber,

Running a business from the palm of your hands,

Full scale, WIDESPREAD, portable video conferencing on the scale of everyone,

Checking the time it will take for the next bus to arrive at the bus stop,

Complaining about the next Singapore train breakdown on all of social media,

and much, much, more.

Hell, REAL social media won’t have been possible without the iPhone.

Here’s to ten great years of the iPhone. And to the next hundred.

Happy 10th Birthday, iPhone

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iPhone Original

I still remember the day I was sitting in my room, at my desk, watching the keynote and calculating how long would I have to save in order to afford the phone should it come to Singapore eventually (roughly 7 months, I was a student then).

Many months later when it seemed like the iPhone will not be coming to Singapore anytime soon I started exploring the possibilities of buying an iPod Touch instead, for it was running “iPhone OS” albeit with several restrictions like the inability to edit calendars on the iPod (they reversed that stupid decision very soon after the iPod keynote).

Then I finally saw it in person.

My friend Roger, had one and I remembered meeting him just to have a look at the phone. There I was, sitting outside McDonald’s at Bugis Junction, looking at this unbelievable device – supposingly a phone, but unlike any phone I knew then. It has such a bright display that it looked out of this world, for until then there was no such display in the world. The reaction to touch was instantaneous, and NOTHING with a touchscreen up till that point was as responsive as the iPhone’s display was.

It was, to put it simply, MAGIC.

I would eventually come upon a chance several months later to own one of the original US sets, thanks to a friend’s aunt who worked in an airline and flew to the US often back then.

Even though it now has a dent at one of its corner, and iOS 3.1.3 is as slow as hell on its hardware, it still sits proudly on my shelf in its dock(that came in the box!).

The original iPhone, is still my favorite iPhone.

Thank you Steve, and thank you Apple, for this wonderful gift to the world.

Sent from my iPhone

Steve Jobs’ Death Anniversary 2014

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It has been three years since Steve passed.

As we today look at our iPhone 6es, our iPad Airs, our new Mac Pros and wait longingly for the Apple Watch, do we remember Apple as the behemoth that bought Beats, stepped repeatedly on tiny has-been Microsoft, and shows the finger to Google? Or is Apple still The Company that Steve Built?

Today Apple is moving at a pace that it has never done before, hiring superstar designers and ex-CEOs at breakneck speeds, and trying to “enter its next chapter” with new product categories – all while forgetting that software excellence can’t scale well.

iOS 7 and 8 looks great and comes with even greater power (to developers), but not a single version of either was as stable as any of the iOSes before it. Ditto OS X and iWork apps. iLife is not even in existence anymore, with iPhoto canned and iMovie and Garageband degraded in order to sell more Logic and FCX.

When former software chief (and arguably software genius) was fired in 2012, most of his software lieutenants eventually left Apple as well, and despite Hair Force One (Craig Federighi)being a great sport, a superb presenter, the quality of Apple’s software under him never did return to what it used to be.

Surrounding himself with superstar designers and ex-CEOs is probably a good thing for Tim Cook, but please do not forget about software. Apple’s software is the reason why Apple’s hardware can shine, remember Steve once saying “People who are serious about software should make their own hardware”(that’s from Alan Kay by the way) during the iPhone keynote? It is no use making your own hardware great if you are not serious about your software in the first place.

We are not looking at you to make Apple way greater than it already is, we just hope that you keep it afloat and working, and not turn it into another Microsoft, Tim.

Let us keep Steve’s legacy alive.

My podcast (listening) journey, 2013 edition

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Changed a few things around the site. Contemplated going with a completely new theme, but decided that the effort will not be worth my time, especially as I really like the current layout.

Quite some time back, I wrote about how I discovered 5by5 studios, and how switching to it (from the deteriorating TWiT network) gave me new enjoyment as I discovered, along with other like minded listeners, Marco Arment and John Siracusa.

Then the whole John Gruber-Dan Benjamin fallout thing happened, and 5by5 lost The Talk Show. It was, however, not a huge loss for 5by5, for by then Build and Analyze and Hypercritical were way bigger shows than The Talk Show ever was, and John Gruber’s own relaunch received universal criticism for the lack of polish.

Then, the unthinkable happened. In late 2012, both Marco Arment and John Siracusa ended their shows on 5by5 studios. There was apparently no falling out between Dan Benjamin and either of the two bigwigs, and the termination of shows was reportedly on good terms.

Marco Arment, John Siracusa and their friend Casey Liss eventually went on to do their own car podcast, Neutral in early 2013…… and accidentally created a tech podcast in the process.

The Accidental Tech Podcast is, today, arguably the most popular Mac-related podcast amongst like-minded Mac podcast nerds, and is what I look forward to most every Friday.

Jim Dalrymple and Dan Benjamin on Amplified. Need I say more? Jim is the nicer version of John Gruber and the combination of Mac stuff and rock music is just awesome (I am into rock music and band stuff).

The Talk Show with John Gruber, Gruber’s relaunch of the popular The Talk Show on 5by5, is third, and only because the other choices are not very promising. Gruber is still a pretty bad host despite marked improvements, and there are episodes where I could not bear to continue listening after the first fifteen minutes. Very often though, the show is saved from extreme boredom by his interesting guests, who often ask the right questions in order to extract interesting replies from Gruber. The main problem with the current The Talk Show? The current host should be the one being asked questions, not the other way round.

To finish the list, I listen to the Vergecast from time to time. A bunch of noisy tech nerds talking industry-wide tech stuff is often interesting so long you can overlook the complete mess that is the Vergecast.

With the drought of interesting Mac news these days, these shows provide me, and probably many others, much needed relief from the boredom that is life.

You can follow MacRyu at @ryuworks on Twitter and @ryu on App.net.

On the long Apple writing hiatus and my hatred for the world right now

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Since Steve passed away, I have not found much motivation to post anything here. Furthermore, changes to various aspects of my Apple-related connections locally just made things worse.

These days, I am really more depressed than anything else to have idiots berating me every time I point out factual mistakes in their Anti-Apple rants, all while the whole local Apple scene is becoming more generic and boring. The Mac no longer matters to most, and all everyone is about are just iPhones and iPads, and how Samsung Galaxys are better simply because they have styluses and bigger (but lousier) screens.

To tell you the truth, I do not give a damn. I hate Samsung because I am disgusted by how they operate (through deceitful ways), and I hate people who defend them without any factual knowledge to back up their anti-Apple rants, and somehow thinking that if they hate Apple, they must support Samsung.

Samsung the brand and company is made up of scumbags and more scumbags, and every single person in cahoots with them by being a fan should be ashamed. Either that or they are scumbags themselves as well.

This is a fact – I do not hate Android. I just prefer iOS because Android is way too limiting for many things (yes, don’t give me all that crap about being “open” and whatever, because despite the sheer app ecosystem and raw numbers of devices out there in the world, Android and Android apps don’t do half of what iOS can do for me). I have Android phones all over my table right now, namely the Nexus S, the Nexus 4, the Xperia Z and the Sharp Zeta SH-09D (not everything is mine) and even a Windows Phone 7 phone (the Lumia 800) and I do not hate any of them.

Yet arseholes tell me that I am nothing but an Apple fanboy (including one of my old friends) everytime I point out how factually wrong their anti-Apple rants are, and either refused to give any facts to support their crap-attacks or simply do not have anything to back their shit up.

Just because I am a Steve Jobs fanboy does not mean I support Apple in every thing they do. There are more than a few things that I take issue with Apple in the past 20 months or so;

1. Firing of Scott Forstall – Just shows how ineffective Tim Cook is at managing those under him. Forstall was getting out of control and it seems that Cook had no choice but to get rid of him to keep the harmony within Apple’s executive team.

2. You think of Apple these days as AAPL and nothing else – Everything done in the past 12 months seems to be more than focused on the share price of AAPL. Is AAPL more important or is Apple Inc. more important? The board of directors seemed to be a bit confused. Almost every single comment Tim Cook makes publicly these days seems to be carefully calculated to affect the stock price positively. Whatever happened to “screwing” the stock price?

3. Wrong timing of product announcements – Seriously, what’s with the product announcements last October/Novemeber?

4. Don’t just give me iOS stuff. I want OS X and Macs.

There was a time when I relied on Apple to keep me entertained and feeling alive waiting for the next new annoucement, those days have since long passed. Every time I check RSS there’s nothing but stupid and baseless crap from analysts, or yet another report of Samsung doing something deceitful. Nothing, nothing at all from Apple.

Things may change with WWDC with iOS 7 and OS X 10.9, but until now I continue to be bored with the no-news situation from Apple that has been continuing since last October’s product announcements.

One more thing: Don’t listen to analysts. Those arseholes know nothing.

Apple posts yet another record breaking quarter, AAPL down 13%

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Even more proof that Wall Street and all these analysts/investors are just idiots. On the other hand, why should we bother with them in the first place? They were not here with us when the iMac was launched, neither were they here when Steve announced the original iPod. When the iPhone was released they said it was crap and that Palm would eat us alive, and guess what? Where’s Palm now? RIM, RIM who? When the iPad was launched they told us it was stupid because it was just a bigger iPod Touch. And looked at what happened. And recently they tell us that the iPad mini is just a smaller iPad.

Seriously? If you ask me, it stands to reason that these jokers (and a lot of bizad students training to become similar jokers) are some of the idiotic people I have ever known in my life.

In other news, AAPL has just became cheap enough for people interested in the stock, and know enough about Apple to know that buying more AAPL is a smart move.

On Tim Cook and others

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Been a long long time since I last wrote here, and before I restart having more frequent appearances here I thought I will post some very short thoughts about everything happening at Apple for the past few months.

On Tim Cook:

There are men who are “leaders”, and there are men who are just “bosses”. Unfortunately our dear man Tim seems to reside in the latter camp. I’m not doubting his abilities as a CEO/manager for it has been proven that he’s one of, if not the best, operations man in the world. But a leader attracts and keeps talent through sheer charm, a manager can only do the same, much less successfully, through promises of wealth and power. While Tim is arguably one of those talents attracted to Apple, he is no Steve Jobs, and it’s apparent if you follow news of Apple’s management shifts.

Still, the guy is one hell of a CEO, having run the company’s operations during its crazy ascent in the last decade, and was the best choice that Steve had to succeed him.

On Scott Forstall:

Unlike many, I am quite a Scott Forstall supporter. I don’t hate the look of iOS skeuomorphism at all, and while many like to say shit about the guy, you cannot deny that the guy is smart, and good at what he does. Everything iOS is today can all at least partly be attributed to him, and the so-called maps screwup was not really much of a screwup at all, no matter which way you see it.

Problem though, is that many geniuses are also jackasses, and Forstall happens to be one of them. Steve was able to “control” and keep Scott working under him for all these years, something that Tim was unable to do. I see the loss of Scott as a loss for Apple, but neither Tim nor anyone else in Apple today will be able to control Forstall, and it is best for Apple’s internal stability that he was fired. Which is why Steve’s presence is missed so badly, not just because of what he can contribute to Apple’s ideas and lineup, but also because of his influence in other areas.

Whether iOS loses direction from now on without Scott at the helm all depends on his Hair Force One successor, and I am not very hopeful, looking at his work on OS X.

On John Sculley’s remarks:

The guy is the reason why Apple almost shut down in the nineties. When he gives advice on how Apple should act, the correct approach will be to do the exact opposite of what he proposes.

The Parities of Steve Jobs and Hyuuga Tooru in “Rich Man, Poor Woman”

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Those of you who know me personally know that in addition to being an Apple freak, I am also more Japanese than most other Singaporeans. This drama season (summer, running roughly from July to September), I am addicted to “Rich Man, Poor Woman” a “Getsuku”(Fuji TV’s most famous timeslot for Japanese dramas, Monday 9pm, also the time slot that usually garners the highest TV ratings, and dramas in this timeslot usually receive the biggest budget from Fuji TV every season) drama about a love story between Hyuuga Tooru (Oguri Shun), a young and famous entrepreneur, and Natsui Matoko (Ishihara Satomi) a college student from Tokyu University who is unable to find work as graduation approaches. It’s my favourite drama of the year so far.

Being an Apple freak and “Chief Steve Jobs Worshipper”, I can’t help but keep noticing the blatantly obvious parities between the lead character, Hyuga Tooru, and Steve Jobs.

It’s highly probably that the scriptwriter, Adachi Naoko, wrote this script as a tribute to Steve Jobs.

*SPOILER ALERT* Those who are interested to watch the drama please be warned that there are a lot of spoilers below.

The Parities of Steve Jobs and Hyuuga Tooru

1. Steve Jobs behaved like a tyrant in his original stint at Apple, which he co-founded. So did Hyuuga.

2. Steve Jobs’ second company is called NeXT, Hyuuga’s company is Next Innovation.

3. Steve Jobs fell in love with a college student from a top college, Stanford. Hyuuga fell in love with Natsui, from Tokyo University, the most prestigious school in Japan.

4. Steve Jobs was forced out of his original company by a man whom he then trusted to be his partner, John Sculley, and Hyuuga was forced out of Next Innovation by Asahina Kousuke, his co-founder and partner.

5. Apple went downhill after Steve left, and so did Next Innovation.

6. Steve Jobs is all about Simplicity in all his products and UI(User Interface), and Hyuuga’s Personal File data system’s strongest point is the super simple User Interface that can be understood and used by everyone from young to old.

7. Steve Jobs’ crazy attention to product details and admiration for well built products (including the story about him spending a lot of time studying the construction, design and details of mercedes cars in the carpark) is matched by Hyuuga’s crazy attention to details about his furniture, and how he spent two years looking and thinking about the table that he wanted to buy.

8. Steve Jobs, in his younger days, stayed in a big house with very little furniture. So did Hyuuga.

9. Steve Jobs looked like a hippie in his early days before he founded Apple. After he cleaned up, he was a very charming and handsome guy who looked great in a suit. Hyuuga looked like crap before he started Next Innovation as well, and he too look great in a suit.

10. Steve Jobs loved Japan, especially Kyoto and its old temples (even though he did proclaimed that he will never visit Japan again after airport officials at Kansai International Airport ill-treated him). Hyuuga’s “place of peace” is in a Zen temple.

11. Steve Jobs was given up for adoption when he was young. So was Hyuuga. Steve eventually searched for his real parents but kept a distance, and so did Hyuuga, having found his real mother in episode 10 but not telling her that he is her son.

12. Steve Jobs founded Pixar during his exile, which became very successful, and Hyuuga founded Wonder Wall, which became quite successful during episode 10. Why do I call Wonder Wall the equivalent of Pixar in the drama? There is one very obvious fact;

John Lasseter, who is an important member of the Pixar team, looks like this with his usual dressing style:

and here is Hosoki, an important member of the Wonder Wall team, with his usual dress style:

The parity is so obvious that any REAL Apple historian can’t help but notice.

13. After his stint at NeXT and Pixar, Steve Jobs became an even better leader than before, and do did Hyuga after starting Wonder Wall.

14. Steve Jobs returned to Apple to save it from bankruptcy and turned it into the greatest company ever in tech history, and Hyuga is seemingly going to do the same to Next Innovation from the preview of episode 11, the last episode, at the end of episode 10.

These are just some parities that I can remember from the top of my head, and I’m sure there are even more. Will update as I remember.

While obviously the main story here is the crazily cute puppy love between the two leads and almost everything is fictionalised, I can’t help but feel consoled that Apple supporters are all doing their own tribute to Steve Jobs in their own ways.

Those who have yet to catch Rich Man, Poor Woman, please do! It’s my favourite Japanese drama of the year. The theme song by Miwa is crazily nice too. Though it sucks that Samsung paid their way into the product advertising for this show. It does serve as a reminder that this is all a parody of the real world.