No on Prop 8

October 24, 2008

Apple is publicly opposing Proposition 8 and making a donation of $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees’ same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person’s fundamental rights — including the right to marry — should not be affected by their sexual orientation. Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8.

anyway – thats what those random posts were… if ya wanna follow my tweets just go directly to twitter… (www.twitter.com/swimfinssf)

*sigh*…

So in the mean time forgive the stock template – don’t have much time to fix it right now…

DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN DAMN

So.. Now that i’ve been using it for a little while here are some observations for those considering it.. Since I couldn’t find good discussions on the thing online I figured I’d share!

• Interface is very good.. It took me a little while to figure out how to get it to show me maps for a place that I wasn’t currently at because it is always trying to give you directions from your current location. But if you choose ‘Find Location’ and navigate to an address you can then select ’show map’ at the bottom of the screen.. Thats very cool when you’re trying to look at maps in other states or countries cuz otherwise it’ll try and drive you there which is rough for points across an ocean.. (strangely it couldn’t find a route from SF to berlin..
• Dashboard Mount: This has been giving me grief. First, when I put the power cord into the mount I couldn’t get it out.. still can’t.. which is frustrating since I HATE cords all around my car.. I only want it plugged in when it needs juice. It has also started loosing suction on the window lately – probably just needs cleaning but still.. This is particularly a problem living in a big city where you can’t really leave a cool gadget in sight when parked – taking it on and off is a little troublesome..
• Traffic integration: This is REALLY cool.. shows you both incidents on the freeway as well as red, green, and red on roads to indicate traffic flow.. WAY cool.. Confusing part here is they have a bunch of different models (10,11,and 12) and I had a hard time figuring out which one to buy.. I finally just picked the 12 cuz it looked the least conspicuous and it seems to work.. Only issue I have with it is that it needs the nuvi to be connected to power which means it needs to be in the cradle (kind of a bummer when I got the thing at work and the cradle was at home..)
• European Maps: So this one was wierd.. They have two versions – one that comes on a DVD and one that comes pre loaded onto an SD card.. The one on the SD card, in retrospect is what I should have gotten but I couldn’t tell and got the DVD version. This version requires that you run the maps on a PC and then send them to the Nuvi.. great if you don’t want all the maps but a hassle otherwise (and thank GOD for Bootcamp – otherwise i’d be screwed).. Its also kind of counter-intuitive how to get the right things sent across.. It turns out you have to go into the application and select the segments of the maps in the map browser and hilite them and then click transfer to get the maps over.. There really shoudl be a ’send all the damn maps’ option or more clear directions..
• Phone integration: This is also cool and everyone I talked to says they can hear me fine.. I do wish the volume went up louder on the thing though – road noise makes it a little hard to hear some times.. I also wish there was a ‘answer with phone’ option for the situations where I don’t want to talk on speaker.. Its probably there but I couldn’t find it..

Overall this thing is REALLY damn cool and I HIGHLY recommend it.. just a little nits that I wish worked differently.. but thats OK.. I’ll live.. still love my gadget.. can’t wait to try it in europe!

(Oh yea.. and I need to post a link to Technorati Profile so I can claim my blog.. so here it is..)

The other is just my favorite new time sync… They’ve FINALLY started supporting Plaxo on Mac OS X. as a result i’ve killed WAY too much time pestering my friends to update their contact information and cleaning out my address book. But seriously – the idea is VERY cool and its about f-ing time they made a mac version.. For those of you that don’t know, Plaxo is a web integrated service that helps you keep your address book up to date by allowing your contacts to update your address book for you. You can send email requests to your contacts which sends them to a web page where they can update their information and the next time you sync your address book with Plaxo you get the updates. But, even cooler, it also allows you to connect your address book with other Plaxo users so if any of your contacts are also plaxo members you automatically get their updates whenever they make changes without having to send a request. They definitely have some things to work out (especially when it comes to iSync) but its still very cool…

ok… enough plugging… Happy saturday..

Ever wonder what the deal is with these things are called or whats behind them. Had a friend of mine ping me asking how to get information on them. I know what they’re for – they allow computers to detect whether input is from a human or a computer – humans can read these but computers generally can’t. They deter spammers and other software based attacks from doing things like automatically posting blog comments or applying for email accounts. But I didn’t know what they were called or where they came from and, being the curious fuck that I am, I had to find out… So after some clever dissection of a site that used them (in this case, blogger) I found a term that looked odd to me in the right spot.. A quick google search of that term landed me right where I wanted to be…

So here are the fruits of my labor. From Wikipedia:

Captcha

A captcha (an acronym for “completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart”) is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human

And from the Captcha site:

Telling Humans and Computers Apart

(Automatically)

A CAPTCHATM is a program that can generate and grade tests that most humans can pass, but current computer programs can’t pass. For example, humans can read distorted text as the one shown below, but current computer programs can’t:

So there it is.. more than you ever wanted to know…

So anyway. We’re out for drinks last night with his business partner and he asks another one of his questions and I do my usual shrug to which he has his usual response and then the conversation moves on. Later, while he’s off doin whatever, his business partner asks what that was all about. I explained our little rapport and the history behind it – then explain that there is more to it than that. And here’s the scoop.

I actually believe personally in the need for Apple to keep shit confidential until launch – and its for two important reasons. First is the obvious financial reasons. The fact of the matter is we make money by selling products. We make enough product to cover demand. When new products get leaked before we’re ready to sell them people stop buying the existing products, inventory builds up, and it has a real impact on the company’s bottom line. The thing that I always tell friends is that worrying about what’s coming next is like worrying about whether the sun will rise. It always will rise and we’ll always come out with new products. Make your buying decisions based on your needs now and just deal with the fact that at some point your machine won’t be the newest and thats OK – it does what you want it to do… The only people that conceptually get hurt by buying a machine the day before a new one are the size queens who want the latest toy – and frankly, they should be buying when the previous product is announced rather than late in the cycle…

The other reason, which is actually more important to me than the financial reason, is personal. We BUST OUR BALLS trying to make great products and part of the satisfaction of doing that is the ‘Wow factor’ when the product is finally launched. It is SUCH a great feeling to work one of these shows and have people just giddy to get the product that you’ve ruined your life to deliver. When the launch is truly a surprise and has accurate information it is more gratifying than you can believe to see and read user’s responses to the product – it really makes the pain worth while. However when the fuckers at Think Secret and other rumor sites pre announce this stuff it blows a lot of that surprise. And, what is worse, is their information is 9 times out of 10 is WRONG, either completely or partially. The result is the reaction is more along the lines “Oh.. Well thats cool.. but I thought it was gonna do X.. When will it do that?”. People frequently over look all the cool things it does that the rumor sites don’t even notice and fixate on the thing that it was ’supposed’ to do. Its really frustrating. This last MacWorld was no exception – the rumor sites spent a lot of energy hyping bad information and, as a result, many people didn’t really get how cool what we DID launch was. New Intel Macs that scream, a bunch of great new software, great financials, and others. Thats COOL – its not our fault the rumor sites fucked up.

The Engineers on my team and around Apple BUST THEIR BALLS to get great products out on the market, often sacrificing sleep, a personal life, and their health. These folks deserve their day in spotlight without it being tainted by misconceptions by rumor mongers. So just sit tight – we’ll continue to announce cool stuff.

(sorry – that was more soap-box-ey than I intended… I just feel strongly about it after 14 some years at apple.)

Happy Friday

I know.. i’m behind the times.. but still cool so I had to share..