The iPad: What has Apple done?

When I read the live blogs of Apple's announcement last week, I kind of thought that the device has pretty uninteresting to me as an individual. I did, however, think that it had great potential for vertical markets. Medical records and pre-hospital emergency care come to mind immediately. There are, of course, lots of other potential vertical markets for it. At $500, the device is quite cheap for a vertical market.

A day after the announcement, I went to Apple's Web site and after watching Apple's video, my view on the device for a consumer, has changed dramatically. The device looks very cool and I could definitely see myself using one for surfing the web on the couch or reading books (I sometimes use my ancient Sony eBook reader).

As pointed out on the MacBreak Weekly podcast, Apple has basically created a device that people didn't think they needed into a device that lots of people will believe they need. Only time will tell if this is true, but I would not be surprised if it was.

As someone who has written iPhone applications and has been a long time Cocoa/Objective-C developer, I'm excited to start developing applications, even if they are not my own ideas. I love writing code and a "new" platform will make things very interesting.

Now I just have to figure out how to justify purchasing one or find someone to buy me one!

Alarmist News Reporting

While it shouldn't surprise me to have news programs try to increase ratings by alarming the public, I was quite disappointed by NBC's Nightly News on Saturday. Here's my letter to them:

On Saturday's Nightly News, you had a story about the Toyota Recall. In the story, you highlight a retired orthopedic surgeon who had an issue with his 2005 Toyota Highlander hybrid. This model vehicle is NOT part of the current recall and either you know something that Toyota doesn't or your story is trying to alarm the public. The recall only covers certain new model Highlanders; as an owner of a 2003 Highlander, I didn't pay much attention to it. Your story didn't make it clear that this story had nothing to do with the current recall. While the doctor highlighted may have had issues with his vehicle, I think it is quite irresponsible for you to do a story on an issue that has nothing to back it up; one person had an issue with an older car.

I would appreciate seeing a clarification to this story.

We'll see if NBC does anything. Toyota does have a huge problem, but this story could likely make it even worse.

Violating a privacy policy

Today I received a survey from the congressman that serves my area, Duncan Hunter. (Notice I didn't say my congressman, I don't think he serves my interests.). The survey was sent to an email address that I used once to fill out a form to tell the congressman to stop sending paper newsletters.

Well, it turns out that the congressman has violated the United States House Of Representatives Privacy policy which states:

Any personally-identifying information which you choose to provide. For example your mailing address, in an electronic mail message or web form requesting information or commenting on current legislative issues. Information collected in this manner is used solely for information and, in some cases, to respond to you. Please also see Security and Policy Notices posted on individual Member, Committee and other House office web sites for information on how individual offices may use the data you choose to provide them via forms on their sites.

It doesn't say that I can be contacted for a survey, does it? Furthermore, there was no unsubscribe link in the survey. This is almost a violation of the CAN-SPAM act as the act requires a way to opt-out. However, since this wasn't an ad, it probably doesn't violate it.

Duncan Hunter, stop sending me unsolicited paper and electronic mail. While you are trying to use technology to be in touch with your constituents, you are doing it in a way to further tick us (me) off.

Shifting the blame

When I see kiosks with Windows error messages, I usually love to blame Windows as I'm a life long (OK, I was 16 when I got my first Mac) Mac user so Windows is an easy target. Several weeks ago, I was at the San Diego airport picking up my wife and son when I saw an error on one of the displays. I realized that the displays were still running and the only problem was the crash message on the screen. I attribute this error to the person that setup the kiosk. Software is going to crash running most operating consumer operating systems (Mac OS and Windows primarily), so whoever sets up the kiosk needs to do whatever is possible to make sure the kiosk or display keeps running. This includes background processes to monitor the foreground processes and vice versa. In addition, all error messages need to be suppressed. Mac OS X has a command line option

defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType server

to prevent the crash dialog from coming up. I can only imagine that Windows has something similar.

I've worked on a kiosk system before and setting them up is not trivial. It takes a lot of thinking and failure design to get it right.