Posts Tagged → Apple

How pretty is *your* iTunes library?

I am more-than-averagely obsessive about my iTunes library. And yet, this is what most of it looks like. Ever see those pictures of ancient relics being restored in museums, when they’ll have exactly six pieces of some ancient textile and try to somehow fill in the gaps? It’s kinda like that.

Assuming I am more diligent about matching graphics with my albums than most people — and assuming most people acquire their music the way I did, rather than buying it exclusively through iTunes or Amazon — then it stands to reason that most iTunes libraries in the world look like this, or worse.

Kinda depressing, somehow.

And All That You Hear: Mastered for iTunes

Apple announced today a new service or product or category or something called Mastered for iTunes. You can see the thing for yourself in iTunes at this link courtesy of The Mac Observer; here is the description from Apple if you don’t want to bother reading it there:

Mastered for iTunes means these albums have been specially tuned for higher fidelity sound on your computer, stereo, and all Apple devices. Browse a range of music across all genres below, and keep checking back as we add more music that is mastered specifically for iTunes.

What this means is anyone’s guess, at least until people prod Apple for details and if Apple deigns to respond. Most likely they’re just compressing the tracks to make them sound louder and punchier. This would make them sound worse rather than better, especially on an iMac or a pair of pack-in iPod earbuds, but that does seem to be where modern tastes have landed us. I don’t suppose I will ever know, as I’m not going to re-buy any of my (relative few) iTunes purchases to compare old and new versions.

What caught my eye was the categories of music available in this new format. You have your Jazz, your Classical and whatnot. And then you have this:

Tastes come and go, but any format meant to appeal to serious audiophiles has to have the Floyd catalog. One day, music players may be able to stream music directly into our brains, leveraging the mind’s extraordinary sensory powers to make you feel as though you are within and surrounded by the music, inhabiting it in every fiber of your being, every nerve ending ablaze with it. And no one will buy it until you can play Dark Side of the Moon in it.

Edited the title to improve the Floyd reference. I can’t believe I got that wrong.

Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs and the Wrong Question

You have no fucking idea what it’s like to be me.
— Steve Jobs

While I have deliberately avoided reading most of the critical reaction to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, the broad consensus seems to be that Isaacson had the biographer’s opportunity of a lifetime, and blew it. Despite having unprecedented access to one of the most relentlessly private of public figures, Isaacson’s is a book without insight: his Steve Jobs is the same collection of contradictory impulses he has always been, a self-centered, unlikeable man who somehow created products that people adored, changing whole industries in his wake. In a world full of assholes, critics complain, what set Jobs apart? What made it possible for him to do the extraordinary things he did?

Let me say first that I agree in principle with the critics: Steve Jobs is a lousy book. I believe I arrived at the conclusion via a different route from a lot of other people, and I’ll get into that soon. First, let’s consider the argument, articulated well by Thomas Q. Brady, quoted on Daring Fireball:

I know lots of people that could be described [as “self-absorbed, immature, emotionally unstable control-freaks”], and none of them started a company in their garage that became one of the most valued corporations in the world. What made Jobs different? This isn’t really answered.

Actually it is, at least to a point. There is the asshole half of the Jobs equation, and then there is the other half, which Isaacson documents and which everyone already knows about: his fanatical obsession with spare, minimalist design; his belief that he was destined for greatness and his determination to achieve it; his tremendous persuasiveness; and his knack for infusing technology products with an underlying human friendliness. Unlike Jobs’s more unsavory characteristics, these are not common traits. Combine them with the ones above, and the story of Steve Jobs begins to seem, if not inevitable, then at least somewhat plausible.

Our civilization has spent centuries debating the origins of genius — even the definition of genius — and yet with each new transformational figure that comes along, we start the debate all over again. The truth is that genius has no formula. It cannot be predicted, reconstructed, feigned (for very long) or dissected, at least not in any way that is remotely edifying. You can quantify the factors that make it possible for people to be successful; for instance, Jobs acknowledged how lucky he was to grow up in Silicon Valley, surrounded by people who could nurture his talents and fire his ambitions. Had his parents opted to raise him in the suburbs of Wisconsin, we’d likely never have heard of Steve Jobs. But creativity — or inventiveness if you prefer, since we don’t tend to associate creativity with non-artistic pursuits — is a process that ultimately operates beneath the threshold of awareness. Indeed, it can operate in no other way; inspiration is not an algorithm.

Many people seem to have expected Isaacson’s book to provide the missing piece of the puzzle — the key that would finally unlock the secret of his genius and forever solve the enigma of Steve Jobs. They were never going to get what they wanted, because it didn’t exist. There was no “one more thing.” The enigma is its own solution.

I don’t want to give the impression that any inquiry into the inner workings of a genius is futile, or that Isaacson should be let off the hook for writing a superficial book about a man who was anything but. I merely suspect that no one could have written an entirely satisfying book on Steve Jobs, because the things people want to understand about him aren’t really explicable. What made Jobs different? How did he look at a Rio MP3 player and conceive what would become the iPod, where everyone else just saw a clunky, half-assed music player? You can posit various intermediary reasons — because he was driven to achieve perfection, because poor design caused in him something akin to physical pain — but what do those explain? What are the reasons for the reasons? The truth is that Steve Jobs did what he did because his unique blend of innate qualities, combined with the people and places that helped to shape his worldview, allowed him to. His career was the result of a confluence of circumstances so unlikely as to appear impossible. “What made Steve Jobs different?” is more a rhetorical question than an actual one. It is a way for our mathematically hampered brains to acknowledge the  baffling unlikelihood of his achievement — the incredible fact that in this world, a man like him could exist at all.

So having put that issue in perspective, what is my primary objection to the book? I will put it in straightforwardly Jobsian terms:

The writing sucks. Continue reading →

You Say Goodbye, and I Say Hello: Steve Jobs Resigns

If you’re an Apple fan, an Apple user or just a technology enthusiast in general, there is only one story today: Steve Jobs is stepping down as CEO of Apple.

This is not to say he is leaving Apple. He is continuing on as Chairman of the Board, so it seems reasonable to assume he will still exert considerable direct influence on Apple’s products and overall direction. That face-saving news probably helped insulate Apple’s stock from the bad news. As of this writing, it has taken a five-percent hit, much less than the cataclysm many predicted would befall Apple should Jobs have died, quit or otherwise left the company abruptly.

Apart from sadness and a vague sense of unease or disquiet, I have these thoughts on hearing this news.

Whatever health issues Jobs has been dealing with, he has not been able to overcome them. Jobs must have reached a point where he and his doctors realized his recovery would make no more significant progress. It is possible (and I certainly hope) that Jobs has many years ahead of him in which to contribute to Apple and to enjoy life with his family and friends. However, it is just as possible — and knowing Jobs’ concern for his privacy, not at all unlikely — that there may be more bad news about Steve Jobs ahead, and that it will come sooner than anyone wants to accept. I take no pleasure in thinking that. But I do think it.

In a sense, we are about to see the ultimate test of Jobs as a businessman and leader. How well has he inculcated his values and expectations into Apple’s culture? How well, in other words, has he enabled it to continue as though he were still there? The answer to this question will not be apparent for some time; Jobs will, as noted, continue to be involved with Apple, and it will take months or even years for the efforts he has overseen to come to fruition. That will not, alas, stop the tech pundits from clucking over Apple’s “loss of vision” at the first post-Jobs bump in the road to come along. For example, if the iPhone 4’s “Antenna-gate” issue had happened at a post-Jobs Apple, no one would skip a beat before denouncing the scandal as the inevitable result of Apple adrift in the leadership vacuum left by its departed visionary: “This would never have happened if Steve had been there.” There’s going to be a lot of bullshit like this in the months ahead, I’m afraid.

But it is true that, at some distant point, people will look at Apple and have to decide, as well as they can, whether the company they see is truly living up to its founder’s standards, or whether it shows the first signs of an inevitable decline. Apple could easily remain unassailable with no input at all from Jobs for at least three years, and probably closer to five. By then, the tech landscape may have shifted sufficiently to allow a smaller, faster competitor to undermine Apple’s dominance or to establish a new computing paradigm ahead of it. This is going to happen eventually; it’s just a matter of when. The only real question is: will it happen sufficiently far in the future that no one can reasonably blame it on Jobs’ absence? Indeed, could Apple remain dominant for so long that Jobs himself one day becomes a hazily remembered, almost mythic figure like Henry Ford, with no direct associations with any of Apple’s then-current products?

I think it could happen. If it does, that will be the true confirmation of Steve Jobs’ genius. He would not have merely started Apple. He would not have merely rebuilt it from a teetering computer company into the world’s most valuable technology company, capable of redefining entire markets at a stroke. He would have given it a soul, and not just a soul but his soul — the one thing even some of his greatest admirers were convinced he could not do. He would have achieved a kind of immortality: a cluster of dedicated people who absorbed his ways of thinking and distilled them into an essence that can be taught and passed on after he was gone. If he succeeds in this, then there is no telling how long Apple could remain in its present dominant position. Jobs came back to Apple 15 years ago. What could Apple be in another 15 years? It could come back down to earth, become just another successful purveyor of computers, gadgets and lifestyle accessories. Or it could be something that no one today can see, an integral part of industries we haven’t yet imagined. We might even one day call it the most powerful and innovative company that has ever been — greater than U.S. Steel, greater than Ford, greater than AT&T or Microsoft — a company so ingrained in our lives that it literally has no precedent.

Knowing what little I do about Steve Jobs, I am guessing that is the legacy he strives for. Will he succeed? I wouldn’t bet against him. How amazing it is to think that for all Jobs has accomplished, today really only marks a new beginning.

My New iPod. (Please, Apple?)

My New iPod. (Please, Apple?)

Recently my 160 GB iPod classic began showing signs of advanced age. I would fully charge it, play it a bit, leave it to the side for a day and return to find the battery nearly depleted, sometimes so low it wouldn’t turn on. I began to think it was time, that this device had finally reached the point where it could be allowed to retire gracefully.

I bought this iPod, my third, shortly after the “classic” designation was first introduced. I was thrilled: this was the first iPod large enough to hold the entirety of my music collection, freeing me from the burden of curating playlists and trying to second-guess what my tastes would be on a given day. (I have largely re-assumed this burden with my 32 GB iPhone, but that is another matter.) It did not trouble me at the time that, merely by calling its former flagship product a “classic,” Apple was signaling that the iPod’s glory days as a music device were behind it. A classic is something beyond the need for evolution or change, something that provides the same pleasures over and over, something — if I may get momentarily pretentious — more associated with memories than hopes.

So, back to my ailing iPod classic. I had some extra money and, what’s more, an impeccable justification for replacing my current model. Except I dragged my feet. I looked at the refurbished models on the Apple website and noted with approval that I could save quite a bit of money buying used. Gradually it dawned on me that I didn’t want to buy a new iPod. Not because of sentimental attachment to the current one — though I love Apple technology, the devices themselves are completely fungible to me, and I have no hesitation in dumping my current object of affection for something new and improved. The problem is that the current iPod classic really isn’t improved from the model I bought in 2008. Today’s classic supports Genius playlists and … I’m not really sure what else. There is certainly no difference of any substance. I can’t think of another Apple product so little improved over so long a time. But then, why improve a “classic”?

I see the logic. Apple is about iOS devices: the iPad, the iPhone and its bastard offspring, the iPod touch. The iOS platform is Apple’s chance to directly influence the evolution of an entire new computing paradigm, in a way they didn’t quite do with the Macintosh. They’d be crazy not to put all of their eggs in that basket. And let’s face it: mp3 players are so five years ago. Continue reading →

Airport Security — Solved. (Badly)

Security at the airport is annoying for a panoply of reasons. It’s woefully inefficient, funneling hundreds of people into a narrow pipeline of security stations, which guarantees long delays, missed flights and tremendous irritation. It wildly overreacts to any new botched and half-assed terrorism attempt — is there anyone who truly feels safer knowing his fellow passengers have had their shoes x-rayed? And of course, there is the increasingly invasive searches and surveillance technology, conducted by a bureaucracy that has been allowed to run unchecked and increasingly amok.

We know all these reasons. But there is another reason why airport security is annoying that I think has been overlooked: the anticlimax. Security screening consists of a wait of anywhere from twenty minutes to two hours or more, during which you are forbidden from relieving the tension by joking about the one subject — terrorism — that is on the mind of literally every single person there, which is rather like being forced to wait in an elephant paddock without mentioning the elephant. This is followed by a mad shuffle to dump purses, jackets and laptops into trays, take off shoes and demonstrate that your shampoo and conditioner can’t be used to blow a hole in the fuselage of the plane. All of these things are really only the preamble to the personal screening, in which you either pass through a metal detector or stand in front of a scatter x-ray machine before being summarily waved through.

That’s it?

The reason that this process seems so onerous is that we get nothing out of it — that our time appears to have been frivolously and blatantly wasted. It is hard to think of any routine activity in which so much waiting delivers such little payoff. Therefore, one idea for making security more tolerable and thus, perhaps, more effective is to give people more for their money, as it were. I have a few ideas on this score.

Make the Screening Longer

Yes, this is an insane idea, but given that our present system is so massively inefficient, making it nominally more so in the interests of passenger satisfaction makes some sense. If passengers felt that TSA personnel were really making a big deal out of them — or, if you like, really taking them seriously as a potential threat — they would probably find the process more fair and more justified. My ideas for expanding the screening process:

Personal interviews. Every passenger has to submit to a brief, two- to five-minute interview. These would include standard questions about the traveler’s destination and purpose of visit. The screener would then have the option of exchanging small talk with the traveler, perhaps comparing pictures of grandchildren and such, or of engaging them on the subjects of politics, economics and current events. Screeners could draw upon a list of prepared questions that appear designed to elicit potentially dangerous or subversive views but whose answers would, in fact, be completely ignored, their only purpose being to permit the traveler to express him or herself and to let them know they are taken seriously.

Actors. Airport security suffers from an inherent problem: its successes are invisible. Nobody ever sees a terrorist plot foiled or a suspicious passenger with no carry-on baggage summarily hauled away for questioning. Thus, the common perception is that airport security is a fiction, a charade put on solely to deliver the illusion of safety rather than the thing itself. Well, perhaps it is — and if it is, let’s make it a good illusion. Scattered randomly throughout the day at every major airport should be actors whose sole purpose is to pose as passengers, be “unmasked” as potential terrorists and swarmed by security personnel and then arrested, in as showy a manner as possible. There should be variety: while suspicious travelers will nervously eye the Middle Eastern men, a young, pregnant white woman should suddenly rip open her coat to reveal that she is wired head to toe with explosives, screaming that she’ll blow herself, her unborn baby and all the rest of these goddamn people to kingdom come unless someone gets her ex-husband on the phone RIGHT MOTHERFUCKING NOW. There would then occur the most spectacular display of security prowess as a (carefully rehearsed) crack team of agents wrestle the woman to the ground, disarm her and drag her, howling and shrieking like a hyena on fire, to the nearest holding cell. An agent will then return to assure people that everything was under control and that all were safe. You know what would probably happen then? The whole room would spontaneously break into applause.

A lot could be done with this idea. The TSA could stage foot chases, martial arts battles of a dozen or more combatants, and even mock shootings. You would walk through an airport en route to a flight knowing full well that anyone around was capable of doing literally anything. I don’t think this would make people terribly afraid, but it would make them more alert, and enforce the principle that security procedures are there for a reason.

Of course, these ideas only make a flawed system more tolerable, while actually increasing its cost and inefficiency. So, in the interest of a constructive debate, here are actual suggestions for improving airport security.

TSA On the Go

Have you ever been to an Apple store and noticed there are no cashier lines? Instead, hipsters in black t-shirts and carrying portable credit card readers roam the floor and conduct transactions on the spot, wherever you happen to be. This is how airport security should work. Rather than a thin, urethra-like line feeding a paltry security station, the screening area should be vast and open, with TSA screeners equipped with the latest metal detector wands and other portable scanning gear. They would proactively find travelers in the crowd, quickly check them over (no one’s taking off their fucking shoes, thank you very much) and issue them a signed and dated stamp indicating that they have cleared security and may enter the terminal. No one could board a plane without that stamp, and anyone failing the brief security sweep would be led to a more thorough station — in fact, the same station to which we foolishly submit every traveler today.

Appointments

Taking the Apple store menu even further, why not be able to make an appointment with a TSA screener? I don’t think this would be as efficient as the previous suggestion — waiting rooms always run late — but it couldn’t help but improve the current situation, and people would be in a better mood if they knew that a time and place had been set aside for them. And in fact, there’s nothing to say you couldn’t combine this suggestion with the previous one. Make the security experience more like the Apple store is basically the takeaway here.

You know, on second thought, I’d really rather have the actors.