The Pond

Silicon Valley Insider comments on Forrester Research’s list of potential new Apple products, noting the lack of imagination in the list, despite providing no list of its own

So here is my wishlist.

Dual display MacBook

Like the new XO mockup, but real. I know there are folks who love their real keyboards, but how cool would a full touchscreen on the bottom of a MacBook instead of a keyboard. Better yet, make it a display as well so that it can be a keyboard, huge mouse, tablet, gesture surface, etc. I love the keyboard and all, but some new input devices are really needed for a lot of applications like editing video, making music, etc. And I’m sure a lot of tasks we do now could be greatly improved.

This is probably waaay out there, but it would be an extremely cool device.

Multitouch mouse

Sort of a lite version of the above. Maybe a mighty mouse with touch surface on top. Perhaps something like an iPod Touch that can also function as a touchpad for your computer, or small auxiliary display. It would be sort of like that Microsoft technology for displays on the outside of laptops, except that it would be useful, and exist

Kyle and I have talked about this since the death of Mirra (from Microsoft). If the pricepoint could be hit, I think this is a killer technology.

Webcam based gestures

Who wouldn’t love LED gloves like in Minority Report. Answer: noboby. Like multitouch, but in mid-air. It would be quite a feat of engineering to get it to feel right, but would also have the potential to really transform how we work with computers.

.Mac overhaul

Yes. All of us that spend $100 a year on this for some inexplicable reason are mandated to include it on any ‘new features’ list. This is because we must believe we haven’t wasted this money when in fact, we have.

A .Mac that could really function as a hub of other internet activity would be really great. The pages with OpenID. Let users build something that can integrate their other places on the web. It would sort of be like FriendFeed without Scoble blogging about how super it is every two minutes (I jest…mostly).

Seriously, however, a .Mac that could run applications (like Google apps for people like my Mom) would be a great thing. Imagine being able to build something like a Google app, but with Interface Builder. Or Pages. Or iWeb. Maybe this involves scrapping .Mac and using Google services and tightly integrating them with iWork. Providing applications that make collaboration work for non-techs would be great. Making all these cool things the internets have made work for our Mom’s, and work betterfasterprettier for us would be great.

iPhone/iPod payment

Application on iPhone for paying for things. Like Starbucks, lunch, dinner, etc. Content on iPods is sweet, and there is room for growth in iTunes, but I can imagine the application store being a huge huge win for Apple, and what better application that handling all sorts of payments and micropayments. They already do it for iTunes. Take a few cents off the top.

iPod Fit

More iPod apps. Integrate your gym schedule and progress. Other than work, and sitting on the couch, it is the main other thing I (try) to do during the week. Also, my iPod (or one of them) is always with me.

Conclusion

Forrester’s list seems to make me think that those folks like to stay in their house a lot. All those products (genius to the home?!?) seem to be focused on not getting outside.

Apple’s products work best off a little bit of envy. When people see you out with an iPhone, its a win for Apple. AppleTV sits in your house. iPod HiFi (buhbye), sits in your house. MacBooks go out with you. There is a lot of work to do on making mobile technology usable, and iPhone has really only scratched the surface so far. The SDK and the app store are potentially an enormous win for Apple, and I’m sure they know that. Need to take your facebook with you? It’s easier on an iPhone. Need to take your GPS with you. iPhone. Want to find all your friends and meet up somewhere while on the go? iPhone app sounds like a good fit for that too.

I think this is why people are so hotly anticipating the 3G. Both because of the speed (yaay) and because of the app store.

That being said, they will probably do something from my list, and something from the Forrester list. If it is the alarm clock, however…that thing better be loud. I could not wake up this morning!

Just a quick reply to this post.

Java on the Mac isn’t an environment for running applications. Nearly all the applications that I use on OSX are based on Cocoa. The real reason for having Java on OSX is as a development environment. I really, really wanted Java 6 on the Mac. Not for the sake of writing applications for OSX, but for doing my work development on my Mac for deployment on something else. For me, the important thing is that I can keep using my Mac for development, even when (if) my company changes over to running my work under Java 6 on the server.

So Apple gets away with the 64bit only version because developers love new hardware anyway. On the fence about a new MBP — well..it has Java 6 now. Apple is essentially forcing non 64bit users who wish to develop Java 6 to upgrade, but for many of us, though there might be some grumbling, a new machine is never a bad thing.

The only problem with Selenium is that it is hard to write tests before actually implementing a feature. Or perhaps I’m just too tempted to use ‘record’ after the fact to test things. That setup works well for regression testing type stuff, but sort of defeats TDD (as it’s done after the fact, not before). Either way, I’m pretty happy with doing some site testing with Selenium. Now I just have to get good at actually using it

Like Microsoft peeps have been saying…

Apple just copies things Microsoft thinks of. I bet Apple is now going to claim to have innovated the super unweildyness of a table-sized touch screen. Apple is such a copycat.

Actually. Google buying Skype would be nice from a user perspective.

Or perhaps I’ve stated that wrong. What I really want is a soft-phone option for GrandCentral. GTalk would do just fine, but I would love for calls (particularly when I’m at home, and cell coverage isn’t great) to head to a soft phone if I’m just sitting on the couch with my computer on. Skype just seems the obvious choice for that at the moment, since it is probably one of the major PSTN -> IP consumer gateway thingies out there.

Rich Thinks Skype Should Go To Google…..

Given what I’m picking up in London about the Skype future plans and the way things seem to be really settling down under Josh Silverman Rich may have been right a few months ago, but I’m not as much in that camp any longer.

I mean. I know how to *use* it. That part couldn’t be simpler.

The real problem is how to do something useful with it. Scoble suggests following lots of people. Perhaps this is another tactic that I haven’t really tried yet. I guess my problem there is…I work during the day. And have lots to do after work between dog, gym, etc.

I read tons of RSS feeds, primarily because the reader tools are so incredibly good, and allow me to check in 4 or 5 times a day, and get lots of good information. Twitter doesn’t really have tools like this. Or at least, none that I’m aware of. I’m not a big AIR fan, so I haven’t tried out any of the AIR based tools. Frankly, its pretty surprising to me that for a service that everyone is so gung-ho about, there aren’t better tools to use the data.

Here are some things that would help me:

Not river style

I know Dave loves river of news style things, but… it just doesn’t cut it for me. I have to dam up my river most of the day. I’m coding/in meetings/doing training/attending training/working customer problems/a zillion other things 90% of my day. And I am so so so easily distracted, I can’t have something like twitterific open. It will kill me. Or my boss will. Either way…not good for me.

An app that would read twitter in a more netnewswire(y) way would rock. Or maybe it should be added to NNW. Who knows. All I know is that when I un-dam that ‘river of news’ from twitter, I get washed away, and so it doesn’t wind up being useful to me.

Twitter + reddit

I use reddit all the time. Digg is to UIy. If that makes sense. I really just want the best links. ASAP. Perhaps some voting up/down of twitter posts would help those of us who can’t swim in the river make sense of it all. Do I really need to see the latest LOLCats when I hit twitter? Or a 6mo old video that someone just discovered for the first time. Conversely, do people really need to see old links that I just came across. No. Most likely they don’t.

I know some of the appeal of twitter is that there is no wheat-from-chaff system, but for those who can’t (or don’t care to) be on twitter 24/7, there is no way to catch up with the best tweets of the day.

friends

Holy crap. Could it *be* harder to find a friend on twitter. I mean. For the love of God.

Get a real social network engine. Or integrate with one. Don’t make me invite everybody when I really just want to see if Ben or Kyle or Sally or Chris has a twitter account. Don’t be that guy. Pleeease.

More Metadata Please

Let me tag posts. And feeds. And let me browse by tags. Let there be some categorization. The reason there are posts like Scoble’s, and perhaps the reason why ‘follow a ton of feeds’ is the best advice anyone can give about twitter is because it is nearly impossible to find a feed on a topic of interest.

I would love to follow Apple news. Or Java news. Or Ruby news. How does one do that?

1. search for a blogger that blogs about such topics.
2. look for a link on their blog to a twitter feed.
3. hack twitter urls
/Javaguy
/applenews
/functionalprogramming
/hotjavanews
/what_the_aaaaargh
4. sub to the blog you just found in NNW and give up.

final thoughts

I guess the point for me is that twitter is like RSS. Wicked (from boston, sorry) cool stuff that still hasn’t found the UI to make it wicked useful stuff. RSS doesn’t have a lot of the stuff that I mentioned above (tagging, etc, etc), but it did get some great UIs that made reading news and information and learning about the world something lots of people could do without doing a double take.

My brother, the history teacher, uses NNW to read up on news and current events and all kinds of stuff.

IMO, it is time for twitter to take that next step from something us techies use to pass the day while we should be doing something productive into something that folks like my brother, who is tech-saavy, but not interested in tech merely for the sake of tech, would use and get value from.

Oh, and in case you want to sub to my twitter, it is here. But I warn you — I haven’t figured out what to post on there yet either.

I signed up for FriendFeed. The remembered I need friends for it to be fun. *sigh*.

So. I’ve put up with the massive overload of articles from Gizmodo that I can barely even make it through even over the weekend. I wrote an applescript to mark several feeds that have news diarrhea read automatically when I just need some amnesty from my feeds.

But the stunt at CES was sort of mean. Kyle was at the show and he didn’t get zapped during demos. But I worked in technical marketing for a few years at NMS, and it is by and large pretty tough to go to a show, get all the demos working happily, etc. So between news overload and this nasty little trick, I think its time I unsubscribe. Now I only have to not be able to keep up with Engadget.

For those of us that were there, you’ll understand this picture. It is my brother covered in stickers. It was rather amusing — somehow he just wound up with them on his face. I’m not sure why, but…we took pictures anyway.

duh. but.

100%How Addicted to Apple Are You?

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