Speaking of iPhone Imitations

Check out this incredibly cheesey infomercial for HP's TouchSmart PC, which appears to be an attempt to re-create the iPhone's user-experience gimmickery on a desktop computer:

(click to watch video)

Sure, it demos pretty well for those scenarios where you use your PC as a $1000 MP3 player or slide projector. But tell me this: what value does a touchscreen add to all of the day-to-day word-processing, email-writing, and web browsing tasks that the average person actually performs on their PC? Not much, at least not until we start to encounter software that's specifically designed for such a tactile interface.

For example, consider a software application that allows you to order tacos and fried chicken:

Or how about an application that helps you quickly and intuitively scan through other people's visions of the future:

Indeed, it would appear that the technology sector has served up yet another compelling chicken-and-egg problem... where the chicken is either fried or smothered in cheap paprika-like seasoning, and the egg is a little red ball that looks like this:

iPhone Contrarians

Sometimes, a blog entry engages you at such a fundamental level that your comments in response almost end up being a blog entry of their own. (This has yet to have happened on these pages, but eh, my random babble is probably less engaging than that found elsewhere.) Also sometimes you'd rather pig out on store-brand chocolate-chip cookies than write an original blog entry.

An excellent example of this happening is my response to ThongCharm-Priya's thoughts on the iPhone and all the hype surrounding it. What can I say, stuff happens (and sometimes things as well).

For those of you too lazy to click for yourselves, here are some highlights from the review, with some words randomly highlighted in various colors for no particular reason.

i'm sorry to be the contrarian here in this frothy summer milkshake which is the july launch of the 3G ipod, the motto of which appears to be "i will stand in line in the hot sun and queue like i live in a communist country to buy this object i covet and then be forced to activate it on at&t's crappy network and i absolutely must have it now cuz it's so beautiful and oh, dare i say, iconic".

[...]

form factor: the iphone is sleek, and is neat for pictures and videos with the edgeless screen.

[...]

keyboard: the iphone's keyboard blows. i fatfingered everything and it requires constant attention. [...] i've almost successfully memorized my blackberry pearl keypad so i no longer have to look when i type, and can type with one hand, which comes in handy when i'm walking or in a car or wishing i had the other 2 arms of lakshmi, which is 80% of the time while using the phone

[...]

web browsing: the html browsing was the biggest iphone disappointment because web pages on safari were miniature and unreadable and i couldn't intuitively figure out how to make the browsing easier in any way [...] and sadly, i am way behind in my conspiracy theories and editorial news about central asia.

[...]

i also for some reason got really excited about how you could change phone options. all of a sudden that lame options tab was fun. [...] somehow i liked the icons of everything better, and that's not a real competitive advantage.

And here's my comment in response:

All of those iPhone commercials that have inundated our TVs do a fantastic job of showing all of the nifty little things that the iPhone can do, and how it makes even the most conceptually boring tasks like unlocking the phone or choosing options fun and exciting. Props to Apple marketing for that.

However, there are actually quite a few things that the iPhone can't do, and some may surprise you. Prime example: there's no cut & paste... didn't you just assume that a device as sophisticated as the iPhone would have this basic feature? Even the capacitive touchscreen (for all of its general engineering awesomeness) will not respond to stylus-like input, and therefore in spite of Apple's push to get the iPhone entrenched in corporate America through its integration with MS Exchange, you'll never be able to use an iPhone to wirelessly sign on the dotted line and close the deal in the field (and yes, this is indeed a viable use case for a mobile phone, or at least it will be soon).

The other interesting side of the iPhone hype is how all the other carriers and manufacturers are rushing to bring iPhone-like devices to market, sometimes with similar hype (Samsung Instinct, I'm looking in your direction). While this is a global phenomenon, the funny/sad part is that American carriers who want to compete with the iPhone are still bumbling around with the first wave of imitation devices (e.g. the HTC Vogue/Touch/XV6900, my new baby) while customers of their overseas counterparts are already equipped with the second round of much beefier, sexier handsets (e.g. HTC Touch Diamond). If I subscribed to a GSM-based carrier, I might be tempted to buy an unlocked phone from overseas on eBay and plug in my SIM card to (which I did successfully when I was with T-Mobile)... only there's one small problem, in that most of these devices only support UMTS/HSPA, and the only such service that you can find in the U.S. as of this writing is in a few select cities on AT&T's network... anywhere else, and you're S.O.L.

At any rate, I like the fact that the iPhone has given a solid kick in the pants to the manufacturers and carriers (especially in the U.S.) who were dragging their feet on advancing mobile technology. There's no reason that we couldn't have had visual voicemail in 1999 or touch-oriented user interfaces in 2003, but thanks to the iPhone, those are looking to become new baseline features.

BTW, the thing about the iPhone keyboard is that you have to get used to the idea that the key is actually "pressed" when it's released (which is why it displays a larger version of the key you're pressing above your finger), so if you're used to a BlackBerry, Q, or Treo, it takes some mental adjustment. I installed an imitation iPhone keyboard on my XV6900 and after a few minutes I was tapping away at a pretty rapid pace. In the end, I ended up uninstalling that keyboard (it had a nasty bug whereby all letters entered from other soft keyboards would become numbers) and using the "Touch Keyboard" that comes pre-installed... it's basically a soft version of the BlackBerry Pearl's SureType keyboard, and after a few minutes of acclimation it becomes just as fast as a full hardware QWERTY.

High School Chemistry Review

BTW, in case you forgot what happens when you mix cesium with water:

The Captain's Cookbook, Part I

Lately, the ThongCharm ladies have made a habit of sharing with us some of their most interesting (experimental?) recipes and other culinary undertakings. Since imitation is the highest form of flattery, and since the universe requires some sort of counterbalance to their casually chaotic, quasi-artsy approach to food (lest everything collapse in a Big Crunch), I present to you, in the most somewhat-proud of manners:

THE CAPTAIN'S COOKBOOK
Applying a Services Oriented Architecture to Culinary Design Problems

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of a Services Oriented Architecture, suffice it to mean that I shall be both agile and lazy.

Also, I hereby dub myself The Cesium Chef.

And now, for our first recipe.

Random Sweet & Spicy Chicken Meatball Lettuce Wraps
Prep time: 90 seconds
Cooking time: Whatever makes sense, but probably not too much

Ingredients:

• 1/2 package Costco Sweet & Sour Chicken Meatballs (if you wish, you may instead use Costco Buffalo Chicken Meatballs or Costco Teriyaki Chicken Meatballs)
• 1 can pineapple chunks in pineapple juice
• 1/2 pound baby carrots
• 1 bottle K.C. Masterpiece Spiced Caribbean Jerk 30-minute Marinade
• 1 cucumber
• 1 head of lettuce, of whatever type, as long as it doesn't have salmonella

Cooking Instructions:

1. In a fairly large skillet or saucepan, combine the bottle of marinade, half the contents of the can of pineapple (chunks + liquid), and the meatballs. Bring to a soft boil over medium heat, then cover and simmer for some arbitrary amount of time, stirring whenever the thought occurs to you.
2. Using whatever broke-ass knife you have, chop the baby carrots and cucumbers into various three-dimensional shapes that could fit into a sphere of volume 25π/9".
3. Fill each lettuce leaf with some combination of meatballs, carrots/cucumbers, and pineapple, but try not to include too much of the marinade because it's very likely that the meatballs already contain way too much sodium!!! Serve immediately.

Please note that I haven't actually sampled the results of this recipe yet, as it's still cooking. Wait. I haven't checked on the meatballs in like 37 minutes.

The 10 Most Overrated Brands

A gent by the name of Lucas Conley (a name widely-known to 0.1% of the population) has a new book out called Obsessive Brand Disorder: The Illusion of Business and the Business of Illusion, in which he examines the inner workings, implications, and general insidiousness of marketing strategies that attempt to sell you on a brand name rather than on the actual qualities and benefits of a product.

You don't have to look around for long to realize how pervasive this technique is becoming in this day and age, as our attention spans dwindle and the opportunities for advertisers to reach us multiply exponentially. After all, if you don't have sufficient time or energy to research and evaluate your purchases rationally, all you're left with is a gut feeling whose genesis may have largely resulted from exposure to various sorts of black magic (e.g. brand marketing). (Think about it: who wouldn't be tempted to fill up their gas tank with a sexy iPump even if it cost them $0.50/gallon more?)

To help promote his book, Conley released to The Boston Globe a list of what he considers to be the ten most overrated brands. To save you the trouble of clicking through the whole list (and from all of the advertising entailed by this experience), I've reproduced it below:

• Southwest Airlines


• The Gap


• Los Angeles Lakers*


• Oprah


• MTV


• Dunkin' Donuts


• Victoria's Secret


• Apple


• Trump


• Generic Store Brands

*Okay, while the traumatic events of Game 7 of the 2000 Western Conference Finals will have me forever cursing the name of this Tinseltown team, Conley's argument that Kobe Bryant's spoiled, whiny egomania somehow translates into an over-inflated image of the team as a whole doesn't really make any sense. I suppose he could find a less transparent way to pander to his audience, but eh.

Any big surprises here? Which brands would you add to this list?

Your Choices at the Pump

The incident that prompted this post happened the other day at the Natick Plaza service station on the Mass Pike eastbound.

I had just pulled up to one of two pumps at the end of the station that offer both gasoline and diesel. These pumps have two separate nozzles, one at either end, and two banks of buttons to select either one of three grades of gas (standard, plus, or premium) or diesel. The diesel pump is clearly marked with a green handle, and the overall picture looks a lot like the one at right (only with an annoying television that endlessly blares the ever-tantalizing GasStationTV as you fill your tank).

As I watched the numbers on the pump tick upward at the rate of $4.96/gallon, a middle-aged woman in an old Subaru (a typical New England sight) pulled up to the opposite face of the pump I was using. Not thirty seconds later, she made her way around the pump to ask an innocent question:

Excuse me, can I ask you a question? Which one is gas, and which one is diesel? I don't want diesel.

As I explained to her that diesel was the one with the green label and handle, and that all she needed to do was use the other one, it occurred to me that questions such as hers are only going to become more common.

Imagine that it is the year 2020, you're on an extended road trip to see your parents, and you've just pulled off the interstate into a British HesxonGulfbil station to refuel your 2011 Toyota Camry (which is one of a shrinking population of non-hybrid Toyotas still in use). What would your reaction be if the pump console looked something like this?

Yep, that's what's probably gonna happen if (as it currently appears) there's no one-size-fits-all solution to our automotive energy needs. In this case, the only solution to the usability problem is for Apple to invent the iPump, whose extremely sexy touchscreen interface with integrated passive RFID payment capabilities will make sorting through this mess both easy and fun:

Tracking Your Car's Fuel Economy in an Excel Spreadsheet Is Completely Normal

As you can see, in the upper-left-hand corner is a summary of MPG metrics (including the average, median, best and worst fuel economy between fill-ups), in the upper-right is an embedded line graph of the Mystery Ship's fuel economy over time, and below that is a running log of all fuel stops that I've made since I purchased the car in December 2004:


That's about it. Nothing too special... I mean, I didn't bother to do a 3D plot fuel economy versus fill-up location over time or anything.

So, what does your spreadsheet look like?

Update (6/5/2008): If you are interested (and are completely normal like me), you can can download my spreadsheet template here to get started with your own fuel economy log.

I'm sure you'll note that there is clearly a general upward trend in fuel economy (taking into account seasonal variations in fuel composition and ambient temperature), mostly due to a recent increase in the proportion of highway driving relative to city driving (as reflected by the increase in fill-up frequency). Although some might ask whether the 2007 federally-mandated availability of ULSD fuel (which boasts a 97% reduction in sulfur content over LSD fuel, and therefore which I use exclusively) might have had an impact on these numbers, the 2007 data clearly indicate that the switch to ULSD had a negligible effect (if any) on fuel economy. Of course, you can't really see much of the 2007 data in the screenshot above, so you'll have to trust me on this one.