weblog
Lingering questions about the iPhone 3G
Monday, June 9th, 2008, 3:35 pm EDT
The awesome iPhone 3G has been officially announced, but many questions have been left unanswered.
The price: we know it’s supposed to be cheap, but is this $199 8GB base price part of a contract? If the actual price without a contract is higher, can we re-start our contracts to get this deal?
Answer: Nailed it. Previous iPhone customers can upgrade and renew their contract to secure the new $199 price level. ∞
- What do we do with our old iPhones? If we don’t want them, are they bricks? Will they resell? Is there a trade-in program so we can recover some of the costs and maybe even recycle the materials?
- What about Flash support? It’s getting pretty ridiculous that we can’t access such a large part of the web. I understand this is largely the fault of the web developers, but there’s no reason that we still lack Flash support.
- Did they nail copy and paste this time?
- Does it support video? Can we teleconference?
- When can we demo it in stores? What were those packages that were to be opened tomorrow? I called both AT&T and Apple stores, but retail employees haven’t heard anything yet.
- How will 3G hold up with the upcoming surge of users?
- Is the battery replaceable?
- What happens to the iPod Touch? Will they discontinue it?
- Is there support for wallpapers? Can applications at least change that?
- Is the processor any faster?
- Is there some way (first- or third-party) to do MMS?
- This is still an amazing piece of technology. How the hell did they do that? Is everybody going to have one of these now?
The Unbearable Ambiguity of Predictions
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008, 8:21 pm EST
In philosophy, you learn that a lot of your basic assumptions about reality are depressingly incompatible or inherently meaningless. One of the clichés on which I rest many of my most meaningful decisions has been to live without regrets. Don’t do anything you’ll regret, and don’t avoid trying something you’ll regret having missed.
Well, Time is running an article, Can You Predict Happiness? (998 words), which basically overturns that. The idea may seem simple — people are far too distractable and moment-centered to predict how much they’ll enjoy something — but it has really fundamental consequences. I read this article a week ago, and yet I still keep thinking about it. Once you make a decision, even one you find important, and go with it, “the unchosen alternatives evaporate.” The good news about that is, when making a decision seems like a toss-up, you can be happy with either choice. That bad news is, if you take it to the extreme, it’ll render all of your decisions meaningless and arbitrary. You would have been fine going with that other career, that other spouse, that other life.
You know, maybe Hillary wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Update: John tipped me off to the fact that the experiment’s designer, Dan Gilbert, has done a talk on this very subject for TED. In twenty-one minutes, he clarifies it much better than either myself or the Times article does. ∞
Facebook’s new profile preview
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008, 9:13 pm EST
In the same way that they gave us a preview of profile changes last time, fishing for feedback, Facebook is giving previews of the next possible profile changes to users to see what people think.
There’s no point in commenting on the photos or notes, unless you’re discussing the changes with other users. Facebook asks that you email profilespreview@facebook.com instead. Hopefully having them manage it privately means even more feedback will be considered.
The main changes?
- I’ve always considered the end user first, even before the developer, and the way in which they are changing the profile seems to do just that. Similar to the iPhone version of the site (where efficiency in information design is even more important), profiles have tabs. The most frequently-changed, and thus the most viewed portion of the profile is what you’ll see first.
- The layout of the entire site is wider than it was before. You can notice this because the whitespace (blue, in this example) between the link to the “Inbox (1)” at the top, and “home” is much wider than before. One of the great things about Google projects and sites like Netvibes is the use of all the available screen real estate. Facebook might not be in a position to change the layout that drastically, but at only 800 pixels wide, the width is beginning to become constraining. In a trend possibly started by the latest New York Times redesign/realign, sites have begun adapting to larger screen resolutions. Considering the density of the Facebook homepage, perhaps it’s time to consider 1024×768 a minimum resolution, although the iPhone has made this a more confusing situation. Application developers will have to adapt to the new wide-column width if this change goes through.
- Photos is the third tab, although it seems likely that Media would be a better choice. Perhaps the Photos tab will be a listing of all the albums of a user, but this is already done with the Photos application. Naming it “Media” would allow for boxes of videos, audio clips, and books, and thus seems much more appropriate.
- Many of the changes in the last set of proposed changes never went through. The mini-feed has undergone many aesthetic changes, including a line indicating a speech bubble in relevant items, and a huge amount of whitespace between feed items. I would guess and hope that neither of these changes will go through.
Update: The Facebook Developer blog has some more information about the changes. It seems like applications can only go in the narrow columns of the main tabs, or in tabs of their own. We’ll see if this decision sticks.
Another update: a less tidy profile picture shows that the wall will be merged with the mini-feed. This is a major change, one that I have a feeling won’t go well with users. ∞