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In Defense of Comments… Again
Thursday, January 5th, 2012 | Uncategorized | Comments Off
It seems every year or so the high and mighty tech writers come out with anti-comment posts. And just like last time, I’m here to defend them. The current anti-comment post comes from Matt Gemmell.
He lists a lot of the benefits, but they don’t seem to come close to over riding the best reason to have comments- further the conversation. Oh sure HE benefits a lot, and HE can participate in the conversation, and that’s his right, but NOBDOY else can. That’s a huge dent to the interactive web.
Not everybody can have a blog, and very few people will have more than a few token followers on the blog or twitter. So very few people see the responses, very few people will be prodded to think critically, or learn more information. All those are bad things.
Bloggers who don’t have comments turned on are sheltered, and so are their audiences. Its hurts the readers, and it doesn’t help the bloggers become better. Comments are not shouting matches, not if they are run right, and blogs without comments are not a curated conversation- because you need to have more than one person in a conversation. Those bloggers need to wake up.
Luckily, those selfish bloggers are few and far between, and there are great ones like GigaOm out there. Somehow I missed two excellent articles about comments on GigaOm. The first one explains that comments are perfect, but they are still a necessary part of a good blog. I love this paragraph here:
That said, however, not everyone has a blog, and not everyone is on Twitter or Facebook. One of the benefits of having comments is that they are open to everyone — although that is obviously part of what can make them so noisy as well. The barriers to entry are low, and so there are plenty of “drive by” comments and trolling. Having people respond on their own blogs or on Twitter and Facebook can also fragment the conversation on a topic, making it difficult to follow and causing potentially valuable responses to be lost or not recognized properly.
The most compelling reason to have comments is that you actually care what other people think. It’s true, as Siegler and others argue, that readers can find other ways to comment: they can post a remark on Twitter with a link, they can do the same on Facebook or Google+, they can send an e-mail, or they can write a response on their own blog. But doesn’t that make it even harder for a blogger to find and respond to all of the thoughtful comments, since they will have to check all of those other sources? I think in most cases, bloggers who shut down comments don’t do this — they simply don’t respond.
Using SMART Utility When Your Mac is Running Slow
Friday, April 8th, 2011 | Uncategorized | Comments Off
Check out this excellent article about using SMART Utility to check out your HD. It is part of a series of articles on how to fix a slow running Mac.
Ugly UI rules the App Store
Friday, January 7th, 2011 | Uncategorized | Comments Off
It starts with the App Store itself. The Close, Minimize, Zoom buttons (red, yellow, and green) are in a none standard location. It looks ugly. There is no title bar, and the toolbars are an ugly monochrome. This is just as bad as the new iTunes (vertical stoplight buttons, monochrome sidebar, nonstandard scroll bars).
Next up is the new Twitter for Mac app. Its not surprising its ugly, and its UI leaves much to be desired- its descended from Tweetie for Mac. That was one of the worst Twitter applications. It took a couple of versions to support Growl, and to send a tweet it was Shift-Enter which was incredible frustrating and stupid. See this post for more on that.
Back to Twitter- it has nonstandard stoplight buttons (sound familar?). It has no Titlebar OR toolbar- so how the heck does one move the window? By the ugly black box on the right. The font is in Helvetica, rather than the proper Lucida Grande. The new Tweet window is draggable by the bottom, and is not attached to the main window.
Because Apple has led the way with their bad UI design, other apps have also taken that approach. What a mess. For more on this, check out this post from Tim Morgan.
Mac App Store
Monday, November 22nd, 2010 | Uncategorized | Comments Off
I’ve had a few weeks to digest the Mac App Store, and what it means for SMART Utility, as well as any future apps. The Mac App Store has all the same benefits and issues as the iPhone App Store. Selling an app just got so much easier. No more worrying about setting up a store front, worrying about payment processors, serial number systems, or bandwidth hosting. Its great for the customers too- easy installation, easy updates, and no more serial numbers.
But it also comes with problems, the biggest of which is the restrictions. Even if I wanted too, I could not sell SMART Utility in the app store. It violates a number of rules, and version 3.0 will violate more. I don’t like giving control of selling to another company. And I will also lose my connection to my customers- as Apple does not release that information.
I’m sure the store will do great, but I’ll be happy to continue to sell my app the old fashioned way.
SMART Utility 2.2.1 is Out!
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 | Uncategorized | Comments Off
I’m please to release version 2.2.1 of SMART Utility. The biggest features are progress bar for opening files, a 64 bit build, and a new feedback system.
Note that there are now 2 builds. Because of how Apple’s development tools work, the 64bit build can only be compiled with the 10.5 SDK. There are also some bug fixes and changes that allow for newer features. So if you are running 10.5 or 10.6, run the 10.5+ build. Only use the 10.4 build on 10.4 (though it will run on 10.5 and 10.6). If you don’t know which to use, download the 10.4 build.
Full Release Notes:
- Added support for 64 bit build (10.5+ build only)
- Added progress bar for opening drive reports (10.5+ build only)
- Added Clear Log button in log window
- Fixed a crash on 10.4 systems
- Fixed bug reading in drive attributes where extra line would appear
- Fixed spacing of log output
- Fixed two spelling mistakes in preferences
- Now ignores errors from attribute 190 by default
- Improved error handling in certain conditions
- Removed deprecated API calls and replaced with modern ones
- Removed Smart Crash Reports and replaced with UKCrashReporter for 10.6 support
- Removed built in feedback system and replaced with UKFeedbackProvider, also now sends all logs automatically
Steven F Gets It All Wrong
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 | Uncategorized | Comments Off
In his recent blog post Steven writes
This is such a perfectly encapsulated nutshell of exactly why Apple does not allow third-party background processes on the iPhone.
He gets it all wrong. If this is why Apple doesn’t allow third-party background apps on Touch OS X devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad), then Apple has failed at UI innovating. Palm, as well as the Android, have very poor interfaces for allowing background applications.
Mac OS X (which the iPhone OS is based on) can handle background processes just fine. Obviously, the interface for dealing with them is poor for a small touch device. So a new interface needs to be created. I don’t know what Apple has in mind, but I will tell you how I’d do it.
Double click the Home Button, and up comes a popover listing all running applications- iPod, Mail, Safari, Twitter. Each has a little X next to it to kill the app. Tap on the app and the popover flips over to reveal a widget for that app (ala the iPod that currently pops up on a double click). Heck to assuage the nonsensical battery life arguments (let me choose what and how my battery life is- that is why Mail and the iPod can run in the background if I want), a maximum of 4 apps can be running.
I think that solves the problem once and for all. After finally allowing multitasking (just like the finally allowed copy and paste), Apple has only one more hurdle for the perfect phone- unsigned apps. Android won’t stand a chance once those two things are checked off. I’m anxious to see iPhone OS 4.0 to see how they really do implement background apps.
Thoughts about the iPad
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 | Uncategorized | Comments Off
So I’ve had some time to digest the iPad announcement. For the time leading up to the official unveiling, I was unimpressed with any idea of a tablet. “Why would I need one?”
Well, color me impressed. I could definitely see using this around the house or on a long distance trip to surf the net, play games, even type on it. Sometimes it would be nice not to look at a small screen, or lug around a big laptop.
Now, I don’t like the fact that it still doesn’t allow unapproved apps, but I’m hoping that changes with time. However, the ability to run iPhone apps, as well as apps specifically designed for the iPad will be very cool.
I will probably wait for revision B in any case, but I will probably pick one up.
SMART Utility on MacBreak Weekly!
Thursday, December 24th, 2009 | Uncategorized | Comments Off
I forgot to post this last week. SMART Utility was a Pick of the Week on MacBreak Weekly. Thanks to Peter Krogh.