TechDistortion

A Phone Rings And Disrupts a Concert...

So a phone rings and disrupts a concert…that’s something that’s happened thousands upon thousands of times in the past and will happen again in the future. Two differences that make this sort of story newsworthy: it stopped the New York Philharmonic mid-movement and it was an iPhone. Were it another kind of phone it wouldn’t have mattered so much but Apple being the biggest company by market capitalisation makes it more newsworthy. Not just that but perhaps one of the curiosities of the iPhone from Day 1 in 2007 was the operation of the silent/ringer switch and how it handles alarms.

The point of contention seems to centre around whether the silent/ringer switch is actually a mute switch for all audio coming out of the phone. It does mute everything with two exceptions: Find My iPhone alerts and Alarms from the built-in clock application. (Other apps if you jailbreak it perhaps). Argument 1 says: Mute with no exceptions. Argument 2 says there should be selectability for which apps/notifications can ignore the switch.

Apple have chosen their path and if they make it configurable and there’s another incident with the Calgary Philharmonic this time for example then you can bet that there will be a “it’s too confusing now it’s configurable and I thought it was on silent” or the configuration is buried “ten levels down in the Settings app and I couldn’t find it” or similar complaint with anger directed at Apple. Even if Apple do make it configurable, you can guarantee they will stick with the iPhones current behaviour as its new default.

Say what you will and believe what you want, the one fact I can’t get past is how this functionality has been in place for more than five years and only now people are up in arms about it after a single public incident. Take responsibility for yourself and learn how your device works. Turning off a device is the only true way to ensure it won’t “go off” during a concert, movie or performance and people should follow that advice instead.

To me, the fact this is news and a topic for discussion borders on the ridiculous. Move along people…there’s nothing left to say here…

We're Too Big For Your Trade Show Now, Thanks Anyway...

The recently concluded Consumer Electronics Show (CES) held in Las Vegas in the USA was Microsofts final. Much in the same way that Apple bowed out of MacWorld a few years ago with Frank Shaw confirming in a blog post that Microsoft: “…won’t have a keynote or booth after this year because our product news milestones generally don’t align with the show’s January timing.” Despite Apples comment that they reached millions of people in their Apple stores around the world and that made trade shows less important, many people have speculated that Apple found the January timeframe for product announcements a frustration they felt obligated to deal with. If that’s true it didn’t show as picking some of Apples product announcements at past MacWorlds, most announced products were launched within a month - the big exception being the iPhone in 2007:

2007: Apple TV Mk 1 February (1 month later); iPhone Ships in June (6 months later)

2008: MacBook Air late January (2 weeks later); Apple TV Mk 1 Hardware Update late January (2 weeks later); Time Capsule February (1 month later)

2009: 17" MacBook Pro late February (1 month later)

Microsofts keynotes at CES were much worse in terms of what they talked about and what/when they delivered. An interesting piece by Business Insider was a look back at their last 11 keynotes and what was announced and what never came to be.

No matter how you look at it, trade shows used to be the big way to rub shoulders with your distributors, potential distributors and in some cases end customers directly. It was the place for journalists to flock to, to garner as much tech news as they could about the latest and greatest in products from a diverse range of companies from all over the world.

Outside of a trade show, news aggregator sites amongst themselves monitor their own subset of companies, start-ups and blue-chip companies for the latest in news about their products. It is now very common for product announcements to be very low-key and yet still be far reaching, with keynotes usually made available on video or even streamed live in some cases, with tech bloggers live blogging some events to eager tech enthusiasts. As tech becomes more mainstream the need to be at a trade show becomes less and less important - particularly for the bigger players like Microsoft and Apple. To the big tech companies, trade shows are a big expense with little traceable payback. They disrupt development schedules and drain resources that could be used elsewhere while marketing work on a better keynote in a more controlled location at a time of their own choosing; not the trade show organisers choosing.

The smaller players (those that can’t gather such large audiences at a whim) need trade shows to make connections and further their business. It’s still expensive but there can be enough of a payback to make it worth their while. They don’t take as much floor space and can be more cost-effective for them than the larger companies.

It seems for the moment and near future even that some technology companies are simply saying, “I’m sorry but we’re too big for your trade show now, thanks anyway…” then packing their bags for good. It’s not so good as the trade show loses a draw card or two in the large company as it departs, but that leaves a big space on the floor open for the smaller companies that really need that air-time.

Being Pedantic About Pedanticism

There are many ways in which bloggers, tech writers, journalists and so on, attract attention. I see the following as four sub-types of Journalistic content. The most common is sensationalism, and I think that’s relatively self-explanatory; examples are: 9to5Mac and BGR that publish a significant number of wild, attention-grabbing rumours regularly. Another is aggregatism (news “aggregators” and yes I know that aggregatism isn’t a word yet: I’m making it mine…) extolled by sites like The Verge and Engadget that try to bring all the tech news you may ever want to read into a single web site based on multiple sources including their own internal sources (in some cases). Factism is pure analysis, devoid of opinion and seeks to analyse the facts and only the facts and draw a purely logical conclusion from those facts without bias; a good example of this is Asymco. Then there’s the art of pedanticism and in the context of technology opinions, I would like to explore further. Keep in mind that most news sources produce articles of every different type, however the sites I’ve mentioned I feel as though they tend to produce more of that type of content.

Firstly, let’s be clear about exactly what I mean when I say Pendanticism, that comes from Pedant, “(one) who unduly emphasises minutiae in the presentation or use of knowledge” and minutiae, a “…minor detail” (plural). In this context, someone that points out the most minor aspects of technology products that are both good and bad and talks about them usually at great length. I don’t see this as Factism as it’s not an in-depth analysis but rather picking at minor points of the overall product and focussing solely on them at the expense of other facts that are usually ignored or downplayed.

So what I hear you say? I suppose it’s fine really until one day I was asked on Twitter by a friend what I thought about a particular tech related podcast. My initial response was I thought they were too pedantic and didn’t want to listen beyond the two episodes I had sampled. This generated comments back and forth between the podcaster and even garnered a mention on their next podcast - the year in review. I was challenged to listen to more episodes and give it another chance. When I did, my opinion was unchanged: they were “a bunch of pedants” as they mentioned I had accused them of being.

In line with myself being my own harshest critic, I began re-examining my own choices in PodCasts that I listen to and sites that I frequent. The truth was I listened to plenty of podcasts where the majority of what was discussed was nothing but pedanticism. Some of the best rating podcasts available on the internet contained little but pedanticism. These podcasts attract so much attention because they incited such strong agreement or disagreement with the minutiae they discuss. Some people are passionate about technology (I am, so I understand that) so the pedanticism has had a really positive effect on their popularity.

Think about the other extreme: Imagine a podcast where two people discuss a new smartphone. The dialog might sound like this: “Sony Ericsson released a new phone.” “What’s it called?” “The ‘Sony Ericsson Mesmerize Incredible Pro Prime G2’…” “What’s it like?” “Good” “Just good?” “Yeah, good.” Call the closing credits. Guaranteed it would be less popular than one that enters into a pedantic discussion regarding the ‘clicky-ness’ of the ‘Back’ button on the phone instead.

In the final analysis the issue I had with the podcast in question was that I didn’t like it when the topics under discussion were regarding things I really enjoyed and they were being so ruthlessly, pedantically pulled apart by the co-hosts. Then that podcast is not for me - moving on to the next one. There’s only a limited amount of time in the day to listen to such things anyway.

What I’ve learned is that pedanticism is just a method of attracting a specific audiences’ attention. Whether it is intentional or not by the writers/podcasters it has proven to be very effective and made many sites/podcasts very popular. Being called pedantic shouldn’t carry a negative connotation in the sphere of writing and journalism, as it is preferable to most over the alternatives.

All of that said, it should be added that being pedantic in the content isn’t the only ingredient to a good podcast or website but it is an interesting element. I should stop: Now I’m just being pedantic about pedanticism I suppose.

Word counts:

- Pedantic: 5 occurrences

- Pedanticism: 6 occurrences

Why I Love Shifty Jelly (not the edible kind...)

I’m not a big fan of large corporations in general - especially when it comes to software companies. When small startups or so-called “indie” developers make a name for themselves they usually bring a personality that is very close to those of their key employees and it shows in how they conduct business. They’re not stuffed shirt, collar and tie, business speak and double-talk. One that has always impressed me is the Australian developer, Shifty Jelly.

Why I love Shifty Jelly is mostly about their attitude and an app of theirs I use constantly is Pocket Weather AU. When updating today to version 2.4.5 I came across the following text in their description update: (I haven’t asked for their permission however I can’t see them complaining - SJ: Let me know if this is okay)

“- Fixed iOS 3 radar crash. So now we want to talk to you people who still run iOS 3. Everyone else, you’re excused. No really this is a private conversation, go send some Twitterz or something. Off you go.

Ok, now that we’re alone with our iOS 3 friends, let’s talk.

At first we thought about being smug with you: ‘2009 called, it wants it’s OS back’, but that seemed nasty.

Then we considered the helping approach: ‘You know pretty soon all apps including our are going to required iOS4’, but that sounded patronising. Then we pondered the angry approach: ‘Frickety frick frick people, update your fracking devices! Can’t you do anything right?!’ but that had 3 fricks (and one frack!), which is at least 2 more than any sane person would ever use, unless they were from the Balkans, in which case we’d have needed 32 of them.

Then we considered compassion: ’look, I realise iTunes is scary, god knows I’m scared it’s going to wipe my phone every time it gets within 2 meters of that crazy white cable’ but we thought Apple would slap us silly if we put that in there.

Then we thought about trying the mum approach: ‘Alexander Jones you update your phone this instant you hear me!’ and it was funny, because the one Alexander Jones out there would have just freaked out, but then Paul Allen would have missed out, not to mention Sue Morgan and Brad Smith.

Then we just gave up and released a fix.”

BRAVO.