I’ve received several emails complaining about the gallery of Star Wars: The Force Awakens props and concept art I posted last week. I don’t understand why people are complaining since I explained in the post there’d be spoilers. Nevertheless, I do feel a little bad so this week I’m posting this spoiler free trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakes created by fellow Mac geek, Taz Goldstien. Enjoy.
Dan Moren over at Six Colors points out that Apple has now published the Apple Watch online user guide. I’m very interested in force touch as a new way to interact with touch screens. The magic term of art in the Apple Watch is “firmly touch”. I ran it and found 37 separate instances of the phrase in the user guide. I’m going to go through them later just to see how they are using it. Yes. I’m that kind of nerd.
If you are like me and checking to see if your watch has shipped yet, you may want to spend some time watching the guided tour videos at the Apple Watch website, which are now complete.
This is the first “new category” Apple product I’ve ever bought from Apple where I feel, based on these videos and my experience in store with the sample watches, completely ready to pull it out of the box, strap it on, and get back to work. At least in theory …
As WWDC approaches, there is a lot of speculation about Apple releasing some sort of new Apple TV product. Most interesting, we’ve heard rumors that they are negotiating with some of the major networks so they can offer a television package where you pay some flat monthly fee and you have channels streaming through your Apple TV.
There’s a lot to like about such an idea. With most cable providers, the user interface design is an afterthought and looks like it. Navigating my cable system is a mess and I’d love to see what Apple could do. Nevertheless, I don’t think this is going to solve the“TV Problem”.
Recently I spent some time at the local corporate office of my local cable provider. It’s is a big company and I’m sure they have lots of offices like this all over the country but the one I was at was gorgeous, huge, and full of employees. It is quite an enterprise. Setting up a cable network is not cheap or easy. It up takes a lot of money and manpower. In exchange for this investment, the government, more or less, gives cable providers local monopolies so they can recoup their investment. That strategy seems to be working because these companies appear to be massively profitable. This article claims that Time Warner Cable has a 97 percent profit margin on Internet service. According to the New York Times, last year Comcast reported $2 Billion in profits.Moreover, the cable companies seem intent on holding onto this advantage. Last year Comcast spent nearly $17 Million lobbying. Time Warner spent $7.8 Million. That data pipe going into your house is big business and existing cable providers are going to do everything they can to remain the only person that can give it to you.
And that is the real “TV problem”. It has nothing to do with television production or licensing at all. It’s all about that Internet pipe coming in your house. Even if Apple is able to make a deal with the content creators, you’re still going to need to pay for Internet access. The cable companies understand this is the current vector and that’s why they are suddenly pushing back against net neutrality.
I don’t see a scenario where Internet access suddenly gets much cheaper and government regulation clamps down on cable company profits. There’s too much money at stake and there’s too much lobbying going on for that to ever realistically happen. In my opinion, the only way we’re going to truly revolutionize Internet access and, in turn, television access, is when we cut the cable entirely. I think it’s going to require a technological breakthrough.
When we can access the Internet directly from the satellite or some other wireless medium and it doesn’t involve guys driving around with trucks and ladders, then there’s a potential for competition and a much more satisfactory position for consumers. I have no idea when this will happen but I suspect it will … eventually. Until then, I don’t know if there’s any solution to the “TV Problem”.
This week Katie and I run down our top five web services to boost productivity and some of our best tips to for using them.
While attending the Star Wars Celebration yesterday, I got the opportunity to tour an exhibit of costumes, Models, and Props from the upcoming Star Wars, The Force Awakens movie. This pushed all my nerdy Star Wars buttons and it will probably press yours too. SPOILER ALERT: Be advised these pictures most certainly contain spoilers. There are a lot of images in this gallery. Enjoy.
About a month ago I wrote a snarky post about Microsoft updating Word. In my defense, Word for the Mac has not had the best track record over the past several years. Nevertheless, I do frequently need to use Word in the law gig and I’ve been using the new beta on nearly a daily basis and have to admit, I like the new version. It’s still Word and full of features, buttons, and dials, but this is the cleanest user interface they’ve had yet. Most importantly, it is the most stable version of Word on the Mac I’ve used since before the Intel switch. I’ve not had a single crash.
Earlier this week Microsoft released an update to the beta that you can download here. I asked around to some other Office power user friends and I’m hearing that Outlook is having issues but if you are just using Word, give it a spin.
There’s an interesting Kickstarter project built around expanding the new MacBook’s one USB-C port. I think USB-C is going to be an interesting contrast to Thunderbolt in third party adoption. I’m really not going out on much of a limb here since it is “USB” but when you consider this port is non-proprietary and going to be on a lot of devises in the not to distant future, I doubt you’ll need Kickstarter to find cables.
I’ve got a full agenda of meetings today but it looks like my day ends pretty close to an Apple Store. Sounds like an excuse to go play with the demo Apple Watches to me. I’m going to be turning Periscope on at approximately 4:45 PM PST so if you are far away from an Apple Store and would like to look at the demo watches with me, check in with me on Twitter at about that time.
One of the most frequently used iPhone Today View widgets on my iPhone is the Hue App. It isn’t anything particularly special but with a quick flick down, I can can turn the lights on (and off), which is nice and faster than opening an app and navigating to buttons.
The interesting part to me is how second nature this has become. Doing the home screen posts, I find people either love using widgets or don’t use them at all. I’d be interested to know how many people actively use Today View widgets. I’m guessing it’s a pretty small percentage of overall iPhone owners and that may explain why Apple has backed off it’s initial, conservative stance with respect to widget approval. I also have to wonder if the Apple Watch may wake people up to just how handy widgets can be on all of the iOS devices.
