Today iOS 8.1 releases (hooray!). Now that we’ve all been using iOS 8 awhile how big of a thing is the ability to send a recording of your voice via iMessages? I’ve done it once for the sole purpose of demonstrating how it works. I thought it may be a generational thing but my kids report they aren’t using it either. 

The problem for me is that the ability to send an audio message defeats a lot of the advantages I get from text messages. When I’m in court, my secretary can send me updated witness availability via a text message. I can read that text message without having the judge throw me in the pokey. If instead, I start lifting my phone to my ear or playing audio messages, my results may vary. I just don’t see the ability to send audio messages (even with a slick interface) as something taking off. One wildcard in this for me is the Apple Watch. It may be a lot more convenient with something on my wrist. For now, however, I just don’t get it.

Judith Newman wrote a touching piece for the New York times about her autistic son’s relationship with Siri. If you’ve previously written off Siri and iPhone dictation, you should try it again. It just keeps getting better and better. I’m dictating these words using it.

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I sat down and watched the video of today’s Apple event and was left with a few thoughts:

1. No More iPad Parity

I’m curious why they spent so much time talking up the new iPad Air and then talked about the iPad mini as an afterthought. I thought last year’s updates, which gave you essentially the same specs with different screen sizes, was a great idea. I wonder why that didn’t continue. I can think of all sorts of reasons ranging from low sales of the prior mini to trying to push users to the bigger one. (I am an iPad Air fan.) I also have to wonder if the iPhone 6 Plus plays a role. Either way, the iPad mini is now a second class citizen.

2. Retina iMac

The retina iMac looks pretty nice. As I explained earlier, I’m not planning on going by the Apple Store anytime soon. Did you notice how Apple made a big deal about the electronics they invented to push so many pixels at the screen? I suspect that means it may be awhile before we get a retina 5K cinema display.

3. Sans Steve

Notice how nobody talks about how they miss Steve in these presentations. Apple management has really come up with a new formula for these presentations and they are getting pretty good at it. My only critique is that very short goofy jokes are fine. Longer goofy jokes, like videos of handshakes, get tedious.

The last several weeks we’ve seen a lot of attention placed on the treatment of women in the geek community. A few months ago, Brianna Wu, a game developer that happens to be female, published an opinion piece about the treatment of women in her industry. I found it enlightening and, as the father of two daughters and a human being, a bit disturbing. A few days ago, some anonymous person posted Brianna’s home address and then she started receiving death threats.

Peter Cohen at iMore covers this subject today with particular aplomb. One of the best explanations I’ve ever heard of geek misogyny came from John Siracusa a few years ago on the Hypercritical podcast.

I am not going to pretend to have all the answers to this problem but I do think we, as a community, should all shine as much light on this problem as we can and support our female geek friends in any way we can in confronting and eradicating this problem.

David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, joins us this week to talk about GTD, creativity, and using technology. This is another good one.

This week’s Jazz Friday pick is my first pick from the fusion jazz movement. In the 1970s and 80s, a lot of jazz musicians started fusing jazz to R&B, rock, and other genres of music. One of the pioneers in this form of jazz was Weather Report, founded by more traditional jazz artists Wayne Shorter, Miroslav Vitouš, and Joe Zawinul. (Zawinul composed a prior Jazz Friday pick: Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.)

Weather Report saw itself as jazz pioneers and over the years came to define the fusion jazz movement. Their most popular song by far is Birdland from the Heavy Weather album. The song was named after a New York jazz club that was ground zero for a lot of the bebop, cool, and post-bop eras that I keep writing about. Interestingly, the club itself was named after Charlie “Bird” Parker. Birdland also features bassist Jaco Pastorius, who is a legend in his own right and will get his own Jazz Friday post at some point. Birdland has become a standard with lots of jazz artists covering it over the years. I first played it with a big band in the 80’s. If you add one fusion song to your library, you’d be hard pressed to do better than Birdland.