Apple’s Reality Distortion Field Relocates to Wall Street

Apple’s Reality Distortion Field Relocates to Wall Street, article.
Apple is the most profitable company, can’t make enough products to meet demand and is the most admired by its peers. Yet Wall Street and media fanatics are claiming Apple is doomed. The reality distortion field is in full effect.
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"Surge in iPad mini Popularity Shows Tablet Market is in Flux"

Surge in iPad mini Popularity Shows Tablet Market is in Flux, article.
As time, technology and display technology have evolved, it has been discovered by customers that a slightly smaller, lighter less expensive iPad mini can do the job most the time. Even Tim Cook showed up at the Shareholder meeting sporting an iPad mini.

I totally agree. I love the Mini, particular that it's half the weight. It's way more comfortable to use, and fits in many of my pockets.

At the same time of course, I also think that bigger tablets are much wanted and needed. But that's for different purposes, that's for content creation, and for reading content with complex layout and graphics. (And surely for many purposes we'll discover when we have those tablets, like usual.)

Big-phones are growing

Seven inches are just better than five. Unless you want to keep it in your pocket.

The big-phone market is expanding, in more than one way.

It struck me recently, why don't the tablets with 3G or 4G capability also have phone capability? That surely can't be that hard? Well, now two of them do, an Asus Fonepad and the new Galaxy Note 8.

For those of us who use a big phone or small tablet 98% for surfing, reading and video*, and 2% for phone calls, "phablets" are kewl. It's just silly to have to carry two devices and have two contracts and bills, when one device easily could do it all.


*Many would throw in gaming here too, but it's funny, games could never hold my attention. I have tried dozens of them over the years, but after max ten minutes I just lose interest. 

"It’s Not Email That’s Broken, It’s You”

It’s Not Email That’s Broken, It’s You, article.

Every time I hear in some ways of bulging in-boxes, I get confused. To me that’s…. I dunno, like getting groceries delivered and just letting it sit in the hall, week after week…

I get up in the morning (or “morning”), and I handle everything in my inbox. Sometimes I’m lucky, and it’s just ten minutes. More typically, I guess half an hour to an hour, but that includes work and personal items. Occasionally it’s heavy and takes a couple hours, but that’s rare.

Then several times a day I check mail, and empty it every time. With the rare exception of the very long mail from a friend which I send to my iPad via Instapaper, to read it in comfort.

And I don’t dream of going to sleep without an empty inbox.
There’s nothing difficult about it. It’s like brushing your teeth, you just do it.
Inboxes are not *meant* for long-term storage! For that you have to create another box, for things like information you *might* need later. I also recommend having one for read-and-handled mail, if your system doesn't have one. Don't delete old mail.

But it seems to be a universal problem that many people simply have problems handling communication. Many years ago I worked for some months in a modern religious organization. They pride themselves on having the most sophisticated management system in the world, with about 10 big volumes of collected articles on it. Some of it is very workable, like: one of the central tenets is that to get work done, you do it once, right away, and you finish it. You don’t look at it, make plans, start something, then put it back… etc. You do it and finish it. And you keep your inbox empty.
Despite this clear doctrine, many people in the organization can’t manage it. I remember an executive who was being investigated, and one of the findings of his failures was that they’d found letters in his inbox dating back months.
I don’t know how many it’s true of, but I’d hazard a majority. At least of those who aren’t lucky enough to have a job (“post” they call it) which gets very little communication.

I think one of the problems is that people don’t include answering email in the category of “work”. They think that they will do “their work” first and *then* they’ll do their email, if they get time! But your communications is one of the most important parts of your work, trust me. The majority of of big and costly mistakes in companies comes from messed-up communication.

I guess it also hinges on interest. I like my email. And also I really hate clutter, so a not-empty inbox just irritates me until it’s handled.

But: right now I’m learning how to use interdental toothbrushes. I don’t like it, because I find it difficult to get to the back teeth. But I have to learn it because otherwise my teeth will decay, this has been shown to me clearly. So I’m learning it. I think it’s the same with things like inboxes, you just apply a bit of will for a while, until it gets to be a habit.

Custom fonts on the Kindle Paperwhite!

This is so great! When the Kindle Paperwhite came out we finally had a Kindle with more than one font. But lo... Amazon's choices of fonts were so anaemic that in reality we only really still had one or two fonts which were really good on the smallish BW screen. Sadness.

But now I found this tip about how to install custom fonts, hurrah!

No hacking necessary, and it is not too complicated, went smoothly for me.
For the USE_ALT_FONTS file, I just made a text editor document with a single space character in it, and named it thus.
I found fonts in the library/fonts folder both in my own user folder on my Mac, and in the root library folder. (I don't know what determines where they are installed.) It seemed that any format worked.


So apart from my favorite screen fonts like Georgia and Verdana, I of course couldn't resist installing some crazy fonts, just to show you and myself that it really worked! Here we go:

Font: Insolente

Isn't this great? It's one I found recently,
the best handwriting font I've seen. 

(all pics are clickable)

Font: Moderna

 Font: Codex

Thyme Sans

Sister Frisky

Ain't technology great!?

My iPhone case design! (Updated)

No sooner said than done.
I have now made my RedBubble account and created my first design, available for cards, prints, or iPhone or iPad cases.
Buy it and try it.

Update: I have added two new designs, one computer-work and one from a painting.

Cool, eh?
They say that their cases are highest quality, and that the color is somehow embedded in the material and won't peel off.

Apple Core Rot, society skin rot

Apple Core Rot, article.

Over the past few years a semi-conscious unease has been steadily growing in my mind: OS X is not getting more reliable and more stable, it is instead developing more and nastier problems that range from interference with getting work done to potential data loss.
This unease is now consciously realized, hence my decision to publish this series of pages and to no longer ignore the eruption of a serious bug, but to document it.

As is clear to anybody, I'm ecstatic about the new ereaders and tablets platforms. I love 'em.
But at the same time, I'm becoming more and more disenchanted and even fearful about what is happening to my once-beloved Mac platform. The Mac Pro has hardly been developed in five years, and the same can be said for the OS, which even seems to be getting worse, including for the very dubious choices of making it look and behave more and more like a smartphone.

Also in general, I feel that culture is getting more and more superficial and less and less interesting, everything is being reduced to sound bites and 140-character-sized "reports".

Something need to change, otherwise I might just step off the horse as a professional computer-user, and step down to a technologically simpler life. Maybe make paintings or write books instead of running a pay site, and use the web less, and ebooks and good films/TV more. Slow down. Go narrower, but deeper. Breathe instead of pant.

Faster and wider communication is wonderful in principle, but when it seems to be mainly used to disseminate either worthless gossip or mindless fear-mongering, I'm out.

Update:
Portlandia has a great sketch which illustrates this: A small newspaper is taken over by a company called Links PDX. And they no longer really write articles, they just link. The former boss gets honors for getting 78 million hits with an article. The whole content of the article is three words:
"Charlize Theron NSFW."
("Not Safe For Work", generally meaning nude.)
LOL. As it were.

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BTW, I've been thinking that a modern outlet for art is phone/tablet cases, tee-shirts, etc etc. So I've been thinking about teaming up with somebody who does that. But just now, an Anon linked to RedBubble.com in a very old post of mine. I'm not even sure if he was spamming for the site or not, but if the quality of their products holds, that might work.

Here's a pretty cool iPad back-cover which is sold via their site:

Ebooks up to 22% now, how fast will it go?

Worldwide eBook Sales Valued at $859 Million in 2012, article.
Worldwide ebook sales are drastically climbing and the big five publishing companies are now seeing 22% of their revenue stem from digital sales. 

And the "big five" are probably the hardest part of the market to change, because they have so much to lose in their print sales, so this is a very significant number. I think by now one would have to be a fool to consider ebook market "niche".

It will be interesting to see if there now will be a flattening-off of this market shift. If the number of people who will stick with paper come hell or high water is a huge group, or if in five years ebooks will be over 70% of the market, and in ten, 90%.

I think this will depend on 1: How many are *too* uncomfortable with technology, no matter how simple. 2: How usability improves. 3: Whether prices continue to fall. 4: Whether there will be any big programs like ereaders given away with subscriptions on a big scale. 5: How fast more publishers will shift to digital-only publishing.

And this will probably depend even more on the magazine market than the book market. Many more people read magazines than read books. And magazine publishers have been in deep doo-doo for years and it's not getting better. So if you can no longer get your favorite magazines on paper, but it's bundled with a tablet for a reasonable price, that will shift a lot, very fast.

I actually wonder if a big magazine market won't be perhaps the main thing calling for a bigger tablet. The 10-inch size is really too small for a proper magazine page. Here's hoping. (I'm sure it's just a question of when they'll be able to make it cheap enough and light enough.)

Photo by Toronto Star

Early learning

Hurrah for ebooks!! (updated twice)

People who don't yet take advantage of ebooks really should get wise.
For example, take this, Complete Anne of Green Gables. This is a great collection, and the price, $31, is certainly reasonable. And I have to admit that the books together is an attractive bundle to own physically.
(Mark Twain, by the way, was a big fan of Anne of Green Gables.)
(Many people only know it from films/TV, but I think the books are far superior. You have the time to really get to know the characters, and they are wonderfully written, and wonderfully funny, an understated, intelligent kind of humor.)

But they do take up space. Long-time readers know how it adds up. And now compare it to this item (seems unfortunately to only be available on Amazon UK at the moment): The Complete works of L.M. Montgomery.

Update: it turns out it is indeed available in the US. (Thanks to Len.)

It is illustrated, and it has everything, including the books above, the Emily books, the Storygirl books, all the shortstories, articles, and her autobiography! (The last was actually what I was looking for. I want to know how much of Emily's struggles and joys as a young writer, she had in common with her author.)

... And, it is zero grams and no space, being digital, and costs less than two Pounds Sterling! (Three dollars.)
(You may be able to find much of it for free, but I had to work through quite some hoops just to find the three Emily books and convert them to Kindle format, so I'm delighted to pay two Pounds for this collection, trust me.)

Montgomery's books are sometimes seen as books for young girls, but as she found out herself, they really transcend their genre. Full of wisdom and humour and warmth, and very entertaining, I love them despite me being a 49-year-old male.

Sometimes, especially in the Emily books, I am very impressed just by *how good* she is, both in terms of plot and in terms of language.

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I will happily pay a good price for a small item I really like. But I'm also sometimes delighted with simply a good deal. And it rarely comes better than this, look at how much you get for the three bucks (see list at the end of the post.)

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Delphi Classics in UK has many other interesting Collected-Works collections at similar crazy prices. And it is said that they are beautifully produced and formatted, something you can't often say about free ebooks.

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Update:

ganesha games said...
Anne of Green Gables was also made into a delightful anime adaptation. I don't know how faithful it is to the book but it was popular in the late 80's in Italy.

Thanks. Maybe I'll take a look at it. Despite:
I got the famous Canadian film from the eighties. And it really was very good, and "Anne" actor was sweet and perfect. But... like with Little Women, I felt that an adaption of such a book cannot *really* succeed, because the main attraction is that over the many hours you read the book, you grow *so* attached to the characters, and in a film, that just can't be done. (Perhaps in a TV show?)

Also, in those books, the other very strong side is the *tone* of the book, very loving, and the *thoughts* of the author, loving and reflective and philosophical, and often speaking directly to the audience. It might be done with a voice-over, not sure, but for some reason that is very rarely done. Maybe they fear it takes the audience out of the story? (I think a voice-over, done really right, can be great.)

Also, movie/TV adaptations almost inevitably popularize and flatten a book. They have to take out something for time, and of course they take out the things that some of the audience may not understand, or which it takes time to think about, something which you have when you read a book, but not when watching a movie.

An example of this is the James Bond movies. I don't consider the James Bond books great literature, but they do have *some* pathos and depth, which you certainly can't say about the movies, most of which are simple popcorn shoot-em-ups with big budgets.

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CONTENTS of The Complete works of L.M. Montgomery:

Anne of Green Gables Series

ANNE OF GREEN GABLES

ANNE OF AVONLEA

ANNE OF THE ISLAND

ANNE OF WINDY POPLARS

ANNE’S HOUSE OF DREAMS

ANNE OF INGLESIDE

RAINBOW VALLEY

RILLA OF INGLESIDE

Emily Trilogy

EMILY OF NEW MOON

EMILY CLIMBS

EMILY’S QUEST

Pat of Silver Bush Series

PAT OF SILVER BUSH

MISTRESS PAT

The Story Girl Series

THE STORY GIRL

THE GOLDEN ROAD

Other Novels

KILMENY OF THE ORCHARD

THE BLUE CASTLE

MAGIC FOR MARIGOLD

A TANGLED WEB

JANE OF LANTERN HILL

The Short Story Collections

CHRONICLES OF AVONLEA

FURTHER CHRONICLES OF AVONLEA

UNCOLLECTED SHORT STORIES

The Short Stories

LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

The Poetry

THE WATCHMAN AND OTHER POEMS

UNCOLLECTED POEMS

The Poems

LIST OF POEMS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

LIST OF POEMS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

The Non-Fiction

COURAGEOUS WOMEN

The Autobiography

THE ALPINE PATH: THE STORY OF MY CAREER

Contextual Pieces

MISS MARIETTA’S JERSEY

L.M. MONTGOMERY by Marjorie MacMurchy

ANNE OF GREEN GABLES REVIEW (I)

ANNE OF GREEN GABLES REVIEW (II)

OUR WOMEN

LETTERS FROM THE LITERATI

“ANNE OF GREEN GABLES” READY

ANNE OF GREEN GABLES FILM REVIEW, 1920

iPhone/Mini stand (updated)

Frameshift stand for iPad Mini and phones. Not cheap, but I have to admit it looks really nice.

And... on the top picture, doesn't it look like some sort of big piece of workout equipment or summin?    :-)

The site is not very helpful with info, like what does it weigh, and how do you change the angle? (Surely not with tools, as it looks like?)

Update:

Richard Ford of IGP said...
We updated the descriptions of the FrameShift Mini and FrameShift based on your comments.

... They added info about the weight (70 grams only for the Mini), and how to change the angle: "...using only your hands, no tools required. The friction hinge ensures it will stay at the angle you set until you change it and won't come loose over time." Thanks, Richard.

(This is what I love about small companies, they can be responsive. Big companies, I guess, can't allow to delegate enough responsibility to let people speak for the company, and the execs don't have the time.)


I'm tempted to get one, but then I really like my Griffin xPo.

They also have a full-iPad stand, which looks more like something from a science fiction movie, despite its simple function of just propping up an iPad.     :-)

Platforma iPad bag

iPad one

I was just looking at my "old" iPad One, and I was struck by two things: 

1: How much I still like it, and how much it recalls to me the feeling of how immensely important a step it was in computing. I think very few people yet realize just how big tablets is, I think it's almost on par with the World Wide Web. 

2: How outdated it is. The screen is not even close to iPad 2's screen, despite having the same resolution. It is too slow for some of the new apps. It doesn't have a camera. It can't use the newest iOS (6), it can't use Siri or dictation, etc. (To be fair, iPad 2 can't use Siri either.)

3: So I looked it up on eBay UK, and was shocked at the high prices it is still fetching! Around £200/$300! That is not much less than a brand-new iPad 2 or iPad Mini! 

I am not sure what this means. Perhaps there is waiting to get a new iPad, though I have not heard of this. Or this is just another vote about how important the platform is, dripping down even to version one. I dunno. 

Apple defends smallness

An easy way to make ebooks?

Will we get an easy way to make ebooks? (I put this on my mail blog because it has a bigger readership and I think this cause deserves that.)