“If the iPhone didn’t exist, I would have the Nexus One in my pocket right now—but then again, if the iPhone didn’t exist, the Nexus One wouldn’t either.”

He talks about how a Nexus One is good for folks that like to tinker, tweak, and modify their devices, but warns that it comes at a significant cost to its usability. If you want something that just works (and you don’t want to hack it “within an inch of its life”) then iPhone is the one for you.

[via Marco]

“For some reason we believe that sweeping in and fixing a problem has more drama, and gains more attention, than doing the work to predict and avoid problems.”

I think the problem is also a blame game. If we acknowledged that there were ways we could avoid the fire, then we would implicitly own the problem and more so, be responsible for avoiding the next occurrence. But when the next fire comes, implicitly we’ve now failed. The goal was to avoid the fire, not react quickly. This requires strategic thinking.

So if we never acknowledge there is a change that could make things better, then when the fire comes, we just block and tackle — it is happening to us, not caused by us. No one is to blame for the fire, and thus our only measure of success is our reaction speed.

Blocking and tackling is easy. Strategic thinking is hard.

—

Do you ever wonder whether you’d be better off walking instead of taking the bus? This app will help you answer that question.

Fine tune your personal walking speed and your city’s bus speed for the most accurate Walk or Bus recommendation.

Measure by kilometers, miles, or by configurable city block sizes Receive helpful feedback: “at a brisk pace you will get there 4 minutes faster than the bus”

Ideation: Chris Mueller & Dana Boyd
Graphics: Trevor Brown
Coding: Peter Edstrom
Contact: walkorbus@edstrom.net
Twitter: @walkorbus

• The opposite of public domain is their domain
• The opposite of open source software is their software
• The opposite of open standards is their standards
• The opposite of open file formats is their file formats
• The opposite of open rights is [their] copyright
• The opposite of an [open] democracy is [his/her] dictatorship

This may be good in some cases, but usually only for a limited time.

“If I let users steer product decisions, the result would be a massive codebase producing a bloated, cluttered product full of features that hardly anyone used at the expense of everyday usability and polish on the features that matter. Like Microsoft Word. Or Firefox.

By listening too much to outside suggestions, I’d destroy the very reason why I’m receiving them.”

If I had to sum up in a word what makes a good manager, I’d say decisiveness. You can use the fanciest computers to gather the numbers, but in the end you have to set a timetable and act.

—Lido Anthony (Lee) Iacocca

“So while [techies] trump up our skills at designing “easy to use” interfaces for our applications, millions of people are still trying to figure out how to get our beautifully designed application out of its zip file or disk image.  Or where in fact the Downloads folder is. Or what, exactly, a folder is. [...] I’ve watched firsthand as people who’ve struggled to do basic computer tasks as long as I’ve known them pick up an iPhone and be cruising around within hours, if not minutes. For people who do not already thoroughly understand computers, New World devices are easier to understand and easier to use.”

“A detail from the iPad keynote: Steve demoes the Mail application and he puts it in horizontal mode. Oh, look, an Inbox list pops in. Neat.

And I think, hmmm I wonder if you can resize that splitter, making the source list wider. Its a tiny target, so it would be hard to grab…

And then I realize: you can’t resize it.

And a bright light did shine upon my liberated face and a voice did whisper a thunder: You’re free. Free of pointless preferences and finger-baiting adjustments.”

[via Minimal Mac]

No camera? How will we do video chat?

Good entry price point of $499, but I’m irritated that I can’t use my $30/month iPhone internet on this thing. You want me to pay for internet per device? Seriously? Where is the Kindle internet model where it comes with free internet for life?

I can totally see myself sitting down to read a nice long book with the iBooks app. But I’m still skeptical I’ll buy many books this way — $15 for a new book, and no re-sell or lending capability? I don’t mind that with music, but I rarely read books more than once and want to be able to pass the book on when I’m done.

I feel bad for Kindle owners. Given the attention this thing is getting, the screen-looks-like-paper feature was an overrated (but necessary?) step to advance the art of eBooks. Sorry Amazon. Thanks for your efforts. Good luck with your ePaper initiatives – the rest of us will be happy with color alternatives.

The new apps look amazing. Especially the calendar program. And the iWorks apps. Can’t wait to try them out.

Interesting that Apple made their own “Apple A4” chip instead of putting an Intel chip into the device. I wonder what this means for the future of other Apple devices.

Oh yea, and the iPad name is horrible. Please Apple, please. Give up on the iEverything name. The original iMac was what? 1998? This is a tired, dull, and not-what-we-expect-from-a-leading-company-like-yourself name. Canvas would have been so much better. Or Slate. Or just “Apple Tablet”. iPad? iPad?!?

“Checking is something that we do with the motivation of confirming existing beliefs. [...] Testing is something that we do with the motivation of finding new information.”

So when you “test” your software, are you really testing? Or are you just checking?

Opinions and criticism welcome. Theme design by WPShoppe and it’s called Cleanr. Probably a little too clean, but I like it.

I’m an Apple fanboy to be sure, but what exactly can’t the iPhone do?

“The Nexus One seems like a nice enough phone, but it’s nothing revolutionary (it’s got a trackball, for God’s sake). Everyone is still operating inside the same box that Apple defined three years ago.”

On one hand, I’m glad to see some competition for Apple. But I don’t know that most consumers can see what’s happening: Google is playing the Microsoft game. Copy Apple as closely as possible and as quickly as possible. Android will always be a second-rate smartphone (or super-smartphone).

Google’s Android phone operating system will rearrange the icons, change the colors, and maybe even do a couple unexpected things. But the genius at Apple is already working on the next big thing – not trying to copy their competitors.

“The World Has Changed – Why Haven’t Your PM Tools and Approaches?
In the last 10 years many changes have occurred in the world of managing IT projects, yet we still see the same tools and approaches being employed. Is this because they are classic and timeless? Are the traditional PM approaches so successful that they do not need to be dragged here and there following trends and immature technology fads? No, I fear it is more that people are creatures of habit, and the usually more mature project management community, are worse than most at evaluating and adopting new approaches.”

The first thing you must do is admit you have a problem with your project management process. It isn’t the business analysis, coders, or testers that is broken. It’s the process that is broken. Not the people. Once you can admit that, the world becomes much much less stressful.

So anyway, NG did some analysis and found “The United States spends more on medical care per person than any country, yet life expectancy is shorter than in most other developed nations and many developing ones. Lack of health insurance is a factor in life span and contributes to an estimated 45,000 deaths a year.”

The chart is shocking:

A lot of companies seek to control employees. They have handbooks and policies. They monitor emails. They make rules about what’s allowed and what’s forbidden. [...]

Imagine an employee handbook that just said: “We trust you. Be mischievous.”

This makes a lot of sense to me. If the company trusts you with corporate secrets, company property, and access to production servers … maybe the policies on appropriate use of YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are misplaced.

“Someone asked me where I get all my good ideas, explaining that it takes him a month or two to come up with one and I seem to have more than that. I asked him how many bad ideas he has every month. He paused and said, “none.”

And there, you see, is the problem.”

Sounds a lot like photography advise: the best way to get a good photograph, is to just take a lot of pictures.

“In addition to expanded accessibility for those with hearing disabilities, the combination of captions withmachine translation expands YouTube accessibility across the globe. If a caption track is available, it can be translated automatically in any of the 51 currently available languages. As a result, video content otherwise not accessible due to a language barrier can now be understood by a significantly larger user population.”