Linked List: October 13, 2011

Thursday, 13 October 2011

Marco Arment on a subtle but potentially far-reaching change in iOS 5:

There’s no longer anywhere to store files that don’t need to be backed up (or can’t be, by the new policy) but shouldn’t be randomly deleted. This is problematic for lots of apps […].

This kicks in when free space is low, so it’s going to affect people with 8 and 16 GB devices more than those with 32 and 64 GB devices.

Character-by-Character Insertion Point Movement in iOS iWork Apps ★

Interesting tip: in the new iOS iWork apps, you can move the insertion point one character at a time by swiping left/right. This isn’t a system-wide shortcut, though — it only works in Numbers, Pages, and Keynote.

Update: You can swipe with two fingers to move forward/back a word at a time, and three for the entire line — but I find these gestures hard to use, especially on the iPhone. If they’re not perfectly horizontal they scroll the view.

Update 2: DF reader Dave Tach, via email:

For whatever it’s worth, the trick seems to be to peck in the direction you want the cursor to move rather than to swipe. If your fingers stay on the glass for more than the tiniest fraction of a second, then you wind up scrolling the view.

This works like a charm for me, and is especially helpful for the word-wise two-finger gesture.

iOS Fonts ★

Starting with iOS 5, the same 58 font families are now installed on both the iPad and iPhone. Hooray for more Gill Sans on the iPhone. (Fonts installed on Android: 3.)

A Trick That Lets You Hide – But Not Use – iOS 5 Newsstand in a Folder ★

I’ve been asked by several DF readers if there’s a way to put Newsstand into a folder. Officially, no, there isn’t. The reason is that Newsstand is really a folder — it’s just a magic folder created by and controlled by the system, not you. And iOS doesn’t let you put folders into folders.

Here’s a trick from Dave Caolo that will let you do it. (And because Newsstand really is just a folder, the same trick lets you put any folder into another folder.)

It’s clearly a bug though: once you do this, you cannot open any such folder-in-a-folder, and if you try, Springboard (the app that is the iOS home screen) will crash. So this is really only useful for those of you who not only don’t want Newsstand, but who can’t even bear the thought of stashing it on your last home screen.

Twitter and iOS 5: Sharing Made Simple ★

I think iOS’s built-in support for Twitter is a huge deal. Effectively, iOS now treats tweeting as a peer to SMS and email. Anywhere where you could previously send something by text or email, you now should have the option to tweet it, too.

El Presidente ★

This week’s episode of The Talk Show:

iOS 5, the iPhone 4S, Siri, the new camera, RAM usage and battery life on the iOS platform, the conclusion of the 2011 baseball season, and hints about the next series of movie reviews.

Also: my pitch for a new show starring Bob Newhart and Tim Conway. Brought to you by the fine folks at Squarespace (special coupon code “IDONTKNOW10”), EasyDNS (coupon code “5BY5”), and Rackspace Cloud.

Against Close Buttons ★

John Kneeland argues that close buttons are wrong for iOS:

The most egregious example of this interface inconsistency is in the teeny tiny close buttons that pop up on the iOS interface when you want to close apps in the app switcher, delete apps from the homescreen, or close a browser tab. It’s even worse in Apple’s new iOS notifications system, which decided being hard to use wasn’t enough and it should be hard to see as well.

In the case of closing Safari pages, he argues that WebOS does it right, with its flicking gesture to close cards.

It’s a good argument, but I disagree. The advantage of explicit close buttons is that they are obvious. No one has to explain to someone how to close a page in Mobile Safari on the iPhone — the X-in-red-circle is explicit and obvious. If that weren’t there and you had to flick pages to the top of the screen to discard them, users who didn’t know about or remember the gesture would be lost.

Gestures, to me, are the touchscreen equivalent of keyboard shortcuts: a convenient alternative, but almost never a good choice for the primary interface for a task. So, sure, it’d be nice if you could flick pages to the top of the screen to close them in Mobile Safari, but keep the red close button there too.

The key to iOS’s success is that you can figure almost everything out just by looking at it. If a button is too hard to tap (like the ones in Notification Center — Kneeland is right about that) the solution is to make them bigger, not to get rid of them.

iOS 5 Tips, Tricks, and Hidden Features ★

Good list from Chris Herbert at MacStories.

‘Not Really Focused on the Device’ ★

Khidr Suleman, on an interview with Michael Dell at “Dell World 2011”:

Dell did play down the failure of products such as the Dell Streak to make an impact on the market.

“Within the $3 trillion industry that we’re in, the consumer business is worth $250bn. Dell is much more focused on providing a complete set of solutions to customers, including the device, but we’re not really focused on the device.”

“Not really focused on the device”? Good luck with that.

Speaking of Grains of Salt Regarding Businessweek Stories ★

From a Peter Burrows piece for Businessweek, “Working With Steve Jobs”, interviewing former AOL CEO Barry Schuler:

Steve Jobs was a genius, but he knew his limits.

“He was never a guy who tried to make believe he had expertise in something,” said Barry Schuler, now a partner at venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

That was clear to Schuler when he got a call from Jobs in early 1997 to come over to his old offices at NeXT Software in Redwood City, Calif. Jobs, at that point, hadn’t yet agreed to run Apple on a permanent basis.

“What’s this Internet thing?” Schuler recalled Jobs asking. “I don’t get it. What are people doing on it? What do they like about it?”

Steve Jobs didn’t get the Internet? In 1997? OK, sure. Here’s Steve Jobs, in his classic interview with Wired in 1996:

The Web is exciting for two reasons. One, it’s ubiquitous. There will be Web dial tone everywhere. And anything that’s ubiquitous gets interesting. Two, I don’t think Microsoft will figure out a way to own it. There’s going to be a lot more innovation, and that will create a place where there isn’t this dark cloud of dominance. […]

If you look at things I’ve done in my life, they have an element of democratizing. The Web is an incredible democratizer. A small company can look as large as a big company and be as accessible as a big company on the Web. Big companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars building their distribution channels. And the Web is going to completely neutralize that advantage.

Yeah, he didn’t get it at all.

Update: Here’s Jobs in 1985 — 1985! — in his classic interview with Playboy:

The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We’re just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people — as remarkable as the telephone.

Thanks to John Siracusa for the link.

Doing Things That Can’t Be Done ★

Herb Sutter on Dennis Ritchie:

C is a poster child for why it’s essential to keep those people who know a thing can’t be done from bothering the people who are doing it.

Businessweek Profiles Scott Forstall ★

Adam Satariano, Peter Burrows and Brad Stone:

Some former associates of Forstall, none of whom would comment on the record for fear of alienating Apple, say he routinely takes credit for collaborative successes, deflects blame for mistakes, and is maddeningly political. They say he has such a fraught relationship with other members of the executive team—including lead designer Jony Ive and Mac hardware chief Bob Mansfield—that they avoid meetings with him unless Tim Cook is present.

I’m taking that with a grain of salt, given the anonymous sourcing, but if true, that’s not good. Good piece overall, though, and there’s no argument that Forstall is now The Man when it comes to all things iOS.

Update: The thing to keep in mind while reading a piece like this is that no one who currently works with, admires, or even likes Forstall is going to talk to reporters for a profile like this. Their sources are — and they acknowledge this in the article — people who dislike him and didn’t work well with him, or who at least have left the company. But in broad terms I think the portrait they paint in this piece is accurate: Forstall is polarizing within Apple, he’s hard to work under because he’s extremely demanding, and he probably is the most political — or at least politically adept — senior executive in the company.

Also, this bit from the article is the only real “WTF” in the piece:

At weekly Monday meetings, Apple executives disagreed about matters all the time, but could count on Jobs to make the final call. Its board of directors must find a new chairman and take a more assertive role guiding the company.

I’d say this is pretty much exactly the opposite of what Apple’s board should do.

Dan Moren Reviews iOS 5 ★

Great overview of the major new features. I’ve been running the developer seeds on my main iPhone for so long, that I’ve forgotten that some of this stuff is new.

Fire Spotter ★

Glorious new limited-edition Field Notes notebooks. Turn up the volume and watch the movie on the biggest display you can find.

Matt Taibbi’s Advice to the Occupy Wall Street Protesters ★

Matt Taibbi:

Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to fight the deficits the banks claim to be so worried about. It would also deter the endless chase for instant profits through computerized insider-trading schemes like High Frequency Trading, and force Wall Street to go back to the job it’s supposed to be doing, i.e., making sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow.