BenCrowder.net

I used to be a man of many todo lists. They were a badge of honor, a kind of nerd street cred that I took silly pride in. They were also out of control.

See, the whole point of a todo list is (a) getting it written down so it’s out of your head (freeing up mental RAM) and (b) reviewing the list so you actually do the stuff on it. With my twenty-plus lists, I was nailing the first part — oh, man, I was (and still am) so good at writing todo items down — but doing a spectacularly bad job at reviewing those lists. Things fell through the cracks. A growing sense of guilt would perch on my shoulders as I watched my piles of post-its and index cards grow, waiting for me to go through them.

And yes, there were piles. Post-its on my desks both at home and at work, index cards stashed in my Field Notes, and items all over the place on my computer — text files, Simplenote, Things, my Glider wiki, Todoist, you name it.

Then I learned a simple lesson: having a bazillion systems is almost as bad as not having any system at all.

And so I decided to consolidate (one system to rule them all, one system to find them, one system to bring them all and in the darkness bind them, that sort of thing). I took a hard look at what I needed out of a todo list and came up with this list:

• Quick item entry
• Available everywhere
• Sortable into projects
• A daily prioritized “I need to do this soon” list

I almost started writing my own system, then realized that Things for the iPhone already did everything on my list, and it had the advantage of already being written. :) So I committed. I gave up post-its cold turkey and abandoned all my other todo list stashes.

And it worked.

So, whenever I realize I need to do something, I add it to Things. Each day I decide what I want to do that day and put those items on the “today” list, placing them in the order I’d like to do them in. And then I do them. It’s that simple.

What I’ve learned: keep the “today” list short, and only let concrete verbs in as items (next actions, basically). When I follow those two simple rules, things don’t get out of control. When I don’t, I end up ignoring the list and it’s as good as useless.

So now I have a single home for my todo items, a warm, cozy place where I can actually give them the attention they deserve. Because there’s only one place to check, I remember to check it daily (usually many times a day). And todo items don’t fall through the cracks anymore. I’m happy.

(Postscript: I keep my work todo items completely separate, in Things for Mac. It’s nice, but I still much prefer Things for iPhone, though.)

It’s been just over a week now since Apple announced the iPad and I’ve had some time to collect my thoughts.

My initial reaction? Disappointed. The science fiction nerd in me wanted the tablet to be full of the new technologies Apple has patented — haptic feedback, solar-powered battery, individual finger detection, etc. — and I felt disenchanted, disillusioned, all of that dis- stuff. (Ironic, since I said in my initial tablet post that “I do expect some cool, glamorous new technology in the tablet, but the more exciting thing (for me, anyway) will be the re-envisioning of how we use computers.” Sometimes I think I need to read what I write.)

The iPad was more evolutionary than revolutionary, I thought. Wrong. The revolution is more subtle, but it’s definitely there, and it’s exactly what I talked about at the end of that post (duh, Ben). But we’ll get to that in a moment. First, let’s look at those speculations.

Speculations

• Canvas. iPad. The name is awful and I’m sure most of you have heard all of the female hygiene jokes already. It’s also a bit too close to “iPod.” But that’s what it’s called, so whatever.
• 10″ screen. 9.7″. Close enough.
• New multitouch gestures. Some. At first I didn’t think there was anything new on this front, but watch the Gizmodo video on the new gestures. They’re mostly natural enough that I didn’t even realize they were new.
• A brilliant new input method. We got a big virtual keyboard instead. I originally thought this was lame, because who wants to type like that standing up? Then I realized that it’s mostly not meant to be typed on while standing. And that’s okay.
• Amazing battery life. Not solar-powered and not infinite, but ten hours isn’t bad. We’re getting there.
• New OS. Apparently it is iPhone OS, from what I’ve heard.
• Both 3G and wifi. I was wrong about no plan being necessary, but there are no contracts, which is cool. As for the 250mb/month thing, I checked my iPhone and found that I’ve been using around 170mb/month on it. Streaming video, though, would need unlimited (or wifi).
• $1000 price tag. $499–829. I’m happy to have been wrong here, and yes, I’m planning to get one (the $499 model).
• Books. Yes, indeed. More on this shortly.
• New section of App Store. Not quite. Letting the iPad run iPhone apps is smart, I’ve realized, for two reasons: new iPad owners can use all of their iPhone apps from the get-go, but it’s also a spur to developers to make their apps iPad-ready. (iPhone apps look kind of lame swallowed up in that vast sea of black. And no, pixel-doubling is not a real answer.)

iBooks

When Steve mentioned that there’d be an iBook Store and that the books would be using the ePub format, I got a little giddy. This could potentially be really, really big for ebooks. (It could also fall flat. We’ll have to wait and see.)

First, the iBooks app. The page-turning animation is nice eye candy, sure, but the typography on the book in the demo was pathetic. Rivers of whitespace running all over the place. Seriously, Apple needs to learn about hyphenation. (And this from the company who first brought beautiful typography to computers. Sigh.)

Brief semi-related tangent: As a ebook designer, I’d prefer users to be able to read books the way I typeset them, but if they really want to change the typeface or the font size or whatever, then I say let them do it. If they make it worse, it’s their own fault. My job is to set sane defaults (since most people don’t change the defaults anyway). Similarly, as a reader, I’m willing to stick with the default settings if they’re beautiful, but if they’re hideous, I want to be able to change things till I get something I can stand. Apple, if you can’t get the justification to look good, at least let us turn it off. Please.

Also, the font choices (Baskerville, Cochin, Palatino, Times, and Verdana) wouldn’t have been at the top of my list, but I’ll reserve judgment there till I see them in use on an actual iPad.

I hope the iBooks app doesn’t mean Apple will be restricting other ebook apps (like Eucalyptus, Stanza, and Classics) on the iPad. Probably not. Will I be able to load my own ePubs into iBooks? Hard to say, but iTunes does let you add your own music and videos to it, so there’s precedent for that. I’m crossing my fingers that the iBooks infrastructure will be available on the iPhone and Mac as well. The iPad might be the ideal way to read iBooks, as far as form factor goes, but it’d be nice to switch devices when I’m away from my iPad (the way you can read Kindle books on your iPhone).

Speaking of the Kindle: Its display is ugly and the slow refresh rates turned me off from the beginning. Yes, I know that e-ink is supposedly easier on the eyes and all that, but I’d rather have a crisp, colorful, fast display, and most people are used to reading off screens anyway. (And if you’re planning on reading for long periods of time, go get a real book. The iPad/iBook isn’t meant to replace paper books — at least not yet.)

iBook Store

This is the more exciting part for me, being a publisher. In the keynote, Steve Jobs said that they’d be opening the floodgates to every publisher in the world, which is great. I’m wondering what their requirements are for who they consider to be a publisher, though. Will it be a yearly fee (like the App Store, where you have to pay at least $99/year) or something else? No clue. I don’t really know what the process is for getting music or videos into the iTunes Store. (Podcasts are relatively easy, though.) Unless Apple’s requirements are unnaturally stiff, I plan to sign up and try it out.

This is great for ePub, I should add. Apple’s backing could help it become the MP3 of books. And ePub is itself a decent ebook standard (it’s HTML/CSS zipped up, basically, with some XML metadata attached — nothing too proprietary).

Will there be DRM? I hope not. Apple is already moving away from DRM for the music on iTunes, but I don’t know if the book publishers would sign on if there weren’t DRM. My guess is that there’ll be Apple-specific DRM, like there was in iTunes, and in a few years when the publishers see how they’re selling way more ebooks through the iBooks Store, Apple will press them to drop the DRM and they’ll comply. ~fingers crossed~

What the naysayers are saying

Two of the biggest complaints I’ve heard so far are about the iPad’s lack of multitasking and Flash — both of which are complete non-issues to me.

Multitasking: First, it’s detrimental to productivity. Seriously. Not only that, but you can switch between apps on the iPad (and iPhone) fast enough that it doesn’t really matter, and the apps remember what state they were in before so it’s almost like you never even quit the app. Not allowing multitasking also really does result in more stability and better battery life. People who keep begging for multitasking are missing the boat. For more on multitasking and the iPad, read Milind Alvares’s article.

Flash: Honestly, who cares? I’ve never, ever missed having Flash on my iPhone. Ever. And believe me, it won’t be long before content creators whose stuff only works on Flash (Hulu, I’m looking at you) make iPhone/iPad apps using H.264 instead. Flash is dying. Let it die.

For more on Flash and the iPad, read John Gruber’s post. Also read Zeldman’s piece on how “lack of Flash in the iPad is a win for accessible, standards-based design.” (And HTML5 video is coming along nicely: check out the new SublimeVideo player. Only works in Chrome and Safari right now, but Firefox support is coming soon.)

My brother-in-law brought up a point that I hadn’t really considered so far: if someone emails me a document, I can’t easily save it to my iPad, edit it, and then email it back. A central Document Library (ala the Photos Library, which apps like CameraBag and Brushes can access and save to) would be nice.

The revolution

It began with the iPhone. Millions of iPhones sold, millions of customers saying that yes, they really do want a more human computing experience. They don’t want to tweak. They don’t want to fiddle. They don’t care about open v. closed. They just want something that works.

And you know what? They’re right. This is what most people need: a computer that’s easy to work with, that abstracts away all the details that don’t matter, that’s as stable as, say, a car. And on that note, check out Gruber’s comparison:

Used to be that to drive a car, you, the driver, needed to operate a clutch pedal and gear shifter and manually change gears for the transmission as you accelerated and decelerated. Then came the automatic transmission. With an automatic, the transmission is entirely abstracted away. The clutch is gone. To go faster, you just press harder on the gas pedal.

That’s where Apple is taking computing. A car with an automatic transmission still shifts gears; the driver just doesn’t need to know about it. A computer running iPhone OS still has a hierarchical file system; the user just never sees it.

Why the iPad matters: people who aren’t “good with computers” will be able to use the iPad without having to call their tech-savvy nephew or granddaughter for help. It’s computing for the masses.

Don’t believe me? Read On iPads, Grandmas, and Game-changing, Old World and New World Computing, The iPad is the iPrius, and Future Shock.

Sure, techies who like tinkering will still be able to get old world computers. You can still buy cars with manual transmissions. But within, I don’t know, five to ten years, most computers will become like the iPad. And yes, there will be more open solutions as well (running Linux or what have you). Give it time.

This is huge. It’s perhaps one of the biggest steps we’ve ever taken towards making computers more human-friendly (and not just geek-friendly). Until the iPhone, computers were the province of magic and wizardry, or so it seemed to everyone else. No longer. And again, the iPhone has shown that this is what people want, and the iPad is going to give it to them.

Just released Issue 8 of Mormon Artist:

I redesigned the magazine (well, most of it) using a new six-column grid instead of the old two-column one. Much better.

You know, just now I realized that we’ve published nine issues of the magazine so far. Nine! That’s crazy — it still blows my mind to think that I actually publish a magazine. And that it’s survived this long. :) (It’s going well, by the way. Our next issue will focus on Mormon artists in New York City, and the next will be all about the Mormon pageants.)

Now to breathe a sigh of relief and — oh, drat, I just remembered that I haven’t done my daily writing yet today. Looks like I won’t be going to sleep quite yet.

Today is Monday, which means only two more days till Apple announces the tablet. Seriously, I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about it and have to restrain myself from jumping up and down in my cubicle. Come Wednesday at 11:00, I’ll be glued to Engadget or MacRumorsLive watching the liveblog feed and tweeting up a storm.

Whence the excitement? This is going to revolutionize the personal computing world. It’s going to turn things on their head. It’s going to change everything.

I don’t know how, but there’s electricity in the air and my bones are telling me that this is way, way bigger than the iPhone. Steve Jobs has apparently said, “This will be the most important thing I’ve ever done.” It’s Steve’s magnum opus, even more so than the iPhone or the iPod or iTunes or the original Mac. That’s saying a lot. And he’s extremely happy with it, which is also saying a lot.

Man oh man, this is better than Christmas. (Don’t tell my wife I said that. ;)) And yes, I’m saving up to buy one. (Oh, I’m also expecting iPhone OS 4.0 to be announced on Wednesday, with new multitouch gestures, some new way of organizing apps, and a new lock screen. That’s exciting too, but the tablet is the big kahuna.)

Since half the fun is in wild guessing, here, dear reader, are my speculations. I’m prepared to be wrong, but I’m also prepared to be blown away by whatever it is Apple has come up with. Blind faith? No. Apple’s recent track record gives me confidence. (Even in spite of the Apple TV.) Seriously, people, this is going to be big. Huge. This is a turning point in technology history.

Without further ado, then, here are the new Apple tablet specs…as in speculations. ;)

• Canvas. If it’s not called Canvas, then I have no idea what it’ll be called, but there’s no way it’ll be the iSlate or iPad or iTablet. Apple has better taste than that. (Granted, they do have a product line filled with iThings and MacThings, but I think this will be revolutionary enough to warrant its own new naming scheme.)
• Either a 7″ or 10″ screen. 10″ sounds more likely from what I’ve been reading on the interwebs, and it’s still small enough to carry around easily (though not in your pocket, of course). I don’t think it’ll be a phone, at least not the kind we’re used to.
• New multitouch gestures. No idea what these will be like but I’m excited to find out. I’m betting they’ll be using the fingerprint technique they patented, though.
• A brilliant new input method. I think it’ll be new but simple and, in retrospect, completely obvious. I’m not counting on a full virtual keyboard (typing on one while holding the tablet with your other hand would be a pain), definitely not on a slide-out physical keyboard or a stylus. Maybe they’ll have a small virtual keyboard slide out of the side of the screen like the OS X dock. Probably not. It’ll probably have something to do with those multitouch gestures.
• Amazing battery life. This might be solar-powered (Apple has already patented the idea) or something else, but for a tablet to really become ubiquitous, the battery life has to be a lot better than anything we’ve seen before. They might not be quite there yet, but I’d bet that within five to ten years we’ll have infinite battery life. No more charging — your phone and computer will always have power. Mmm.
• New OS. By which I mean something that isn’t OS X and isn’t iPhone OS but has a shared core. It’ll probably be more similar to iPhone OS than to OS X. It has to be if they’re going to reinvent computing for the masses. (It’ll sandbox things so users don’t have to worry about where files are saved, for example.) It’s not just going to be a Mac tablet. It’s going to be something new.
• Both 3G and wifi. In 2010, constant access to the Internet is a must. Since free wifi isn’t ubiquitous yet, I’m betting Apple’s worked a deal with Verizon (as has been rumored for a year or two now). No plan necessary, just like the Kindle.
• $1000 price tag. While I wish it would be cheaper ($300–400), it’ll probably start out expensive. (I’m betting part of this will be the packaged 3G plan price. More expensive in the short term but far more cost-effective in the long.) But to become ubiquitous, and for normal people to justify buying one if they already have a computer and already have a phone, it almost has to be cheaper. We’ll see.
• Books. With the larger screen, books can be beautiful. I can’t wait. And Apple has apparently been in talks with HarperCollins, so they’re obviously thinking about books on some level. I see this going one of two ways — either they come up with a specialized ebook file format (hopefully based on EPUB) and sell books directly on the iTunes Store just like music, or they go the App Store route and let publishers package up the books themselves and sell them as apps that happen to be book readers (as is currently the case on the iPhone). I’m hoping for the former, because I think that would do a lot more good for the ebook world (giving more weight to the EPUB standard and hopefully making it the MP3 of books), but I’m betting on the latter. I’m wondering if iTunes LP is also connected to this somehow…
• New section of App Store. They’re not just going to scale iPhone apps up to tablet size. Microsoft would do that, but Apple won’t, because Apple has good taste. No, tablet apps will have to be written specifically for the tablet. There might be a lot of shared functionality (so it won’t be that hard to port apps over), but you won’t be able to just press a button and have your app work on the tablet.

Are they going to use the new haptic feedback technology? Probably not, but dang, it would be cool.

Speaking of cool, I do expect some cool, glamorous new technology in the tablet, but the more exciting thing (for me, anyway) will be the re-envisioning of how we use computers. The iPhone paved the first part of the road, making a pocket computing device that normal people can easily use. The tablet is the next big step.

Will it be as powerful as, say, a Mac? No. But it doesn’t have to be. The tablet isn’t going to be aimed at those of us who live and breathe computers (though we’ll use it, too), and it’s not going to do everything that a full-blown computer can do, but it’s going to do the things that matter, and it’s going to do them in a simple, easy, enjoyable way that normal people can understand. It’s going to make using a computer as easy as using a toaster.

That’s why the tablet is going to change the world.

Up until today, I had only used the search feature (Spotlight) on my iPhone maybe two or three times. My initial reaction? I thought it would be slow — typing seemed so much less efficient than swiping or scrolling. Yeah, I was wrong. (And yes, this is very ironic considering how I’m normally so addicted to the keyboard.)

Today I decided to give search a fair trial, so I banished my Contacts app to the last screen and configured the results to hide the stuff I don’t care about (notes, audiobooks, podcasts, etc.).

And you know what? Search is brilliant. I’m already saving tons of time using it — mere seconds, maybe, but they add up. Typing really is faster than swiping or scrolling. Much faster.

I’ve mainly been using search for getting to my contacts, but I’ve started using it for launching apps and playing music, too, and wow, it’s amazing. I only wish it hadn’t taken me months to realize this.