Fire and Knowledge

Here’s an iPhone developer comparing the Nexus One and the iPhone after using the Nexus One for a while:

The Nexus One isn’t a bad phone by any stretch of the imagination. Had it come out three years ago, it would have been revolutionary. But you do have to train yourself to Android’s idiosyncrasies much more so than the iPhone. If you’ve never owned or used an iPhone, you’ll probably find the Nexus One to be a very adequate device and will assume that the minor annoyances are just part of owning a smart phone. If you’ve owned an iPhone for any length of time, you’ll likely feel, as I do, that it’s a rather half-baked device with some good ideas but generally weak execution. [...]

I would never willingly choose the Nexus One over my iPhone for daily use, nor would I recommend it to someone who didn’t explicitly state that avoiding AT&T or using an open platform was among their top priorities.

I wrote an essay a couple years ago about why I was no longer a young-earth creationist. I finally decided it was time to publish it, and it went up today on the First Things Evangel blog: “Why I’m Not a Creationist (Anymore).”

The future of magazines is coming soon. This look like a much better experience than browsing a magazine’s website:

This is really exciting from a design & reading standpoint. It will be the experience of reading a magazine, but with the interactivity of the web. It’s going to be a really fun decade.

From 2004 to 2009, I spent most of my evening hours reading. I owned no tv to distract me. At first it was mostly theology and philosophy… until I got a taste for novels. I devoured the Dickens canon within a year. Next I dove into culture and came out a fiery neo-Luddite. Then I got into history, economics, and science. I left my fundamentalism behind and embraced evolution. Every book I read made an impact on how I thought and viewed the world.

I couldn’t understand why everyone didn’t spend their evenings reading — who wants to stare at a tv when you can have your life changed every day?

I was a compulsive book buyer for years, but recently I’ve found the joys of the local library. They have far more books in the county than I’d be able to own and — this I find amazing — it’s free, unless you count those pesky late fines. Still, I find two disadvantages to the library system: (1) you’re not allowed to write in them and (2) you only have them for a few weeks.

Here’s my confession: I write in library books. I can’t stop myself. But don’t worry Mrs. Librarian, I always use light pencil and I erase all traces of my graffiti. I don’t do it just for the thrill, though — I mark quotes. When I finish the book, I find the quotes, type them out, and erase my markings.

I don’t want to believe it’s just a loaned book. I like books that sit around for months and beg to be picked up and read. I don’t want to give them back in 7 or 14 days. And even though I became quick friends with the online renewal system, it only lets me renew three times (they set limits because of greedy people like me).

So the library doesn’t work for books I want to write in and have on hand for a long time. So should I buy them?

I used to. But unless it’s a book I’m extremely excited about, I’ve found myself not wanting to buy a paper version, even though I love paper books. They’re expensive, heavy, easily ruined, and take up a lot of space.

The truth is, I want a good e-reader. It’s only a matter of time before one exists. I’ve owned two editions of the Kindle, but sold them both. The terrible interface and control mechanisms (a joystick and noisy page turning button) ruined the experience. The iPad isn’t The One either — the screen is backlit and there isn’t a great way of marking books. The irony is using the Kindle app on the iPad is better than the Kindle itself.

I used to hate the idea of e-books. I thought paper was far superior and that it wouldn’t really catch on. That was naive. Eventually paper books will go the way of scrolls and stone tablets — of interest to collectors, but not to the rest of us. E-book readers (either as separate devices or integrated into mobile devices) will fit much better into our lifestyles and we’ll gradually move to them in the coming decades.

I think most of us know this intuitively as we watch how technology and culture is progressing. This isn’t a bad thing; it’s just different. There will be advantages and disadvantages, just like any technological revolution.

I’m still waiting to meet a good e-book reader. My compulsive book buying has been put on hold until I can buy them digitally to read on a device that I feel is a worthy alternative to a paper book.

And in the meantime, I’ll be a loyal — if not ideal — visitor to my local library.

We’re paying for the inconvenience of quality control without the quality part. In fact, lots of software has lower quality because of the App Store process. Developers can’t easily get bug fixes out and they certainly don’t release new versions as often as they otherwise would. This harks back to the era where software was really cumbersome to release on CDs, so you did it much less frequently.

Contrast this with OS X and the web. Both platforms are much more open and on a mac you have very little trouble with stability or malware or even quality. In general, the market is pretty good at sorting this stuff out. If you make a crappy application, people don’t buy or recommend it. And OS X seems to be holding up well as a secure platform compared to, say, Windows, so malware isn’t much of a concern either.

What I think Apple should do instead is to reserve the power to nuke apps that prove troublesome. Have a “if you fuck it up, we’ll yank it” policy rather than a “we’ll review everything poorly and slowly and still not catch it all” policy. They’d be able to get by with a much smaller App Store clerk staff, developers would be thrilled to escape the needless gate keeping, and consumers would enjoy more applications updated more frequently.

What’s there to lose except for the feeling of powah?

—David Reeves, “The App Store: Quality control without the quality”

Contrary to popular belief, water is an awful choice [to try and land on when falling from a plane]. Like concrete, liquid doesn’t compress. Hitting the ocean is essentially the same as colliding with a sidewalk, Hamilton explains, except that pavement (perhaps unfortunately) won’t “open up and swallow your shattered body.”

—How to Fall 35,000 Feet—And Survive