Sometimes the smallest of changes can deliver a huge impact. In my case, several weeks ago I switched away from the popular Mac text editor TextMate to Sublime Text 2, giving a significant boost to my productivity in the process.
Some context is necessary here: any web developer can tell you that, with the profession’s focus on coding, text editors are generally the most important tool at hand. For the last five years, TextMate was my editor of choice and I depended on it for effectively everything at work: HTML, CSS, Ruby on Rails, even extended emails and design notes. I loved the speed, the keyboard shortcuts and its slick bundling system – macros, commands and templates came together in a unified package.
But ever since Mac OS X Lion came out, TextMate’s lost a lot of its luster. The downward spiral began with the program’s incompatibilities with much of Lion’s new functionality; this only amplified the nagging suspicion TextMate would never receive a significant upgrade (its last significant release was version 1.5 back in January 2006.) The TextMate team unexpectedly announced a public alpha of TextMate 2 for release before the end of 2011, but I think it’s a case of too little, too late.
I’m a relative newcomer to Apple and Steve Jobs. Apple computers were an influence growing up, but I didn’t really start using Apple products until my post college days. Yet, after getting my hands on my first Mac, a Powerbook G4, I was hooked. The accessibility and design of Apple’s products always matches the tech power under the hood – a rarity in our industry. I don’t think any of it would have been possible without, as Jobs often said, Apple at the intersection of technology and liberal arts. It makes the company’s work unique and often amazing.
Jobs was a genius, yet still fallible; his flare ups of anger and arrogance were well documented. Paradoxically, the weaker sides of Jobs made him even more approachable, human, and charismatic. That made news of his passing all the more tragic. Not every Apple launch under Jobs has been a success, yet his successes fundamentally changed the technology industry at least three times with the Mac, iPod, and iPhone. Who other single person has had that kind of impact?
Jobs also had an incredible gift at intertwining technology and design, along with a relentless drive. Both are traits that I strive to achieve every day in my career.
Rest in peace Steve and thanks for always moving the ball forward.
Web development is constantly evolving, rewarding those that learn and adapt; developers that cling to older methods do so at their own risk. Yet the industry’s heavy workload and tight deadlines place many in a paradoxical situation: Due to their proven and familiar status, older techniques and programs often stay at the forefront of a developer’s workflow.
So how does a web developer learn and evolve while still making their deadlines? Having been in the industry for nine years, recently shifting into a position where I’ll be mentoring junior developers more often, I’ve been reflecting on that question a lot.
With HP cutting its losses on the Touchpad and PC markets, the “post-PC” era begins with Apple firmly in the lead. The evidence is overwhelming: HP’s exit leaves Apple as the only major consumer PC maker with increasing profitability. Yet even with its leg up on the competition, Apple is shifting away from PCs. Over 70% of its previous quarter’s revenue was wrapped up in iPhones and iPads; it’s fair to expect that percentage to only increase in the future.
However, I disagree that the failures of HP, RIM and other companies in the tablet sphere make a long run Apple victory inevitable. In actuality, the post-PC era is divisible into two eras. The first is a transitional, “tablet as entertainment” era that we’re in now in which Apple clearly dominates. Yet there’s a final, longer term “tablet as PC” era of the future where I doubt a single company will control the market.
Technology gives us an amazing breadth of information, from email and Twitter to task lists on OmniFocus. Yet the sheer size of what’s out there comes at a cost; the decisions of what to tackle next can be overwhelming, stressful and, given the frequent contextual switches between programs, inefficient.
As a result I’ve lately found myself turning less and less to news sites, RSS and Twitter to catch up with what’s happening. Instead I’m increasingly relying on information sources that eschew decisions, pare down content, and make a conscious effort to slow the user down. Two iPad reading apps fit this goal perfectly: Zite and Palimpsest.
Both apps intentionally limit what’s on screen at once, emphasizing a “lean back”, more methodical browsing pace. Zite packages information from the user’s Twitter and RSS feeds in a magazine like format; each page rarely has more than five or six articles. Palimpsest takes this limitation even further, presenting only a single curated article to the user at a time. The experience is a welcome contrast to the “lean forward”, rapid scanning behavior that predominates nearly all RSS and Twitter clients.
After testing stream music services for last week’s post, Rdio came out the winner but had some shortcomings; its stream was sub-CD quality and the music library had noticeable gaps. That lead me to MOG, an early entrant into the U.S. mobile streaming market. I passed over the service a year ago, but with recent praise of the service’s sound quality on Twitter, I decided to give it another look for the past week.
Bottom line: after only a few days of MOG usage, I’m impressed. I’ll be signing up for both MOG and Rdio’s $5 a month web plans for the foreseeable feature. There’s a few reasons you should consider MOG as well, especially if you’re intrigued by Spotify:
Every song is streamed at a consistent 320kbps bit rate over the web and can be stored offline on mobile devices at the same quality. For audiophiles this feature is probably worth $5 per month on its own. It’s the only streaming music service I’ve used that rivals the sound quality of my CD rips and downloads from services like Amazon, iTunes and 7Digital.
Track selection is excellent, closely matching Spotify’s offerings. There isn’t a clear winner between the two services; Spotify tends to have better euro-pop and electronic selections while MOG has better coverage of classic and indie rock. Either way, at least from my informal tests, it was hard to find serious gaps in either.
The much hyped and praised streaming music service Spotify debuted in the U.S. last Thursday and like many others, I signed up. One week after testing Spotify Premium extensively I’m sticking with my existing service, Rdio. I find Rdio’s excellent discovery tools and social integration trump any of Spotify’s advantages. Overall though, there’s not a definitive winner in these streaming music wars; each service has their own set of strengths and weaknesses.
It’s not easy at first to pick apart those differences as both Rdio and Spotify share a lot in common. Each has a huge song selection, mobile syncing for music on the go, search capabilities and integration with social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Yet the two services diverge in their user interface and sound quality on different mediums, the focus for the remainder of this article.
It’s clear Google+ and Mac OS X Lion are getting a lot of attention from tech and design communities online. Some question the focus, but I think it’s well deserved based solely on both products’ visual design changes. However, it’s not flashy CSS3 animations or iOS-like visualizations that have me excited. Instead, I’m most impressed by the changes in spacing; Google+ and Lion provide significantly more room between UI elements and content than their competitors (or in the case of Lion, earlier versions of Mac OS X.)
That white space factor is one way Google+ distinguishes itself from Facebook and Twitter: Content receives extra padding and wider margins than I initially expected. Side columns are sparsely populated and the pages for Circles and profile management are spaced out to ensure editable elements have adequate room. Comment threads are limited in scope by default (though more customization here would be welcome) to keep the stream view uncluttered. In addition, while it’s not exactly Google+ only, listings in Gmail, Google Calendar and core Google Search results all received a bump in padding to increase readability.
We’re in a fast changing digital landscape; innovation has worked into almost every device I use regularly and with cloud syncing my content is accessible from anywhere. So why do higher end cameras, most notably digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) ones, feel absent from the picture? Big manufacturers like Canon and Nikon push out better sensors and higher end lenses year after year, but the core design remains unchanged. Contrast that progress with the rapid evolution in smaller, camera-equipped devices like the iPhone and Canon S95, both in terms of technology advances and mainstream adoption. If the trend continues the DSLR will be relegated to a niche device for professionals only.
The problem starts with perception: compared to hot new consumer tech like the Kinect and iPhone, DSLRs, at least to a mainstream audience, are run of the mill if not behind the curve. First and foremost, in a golden age of lightweight, powerful technology, DSLRs remain heavy and bulky. They also have a higher learning curve than most other tech devices: even using its simplest operation, the most basic DSLR offers a bewildering array of dial settings, zoom levels and menu adjustments.