I spent about 24 hours with my “fully-featured” client-side mail application and new Gmail+IMAP support before I went back to mail.google.com. The web interface is just better.
Rant 1: My Love/Hate Relationship with Exchange
The MS Exchange protocol is so much better than POP/IMAP that it makes me want to cry. I’m no MS fanboy, but I don’t know of an open alternative that comes close.
- When I send mail does it go to my local sent folder, or the IMAP folder?”
- Why do I even have these local folders? What good are they?”
- How do I search all the server-side messages?”
All of these questions arise because desktop mail apps are designed around the old POP model — they assume that you might want to bring mail down, locally. I don’t. I want to leave it in the cloud where it belongs. The Exchange guys apparently figured this out a long time ago.
Rant 2: Net Apps == Web Apps
Years ago I used client-side RSS readers on multiple machines. My list of feeds was always out of sync. I also read many articles twice. First Bloglines and eventually Google Reader solved this for me. The web app is ideal here. I don’t fly much so I don’t care about offline access (although Gears delivers this too).
Email is the same. 99% of the email experience is being on the net. Sure you can do some things offline, but not much. So why waste time on the sync problem? Just assume the network, move the whole application to the server side, and you are done.
Sometimes I copy text from a formatted document, often a web page, and end up getting more than I bargained for. When I paste the text, I see that it has retained its source formatting. I hate this. I never ever want it.
No, I don’t want to start instant messaging in boldface just because tinyURL used a bold tag.
Where is the global-off-switch for this idiot feature?
Lots of net-nerds have misunderstood the Apple / Starbucks announcement (I’m looking at you, Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose).
Apple has announced free WiFi in Starbucks, from your iPhone, when accessing the iTunes Store. That’s it. Not the whole internet — just the store. The announcement that some people heard — unconditionally free WiFi at Starbucks for iPhone owners — is at least a hundred times cooler than what’s actually going to happen.
Here it is, straight from www.apple.com/itunes/starbucks:
As long as you have an iPod touch, an iPhone, or a computer with the latest version of iTunes, you get free Wi-Fi access to the iTunes Store and to Starbucks Now Playing content.
It’s pretty hard to blame people for the misunderstanding. Coffee shops which charge for WiFi access are totally cheezy. The internet is like air, you morons. You don’t charge for air.
PS: If you happen to be at my local Starbucks, just cross the street. There’s free WiFi (and better coffee) next door at Tully’s.
Nothing puts my wallet back into my pocket quite as fast as DRM. The details hardly matter. I won’t fire a single neuron to even attempt to understand your DRM system. Not one.
Here’s what my buddy Rob had to say about today’s price cut:
$100 Price Drop Expected on iPod Touch!
Reliable sources say the iPod touch will be dropping by $100 in about 6-8 weeks. That’s a whopping 30% on a brand new product! It is highly recommended that you all wait to purchase your sexy new iPod touch until then. When asking my sources how they received this information and explaining to them how absurd their prediction is, they replied “Didn’t you see the price cut on the iPhone today with no refund for people who purchased the phone more than 14 days ago?” Oh right. Can’t argue with that.
In closing, I don’t actually have any sources and my interactions with them are purely fictitious, but I wouldn’t doubt that kind of price cut in a few weeks given today’s iPhone price cuts - would you? Better keep your money and only buy OLD Apple products since Apple stuff looks like it is going to depreciate worse than a car in the future.
See? I learned my lesson. Bad early adopter! Bad early adopter!
Update:
Apple has seen the error of their ways. They are offering a $100 rebate to all existing iPhone owners (in the form of store credit). Nice work, Apple. Nice work.
- Safari 3: ⌘} and ⌘{
- Firefox 2: Ctrl-Tab
- iTerm, Adium: ⌘→ and ⌘←
Can we just pick one and stick with it?
Update 3/28/2008:
I just discovered an alternative sequence for Safari: Shift-⌘→ and Shift-⌘←
Weirdness is extremely common. Terrorism is extremely rare. Quit evacuating buildings and arresting people for weirdness. You are wasting your time and my tax dollars.
Thank you. That is all.
Wireless carriers are such dinosaurs.
Here’s how it should work. I pay you money every month. I give you bits. You move the damn bits. That’s it. Just move the damn bits. Don’t ask questions, and don’t send my bits to the NSA either.
We should have nationwide wireless data, at megabit speeds, for a flat monthly rate. There should be 100 wireless providers, and when asked at a bar on a Saturday night, most people shouldn’t even remember who theirs is*.
Instead, we’ve got 4 carriers with such delusions of grandeur, that they actually exert control over the handset manufacturers. My RAZR still has a Cingular logo printed on it. Can you imagine Jonathan Ive allowing this?
Instead, they force us into “walled gardens” where we can only buy ring tones and games from them. In some cases, they will actually disable hardware features to make this possible.
Instead we have this bullshit tethering idea. What bugs me the most about tethering is that, in a network of sane design, it should not be possible for the carrier to differentiate between “normal data use” and “tethering”.
If you sell me a flat-rate plan and I figure out a way to share the service with my whole dorm, tough cookies. You should have got your damn pricing model right in the first place.
Capitalism has done a complete face-plant on this one. Whatever happened to the collective good?
* Unless they really love their provider, because of the great customer service. Ha! Imagine that!
Just a quick rant: Why does Google still suck for finding BIOS and drivers online? A search for K8N-DL BIOS yields exactly zero first-page results from the Asus web site.
Hey Google, this is the link I want.
kthxbye
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