Glenn Fleishman Interrogates the Past

iWatch, iHub

I had a vision this morning of where the Apple Watch fits into the bigger universe of things. As I said at the launch, this first version is not what Apple intends to make at all. It will have a highly interested but likely limited audience, and it will make huge margins on the top end of the basic watches plus the premium ones, like gold.

The ultimate form of the Watch comes when it can contain all the sensors and radios of a current iPhone. That's probably within two years — Watch 3. Most of the improvements in battery performance in an iPhone go to power bigger and denser and brighter screens. In a Watch, the power needs for a cellular radio (multiple standards), Wi-Fi, GPS, and MEMS (accelerometer, gyroscope, etc.) will likely be low enough by then and the chips advanced enough to work.

In that view, the Watch

Technology

Apple Updates To Fix Some Annoyances

Apple released OS X and iOS updates today with a little more verbosity than they have in recent years. Yosemite 10.10.2 includes a Wi-Fi disconnection fix, and we'll see if that finally nails a bug that dates back to beta testing and has driven some people bananas. I've seen it in roaming problems in my house, in which Yosemite won't hand off from one base station to another, despite a poor signal. Several other items in the list appeared in my or the mega-comments for The Software and Services Apple Needs to Fix.

The iOS 8.1.3 fix repairs several issues, including the bug I've seen repeatedly in which apps are not searchable via Spotlight—they don't show up in results. This is a four-month-long bug for a feature I and others may use multiple times a day. (It didn't always fail, but it did at least

Technology

Isles of Stability and the Perception of Apple's Software Getting Worse

On the most recent episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast (#99), the fine hosts discussed a number of things related to whether Apple's operating systems have become less stable or well executed. They made a few points that I think emphasize the sensation that things are worse, even if one could argue that this is part of a routine cycle.

Isles of stability. New OS releases always have teething pains, and if we're lucky, a rocky 10.x.0 is fully stable and good by 10.x.2 within about two to three months. (Dirty secret of all software: when version x.0 ships, they're already working on x.1, because they ship with known problems, but the damned thing has to get out the door. ) However, when OS releases were more than a year apart, we might have a few months of pain, during which period we would either

Technology

The Software and Services Apple Needs to Fix

2022 update: Glenn has several books on macOS and iOS/iPadOS to help you work with and around Apple’s choices for security, privacy, and networking. As of 2022, that includes Take Control of iOS & iPadOS Privacy and Security, Take Control of Securing Your Mac, and Take Control of Your M-Series Mac.

Marco Arment's excellent post on Apple's current state of development has this pithy sentence:

…the software quality has fallen so much in the last few years that I’m deeply concerned for its future.

Apple has huge cash reserves, is massively profitable, and none of that seems likely to falter, nor is that by any means what Marco meant. None of us think Apple will go out of business. Rather, that we will lose the reasons we have selected using Apple's products over those of other companies. We don't pick only or primarily Apple gear because we

Telecommunications

My Revised Ebook on Setting up Apple's Wi-Fi Routers

For a decade (!!), I've been writing and revising a book on using Apple's Wi-Fi routers. Long ago it was Take Control of Your 802.11b AirPort Network, and the current, fifth edition has the moniker Take Control of Your Apple Wi-Fi Network. This latest update (a bit late and all my fault for that) brings the title up to date for 802.11ac, the newest and fastest flavor of Wi-Fi, as well as OS X Mavericks, iOS 7, and Windows 8.1.

The book's designed for any home or small-business user who finds that the basic information Apple provides isn't enough. While I fully agree configuration has never been better for Apple's AirPort Extreme, AirPort Express, and Time Capsule base stations, if you want to configure network layouts or network details outside of quite standard arrangements, you might feel at sea. This book is designed to help.

I go through

Journalism

Apple's Next Products

I have no special knowledge beyond following Apple as a company for 15 years and using its products since the early 1980s. I have a feeling now for what direction Apple might take, even though I've never been able to predict a specific outcome.

What Apple won't do

There is no iWatch. A watch has never made any sense, but it's the only thing that analysts and Apple's competitors have, apparently, been able to think of as a next logical device to make. The history of technology is littered with failed computer watches; Microsoft has gone through two bad iterations itself. If Apple's partners or spies have seen an iWatch, it's more likely a feint to throw competitors off. Apple does put out false scents!

Apple is not going to buy a cellular operator. This comes up again and again. T-Mobile would have been the only firm that would have

Technology

Two Squarespace Image Placement Tips

I've been using Squarespace for months and have been quite happy with how it takes care of so many Web page and site details for me, while also affording me the chance to customize. (I have beat the heck out of adding CSS tweaks.)

Images were still driving me batty, though. Inserting images into a post and resizing them seemed inconsistent and problematic, but I worked through. I finally went to the community forum and knowledgebase sites Squarespace operates and dug around until I found the answer to of the biggest problems.

You can drag and drop from the New Content Block list into a post.

In the corner of a post, there's a + icon. Click it, and you get a list of the various kinds of content blocks you can add to a page. If you just click a block, it's inserted at the end of the post. This

Technology

For What Shall It Profit…

For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?
—Mark 8:36, New American Standard Bible translation

An article in the Verge titled "Inside Pocket: how a startup beat its rivals to build the 'DVR for everything'" prompted me to think about the notion of scale, revenue, and sustainability over my nearly 20 years of work on the commercial Internet.

Way Back in the Long Ago, Children

In 1994, I co-founded a Web development company called Point of Presence Company (POPCO). We funded it ourselves from credit cards and payments from three early clients (Peachpit Press, Faucet Outlet, and Atlas Model Railroad). I brought the first client in; my partner, Todd Haedrich, brought the others (a client of his father's and his uncle's hobbyist company, respectively).

We never really gave a thought to outside funding. I was 26; Todd was 21 or

Technology

Dropbox Manages To Get It Right

A disproportionate percentage of my life (and probably all of yours) has been spent managing the bad customer service offered by most companies, technology and otherwise. It's worth calling out a company that gets it right.

I've had a Dropbox account for years, but I foolishly had the company convert my normal, free account into a Teams business account for a review two years ago for Macworld in which I looked at several cloud-storage options for businesses. I asked the PR folks if they could convert my account back later, and it didn't happen — I didn't follow up and forgot about it.

Recently, I received email that my account was expiring and I realized I need to take action. I guessed I was well above my 2 GB initial account size even with referrals and other upgrades that Dropbox offers. I can't accept free services or products except for testing,