Others have already said so much about Steve Jobs stepping down as the CEO of Apple that I had serious doubts about adding my voice to the existing cacophony. Others have written so much, and surely so much more will be over the next few days. I had doubts, but I have this to say:

Apple is a reflection of Steve Jobs, a reflection of his aesthetic taste, his preference for design, and his uncompromising demand for quality in everything bearing the Apple logo. This dedication to creating the best polarized the tech community into a group of a few who understood his passion, and a much larger group of detractors who love to point out each and every misstep Apple has taken. Steve Jobs is the best because he would accept nothing less. Not from himself, not from those he worked with, and not from the products his company created.

This is good.

To be uncompromising today means going against the tide, it means pushing boulders up hill. It means ignoring everyone else who says that what you are trying to do is impossible, that you ask too much, that you should simply not care. American industry outside of Apple seems perfectly content to punch a clock, make a paycheck, and watch the hours drone by till the weekend comes and they can drown their atrophied ambitions in alcohol. That is not my job. No skin off my back. Two tears in a bucket.

Mac OS X drew me to Apple because of its Unix core. Since then, I have studied psychology, design, typography, and am now earning a masters degree in the Human Computer Interaction. I do not think it hyperbole to say that Apple, in a way, affected my life. More than anything, what I have learned from watching Apple for the past decade is that not only is it OK to strive for excellence, it is in this striving that you find success.

Half-ass is not good enough.

Those who do not care will always surround you, those who will try to belittle you and find fault in anything you do. Do not let them drag you down. Stand out, believe, care, and bring a Mac to work.

So, thank you Steve. Thank you for making your life a story that we can look up to. Thank you for creating, building, failing, believing, and succeeding.

Every so often I get the inkling to make this site more than what it is. Since 2008 I’ve been writing fairly regularly here about whatever comes to mind, and in doing so I’ve covered several topics. I’ve written about Android and Mac geekery, success and failure in Mac development, business, psychology, systems administration, personal stories, and memories. More than anything, I have tried to inspire others, and sometimes, if I’m very, very lucky, I succeed.

From time to time something I’ve written gets linked to by someone unexpected, and sometimes I get linked to because I’ve emailed someone to show them the site. These spikes in readers tells me that what I write can be interesting, at least part of the time, but the pattern is haphazard. Probably as haphazard and random as the topics I’ve covered. I think that this range of topics is what discourages readers from returning to jonathanbuys.com, at least outside of those that know me personally.

For a long time, I simply did not care how many people read the site. I did not collect statistics or hit counts, and the only metric I had for measuring the popularity (or lack thereof) of the site was email and Twitter responses. Lately though I’ve been wondering why I keep the site at all, if not for people to read it. Part of me wants to answer that the easy way and say that it is simply a developers journal, a place to rant about whatever my latest complaint is about this language or that syntax. That’s not the truth though. If it were, the main topic of the site would be development, and it is clearly not. Another reason is to maintain a sort of “online resume” for potential job offers. Keeping an online persona for employers is an interesting idea, and I would certainly not be against anyone looking through the site to try to get to know me better, but as a sole purpose I think the online resume could be done better in a different format. A much older reason I had for keeping the site was just to practice writing. An idea worth exploring.

To be able to write coherently, you must first be able to organize your thoughts, feelings, and emotions. In the 37 Signals book “Getting Real”, the authors say to hire the better writer, because good writing is the sign of an organized mind. Writing is exercise for the mind. If watching TV is eating potato chips, writing is lifting weights. However, writing for practice does not mean that you have to share. If practicing writing was my only motivation, I would have no need for a website. A personal journal would do. So, why do I keep publishing? Why do I keep working on the site?

Mostly, its hope. I will be deep, bare-bones honest with you here. It is hope that maybe, just maybe, the site will turn into something more, or lead to something more. I publish here because I hope that something I love to do, writing, can lead to opportunities I cannot foresee. I write here for the same reasons I started Farmdog, the same reasons I went back to grad school… hope. Still, hope and $2.02 will get you a medium cup of coffee at Smokey Row. It is not enough to hope. To make anything real you must take action. To take action, you need direction, to have direction, you must have a plan. Me, I’m a planner.

Going back to the idea of writing being the sign of an organized mind, I honestly did not know how this article was going to end until I started writing it. In the writing, my mind worked through the reasoning and logic, aligning things I knew into a cohesive story. A story that starts being more focused on the topics I write about, and thinking more about the reader than myself. I don’t know how I’m going to say I’m writing to be a writer without sounding like an asshole, but I’m going to do my best.

The Motorola ATRIX 4G is technology released before its time. At first glance, it seems like any other Android phone with impressive technical specs and questionable user interface decisions, but the phone as a phone is not the interesting part of this device.

The phone can be docked to what appears to be a notebook, and used as an (almost) full-fledged computer. Motorola (soon to be Google?) calls this a “webtop application”, and packages a version of Firefox. I would call this technology an early preview of whats to come.

The iPhone changed the mobile phone market. It proved how much a small mobile device could do. Before the iPhone mobile applications were horrible, slow, and expensive. I remember it costing $2.99 per month to play Pac-Man. The disruption caused by the iPhone is still being felt as the market continues to adjust, and innovation continues to leap forward. As the phones become more powerful and more capable, the role of the desktop computer will continue to decrease. Eventually, the big boxes will only be useful to developers and movie makers. The role that they played will be replaced by our phones.

On my desk, as on many others, sits my MacBook Pro (clamshell mode, in a BookArc, if you were interested), a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and my iPhone in a dock. How long will it be until the MacBook is no longer needed? How long until all I need is to drop the phone in the dock, my monitor springs to life, and I start working the same as I always have?

As a short sidebar, touch based interfaces are wonderful, but I believe that there will be a place for the tactile response of a physical keyboard for a long time to come.

A brief look at the history of computers shows a steadily declining physical size, and a steadily increasing amount of power. I do not believe that this trend shows any sign of slowing. For example, recent research by IBM shows great promise in increasing the amount of, and reliability of, local flash storage. How long will it be until both the raw computational power and local storage in a phone both match what is available in a notebook computer?

The form factor of a notebook computer is a good trade off. There is ample screen resolution, and a full sized keyboard for serious work, and it is portable enough so you can comfortably sit on your couch to get things done. However, it does not pass the pocket test. That is, you can’t fit one in your pocket… unless you have freakishly large pockets. But, what about a notebook sized device with a keyboard, monitor, and touchpad that you could slide your phone into like you load a CD now? What if you could take that same phone and dock it on your desk to use as your main desktop computer. What if you could bring it with you anywhere, and have everything with you, anywhere you had a pocket?

The ATRIX is clearly a step in that direction, but it is too little, too soon. The ATRIX is more of a curiosity than a real consumer device that people would be expected to use on a daily basis. I explored one at a local BestBuy for a while, and found the user interface to be laggy, slow to respond to mouse events. It felt like using old emulation software. I can not imagine why anyone would choose to use the device as it is, the hardware is simply not ready. However, slow hardware is a temporary problem. The ATRIX is a glimpse of the future.

My daughter had an ear infection. A common occurrence in children, so I brought her down to our local doctors office. The doctor took one look at her ear and knew what needed to be done. He wrote out a prescription, gave me a few instructions, and sent me on my way. I then had two choices, I could drive the twenty miles into the city to get her prescription filled by Walgreens, or I could drive seven miles over to the next town to see if the local pharmacy could take care of it. I decided on the shorter trip.

Walking into the pharmacy in the next town I felt a bit like McFly in Back to the Future. The front of the store is segregated by a few short isles of various ointments and creams, heartburn treatment and special insoles for shoes. Towards the center of the store is a small cafe serving soda and malts. The pharmacy is at the back of the store, adorned by relics of its past: an antique cash register, mortar and pestle, weights and scales, and an assortment of glass bottles that once contained the popular medicines of their times.

I walked to the counter and asked the teenager if they could fill the prescription. She looked at the slip and the doctor’s scrawl, asked if I had been there before, and went to ask the advice of the woman in the back. She soon returned and said that it would be just a few moments, and that the other woman was working on the prescription now. I walked around the shop a bit longer, taking note of the blood pressure testing machine and the variety of bandages on the shelf, and was soon called to the counter by the woman who had prepared the medicine.

After I paid the copay, I told her how glad I was that the little pharmacy was there. She smiled, said thank you, and then did something unexpected. She said, that since I have children, and that children sometimes got sick in the middle of the night, that she would give me both her home phone and her cell phone numbers on the back of her business card.

The woman was both the pharmacist and the owner of the little corner store, and the great-granddaughter of the man who opened the store over one hundred years ago. On the drive home I reflected on the choice I had made to visit the small town instead of the city, and it occurred to me what a difference in quality of service there was. Not only was the smaller store closer, I came away with more than expected. I could have easily lost two hours driving to the city, and had little to no interaction with the people mixing the medicine. The transaction could have been dry and remote, but was instead warm and personal. It felt good to know who I was dealing with, that they had a concern for the welfare of my children, and that I was supporting the local community.

Chain stores have increasingly replaced the small town, family owned store, and that is a shame. People stand to gain so much more by shopping locally. I now have the pharmacists home and cell numbers on our family bulletin board at home, and an assurance that I could call anytime, day or night. The personal touch she added to our business today is the essence of personal quality.

The venerable BBEdit recently received a big upgrade, and looks poised to attract users of TextMate, which, by all accounts, has been abandoned by its developer. I tried to love BBEdit, but it always felt like trying on someone else’s clothes. They might look good, but that does not mean the clothes will be comfortable for you. Recent conversations about text editors on Build and Analyze led me to rethink my position, and examine in more detail how I came to choose MacVim.

Several years ago, I was sitting with a contractor as he installed a new firewall on our network. He was explaining to me how Unix systems relied on text files, and how all Unix systems came with a text editor named vi. I asked, in my ignorance, why anyone should bother using such ancient technology, when a modern graphical text editor was available. Pragmatically, he replied that someday I would be connected to a server through SSH or telnet and the only way to edit a file would be with vi. I took his advice to heart, and I am glad I did.

Over the years as I have dug deeper and deeper into Unix (and later Linux) systems, I accumulated a few of my favorite vi tricks which I kept in an exrc file. I had complicated macros that would do things like building the skeleton of a shell script, or insert a comment with my name and email address, or the current date. OK, maybe it was not that complicated, but every time I hit the mapped key combo, I smiled. I learned to navigate to an exact line in a file, to yank and paste text, and generally how to get along with the only text editor I could be sure was on each and every server I was responsible for. I did not realize it at the time, but I was building up valuable expertise, and, it seems, more importantly, a type of muscle memory.

In the past, I always kept my work on the servers separate from my “work” I did on my Mac. My Mac was a hobby, but work was important. When TextMate appeared, I downloaded a copy to use for building web sites. I enjoyed TextMate, but there was never love. Love takes time, frustration, and understanding. Love was what I was building at work with vi. I simply did not understand it at the time.

In fact, for many years I kept the attitude that vi was not a modern text editor. It was simply a tool for work and that on a Mac I should be able to use a graphical text editor that did lots of fancy tricks. It was not until this summer, after years of building my vi knowledge on the server that I decided to use vi for a Python programming course on my Mac. I downloaded a copy of MacVim, spent a few days configuring it the way I liked it, and, for what feels like the first time, felt completely comfortable in my text editor.

I had already overcome the biggest obstacle to vi: the learning curve. Slowly, over years of use, I had become fluent in one of the most powerful text editors available.

I will not go into the details of how to configure MacVim, there are several articles for that already. If you are interested, I keep my MacVim configuration in GitHub. What I will say is that taking the time to learn the basics of vi, and taking a few days, maybe a week, to find the magic combination of plugins and configurations that work for you, is worth the effort. MacVim is like a gateway drug. Once you get used to using it, you might find yourself attempting to navigate a new email in Mail with vi key bindings.

I am still learning new things with MacVim. There are precious few tricks that another editor can do that MacVim cannot. However, choosing MacVim is akin to choosing a partner to share your life. The more you put into the relationship, the more you get out of it. In any relationship, over time you become aware of the others shortcomings, but if the relationship is healthy, those shortcomings are very easy to overlook. If you spend serious time in text, it behooves you to spend serious time learning your tools.

MacVim is actively developed, has a dedicated community, is easily extendible, and can fly through the biggest text files with ease. However, it does take time to understand, and I will not try to tell you that the commands you use to control MacVim are intuitive or “easy”. Nothing worth doing is ever easy.

OS X Lion is a big step forward in personal computing, and, over the next few years, we are going to see a lot of our preconceptions about how computers work begin to melt away. Apple is setting a high bar for themselves and their developers. Lion is an ambitious release with ambitious goals that are going to take some time to actually come to fruition. However, as futuristic as Lion is, Mission Control feels like a step back.

One of the best features of the Mac since 10.3 been Exposé. Exposé became a part of my workflow so easily that I came to rely on it just by muscle memory. Exposé was always one of the gems of OS X that highlighted how different the mental model of using the computer was when compared to Windows. Unfortunately, with Lion, Apple decided to cut way back on the features that were available in Exposé and mash it together with Spaces. Spaces are Apple’s implementation of multiple desktops, a feature that UNIX and Linux desktops of had for decades. Spaces before 10.7 was fairly good, but I rarely used it.

One situation when I would use Spaces is during server patching. When patching servers it would not be unusual to have 20 or even 30 different terminal windows open at the same time, as well as a chat window, Mail, and Safari. With that many windows open at the same time I would use Exposé to keep track of them all, and I would use Spaces to keep all of the different terminal groups in their own space. On Snow Leopard and before you could activate Spaces, and then drag windows back and forth between Spaces even if you weren’t actually on the desktop that was active at the time. It didn’t matter, they were all equal.

Then, using Spaces’ 10,000 ft. view, you could see all of your Spaces, and all of your overlapping windows. It is interesting to note that this core functionality has not changed in Mission Control. Mission Control does still let you see all Spaces and all overlapping windows in them. In Exposé, the magic was that you could then hit the key command for Exposé and inside of each one of the Spaces, in real time, the windows would all zoom out into Exposé in each of their Spaces to give you a full view of every window in every space that you had opened. Exposé allowed you to drag-and-drop your individual windows between Spaces and watch as the windows in the new space automatically resized and rearranged to make room for the new arrival.

Mission control is almost Exposé; it does give you the ability to see different application windows, but what it takes away is the elegance of Exposé. Instead of a set of miniaturized windows, each a small, live updating thumbnail, mission control overlaps windows from the same application. Worse, applications windows overlap in the order they were used, which is wrong. If you think about it, when you are going into Exposé, you don’t want to see the application window you just used, you want to see the window that was active before you began using the window that you are currently in. I have always used Exposé to switch between tasks, not to switch between applications.

Also gone from Mission Control is the live nature of Spaces. You can only interact with the space you are currently in, you cannot interact with any other open space, except to switch to that space. That is a step back, no matter how you look at.

I can understand why some things needed to change and Spaces. In Lion, the three finger swipe gesture between Spaces would not have worked with Snow Leopard’s implementation of Spaces. With Snow Leopard, Spaces occupied a two-dimensional graph, both horizontal and vertical. Spaces could be either up or down, or left or right. In Lion, Spaces are only horizontal. This works because the best way to move between Spaces is the three finger swipe from left to right, or from right to left. On Snow Leopard Spaces, to be able to use gestures, you would also have to be able to recognize a three finger swipe up for the space above, and a three finger swipe down for the space below. In Lion, those gestures are already accounted for. Not to say that it could not work, but I could see users becoming easily disoriented as to which space they were in, and which way they should be swiping. With Mission Control, when you reach the end of available Spaces, the desktop bounces slightly, a move clearly reminiscent of iOS. However, what does not make sense to me why Apple decided to change Exposé in a way that is clearly inferior.

With that being said, I love the three-finger swipe gesture to activate Mission Control, but I do wish I could see the full Exposé. I find myself using Spaces a more now than I ever did before. I do not use them as additional desktops but I do always have a space open for iCal, another for iTunes, and maybe another for mail. It’s good to see improvements in Spaces, but it is unfortunate the improvements had to come the cost of the most sophisticated window management system on any platform.

Since writing Keyboard Driven Safari I’ve updated my list of extensions that make Safari my browser of choice.

• Shut Up
• YouTube5
• uTube
• Incognito
• Beautifier
• [Optimize Legibility][7]

  update: Optimize Legibility seems to have some performance issues. My Thanks to Dominic Evans for pointing this out.

• Beautipedia
• Type-To-Navigate
• Invisible Status Bar

The combination of shutup.css, YouTube5, and uTube makes for a great experience viewing videos on YouTube. No comments, a very nicely centered layout, and high-quality 720p h.264 video. Beautifier and Optimize Legibility are both very small, and insert some simple css into each page to enhance typography and font rendering for a better reading experience on sites that may not think of these things on their own.

When reading a Wikipedia article on my MacBook, the experience is similar to using Instapaper on my iPad, thanks to Beautipedia. Absolutely gorgeous. I’m not entirely sure I need Incognito, but the idea of being tracked by some gigantic, faceless corporate entity just feels wrong. Incognito blocks Google Adsense and Google Analytics, as well as Facebook tracking.

The next two extensions are new to the list: Type-To-Navigate and Invisible Status Bar, both by Daniel Bergey. Type-To-Navigate lets me type the characters in a link, and hit the return key to “click” the link. Previous to installing this extension, I would use the Safari “find” feature to quickly find a specific link on a page, and then click on the link with the mouse. Type-To-Navigate removes two steps from the process, and the results are fantastic.

Invisible Status Bar borrows from Chrome, and allows me to hide the status bar, while still being able to hover over a link to see the full URL. Very nice to have when reading through long text, and deciding if a link is worth following or not.

The last extension I use is the fantastic 1Password. 1Password is the one of the first three apps I install on a new Mac, and the first I install on a new iOS device.

Dropped from the list is Google Search Cleanup. I’ve switched most of my search to DuckDuckGo, thanks to outstanding keyboard navigation (it supports vi keyboard bindings for navigation). DuckDuckGo is a very small operation taking on giants, I can’t help but root for the underdog.

I have some issues with the design of Lotus Notes. I’m a relatively new user, I started using Notes in 2006, and at the time we were using 6.5 on Windows. I’ve since upgraded to 8.5.2 on Mac OS X.

The very first thing that strikes me is the default “new mail sound” on the Mac:

Now, imagine hearing that sound several times a day. I eventually got tired of having my Mac muted, and copied the new mail sound out of Mail.app and into Lotus Notes. Here is how it sounds now:

Much better. The original sounds like a carousel at a carnival or something. I would love to hear the rational behind that sound.

Secondly, there are preferences. Lots and lots of preferences, spread all over the place. Each day I start Notes at work, and someone will send me a link to a web site. I’ll click on that link, and each day an error will pop up saying “Unable to launch program”. I click “OK”, and then remember that I need to set my default browser in the Notes preferences. That is not a design issue, that is just buggy software. The design issue here is where I need to go to find the preference to change the default web browser.

On a Mac, all well designed applications’ preferences can be opened by pressing the key combination “Command + ,”. Notes also recognizes that key combo, but only opens a subset of the available preferences called “User Preferences”. The User Preferences are also available under a submenu named “Preferences” under the main Lotus Notes menu. In addition to the User Preferences, there are also menu options for Toolbar Preferences and Status Bar Preferences. Each menu option opens up a similar looking window with a plethora of options for changing different aspects of Notes’ appearance or functionality. None of the options change the default browser.

Under the “File” menu, where only functions relevant to the currently opened document should appear, there are four more menus leading to submenus for additional preferences: Application, Replication, Locations, and Instant Messaging. Under the Locations menu, there is a submenu option to “Manage Locations”. This opens a new tab in front of the mail applications tab in the main window of Lotus Notes. Double-clicking on “Online” opens up a third tab with options defining how my Lotus Notes client connects to the Lotus Notes server. This tab has sub-tabs. The fourth sub-tab over is labeled “Internet Browser”. Clicking on this tab shows a screen with one option for choosing the web browser. Double clicking on the name of the browser, or clicking on the edit button towards the top left hand corner of the locations tab will show a drop down menu. Clicking on the drop down menu does not drop down a menu, but opens up another window where I can then choose the default browser. Then, I need to click “Save & Close”, close the Locations tab, and then I’ll be able to click on the link.

This is completely unnecessary. Mac OS X keeps the default browser settings, so all an external application needs to do is pass a URL to OS X (via the NSFileManager class, if you are into Obj-C), and the OS will launch the appropriate application to handle the protocol.

This doesn’t even begin to get into other standard Mac practices like pressing Command-N to start a new email (Notes tries to create a new application?), the lack of spotlight integration, or the fact that none of the controls are standard controls. No syncing with Address Book or iCal, and the text fields do not inherit the standard NSTextField or NSTextView functionality. The UI is literally surrounded by buttons. Lotus Notes is a very powerful application, but all I want to do is check my email and calendar. Every now and again I use it to send a time-off request.

I understand that Notes has a long history, and I understand that it is a cross-platform application. I’ve also read the paper(pdf) on the redesign of Notes, and commend the team on bringing Notes this far. However, I believe the application has a long way to go, assuming a goal of Lotus Notes is to be a viable mail application on Mac OS X, and not just what the company forces the user to use.

I’m willing to help in any way I can.

Apple makes great products, and Brooks Brothers makes great clothes, but neither make the man. It is pure foolishness to judge another person at all, much less using a measure as trifling as a choice of computer.

I woke this morning at 5:20, got dressed, and went outside for my morning workout. Today’s weather was beautiful, perfect temperature, and the smell of fresh rain. Lately I’ve been riding my bike, a Schwinn that is neither strong enough to be a mountain bike, nor sleek enough to be a road bike. I would call it a “small town bike”, as it gets me around all four corners of our small town.

I rode down the street, fast down the slight decline, feeling the wind on my cheeks, blowing the last of the sleep from my mind. I slowed down a little going up a slight incline, starting the muscles in my legs working for the day. Across the highway, down a few cross roads, until I came to the city park, my favorite part of the ride. The park has a small pond with a path around it and a bridge over it. Sometimes I see frogs jump into the pond, and twice now I’ve seen a large bird I believe to be a stork on the far side of the pond.

As I rode around the pond I was distracted by something in the path, something fairly large. Large enough that I was sure it was not supposed to be here. This was unusual. As I rode closer I saw that it was a blanket. My first thought was “why would someone leave a blanket out here”. As I rode closer I began to think that it was shaped oddly like a man.

My thoughts raced back to New Mexico, where I found a man, drunk, lying in the street. He was unconscious, and looked as if he had fallen face-first into a busy city street off the curb at a bus stop. His companions at the bus stop simply looked at him, and continued to wait for the bus. I was driving by on the way to work, but stopped to help.

Gliding by the oddly man shaped blanket I glanced down at it and thought I caught a glimpse of skin under the blanket. I stopped my bike, got off a few feet past it, and could see a bare foot uncovered. I started to feel anxious. There was someone there. I took a small step towards the blanket, thinking about what I would do if it were a homeless man sleeping. I had decided to step up to the blanket and ask if whoever was inside needed help. If it were a hobo, he’d probably say no and yell at me to leave him alone. I did not want to get yelled at, but I also did not want to leave someone if they needed help.

I looked again at the foot, and something about it struck me as odd. Even a hobo would probably have shoes, and this foot looked oddly clean, well kept, and small. A horrible thought ran through my head, something worthy of the opening scene from a prime time crime drama on TV. All of these thoughts raced through my head in the course of a few seconds as I took another step towards the blanket. Then, the blanket was thrown back, and a voice greeted me.

“What’s up? Did you think we were dead?”

Of course. Under the blanket were a pair of teenagers. A boy with a bright, fake diamond earring, and a girl with pink hair. I have a feeling I know what they were up to under there.

“Wasn’t sure.”

I replied.

“Naw, just chilling.”

Said the boy.

The girl giggled. Feeling slightly embarrassed at interrupting their ill placed chilling, I looked at the pond, then looked at the sky, then said:

“Nice place.”

Then got back on my bike and continued on the path.

Another mile down the road I saw two rabbits.