I’ve been thinking more about my defense of the Mac as a long-term computing platform, and I’m slowly coming around to understanding that at the base of my ideas is a type of willful ignorance that I should know better than to indulge in. The world is changing, computers are changing, and how we work and interact with them is changing drastically. To get to the root of this, let’s follow the five “whys” of why I need a Mac to work.

I need a Mac to get my work done. Why?

Because the Mac is a Unix based computer that includes the standard set of tools I use day to day, and it’s solid and reliable enough for me to depend on to work well when I need it.

Why do I need a Unix computer to work?

Because I’m a devops engineer, or automation engineer, or advanced sysadmin, whatever you’d care to call this job at the moment. I work primarily with AWS, and the best tools for building the automation systems for deploying our applications use the command line. Not to mention I often need to ssh into a server to troubleshoot it.

Why does the AWS environment use the command line?

Well, technically the command line is just one of the tools available, the awscli tools talk back to the AWS API, and AWS has SDKs available for popular languages. I could, and often do, write python code to accomplish what I need done. I suppose the real answer to this question is that there is currently no better interface for doing what I do.

Why is there no better interface for doing what you need to do?

Because designing human interfaces that make sense is difficult, especially with complex concepts. We need to be able to express logically that one bit of code needs to pull data from another bit of code which is pulling data from a database, all the while ensuring that the customer is getting the information they need quickly and easily.

Why are the systems you work with so complicated?

That’s a good question. Maybe they don’t need to be, or maybe in the near future they won’t be anymore. My work involves manipulating data, building websites that allow people access to upload and download data, and ensuring that the infrastructure these systems run on remains fast and available. How much of this is now being built into platforms like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform? How much of what I do each day could soon be accomplished by machine learning?

What if you could ask your phone to generate a graph of Apple’s annual profit and loss, and be sure that the visuals it returned were accurate and reliable? What if I could tell an iPad to build a highly available, auto-scaling infrastructure for hosting the Python code in my git repository, and the iPad would just go out and build everything I needed? How far are we from AI being able to tell from looking at a git repo the details of the infrastructure it needs? In that scenario, what use is “devops” when the engineer is AWS? For that matter, how far away are we from telling the computer the logic of what we need and having it develop the code for us?

Possibly not far. A recent article in Wiredexplores this very possibility:

Traditional coding won’t disappear completely—indeed, O’Reilly predicts that we’ll still need coders for a long time yet—but there will likely be less of it, and it will become a meta skill, a way of creating what Oren Etzioni, CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, calls the “scaffolding” within which machine learning can operate.

That scaffolding is where I’ve been aiming my career for quite a while now, but, it may not be enough.

In the long run, Thrun says, machine learning will have a democratizing influence. In the same way that you don’t need to know HTML to build a website these days, you eventually won’t need a PhD to tap into the insane power of deep learning. Programming won’t be the sole domain of trained coders who have learned a series of arcane languages. It’ll be accessible to anyone who has ever taught a dog to roll over. “For me, it’s the coolest thing ever in programming,” Thrun says, “because now anyone can program.”

Basic economics says that scarcity creates value, in a world where anyone can program the skill currently required would be drastically devalued. This predicts a move from “infrastructure as code” to “infrastructure as algorithmically determined”.

I need a Mac for what I do now, but if current trends continue I might not need a Mac for much longer to do my job. In fact, as the tech industry continues to evolve, it’s entirely possible that it will evolve to the point where it no longer needs me. When that happens, maybe I’ll finally open up that coffee shop I’ve been dreaming about for decades.

Link

Sal Soghoian, writing for MacStories:

Here’s a thought experiment. Let’s imagine that Apple decided to combine their engineering resources to form app teams that delivered both iOS and macOS versions of applications.

In such a scenario it may seem logical to retain application features common to both platforms and to remove those that were perceived to require extra resources. Certainly Automation would be something examined in that regard, and the idea might be posited that: “App Extensions are equivalent to, or could be a replacement for, User Automation in macOS.” And by User Automation, I’m referring to Apple Event scripting, Automator, Services, the UNIX command line utilities, etc.

I’ve said many times that one of the main reasons I came to OS X is the underlying Unix utilities. I literally can’t do my job without the command line. It’s always in my dock, it’s always open, and I’ve got it customized just the way I like it. There is no replacement for the terminal, and no App Extension can provide a way for me to string together the tools I use to get done what needs to get done.

In such a world like Sal is imagining, I would have to find an SSH app like Prompt and setup my entire development environment on a Linux server somewhere. While possible, it’s not economical and it’s certainly not how I’ve become accustomed to working. I don’t think I’m alone in this either, anyone who does web development relies on command line versions of Python, Ruby, PHP, or Perl, along with a host of other small utilities to do things like syntax checking or unit tests.

I think it’s possible that Apple could remove the Terminal from OS X, along with the Unix utilities, similar to what they’ve done with iOS, but I don’t think they will. Apple uses OS X to develop their own software, so they know what the developers need to be efficient and productive. However I could see a world where you had to install Xcode and enable “developer mode” to get to the Unix utilities. We may not be far away from a day when OS X no longer ships with Terminal.app, but I think we’ll always have a way to install it when there’s real work that needs done.

I think Apple may be heading in the wrong direction, and it’s sad to see Sal be let go, but I’m glad to see him carrying on fighting for the users.

Despite aspirations of expanding my fields of interest and adopting new hobbies outside of technology, my day-to-day work gets done on a Mac. I’ve got a vested interest in the Macs continued survival, I’m one of those “truck drivers” that uses their machine for all it’s worth, and would have a difficult time transitioning to anything else. In my job I need to run shell scripts and build Docker containers, I need to ssh to Linux servers and RDP into Windows instances. I need to write, edit, and run Python code that connects to a database through a ssh tunnel. I need to do things that are either difficult or simply impossible with iOS, but are dead simple¹ with a Mac.

That’s why I switched to a Mac in the first place, someone had finally put a useable interface on top of a solid Unix core. The Mac community, especially the third-party developers, is why I stay on the Mac. I could get my work done on Linux, but my Lord, why would I want to? My degree is in human-computer interaction, I’d spend half my time ranting about the thousands of paper cuts in the user interface until I abandoned the GUI and ran everything from the command line, or a stripped down paneling interface. I’ve been there before. The Mac is a comfortable work environment that doesn’t skimp on capability like iOS does. Look deep enough into any of the iOS only workflows and nearly all of them are relying on outside computing devices of some type to get around what iOS can’t do.

But today we are once again hearing the death knell being rung for the Mac. This time it’s not because of an outside source taking over, but Apple itself who might simply decide that the Mac isn’t worth keeping around anymore. This is despite it being a profitable business, and being the sole source of development for iOS apps, and despite it being an industry leader in features and design, the tech media have decided that Apple is only a breath away from blowing out the Mac candle forever.

Well, we’ve been here before, right? It was before my time as an Apple user, but it’s my understanding that in the late ‘90s you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting on an industry “think piece” about the death of the Mac. Yet, here we are at the dawn of 2017 and the Mac is still here.

That’s not to say that it isn’t entirely possible that Apple might kill off the Mac Pro, or the Mac Mini. I wouldn’t be too surprised if neither of those products existed by the end of the year. But a new macOS-running computer of some sort is something I expect to be able to buy for the next three years, at least.²

Assuming the current Mac I’m typing this on lasts for the next three years, which it should unless I break it somehow, my next Mac should last for another estimated three to five years. Let’s just say I draw this out as far as I can and say five, that means I’ve got at least eight years of Mac use easily planned for the future. Which of us can look that far into the future and see what the computing industry or our lives will look like by then? Perhaps the iPad and iOS will finally have matured enough to make Macs truly obsolete, or perhaps my work requirements will have changed sufficiently to make adopting iOS full-time relatively painless. Who knows?

The point is, all this handwringing over the future of the Mac is overblown. We have years of macOS ahead of us. Apple is selling some fantastic Macs right now³, and I expect they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Until iOS actually is better than the Mac, there’s no reason to think that any of us will have to adopt our toolset to another platform. The Mac is here, has been here, and from what I can see, will continue to be here for many years to come.

Part of what’s been great about using Apple products is the feeling of living just a little bit in the future. The Mac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad paved a way towards a far less complicated future, where technology was seamlessly integrated into our lives, and enhanced our day to day interactions with our work and with each other. Apple, better than anyone, understands that technology is at it’s best when it’s nearly invisible. But, living in the future comes at a price, namely a sacrifice of stability and accepted norms of what works.

Yesterday we were driving to see family who lives three hours away. About a half hour into the trip I got a Skype message from a friend asking for some technical help. After he explained the problem I knew how to fix his issue, but I needed to SSH into a server to do it. Unfortunately, I left my Mac at home, and had nothing but my iPhone. Undaunted¹, I setup a VPN and downloaded Prompt by Panic. This is where I ran into a problem. To SSH into the server I needed to get my private key². Prompt would use the key if I could get it copied into my clipboard, but getting it there turned out to be more of a hurdle than I could overcome.

I tried to get the key from BackBlaze, but the iOS client wouldn’t let me view the text of the key or to export it with a share sheet, it only told me the type of file it was, which was no help. I also thought that I might have a copy of the key³ in a zip file in my Archive folder under my Documents folder, and I recently turned on iCloud sync for my entire Desktop and Documents folders, so I thought I should have been able to get to the key from there. In what was probably the most frustrating technical failure of the night, the iCloud app refused to download any file, and any other app I had installed that also had access to iCloud also refused to download files or would simply freeze up and crash.

The point of moving documents into the cloud was to have them when I needed them, but when I did need them the system failed. To add insult to injury, when I wanted to look up something frivolous this morning the app worked fine. I’ve since turned that feature off. If I can’t rely on it, it’s not worth it having it turned on. I wanted to live in the future where I never had to think about having access to my data, where it’s just always there when I need it, but in this case, the future simply isn’t ready quite yet.

This fiasco caused me to think a bit more about what has and has not worked in technology in 2016. A lot of virtual ink has been spilled about virtual reality and self-driving cars, but neither of them are quite ready for the real world yet, not that I’ve seen anyway. Social media has allowed trolls to run rampant, sucked our attention reserves dry, and helped elect the single most unqualified president in history to the highest office in the land. Twitter and Facebook have had great years in the past, but 2016 was not one of them. I’ve withdrawn almost completely from both of them, but I’m looking forward to Manton finally unveiling micro.blog. Yahoo announced that they let over a billion accounts get hacked, the DNC got hacked, and the Internet of Things got hacked. Overall, not a good year for online security either. A great year to be a 1Password customer though.

2016 was a not-too-subtle reminder to be critical of the organizations and devices which play a role in our lives. A reminder that trust is easily lost and not easily regained. That the promises people make are not always the ones they keep.

So, what has worked? On a personal level, while I’ve been critical of my need for the application in the past, my experience with DEVONthink and DEVONthink to Go has always been exactly what the developers said it would be. I’ve never lost data, the new sync works reliably and securely, and the company continues to be active and responsive with their customers. I’ve left DEVONthink in the past, 2017 is the year I commit to it wholeheartedly.

My Mac, iPhone, and Apple TV continue to work well. I almost never have an issue with any device. The one issue I had with my iPhone was recognized by Apple as being widespread and they fixed it for me at no cost. My particular recipe for apps on my Mac continues to work well, although I removed Byword shortly after writing it to consolidate all writing in Ulysses. Speaking of which, Ulysses deserves a special mention as being rock solid, beautiful, and reliable. It’s my favorite writing application, probably ever. Likewise, Day One continues to be fantastic, and receives my highest recommendation for consistent, intentional journalling. There’s more that’s worked over the past year, things silently working along in the background, but these are the things that stand out to me.

I work in the technology industry. I’ve spent sixteen years (so far) studying where and how it fails, what works, what doesn’t, and how to get the most out of our investment. This year my optimism took a hit, and more things than I expected failed. In 2017, I’m looking forward to finding new ways for this tech to not only become more invisible, but more trustworthy as well. 2017 is not just about personal benefit, it’s about security and social conscience as well. It’s about choosing technology that works best for yourself, and for everyone involved. I’m looking forward to exploring exactly what that means as we sail into the uncharted waters of a new year.

From time to time I wonder if I could get by without any 3rd party software installed on my Mac. What would I have to do to adopt to not using the software I’ve become accustomed to? In no particular order, as of this moment I’ve got:

• Ulysses (For long-form writing)
• Byword (For blogging or shorter articles)
• MindNode
• Day One
• OmniFocus
• OmniGraffle
• OmniOutliner
• Transmit
• BBEdit
• Alfred
• Magnet
• Bear
• Reeder
• BackBlaze
• 1Blocker
• ScanSnap
• Debit & Credit

I also have a few apps for work:

• Cisco AnyConnect
• Docker
• Chrome
• HipChat
• Skype
• Microsoft Remote Desktop
• Sequel Pro
• SelfControl

Why would I want to do this? The idea of opening up any Mac and being able to get right to work without any setup is appealing, but honestly, how often do I move to a new Mac? Not very. And the apps that I do use are pretty easy to set up.

Some apps, like MindNode or OmniGraffle are almost impossible to replicate. And others, like Day One, offer so much more than built in apps that I wouldn’t want to move away from them. It’s possible that any third-party app might go out of business or be abandoned, but if I’m careful about what I choose I think I can be reasonably safe in trusting them.

Both the 3rd party apps and the built in apps are playing in a fairly level playing field. They use the same APIs (although the Apple apps get to use some private APIs), the same underpinnings, the same frameworks. The 3rd party apps are, for the most part, simply better done. Like Bear vs Notes for example. Bear is absolutely the better application. Beautiful, well thought out, and has useful features that Notes misses. And, Notes insists on using that ridiculous faux-paper background, and makes it difficult to change the font or font-size of the text. Bear is better, but Notes is built in. But Bear is just a quick trip to the App Store away, but sync costs $15 per year. But at least it’s a good business model that should keep them around. If not, Bear exports my notes easily, so I think it’s safe.

I think the unique mix of applications that are installed on each persons Mac or iOS device is interesting. It’s like a recipe for a good soup, some ingredients have more flavor than others. Some are fresh, some may have grown a bit stale. Some you can grow yourself. Everyone has their own recipe that works best for them, and by sharing we can learn from each other. Using only the built-in apps is like buying pre-made soup off the shelf from WalMart. You can live off it, but the good stuff is found elsewhere.

What could an organization comprised of some of the smartest, most driven people on the planet do with ten billion dollars in a year? Apple increasing their R&D budget five-fold over the past decade is interesting, but the numbers they are talking about are not uncommon in the rest of the tech industry. What I find noteworthy is the comparison with NASA.

It reminds me of the meager resources NASA had when they sent a man to the moon for the first time. We can accomplish amazing things when we put our collective minds to it. And what are Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft doing with their collective billions and billions of dollars in research and development? Building ever more immersive ways for us to share funny cat videos.

It bothers me in a way that so much money is spent on such frivolous things when there are real challenges in the world that our smartest people could be putting their minds to. Could a portion of those billions of dollars be spent figuring out how to get clean water to every person in the world? Or how to overcome drought by filtering seawater?

There are pursuits that are worthwhile and pursuits that are noble, and they are so often not the same thing. Every now and then though, they are. I think what Tesla is doing is both worthwhile from a financial perspective and noble in that by creating technology that relies on clean power they are benefiting everyone. It’s possible that a good sum of Apple’s ten billion is also going towards electric, self-driving cars, but we haven’t seen the fruit of that research yet. Meanwhile, NASA landed a probe on a comet.

This is fantastic, pure Phish. I’m so glad that they’ve just been getting better over the years.

Vibrating with love and light, pulsating with love and light, in a world gone mad, a world gone mad, there must be something more than this!

Perfect.

We humans are complicated creatures. I run for miles at a time, even though I’ve got nowhere to go, and nothing is chasing me, nothing but time and old age. Some people collect stamps, others watch birds; there’s no end to the ways that we occupy our time. Some people write stories, or draw, or paint, or make pottery out of clay. Some people write poetry. My daughter, my oldest, spends her time practicing the ancient art of dance.

Over the years that I’ve been taking her to dance practice and recitals, I’ve spent quite a bit of time pondering the significance of dance. Why do we do it? What sort of purpose does it serve? I’m reminded of Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society on why we read and write poetry.

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.

Poetry, beauty, romance, love… and dance.

Dance, a physical expression of emotion, the rhythmic movement of the human body. The endless, impossible pursuit of perfection.

To dance takes dedication and courage. It takes practicing before the sun comes up and finishing after everyone else has long gone to bed. It takes a willingness to incur injury in pursuit of your art. It takes being able to forget all that and have fun. To lose yourself in the moment, to revel in your ability, gliding from one motion to the next, emotions coming to form like firecrackers on the stage. Body and mind working together in unity.

As I’ve watched my daughter grow up over the years and explore her chosen pastime, I’ve thought deeply on the purpose of dance, and how easy it is for those of us with highly analytical and logical minds to discard or ignore the pure joy of artistic expression. I’ve seen reference to a debate over whether dance is an art or a sport. The question is wrongheaded, dance is both, of course. My daughter has grown to show poise and grace while on the lighted stage, performing before crowds that would freeze lesser individuals with stage fright. After every single performance I’ve seen I come away feeling more proud of her than ever.

This is her senior year of high school, which, one, means I’m officially old now, and two, in a few months she’s going to set out on her own big adventure. I know that with the dedication, courage, and ability she’s developed over the years she is going to be fantastic. While it will be bittersweet to see her leave home, I can’t wait to watch her start to fly. There will be hard times to come, as in anyone’s life, but through it all I hope she never stops dancing.

“Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary.”

One of the surest ways I know I’m well on my way to crotchety old man status is not the grey in my hair, but my gut reaction to a certain tradition in our small town. To celebrate homecoming, our high school cheerleaders and dance team spends the night covering the high school football players houses, cars, and possibly yards with toilet paper, saran wrap, and plastic forks. They call it tradition, I call it vandalism, but, like so many other things in this tiny Iowa town, I’m simply outvoted.

One of the oddest aspects of this annual event is that it’s completely legitimized by the adults in town. Some of them even drive the kids around to the different houses. I know TP’ing happened when I was a kid too, but at the time it was done by kids who snuck out at night and did it knowing full well it was illegal and that if caught, they would be in somewhat serious trouble. Last year, one of the local cops helped the cheerleaders throw a roll of toilet paper at a house. It’s like the kids who used to do this on their own grew up and wanted to make sure their kids had the same experience, but in a safe, supervised way.

So tonight teams of cheerleaders and dancers will drive around the area, chauffeured by a few parents, and visit 28 homes. At each of the homes various acts of light-hearted vandalism will occur, throwing toilet paper over the house and trees, wrapping the cars in saran wrap, and maybe even filling up the front yard with plastic forks, known, I’m told, as forking the yard. The kids and parents involved say it’s all in good fun, and I understand that, what I don’t understand is who cleans up the mess after the night is over. TP makes a heck of a mess when it gets wet, and if it rains in the next few days some folks are going to have a heck of a time getting it off their homes and property.

Speaking of it raining, another prank that I’ve been told is reserved for those that really deserve it is to fill the front yard with a few boxes of instant mashed potatoes. After it rains, as I understand it, I’ve never seen this done, the potatoes absorb the water and cover the yard. I imagine the owner would have to shovel it out.

The kids have a great time and get to feel like they are breaking the rules, even though the rules have been temporarily adjusted, so they aren’t actually rebelling at all. I think that’s really where the crux of my issue with this tradition lays. It’s become phony, fake. Like mandatory corporate shuffleboard or trust falls. The kids aren’t really being rebellious; this is all pre-planned, packaged and vacuum wrapped like a lunchable. Sometimes I wonder if we are doing the next generation any favors by protecting them so much. There can be no bravery without danger.

But, it is all in good fun. No one gets hurt, no one is in trouble. No one complains about cleaning up the mess, at least no one I’ve talked to has. Maybe some of the kids from the teams have to clean it up, I don’t know. I’m just the grouchy old man who really wants the kids to stay off my lawn.

My favorite new-to-me site is Farnam Street by Shane Parrish. I’ve been experiencing a slow change of interests over the past several months as Apple and tech related news fails to grab my attention. The last time this happened I lost more than a professional interest in the open source community, an area I left years ago and haven’t looked back. I can’t find it in me to care enough about iOS 10 to read the book-length treaties on it at MacStories, in fact the latest iPhone or iOS barely interests me enough to learn what’s in it and if it is anything of use to me.

I just don’t care anymore. My tools of choice work well, and I’m comfortable knowing that there’s nothing better. Instead, I’m turning my attention to a topic that I’ve been dancing around for the past few years, but haven’t put a concerted effort into, something Cal Newport calls Deep Work. I’ve always been fascinated with how the mind works, and exploring the outer boundaries of the human brain. The psychology courses I took in grad school were among my favorites, and how we think about the world around us is endlessly fascinating.

Farnam Street is chock-full of insight into the human condition, where we fail, and how we can be better. Being a little better every day is exactly what I want to pursue, To that end, I’m in the middle of an experiment right now, once it’s over I’ll report my findings, but my thought is that after 30 days I’ll be more focused, happier, and more productive than when I started. Better.

I’m giving up a few things, and putting my energy into other things, but let’s leave that alone for now and return to this idea of areas of focus. I once considered myself a part of the Apple community. I was a developer for a short time, and a writer for a popular blog. I followed all the right people on Twitter, subscribed to all the right podcasts, and generally knew what was going on in the community of internet famous folks in the Apple community. I still do, to a point, but as I’ve stated earlier, I just don’t care about it anymore. One of the things I’ve given up is the thought that I’m going to be any more of a part of this community than someone on the outside looking in. I don’t have time for such juvenile pastimes, and this hobby was not actually making my life better.

I’ll dip my toes in from time to time to see what’s going on and see if any new developments are coming down that pipes that might make my tools better, but I’m not diving in and swimming in it anymore. Perhaps one day some online technical community will interest me again. Instead I’m taking a more realistic approach to my time, and turning my attention to those things that actually do make me a better person. My plan is to write about those things here.