Since this Mac in question became a bit of side-project, I put finding a keyboard off for awhile, but finally got one. Although I’ve been a Mac user for years and can rattle off facts and figures in my sleep, it struck me how simple the keyboards on the first few Mac models were.

I managed to track down a Mac Plus keyboard, which still works with the old 128k, but features a numeric keyboard and has cursor keys. It’s a little less rare, but still works to complete the system—for now. The computer itself actually has a 512k motherboard (which was an Apple-sanctioned upgrade), so it didn’t matter that the keyboard wasn’t 100% original either. Anyway, pulling it out of the box and setting it on my counter next to my aluminum wireless keyboard (which gets quite a bit of use on my iPad), I found it quite amusing that it seems the complicated versus simple continuum is heading back in the simple direction. It’s amusing that Apple even used Helvetica (or something close) for the hardware labels before completely adopting Apple Garamond as the typeface (Helvetica also happens to be the iOS system font of choice).

While today’s Mac are getting increasingly complicated (well, they have been ever since OS X hit the scene, maybe even earlier than that), powerful, and more user-friendly with some of the features in Mac OS X Lion, they still are a far cry from the goal of the original Mac, and certainly overkill for many who just want a basic computer for entertainment or communications. Don’t get me wrong, Apple’s hardware lineup is probably the best value it’s ever been, and the designs are top-notch.

Two Years On

In light of the iPad’s second birthday (January 27), I started reflecting on what this has meant for the tech world, and am surprised some people still question the iPad’s long-term success. I wonder if the Mac community had this feel in 1986—excited about a product growing in popularity, but a bit apprehensive about its future. I vaguely recall some early comparisons of the iPad to the original Mac—simple, appliance-like, closed. Much like the original Mac, the iPad could’ve been a bit more powerful, didn’t offer multitasking until a couple of software versions later, and was sealed. Mix in the App Store, and you have a completely Apple-controlled experience. Critics say the App Store limits the “openness” of software choice, but the original Mac was lacking software options simply by the pure number of developers wanting to take a stab at a new platform. Eventually they came, but not in droves like the App Store.

The iPad is a very personal product—it makes it difficult for multi-user environments, such as classrooms, but it begs not to be shared even more than a Mac. I like the idea that everything on it is yours and all yours, although a “guest mode” might be nice for sharing something—much like booting off of a fresh system diskette on the original Mac.

But back to that keyboard…

Missing Keys

For some reason, looking at that aged, yellowish, oversized, yet small Mac Plus keyboard got me thinking where it all came from. Take away the extra keys that were added for the Plus and you had a keyboard that was almost identical to the on-screen keyboard on the iPad, except for a separate row for numbers. Things like Escape, Control, Function, F-keys, Eject, and even cursor keys that adorn our Mac keyboards were nonexistent. To the left of the space bar is simply Option (for alternate characters) and Command (to simplify tasks). While some may say that you’d at least need arrow keys, the idea was that there was one or two ways to do a task and that was it. Uncluttered.

I hope that the iPad continues to develop as a competent standalone computing platform, especially with the introduction of iOS 5. The iCloud/iTunes Match model is much different than the Mac has ever been, but if you buy in (or start from scratch) it works quite well. While the computer geek side of me will always want something with more features, tweaks, and power, the user side of me wants something that is simple, uncluttered, and will always work as expected. The Mac faced the “PC-ification” of becoming more complicated, conforming to standards, and offering more flexibility—all of which are not bad, but today’s Mac models are vastly different than the original goal and experience of the first Mac. I hope the iPad can stay true to form as it grows up and be a nimble, reliable, appliance computer that it is.

As reported, the concertgoer, known as “Patron X” was trying to be courteous, but there was an apparent usability failure:

Actually, Patron X said he had no idea he was the culprit. He said his company replaced his BlackBerry with an iPhone the day before the concert. He said he made sure to turn it off before the concert, not realizing that the alarm clock had accidentally been set and would sound even if the phone was in silent mode.

“I didn’t even know phones came with alarms,” the man said.

But as Mr. Gilbert was glaring in his direction, he fiddled with the phone as others around him did, just to be sure, pressing buttons. That was when the sound stopped. It was only in the car going home that his wife checked the settings on his phone and found that the alarm had been set.

One could argue that anyone getting a smartphone should expect it to do just about anything, since even basic phones and pagers from the late-1990s featured alarms and simple organizer functions.

Immediately from there, some writers cried foul about Apple’s current usability, while others focused on user-error. Still, there are two ways to look at it, as Andy Ihnatko pointed out:

So that’s why I’m moved to post my own thoughts about this Daring Fireball piece. I think Brother Gruber is wrong when he says that Brother Jim is wrong. John’s point is that the iPhone handles the Mute switch in a friendly and sophisticated way. The iPhone doesn’t treat it like a modal function (speaker is on, speaker is off). The iPhone does a contextual mute. It’ll mute any alert that you didn’t specifically tell it to make. You weren’t expecting a phone call to come in at 8:31 PM. It mutes the ringer. You told it to sound an alarm at 7 AM the next morning. The iPhone wakes you up as scheduled.

That’s a reflection of a valid specific philosophy. I just think it’s wrong in this specific feature. The key question to ask is “When the user slides the switch to ‘Mute’, what does he or she think is going to happen?” They’re most likely to think that their iPhone will be completely silent until they flip that switch back.

Furthermore, Ben Brooks points out via one of his readers, Ian Ferrel, that when you slide the switch on the side of the iPhone, the bezel image gives the best context:

It’s worth noting that the image shown when you flip the switch is a bell with a line through it, not a speaker symbol with a line through it. This is a clue that the switch is not setting the volume to zero, it’s turning off the ringer.

Brooks continutes in regards to Ferrel’s point:

I don’t think most iPhone users are going to notice the difference between the ringer symbol and the speaker symbol, but Apple took the time to make them different because, they do in fact, have different meanings.

Update: I’m not saying this exonerates Apple. I am saying that Apple sees a clear differentiation between the mute switch and the volume rocker — and uses symbols differently to convey this to users. It should also be noted that Apple labels the speaker icon as “ringer” when you adjust it with the volume rocker and this leads to more confusion.

It’s worth noting that on an iPad or iPhone with a physical keyboard connected, hitting the mute button (as opposed to the volume keys or the hardware switch), turns the volume down to 0, with a line through a speaker, not a bell.

For me, I think Apple could rework this a few ways, if they were going to. Most prior phones I’ve owned either were silent or “normal”, although a few featured profiles. Sony Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung offered situational settings, like indoors, outdoors, silent, or car. Pressing the power button once usually toggled between these. Motorola offered the option of changing the entire set of ringtones and vibration patterns, depending on the context, and if the phone was plugged in to charge, vibration stopped as to prevent it from “walking” off the table. The iPhone could adopt something like this:

• Standard mode: Same as an unsilenced iPhone now
• Courtesy mode: Similar to the silent mode now—everything is quiet, but there’s still vibrations and alarms
• Silent mode: Everything is quiet
• Car mode: Regardless of the switch, sounds will go through to the stereo for incoming calls, but things like emails, IMs, and texts will be silent (as to not interfere with music)

Obviously, this adds an additional level of controls, and new, unfamiliar-to-iPhone users may still have issues (how many people use sound profiles now?) I find the current arrangement pretty functional, and have learned the way iOS handles alerts and alarms to keep from embarassing situations.

Ihnatko’s follow-up article sums it up best:

Overall, the lesson is that silencing a phone is far too idiosyncratic a feature for any “one answer fits all” implementation. As I said in the blog post, no locked-in definition of “Mute” is going to work for everybody. Worse, any definition will fail for every user at some point, either in the form of a missed alarm or a humiliating disturbance of public silence.

Which is why the only solution is to allow the user to adjust those settings. The iPad has its own little sliding switch. The user can define its function as either “Mute” or “Lock screen rotation.” If the default function of the switch works fine for you, then this “added complexity” is invisible. If you wonder why on God’s green earth any rational human being would prefer an iPad that rotates willy-nilly as you recline on your sofa with a good ebook, you can fix it in about fifteen seconds. And then you never have to touch that Settings panel ever again.

I’m all for a way to customize it in settings—iOS is getting mature enough that Apple can add some more user-experience fine-tuning options, much like the iPad’s switch function, without making it completely complicated. After all, an Apple mouse now has multiple “buttons” (actually one button, but able to sense right/left click or scroll), but defaults to a single one for new users.

Arguably one of Apple’s most underrated products, the Apple TV is inexpensive enough to be considered an almost impulse purchase. It’s not really advertised and only sold in electronics stores or direct from Apple right now, but has the potential to be a disruptive product. Sure, Roku boxes and so-called “smart TVs” exist, along with the much-rumored actual Apple-branded TV set on everyone’s radar, but the Apple TV works with any HDMI-equipped TV set. Although things like iTunes rentals, Netflix, YouTube, Vimeo, and sports subscriptions are often talked about as the big selling point, I think few people realize the most important feature—AirPlay.

I’ve found that AirPlay brings so much more to the table for both techies and non-techies alike. It’s easy to use (simply pick it as a source on most iOS apps or iTunes on a computer), and your content is immediately sent to your TV. iPhone 4S and iPad 2 users can even mirror their devices on the TV, immediately improving the experience of games, or allowing you to load up a video without having to hunch over a 10″ screen. Unfortunately, a few of the TV networks still need to make their apps work with AirPlay—I’m looking in your direction, ABC and NBC. This may be intentional, or might be laziness.

Apple was smart to include an optical audio port on the back, despite minimizing all the other connectors. If you have a receiver, you can even pipe audio through your stereo via the Apple TV without turning on the TV. Forget cables direct from an iOS device—it becomes your remote control and source.

I’ve had a few people ask me the “Should I get an iPad?” question, since it is a product that is hard to justify on paper, but not in actual use. The tough thing is giving my opinion of a $500+ purchase to someone who may barely use a computer as it is. The same goes for the smartphone-versus-not argument, as the data plan comes into play. For those who already have an iOS device, I can suggest the Apple TV without hesitation, mostly because of the price (when you look at what it does in contrast to the $40-$50 cables to get video out of a Dock Connector), and because I know exactly how people will use—AirPlay (if they discover it), Netflix, iTunes, or (less likely) the other services.

Still, with the mix of current capabilities and the new content Apple is adding with each subsequent software update, the Apple TV can only get better. I think with the news about Target carrying more Apple products in some stores and the expanded content, Apple really ought to start pushing this product more. It’s a simple, inexpensive, and well-designed piece of hardware.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been using Apple products since before the Internet was common, but I liked the initial premise of the Apple Stores—they offered a place to buy all Apple products, along with people who knew about them (as opposed to a random computer store employee that would rather you leave with a Compaq), and a place to get service locally, without relying on the sometimes unsettling Apple Authorized Service Providers. Besides, we’ve all heard stories of the warranty swap for an iPhone or iPad, or the quick fix of a Mac by a Genius.

Pitted Out

Shortly after I bought my MacBook Pro, I noticed that the aluminum around the palm rest was pitting and some folks in forums said it was a 50/50 shot that Apple would replace parts for this “cosmetic” issue. Still, my LCD had some weird splotches on it (not dead pixels, but actually in the liquid crystals themselves), so I though I could kill two birds with one stone. At that time, I lived about 45 minutes from our local Apple Store, so I made an appointment, drove down, and was told that that my top casing would not be replaced and I’d have to come back to pick up my computer, even though it was being sent via FedEx to Texas. I was more frustrated that all of my concerns were described in the actual appointment, so someone could have told me that I’d be wasting my time. Still, that’s how the game works. The funny thing was that a call to Apple’s 800 number yielded both of the original results I wanted, since I didn’t have to deal with the “gatekeeper” known as a Genius.

I understand that some people have ridiculous reasons for going to the Genius Bar, and some even have ridiculous stories as to what is ailing their Apple product. After supporting a fleet of iBooks for 11th and 12th graders, I understand that sometimes Mountain Dew gets inside a computer and nobody seems to know how that phenomenon occurs. Still, I’d like to see some consistency with the Genius Bar and Apple’s “old fashioned” support line.

iPhone Home Button: Round 1

About a year ago, my iPhone 4′s home button was acting up. Pressing it sometimes registered as two pushes, while other times registered as only one, or none at all. After calling the 800 number, the person I spoke with told me that that sounds like an issue they’ve seen before and if I was close enough to an Apple Store, I could get it swapped. That sounded great, so I made an appointment, drove up (I live closer now), and explained the situation about my phone.

The Genius who looked at it stated that it was because I had too many apps open and my phone was struggling, due to low memory. I questioned this, since I knew how iOS multitasking worked, but it seemed that I was going home with my original phone. Additionally, my iPad had less RAM than my iPhone, yet could handle all sorts of things, some arguably more complex (all of my complicated games get played on the iPad). Finally, the manager, who was wandering around, asked about what was going on and I explained. She swapped my phone, but I was annoyed about the lack of understanding and training (or so it seems) about Apple’s own products.

Just a Hobby?

While visiting my dad shortly after my iPhone experience, I managed to talk him into picking up an Apple TV. I had one for a few months, really liked it, and thought it could be a good addition to his tech arsenal. After hooking everything up, it would not turn on. Using the same cables, mine worked flawlessly (I brought it home for Netflix if he didn’t end up buying one), so I knew his was defective. The next day we took it back to his local Apple Store, and the first staff member stated that he “didn’t even know how those worked.” This led to us explaining that the device was dead-on-arrival, the steps we took to diagnose this, and that we wanted to exchange it. Two staff members later, we finally got a different one. As a precaution, we had one of them test it with the in-store display, and we headed home. Apparently the Apple TV is so much of a hobby, nobody has to support it.

iPhone Home Button: Round 2

I thought of Ramey’s comments in regards to my prior experiences at my local Apple Store. Although both of my experiences were a little ways away, it felt a little overwhelming and rushed:

Due to the overwhelming number of appointments per employee and the continued push to open more and more active queues, most interactions are now completely transactional, rather than transformational. We are lucky if we have time to ask the customer their name, nevertheless truly get to dig deeply into their lives and their issues, and further repair their relationships with both Apple and the Apple brand. As employees, we are forced to worry more about pushing business leads and reaching numbers, rather than truly focus on the customer’s problems. Everything I was led to believe in CORE training four years ago has become nullified; Apple is no longer about enriching lives, it is about enriching pocketbooks.

Still, I didn’t think much of the letter until a friend whose iPhone 4S home button was completely unresponsive. She had made an appointment at the same store that I usually go to this past Friday, and the Genius decided that her iPhone had water damage on the Dock Connector, as per the red liquid contact indicator (LCI). She seemed confused and was a little upset to hear that her phone, which she babies more than I do most of my gadgets, was not covered and she’d have to fork over $199 for a functioning iPhone. Despite arguing the contrary, they would not budge, especially since she did not get AppleCare+. Of course, I got a phone call.

She was limping along by navigating via the Notification Center, frequent restarts, and eventually turning on the on-screen accessibility controls, but was puzzled how her phone could’ve gotten wet when she is so careful. Strangely, her home button started working again, but she kept her appointment the next day with me in tow. Walking in the Apple Store was a nightmare—the amount of people would have made you think it was Black Friday or just before Christmas, an amount even crazier than a normal day at an always-busy Apple Store. Still, after fighting the crowds to get to the Genius Bar, we ended up waiting about a half hour, while just feeling like we were in everybody’s way. They really need a bigger store, or at least a designated waiting area.

Finally, a different Genius looked at her phone and was confused as to what she wanted with this appointment, so he brought a “tech” over. The “tech” stated that the policy was that if any of the LCIs were red, the phone had to have gotten wet and that was that (the headphone jack LCI was not red and he would not look at the internal ones). I asked if false positives were possible and if Apple was getting away from LCIs, since the iPad 2 didn’t have any. Apparently, there are LCIs in the iPad 2 and they never have a false positive—the “tech” said that he took his phone into the bathroom while showering and the steam didn’t turn the LCI red. After not really having any help, we left.

Hurting Relationships

I’ve noticed over the past few years that the average “type” of people at your run-of-the-mill Apple Store went from Mac geeks who truly cared about the platform and were possibly between tech jobs to faux-hipsters that work at the Apple Store because it’s the “cool thing to do”. Yes, Samsung does have a bit of truth to this. Today, it does seem to have more of a retail get-them-in-and-out-as-fast-as-you-can feel, where most of the staff are more concerned with letting everyone else know how cool they are because they work with Apple products, rather than what kept the Apple community going in the late-’90s—building relationships with other Mac users.

I hope these might be isolated instances, but it does seem that the average Apple Store has gotten more and more traffic as time goes on. Furthermore, it seems this problem has left Apple with a catch-22 of sorts. Either hire more people and expand facilities, or add more stores. If they try to grow the size of existing stores, this may not be fiscally responsible. If they add more stores, it could end up more like Gateway’s too-fast expansion. Regardless, they should make sure staff members have ample training, to actually know inside and outside how every product works, along with the most up-to-date policies and procedures.

The fact that it seems Apple has a guilty-until-proven-innocent approach with warranty coverage, and a lack of consistency across the board is not going to win any friends. With Samsung, Google, Microsoft, Asus, and the rest of the lot encouraging people to question the supposed “price premium” and pure specs, Apple really needs to focus on what set it apart—the experience. Although I still believe that Apple’s products are the best in the market, if the most accessible form of customer service, the corporate-run retail stores sours someone who actually knows what they’re talking about, I can only imagine it frustrating users who might have gotten an Apple product because of arguments from a friend or family member.

Update: A few have argued that some of the situations were isolated experiences at the couple of Apple Stores I spoke of. That could be the case, but I think the mix of Ramey’s letter and a post by Thomas Brand on Egg Freckles also reflect this:

Today’s Genius are no longer required to have the same deep understanding of the Mac OS, its UNIX roots, or classic past. They can no longer troubleshoot the same impossible set of hardware symptoms with ease while customers watch bar side. Their lack of knowledge into the depths of Apple history and lore is embarrassing for anyone who grew up with Clarus the Dogcow, HyperCard, and the 1.44MB SuperDrive. The Mac Genius who knew all these things have either moved on, or burned out. Replaced by a new generation of Genius every 18 months who are eager to take their place.

The Genius that work the bar today are different from the Mac Genius of the past. They see more iOS than Mac OS X.3 Their customers are delivered one by one using a reservation system while an assistant holding an iPad keeps order…

I couldn’t have said it better myself. I think if a shift is taking place, maybe more gradually in some places than others, this is the biggest byproduct of iOS becoming Apple’s big-seller. It’s not a bad thing, but for those who are used to the “old days” from both a customer and employee standpoint might be surprised or disappointed. It’s almost funny to think that couple years back, the biggest worry was that the iOS and Mac would merge or the Mac would be replaced.

The entire post gives Siegler’s history with the OS, including a time when he liked it, but if you want the highlights, Google ended up giving all the control to the carriers, mostly to sell handsets:

Thanks to the Google/Verizon alliance on the matter, the FCC decided the compromised vision of Net Neutrality was just fine also. To be clear: Net Neutrality was thrown out in the wireless space because Google sided with Verizon’s ridiculous and horribly conflicted stance on the matter.

The open spectrum enemy, turned Net Neutrality enemy, became Google’s bedmate thanks to a business deal. Straight up. Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.

We got all of this thanks to Google’s desire for Android to take over the world. I commented earlier that they signed a deal with the devil — I wasn’t being facetious. They actually did! And they got away with it!

I think about these things everyday that I see positive news about Android. It’s so wonderful that the platform which helped cripple Net Neutrality and is keeping the evil carriers in control is taking off. Make no mistake: Android is now the carriers’ best friend.

I almost see Android along the same lines as the carrier-molested phones of the old days, full of crapware, but with a much worse backstory. Before my iPhone, I had a pretty good Sony Ericsson flip-phone that was utter garbage until you flashed it to have the generic firmware. AT&T disabled things like the GPS chip, the stock email client, or turning off 3G (for a phone without a data plan, this meant saving battery life; if you had a data plan, the other features were handy). These features worked fine on the stock firmware. Let’s not even get into disabled Bluetooth transfers to sell more ringtones, or the fact that every Verizon phone had the same terrible interface, rather than what the manufacturers designed.

A few months ago, we learned how an AT&T smartphone comes to life. I would assume Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile work the same way. Apple’s model for the iPhone is much different—they design, test, and support it, while the carriers simply have to take it or leave it. Verizon wanted more control the first go-around with Apple, as stated by Verizon VP Jim Gerace:

“They would have been stepping in between us and our customers to the point where we would have almost had to take a back seat … on hardware and service support.”

Take that how you will, but Siegler’s analogy wraps it up the best for any tech writer who has become anti-Android, especially since it almost feels like the days before the iPhone:

Perhaps more people will relate to this: I hate Android for the same reason that Severus Snape hates Harry Potter — the very sight reminds me of something so beautiful, that was taken from me. Except it’s worse. It’s as if Harry Potter has grown up to become Voldemort.

As Fraser Speirs wrote, things in the multitasking bar are actually inactive, although people always think that closing them will free up resources and battery power:

There is one iOS “tip” that I keep hearing and it is wrong. Worse, I keep hearing it from supposedly authoritative sources. I have even heard it from the lips of Apple “Geniuses” in stores.

Here is the advice – and remember it is wrong:

All those apps in the multitasking bar on your iOS device are currently active and slowing it down, filling the device’s memory or using up your battery. To maximise performance and battery life, you should kill them all manually.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. There are caveats to this but anyone dispensing the advice above is clearly uninformed enough that they will certainly not be aware of these subtleties.

Let me be as clear as I can be: the iOS multitasking bar does not contain “a list of all running apps”. It contains “a list of recently used apps”. The user never has to manage background tasks on iOS.

Except in a few cases, which I’ll explain, the apps that appear in the multitasking bar are not currently running. When you press the home button, iOS will tell the app to quit. In almost all cases, it quits, it stops using CPU time (and hence battery) and the memory it was using is eventually recovered if required.

When my iPhone 4′s home button was acting up, the Genius at my local Apple Store initially tried to tell me that it was “all the apps I had running”—eventually they replaced it anyway, but this bad advice has got to be bad for consumers who have limited knowledge. Also, with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion trying to go this route, you have potentially more people worrying about what is running.

Update: Speirs has updated his site with a new post explaining memory usage and the different states in detail, complete with Xcode monitoring. Worth a look if you want geeky proof.

Why would Apple do this? By getting the exclusive streaming rights, this would certainly sell a few Apple TVs and/or iPads, but also will further enhance the portfolio of streaming content that Apple has worked into the Apple TV:

The Premier League is seen as the type of premium content that will help establish Apple TV in the UK and boost iPad sales, while the iTunes subscription service infrastructure is already in place…

…The three certain bidders will be Sky, who paid £1.6billion for their current packages, ESPN, who say they are determined to buy more PL content, and Middle East network Al Jezeera, who also have the resources to break the Rupert Murdoch stranglehold on the Premier League.

In contrast the FA have had to accept a 30 per cent-plus drop in the price of a two-year FA Cup and England renewal with ITV. The £42m-a-year deal has been delayed while talks took place over increasing the price for more England matches, but no definite extra dates have been agreed.

To translate for our American readers who say, “So what?! It’s soccer,” it’s a lot like if Apple managed to get the streaming rights to the NFL away from DirecTV. We wouldn’t be surprised if they try to one day.

Update: Now it looks like not so much (via 9to5Mac)…