Thinking Bigger about the Future of iOS Computing

There is a growing trend emerging that is worth keeping an eye on. A very small group of the tech elite have been experimenting with using their iPad as their sole computing device. This seems like an impossible feat, or perhaps something most power users such as myself would find unappealing. Why give up a glorious large high resolution display (among other advantages) for a much lower resolution 9.7” display? Indeed this is not for everyone — at least it isn’t yet.

For serious Mac nerds who also own iPads, many feel that their iPads are more enjoyable overall for many tasks such as reading books, managing their email, browsing the web and checking their Twitter timeline.

iOS devices are exceedingly pleasant to use on a daily basis. It doesn’t matter if it’s an iPhone, which glides every so perfectly into the front pocket of your jeans, or an iPad where you can curl up on a couch to do some reading — they both can accomplish many things that you once used your Mac for — rather staunchly to boot. The non tech savvy adopters who are getting iPads now — many of whom this is their first computer — are finding that they rather use an iPad for almost everything that they can think of doing. Why not, when you don’t have to worry about losing that perfect photo or that essay for school you had been toiling over for hours — no doubt thanks to services like iCloud.

As high resolution IPS displays that are Retina quality become the gold standard, there will be even more incentive for users to spend more time than ever in front of their iPads. If you feel spoiled right now because you have an iPhone 4 or 4S and have been holding off from buying an iPad, then perhaps whatever future high resolution iPad you own will become your primary computing device for almost all of your tasks. While the number of Mac nerds switching full-time to iPads is few and far between at the moment, I would not be surprised to see the rate of adoption on this trend rise in significant numbers in the years to come.

The barriers to entry for serious web developers, programmers and even writers is being steadily etched away. The tools we have available are being improved at fastidious pace, year-over-year. At some point I remember thinking that there would be no way for someone who uses SSH a lot to use an iPad for serious work. I was wrong when the people at Panic software — purveyors of gorgeous Mac apps — released Prompt for iOS. There are countless fantastic Dropbox based editors for writers now, and we have fantastic options for developers like Textastic. These apps are all equally exquisitely designed as they are practical and functional. Can you just conjure up what these powerful apps will be like a few years from now? I can’t wait to see how things develop on the mobile app front for serious professionals.

The frustrating thing about large single or double LCD display setups is that you have to spend time arranging windows on the display to get them to just where you want. I find myself not enjoying dual display setups as much anymore, and prefer just a single display. I’ve never found it appealing to constantly rearrange windows in a desktop operating system. Spaces never worked as well as I liked in Leopard or Snow Leopard, so this wasn’t the best solution either. With the introduction of Lion and full-screen apps, I started using this a lot more on my 15” MacBook Pro quite a lot. I loved being able to swipe back and forth between my full-screen apps with either the trackpad or my Magic Mouse — it just felt wonderful. That feeling of wonderment evaporated when I connected my Apple Cinema Display to my MacBook Pro. Full-screen apps just felt awkward, and it was clear that this feature really shined on smaller displays — perhaps even more so on smaller displays like on the MacBook Air.

When Apple introduced four finger horizontal swipe gestures to allow you to quickly switch between running apps, I knew that things were just getting started as far the iPad being treated as a serious computing device was concerned. Apple clearly is taking mobile computing and iOS very seriously. They want and encourage you to not just consume, but create things of value that you can share with others. Apple has never been a company to think about the short term, at least not with Steve Jobs running the show. You have to believe that Apple must be thinking about a future were iOS will be the sole operating system that you would be using to get stuff done on. With the file system all but disappearing to the user, you won’t even perceive the operating system as being this thing that is managing everything for you. Everything just starts to fade away into the background, leaving behind all of the friction you experienced back in the day when traditional desktop operating systems like in Mac OS X.

Perhaps Macs will never go away, however they may be re-imagined in some way we can’t even begin to fathom just yet. It’s way too early to think something radically different from the current iMac will be delivered to us by Apple in the next two to three years. What about five or ten years out though? It’s that kind of thinking that I know Apple is doing right now.

iOS 5: Downloading Music from iCloud is Frustrating

One of the most frustrating apps in iOS that I’ve encountered is the Music app. There are many shortcomings that I’ve discussed before, but the most glaring issue since the introduction of iOS 5 and iTunes Match is not knowing just when the hell your albums have finished downloading.

As it stands right now, I have almost 3000 songs matched and synced with iCloud. When I’m on Wi-Fi I occasionally like to download a few full albums of music. Typically this happens at the office before I’m about to head out for the evening. Since I frequently ride the train downtown, it’s typical that I’ll want some music for the ride home — either that or podcasts.

Although I’ve been using iTunes Match since its release, I’ve only now started to take advantage of the fact that I can download any album in my collection from iCloud. While this is an amazing convenience to have in 2012, the experience while trying to do so in the Music app is an exercise in frustration. From a user experience perspective, there is absolutely zero indication or notification that any of your album downloads have completed. This is pretty damn important, and it’s surprising that Apple failed to ship a fully polished iTunes Match experience on iOS 5.

Let’s say it’s the end of the work day and I plan on leaving the office in half an hour. I decide that I want to listen to some music on the way home, so naturally while I’m on Wi-Fi I decide to download a few full albums for the ride home. Once the downloads start, there is no way for me to know when any of them have completed, save for actually opening the app itself. So what is the user supposed to do? You can’t seriously expect me to open the Music app and tap an obscene amount of times to spot check every album I was trying to download, then scroll down and make sure those spinning download indicators have gone away? Utterly preposterous!

A fantastic opportunity presented itself when Apple was building Notification Center for iOS 5. Simply displaying the album or song download progress inside of Notification Center would have been all that was needed. Expanding on this idea, these kinds of visual notifications are perfect for the lock screen. What better way of knowing I can now safely leave the Wi-Fi hotspot I was in with a friendly push notification: “Your iTunes Match downloads are done.”

I hope we don’t have to wait for iOS 6 to see this kind of improvement. I do think this is more of an iterative iOS 5.x kind of feature enhancement.

How We Perceive Performance Degradation Over Time

After I acquire a new computer — typically a MacBook Pro — over the course of its lifetime — typically three years — it starts to feel sluggish. Somewhere between the first time I use my MacBook and the day I decommission it, I would have upgraded the operating system and installed a boatload of new apps. I don’t do much upgrading to my MacBook since I typically buy the highest spec machine at the time of purchase. The rationale behind this decision is that the fastest fully spec’d out machine will last the longest — something that still holds true today for me.

During the first three years of use, at some point a major new version of OS X would have been released. Historically I have always upgraded within the first week of its release, with nary an issue. I’ve been fortunate that the core group of apps that I use tend to be responsively updated well in advance of a new OS release. Great software companies who care about their customers experiences will always try and push out compatibility updates in time for the shipping of a new version of OS X. In fact, this is one of the best things about being an Apple user — getting compatible software updates in time is the bare minimum expectation, however the good developers release major updates to take full advantage of new APIs introduced by Apple.

With operating system upgrades, ongoing patches, app upgrades, and of course app removals, none of these regular tasks should affect the performance of your Mac. Well-written software can and should behave itself. Unlike the utter mess that is the Windows Registry, it’s next to impossible for a poorly written Mac app to completely destroy your system. This isn’t to say that problems never arise, because they occasionally do, however it’s far easier to deal with problems when they do happen. There is another problem that we all seem to experience at some point during the lifetime of using our Macs — creeping performance degradation over time.

There is the notion that at some point — perhaps after a couple years of day-to-day use — your Mac will start to feel sluggish. It just won’t feel the same as it did the first time you brought your shiny new Mac home from the Apple store. There has to be a rational explanation for this though. So what is it exactly? We all perceive an inherent slowdown in our computers over time, as if there’s this gremlin inside slowly gnawing away at the bits and bytes. I don’t think there’s a simple and clear cut explanation for this, however I do believe there is a multipart answer to this conundrum.

As it is with your living quarters, if you never do any house keeping on your Mac, things won’t clean themselves. Over time you install apps — some stable and others not so much — and continue to slowly fill your boot drive to its limits. Filling your boot drive until it can’t store any more data is not a good thing, however this just another factor that can cause performance problems over time. To many tech savvy geeks out there like yourselves, you and I are already in the regular habit of removing unnecessary cruft from our systems. Disk Utility is always handy for performing a “Repair Disk” once every 6 months, but all of these things don’t necessarily make our systems feel faster do they?

The only major factor that I can think of that may cause noticeable performance degradation over time is a dying magnetic storage disk drive. When things start to go south for spinning disks, OS X won’t necessarily be able to tell what’s wrong. Sure you could run diagnostic utilities on your hard drive in order to get an idea if there are bad sectors, but you won’t know until you do that. Magnetic storage disks are not the only drives susceptible to slow failure. Sold State Storage drives also fail, however they have their own set of unique problems.

There is a major psychological factor involved as well that contributes to perceived slowness over time. After three years of using the same machine on a daily basis, you have become acclimatized to the environment. The initial wow factor when you first brought home that new Mac has long since evaporated. The reality is that you no longer notice the speed boost from your old Mac because it’s been so damn long since you used it. I posit that if you were to go back and use your old Mac for one month, then went back to using your current one, that you would notice how awesome your current Mac truly is.

Raven Browser: A Review

When it comes to choosing a web browser on OS X, there are no shortage of options. Many of these options have different rendering engines — some work better than others.

The three most popular browsers in terms of marketshare are as follows:

1. Safari
2. Firefox
3. Chrome

Of course there are other options as well, however these browsers serve a much smaller niche. The browser I am going to discuss today is a relatively new up-and-comer. Raven browser is an interesting option built off of Webkit — the same rendering engine that powers Safari and Chrome. If you ignore Raven’s unique feature set, it should at least perform on par with Safari in terms of pure javascript and rendering performance.

At the time of this writing, I’m using Safari 5.1.2 on OS X 10.7.2. The build of Raven I tested was 0.7.14460 beta.

My intention for this piece is not to purely compare performance, but to focus on some of the unique aspects of Raven. That being said, I’ll offer some javascript benchmark results from SunSpider so you can see the differences between Raven and Safari.

Performance: SunSpider 0.9.1 JavaScript Benchmark Results

When I ran the SunSpider benchmark in Raven, it took less than 30 seconds for it to complete, however I ran into a peculiar issue when running that very same benchmark in Safari. In Safari, it took well over two minutes to complete. The only reason for the discrepancy that I can conclude is that Raven is using a newer version of Webkit — which not only performs slightly better, but doesn’t have the same bug that caused the benchmark to take so long on Safari.

User Interface and Design

When you first launch Raven, you will notice that all too familiar Tweetie-esque sidebar that Loren Brichter made famous. Unfortunately, this design is now so pervasive among many OS X apps that it’s completely annoying. Perhaps some people will like this — as for myself I find it irritating and a complete turn off.

Features

Putting the design choices made by the developers aside, the most interesting aspect to Raven is the notion of installing web apps inside the browser. Similar to how you can install web apps in Google Chrome, Raven has a small selection of installable apps in their Web App Shop that you can quickly add. The selection is growing, and in the future they plan on opening it up to allow user submissions.

Once apps are installed, they show up in the sidebar on the left, and you can easily switch between them with a simple keyboard shortcut.

Uninstalling web apps is as simple as going into your Library and clicking on the “X” to remove it — which happens to be just the way you uninstall apps in Launchpad on Lion or on iOS.

One of the interesting things that web apps in Raven do is put dedicated links to specific features of that webpage in the sidebar. For example, after I had installed the iCloud web app, it gave me separate icons in the sidebar for Mail, Calendar, Contacts and iWork. If you were to use iCloud via the web in Safari, you would need to open separate browser tabs to do the same thing, where as this becomes built-in Raven. The main advantage is that you may always want to have certain web apps accessible in your browser. With Safari, it’s easy to accidently close a tab that you were in, so this is something I think a lot of people will appreciate.

Coda

Let’s keep in mind that Raven is still in its infancy. The beta label should be a very clear warning that it’s far from feature complete — a good example being on Lion how you can’t use swipe left/right gestures to go back/forward between webpages. In addition to missing gestures, If you simply poke around in the apps preferences, you will find some things non-accessible as they have yet to be fully implemented. To name a few major missing components: cookie management and the ability to change the default search engine.

I still plan on sticking with Safari for daily use, but Raven is definitely interesting and fun to use for a brief period of time. I imagine some may like it enough to switch from Safari, so long as those same people don’t rely on browser extensions. Since I’m a heavy 1Password user, I can’t use Raven as my main browser since it lacks any sort of extensions platform. Apparently this shortcoming is going to be resolved in the near future, so I’ll be keeping a close eye on the apps development.

iOS: Not Running State

In my piece that I wrote yesterday, I discussed how my father’s peculiar tendency to go into the multitasking tray to kill all apps might be a bad habit from the days before protected memory operating systems, such as OS X.

Alas, one of the design decisions made by Apple to make all apps — regardless of their state — have no visually discernible difference seemed like a poor choice at the time of its inception. Apple’s attention to detail is typically unparalleled, however I propose that even the smallest change could have been made — perhaps should be made — to give some sort of visual distinction between running, backgrounded and killed apps.

How could this be done? It’s simple. Why not gently mute the colour of apps in the multitasking tray when they are not actively running? Different levels of opacity could be applied to give a visual distinction between the different states of apps. I think to the user who isn’t acutely aware of the inner workings of how iOS handles memory management, there are only two states that matter: running and not running apps. My ideal solution that I would like to see is simply that backgrounded or killed apps have a higher level of opacity applied to the app icon. This way, ones attention is focused onto the active and running app.

Perhaps Apple has already thought of an even better solution to this, however this is the first thing that came to mind today.

iOS Multitasking: Is There More to This Than Misinformation?

Last year my father ditched his ancient Palm Treo for an iPhone 4. He is without a doubt pleased with it, however I noticed an odd behaviour he’s been making a habit of. Frequently he will double-tap on the home button to bring up the multitasking tray — which begins a process of holding and tapping on an app until he can forcibly remove each and every one.

The peculiar thing about this habit of his is that he didn’t learn to do this because an uninformed Apple Genius told him it was beneficial. He’s been doing this ever since I taught him how he could tap and hold on an app to move or delete it. Out of curiousity, I asked him what made him think this was even necessary. His answer: “Things were slowing down, so I thought this would help if I closed all of these apps down.” My father has been a Windows user for most of his life — DOS before that in the 80s. The only explanation I can piece together is that perhaps he has been long used to Windows not being able to handle memory management very well — an old habit from the pre-NT days before protected memory. Of course even modern Windows operating systems handle things much better now, but old habits die hard.

I know there is a lot of misinformation going around these days about how iOS handles the suspending and resuming of apps — partly of which inadequate training at Apple stores is to blame — however, perhaps there are more people like my father out there who simply are holding onto old baggage from inefficient desktop operating systems (this goes for OS 9 and earlier as well).

A Glut of Web Services: Google

The last several years I’ve spent many hours signing up and trying new web services from Google. Some good — others complete shit. Google mail is one of those not shitty ones. I have gone back and forth between email hosting services before. Back in the 90s it was Hotmail (before Microsoft bought them) and then later on I moved my life to Gmail. Yet again, just a couple of years ago, I moved from Gmail over to a Google Apps Business account.

Google Apps is pretty powerful, however I decided this week to make a huge change. A lot of the services that I use on a daily basis rely on Google: this primarily includes email and the Google Reader API for syncing RSS feeds on my Mac and iPhone. I spent the past few days exhaustively researching various email hosting services, and finally settling on Hover. Hover is my domain registrar, and they were extremely helpful in setting me up with a great email package for the various domains I needed email on. I think the only feature I’ll miss from Google Apps is push email, however I’m willing to live without that and simply fetch email every 15 minutes.

The impetus for this decision was simple. Over the course of the last year, Google’s products and services have been expanding and have been getting progressively more bloated. Just look at how the Google search webpage has evolved over the years. Another example that comes to mind is the recent inclusion of — the very controversial — “search, plus your world” stuff.

We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships.

I simply want the search engine to do one thing, and one thing only — find high quality results from the queries I give it.

1. Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page;

2. Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following; and,

3. People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community.

None of this crap interests me. Luckily all is not lost, and we all have choices. I have decided to switch my default search engine to Bing. I have done this on my Mac as well as iPhone. Bing has come a long way since its inception. It actually produces very good results, offers those results at great speed and is pleasant to look at. There are a few things I like better on Bing: like image search. I personally think image searching in Bing is prettier. If Microsoft can keep improving Bing’s search results — without adding unnecessary features — I think it’s going to do well.

Google has been pouring a lot of their resources into building Google+ into something that has a chance against competing with Facebook. Regardless of what Google may want to admit, make no mistake, Google+ is certainly fighting to steal away users from Facebook. Google is poised to acquire more and more users, as many who already have Gmail accounts can very easily activate Google+ and jump right in. With people storing their contacts in Gmail, it’s extremely easy to scrape that data to offer suggestions on who you should Circle. One of the things that really irked me about Google+ when I was using it was this: after spending a significant amount of time adding people to different Circles, I discovered that Google+ thought it would be great to add those people as contacts. I store all of my contacts with Apple in iCloud, so I ended up deleting all of the contacts that ended up in my Google Apps account. It gets worse though. The next time I had checked Google+, all of the people I added to circles were deleted. This kind of user hostile behaviour is exactly what pisses me off about Google. This was enough to make me want to ditch my Google account.

By shutting down my Google account, naturally I had to figure out what I was going to do about RSS syncing. Unfortunately there isn’t a syncing solution that comes close to Google Reader — not yet that is. Google allows users to export their subscriptions in the widely supported OPML document format. I exported my subscription list as an OPML file and imported it into NetNewsWire 3. Since the Black Pixel people took over maintaining the app from Brent Simmons, I have started using it again. While NetNewsWire isn’t as pretty as Silvio Rizzi’s Reeder, it’s extremely powerful and has nice features like user configurable stylesheets. I can get it to display RSS content in the exact way that I want. Perhaps NetNewsWire is not the perfect solution to RSS reading, however, I have used it in the past and continue to use it now. Until a better solution comes along, I see myself continuing to use it for the foreseeable future.

As an addendum to this whole RSS reader syncing stuff, I’d love to see a new Mac and iOS app that could import OPML files from Dropbox, yet sync your feeds with iCloud. This would allow me to start catching up on news while sipping on my morning coffee, and then later pick up where I left off — either on my iPhone or iPad.

Fast on The Way to Nowhere: RIM

This year should be a big year for RIM. By big, I don’t mean in a good way. In order to elucidate, I’m basing my thoughts on some announcements made in Q4 2011, but also the general trend the company is headed on while we’re just a couple weeks into 2012.

Rim unveiled some of the work they have been doing on OS 2.0 for their PlayBook tablet. I had a look at some of the screenshots, and my initial reaction to them was positive. While I must reserve final judgement until I have tried the finished product, I must say some of the design seems modern and thoughtful. These are all good things, but it’s just not enough. RIM can’t seem to catch a break. 2011 was an abysmal year for Playbook sales. They were so abysmal that RIM slashed the price of all models to just $299, just so they could unload the mass stockpile of unsold product in their warehouse.

Perhaps you could make a valid argument that upper management is to blame. I certainly would not argue with anyone on this, although their problems are a culmination of that and not being proactive enough when identifying upcoming trends in the mobile space.

Up until last week, I had zero confidence that RIM was capable of a single iota of good design. I truly wanted to believe they had some talent in the company. It seems this is case after having a look at the upcoming Playbook OS v2.0. Here’s the issue though: it’s too little too late. The design and development teams at the company are not stupid. They probably are well aware that the Playbook should have shipped on day one with native email, calendar and contact support. I do not portend to know the inner workings of the company, so I have no idea what the barriers were to not being able to ship a finished product. Was it that they didn’t have the right people at the beginning when development started? Or perhaps did they just not have enough people working on it at the start? Whatever the problems were, I have this gut feeling that everyone involved with the project knows this device is going to get canned in the next six months. I would not at all be surprised if we start seeing a lot of RIM’s current talent jump ship — either heading over to Google or Apple, and I’m sure both companies would love to have them.

So what happened to their BBX (now named BB 10) operating system? It was supposed to be available with a slew of new devices in the first half of 2011. Now RIM is back-pedalling and can’t commit to an earlier release date than the tail end of 2012.

As I said earlier on, RIM can’t seem to catch a break. Screwup after screwup. Not only is this causing RIM’s share value to take a nose dive, their most important investment — their customers — are quickly losing faith — to wit, if they haven’t already.

So what’s on the horizon for a sinking ship? Well, their shares are are plummeting, their hardware sucks, their software sucks and there doesn’t appear to be any signs that they’re going to be able to pull off anything spectacular anytime soon. Speaking of share value, let’s look at the last year:

I think the chart speaks for itself…

I have spoken friends of mine who have been long-time Blackberry fans, and they aren’t holding their breath for any miraculous event where the company will suddenly bounce back. It isn’t going to happen. The sooner everyone comes to this realization, the better.

Apple Replaced My 43 Day Out of Warranty iPhone for Free

I read an unfortunate story the other day. A good friend of mine mentioned she was having some problems with her new Android phone. The sad part about this is that neither her wireless carrier or Samsung could be bothered to send her home with a new replacement.

To give you a bit of backstory, a couple months ago she asked (on Facebook) about a good Android phone to get. Of course I chimed in and recommended an iPhone, but this isn’t because I believe Android isn’t a good choice for some people — it’s because I believe it was the right choice for her needs. I was blown away when I heard back from her, because she explained her rationale for not caring about my suggestion was because I was “biased” and not a trust worthy source. Perhaps this is the case, but I gave an honest suggestion — not from an iPhone user who doesn’t know about the alternative platform — but because I’ve used Android phones before (several I might add).

So flash forward to this week, and now my friend is stuck between a rock and a hard place. There’s no Samsung store she can walk into, talk to a technician and within fifteen minutes walk out with a brand new replacement. You can forget about her carrier being of any help, because they are absolved of all responsibility the moment she signed a contract. Her only recourse now is to RMA the phone with Samsung, and wait weeks until they can replace it — thus leaving her without any phone.

This is a really shitty position to be in, and I feel really bad for her. I haven’t talked to her about this yet, and I don’t plan to. She made her decision, but damn does it ever make me thankful for Apple and their wonderful customer service.

You see, with Apple, taking care of their customers is a massive priority. The buck doesn’t stop the moment you walk out of the store with a new piece of hardware. There is plenty of after-sales support as well as quick and painless in-store warranty replacement — providing the parts are available.

Last week, I ran into my own predicament with my iPhone 4. It had been exactly forty-three days post warranty, and I instantly regretted not buying Apple Care. The issue was my iPhone flat out refused to charge. I had tried different USB cables as well as cleaning the grease and lint build-up inside the connector. None of this worked. I made the trek to my local Apple store, and the Genius bar guy mentioned it would normally be $170 for the replacement. Although I was far outside the warranty period, they took pity on me and replaced my phone at no charge.

So I walked out of the Apple store that day with a brand new iPhone and continued my day as per usual — taking calls, sending SMS, emails and generally being productive. Apple was in no way obligated to offer me a replacement phone for free. I did not expect any such special treatment, but I’m grateful for it. I can’t think of any other company that would do such a thing for their customers.

For what it’s worth, maybe this will make you give pause prior to your next smartphone purchase.

Now Available in Full Screen Mode

I love the idea of full-screen web apps, and it’s one of the little perks you get when using iOS. Last night I added a simple line of code that enables that for this very site.

You simply add:

<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style" content="black">

The content=”black” part sets the status bar black, however you can change that if you want. There’s a lot more on this in Apple’s documentation.

There’s one annoying caveat though. Once you “Add to Home Screen” and go to this website, anytime you tap a link it boots you out into Safari proper — thus negating the perfectly awesome full-screen mode.

I believe full-screen mode was ideally meant for web apps that are truly standalone. In other words, not content that requires frequent navigation between pages.

Since I couldn’t find a fix for this on my own, I figured I’d ping my fellow nerds on Twitter. I was fortunate to receive a lot of helpful responses, and I want to give credit to @mmhd for linking me to a javascript solution.

@ZeroDistraction gist.github.com/1042026

— Moeed Mohammad (@mmhd) January 9, 2012

Now that I have made the necessary changes, you can freely tap on any link that’s inside of this website without having to leave the page you’re on.

Here’s what it looks like now in full-screen mode:

Weblogs without Commenting Systems Are Closed Ecosystems

The whole commenting being good or bad argument seems to get rehashed every six to twelve months for some reason. I want to offer my own thoughts on this, but I don’t believe exhausting exposition is in order.

Weblogs without commenting systems like Disqus are silos. Closed ecosystems. This is not a bad thing or a good thing. It simply just is.

Without commenting systems, you have your own private little world. This is a complete guess, but I’d say a good majority of people don’t bother commenting on posts. You’re not encouraging conversation but discouraging it — this is completely fine for me. In fact, I don’t have a commenting system enabled on this site for many valid reasons (which I won’t get into).

So let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that most people will put two and two together and will find responses to your posts on other weblogs. It isn’t going to happen for most. Period.

Adjix Closes Its Doors

URL shortening services are a gamble at best. I know it, and if the whole world doesn’t know it by now, then those people are fooling themselves.

While I detest URL shorteners for the most part, they serve their purpose only for the fact that Twitter truncates tweets that have long URLs.

When Twitter announced that they would begin wrapping all links with their own t.co shortening service, I was worried that they would kill off third party URL shorteners for good. Fortunately for us, we could still use them if we wanted, although they would be run through t.co on the back-end. This is a good thing for security, as Twitter struggles on a day-to-day basis with fighting malware and spam. I do understand why they do it, and the end user is obviously the prime concern.

Recently I switched to using bit.ly Pro — using my own custom short domain. For the better part of a year, I had been using Adjix, which was a lovely service.

A few days ago I tried to access my account, but the page was down. Naturally, the first thing I did was check their Twitter account to see if there was any service level announcement.

What I found, was this tweet:

Sorry, but Adjix had to be unexpected retired on New Years Eve 2012. Previous shortened links will continue to work indefinitely.

— Adjix (@Adjix) January 3, 2012

I can’t help but be a little bit sad, however, I am not at all upset or even surprised. I have yet to see any URL shortening service advertise some sort of compelling business model. The fact that there are still services like bit.ly who have somehow managed to rustle up venture capital funding is astounding.

For the foreseeable future, I will continue to use services like bit.ly. It would be nice if I could pay them a small monthly fee — at least to assuage my own conscience that I’m not a freeloader. When I see value in a service, I have no qualms about offering up my hard earned dollars for it. We simply can’t sustain our economy on sheer good will alone.

I would love to see someone start some sort of open source URL shortening project. We need a de-centralized service that isn’t just tied down to one companies servers that we have no control of. What exact pieces we need to make that work, I’ll let someone else come up with that. I would happily pay for that though. Perhaps a Kickstarter project is in order?

I Give the Mac Pro One More Year

I don’t think there’s any doubt that Apple is rethinking how the Mac Pro fits into their product line. I give it one more major refresh before it’s discontinued. There reasons for this are vast, which include lower volume of sales and Apple’s focus on consumer rather than the “professional” market.

Back in the 90s and even at the start of the 2000s, I loved being able to swap things like hard drives and video cards very easily, without having to reach for a set of Torx screwdrivers. My next desktop computer will undoubtedly be a fully spec’d out iMac. If there is one major component I can’t sacrifice on any of my computers, it’s the graphics card. I don’t play a ton of games on my Mac, but when I do, I want the absolute best performance I can get since I won’t be able to upgrade the GPU. This strategy seems to serve me well, as I typically keep my Mac for about three years, I want to squeeze every last ounce of power I can get, for as long as I can get it.

In 2011, we saw the introduction of Thunderbolt enabled iMacs, MacBook Pros, and MacBook Airs. As Apple continues on their trend with making solid state storage the de facto standard, it only makes sense that we turn to more robust and insanely fast Thunderbolt external storage solutions. So am I a bit sad that such an amazingly capable machine like the Mac Pro may be on its way out? Sure, of course I am. The nerd in me who likes to tinker is crying a bit right now as I write this.

In the grand scheme of things, even though the primary audience for the kind of upgradability and expansion options the Mac Pro offers is all but the smallest sliver of the market, those who do use these workhorses will be initially disappointed. From professional musicians to animators, the Mac Pro has been the only option to choose since its debut in 2006 (and the G5, G4 and G3 Power Macs before).

With any major product change, historically we tend to see the initial uproar of people who will complain, but in time will end up getting used to things and then wonder what all the fuss was about in the first place. The iMac is more than capable — if not surpasses the current Mac Pro — of handling any task you can throw at it.

Thunderbolt is great technology, and although the external storage solutions available today are still on the expensive side, this will change very soon. As more manufacturers tool up their production lines to pump out Thunderbolt accessories, this is going to be how professionals who need to daisy chain multiple devices get things done.

Speaking of daisy chaining, as a musician, I wonder what Thunderbolt means for external audio solutions in the future. Apple still supports and ships FireWire 800 ports on their products, but how long until it gets put out to pasture? Clearly Apple is hoping and pushing for Thunderbolt to be the single, and perhaps best way of connecting things together.

The throughput and robustness of a Thunderbolt connection is far superior to that of FireWire. Not only is the connector itself simple, it allows you to do neat things like run just one cable from your Macbook Pro to your Thunderbolt Display. The Thunderbolt cable combines PCI Express and DisplayPort into a serial data interface, so it combines the MagSafe power connector and DisplayPort connector into one, which just so happens to send Ethernet over the wire as well (that is the neat part). Another advantage of Thunderbolt is that it can be carried over long distances, and technically can be made using less expensive cabling. I don’t know if Thunderbolt cables are cheaper to produce than FireWire, since I can’t find any information on that (perhaps someone can help there).

One major problem for professional musicians who use Mac Pros and multi-track audio editing software like Protools HD, is that these kinds of solutions require full-sized PCI Express expansion cards with Digital Signal Processing CPUs. For obvious reasons, the iMac is not well suited to fit these kinds of expansion cards. This can mean only one thing: audio equipment manufacturers are going to need to start making Thunderbolt enabled external audio solutions. Luckily for those that have concerns over audio hardware, an extra logic board could be added to existing devices already in production, which means you wouldn’t need to scrap the product and redesign the innards from scratch.

As 2012 products roll out from Apple, I’ll be waiting to see how things play out. I’ll be really surprised if the Mac Pro lasts more than one more refresh. I think we all know in our hearts, it’s not a matter of “if” but “when” will the plug be pulled.

My MacBook Pro Battery Life Issues

Last week I wrote about how I was thinking about going back to a dual computer setup in the New Year. The impetus behind that decision was primarily that the battery life on current MacBook Pros aren’t that great.

As I mentioned in that post, I planned on diagnosing what was eating up battery. With the suggestion of a reader, I installed gfxCardStatus — by Cody Krieger. If you want to be able to see what processes are triggering the dynamic switching between integrated and discrete graphics, then this is the app you need.

When I ran it, I quickly realized that several apps that I always leave open (and auto launch when I boot into Lion) use discrete graphics.

As you can see from this list, Twitter, Reeder and iPhoto all force my MacBook Pro to switch to the discrete GPU. I’m not going to count the external display, as for obvious reasons I don’t have that with me when I travel.

After shutting down all offending apps, I re-checked my battery status and watched it go from three to roughly five and a half hours. That’s clearly a huge difference.

When I’m out, I now use gfxCardStatus to force integrated graphics mode, no matter what apps need discrete GPU. All this being said, the battery life still kind of sucks in comparison to an iPad. I can’t wait to switch to an iPad as my primary mobile computing device.

My New Mac Setup for 2012

I only have one computer, and that’s my 15 inch MacBook Pro. It’s a 2010 model and is fully maxed out at 8GB of RAM with an 80GB SSD and i7 processor. I absolutely love this machine. Here’s the clincher though: the battery life sucks.

Apple claims 7 hours of battery life for the latest MacBook Pros, and if I’m not mistaken, that hasn’t changed since 2010. Luckily for me, I mainly use this at home and it’s always plugged into AC power. Occasionally when I head out to a coffee shop for a few hours, I’ll bring my MacBook Pro with me — without the power adapter. If I turn the brightness on the display to the absolute lowest possible setting, I’ll maybe get 4 hours if I’m lucky.

I’ve run diagnostics on my battery, and it turns out it’s properly healthy, so that’s not the issue. I don’t have battery eating Adobe plug-ins installed in Safari, nor do I tend to watch videos while running on battery. I’ve heard that Twitter’s Mac client triggers this generation of MacBook Pros to automatically switch to its dedicated GPU, which would explain some of the hit the battery is taking. I’m going to have to run some tests without Twitter.app, but it leaves me thinking that 2012 will be the year I re-evaluate my setup.

I’m thinking I may just sell my MacBook Pro in favour of a combo setup. I would get a top-end 27” iMac for home, since I need the most powerful workstation I can get for a reasonable price. For most of my casual computing needs, an iPad would be well suited to this task. Since I obviously do a lot of writing, I think whatever the next generation iPad will be like, paired with a Bluetooth keyboard, would be all that I need. I could go anywhere with something super light that would last me for 10 hours of continuous use.

I don’t re-evaluate my setup very often, but after many years of using MacBook Pros, I’m no longer happy with them as my primary computer.

Thoughts on iTunes Match

iTunes Match only recently became available to me here in Canada. Unfortunately one of the downsides to being Canadian, is that we’re always behind when it comes to receiving the latest services and content that always seem to launch first in the US.

I decided to try iTunes Match yesterday, but that wasn’t without the slightest concern for what the process would be like. I’ve heard of numerous problems with people experiencing anywhere from several days ranging to several weeks for the scan and match process to complete. I subscribed to the service and hoped that would not be my experience.

With 2,959 songs in my library, I expected I would have to wait at least 24 hours for the first two steps in the process to complete. I was pleasantly surprised that it only took about 40 minutes for the first two steps to complete. As for step 3: “Uploading artwork and remaining songs,” that has been running since last night and hasn’t completed yet.

Since the initial scan and match steps were done so quickly, I was able to open the Music app on my iPhone, which loaded my entire library for me. I can very easily grab any song and have it downloaded to my iPhone without the need to ever sync my library with iTunes. Of course, with iOS 5 Apple introduced WiFi syncing, but this is a far superior solution since syncing takes quite a while. I’d rather simply just download a few albums to my iPhone when I want.

I don’t know if perhaps I was just lucky with iTunes Match or that I don’t have a large enough library for it to have been a problem. I don’t have a small MP3 library by any means, but maybe the advantage of not getting iTunes Match right away is that Apple was able to iron out some bugs during the initial rollout.

An iOS 6 Wish List

With any major new iOS release, it typically takes several weeks for my giddiness to subside. Once the initial excitement wears off, I try to ruminate on all of the changes and new features so I can determine what I like and don’t like.

Although I’ve written about some of my gripes with iOS in the past, I thought it would be a neat idea to start a tradition of making my own iOS wish list — things I wish Apple would do — then to look back and see what features made it through the cutting room floor.

This year, I decided to do something slightly different. Instead of just voicing my own opinions, I put out the call on Twitter several days ago to see if I could crowd source some user feedback. What you are about to read is the culmination of some of my own thoughts intermixed with reader feedback.

I’d like to personally thank @thenewperson1 for providing a large chunk of these ideas, which just so happen to align with many of my own thoughts on iOS.

Services

Allow third party apps to expose what services they can offer via the share menu (something I believe Android does reasonably well).

Gestures

Two finger tap:

1. Swipe from bottom to bring up running apps.

2. Two finger swipe to mimic Pg Up and Pg Down commands (swipe powerfully to mimic End and Home commands).

3. Two finger tap-and-hold to bring up the search bar that’s typically hidden at the top of a list when you don’t want to go back up.

Safari updates

1. Unified search and address bar (Chrome does this well).

2. Preference for setting about:blank as the default homepage.

iChat

I would love to see multi-IM protocol support built into Messages.app. While currently Messages supports both SMS and iMessage, a revamp of the UI could certainly accommodate these additional features.

Music app changes

In the Now Playing screen, a double tap of the album art (or a tap of the small button at the top right) reveals the album list. A tab at the top of that list to switch to the current playlist would be nice.

The artist view needs a bit of a refresh. Maybe the artist image could be displayed at the top with the albums for that artist (that you have) shown in a grid view.

Albums only available on iCloud via iTunes Match could be grayed out with an iCloud button on the album art.

Lastly, I think it’s about time proper podcast subscription support was fully baked into the music app.

Notification Center enhancements

One of the most frustrating things about Notification Center, is the minuscule tap target of the “Clear” button. If you receive notifications every day, it gets extremely tiresome having to tap several times just to clear notifications off the screen.

In addition to this, I’d love also see the notification drawer push the home screen content down, rather than just being overlaid on top of the home screen.

Background download notifications for third party apps:

With apps like Newsstand, your latest issue of a newspaper or magazine gets pushed to your iOS device, and automatically downloads in the background. It seems ripe for this functionality to be passed onto third party apps. Imagine apps like Instapaper, who could automatically push the latest article you marked “Read later” and display the download information in Notification Center. Currently apps like Instapaper have to be running in the foreground in order to sync with the server.

Maps

Something that has been missing from Maps is turn-by-turn navigation. Earlier this summer when I tested a Nexus S phone, I really loved that feature built right into Google Maps.

Setting application defaults

As Apple has started to allow a variety of third party web browsers and email clients in the App Store, you should be able to at least set the default application for browsing and email. Otherwise, what good is using a third party browser or email client?

Widgets

One of the lovely things about Android is the ability to make beautiful — yet extremely useful — lock screen and home screen widgets. Apple has already dabbled in widgets, albeit with only two stock widgets — Weather and Stocks.

Although I can’t see Apple supporting widgets to the same extent as how they work on Android, there’s a great opportunity to add a few other useful ones to iOS.

Miscellaneous

1. Built-in dictionary app. While being able to look up the definition of a word is a notable improvement in iOS 5, occasionally I like to look up words that may pop into my head at any given moment.

2. An optional date widget for Notification Center.

3. More web fonts.

4. Advanced camera options (i.e. Panoramic photo stitching, better exposure controls).

5. Siri API.

6. “Pull to refresh” in more core Apple apps.

7. Facebook integration in the Contacts app.

8. A Spotlight widget in Notification Center.

9. Do not boot the user out of the App Store when downloading apps.

A Quick and Painless Way of Sharing Screenshots with Dropbox

I have used Skitch for many years for taking screenshots on my Mac. I never used it because I couldn’t be bothered to use the built-in screenshot capability of OS X, but because it was so easy to annotate and share images. In addition to making that process easy, all it would take to upload and share the image was a quick keyboard shortcut — which quickly whisked it away to Skitch’s image hosting service.

The one thing I never did like was Skitch’s quirky UI. I always found it kind of out of place and not at all Mac-like. Earlier this year, Evernote purchased Skitch and they have continued to do a good job of maintaining the code base, as well as provide better integration with Evernote.

I’ve discovered a much better solution now for creating, annotating and sharing screenshots. The solution utilizes OS X Lion’s built-in screensharing and annotating features — using Preview, but with a slight twist.

Tools that you need

There’s a good chance you’re already using Dropbox (shame on you if you aren’t). You need Dropbox, but you also need Running with Crayon’s launcher app called “Alfred.” Alfred is a fantastic multi-purpose app launcher. Actually, it goes far beyond just an app launcher. Alfred is highly extensible if you purchase their Powerpack add-on. I highly recommend it, as it’s inexpensive and adds an almost infinite amount of possibilities.

Make sure you grab these three items before you get started:

1. Dropbox.

2. Alfred + Powerpack add-on.

3. Ryan M.’s “Move to Dropbox Public Folder” extension for Alfred.

The workflow

I can take screenshots, annotate them using Preview, upload them to Dropbox and share the public link all within a minute or less.

Essentially I start by taking a screenshot of the area I want to grab. I do this by using the standard command + shift + 4 keyboard shortcut. Once the screenshot is taken, it ends up in my Dropbox public folder. Assuming I don’t need to do any annotation, I trigger Alfred’s launcher bar and type: “public.” The real magic happens when the extension checks the public folder for a recent image, and then simply grabs the public URL and copies it to the clip board. Now you can paste that public URL in an email, webpage, document or on Twitter (very handy).

By default OS X saves your screenshots to the desktop, which I not only find annoying, but also useless for easy sharing. The first thing you need to do is change the default location where your screenshots are saved to. This unfortunately cannot be done by simply going into System Preferences and changing an option. In order to accomplish this, you need to open up Terminal and write a very short command to a plist file.

What you need to do

1. Open Terminal.

2. Type the following:
   defaults write com.apple.screencapture location /users/yourname/Dropbox/public

3. Now type:
   killall SystemUIServer

Obviously make sure to specify the full and proper path to your Dropbox public folder. Once you do this, all screenshots will be saved to your public Dropbox folder. This is crucial, because the Alfred extension you should have installed and configured earlier, will look in there for recent images.

Modifying the Script

After asking the developer how I could have the extension simply check a subfolder instead of just /Public, he was able to provide me with a simply solution. With two minor changes in the Python script, you can specify a sub-folder where you want it to check. This is handy because I prefer to dump all of my screenshots into /Public/screenshots.

To do this, you first need to open script.py with a text editor of your choice. You can find location of the script by going into Alfred > Extensions and then command + click on “Get Dropbox Public Link” and select “Show in Finder.”

1. Look for: public_folder = db_info[1] + "/Public/" and simply append /screenshots if that’s where you want it to look for recent files.

2. Next you need to find:
   public_link = 'http://dl.dropbox.com/u/%s/%s' % (db_info[0], file_name) and change that to public_link = 'http://dl.dropbox.com/u/%s/screenshots/%s' % (db_info[0], file_name)

3. Save your changes and you should be good to go.

Lastly, if you want to go back and annotate a screenshot that had already been taken, you can do that by opening up the image in Preview. Once the changes are saved, Dropbox does the work for you by syncing the change back to the server. Since public URLs don’t change once they’re created (assuming you don’t delete the file), you can use the same public link and re-share it with anyone you want.

An Interview with The Creator of Calepin

Jökull Sólberg Auðunsson is the author of Calepin, the Dropbox powered blogging engine built off of the open-source Pelican, and also serves as interactive tech director at Icelandic agency Jónsson & Le’macks. Jökull’s personal weblog is solberg.is.

Over our email discourse, we discussed the recent static blogging engine craze and how it seems to be picking up steam, how his product Calepin came into fruition, thoughts on being a writer and what tools you should be using and of course what his own tools and workflows are like.

ALEX KNIGHT: I believe I found out about your product when Merlin Mann first tweeted about it. I imagine someone with that kind of clout brought some new users to your door. So what’s the scoop with Calepin? I imagine — like many creative types — you built it to scratch your own itch. Tell me more about it and how the project came to fruition.

JÖKULL SÓLBERG AUÐUNSSON: One week after the launch I actually came across a comment I wrote on Hacker News that pretty much documents how Calepin started. I noted that such and such product should exist to make static blogging easier. It must have been the sixth blog post on Hacker News about how some geek ditched Tumblr or Wordpress for Jekyll or a similar tool. But Calepin has evolved from just a static blog service. At least the ideas I have for it. 

I had no idea who Merlin Mann was at the time. I’m following him on twitter now though :o)

Alex: Can you talk about some of your thoughts for the longevity of the platform? I say platform, because it seem like a fair way to describe what Calepin is. Right now the service is free to use, but have you thought about a business model for the long term?

JÖKULL: I want to ensure Calepin continues to work as a reliable platform for the long term. The way to do that is to innovate around a user base that’ll be passionate about the features I add. Calepin has reached people who know Markdown. I want to find people who need Markdown but haven’t been introduced to it yet. That’s where my market is, and that’s where I can bring in more passionate users. I’m sticking to the “serious writers” tagline. It’s a reminder of who I’m working for: one of the most passionate consumers out there; consumers who create. 

That’s kind of my business plan. More concretely, we’ll probably see a free and premium plan early 2012.

ALEX: I can see why you’ve been able to reach Markdown users, but it sounds like a potentially complex problem to solve when it comes to articulating to non-Markdown users why they should use it. I imagine this poses a slew of design and marketing obstacles that need to be solved. How do you communicate the benefits in a concise way, and how do those people go about learning how to use Markdown without a huge learning curve? What are your thoughts on that?

JÖKULL: As a user of a product, when you take something seriously you are more mentally adjusted for a learning curve. You can see the opposite when you look at the development of social network apps; an experience that is more casual. Facebook, as an example, has to use gamification and build upon user experiences people are already familiar with. That’s why Facebook could never have preceded Hotmail and MySpace. They can’t have a perceived learning curve (although certainly there is one). So maybe the trick is to make the learning curve non-perceived? 

Along that thought, I believe Calepin should present itself as a serious, even dull tool. Somewhat similar to what recent focus text editors have done by stripping out features. Speaking of the focus editors; that would be smart alliance. Integrate publishing into editors and let them do the marketing and presentation. After all, it’s easier to market an iPad app than a platform.

ALEX: I agree with the notion that it’s easier to market an app, as opposed to a much larger platform. It’s much easier for people to make an impulsive purchase, knowing that within minutes their content could be published in a professional looking site — thus taking away the “thinking” needed to get everything going.

JÖKULL: I spend a lot of time in TextMate. I’ve tried Sublime 2 and TextMate 2, but came back to TextMate. I love that the choice of text editors is so good now days that it’s just come down to taste. 

The Calepin user interface is written in a toolkit called Brunch. It’s stack of tools that makes modern frontend engineering as painless as possible. I’m completely sold on things like CoffeeScript and Stylus, which Brunch forces you to work with. I built the Calepin interface in an afternoon and it still feels future proof and readable. It feels great to have invested in forward thinking syntax. 

I do all my coding on a Macbook Air 13” and 27” Cinema Display. I look forward to a retina display 15” Air-like Mac. I never understand people who skimp on hardware and still use computers every day. These things are incredibly cheap when you do the math. 

For software logistics I rely heavily on Amazon Web Services and GitHub. If GitHub offered public stock I’d put all my savings into it. I believe GitHub could become a Fortune 500 company in very few years. The proprietary social layer they’ve built on top of Git is something the world is going to start standardizing around and consequently relying on. Software is still eating up the world, after all.

ALEX: Very cool stuff. Thanks for sharing your tools and workflow with everyone. I think a lot of people are looking forward to seeing where Calepin goes in the next 6-12 months months. It sounds like you have a game plan and already have a growing list of stuff you want to accomplish with it.

You can read Jökull’s weblog over at solberg.is and follow him on Twitter at @Jokull or @Calepinapp for product updates.

Grant Paul (Chpwn) Responds to Jerry Hildenbrand of Android Central

When you run your own weblog, you are entitled to your own opinions. As a reader, however right or wrong you may think they are, its incumbent upon you to not be an ass when engaging the writer. When it comes to iOS developers critiquing some of the design decisions made by Google, historically speaking I’ve seen a general lack of rational and well-thought-out responses from Android users.

He’s primarily known as “Chpwn,” (or Grant Paul) the person behind the Redsn0w jailbreaking tools for iOS and the Cydia app store. Recently, he put up a Tumblr site showcasing some of the questionable design decisions (in his view) on Android Ice Cream Sandwich.

Not long after this happened, Jerry Hildenbrand responded with his own thoughts on the Android Central weblog. While I don’t agree with everything Jerry had to say, I have more of a problem with many of the down right mean-spirited, and frankly rude responses by some of those Android users.

“hldc1:”

iTunes can suck a hairy nipple. I checked out a few more of his “I can’t stand this about Android” issues, and with complete certainty, I can say that that dude is an idiot. The guy has a beef with the YouTube app icon. Really? It’s the f&^king YouTube icon. How could there possibly be a problem with the icon? I hope someone slashes that d-bag’s tires.

Then there’s this lovely gem from “NorthLondonGunner”:

The author of the original Paper Cuts article, @chpwn, is a piece of shit IMO.

I’m not about to lump all Android users into the ill-informed, troll-ish and stupid category, but some of these comments show a profound lack of empathy and understanding. Some of these comments epitomize what I believe to be a general lack of taste and appreciation for well-thought-out user interface design and experience. Using “hldc1’s” comment as an example, why should anyone care about the YouTube app icon?

There are a lot of reasons:

1. How about care? Caring about what millions of people are going to be staring at should be important to you if you’re responsible for design. As a designer, you shouldn’t be able to sleep at night, knowing that you just shipped a complete piece of a crap icon on a major flag ship smartphone device.

2. How about pride? Pride in knowing that from top to bottom, your users will have an exquisitely delightful experience in using your product?

3. How about taste? As a designer, you should have exquisite taste. Having good taste coupled with the desire for shipping pixel perfection means a superior product for everyone.

I have not had a chance to test out the Galaxy Nexus and Android 4.0 yet, however I have read numerous reviews, looked at many screenshots and have even watched a few videos. From what I can gather at this moment, given the information I have been exposed to, Ice Cream Sandwich is a notable improvement over its predecessors. I have no doubt Google will continue to listen to user feedback and will iterate heavily. I think it’s fair to say the company has an even more design driven culture, now more so than ever.

It just pains me to see some Android users bash Chwpn’s post like this. We are all entitled to our opinions, and there’s absolutely zero excuse why we need to attack each other (this goes for iOS users as well). Debating can be intellectually stimulating if done right.

Remember, you can disagree with people, but you should be preparred to back up your statements with cogent answers as to “why” you disagree.