I’ve been truly happy over past six months with Palatino as the sole font on this site, but I decided the other day to try switching everything to just Baskerville. Baskerville is also a much beloved serif that ships with Mac OS X and iOS, and it also holds a place in my heart. I can’t say with certainty that I prefer it over Palatino, as the differences are more nuanced, and less black and white.

I believe it takes some time before one can come to truly appreciate a font, and this is why I decided today to leave Baskerville on this site for at least a week. I can’t say with certainty I will go back to Palatino, but I’m really starting to like it.

I have already tried adjusting the font size and line-height, as some of the settings I had for Palatino are non-optimal for Baskerville. We’ll see how things go over the course of the next week.

The current generation MacBook Air is no slouch. It boots in a matter of seconds, and can go to sleep and wake up extremely quickly. There’s still more work to be done, and instant-on is a feature that needs to be across the board with all MacBook products. If Apple were to remove the optical drives from all MacBook Pros, fill that space with higher capacity battery, and move to the same small package SSD drive that the Air uses, this would be my ideal configuration.

On the subject of battery performance, the iPad has thirty days of standby time on a single charge. At some point we’ll get there as well on the MacBook line, however, there are far larger problems to deal with. First of all, on iOS devices, Apple doesn’t use x86 architecture. Macs are powered by Intel processors, and iOS by Apple’s own A5/A5X. Unless Apple eschewed Intel for Arm architecture on Macs, I can’t see huge strides being made by Intel on the mobile chip from as far as power consumption is concerned. Sure, every year Intel manages a die shrink and squeezes in an optimization here and there to improve power consumption, but they aren’t making improvements at the rate we need.

You can’t ignore the software. It’s unequivocal that developers need to work hard to ensure optimal tuning for battery performance on mobile computers. Release after release, Apple has continued to push forward on making sure each new version of OS X is optimized for the latest generation hardware, thus improving battery performance. This isn’t any different with OS X 10.8. Whilst I have yet to try Mountain Lion, I hear some people reporting that the developer previews — coupled with the latest generation MacBook Air — equate to much faster cold boot and sleep/wake performance. This is welcome news, and I can’t wait to see just how much better Apple can do with the imminent release these new MacBooks and Mountain Lion later this summer.

Presently it may seem preposterous that Google could continue to do well with Android if it didn’t have Samsung, or perhaps HTC to a lesser extent. When Google purchased Motorola mobility last year, they made a clear statement that they had no plans to screw over (obviously I’m not quoting verbatim here) their partners. The reality is Google needs to do something about the fragmentation of the platform. Most people seem to be cognizant of this as well outside of Google — be it third party developers or tech savvy consumers.

We may not see massive change overnight, but it feels as if things will incrementally change from here on out. First it’s an acquisition of a substantial mobile phone company (Motorola), and then it’s Google selling their own devices directly to consumers — sans carrier contract.

Amir Efrati reporting for the WSJ:

Google will work with as many as five manufacturers at a time to create a portfolio of “Nexus” lead devices that include smartphones and tablets, said a person familiar with the matter. Google also plans to sell the gadgets directly to consumers in the U.S., Europe and Asia through its website, and potentially through some retailers, this person said.

This strikes me as the smart and correct thing to do. Sure, this won’t solve the fragmentation issue overnight — quite the contrary, it will never be fully eliminated unless Google takes full control over the manufacturing of the hardware and software.

I’m sure Google in the present day loves their device partners, but this can change quickly. What Samsung has done to propel Android as a platform can’t be ignored. The sheer number of Android devices Samsung sells makes it one of the top mobile phone manufacturers. If I were at Google, I would be devising ways of how the company could slowly start to push third party ODMs out of the way. Envisage what Android could be like if Google fully owned the hardware and software experience, from top to bottom? Indeed some may be thinking right now that this would mean far too much control, and that Android wouldn’t be “open” enough. I posit that a fully owned experience by Google could still retain the more flexible nature of Android that the company initially envisioned and conceived. This could happen, all whilst keeping the operating system a complete and cohesive experience — sans carrier app bloat and third party skins messing around with the pure Android experience. There’s zero reason why having full control over the hardware and software experience means that Google would suddenly make Android less flexible to tinkering.

Another part worth citing from this WSJ piece:

Carriers also are sometimes slow to push through software updates to phones, and they preload apps of their own choosing on devices. By avoiding carriers, Google and its hardware partners can get devices to market faster, often by several months.

They’re sometimes slow to push through software updates? Try always. Carriers couldn’t care less about support existing customers. Instead of pushing out software updates, they would rather you just buy a new phone. This is the sad world many Android customers are facing today. This also isn’t just about Google being able to push out devices to market faster though. The much bigger picture is that Android users will be infinitely more happy with updated devices, rather than getting screwed on after sales support twelve months onward. And Google will no doubt love ensuring that these same people are experiencing Android the way it’s meant to be — to wit, with the latest and most innovative UI and UX to come out of their labs.

Small baby steps are needed to get Google to where they need to be. They know they can’t pull the plug on their partners right now — lest face their pure unadulterated wrath. But perhaps selling their own devices directly to customers, as well as owning Motorola mobility will put them in a position of power one day. Perhaps now it may seem foolhardy of me to think things will change in the not to distant future, however, I’d honestly love to see Android evolve in the right direction as a beautiful alternative to iOS. This is not a matter of Google not having enough talent to pull it off — after all, Ice Cream Sandwich was a massive step in the right direction. The herculean task Google is faced with right now is fully controlling Android’s destiny — something that seems slightly ambiguous to me considering the plethora of different devices with different versions of the operating system available today.

I’ve been involved in the software industry for a number of years, and have worked closely with developers, project managers, and designers. I know how hard all of these people work to ship a major new release. Shipping is not easy. You pour your heart and soul into the product, and hope that the pricing is right to sustain further development. Once you ship, the party doesn’t stop. You need to have a healthy dose of cash flowing in every month in order to pay people to continue to iterate and work on your app. If you’re just a one man or woman development shop, you may only need worry about yourself, however it’s even more important that you have a sustainable business model so you can remain self-employed.

It saddens me when I see a small development company like Vemedio release a great 2.0 product, but get rewarded with plenty of one and two star reviews — all people bitching about the pricing structure change. Look, I get that some people are pissed off that features they previously had, such as playlist management, were removed and then added as an in-app purchase. The thing is, $1.99 is such an insignificant price to pay for that plus a few other great features. Unlike what some believe, push notifications were never a feature in Instacast 1.0 (only local notifications were supported). I look at the in-app purchase as a way of funding the continued development of a fantastic product. Besides, if 2.0 were released as a completely separate product, you’d end up paying more for a major upgrade — likely $4.99, which was the original price prior to the latest release.

As soon as I installed 2.0, I happily paid the $1.99 for the in-app purchase. There’s no good reason why anyone should be upset by the new pricing structure of the app. Since the inception of the App Store and the $0.99 impulse buy, we have cultivated an ecosystem where incredibly powerful software is available for purchase for less money than what you spend at Starbucks every month. Unfortunately, some people have a huge sense of entitlement, and think they’re now owed something for nothing when developers decide to offer things like in-app purchases.

We simply can’t continue to foster a robust ecosystem of amazing app development, if developers themselves are constantly pressured into lowering the price of their apps — all whilst delivering more and more features to the end-user. This is beyond a shadow of a doubt, not sustainable, and it’s an unrealistic expectation for any of us to have.

If you enjoy beautiful, hand-crafted software on your iPhone, there’s zero reason why you should hesitate to buy the $1.99 in-app purchase. You won’t regret it, not to mention you’ll know that money is being funnelled back into the continued improvement of a truly great product.

Companies like Apple are one of the rare examples that I can think of that have superlative industrial design and innovation on their own — without being influenced by other competing companies. Whilst I’m primarily an iOS user, I still yearn for solid competition in the mobile space. This is not because I wish Apple ill will, or wish them to be knocked off their proverbial throne, but because they need strong competition. Even the best companies that are filled to the brim with the best talent need solid competition. This is just a healthy way for the entire industry to operate.

Now well into 2012, everyone — including RIM — knows they’re struggling to keep afloat. I’ve discussed this before back in January, and the future outlook for the company doesn’t look promising — in fact I’d go as far to say that it’s down right depressing. That being said, I wanted to acknowledge something that RIM deserves credit for. Whilst the upper echelons of management are arguably bozos, the company has many talented developers and designers working underneath. It is easy for us to forget, or worse, dismiss these individuals. Worst case scenario, the company is sold off, and everyone loses their job. The sad part is the super talented designers, developers, and everyone in-between — except upper management — will lose their jobs without being paid out millions of dollars in severance fees. At big companies like this, the talented people that contributed to a product get virtually nothing, yet the people in charge running the business get millions of dollars for sucking.

Today news broke about BlackBerry 10, and by now you’ve more than likely gone through some of the screenshots that have been released. Judging purely on the screenshots that I’ve seen, there are some elements that I see borrowed from iOS, but there are also some elements borrowed from Android and even Windows Phone 7. I also had a chance to look at a quick video posted by The Verge on how the actual interface and elements interact with each other. I must say it’s not looking bad at all. Dare I say some elements kind of look webOS-ish. That’s only a good thing, as webOS had a lot of great things going for it — things most people will never experience.

I’m looking forward to seeing how BlackBerry 10 turns out when it ships. I’d absolutely love to play with a loaner model if I can get my hands on one. Let’s hope those devices actually ship this year.