I once joined the “iPhone non-buyers” group on Facebook. I swore up and down I wouldn’t get one. I said:
I will not be buying an iPhone until they sell an unlocked version that doesn’t need to be hacked to use third party applications.
Well, the iPhone 3G changed the equation, some. The iPhone 3G does have 3rd party apps, but they have to be vetted, etc. by Apple, which is a mixed bag. The iPhone 3G had some compelling features and 3rd party apps (like Pandora, which, I have to admit, is about 1/2 the reason I got the phone.)
So, I got one, about two weeks ago. And it’s been a combination of sheer joy, and sheer frustration. In general, the phone actually works quite well. The phone interface is great, visual voicemail rocks, reading email is really good, and surfing the web is decent – way better than on a blackberry.
But the apps, and the app store (where to get apps) have been the cause of crashes, iPhone lockup requiring multiple restorations (which, luckily, are relatively painless.) There are some great apps and games, some really good for really cheap (or free.) But getting them onto the iPhone, or getting them to work, is sometimes a pain.
Syncing is way slower than on a regular iPod, and backups can take 1/2 hour, which is absurd. There are multiple threads on multiple sites about problems with the iPhone 3G – clearly, some software fixes need to happen, and the faster they happen, the happier I’ll be.
My suggestion: if you like gadgets, are addicted to being connected at all times, and you feel like you need reading glasses to read email or the web on the Blackberry screen, the iPhone might be a good bet, but I’d wait until software version 2.1 comes out. And if you are eligible for an upgrade, it’s cheap (relatively speaking for smartphones.) I know some folks are holding out for an Android phone, which, from what I can tell, are going to be pretty similar.
I think I might need a new blog category: why I won’t be buying … First Leopard, now, Kindle. Kindle, at first blush, sounds pretty cool. I’ve been waiting for devices using the e-ink technology for a while now. And, I’m an avid reader, so the idea of being able to carry a bunch of books with me in a small package (instead of the usual very heavy pile I travel with) is quite appealing. And $10 a book is great – I love the idea of not using all of that paper. But …
Why am I not buying a Kindle?
No wifi – uses Sprint’s EVDO network (for me, that makes the Kindle basically a brick when I’m at home.)
Closed – can’t upload open document formats
Can only buy books from Amazon
I’m still not clear about what happens when you buy your 201st book – do you have to throw out one?
Can’t share books – I like to loan out my books to people.
I want something like a Kindle that:
Has wifi (EVDO would be a nice addition, but some of us live in areas where the EVDO network does not go)
Allows me to share books with people.
Allows me to upload any open document format (.odt, rich text, pdf)
Allows any vendor of books (like Lulu, for instance) or any independent author to provide books for the device.
As many of you know, Apple’s newest version of the Mac OS, 10.5, shipped just a few days ago. I have been an Apple user since 1980, and a Macintosh owner since 1987. I have owned about a dozen Macintosh computers (or clones) over the course of 20 years. I still own a Mac mini, which I expect will be my last Macintosh, and I won’t be upgrading that Mac mini to Leopard.
Those of you who are loyal Mac users are gasping. I’d gasp if I read this a couple of years ago. The Macintosh operating system has without question, the best, most intuitive user interface ever invented, built on top of the best OS invented, UNIX. Things “just work” (for the most part – apparently Leopard has been having issues.) And I’ve been quite happy that the Mac OS is gaining market share over Windows – it would be great to see that continue.
There are a number of reasons for my deciding to slowly leave the Macintosh platform:
I want to focus more energy and time on free and open source platforms – I might donate what I would have spent on Leopard to some deserving projects.
I’m not liking Apple’s increasingly closed and monopolistic tendencies when it comes to the iPod and iPhone.
I don’t use my Mac much anymore – I migrated to Linux as my main desktop, and will be sticking there. I do have a few things I need to migrate, including time tracking (I’m starting to use GnoTime to do time tracking,) PIM data (I haven’t decided which avenue I’ll be going, but I’m definitely migrating that data this month to Linux), and music (which will be hard – I have quite a number of DRMed iTunes Music Store albums I will have to painstakingly convert.) The only thing that will be left is games.
I like building my own systems – I need a new desktop, and I like the idea that I can build my own easily, and get a fair bit of power fairly cheaply.
It’s been fun, these 20 years with Macintosh. It seems a fitting moment to say goodbye to Apple.
I remember in the late 90s, in the heady days of getting organizations up to speed with technology, I would suggest to organizations that they add in their budget replacing 1/4 to 1/3 of their computers each year (instead of the much more common practice of replacing them all at once every 5 or 10 years when a grant happened.) This was for all the good reasons: computers are cheap, support is expensive, and it would cost more time and money to diagnose and fix a computer than replace it – so replacing computers on a regular schedule would actually decrease IT costs.
Well, all of that is true. But in this newer era, when we think that cost is more than just dollars, but we also have to think about the hidden cost of all of those toxic chemicals, fossil fuels, and water that goes into manufacturing computers, as well as the bulging landfills all over the country.
So I’ve been thinking a lot about the role of free and open source software in environmentally sustainable computing. Some of the biggest reasons to replace computers is not as much the hardware failure issues, but software bloat and cruft, and planned obsolescence. You can’t run Microsoft’s Vista on a computer that is more than a year or so old. Computers that now run Windows 2000 (there are plenty of them in nonprofit offices, I’m sure) probably can’t even run XP, let alone Vista. But computers of that vintage can pretty happily run Ubuntu Feisty (the current Ubuntu version). And older computers running Linux make very handy single (or even multiple) purpose servers – file servers, backup servers, dhcp servers, routers and firewalls, print servers, etc.
The great thing is that converting to Linux won’t just help environmentally – Linux has lower IT costs – lower support costs, and no software acquisition costs. If an office converted from Windows to Linux, they could keep their hardware much longer (five years easily), and have much lower IT costs, thus, in the end, creating a more environmentally and economically sustainable office.
Of course, there are caviats. There are software options that don’t exist yet, there are hardware incompatibilities, but these decrease every year. Sometime in September, NOSI will be releasing the new version of the primer on open source software for nonprofits. I’ll be announcing it, for sure. There will be some much more detailed information that will help make it easier to figure out if it is right for you.
Welll, it’s not really week 2. I got the laptop a few days ago – but it was last week. I figured this was a good time to post an update, and complai… explain where I’ve gotten to so far.
I’m using it full time now, as my basic desktop. I’m reading email, posting blog entries, searching the web, working on presentations, etc. I have definitely hit some points of pain in migration.
What’s fine:
The web was painless. I’ve been using Firefox for a long time anyway, and all I had to do was install a few extensions (and google sync, which rocks) and I was up and running exactly as I had been before. And since so much of my workflow is in Web2.0 apps, it all works great.
I had converted to IMAP a while back in preparation for this change, so all of my old mail and folders are now sitting on a server. Thunderbird is a bit different than Apple Mail.app, so it’s taking me a bit of time to get used to it.
Skype seems to work fine (I haven’t tried to make a phone call, but I usually use it for chat anyway, and it works fine for that.)
There are a lot of open source apps that I’ve already been using (XChat for IRC, Open Office, GIMP, Scribus) that work just the same, and can read and write all of the same docs I’ve been using.
I found some good screenshot software.
What’s been problematic:
Wireless networking – it took a bit of work to initially get it going, as I’d mentioned in my last post. Now, it seems to work fine – I’ve used it with two different open access points. I have yet to try it with a closed access point – I’ve heard that WPA can be problematic.
Video – the video resolution that the generic driver has is lower than the resolution that my laptop can use. I had to install new drivers, and, I have not yet gotten a configuration to work yet. I posted this plea to the techtalk list on Linuxchix. Hopefully I can find a solution.
For some really odd reason, Konqueror, the web browser that comes with Kubuntu, can’t see any external web sites. Every other program does fine (GAIM seems to flake out at times.) I haven’t solved it, and I hate Konqueror anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. But it’s quite odd.
Proprietary media doesn’t play by default. I totally get why this is true, and it’s not Ubuntu’s fault – it’s the fault of those who license the proprietary media. I wish everyone would just switch to Ogg Vorbis – it would make life easier. But, fat chance. So I’m having to download and install all sorts of strange stuff in order to play MP3s, Quicktime, etc. Installing Flash was kind of a pain, and I had to resort to the command line.
What’s unclear:
I haven’t done much with sound yet.
I don’t know what I’m going to do for an address book, and I don’t know how I’m going to get that to sync with my cell phone.
There are several key pieces of software that I use every day that I don’t know how I’m going to replace. They include the blog client, ecto – there really aren’t any good solutions for Linux. There are also Journler and Scrivener – two great apps for which there are no Linux equivalents (actually, there are no Windows equivalents for these either.) There are also a whole host of tools and games I’ve gotten used to that there are likely no good replacements for at this time.
The bottom line – pretty much, if I were the type of person that did mostly email, the web and word processing, and the occasional spreadsheet or presentation, I’d be off and running, and doing just fine. And, actually, I am off and running, and doing just fine. But if I hadn’t been so familiar with Linux, some of the stuff (like wireless) would have stymied me, if I couldn’t resort to the command line (Ubuntu doesn’t come out of the box with a decent wireless network application – if I were them, priority #1 for the next version would be seamless wireless, at least as good as is present in Mac and Windows.) I can’t blame them for the driver problem for my laptop, really.
But since I’m a power user, and have gotten used to Mac tools, which are great and user-friendly, it’s going to be a bit painful at times, I think. But I’ll be getting my work done, for sure.
Here are some tidbits from the open source world that might be of interest…
Sun makes Java open source. This is a big one. A few components (like the compiler javac, and others) have been open sourced under the GPL, with the rest of the SDK to follow next year. Find details at the Open JDK Project.
Make has a kit for an open source mp3 player. Yes, open source hardware. Cool!
This is old news, but I’m finally getting to understand it. Some really big 800-pound gorillas (Microsoft and Oracle) are bullying their way into the open source sandbox. The Oracle issue is much more straightforward – Oracle unveils “unbreakable Linux” – providing support for Linux that severely undercuts Red Hat’s support prices. There are some interesting theories afloat about this one (a ploy to then do a hostile takeover of Red Hat?) The second was the deal with Microsoft and Novell. Basically, they have agreed to collaborate on technologies and support. Here’s the kicker. Novell is paying Microsoft basically protection money. Microsoft agrees to give Novell customers indemnity against any patent or IP challenges. Eben Moglen thinks that this deal will be dead in the water because of the GPL 3.0. I’m not so sure, since no software project has to choose to adopt 3.0. It does mean that there will be a lot to watch in the next year or so.
I’m trying Ubuntu Linux on an old compaq laptop I have (and brought with me to California.) It’s an old Compaq Armada (m300) that I bought used last year, and weighs about 2 pounds without the accessory bay. It was pretty cheap when I bought it, but it must have cost a fortune when it was new. I’ve installed regular Debian on it, plus a couple of versions of Fedora.
I’ve been hearing all sorts of good things about Ubuntu, and I figured it was time to try it out. Here’s my basic experience and review of it.
The most recent version of Ubuntu is 5.04 (Hoary Hedgehog). You can get it from their download page. They have regular ISOs, bittorrent files, and jigdo files. They’ve got some good mirrors, because the regular ISO download isn’t too slow.
I am intimately familiar with Debian, and Debian installs, but I’m going to write this as if I wasn’t – I think that would make it the most useful.
The first part of the install process (basic configuration, partitioning and base system install) is very straightforward – there were few choices to make, the hardware was detected flawlessly, and the install went easily. I kinda went away after the first reboot, and was greeted with the login screen when I came back. No intervention was necessary. Easier install than Windows, I think.
A few things were a bit odd – for example there wasn’t a request for a root password – the default root password seems to be the same as the password for the single user account that was set up during install.
Gnome is the default desktop, and the only one installed by default – I’m a KDE fan. I switched my desktop environment in a way that I’m familiar with (install the kde packages, then change the default desktop manager in /etc/X11.) Kubuntu, which is the sub-project to bring KDE to Ubuntu, seems really nice – and if I’d read the Kubuntu page first, I would have had an easier time switching to KDE.
The basic add/remove applications interface is nice, and the advanced panel has everything. The configuration editor is not really intuitive, but for those who don’t like the command line, it’s an improvement over basic CLI configuration.
All in all, I’m pretty happy with Ubuntu so far – the ease of install and configuration, matched with Debian’s ease of software update, etc. We’ll see how it works when I try to set up development environments (both Postgres/Perl and Ruby for Ruby on Rails) but I can’t imagine, given the Debian base, that I’ll run into trouble.
Since I’m travelling, I haven’t had much time to think in depth about much of anything. However, in my snippets of time reading my blogroll, there are a few technology snippets that I’ve come across that are interesting.
Beth Kanter has been investigating vlogging – that’s video blogging. It’s pretty interesting – and I imagine that once high bandwidth connections are truly ubiquitous, vlogging might get pretty popular. But the barriers to entry are pretty high. I’ve done a little video editing, etc. myself, and the time and energy it takes to do it well is pretty daunting. I think I’d be lucky to get one or two vlog entries a year actually done. More power to Beth, though! And great to start thinking about this new technology and how nonprofits might use it. I also have been watching her coverage of Blogher – something I just learned about, and sounds really interesting. I wish I’d known about it sooner.
There are rumors that Palm is going to move off of the Palm OS platform, to possibly to Windows Mobile. Case in point – the new Treo 670 has been seen running Windows Mobile. Anyway, this is all rumors and innuendo, but the truth is, if Palm moves to Windows Mobile, I hate to say it, but I dump Palm. Sad but true. I’ll hold on to my Treo 650 until it falls apart, then figure out what to do next.
Unintended consequences: The new energy bill has in it a change in the daylight savings time, which hasn’t changed since 1987. So there are a fair number of devices that have programmed in them the old schedule. I imagine this will be worse for devices not connected to the internet in any way. Could have some interesting side effects.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised in my travels how much I’ve been able to use wifi, most places. Most of the chain motels are sporting Wifi, tons of cafes and the like are, and even rest stops seem to have wifi. I think the days of ubiquitous Wifi are coming. The question is, ubuquitous free? Will that grow, or will it move to become ubiquitous, but you pay for it? Not clear yet.
This is incredibly cool. I don’t know if it’s true, but I like it. A lot. If true: get an intel Mac, run Mac software, Windows software and UNIX software (via X windows) too. Wowie Zowie! Not only a geeks dream, but a very nice solution to all sorts of problems.
Today, in the New York Times, there is an article (reg. required), that talks about how people are throwing away their old PCs, in an effort to rid themselves of spyware, viruses and the like. "throwing out a computer ‘is a rational response,’said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project…"
A rational response?? Rational would be to wipe Windows and replace Linux. Rational might be, like the woman pictured, throw away the box, and get a Mac (or, for the brave, you can wipe windows and put Mac OS on the same box). I can’t quite believe we have gotten to the point where people are not only willing to put up with the viruses and spyware, but are willing to go out and buy another Windows machine! Microsoft, who makes a decent amount on each purchase of a Windows machine, must be jumping for joy. They are entering the anti-spyware business, and, of course, they will "not [be] providing protection for people who have earlier versions of the company’s operating system."
First off, MS entering the anti-spyware business is kind of like a vendor who sold you locks that are incredibly easy to pick, coming in and saying they’ll clean up after the mess created by a break in (for a fee, of course). And, if the mess is too much, they’ll sell you more locks!
How long are people going to put up with this nonsense? And how long are nonprofits, where every dollar spent on new PCs means a dollar that doesn’t feed someone, or give someone services, or pays for medicine, or an activist on the hill, going to put up with this?
