I like this Macalope column from Macworld, reminding us all how wrong all the pundits were in advance of the iPhone (and quite a bit of the dumb stuff that’s been said lately about the rumored Apple tablet). The best part though is his insight that the reason Apple has succeeded with the iPod and iPhone is because those two technologies each had a killer differentiating feature that made them able to disrupt an existing market.

if and when it appears, will have some differentiator that makes it a compelling purchase. The iPod replaced your CD collection, the Apple TV would like to replace your DVD collection (but you won’t buy one), and the iPhone, obviously, replaced your cell phone. The tablet (insert caveat about its existential dilemma) will turn another industry on its head. The problem with the JooJoo is that it has no hook, no ecosystem. It doesn’t act as a compelling replacement for anything you have.

One thing that I’m hoping for (but that I think there’s very little possibility of due to the likelihood that they’re going to base it on iPhone OS) is some kind of personal diagramming application. I’d love to be able to add some programmatic heft behind the diagrams I draw of data models, applications, etc. I’d love to be able to put data behind some stuff, or draw things that can go right into a program like OmniGraffle

If my own little personal BS grammar of pseudo UML could get programmed out pop-n-fresh automatically into some ActiveRecord models right after I drew it freehand, I’d be one step closer to some right-brain techie Nirvana.

As we all wait with bated breath for the latest announcement of awesome from Cupertino, I thought I’d mention something that I’d love to see Apple make: a “soft button” keypad for configurable hotkeys.

I spend most of my work day at the computer, either writing code or working in hotkey-heavy applications like Adobe Fireworks or OmniGraffle. I also tend to use hotkeys for closing windows, switching applications, creating new tabs in browsers and terminals, switching between windows, and (all the damn time) copy/paste. The result of all this hotkey action is that I get pain in my fingers, particularly my left index finger — the go-to digit for most of my hotkeying. Between that and the constant need to type almost as fast as I can, the pain can sometimes become nearly debilitating, causing me to have to stop using my computer for up to half a workday sometimes, which in turn costs me money.

As has been pointed out quite a bit, QWERTY sucks and is really just around because of design inertia. Keyboards don’t really seem designed to be used by human hands. As much as I love Apple’s recent innovation of the peripheral keyboard that feels like a laptop one, I still find myself with major hand fatigue at the end of the week.

If I could just set my hotkeys to be what and where I want them to be, I think I could solve a lot of this. I’m envisioning something that looks sort of like a square iPhone, sitting to the left of my keyboard and plugged in via USB. Spread across the screen of the device would be my hotkeys, customized in function and position, and changing automatically when the active application changes. Since the keys would be on a “soft” screen, I could position and size them how it made sense for my hands and my workflow. Since they could each have a custom function, I could reduce the claw-making, four-button combos I frequently have to pull off in my editor to just one tap of one button. This would make my hands happier. Happy hands, happy dev.

I know there are soft keyboards out there, but I’m not really looking for that. What I want would me more versatile — a “key palette” if you will. I could see this being only one of many possible uses for such a device.

Anyway… Apple, should you decide to make one, there’s no need to give me credit. Just send me a free one. My over-stretched left index finger will breathe a sigh of relief from inside its ice pack.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball has posted the best thing I’ve read so far encapsulating Microsoft’s current challenges in the consumer PC marketplace. He puts it in context with the history of Microsoft and Apple’s competition—especially their recent dueling ad campaigns–and takes MS executives to task for being simultaneously myopic, dismissive, and clueless when it comes to what’s happening in the retail computer marketplace.

But my favorite part is where he points out that Microsoft lost the computer geeks a few years ago and that’s the PC platform’s biggest problem. I’ve been saying this to friends of mine for awhile–the nerds all went Mac in droves when being on a Mac began to mean being on UNIX instead of the old-school Mac OS that was rather like buying a Mercedes-Benz with the hood welded shut. When Apple decided to be the platform where all flavors of nerdy digital innovator worked (as opposed to just illustrators, filmmakers and musicians), the nerd herd rallied to their flag fast. He pinpoints a subset particularly close to my heart — web developers.

Web developers had to know both the Mac and Windows, at least with passing familiarity, and the truth is that many, if not most, preferred Windows.

Today that is simply no longer the case. Microsoft has lost all but a sliver of this entire market. People who love computers overwhelmingly prefer to use a Mac today. Microsoft’s core problem is that they have lost the hearts of computer enthusiasts. Regular people don’t think about their choice of computer platform in detail and with passion like nerds do because, duh, they are not nerds. But nerds are leading indicators.

This is true in many markets with broad appeal, not just computers. Microsoft is looking ever more so like the digital equivalent of General Motors. Car enthusiasts lost interest in GM’s cars long before regular people did; the same is happening with Windows.

It might be hard to notice if you’re not watching from the techie vantage point, but the trickle-down effect of this nerd migration has been enormous–go into an Apple store on any weekend and you’ll probably have to push your way through a heterogenous crowd of browsing hipsters, grandparents, suburban moms, small children, etc just to get to the middle of the store. Everyone seems to know that a Mac is the thing to buy, and that PCs are cheaper, but they’re cheaper for a reason.

Imagine if this happened with cars

The “Laptop/PC Hunter” ad campaigns that Microsoft is so proud of make no effort to answer Apple’s contention that a Mac is a better computer–Microsoft seems satisfied merely to point out that it is possible to purchase computers for cheaper. This is just stupid. I like Gruber’s car analogy above. So what if someone tried this same ad campaign with cars? What if you saw a commercial in which GMC mocked Honda because a Civic costs more than a Geo Tracker? No one would make that commercial, because anyone who saw it would say “wait a minute–a Civic is a waaay better car than a Tracker. Of course it costs more.”

But to a lot of the people you see in these commercials — the people that Microsoft is actually targetting in a pretty savvy way — you’ll see that these are people who aren’t real comfortable with their ability to discern what’s what between computers. They don’t know too much about how they work, and actually not that much about what you can do with them. Computers make them feel uneasy. But they are comfortable with shopping for a bargain. They’ve made a religion about it, which is how there got to be things like Best Buy and Walmart in the first place.

And Microsoft is telling these people that there is equivalence between the Mac and the PC — that it’s OK to shop for this like you’d shop for a toilet brush and laugh at people who don’t. It’s ludicrous. But people have no other real basis for comparison, because if they think about it at all, they see Apple vs. PC as a tribal thing like Ford/Chevy.

But the reality is that people have settled for Windows machines for years without really knowing any better — no basis for comparison. They thought that Windows was it and computers were Windows.

I mean if you see a commercial hollering that ShitSandwiches™ are 75% off, are you going to get excited? No. Because you were never in the market for a ShitSandwich™ in the first place, thank you very much. Not even if they decide to call it Active ShitSandwich Live 2009™ But what if you don’t know it’s a ShitSandwich™?

Apple is cleaning up

As Gruber points out, MS execs believe that the PC Hunter ads work because… they answered Apple somehow. Well Gruber kicked off his post by referencing an NPD report showing that Apple now owns 91% of the $1,000+ retail computer market. Not a huge portion of the computer market by any means, but MS would do well to pay more attention to that number as an indicator.

Windows 7 isn’t going to be awesome. The Bing/Yahoo whatever isn’t going to do anything more than help out Google by keeping the US Justice Department off their back. The Wii is going to keep kicking the XBOX down the street. Exchange’s market share will get eroded by things like Zimbra (even if perhaps not Zimbra itself) over time. Office 2010 will be a laughing stock for its schizo attempt to mimic Google Docs and its bewildering interface (prediction: MS will fall on its face with something douchey for their web-based document sharing monstrosity inside the next Office). And no one is going to care about Windows Mobile I mean Windows Phone with the iPhone 3GS, the Palm Pre, and new stuff from RIM.

Long, slow decline indeed. Bring it.

Now that Arrington has weighed in, I’ll place myself in his rarified company by writing the obligatory blog post about why I think Apple is doing a tablet.

Because I am a loser, I have no access to Arrington’s clandestine sources, so I’ll content myself with doing a plebian version of trying to break down the reasons why it might make sense for Apple to do this.

Why would they do this?

People cry wolf on the Apple tablet thing almost every year:

• 2007
• 2008

Why would 2009 be any different?

Well for starters, netbook sales numbers are getting pretty huge. Apple hasn’t made a netbook yet, but why not? Well one reason is that Tim Cook thinks that netbooks suck. But a better one is that Apple has to know it could just do something a hell of a lot cooler if they made a device with the functionality of a netbook but the form factor of a a giant iPhone.

Why do I think this? Because Apple hasn’t entered the netbook market yet even though they have the expertise to own it. The iTunes Store is a juggernaut engine of adoption, and Apple’s also sitting on some badass multi-touch patents that they’ve hardly begun to make use of yet, not to mention supply chain prowess that is the envy of the industry and the cash/demand to ensure they can get whatever they need from overseas suppliers. I think they’re going to enter the netbook space in a major way, and that when they do, it will be a tablet.

What would it look like?

I’m thinking something like Amazon’s Kindle, but with the capabilities of an iPhone, and most of the look — big, flat tabula rasa touch screen. The size would be really important, because you would want this thing to be able to be a book or a control panel for your home media center, but also have a netbook-like capability set.

It’d probably have to have a better version of OS X on it than the iPhone does — more bells and whistles. This could be why OS X Snow Leopard has support for 3G. (I don’t think that the Air sells enough to be the reason. If that’s why, then they’re going to severely lower the price of that badboy).

What it would do

In general, I’m envisioning an on-the-go “instead of the laptop” option for when you’re travelling light but the iPhone isn’t enough. Here’s a list of the potential use cases that get me excited:

• Touch-screen notebook/sketchpad/eisel (a bigger space for Brushes!)
• E-media reader a la the Kindle
• Home media remote control
• iPod with awesome capacity
• iPhone with magnetically-attached, Ive-designed earpiece (we can dream, right?)

OMG! When can I have it?

Supposedly this fall, but who knows? The intensity of the buzz has been building for awhile. Most people think that an announcement would come at WWDC next month. Let’s hope so — I’d definitely be first in line for this one.

I got my iPhone 3g one week ago, and so I thought I’d blog a bit about my experience so far.

3G

I’m not sure if it’s just where I live, but the 3G service has been unexceptional so far. Or maybe I should just go ahead and call it “lousy.” I’m almost always auto-switched to the Edge band by the device itself when I’m at home, simply because I’m getting no bars of 3G. I had thought that AT&T had blanketed our nation’s capitol w/ helpful 3G service, but it appears not to be the case in my neck of the woods. Unfortunately, my office is also in a place with no decent coverage. Annapolis, MD isn’t on AT&T’s list of cities covered in Maryland, but it gets some residual 3G I guess from being close to Baltimore and DC.

GPS

This has been seriously cool for the most part, although it seems to work best with the 3G turned on, which I frequently don’t have — either for battery life or service reasons. I can see why it’s not “turn-by-turn” ready, but if you have a destination/route mapped out and you’re just trying to follow it, this works pretty well. It’s generally been just a few seconds behind my actual location.

Bigger Capacity

I bought the 16GB, and after my year of having the 4GB model, this extra capacity is sort of boggling my mind. I need to start adding some videos just to fill it out.

Case

I sort of feel like I liked the heavier metal version of the phone a little bit better, but the curved case is going a long way toward making me a believer in the new form factor. It does seem a bit more cheaply made though — I suppose that’s only natural when you drop the price point and ramp production up enough to have 40 million before the end of the year. I can see tiny inconsistencies in the way the light comes off the metal on the edges. I’m thinking of it as sort of a “brush blemish.”

App Store

Nothing out of here has really blown my mind yet, but I appreciate all the stuff that I’ve used so far. OmniFocus for the iPhone has been pretty disappointing on both this device and the old one, but they’re still working on it, so I’m going to give it some time before I start really dissing the experience.

I’m a fan so far of:

• New York Times reader
• Trism
• Break
• Twitterific
• Bank of America Mobile Banking

Jury’s out on:

• Where (especially the Buddy Beacon thing)
• UrbanSpoon
• GPSTwit (bad interface)

Apple needs to get hip to the fact that the AppStore is something that people need to like and trust. Pulling apps from the store with no explanation isn’t going to endear you to iPhone users, nor is the inclusion of a “kill switch.” The more people use the store, the more they’re going to expect that Apple act like the the benevolent, permissive distribution mechanism that Jobs’ promised at WWDC 2008.

Hacking/Jailbraking/Pwnage

I decided to wait on implementing the Pwnage tool for a little while. Until AppInstaller is ready for the 2.01 firmware, what you’ve mostly got available is a bunch of developer tools that I really don’t care about right now.

Summary

I like the thing a lot. I had been thinking that it wasn’t as cool as the last one, btu then I realized that the novelty factor w/ the first gen release simply wasn’t going to be topped; no subsequent iPhone experience was ever going to live up to the thrill of having/using one for the very first time. It was unfair to expect that level of cool from what was for me, basically an upgrade.