Sunday, October 16, 2011

The definition of awesome design

The definition of awesome design is when you don't know you desperately want something until you see it because until then you didn't even imagine such a thing existing. Like this:

Saturday, October 15, 2011

iCloud without a silver lining

I upgraded my iPhone and iPad this week to the latest version of iOS. Given that iOS 5 has some neat features I can overlook the fact that Apple seriously messed up the logistics of this release. If you're going offer upgrades to everything in the Apple universe all on the same day, you better be prepared for some unbelievable peak demand on your servers. Which Apple clearly wasn't, leading to all sorts of problems.

What I don't get is why everyone is so excited about iCloud. I'm absolutely excited about the vision but underwhelmed by the execution.

For me iCloud will be a winner when I can uninstall iTunes from my PC. I don't know if the Mac version is as bad, but iTunes for Windows looks to me like some sort of passive-aggressive Steve Jobs revenge on Bill Gates.

Right now the emphasis on iCloud seems to be on syncing mail and contacts and calendars. I've already got all that stuff in the cloud on my work mail server and Gmail instantly available to all my Apple devices. What I want to do is sync all the stuff I have to manage with iTunes like photos and videos and music.

The one step in this direction that Apple have made in this release - Photostream - is incredibly badly implemented. Sure it would be nice to have any photo I take on my iPhone instantly available on my iPad, but what idiot decided to release this without the ability to even delete a photo from the stream or an individual device?