Is Apple turning evil?

Apple has intentionally broken third party syncing services. From what I gather in the press, it’s an ego battle going on with Google, but third party vendors are suffering.

You cannot, absolutely cannot, use Apple’s iCloud and sync your contacts and calendars with Google Apps also. This is new as of the OS/X Lion (10.7) release and seems like a stupid, stupid idea to me.

Spanning Sync and Soocial (both of which used to support very nice services in this regard) are out in the cold. I have both of them — and neither has been able to solve the problem. Basically you have to choose between using Apple cloud (iCloud) or someone else’s cloud (such as Google). Unfortunately, that means you can either have seamless syncing between all you Apple gizmos… or, you have to take a more manual approach.

So, for those frustrated Lion customers out there, if you want the more manual approach, here are a few tips:

1. Turn off iCloud for calendars and contacts on your computer.

2. Disable any kind of iCloud syncing for calendars and contacts on your devices, too.
3. I deleted all the contacts/calendar databases from my mobile devices (well, it happens automatically when you disable the iCloud syncing).
4. Now, on your Mac, turn on iCal and AddressBook syncing to Google or, if you prefer a more powerful option with more configurability, get a copy of Spanning Sync or go with Soocial, or some other service. These do good jobs of preventing dupes, etc.
5. Set your iPhone or iPad to use an Exchange server for contact and calendar syncing. (I still prefer to use a Google server for mail, it works better).

There you go. You should be mostly in the same place as with iCloud, although there are a few limitations. For instance, Google doesn’t support all the custom contact fields that iCloud supports. That hasn’t had much of an impact on me, although it can bother some people. Other than that, I’d just have to say things aren’t exactly, quite as seamless as with iCloud… for instance, iCal integration with Google Calendar works great, but you can tell from the user interface that they weren’t really made to work together from day one.

I hope that helps, but I know it’s a frustrating situation.

It would be great if Apple fixed their shit (so to speak) but I don’t expect it. They’ve been making some bad decisions this year… releasing Lion too early, the horrible new AddressBook design, the mess that was iTunes Match (I think it’s fixed now but I’m not going to risk it). Seems to me Apple is becoming more political, and less focused on the old mantra of “it just works.” Bah. It doesn’t work anymore.

Farewell, Mr. Jobs

Steven P. Jobs, leader, visionary, and chairman of Apple Inc., died Wednesday at the age of 56.

We will all miss his influence on the world. This strikes particularly close to me, having known him, and worked in close proximity at NeXT Computer. His innovation, drive for excellence, and uncompromising belief in building something better than “good enough” will, I hope, continue to be the inspiration for Apple, and others.

A complete report is available from The Wall Street Journal.

Lion gives good font

I finally buckled and upgraded to OS/X 10.7 Lion. After all, now that the first update is out, the major glitches should be gone right?

Overall I’m happy with the upgrade. There are some really nice usability improvements, in general I’d say performance is great, and some of the new features are really very handy.

Take, for instance, the new Font Book that ships with Lion. For years I’ve used, loved, and cursed Suitcase Fusion for managing my fonts. I’ve got about 800 or so that I’ve accumulated over the years — enough to pose a small organizational nightmare if not done well. Past version of OS/X have had no problem handling the number of fonts, but organization was a pain.

The new Font Book has some much needed improvement. It now clearly indicates duplicate fonts and makes resolving duplicates easy. And, more important, it does a fantastic job of diagnosing font issues — far better than Suitcase, it turns out. I had nearly 80 fonts in my Suitcase library that were in some way defective (ranging from missing kerning information to more dramatic problems). So hands down, kudos for the new Font Book.

I’ve removed Suitcase Fusion and am loving it — Suitcase has had its quirks and problems and frankly I think they’ve been getting worse. Lately I’ve seen huge CPU usage, lockups, and less reliability than in the past… and reviews of the latest release make it sound even worse. Now that Lion has some really solid font management and organization improvements, it’s one less thing I have install (and pay for).

Working not writing?

Ok, so I’ve been working hard on the launch of Project Masters (and on content for Hyrax International) and really have ignored the whole personal blogging thing. I should fix that and may have found the right weapon to help.

Socialoomph is a pretty cool tool for boosting your “social productivity.” Well, whatever, I don’t think of it as “social productivity.” For me, it helps to get my job done — and that includes posting stuff online (to both Project Masters and Hyrax), tweeting about it, and cross-posting announcements on places like LinkedIn and, yes, Twitter.

I’ve been using Socialoomph for a while on the Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook side of things. Now I’m going to start using it for posting the basic stuff across my different blogs and web sites. We’ll see how it goes… it looks promising. Anything that can reduce the effort of posting short little stories and updates (like this one!) across multiple sites sounds good to me!

Stock market versus economic fundamentals

Everyone should take a good read of Robert Reich’s September 1 article. I absolutely love this quote. If only everyone understood this, I think we’d see a lot less fluctuation in the market and the economy. But alas, his point:

The stock market has as much to do with the real economy as the weather has to do with geology. Day by day there’s no relationship at all. Over time, weather and geology interact but the results aren’t evident for many years. The biggest impact of the weather is on peoples’ moods, as are the daily ups and downs of the market.

Please, follow Robert’s advice and pay no attention to the short-term fluctuations. It’s the long-term we should be keeping our eyes on — something the U.S. has never been good at.

Future proof your future

Snagged from 43folders and totally worth the read:

If we embrace the fact that no one can or should ever care about the health of our passions as much as we do, the practical decisions that help ensure Our Good Thing stays alive can become as “simple” as a handful of proven patterns—work hard, stay awake, fail well, hang with smart people, shed bullshit, say “maybe,” focus on action, and always always commit yourself to a bracing daily mixture of all the courage, honesty, and information you need to do something awesome—discover whatever it’ll take to keep your nose on the side of the ocean where the fresh air lives. This is huge.

The internet is making us stupid

The Internet is making us stupid (well, maybe). I think there’s no better case that illustrates this than a recent lawsuit against Google, in which the plaintiff charges that:

Google Maps led her to a four-lane boulevard without sidewalks that was “not reasonably safe for pedestrians,” according to the lawsuit filed by the Northridge, Calif., resident.

The plaintiff then proceeded down the street and claims she was subsequently hit by a vehicle. And that, obviously, is Google’s fault.

Is the human race now so dependent on augmented reality that we can’t think on our own? The last time I looked down a street without adequate walking paths, I made my own decisions. This is called “risk management” by those the know. Before such fancy terms came along, it was just common sense: Should I avoid the dangerous looking forest, or walk into it?

Then again, maybe it just means people in the United States will sue their own mother for a few minutes of fame.

Google dumps Windows

Snagged from the TUAW news feed:

We first heard rumors of this policy change a couple of months ago, but now it’s made the papers: the Financial Times is reporting that Google is phasing out the use of Windows internally, as employees are migrated to either Linux or Mac OS X on machine turnovers or new hires. The policy change was precipitated in large part by the security breach attributed to Chinese hackers; Google’s IT leaders apparently feel that Microsoft’s OS represents too great a risk across the enterprise to leave it in place.

Personally, I stay as technology-agnostic as I can, at least in the professional arena. If a Windows-based solution is the right choice for a company, that’s what I recommend — and, there are many situations (more than most) where it is the right choice. But, on a purely personal level, my inner child does a little jig of joy when it hears that someone else is getting fed up with poor software. Seeing Google add their voice to the many companies pushing-back against Vista is a good thing.

$24M and 10 years later cell radiation still fuzzy?

Can cell phones cause brain cancer? It’s been the focus of discussions, arguments, studies and bloggers for decades now. So when do we really find out?

Thankfully, there’s the Interphone study, launched 10 years ago and studying 10,000 participants spread across 13 different countries. Those concerned with The Answer have been waiting for the results with increased anticipation. And, here it is, summed up by Dr. Elisabeth Cardis, leader of the Interphone study:

Until stronger conclusions can be drawn one way or another, it may be reasonable to reduce one’s exposure [to cellular radiation]. It can’t hurt. — Dr. Elisabeth Cardis

“It can’t hurt?” So, it turns out that the long awaited report, published in the Internal Journal of Epidemiology on May 17, according to Time Magazine’s May 31 issue, “is by far the most comprehensive look at the issue to date and was meant to provide a possible conclusion to the debate.” Unfortunately, the real facts of the matter: 10 years isn’t that long to study something as subtly insidious as cancer poisoning from a radiation source such as cell phones. Even so, the study does give us interesting new data to ponder, discuss and argue over while another 10 or 20 year study is pulled together:

1. The study did not find any obvious connection between cell phone use and cancer, but it did find some seemingly conflicting data that muddies the discussion even further.
2. Of the study’s subjects, the 10% that used their cell phones most often did exhibit a 40% higher risk of developing some form of brain cancer, as compared to those who don’t use cell phones.
3. On the other hand, participants in the study that used their cell phones infrequently demonstrated a lower likelihood of developing brain cancer over people who use corded phones exclusively.

Unfortunately, even some of the data the defined the study is already out of date. 15 years ago (when the study was originally designed), using a cell phone for 30 minutes a day was considered “heavy” use. By today’s standards, 30 minutes a day might be considered moderate, particularly as people are starting to forego land-lines in favor of simply having a cell phone.

So what’s our take-away? Probably that the Interphone study is too dated and flawed. When you hear the mobile phone industry trumpeting it’s positive findings, or when you hear consumer advocates talking about it’s negative discoveries, keep in mind: They’re both quoting from the same study, a study which seems to equally support either position.

We need a new study. Unfortunately, that means we’ll be waiting another 15 or 20 years before “significant” evidence has a chance to answer this question once and for all.

8 web sites you need to stop building

The Oatmeal just gets it.

Stay at home

One of the funniest blogs I’ve ever run across, about parenting, staying at home, and life. Enjoy!

iPhone class action

Isn’t anyone going to start up a class action suit against AT&T and Apple? Both companies promised iPhone tethering support, spurring greatly increased sales of the iPhone 3Gs, only to yank the promise of tethering in the U.S. even though AT&T offers tethering with other devices. Promises for the past year have been broken, leaving a lot of iPhone users miffed at Apple and just plain angry at AT&T for worse and worse service. And it didn’t help when Steve Jobs rubbed it in, delivering the news that the Wi-Fi iPad will not support iPhone tethering.

I know all the arguments for tolerance: AT&T’s network was slammed with unexpected adoption levels; they are trying to roll out more coverage; they are upgrading their networks. But that doesn’t change the fact that when I bought my iPhone 3Gs, I cancelled my data card and plan and have been waiting for over a year listening to promises of “real soon now.” In the meantime, I’m inconvenienced on every business trip. Dishonesty is at the heart of the matter: AT&T needs to deliver on their promise, or tell us what’s really going on.

So, for the record: If a class action suit gets off the ground, I’m in.