If you found the iPhone 5c/s presentation by Apple boring today, you’re not alone. A lot of people were expecting exactly what they presented and more. Nothing else showed up. You’ll see a lot of people talk about a lack of innovation for a while, and how Apple is dying without Jobs. Things like that don’t help anyone. Let’s talk about why people found today boring:

1. They already knew about all of the things coming out. There were no surprises at all. Those who have been around apple product announcements for more than 10 years expect some kind of surprise. Rumor mills killed this more than anything else.

2. These were all iterative changes. Nothing new, just additions to the existing. Think of this as a clay model you’re slowly removing bit from in order to make the end product come alive. Except you’re doing it in front of thousands of very critical people.

My opinion is that Apple is...

If you look at some software preferences and there is an advanced tab, sit and think about that for a minute. Think about the fact that most people will never see those preferences. Also, think about the fact that the advanced tab is a sign of failure.

It’s a failure to make a decision to cut something. To redesign it to work automatically in some fashion. A failure to figure out where a preference would fit in within the application in general. Too many options lead to confusing people. However, advanced preferences just scare people. The point of whatever you are working on is not to scare people off. Avoid the advanced feature creep at all costs.

When I worked on Adium I used to tell a few of the guys working on it that if the option was in the menu or was in advanced, it was just hidden. That was true 5 years ago, that’s true today. People just do not go into these things unless...

In a post Google Reader world, the knee jerk reaction is to sit and list out the reasons to be angry at Google. There’s the fact the service is gone, the fact you can’t get your data easily from them, and a myriad of other things.

Another knee jerk reaction is to try to make a rival product for a now dead system. If this is you, you would spend between 3 and infinity months writing software for a somewhat crowded market, filled with parsing, interface and user problems. It’s sort of an interesting thing to work on, there’s a ton of room for innovation and improvement, but you’d still be working on an end user product and would have to deal with the whims of that user base.

A better thing to think about is why they dropped out of the Feed Reading market. I’ve come to the conclusion that the surface problem for most people is likely that they think too hard to get any benefit out of RSS...

I’ve seen a new trend on LinkedIn that I think is pretty subtle yet revealing. LinkedIn added a new feature to let others mark that you have skills in certain things. For instance if you know about Project Management, 4 people could indicate that you know that.

However, I believe I’ve seen a new trend for IT professionals, venture capitalists, etc. I’ve started to see skills that you wouldn’t think would be on a professional resume, but they fit well on a resume style website. The skill that most aligns with this is the BBQ skill. I’ve seen it usually ranked pretty low, but it’s there and it’s a glaringly obvious way to indicate someone is more than meets the eye. Heck two people even endorsed it on my profile this week.

I think anyone I see with the BBQ skill will in fact be someone I’d like to work with. I take it as someone who is outgoing and also isn’t afraid to sit down. BBQ...

Every year we hear interesting statistics from Apple regarding the app store. It’s quite impressive really, and they have every right to tout them. Billions sold, billions deposited into the banks of app creators, etc.

One thing that isn’t discussed very much is how much gross revenue Apple receives from their memberships. That 99 dollar fee to get in the door is something that Apple collects yearly. It’s the equivalent of selling mining equipment during the Gold Rush.

The amount of developers this year at WWDC is 5000. So pretend they all pay the 99 dollar fee, and that means that Apple gets 495,000 from just those people. They all don’t, a lot of people are there on behalf of their company that pays once, but it’s an interesting thought.

Apple mentioned today that they have 6 million developer accounts. If that means a separate company per account with a separate 99 dollar fee...

At some point soon we’re going to see a lot of info about 10.9 come out. However, did you know that it’s been around since 2011? Here’s the output from google analytics for http://growl.info against Intel 10.9. Feel free to compare it to this post by MG Siegler showing a smaller time frame.

Note the blip in 2011 and 2012.

You can take this a few different ways. However, here’s how I take it.

1. Most likely this is 10.9, but maybe it isn’t. It’s not hard to change agent strings.
2. More importantly. We already knew 10.9 was coming. Apple told us last year that they are doing yearly release cycles.

So yes, 10.9 is coming. Yes, Apple is likely going to copy yet another application that’s semi popular to popular. Yes, they are likely going to continue copying instapaper too. But does a graph from a website analytics page mean much right now? Absolutely not. It’ll mean more later this year...

It seems like forever ago. Chipping away at the long poles for hours, not paying attention to anything except for the chisel, the hammer and the wood. There were more than 30 of us and we were all chipping away. Totem Poles remind me how most of the world works today.

There are all sorts of totem poles. Tall ones, short ones, different amounts of totems on them. The ones we were carving made it into this article and eventually into a park. The ones that people are building today will probably live on for a very long time.

Building a totem pole is much like building a set of applications, a company, or simply improving yourself. For example, in a software company each application is one of the totems. Some are small totems, and some are huge. At least with the totem’s I carved, we would draw out plans for the pole before carving a single one, which is a lot of what people do with...

Here we are again. Someone is destroying things that I love. Running zombies? Meh. Who thought that was a good idea anyhow? I mean, a head shot is hard enough as it is against thousands surrounding you, and now they get to run at you too? These things that can’t turn door knobs or speak, but they get to run and turn over a bus. They can run and climb over each other? The preview on this movie is proof that the world is going to end. Who thought this was a good idea, seriously?

We can all do better than this. Zombies that do not run are much more dangerous, much more of an intelligent horror. You have a chance there. Running zombies pretty much destroy a movie for me. There is no way to actually outrun a running zombie as depicted in movies that feature running zombies.

We all know that World War Z is ruined. So let me explain, once and for all, why running zombies is an awful concept...

After the PR stunt that was Felix Baumgartner’s (really frackin cool) fall to Earth, there were a few things I thought about. The application of what was proven heading into safety devices for the next decade was one of those. Another was that I’ll most likely feel a tad bit better about drinking red bull. Maybe those alcoholic mixtures in bars that go with red bull will now all have space themed names. That’d be neat I guess.

The most important thought is that space matters again. Not in a small way, but in a big way. People were actually excited about watching, about talking about, and about just knowing that someone was going somewhere to do something that is seemingly impossible. That’s not to say the recent flyovers of a the casket of our previous generations of awe inspiring space explorations, the shuttle, was not awe inspiring. But this was different. Where the shuttle flyover...

I remember having a t68i that lasted a lot longer than a day on a charge. In fact when it got down to a day, I replaced the battery as I thought it was useless to walk around without being able to be away from a charger for more than 12-14 hours.

Now with my smartphone I’m stuck with something.. less than appealing with regards to battery life. Yes, the new iPhone 7 galaxy 5 s2 iOS android microsoft samsung vizio device of the future will have an amazing size difference. However, I would settle for a heavier, thicker phone if the charge lasted for a week. Or even 2 days.