I’m sad, but I’m trying to frame this sadness. Steve Jobs, in one form or another, has been a part of my life since I was 8 years old. In 1979, demonstrating remarkable foresight and disregarding doubtless financial burden, my parents brought home an Apple ][+ computer. I was 8. My daughter is older than that now. A few months before she was born we bought our first iPod, Steve introduced it ten years ago this month. I still have it, and the Apple ][+ is at my parents--both still work.

I'm sad for his his wife and children. But mostly I'm sad for the rest of us. 56.

I was lucky enough to see Steve speak in person at WWDC several times. The first time I saw him come onstage in 2003, it was as if the air was suddenly electrified.

This post was drafted on my iPhone. Steve's iPhone, running Steve's new OS, built on the foundation of Steve's old OS, connected to a machine Steve led the creation of, all of them sold by a company Steve founded 35 years ago.

It's traditional to wish for the departed to rest in peace, but Steve's vision won't be resting, there is so much more to do.

Here's to the crazy ones.

Thank you Steve, for everything.

Last night we tried to rent an iTunes movie on our newish Apple TV. Instead of starting right away, the Apple TV said it would be 2+ hours before we could start watching. I’ve got a healthy 15-20Mb/s connection and a clean wire to the Apple TV, so this shouldn’t be happening.

A little bit of research turned up a surprising fix: Don’t use Google DNS.

The iTunes Store has thousands of entrances. Everyone using Google DNS is trying to get in through the same door.

Some anecdotal evidence:

• Apple TV HD Rental Streaming Problem
• Apple TV users report long rental wait times
• Slow iTunes HD download when using Google DNS
• OpenDNS causes slow download for AppleTV
• Slow tv rental download
• Why using Google DNS / OpenDNS is a bad idea

This totally makes sense. iTunes’ video content is delivered by Akamai who has distributed massive datastores around the world so those large files originate from nearby servers and spend less time getting switched around the network. Akamai somehow uses our DNS routing to determine our location. If Google DNS or OpenDNS routes everyone to Akamai the same way, then those Akamai nodes and the pipes leading to them get overwhelmed.

Since most people don’t know what a DNS server is, this problem primarily affects the “tech-vanguard” and those fortunate/unfortunate enough to be inside our circles of helpfulness.

I switched to my ISP’s DNS servers and now HD rentals on Apple TV are ready to watch in 10-20 seconds.

Go figure…

(I’d forgotton, but I wrote about a similar iTunes-DNS problem in March 2009: iTunes Store DNS Connection Problems)

Netflix streaming has become my family’s primary means of watching TV shows and movies. We long ago dropped cable TV, and for us, buying shows on iTunes was much cheaper than our monthly cable fees.

Over the summer my daughters asked for a $60 show from iTunes (29 episodes)–still cheaper than a month of cable–but Netflix was streaming it for $9/month. A netflix-capable $130 Blu-Ray player (cheaper now) should pay for itself pretty quickly and there’s no chance of buyer’s remorse over a particularly horrible show.

It all worked really well. Samsung’s Netflix app only showed our instant queue, so we loaded it with shows the kids liked or things we thought they’d be curious about. When they were allowed to watch TV, we could relax knowing they’d be choosing from a pre-screened set of programs.

As I said, it all worked really well…until this past weekend.

Saturday morning our Samsung Blu-Ray player asked to update its firmware. Unfortunately, that included an update to the Netflix app.

If the Netflix app had worked this way when I bought the DVD player, I would have immediately returned it.

There are a ton of things to criticize about the revised Samsung Netflix app, but the most glaring is that display of 4:3 content is broken. Everything which should be 4:3 is stretched wide.

It’s almost 2011, I never want to see a 4:3 image stretched wide again. Ever. If you’re a manufacturer or media company, botching display aspect-ratios sends a clear message that you don’t give a crap about your customers or the content you’re serving. Delivering your only product at the wrong size is absolutely unforgivable. Imagine if this happened with pants.*

Aside from that, the function of the application is abysmal. After the unit finishes starting up, it takes nearly 30 additional seconds to launch the app, the first 6 of which show a completely black screen. Navigation is confusing with multiple buttons having the same effect. Animated state changes are gratuitous, inconsistent, chunky and jarring. It takes 24 seconds to exit the app but only 30 seconds to power-cycle the entire unit.

There is no solution. There are no options to rollback the firmware. Samsung customer support is beyond useless.

So, I ended up buying a new Apple TV and unplugging the Samsung. I trust Apple not to screw this up. Netflix looks great on it and is seamless with the rest of Apple’s entertainment user interface.

The future of Netflix

Netflix dominates the streaming space, no one else is even close. However they seem to be at the mercy of various hardware manufacturer’s internal development teams. That, or just incredibly, stupidly lax about the quality of the applications they’re putting their name on. The lack of basic testing and quality control reflects badly on Samsung, but is much worse for Netflix.

With DVDs, the super-convenient red Netflix mailer became synonymous with their service. Netflix doesn’t own the movie experience, they own the delivery experience. Netflix wraps the movie, we’re only aware of them before and after watching something they brought to us. For the sake of their future, Netflix needs to put as much care into their streaming interfaces as they do with mail delivery. If the streaming apps degrade the experience or are unpleasant to use, customers will go elsewhere.

* pants, bad example?

I’m excited about the new iPhone, though we know so much about it already that there’s not much surprise left. I expect it will ship at the end of the month. As Jonathan pointed out this weekend, June 25th is the last Friday in June and my pick for the release date.

AT&T’s been monkeying with plans and data the past couple weeks, but the most interesting tidbit out of the Death Star was the decision to double early termination fees for smart phones. To me, that’s a defensive move. There won’t be Verizon iPhones this year, but we might see a single-chip dual-mode iPhone which would be the beginning of the end of AT&T’s hegemony in the US. Apple won’t break their contract with AT&T, they’ll just hint that it’s up to the user. After all, the iPhone is open, so the consumer is free to swap in any sim card they’ve got.

I do kind of hope Jobs has Gray Powell introduce the new iPhone. Yeah it’s a longshot, but his appearance onstage would absolutely bring the house down. A lot of Apple developers (and other decent people) were furious about what Gizmodo did to him. Jobs bringing Powell onstage would be a fantastic show of support for Apple employees. I don’t think it’ll happen, but it’s fun to think about.

BTW, Gizmodo was denied press credentials. They’re never getting into another apple event. Ever.

iPad

…gets a software update and 15 minutes talking about amazing sales numbers. Unless…

AppleTV

I think we might finally see AppleTV cease to be a hobby. The thing I’ve wanted for a long time would be the ability to “throw” a display from one device to another. We won’t get that exactly, but I think the AppleTV may be reborn as the first peripheral display accessory for the iPad/iPhone. Essentially an AppleTV connected display would be a proxy-resolution mirrored display for a touch devices. No more of that silly grey swipe-box in Apple’s current Remote.app. What is on your TV is on your iPad. Adam Lisagor described almost exactly the same thing. Plus, when media is playing, the iPad or iPhone would have access to the media’s metadata, like a live DVD extra or PiP. (thanks Jonathan)

Little Fluffy Clouds

I don’t know if we’ll see the cloud services that a lot of people are hoping for. Is the NC data center even finished? (I find that video hilarious. Either it’s a data center or a Costco.)

While I’d love to see MobileMe finally live up to its potential, it’s been eight years and not a whole lot has changed. I finally cancelled my account this past year, but I’d be happy to have reason to reactivate it. I doubt it will be free, but I wish Apple would consider a free or discounted subscription with new hardware purchases. Or throw it in with AppleCare.

If there’s going to be an iTunes subscription streaming service, I think Apple would save that sort of announcement for a late-summer special event. It would be a huge thing for students going back to school, but there’s not much to offer developers in locked down streaming media.

Computers? Oh yeah, those…

Quite a lot of Apple hardware has gone stale, especially the Mac Pro which has gone 15 months since its last revision, but also iMac and Mac Mini, both models are 8 months old. This is a complete hunch, but I suspect the Mac Pro will see a new, much smaller form factor. Also, lots of people are still waiting for a new giant Apple display.

If there are hardware announcements, the entirety of the announcement will take less than 10 minutes.

Apple’s got something up their sleeve and Jobs’ said we “won’t be disappointed.” It feels pretty exciting this year, perhaps because there wasn’t the massive rumor buildup to be letdown about. Looking forward to it.

Posting this before the big announcement tomorrow.

It feels somewhat obvious at this point, but I feel certain Apple with continue the iPhone’s conceptual move towards subordinate computing devices. The original iPod was a deliberate appliance, the iPhone is a computer limited by design. The biggest conceptual leap of the iPhone was that it couldn’t be used to create another iPhone. Even a years-old, bottom-end Mac or PC can still run software capable of designing microchips, programming an OS or running the CNC machines which fabricate the computer’s physical components. The iPhone and forthcoming tablet are more like electronic familiars. Without their master device, they’re forever limited in what they can do and become.

Jason Snell feels right on about resurrecting the iBook name and brand. “Canvas” sounds more like an app.

The price will either be $799 or $1199. $899 psychologically goes right to $1000 and if you’re over $1000, might as well go a little higher.

Hardware

There are several obvious components which will be present. GPS, accelerometer and vibration. I still don’t understand why my laptop doesn’t know where it is. It’s 2010, every moderately connected electronic device should have basic location awareness.

Size-wise, I’ll be surprised if the screen is much larger than 9 inches diagonal. I base that figure on an expectation that the short dimension of the tablet will not be much wider than an iPhone is tall, so overall dimensions around 4.25 x 7.5 inches. However, all size-predictions go out the window if Apple introduces some radical new input method.

The idea that it might not have a text-input interface is just dumb, it has to have some means of text input. The bigger question is what that interface will look or feel like. Simplest answer is the iPhone’s horizontal keyboard.

I don’t expect a user-facing camera, no one looks good photographed looking up from their own lap.

Dock connecter and headphone jack will the the only ports. Power, home button and volume will be the only physical interfaces.

Mostly though, I really hope Apple does something completely shoot-the-moon crazy. Word-keyboards instead of letters, or no keyboard at all. Make it round. Linked physical-virtual application rotation, screens with holes in them. Just something completely wild and new.

Connectivity:

Apple has no reason to abandon AT&T, they’re the perfect scapegoat. Should AT&T botch this too, then Apple opens up to other carriers. Should AT&T admit their networks are overwhelmed, then Apple opens up to other carriers. Either way, Apple puts the final nail in AT&T’s coffin. That’s good chess.

Apps and OS

iTunes App store only. All iPhone apps will work. There will be no windowing model like OS X, everything will be iPhone-style full screen apps. There won’t be a separate OS or SDK. iPhone OS 4 will be announced, but tablet development will be a checkbox in Xcode. Apple won’t have an SDK available on day one. As long as iPhone apps display well on the tablet, we’ll probably have to wait for WWDC to get the updated SDK. There’s no way developers are going to get a software tablet simulator before Apple ships the product. One other loosely connected thought; WWDC will see a unified SDK for iPhone, tablet and OS X. “All for one and one for all.”

No new iPhone will be announced, as that would detract from the main focus of the event. Whenever the new iPhone does appear, which I’m confident will be sometime before Summer, it will have a higher resolution display. The Android phones raised the bar on screen quality, Apple will match or beat them. There’s an outside chance for new iLife/iWork suites, but unless they’re somehow integrated with the new device, those aren’t happening either.

Flash

No chance in hell.

Post-mortem

Apple has posted the full announcement video.(Tech Specs)

Initially I was somewhat disappointed, but that’s starting to wear off as the reality sets in. Not just the reality of what the iPad is, but the universe it will live in.

Apple’s new A4 CPU is a very big deal, but the price was a biggest surprise. And it wasn’t just me, look at what Steve Jobs did to the S&P today:

The red line is the price trend before Apple’s price announcement, the green line is the trend after the announcement. Moments before the price was revealed, something caused the market to start tanking, that was stopped cold as soon as the numbers hit the screen.

Predicton-wise, I think I did fairly well. I was right about Apps, but not SDK availability. Very happily wrong about price but right about AT&T. Right about the camera and inputs, but wrong about the dimensions. I am really surprised it’s 4:3, that ratio feels so quaint.

There are some radical changes to the Cocoa Touch Human Interface Guidelines. I’m very curious to see how these changes transition to iPhone, and whether or not those changes will only possible on an iPhone screen with an increased pixel density.

One nice little thing I noticed at around 17 minutes into the video was a two-word contextual correction — haven’t seen that mentioned.

I really hope some of the UI stuff happening with Calendar and Mail find their way into 10.7.

I think my mom might be ditching her Kindle.

There’s been a lot of stuff going on in my life this year, and I haven’t had much time to prepare for WWDC or even really to think about it before getting here. But I’ve posted my predictions for the past handful of years so I jotted some thoughts down on the plane. I haven’t been keeping up with the rumors, so these are quite literaly pulled out of thin air. This is last minute again, I’m posting this from the keynote line. I’ll update with right/wrong and clean up typos after the show.

Snow Leopard

Apple will claim they lied last year they said Snow Leopard would have “no new features.” They’ll probably position it as “this was just too cool not to put in.” What we’ll see will be a radical rethinking of elements of the OS X Interface. The team who built the iPhone UI will have been brought back to the OS group to work their magic on Mac OS. The features may not be ready yet and might not be included in the developer build, but it will be demoed and highly publicized. (just don’t call it leopard skin) Possible strategies include something like “the iPhone was built with the best of Mac OS X, now we’re bringing the best of iPhone back to the Mac.” [wrong, but probably just too early]

The total re-thinking of the window menu bar in the Safari beta and elements of the iLife interface (hopefully the less infuriating subset) will prove to have been a hint of what’s coming. Aside from revamping the appearance and function of interface windows, I expect some sort of real-time text suggestion/correction system similar to the iPhone’s inline typing corrections.

We still won’t get true resolution independence. I really want to run at AppleDisplayScaleFactor 0.8, but it doing so breaks all sorts of little things around the system. [seems right, but we'll see]

Hardware

New iPhones will be announced and demoed, but they won’t be available for a month or two. A lot of iPhone 3.0 is known already, but one thing we might see is some sort of demonstration where the iPhone becoming an auxiliary input and display device for nearby macs. Sort of like Remote but more functional. [right on iPhones] [wrong on timing]

I’m doubtful about any new hardware, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see a small upgrade to portables coupled with a simplified portable product line. The distinction between MacBook and MacBook Pro has gotten really fuzzy. [right on new iPhones]

Portables will also be acquiring location-awareness through a basic GPS chip. If they don’t, I’ll just repeat this one for the next Apple product announcement and for every subsequent announcement until it comes true. It is insane that any portable computing device doesn’t know where it is. [still wrong, so I'll be trotting this out again next time]

No tablets or Netbooks. Though everyone will be talking in hushed whispers about their hackintoshes. [right, too easy]

I’d be terrified to bring a hacked-Mac netbook to WWDC, but someone, possibly quite a few, will. I have to leave the conference early this year to attend a wedding, I will be starting a rumor that Apple saw my hacBook and threw me out of Moscone for running Mac OS X on non-apple hardware. [right. I saw many netbooks, though only one guy dumb ballsy enough to run Mac OS X on his]

Jobs is the elephant in the room. Everyone seems to expect some sort of appearance. I don’t think he’ll be here, but if he does appear it will be either via video iChat or there will be a video letter/statement. Either one of those will be an unintentionally hilarious recreation of the 1984 Apple ad. [too much waffling on my part to call this either way]

If this isn’t the last Macworld Expo, in 2010 everyone will say it should have been.

What I think we’ll see

• New Mac Minis. [ wrong ] I don’t even care what the specs are, I’m buying at least one for the office. I’ve been putting this purchase off forever waiting for a newer revision, the current model has been unchanged since August ’07.
• Unibody 17″ MacBook Pros. [ right ] This just seems obvious. I don’t know how much stock I put in the non-removable battery rumors, though it’s not inconceivable that battery access was reducing rigidity in the aluminum and was dropped for structural reasons. [ wrong ]
• iLife and iWork 09. [ right ] I just hope Apple looked long and hard at Mobile Me and then ran as fast as they can in the opposite direction.
• A new 30″ Cinema Display with Mini DisplayPort connectors and a camera. [ wrong ]
• Phil Schiller will be wearing buttons. [ right ] Consensus will be that he was boring because he didn’t do anything insane.
• Steve Jobs will not appear. I get the impression he’s so far past completely annoyed with the media attention that there’s no chance he’ll iChat in just to bump the stock a few dollars. [ right ]
• The stock market is just too erratic these days to call any dependable reaction. I have some feeling that the stock will be punished for less than earth-shattering announcements, [ right ] but it all depends on the broader market. I’m going to be watching the UltraShort tech ETFs.

What I’d like to see

• I’m hoping for a significant update to the AppleTV. If Apple don’t start taking this product seriously, they’re going to lose this market — if they haven’t already. Roku and Tivo are cutting deals with Amazon and Netflix for huge libraries of TV and movies on demand. These alternates are tempting, especially compared with the often anemic rental selection available from iTunes.

  There’s a lot to hate about the current AppleTV, the movie browsing interface, where you have to scan movie poster thumbnails with text that only appears when active is just horrible. AppleTV doesn’t have to suck like this, make it awesome, just don’t break Boxee.

• Time Capsule, the Mac Mini and Apple TV… seems like there’s a lot of crossover there.
• iTunes needs some fresh thinking regarding some interface and usability features, especially regarding video content and large libraries. I’d love to have a media server where I could create playlists from any of the computers in the house, all accessing the same media library. I also would love to be able to sync a subset of my library onto my portable for traveling.
• iPhoto: Faster please, with less sucking. And share movies already. I’m definitely going to be checking out Picasa and I hope the competition pushes Apple to make iPhoto really shine.

Is Apple pulling out of MWSF so they can attend CES in Las Vegas? I just don’t see it. No matter how much of the Consumer Electronics Show revolves around the iPod ecosystem, CES just feels kind of lowbrow for Apple. Besides, these days Apple can get a gaggle of media assembled in Cupertino on a moment’s notice with five-words and a picture of a light beam. Whenever they want.

I haven’t been to a Macworld Expo in years, but I have fond memories of attending the Boston Expo in the mid 90s. I wish I could go this year, the last-hurrah zeitgeist seems like it would be fun to share in.