Last week, Richard Wright, the keyboard player with Pink Floyd, died.
Maybe I’ve missed it, but I’ve heard surprisingly little in the mainstream media, which is a travesty.
He always came across as a quiet, private and modest person, but he was a key part of a great band - and will be sadly missed by many, many people.
Tom Smith really doesn’t seem to be having much joy with his iPhone.
I, on the other hand, love mine (despite the occasional glitch, random departure of what appeared to be a fully charged battery, or stupid loss of preferences when upgrading).
This may be something to do with the fact that Tom seems to have about 100 third-party apps installed on his, and I (remembering the days of OS 9 extension madness all too well) have about 10 on mine.
I suspect though that it’s all about expectations and the managing thereof.
I can’t speak for Tom, but all I really wanted from my iPhone was something that replaced my old iPod and phone, and by the way was a better internet device than my previous Sony Ericsson not-at-all-smart phone. Expectations well and truly met.
Throw in the fact that I’ve now got always-on, eat-as-much-as-you-can data access wherever I am (yes, at super slow 2G speeds - so what? How fast can you read RSS feeds anyway?), and I am a happy bunny.
Apart from the bloody recessed headphone socket of course, which is right pain in the arse.
For what it’s worth, my list of apps, in rough order of usage:
- NetNewsWire (news)
- Things (to do)
- iFooty (footy news)
- TubeStatus (travel news)
- Remote (kewl)
- Palringo (chat)
- LastFM (music)
- OmniTuner (making music)
- VNC (nerdery)
- Facebook (social)
- Stanza (ebooks)
- eReader (ebooks)
- Light (illumination!)
On the subject of MarsEdit… I’ve been more than a little disappointed with the iPhone version of NetNewsWire (if you don’t know the connection, you haven’t been using a Mac long enough ;) ).
Admittedly my list of feeds is a bit bloated (typically I have between 1000-2000 unread items, which I have no doubt is actually a comparatively small number by Tom Smith’s standards).
However, I’ve found NetNewsWire to be slow, crash-prone (although definitely improved with the 2.1 os upgrade, so maybe we can blame Apple for that one), and generally not very smart about the way it works.
On the whole I think I prefer the NewsGator iPhone site, which essentially does the same job in a browser - but only because it gets me there quicker, not because the interface is necessarily better (in some ways it is worse).
In the unlikely event that Brent Simmons is reading this, here’s my quick fire list of how you could improve NNW on the iPhone:
-
allow me to order my list of feeds; alphabetical is so not how I want to read my news
-
give me a way to read the previous item; sometime I click “next” too soon…
-
update the unread counts quickly; surely you can cache the list of unread items on the server and download them first, before refreshing the actual articles?
-
fetch stuff from the feeds that are empty first; I have a few feeds I read a lot, and a lot of feeds I read rarely. The rare feeds already have tons of unread stuff in them. The popular feeds are empty, because I’ve sucked ‘em dry! Refresh those ones first please.
-
fetch the articles in a more just-in-time manner; I know this may be trickier given the format of feeds, but it ought to be possible to just start by fetching one or two articles, then get the next one whilst I’m reading, and so on. I often seems like I’m waiting a long time just to find out if there’s anything to read
-
be a bit smarter about moving on to the next feed or category; I have a bunch of Mac related feeds grouped together into a folder - I often find myself moved on to another folder, only to go back and discover that somehow a bunch of unread items in the Mac folder got skipped
-
mix things up a bit; off the top of my head I can’t remember whether the feed formats give dates per item, or just an update time for the feed, but I’d quite like to view a bunch of related feeds together in a mixed up order; in other words, it would be quite nice not to have to read all the Register articles, then Slashdot ones, then the TUAW ones, etc - juble them together a bit, sorted by posting date if possible
-
spot and remove duplicates; sometimes I end up with the same story twice because I subscribe to a main feed and a filtered version of it. It would be good if NNW could spot the duplicates and mark them as read for me
I often get mails from recruitment people (I seem to be on everyone’s databases), urging me to get in touch because they’ve got lots of exciting jobs that I’d be just right for.
Then it turns out that the job involves something I know nothing about, would never want to do anyway, pays less than half of my current salary, and/or involves working for a company that I’d rather not touch with a barge pole. A very long barge pole. Operated remotely. From a different planet.
Frustrating though this inevitably becomes, it does occasionally prompt me to wonder what I would actually like my next job to be. Ok, not occasionally… all the time.
Not that you should read this as me saying “I want a new job” or “I’m leaving SI” (don’t forget, I left SI once already, and they still managed to drag me back! If you count freelance contracts, I’m actually on my fourth stint at SI).
What I’m describing below probably won’t happen for another ten years if at all, but just for the record all you recruitment types, this is what you’ll have to do to get me even vaguely interested:
1) Find me a way to work for myself, to my own deadlines, and sell my own software. This is most likely to be the next move I make anyway, but if someone can help me do it, then fine.
2) Find me a Mac or iPhone job. I still work on a Mac every day, but I don’t write proper Mac software any more, and I miss it. Failing that, funky technology is good. Funky languages are good. Yet more tedious legacy C++ is bad.
3) Find me a job on a very small team. I’m talking less than 10 people. All of my most enjoyable jobs have involved working closely with 2-5 people.
4) Find me a research focussed job where I don’t have to work to unrealistic deadlines. I don’t mind deadlines at all (despite what some people think!). The right deadlines are essential if anything is ever to get finished. I do mind it though when I can see what needs to be done, but don’t get given the chance to do it. Ever. Year on year. Job satisfaction does matter, and too many years spent making too many compromises inevitably lead to a loss of morale and motivation.
5) Find me a job with people I can learn from. There are some amazing people out there, but only a few of us are ever lucky enough to actually work day to day alongside great coders like Kent Beck, Scott Meyers, et al, or great managers like Fred Brooks or DeMarco and Lister. I’ve been programming for nearly thirty years but I’d gladly halve my salary and give up all responsibility or kudos to be apprenticed to one of those guys for a while.
6) Find me the right money/quality-of-life trade off. As I mentioned in (5), I’ve been doing this a while now, and consequently I earn a decent wage. I think I’m a good coder, but I also think I’m an ideas person, and sometimes these days I feel trapped in a world that doesn’t give me the chance to express any of those ideas. To a large extent that’s just the human condition, I know. That said, I have no children and no mortgage (but no house, mind you) - I’d be very happy to trade some of my salary for intellectual freedom.
So there you go. I don’t want much, do I?
And finally, if there is anyone from SI reading this who is determined to interpret what I’ve just said in a negative fashion or get all insecure about it (which is really not how its intended), then all I can say is this: I’ve just given you a great list for how to keep me happy! What you do with it is entirely up to you :)