Due to Twitter’s very basic core features (viewing a list of short messages and posting them yourself), the service easily lends itself for usage on a wide variety of devices. It is probably the social network service with the highest number of mobile users. Being out and about, sharing a moment via a shortly tweet, perhaps including a picture or a map-location, is rather effortless.

Most people also use a Twitter client on their desktop PC when they’re working on one, as reaching for your smartphone when already connected to the Internet using the device in front of you seems rather illogical. In fact, it’s not uncommon to add a laptop computer and an iPad to the mix of Twitter-capable devices as well.

The Twitter clients I use

Personally, I use Twitter for iPhone, formerly called Tweetie, on my phone. Even from its earliest incarnations, I have considered it the most elegantly designed iPhone app ever. The app beatifully uses Apple’s iPhone UI conventions, and subtly enhances on this. The “pull to refresh” mechanism feels so natural and intuitive, that one can only pray that Apple and Twitter can reach for an agreement on licensing this technology. iPhone’s Mail app screams for this feature.

On the Mac, my Twitter client of choice is Nambu. As much as I would have loved that Twitter for iPhone’s creator Loren Britcher would have continued his work on Tweetie for Mac, the project seemed to have come to a halt after Twitter’s aquisition. On my Mac, I very much appreciate the uniformity between apps that conform to Apple’s UI guidelines (yes, I am aware of the irony that Apple’s own iLife apps usually abandon these rules where-ever possible). It is for this reason alone that I appreciate Nambu. Its window features a familiar “source list” on the left side of the window, similar to the ones in iTunes or the Finder. It gives quick access to your @-mentions, direct messages and sent tweets, for example. Apart from this Nambu features great picture-service integration, flexible link shortening, and real-time translation. The program is free, but as with all one-man software companies, there is no guarantee of future development. Better support for location features would be a welcome addition at this point. I have Nambu installed on both my iMac and my MacBook Air.

On the iPad, I also use the official Twitter application. Although the app is offered as a universal download containing both the iPhone and the iPad versions, both apps look rather different. Again, Loren Britcher has taken the iPad UI one step further, and came up with sliding panels that can contain information about a user, the contents of a web link or an included image. By swiping the pane in and out, both your timeline as well as a tweet’s linked contents can be visible. A clever way of working around the iPad’s lack of a windowing interface.

The Twitter.com web site

Even though a dedicated client app is usually the best approach for accessing a service like twitter (due to for example its higher speed, less network loading or the ability to cache a lot of data), these apps -especially the mobile versions- need to keep their feature set limited to allow for easy operation. Most day-to-day features can be accessed from most apps, however there might be cases where you still want to refer to Twitter’s official web interface.

Twitter.com has recently been redesigned and is being refered to by the company as “New Twitter”. The new web site’s design clearly took a page from the iPad app’s book. The site features two panes which, albeit the fact that they don’t move, also show a timeline on the left, and details on the right. It now also features excellent integration with picture and video services, eliminating the need to click to a different web site.

The most likely case you want to visit the Twitter site is when you want to check out someone on the service who’s new to you. Say you saw an interesting tweet being retweeted by one of your friends. You might want to check out who this person is, what their bio says, what other things she has tweeted about recently, or who she follows or is following. Doing all of this quickly in a dedicated Twitter app would probably be too much of a hassle.

I find myself looking up stuff on Twitter.com regularly. Thankfully Nambu features an easy “view on Twitter.com” option for every tweet, making this process rather easy.

The problem of New Tweets

It’s very easy to use multiple devices and client apps with one Twitter account. Just sign in, and your timeline containing all of your tweets and all your sent and received instant messages will be loaded in the app. Twitter has been designed for this, and using multiple apps will cause no conflicts. Tweets or direct messages you have sent in one app naturally show up just fine in all the others.

However, there is one very obvious feature that is severly lacking as of now. Twitter has no unified way of remembering what tweets in your timeline you have already seen on one of your devices, resulting in the fact that every Twitter client on every device will mark all tweets as new, relative to the time you last used that app.

If, like me, you use a couple of devices to check your Twitter time line during the day, or occasionally use the Twitter web site, this becomes a big annoyance. Each time you open a Twitter app, you have to scan trough all of the “new” messages to see which ones are really new to you. Only to find out that once you return from say your smartphone to your desktop, these tweets also show up as new on the screen, together with a couple of really new tweets.

You get the idea.

This completely undermines the idea of Twitter, which is quick and easy access to new, real-time information.

How to add a “read status” to Twitter

If you are using an IMAP or Exchange-based e-mail service (like Gmail), you are probably using their benefits even though you might not be aware of them. One of the benefits of these e-mail systems compared to the older POP3-based services, is a server-based storage of message statuses. A message is flagged new or read on the server. Once you marked an e-mail as read on your desktop, it will also show up as read on your smartphone, even if it had not downloaded that particular message yet.

Why not use a similar approach with Twitter, and store the status of the last downloaded tweet by a Twitter app on the server itself, so another app can be aware of this information when it loads the timeline to present these read tweets accordingly.

Of course, there is one important difference compared to e-mail clients in this regard. In an e-mail client, all new messages keep their status as unread, until a user deliberatly opens one. A Twitter client typically displays all new tweets in a row, there is no need for the user to “open” one to see its contents. When a Twitter client loads the list of new tweets, this would not necessarily mean that the user has read them all.

In order to circumvent this, the app should take a pragmatic stance as to what tweets should be considered read. For example only tweets that have been “in focus” on the user’s display are considered read, and the tweets that the user still has to read by scrolling up are marked as unread for that time being.

Perhaps this read/unread behaviour can be tied to a user definable setting, although I am aware that this adds additional complexity. This added complexity, combined with the fact that many Twitter clients may implement the feature differently, is probably the reason Twitter hasn’t added this feature yet. Perhaps they feel that it would compromise Twitter’s basic ease of use.

Universal status between apps

Some developers have tried to overcome this limitation of Twitter by implementing some sort of read/unread syncing between their desktop and mobile apps. This might seem like a solution, but it ties the user to the apps of one creator on all of his devices (and thereby defies the benefit of being able to use any client by simply logging in, as explained above). And even if you stick to the same apps on all of your devices, there would still be no integration with the Twitter.com website, which would always show all of your tweets without any indication of whether they are new to you or not.

The most obvious thing would be for Twitter to pick up on fixing this gloring hole in its otherwise rather perfect system, by adding a server based status of new tweets to its service.

Thinking of all the iPads that must have been unwrapped under Christmas trees around the world last week, now would be a better time than ever.

The author can be reached on Twitter at @JorgK

For quite some time, however, I have been wondering if I should switch to English as the language of my tweets. The reason is obvious: there are (at best) a few hundred thousand people in The Netherlands using Twitter, while the number people on Twitter whose primary language is English, or who are able to understand English as a second language, are more like to reach into the few hundred millions. In theory, the audience for my tweets would multiply significanty. Either people who could follow me directly, or people who found my tweets by searching the Twitter timeline for specific subjects.

However, I always had a feeling that most of the topics that I tweet about are very locally focused. Would these topics lend themselves for an international audience?

To get a better insight into this, I decided to have a look at what exactly it is that I tweet about. For this, I analysed all the messages that I sent in the past 30 days. And this lead me to unexpected insights.

Let me give you a quick summary of what I found: Frequent topics of my tweets.

Personal affairs and observations
Let’s be honest: we all love to share some seemingly unimportant things that happen in our daily lives. I know I do. This might range from telling about a place I visited or the plans I have for the evening, to sharing something I noticed while walking down the street or something I overheard someone say.

Some of these might be funny, interesting or remarkable to a larger number of people,, but most messages in this category are especially appreciated by close personal friends (of which I know a few dozen are using Twitter). Since most people I know are Dutch themselves, I don’t feel the urge to translate these, rather personal, messages into English to reach a broader audience.

Developments in the media
One of my greatest interests is keeping an eye on developments in the media. Especially concerning the Dutch public TV broadcasting organizations and Dutch newspapers. I am a voluntary member of the association board at one of the nation’s largest TV companies, VARA. There is a lot going on in this space, as assigning air-time to each of the broadcasting organizations is a frequent topic of debate in the Dutch parliament and in the segments of society that these companies represent. Likewise, the Dutch newspaper industry is under heavy fire (as the industry as a whole probably is everywhere in the world), with a lot of mergers and aquisitions. I and many others have some steep opinions on these events, and thoughts on how it should be.

Although I do know my share of the international media conglomerates and their business relations and partnerships (especially in the US), my primary interest lies with the Dutch media. Although the country is quite small, this topic is still broad enough in itself.

Discussions about TV shows
One of Twitter’s differentiating factors compared to other online media, is its real-time nature. It’s very easy to read something someone has posted just seconds ago, and likewise people are being able to read my tweets almost instantly. This makes the service ideal to discuss events as-they-are-happening, such as TV shows. By including the appropriate hashtag for a particular show in your messages, discussions about one are easy to follow.

Although we are able to watch a couple of foreign (mainly European) TV channels (my cable box has around 100 in total), some 98% of the time I, and most people I know, watch Dutch TV channels. In my case, this selection is even more specifically narrowed down to the three quality-focused public broadcasting stations, even though there are a couple of handfull Dutch commercial TV channels as well.

Of course I do watch foreign programming from time to time, although in most cases this means watching series (my latest favorite was Mad Men from AMC) or news items using some on-demand technology, or via a DVD or Blu-ray Disc. Little need to tweet about them, especially not in the real-time manner as described above. I don’t feel like changing my TV watching habits just to write about television channels that more people can watch.

Technology
I have a great passion for technology. I am especially interested in creative and usefull usage of technology, rather than in the mere technical advancements. As a result, I am very focused on user interface design and usability in general. This ranges from the on-screen displays presented by a piece of consumer electronics (like a set-top box or media player) to the design decisions behind a particular web site.

Technology is an international topic, and as such most of these tweets would lend themselves for an international audience. Although even then, the implementations of my local cable provider or the latest web layout of one of our local newspapers would probably be of limited use as topics of international discussion.

Apple
Needless to say, I am a big fan of Apple products. As a result, I very frequently tweet about the Mac and its latest software and hardware, about the iPhone and its latest apps, and about the company itself. I pride myself on not only having a decent knowledge of the products, but also on having quite an insightfull look in developments surrounding Apple from a commercial, marketing and competitive standpoint.

Apple’s operations are worldwide. In fact, there are even some products and services unavailable in The Netherlands. No movie sales and rentals on iTunes, no Get A Mac commercials on TV (or any Apple commercials for that matter), and no Apple Stores can be found in our streets. Still, I keep a close eye on such things as well. Come to think of it: Apple might be the primary topic more credible for discussing in English than anything else on my list.

Politics and current affairs
I tend to have a strong opinion about things that are going on in our country’s political system. For this, I actively follow quite a few news sites and blogs, such as the liberally oriented Joop.nl. As I presume is the case for everyone, some subjects fit more closely to my heart than others. Still, I tend to keep track on most of what’s happening.

To enhance this, I follow a few politicians on Twitter. More and more politicians from all flavours are discovering Twitter as a means of very quickly and directly communicating their views and stances to the public, and it allows the public to get in contact with them as well. Most of them seem to personally respond if possible. Although the Internet in general has brought politics closer to public in recent years, Twitter seems to make the line even thinner.

Even though I try to keep an eye on international affairs in general, I solely focuss on Dutch politics on Twitter. I only follow Dutch politicians, and mainly comment on local issues (but sure, there were some Copenhagen-tweets in the past month as well). I am a a Dutchman who doesn’t carry any illusions about the relevance of Dutch politcs for the rest of the world. Not much need for English comments here either.

Personal interests
And then of course, I tend to shoot an occasional tweet about other personal interests of mine. These include, but aren’t limited to:
– Music. I am quite into gothic, wave and EBM music, and I enjoy visiting a concert and -in the summertime- a festival, which mainly take place in Germany. If a concert was especially good, or something remarkable happened, I enjoy posting a quick note about it.
– Efteling. A Dutch themepark with a very unique, romantic style. For all my life, I enjoyed this park which can truly be considered unique in the world, regarding its focus on details and quality, and the clearly unique theme. Nice to know other adults share my love! Sometimes I tend to remark on some latest developments.
– Retro Technology. I am a true sucker for old things. I own quite a collection of vintage Macs (yes, including the 128K!), and some other consumer electronics from decades past. Nice to hear about new findings or views on technology from old times, and nice to contribute to as well.
– Language. I love language. I love writing. And yes, I am one of those annoying people who is quickly angered by spelling errors and other misuse of language. Although I do read and write in English, it is the Dutch language that I care a lot about. I like to discuss language-stuff with fellow obsessive peers from time to time.
– Nijmegen. My city, where I have been living for almost 4 years. Although this seems like a short time (and it is), the city stole my heart. Founded by the Romans over 2,000 years ago, it is considered the oldest city in The Netherlands. Next to the obvious esthetical pleasures as a result of this, I also very much like the loose, liberal mentality of the people, and the fact that the University and its students play a major role in the city’s image. Twitter allows me to discuss the town’s activity.

So should I start twittering in English?

When I look at above list of topics that I read and write about on Twitter, I must conclude that apart from one or two exceptions, most are very locally focused. Either because the topic is typically Dutch (like domestic politics or developments in the national media), or because I tend to focus on the local aspects of a topic.

Clearly, talking about Apple or technology in general would lend itself for an international audience. As I do think mixing two languages in a single Twitter-account too much would just confuse people (both my Dutch followers who notice the inconsitency, or foreign people having no clue what a follow-up tweet may be all about), I tend to keep English tweets to a minimum.

Often, I have considered creating a seperate account just to write about Apple and technology in English. However, I do think that one of the charms of Twitter is the fact that the messages are truly personal. They are, in my opinion, not posted by some blogger or opinion-maker, but by a real person. No other Internet-technology makes publicizing and interacting this personal. And hence, I mostly appreciate the mixture of topic-specific and personal messages of the people that I follow on Twitter. Creating a seperate account for personal messages and messages about non-international topics, and an account for technology-related stuff would break this sympathetic Twitter-convention.

I have thought of means on combining the two, for example by limiting the technology-tweets to the English account, and then retweet them to my personal Dutch account, so that my Dutch followers would see these English tech-messages as well. However, this leaves the English account free of any personal notes and tweets about other topics, and would lead to the less-than-ideal situation of two mixed up languages on my personal account.

I am still not sure on how to handle this issue. I do see the potential of writing in English, as it would multiply the potential audience. But as of now, I am just too much addicted to the personal touch of Twitter (and the possibility to write about a lot of personal and local topics), to give up twittering in Dutch altogether.

I guess for now, I focus on this blog as my main outlet for English writing.

The author can be found on Twitter as @JorgK. His tweets are mainly in Dutch

Twitter is great, and like millions of others I’m a big fan of the service. Many people are worth following. In my case this includes of a great number of personal friends, but also a big number of media reporters, tech bloggers, scientists and politicians. With the growing number of people to follow, it gets harder every time to keep track of all those messages. To get a more organized view, it would be a great idea to group these people into various categories, so that related posts are shown together.

For quite some time, many Twitter-clients offered some functionality to create groups of people. However, this resulted in a less then ideal situation. For starters, these groups you created in one particular client are not portable across different clients, let alone be visible on the Twitter website. This meant that in order to sync them up between your mobile and desktop, you had to use the same client on both your iPhone and your Mac, which had to support some form of group syncing, and you had to remember to sync between the clients from time to time. Many people choose to use different clients though (such as in my case Tweetie on the iPhone, and Nambu on the Mac), or just use the well designed Twitter website when sitting at the desk, so this does not provide a valid solution for them. Furthermore, there was no way to see how other people categorised their Twitter-contacts so you could learn from them, nor could others see the efforts that you put into ordering your Twitter-users.

Twitter adds Lists

To provide a solution for this problem, Twitter recently added a new feature called Lists. As the name implies, it allows you to group people into Lists, which can be given a name to reflect the category. As usual when Twitters adds a new feature to the service, they though this one out very cleverly. The Lists are shown on your Twitter-page once you log into site, so you can easlity select them for viewing the respective tweets.

But it doesn’t stop there. Twitter made the Lists functionality a part of their APIs, so that developers of Twitter-clients can easily integrate them into their programs. This means that the same Lists of people are available across all mobile and desktop clients that support them (many already do, and all others are expected to follow quickly), and on the website. True portability of categories!

Lists are public

However, what makes the implementation really great is that you can also choose to make your Lists publicly visible on your profile page. Others could have a peak at the kinds of people you follow, and likewise, you can browse trough the Lists of the people that you find interesting. Chances are higher that you’ll discover some interesting new people when browsing trough their Lists that interest you, rather than wading trough (often) long unorganised listings of the people they follow.

What’s really great though is that you can also subscribe yourself to the Lists of others. These Lists will simply be shown on your Twitter page alongside your own lists, and they appear in your Twitter-clients. The original creator manages the List, and any updates or changes will also immediately be visible to you. This opens up many possibilities of specialized Lists of people or subjects that can be created for many people to enjoy.

Twitter even added a syntax for refering to a List so you can mention them in a tweet, consisting of the user name, followed by a slash and the List name, like @JorgK/mac. Clicking on such a link will forward you to this user’s List page.

The number of people that put you in a List is now shown in the upper right corner of your Twitter page, next to the usual “following” and “followers” count. Clicking this number forwards you to a page showing the users and the names of the categories they assigned you to.

Am I following you?

Twitter choose to allow you to add people you are not “following” to your Lists as well. This means that you can create a group and add users to it, without their tweets clogging up your regular timeline of tweets. This has proven to confuse some Twitter users, as they falsly assume that they have to “follow” someone first, before being able to add them to a List. That’s not the case.

This also means that it is possible to “unfollow” people you have added to a List. Unfollowing them means that your default timeline on your Twitter client or on the Twitter web site does not show their tweets anymore. It’s very likely that many people would prefer this to happen for certain accounts after they have them grouped into an appropriate category. After all, the whole purpose of this List thing is to reduce chaos, right?

Losing track on how many people follow you

On Twitter, the number of people following a user often says something about the relevance of this user, or their popularity. Many people appreciate having a high follower count (even though some would deny so when asked).

As stated above however, it is no longer necessary to “follow” someone in order to read their tweets, once you have grouped them into a List. Once people will start realising this, the number of “followers” will likely decrease. That is: the number showing as the follower count on Twitter. One could argue if this number then still represents the actual number of people subscribing to your posts.

Although it’s easy to argue that adding up the number of followers and the number of Lists that you appear in will result in an accurate number of people reading you, this does not hold true. As explained above, people can subscribe to Lists created by others. So even though you might appear in an x number of Lists, many more people could be using these Lists as their starting point to reading your tweets.

There is no way of knowing how many people access a List that includes you, unless you visit your Listed page, and manually add up all of the followers for all of the lists.

Confusing times

Twitter has made the once clear definition of a “follower” more vague by adding the Lists feature. Most will agree that someone who put you in a List is technically following you, even though they might not be following your Twitter-definition-wise.

Two independent numbers are now shown on your Twitter page (“followers” and “listed”), but as explained above, the listed number might not show the total number of people using a List that contains your account.

Also, some people do not clearly understand that they don’t need to “follow” someone before being able to file them in a List.

What about this solution?

Twitter needs to clear up several things. Allow me to propose the following.

• It should unify the two ways that people can now subscribe to someone’s posts. This could be done by creating a List called “default” for every user, which includes the people they are following but have not placed in a specific List.
• It needs to eliminate the confusion surrounding the term “following” that has now risen. Due to the popularity of the term, and the strong association with the Twitter service, I suggest calling the procedure of placing people in a List “following them in a List”.
• As a result, the number of “followers” should reflect this. It should include the people that are following you in their “default” List, the people that put you in a specific List, and the people that subcribe to any of these Lists that include you.
• The “listed” number is still relevant and should still be shown. After all, it shows the number of people that have gone trough the trouble of assigning you to a specific category. This may mean something, as they not just added you to their default lists of people to follow. Next to this number of Lists, a number of the total number of people subscribed to these Lists should be shown in parentheses, like: 56 (134).

Conclusion

Twitter’s continued innovation is very much appreciated. In the last months, they added a structurized and very streamlined way to retweet messages, they added very sophisticated geo-tagging functionality, and made some promising deals with companies like Google and LinkedIn to better integrate Twitter into other services.

Likewise, Lists is a very welcome new functionality that adds a lot of usability improvements to the Twitter experience. However, it does confuse users, as some previously easy to understand concepts such as follower count are now not as easy anymore. Furthermore, it might negatively affect (especially high-profile) users, as the number they have used for years now to reflect their popularity might go down.

Both issues should be relatively easy to resolve. Let’s hope the folks at Twitter will find the time to do so.

The author can be found on Twitter as @JorgK. His Lists can be found at @JorgL/lists.

Update December 16, 2009: Bas Westerbaan (@bwesterb) has posted an article on his blog describing a mechanism on how to count all unique Twitter-followers, including those that have filed you in a List.

Plex and its alternatives

However, due to a number of reasons, as of lately I am hooked to a brilliant open source Media Center initiative that is unique to Mac OS X called Plex. Triggered by my new Harmony One remote, of which I wrote in great detail in my former post, I had a closer look at the Plex software because of its unique capability to work brilliantly with the Harmony, bypassing many of the limitations of the 6-button Apple Remote. And what I found was that this software greatly enhances my TV watching choices, and on top doing so in a slick and very well designed manner. The reason for my shift? Online content.

Plex is derived from the well-known XBMC media center initiative. This open source project aims to provide a rich media interface for a number of platforms, including Windows, Mac, Linux, and even a number of modified game consoles, like the X-Box that gave the project its name. Since its inception, a number of independent new projects have derived from XBMC, so called “forks’. A well known XBMC-offspring is Boxee, available for a large number of platforms, including the Mac and even AppleTV.

I do think however that Plex fits my needs best, for a number of reasons. For starters, the project is focused solely at Mac OS X. While this is no guarantee that it is better than any of the others, my experience with multi-platform projects that get compiled for various operating systems, is that they generally do not support the features unique to that OS (have a look at OpenOffice or even Firefox to see what I mean). In Plex, we find this OS X specific behaviour in its integration with local and network-located iTunes and iPhoto libraries, among others. Plex easily works with these program’s naming conventions, albums and events, keywords and ratings, to name a few.

The modular video plug-in approach

But what really makes Plex special to me, is its very modular approach to watching online video. Although a lot of media center software supports the playback of Internet video in some way or another, Plex offers a plug-in structure that allows developers to create a hook into the software to support practically every video service out there. And because the software is running on a “generic” computer, it is not limited in any technical way to only support specific codecs or streaming formats, as is the case with proprietary media players (like the AppleTV). Plex provides a consistent wrapper around the video (including Windows Media, Quicktime, Flash, or heaven forbid even Silverlight), and plays it back in full screen, with its own on-screen information displays and user controls.

What really strikes me is the effort that the Plex developers have made to make the addition of new plugins to video sites as easy as possible. For this, they have added an App Store, as explained in this short video. Just select any of the available content sources, and install with one click. And just what kind of video sources are there to choose from? This ranges from the CNet technology videos and live video feed from TWIT, to TV series available for online viewing like South Park and The Daily Show. Of couse I found that having these videos available to me on my TV screen, selectable using my remote control, makes me much more willing to watch them compared to viewing them on my desktop computer.

Access to media from other people

But Plex not only lets you connect to any of these video services on the Internet, it can also use the network connection to access the media libraries from your friends. What’s more, your friends don’t even need to run Plex or any other media server software, as among many of the protocols supported by plex is plain old FTP. When simply allowed FTP access to the folders containing media files like movies, music and pictures, you can easily browse all content from your friend using Plex and the remote, and stream the video directly to your screen (even over FTP!). No lenghty download or any manual configuration is required.

I tried this with my friend, who has quite a large video collection stored on his home server, mainly to provide video content for his kids. Some of the videos were in iPod resolution, others were full HD transfers. We found my 10 Mbit/sec internet connection to be sufficient for streaming these 1080p videos to my Mac mini, however an occasional hickup did occure. Our best guest is that these minor problems could be resolved by allowing a greater buffer to be filled before starting playback of the video. All in all, having access to other’s media libraries also greatly enhances my viewing opportunities.

Superb control using the Harmony One remote

The whole interface of Plex is designed to be operated using a remote control. It works out of the box with the Apple Remote. Being a standard accessory for some Macs, or a $19 option from Apple, this forms an affordable option for most people to control the software.

However, the Apple Remote, originally designed for use with Apple’s Front Row software which offers far more basic user interface, quickly becomes limited. With its 6 buttons, navigation is not always easy, as it involves longer key presses to initiate different commands, and still then cannot offer access to many different functions at once. What’s worse, Apple designed the infrared receivers in its Macs to just receive commands from an Apple Remote, the receivers wouldn’t work with any other remote.

But here comes in the very clever thinking on the part of both the team resposible for Plex, as of Logitech. They utilize the fact that a single Mac can be paired with up to 6 remotes, each being able to uniquely identify itself to the computer. By programming all commands of these individual remotes into a single new remote, and by mapping the “keep pressed” state of the buttons to seperate buttons as well, several dozens of infrared commands can be send to the Mac.

For this to work, Logitech co-operated with the Plex team and created a new device called “Plex” in their online database of devices, so that it can easily be added to a Harmony remote, such as my Harmony One. There is no need to do any additional programming to the remote, apart from the normal customzing to make it fit your needs.

Using the Harmony remote with Plex gives you instant and always available access to things like bringing up the on-screen info display, transport controls (play/pause/search), navigation controls, aspect ratio selection, etc. But one of the best examples of the fine integration between the Harmony remote and the Plex software can be found when browsing long lists (for example with TV show episodes). By clicking any of the number buttons, you immediately jump to the letter assigned with that button (SMS-style, the letters are also printed on the Harmony remotes). Needless to say, this greatly improves operation, and makes the Plex software a breeze to use.

Getting access to Hulu and iPlayer using VPN

Those in the US, and to a lesser extend the UK, are blessed with an innovative and competitive market place in the field of video distribution over the Internet. Hulu, a joint-operation of NBC and Fox, is a very popular site that offers access to literally hundreds of TV shows and thousands of episodes, ranging from decades old sitcoms like Alf, Knight Rider and Who’s the Boss, up until recently aired material from such hit shows like Heroes, 24, ER, The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad and The Office. In the UK, the BBC offers a similar service for its content trough a service called iPlayer.

There is one major catch, however. Hulu and iPlayer are not available to viewers from outside the US and the UK, respectively. The services determine your location based on your IP address, and provideyou with a message indicating that you cannot play the video because your watching from an unsanctioned area.

Luckily, there is a way around this. It does involve some skills, but getting access to this wealth of TV programming makes it more than worth the effort. In order to get approval from the video site to play the video, you need to visit using a valid IP address. There are services out there, usually requesting a small monthly fee, that can access the sites with a valid IP address, and then redirect the data to you. This technology is called VPN, or Virtual Private Network, and is commonly used to set up a tunnel to a company’s network for employees accessing this network while on the move.

I used the service from a company called UKiVPN, which costs about 6 Euros per month with a 1 year membership. They provide both a number of US-based IP adresses, as well as several UK-based addresses. They provide easy installation instructions, which require no additional software at all, as all the VPN stuff that is needed is already built into Mac OS X. Enterting your details and connecting the VPN is all that is needed to let Hulu and iPlayer do their tricks.

The finishing touch: VPN selection from the remote

Selecting the appropriate VPN connection, or closing the VPN connection again, would normally require you to close Plex, as the software does not have any VPN-features built-in. This would be cumbersome, as you probably would need the mouse and keyboard to do so, making things unpractical in a media center setup.

Luckily, and due to some very clever trickery from people on the Plex forums, I managed to completely control my VPN connections using the remote, and get some notification feedback on screen to boon.

For this trick to work you have to create an AppleScript for each of the VPN connections, that start the connection when it is not yet active, or disconnect from it when it was active. Then, you can assign these AppleScripts to the function keys within Plex. And since all function keys are available from within the “Plex” device in the Logitech Harmony software, you can assign these function keys to a button on the remote. In my case, using the Harmony One, I have created two virtual buttons on the remote’s touch display, called “VPN UK” and “VPN US”, that let me simply select either one directly from within Plex.

But how to make sure that the VPN connection was established? Since Plex is unaware of any VPN business that’s going on behind the scenes, it cannot tell. Well, even for this the clever guys on the forum came up with a solution. Simply install Growl, the well known universal notification system for Mac OS X, and let Growl display a “VPN UK connetion established” window on top of Plex after the connection is initiated by pressing the appropriate button on the remote.

Brilliant. (As far a hackery and home-brew media center customization go, that is!)

In these days, with an ever growing pile of eletronics devices that can be remote controlled, it is not hard to imagine that many people are looking for a single universal remote that can replace them all. The idea seems easy: just put all functionality of the seperate remotes into one new device. However, in practice, it seems to be very hard to turn this idea into a well executed product. This is due to a number of reasons that I try to explain in this article.

Although early remote controls in the 1950s used ultrasonic sound to communicate, the consumer electronics industry moved almost entirely towards infrared by the late 70s, early 80s. Using infrared has a number of huge disadvantages, the most prominent of them of course being the fact that you have to have  a clear line-of-sight between the remote and the device. If the signal gets blocked, the command will not arrive. (Imagine how things would have looked today if instead of light, the remote used a radio signal. There would be no loss of signal, and a device could be operated even if it was locked up in a closet.)

Another major design limitation of the infrared remote control is the lack of a reverse-communication path. Generally, there is no way for a device to communicate back to the remote. This could be handy, because that way the device could “confirm” that it received the command. Naturally, this also prevents any “status” display on the remote, as it has simply no clue as to in what state the device it operates is currently in. The latter one was not that big of a problem, as up until recently, a remote control did not provide any means of user feedback in the form of LED indicators or an LCD display.

This design of the early remote control principles seriously limits the user friendlyness up until this day. The remote does not know if the TV is on or if it’s set to the correct input, and thus cannot issue commands based on the device’s status. Most universal and programmable remotes assume a “virgin” state when they operate a device (i.e. that it’s off), so it’s not hard to imagine that this often leads to problems if that’s not the case (i.e. turning off instead of on, or change to another input when the correct one was already selected).

Furthermore, since consumer electronics devices generally also don’t communciate their statuses (properly) to one another, this also limits a seamless operation of your entire home entertainment system. This means that the user has to select a large number of settings by hand (selecting the source input on the receiver, selecting the source input on the TV, setting the correct volume, setting the correct aspect ratio, etc.), that might otherwise be set by the interconnected devices seamlessly and invisibly. As a result, a universal remote needs to duplicate all or most of the buttons of all individual remotes to perform simple tasks.

It is very hard to make the perfect universal remote control, because of the lack of this return channel from device to remote, the lack of even the simplest intelligence between devices and because of an overwhelming and complicated set of commands for all devices.

A number of companies have tried to solve this problem in the past, or at least they made an effort to ease the pain. With varying results. Personally, I have tried several remotes, ranging from simple and relatively cheap programmable models to more expensive full touchscreen remotes like the Philips Pronto and Pronto Pro. They were complicated to program and proved to be ineffecient in daily usage. My latest remote seems to strike a good balance between intelligently dealing with the limitations of infrared, easing the complexity of programming, good ergonomics and design, welll executed functionality, and on top off all carriying a very friendly street-price of around $150. I am talking about the Harmony One from Logitech.

Programming the remote

Setting up a universal remote to control all of your equipment is by far the most complicated and frustating part of using one. Basically, there are three kinds of methods a manufacturer might have choosen to take care of this programming. In the first category are remotes can “learn” commands from another remote by pointing them towards each other and then storing the command in the universal remote’s memory. While theoretically this allows for any command on any remote to be duplicated, in practice it can be painfull, especially while learning keys that send a repeating command, such as Volume up/down. A big limitation of this method is also that you can only learn the keys from your original remote into the programmable one. While this seems obvious, many electronics devices can receive more commands than the supplied remote can send, to do specific things (for example, while the original remote may only contain a single button to toggle trough all inputs, the device might accept commands to immediately switch to a particular input).

The second type of universal remotes contain a library of commands for a multitude of devices. The obvious advantage here is that you don’t have to “learn” the commands into your remote, you simply select the brand and model number to assign the appropriate commands to the remote. Depending on the execution, this can be done by entering a string of numbers representing the brand of your equipment, or more user friendly by selecting the device from the remote’s LCD screen. The biggest drawback with these remotes obviously lies in the fact that the database of devices is static (and may be limited due to storage restricitions by the manufacturer), and new devices are possibly not included in the database. Most of these remotes have a “learning” method as well, to fall back to in the likely case that a specific model is not included in the database.

The third kind of universal remotes are the ones that need to be programmed using a computer. While this might sound complicated at first, it is in fact the most elegant solution. It allows the manufacturer to look up a database of devices online, which can always be updated with new models. It makes these kinds of remotes the most “future proof” (that is, assuming that the manufacturer keeps the online services running for as long as you plan to make modifications to the remote during its lifetime). Logitech in particular has made severe efforts to offer the largest online database of devices, now running into serveral hundreds of thousands of model numbers. In my testing, it even knew the commands of obscure and outdated equipment (like Philips CD-i players), and also contains a lot of “special purpose” devices like multimedia PCs. In fact, it enhances the possibilities of the Mac’s IR receiver by offering functionality way beyond that of the standard Apple Remote, which I will explain in the next post on this blog about the Plex Mediacenter Software.

Remote ergonomics and usability

In the past, I have owned a number of remotes that include a full size touchscreen (comparable in size to the screen on the iPhone) as their sole method of user input. Particularly the Philips Pronto (b/w) and its successor, the color Pronto Pro. Logitech also offers such remotes, such as the 1000/1100-series. While such remotes look very cool at first glance, their usage on a daily basis is limited at best, or just plain frustating. While a big LCD screen gives you lots of room to re-create any possible button, in practice it makes it very hard to select these buttons due to the fact that you have to look at the remote at all times, and make sure you pin-point the desired button precisely. Things like zapping trough channels or adjusting the volume become painfull experiences that never reach the experience of using even the cheapest of remotes.

It was because of this experience that I decided not to buy an all-LCD remote again, which is when the Logitech Harmony One came in sight. This remote has very good design ergonomics (which might not be that surprising given Logitech’s long-term experience in designing human interface devices like keyboards and mice) and contains a lot of nicely layed-out “hard” buttons for all kinds of standard operations like menu navigation, number selection and transport control (stop/play/pause/search/etc.). But on top of this, the Harmony One also features a small, but beautifull colour touchscreen-LCD at its top, allowing you to assign clear desciptions and labels to buttons that don’t fit any of the hard buttons, it can show things like network logo’s for immediate selection of your favorite channels, but most importantly it can list all of the “activities” that you have set up to operate multiple devices at once.

As a nice touch of both design aesthetics and usabiliy, the Harmony One’s LCD is a capacitive touchscreen, rather than a pressure sensitive one. It reacts to finger presses by means of electic sensing, comparable to the iPhone. Logitech placed two arrows on both the left and right side of the display, and two selection options below it, all of which only lit up when available. This expands the touchable area of the remote beyond just the display, which both looks and works very nice.

Activities

Like most programmable universal remotes, the Harmony One allows for the creation of activities. Activities contain multiple IR-commands that are being send out in succession, for example to turn on the DVD player, TV and reveiver to start watching a movie. While most universal remotes can do this, a lot of problems arise due to the lack of feedback from the devices to the remote, as outlined in the beginning of this article. Most remotes assume a “virgin” state when beginning the sending out of commands, and most will not produce the desired results when for some reason one of the devices did not receive the commands properly.

Logitech seems to circumvent both problems as good as it can get within the limitations of the IR system. It will remember what activity you selected last, so when switching from say watching a DVD to using your media center, it will only turn on or off the devices based on their current state (and hence does not require the TV to be off for example). This is all pretty neatly implemented. However, it might still be possible to not get every device to react as expected, for example because the Logitech assumed a device’s state incorrectly, or simply because the signal of the remote got blocked. For these cases, the remote includes a “Help” button. Simply pressing this button will make the remote send out additional (or repeated) commands in a series of batches, each time asking you “if this solved the problem”. In my testing, in almost all of the cases a problem arose it was solved by the Harmony One’s effecting troubleshooting. Nice.

The missing link – Network connectivity

When doing research for a new remote, I also searched for a model with built-in Wi-Fi. I figured that having network access on my remote would allow for nice additional functionality, such as browsing a TV guide or getting feedback from some devices, like a mediacenter. I found that Wi-Fi connectivity could be found in the high-end (and expensive) all-touch screen segment of the market, which I already ruled out because of my past experiences with all-LCD remotes. I also found that some unknown manufacturer has made a reference design for a universal remote with Wi-Fi access based on Windows CE, but this one lacked all of the polish and computer programmability that I expect from a modern universal remote. In the end, I figured that having network access on my remote would centainly be a very welcome addition, but not something that I would sacrifice usability and ergonomics for.

In the end, my perfect universal remote would be one that combines all of the features of the Harmony One (great design, great execution of “activities” and macros and a gigantic online database containing every piece of consumer electronics ever made) with network access. Think of the Remote application that Apple created for the iPhone to control iTunes playback. Wouldn’t it be great to have this feedback of currently playing and upcoming songs on the display of the very same remote that you can use to control your TV and amplifier? I am sure that the folks at Logitech and other companies must be working on such a device. If this added functionality does not come at the price of reduced usability, I would be more than willing to trade in my remote once again.

Because remote controlling multiple devices via IR is so hard due to the inability of devices to talk to each other, or talk back to the remote, I don’t expect Apple to ever make a universal remote. It is just too unpredictable how the various devices of your home entertainment system will respond, and for a company that is so obsessed with controlling the whole user experience, this must be a nightmare. At least it gives me one potentional future remote controller to rule out.

In the upcoming article I will explain why I finally found any use for a Mediacenter-type of application on my Mac mini, and how Plex, the software of my choosing, works perfectly in tandem with the Harmony One due to special efforts on the part of both the creators of Plex and Logitech.

This listing ranges from handy, but very focussed system add-ons and utilities, to full-blown productivity tools. They are presented in no particular order.

MenuCalendarClock (free / $19.95)
One of the first tools I install on a new Mac that I configure for friends and family. The tool replaces the standard clock in the menu bar, and adds two major features: it shows the full date next to the time, and it shows a month calendar once clicked. You can’t imagine how valuable this tool becomes once you get used to it. Just quickly looking up the date of a particular day becomes a snap. The registered (and paid-for) version adds highlights to the calendar view showing your iCal appointments.

Mail Unread Menu (free)
This one is about as basic as it gets. As a plugin to Apple’s Mail, it shows the number of unread messages against a red blob in the menu bar. The read blob disappears when there are no unread messages. Although you get the same info from looking at the badge of Mail’s dock icon, the menu bar blob is much to spot from a distance. When I am sitting on my couch, I can easily see the read blob appear, while the dock’s icons remain crowdy and indistintable from that distance. A gem!

Smultron (free)
Smultron is an advanced, yet clean looking editor for plain text files, such a HTML documents or programming code. I use it to edit some web sites. I really like Smultron’s Leopard-like interface, its minimalist buttons, and its powerfull editing and search tools. Furthermore, like any good editor, Smultron recognizes the type of file that is loaded, and applies coloring to the various pieces of the text, to make it easy to quickly identify variables, parameters, etc.

CyberDuck (free)
Although I do onw a license of the $29 Transmit, I still prefer CyberDuck as my FTP client. Again, it’s the more minimalist interface that I’m drawn to. Apart from the basic FTP functionality, CyberDuck can instantly edit a file on a server without the manual download/upload process. I must admit however that some cranky web servers that I unfortunately have to work on from time to time are sometimes refused by CyberDuck, but opened fine by Transmit. So I will keep a copy of that around.

AppZapper ($12.95)
Us Mac people keep telling that all we need to do in order to remove an application is drop it in the trash. This might be true to the extend that in Windows, deleting individual files from a program might cause serious trouble, and leaves behind entries in the system’s registry that slows down its operation. Truth is, Mac application also leave some stuff behind when deleted, although these XML-files generally take up very little space and don’t harm the system. One might even argue that leaving them there makes it easier to restore your settings when you re-install the app. Nevertheless, I use AppZapper to quickly erase all the files associated with a program that I want to remove. As I like a clean system.

1Password ($39.95)
These days, we have a lot of passwords, codes and numbers to remember. Let alone, managing the problem of securely writing them down. 1Password takes care of a lot of password stress, as it integrates with all your browsers and synchronises between them and as such allows you to use stronger, harder to remember passwords. However, I don’t use 1Password’s browser integration at all. Instead, I solely use it to store my site logins, passwords, user IDs, software license codes, etc., and manage them in a fashioned order. Biggest argument for me however is the 1Password iPhone companion (free), which securely stores all the information from the desktop version, so that I have all my passwords with me whereever I go.

SuperSync ($25)
As you can read in my post How I put my Mac mini server to use from last December, I have struggled for a while with the problem to keep my iTunes library from my iMac (which I use to manage and add music) in sync with the Mac mini (which I use to play back music in my living room). I have tried a lot of them, hoping that in an ideal situation, such a tool could take care of things without any user intervention. It were those “automatic” tools however that caused a lot of problems. SuperSync needs to run on both machines and manually activated to start the sync process, however it does this without any issues. I use Leopard’s screen sharing to operate the Mac mini from the iMac, so that I can still use one machine to do the trick. I am still looking for a more elegant solution, however.

Simplify Media (free)
Using Simplify Media, you can share your iTunes music with up to 30 of your friends who also run this program. Once configured and running, Simplify Media completely stays out of your way, and instead shows your friend’s music libraries under the “Shared” heading in iTunes. Brilliant. But what’s more, the Simplify Media iPhone app ($3.99) allows you to listen to not only your own shared music, but to your friend’s as well. This allows you to have access to multiple gigabytes of media, without needing to store them on your iPhone or iPod touch.

More iChat icons / More iChat effects (free)
iChat is already the best-in-class instant messaging application (if only more people in Europe would ditch the god awfull Microsoft Messenger and switch to an AIM-compatible client). It already provides a lot of visual effects, but after installing these, you get several dozen more. Guaranteed to add to the enjoyment of video chats with children (ah, who am I kidding, it adds fun for the rest of us as well). Similarly, the extra icons and smileys add to the number of ways you can express yourself in a text chat. But take caution: your IM partner needs to have those icons installed as well in order to see them (yes, I know, MS Messenger solved this problem more elegantly). Only use them with people whose configuration you know (or have set up).

Perian (free)
Do yourself a favor, and install the Perian preference panel. It will install nearly every audio and video codec known to man in QuickTime (except from the proprietary Windows Media codecs, whose WM Quicktime plugin is seperately available). Once you encounter a Divx, Vidx, FLV, AVI or Dolby file, you are sure you can enjoy its contents.

Quinn and Solitare XL (both free)
These are the only two games I ever play on my Mac. Usually to keep myself busy while listening to the ending of a podcast that I started when I was out and about. Both games are very visually appealing, which means half of the relaxation to me already! Quinn, a Tetris-clone, has had some legal issues in the past couple of years with the Tetris Company. Last year, its website featured the brilliant line “A game that, according to the Tetris Company, should not be named”. Solitare XL is like the Solitare game on Windows, but then done right (that is, with customizable card backdrops, and smooth animations).

Twitterific ($14.95)
My favorite Twitter client at the moment for but one reason: The others are worse. Twitterific is very Mac-like, has a nice, minimalist and transparent look to quickly show you your new tweets. However, it lacks simple things like showing the time a tweet was posted, or view the in-reply-to message in a discussion. Most irritating thing to me is that it shows your own tweet as “new”, once it does its 3 minute-interval of checking for new messages. However, it looks the best of the bunch and has the easiest interface. On the iPhone, however, Tweetie ($2.99) is by far my favorite. I consider it vastly superior to Twitterific, so I hope that they consider a Mac desktop version in the future.

Onyx and Secrets (both free)
Two tools for Mac OS X power users, that both allow them to tweak every tweakable setting on the system. Onyx is a long-time respected stand-alone tool, while Secrets installs itself as a preference pane. The latter one can also automatically download new secret settings once they are discovered.

No less than 1,000 new APIs were introduced to programmers, letting them do even more advanced stuff with the iPhone and iPod touch then before. Think of using the dock-connector or bluetooth to communicate to dedicated accessories, or the direct iPhone-to-iPhone networking connectivity over Bluetooth that doesn’t need pairing or joining of a wireless network, or the widely disussed push notification services letting applications notify users even when the actual program is closed, or the voice-over-IP functionality that can easily be implemented in a game or app without much efforts, or the in-app purchasing features opening up the way for many new types of applications.

Surely, consumers will be spoiled, if not overwhelmed, with the flood of new applications (or renewed applications) in the second half of this year, pushing iPhone as a platform even further away of the curve.

In this article, I will briefly share with you some thoughts I have on some of the new features offered by the iPhone 3.0 software and the new SDK.

iPhone-enabled USB-sticks and USB-adapters

When I heard that developers will now have full access to the dock connector to connect an unlimited array of hardware accessories, I started thinking about using the iPhone as a companion for USB storage devices. Think of an adaptor with an iPhone-connector at one side, and a USB-port on the other, which enables you to plug a USB-stick into the iPhone. Next to some obvious statistical data such as the stick’s free space, such an app could then also show a listing of the files that are on it. From here, you could do whatever you want with the files, such as opening (or even editing) documents, e-mailing them to others, or perform file management tasks like deleting, renaming or putting files in (password protected) ZIP-archives. The iPhone would be a perfect companion to a data storage device!

As USB-sticks use a standard protocol to present themselves to a host know as “Mass Storage Device”, a single piece of software should work with virtually all kinds of storage devices, including external harddrives. This might even result in a thriving new market for apps.

Of course, nothing would prevent hardware manufacturers from introducing USB-sticks with a USB-connector at one side to allow connection to a computer, and an iPhone connector at the other side to let the users do all the things described above.

iPhone-enabled photo cameras and card readers

Of course it’s easy to extend the ideas above to other specific pieces of storage devices, such as digital cameras. Imagine being able to connect your camera to the iPhone using a USB-cable, which would then show you all the pictures that are on the device. Apart from the general file management tasks that I desribed in the previous paragraph, the iPhone would be an excellent preview-device for pictures, with its large display, and the ability to zoom in and pan around pictures. And of course, these pictures could be transfered to the iPhone’s internal photo library, so that they can be used by blogging applications, your Twitter client, etc.

As most digital photo cameras also mount as a generic Mass Storage Device, so compatibility across apps and various makes and models of cameras should not be a big problem. And for those who think that connecting the camera using a cable is too cumbersome, you could of course imagine an SD- or CompactFlash card reader that can be directly connected to the iPhone’s dock connector. (That is, untill the first camera with built-in Bluetooth is available, of course.)

Push notification services

Yes, we get it Apple. Push notifications trough a dedicated Apple server are the best alternative to actually running apps in the background, as this drains the battery and slows down performance of the phone. I actually do believe that this is not entirely marketing speak, but very common sense from the guys in Cupertino. But yes, we know that we have to fight a minor PR battle with Android and Pre users that will show us their background-performing, multitasking applications (when connected to an AC-adapter, of course).

As I said, apart from the occasional application that I can think of that would really require background applications (such as a GPS tracker that still allows me to use the other parts of the phone), I am generally very pleased with the push notifications solution from Apple. It will surely enhance the usage of the phone and a lot of applications.

However, I think the fact that a lot of applications will add push notifications to their feature list, will also quickly become the weak spot of Apple’s solution. As of now, a push message is a simple blue-colored pop-up window (the same one that we know from the SMS app) with a line of text and a button to dismiss or open the respective application. There can only be one message on screen at a time, you have to dismiss it or open the app, in any case you have to perform an action in order to receive the next message awaiting in the notification que. And what will happen when you receive SMS messages, have IM-buddies contact you, set your traffic app to notify you of delayed trains or jams, receive notifications of @you-messages on Twitter and what more. There is no unified listing of messages (as there seems to be on the Palm Pre), just constantly popping up blue boxes. Worse, the boxes all look the same, as in the current beta-version they do not for example include the home-screen icon of the app (which would not solve the entire problem, but would at least give a very clear visual clue of the kind of message). Much to my surprise, Apple did say that notifications can issue a specific sound. But why limit this identification of the app to a purely auditive thing, and not add a visual part?

It might be that Apple just wants to put the underlying frameworks in place for now, so that developers can begin adding the services to their applications. It is very thinkable that Apple will add a nicer, clearer and more user friendly presentation layer on top of this framework when the final version of 3.0 will be released (we all know that competitors also watch the QuickTime streams on the Apple website after a keynote event is finished). After all, we still have quite some months to go.

In-app Purchases

A lot can be said about in-app purchases that become a possibility for developers in the next software release. My initial thoughts were those of a typical customer: “So now I do not know upfront how much this app/game is gonna cost me, whereas before the app costst would never increase after I bought it”. True, the new system will make things much less transparent for end users, especially for the type of applications that ususally did not require additional payments in the past.

However, I also quickly thought of the many applications that this new functionality would allow. Think of traditional magazine and newspaper publications, which could now offer a single app that loads individual issues at request. What’s more, Apple even promised a subscription feature, so that a user could subscribe to, say, a month’s worth of newspapers. This might also benefit TV-stations or other video producers (and who do not have a deal with Apple for distribution trough the iTunes Store), who can now offer their premium programming and easily monetize it.

For a long time I have thought that the final missing piece in Apple’s media offerings trough the iTunes store (which now feature music, audio books, podcasts, TV-shows and movies) was books, or “e-books”. I expected them to add this department at some time, and believed that that would be one of the reasons why developers were not allowed to sell content within an app. Appearantly I was wrong. You can bet that Amazon is already working on an updated version of its Kindle app that lets user not only read their existing e-books, but also preview and buy new ones directly over the air. (And you can bet that the standard 70/30 split between developers and Apple will be negotiated on a high level for this specific developer!)

The one thing that leaves me boggled as far as in-app purchases are concerned, is the comment from Apple that this functionality would not be available in free apps. Their explanation: “Free apps remain free”. Of course, this is just another push that Apple wants to give developers to charge for their applications (as free apps of course only costs apple in hosting fees). Wouldn’t this be an excellent oportunity to get rid of all the “Lite” versions of (mainly) games that currently make up for about half of the 25,000 entries in the App Store? The ability to download a free limited “trial” version, which could then be updated to a full-featured paid version, would not only generate a much higher conversion rate (as the “update” would be a rather impulsive action from the user from within the game he is currently playing), but would also help in tidying up the already over-crowded App Store.

GPS-navigation on the iPod touch

Now that developers can include hardware support in their applications, and now that turn-by-turn navigation is officially made possible, why not add a GPS receiver to the iPod touch and turn it into a highly advanced navigation system?

The iPod touch as it is today does not include GPS circuitry. However, I can think of a manufacturer making a cradle for the touch that can be applied to the windshield, and which includes the GPS receiver. A cable from this cradle could be connected to the car’s hi-fi system, or it could even use the Bluetooth functionality that gets unlocked on the iPod touch with the 3.0 firmware, to communicate with compatible car audio systems.

All in all, I think that such a device could sell for sub $99 (perhaps in a bundle deal with a navigation app supplier), and would be a perfect companion to the now $229 iPod touch. After all, this combination offers not only routing navigation, but also a lot of other functionality that other after-market GPS solutions lack, including all of the apps that the App Store offers that come in handy on the road,  such as travel guides. Not to mention that this navigation unit could be used as a full-blown gaming device during rests, or that it can be taken in to that highway diner to check up with the latest news and e-mail using Wi-Fi.

And about music playback: Now that the 3.0 SDK even offers access to the user’s standard music library, the GPS-app might include music navigation controls (or even send this information to the car’s bluetooth audio system).

Keep an eye on the GPS space when 3.0 is released. I wouldn’t be surprised if this would not only benefit the iPhone, but also unvliels the contract-free iPod touch as a very capable car companion.

There was of course one other company, which thought up a business model that was rather different. This company solely devoted itself to developing only the operating system, which it would license to any hardware manufacturer that was willing to pay for it. Obviously, this company’s flagship product, MS-DOS, became rather popular and soon evolved into the defacto standard for computer operating software. Although the system was among the least advanced of all operating software efforts of that time, as a result of not capable of doing much advanced stuff it required inexpensive hardware to run on. This quickly lead to a huge growth in sales, and hence in the availability of third party sofware. Microsoft laid the groundworks of its imperium, and formed the foundation for spin-offs of their popular DOS operating system in the form of its many Windows iterations. The companies that sold these DOS- and Windows-compatible computers (increasingly refered to as “PCs”) basically had no possibilities to differentiate themselves from their competitors on other things but price.

The general public quickly embraced this world of interchangeable, compatible and low priced computers, which in less than a decade lead to the fall of all computer companies that sticked with their proprietary hardware and software combinations. Most went bankrupt, in many cases after a short while of trying to jump on this PC bandwagon themselves. All companies, but one. Only Apple kept faitfull to its idea that a computer product is more than a generic piece of hardware equiped with a generic operating system. To them, the combination was more than the sum of its parts: by ingeniously crafting the hardware and software to work as tightly integrated as possible, they kept themselves alive in a world where all of their competitors had long given up.

Microsoft invented the “operating system as an OEM-product” and “operating system as an after market product” propositions, and became so successfull with it, that roughly 9 out of 10 of the world’s current computers run an iteration of their operating software. It is interesting to note however, that Microsoft is the only company that I know of which markets a proprietary, in-house developed operating system to third party hardware vendors. There is no other company that does the same thing (I don’t count the various Linux-distributions of recent years, as they are not developed by a single company nor marketed on the terms of a single company).

Because 90% of the world’s computers run an operating system that was not developed by the company that made the computer hardware, many people became familiar with the Microsoft business model. So much, in fact, that they began to believe that this practice (letting one company create the hardware and another one the software) is the only valid and ethical way of doing business in the computer world. They completely ignore the fact that, in the view of others, in order to present a customer with a complete and polished user experience, the hardware and software should not be seen as individual parts that can obtained from anyone, but rather as an integrated product developed by a single group of people.

In today’s world, Apple is the only major player left which markets its computer products based on this principle. This is a rather perplex finding on its own, as one would imagine that other companies would see the competitive benefits of developing and marketing their own fully in-house designed computer product. Alas, a practice that was common in the 70s and 80s has now died out, with the sole possible exception of that little company in Cupertino, California. Apart from some exceptions in its past (mainly during the period of Steve Jobs’s absence), it never sold computers with an operating system it did not develop itself, nor did it sell its operating system to other hardware manufacturers. This strategy makes Apple unique in the world, and proved to be very, very successfull for the company, both in terms of money (Apple is one of the richest computer companies) and product quality and user experience (Apple is generally considered to deliver the most well-crafted pieces of computer equipment in the industry).

However, as I said, many companies have grown so accustomed to the Microsoft-model of independent hardware and operating software sales, that they feel that Apple should do the same with their Mac OS X system: license it to other hardware companies. Of course, this would totally abandon Apple’s one and foremost advantage over its competitors. First, it would make their line of Macintosh-computers lose their prime unique selling point, and second, it would force them to create software to run on the wide variety of hardware platforms so that they would have to give up on the advantage of “knowing your system” to take maximum advantage of it. In short it would lead to an inferior product from both a commercial as well as a quality point of view.

It makes me wonder what people are thinking when they suggest that opening up OS X to other companies would benefit Apple, as it obviously would only lead to the problems that I stated above. However, what really hits me is when people say that Apple “has no right” to “keep its OS to itself”. It saddens me that those people have such a short term memory in that they forgot that combining hardware and software was common practice, until that one company successfully changed this idea. The Microsoft-way of thinking became so dominant that they now blame other companies, with other strategies, for not following Microsoft’s example.

I often think of other industries when discussing this issue. When I buy a car from the Ford Motor Company, I have no choice but to buy a completed product. I cannot “demand” from Ford to deliver me just the chassis of the car, since I inted to buy the engine from Renault and the wind shields from Volvo. If Ford, Renault and Volvo decide not to market individual pieces from their vehicles so that I can assemble my own car, I just have to respect that. Everybody undestands this.

But even in a slighly more computer-related comparison: What if I would ask Nintendo to deliver me the operating software from their Wii console, so that I could run Wii titles on the hardware of my liking? Or what if I like the menus and interface of my Philips TV, so I ask the company to sell me the software so that I could implement it in my Sony TV?

Almost everybody would understand that it’s up to the manufacturer of a product to decide whether or not they want to sell parts of their products individually, or just as a complete end product. And almost everybody would respect this company’s decision. However, due to the Microsoft doctrine, many people seem to believe that this does not hold true for a computer company and its hardware and software components.

And now, partly due to the fact that Apple switched to Intel-architecture in their computers several years ago, we have arrived at a time when several small startup companies are trying to bend public opinion and legal clarification to their benefit by selling computers bundled with the Mac OS X operating system.

Apple explicitly sells OS X retail copies for users of Apple branded Macintosh computers to upgrade their OS to the latest version, and it states this requirement in the End User License Agreement (EULA) that comes with the OS X product. Some of these companies argue that, at least according to EU legislation (which often tends to favor the consumer), a company cannot restrict what a customer can do with a product after he or she has bought it. In other words: When someone legally buys a retail copy of Mac OS X, he should be able to with it whatever he wants, including installing it on non-Apple hardware.

Although the verdict is still out on the legal value of these claims (both in the US with Psystar as the main vendor of Mac-clones, and in the EU with the new contender PearC from Germany), it got me thinking. If the fact that Mac OS X is sold as a boxed retail copy in the stores is in fact a large contributor to the believe of these companies that they can bundle these lawfully obtained DVDs with their non-Apple products, then why wouldn’t Apple simply stop selling OS X as a physical product trough retail?

The next version of the Mac OS, called Snow Leopard, will be a strange duck anyway. It is merely considered an upgrade to the current Leopard system. It will include a lot of under the hood optimizations to benefit from the current multi-core CPUs and the increasing, but often idle power of a systems graphics processor, as well as better integration with Microsoft Exchange servers, but it offers little to no “visible” new end user features. As a result, there has been a lot of debate in the Mac community on how Apple should sell this new version to its customers. Most agree that the usual upgrade fee of $129 is probably to much to ask for in this case. Should Snow Leopard be a free upgrade, of perhaps sell for a less than the usual fee? As Snow Leopard will most likely break the current pricing tradition, why not break with another tradition as well: the boxed retail version.

In this day and age, most people have a fast internet connection, so that it would be easy to deliver the upgrade over the wires. Most Apple customers already have an Apple ID for usage with the iTunes and App Stores, so the payment infrastructure for a digital delivery of Snow Leopard is already largely in place. And even if a user, for one reason or another, is unable or unwilling to download the entire upgrade over the Internet, Apple could set up a mail delivery program so that after the online payment is made, a user could request a DVD to be delivered to his house for a small handling fee. Compare this to the exchange program that Apple had in place for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, where users could requests CDs instead of the DVD that was in the box, in case they had no DVD drive.

In any way, this would eliminate the sale of the next version of Mac OS X to people who do not yet own a Mac computer. As a result, there is simply no way for Mac cloning companies to bundle a legally obtained retail copy of Mac OS X with their computers.

When done right, this should not harm sales. Every potential buyer of a Mac OS X retail pack already owns a Mac, so in essence every potential sale can be treated as an “upgrade” from the version that is currently installed on the Mac (please note the huge benefit that Apple has in this respect due to its combined hardware/software business model). And even the in-store impulse buy can be taken care of by selling “upgrade packs” that essentially contain nothing more than an authorization code to initiate the download (comparable to the current retail box for Apple’s MobileMe service). Just don’t put a DVD in a box that might give others the false idea of freedom to do with it whatever they want, such as bundling it with non-Apple hardware.

Please note that I fully understand that this would not impact the home tinkering of users trying to install Mac OS X on their PCs. These so-called “Hackintosh” projects will surely keep existing. However, also in these cases it is important to note that there is no way these users could have legally obtained a copy of OS X to run on these unauthorized machines, as OS X would simply no longer be available as an after-market product. This would make Apple’s case much stronger should it come to a court battle. But I think that this is not as much of a concern for Apple as is the sale of computers pre-equipped with Mac OS X. A court decision in favor of these companies completely destroys the entire business model that the company has built in 30+ years, with obvious dramatic effects.

Snow Leopard will bring some interesting times. Not only will it advance the world’s most innovative computing platform to yet again unseen levels of user satisfaction. I also think that Snow Leopard will mark an entirely new way for Apple to distribute major upgrades of its OS to its customers.

Some limitations that have been widely publicized are the inability to run more than one program at a time (leading for example to the inability to listen to an Internet radio station while doing something else), and the lack of the long promised push notification services (which among others enable instant messaging applications to receive messages when the device is idle or running another program).

But that’s not what I want to talk about. This time, I want to address another major annoyance.

There are a lot of areas when a desktop apps benefits from having a mobile app to take your data with you. Think for example of the excellent password manager 1Password, which can sync its protected database of passwords to the 1Password iPhone app. Or what about a personal assets database containing your lists of DVDs and books? It can be very handy to have these available on the go in a companion app on the iPhone. And of course you may want to upload some Office or PDF documents to a document viewer app on the iPhone.

And then we come to this other thing that has been bugging me for some time: the complexity that is involved anytime I want to exchange data between a desktop app on my Mac, and some application on my iPhone.

This complexity is due to a number of Apple’s design decisions. For one, there is no disk access to the iPhone, so a desktop app can not simply browser in the phone’s file structure to add or update some files. But even if there was disk access, Apple would possibly limit the level of files we could actually alter on the phone, to prevent it from being messed up. Apps would likely retain their “sandbox”, so that it would be impossible to change their contents.

Currently, the only way for an iPhone app and a desktop app to talk to each other is via Wi-Fi. But this has some serious limitations. First, there should be a wireless network available, which is not always the case, especially in corporate situations. Second, the desktop computer and the iPhone should be on the same network, for the handshake to work easily.  Third, the app should be actually running on the phone in order to communicate with the desktop. And fourth, it does not offer the user a streamlined interface to interact with the phone from their computer.

What about extending the iPhone SDK and modifying iTunes on the desktop, to allow desktop apps to exchange data with the phone via iTunes itself? Developers could then directly speak to the phone without getting the user involved. Another big advantage here of course would be that the program that is collecting the data on the phone is not required to be running.

Think about the examples I mentioned above. All of your passwords, personal library documents and files are copied to the iPhone without the need for any interaction on the phone itself. And when these programs automate this process, there isn’t even the need for any user intervention on the desktop either. All you current data is always synced to the phone.

Of couse, there are some possible design issues that need to be taken into account with this approach.

Currently, an app cannot receive data from anything other than itself (and the Wi-Fi connections it sets up by itself). This increases security, as no unwanted parties can alter the app. If Apple wants to maintain this security measure (or restriction, depending on your point of view), there needs to be some form of authentication in place between the the iPhone app and the desktop app that wants to talk to it. Apple could issue secure IDs for this within the SDK deployment program. And, depending on Apple’s mood, they might even loosen up things a bit, so that different desktop apps could talk to the same iPhone app (think of an app that aggregates different forms of data from different programs on your computer).

And there’s quite possibily another thing that might heaten up the discussion. For example what if Microsoft decides to incorporate my trough-iTunes communication funcationality in its Office applications to talk directly to a viewer app on the iPhone. This quite well destroys the open market for Office document viewers.

This can be solved by specifying various document types that a desktop app can parse to iTunes for communication with an iPhone app, and then let the user decide what iPhone app should be used. Compare this to the way an operating system always opens a type of file using a default program, but allows the user to select a different program to open the file if he or she wants to. Of course, for a lot of programs this makes little sense (like the 1Password example I gave above: the desktop and iPhone apps are directly linked to each other), but for many types of files and data it does. This might even create a blossoming market of new iPhone apps.

Of course, in typical Apple fashion the user interaction dialogs that a program displays when syncing or exporting data to the iPhone should be included in the Human Interface Guidelines, so that they become easily recognizable by users, and can be operated in a streamlined way. No more IP-addresses to go to with your browser to upload some documents to your iPhone app, and no more inconsistency between apps when doing so.

Some might argue that in this time and age, one should focus on over-the-air solutions to these kinds of data exchange problems. Some phones, like the Android-based ones, even completely lack any syncing with a computer via a cable. However, please remember that we are talking specifically about the interaction with desktop apps here. In general, when you want a desktop app to move something to your phone, you are near this desktop machine. It’s not something that needs to be pushed to the phone at any given moment. Furthermore, the iPhone needs to be docked to the computer anyway if you want iTunes to upload new audio, movie or photo files. And there might even be a win in it for Apple as well, as it places iTunes at yet another strategical position within the iPhone/iTunes eco-system, the added visibility benefiting its other, money-generating acitivites in the iTunes Store.

Sure Apple, give us the Push Notification Services we have been promised to get last September. But when that’s done, please have a look at how to move data between the phone and the computer. It can be greatly improved.