Almost Like New, Again

The front edge of the right palm rest on my 4-year old MacBook started to chip again, exposing a gap in the case through which dust could enter. Once again, the Apple Store replaced the entire top plate, including keyboard and trackpad, at no charge. This time they did it in under two hours despite the store being very busy. This, for a computer I had bought refurbished online, that was three years out of warranty. I'm very impressed.

Computational Thinking: A Digital Age Skill for Everyone

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The Fate of the US, Canada...and China?

US poverty map

I'd skimmed the New York Times article on the disappearing American middle class, but I didn't go back and read it carefully until I came across this summary:

Apple doesn't build iPhones in the United States, in other words, because there is no longer an ecosystem here to support that manufacturing. There's no supply chain, there aren't enough super-low-cost workers, and there are not enough mid-level engineers.  And many Americans looking for work are still hoping for a return to jobs, salaries, and lifestyles that have simply disappeared.

Uh oh. This might help to explain this Sunday's ominous statement from the Bank of Canada's Mark Carney:

It’s going to take a number of years before they get back to the U.S. that we used to know — in fact, they are not, in our opinion, ultimately going to get back to the U.S. that we used to know,” he said.

Hold that thought.

It reminded me of something unsettling I read a while back—a pensive piece authored by former Intel chairman Andy Grove:

I fled Hungary as a young man in 1956 to come to the U.S. Growing up in the Soviet bloc, I witnessed first-hand the perils of both government overreach and a stratified population. Most Americans probably aren't aware that there was a time in this country when tanks and cavalry were massed on Pennsylvania Avenue to chase away the unemployed. It was 1932; thousands of jobless veterans were demonstrating outside the White House. Soldiers with fixed bayonets and live ammunition moved in on them, and herded them away from the White House. In America! Unemployment is corrosive.

As I reflect on Carney's unsettling comment from yesterday, I worry about the future of the American middle class, not least because their well-being is intertwined with Canada's.

Sure, some U.S. real estate is becoming more affordable for well-off Canadians, but do the long-suffering citizens of Vancouver, BC really want to move to a country where the water in several large metro areas may already be running out?

And what about our erstwhile trading partner China, with its dangerously skewed demographic profile? Is it Canada's turn next?

At a Chinese New Year's banquet I attended last night, one of my dinner companions remarked that "something feels awfully off-balance in the world today."

Indeed.

Nikon D4 - WHY Athletes

Who needs a DSLR?

This past weekend I decided to go to Banff without lugging a DSLR or a camcorder. I just brought my iPhone 4S and a Panasonic Lumix waterproof pocket camera. The photograph here is from a panorama shot on the iPhone 4S, stitched in Pano.app.

Changeover

I finally got my new iPhone 4S activated. The iPhone 3G in this photo served me faithfully for 3 years, and it still works, although it slowed down quite a bit after I installed iOS4 on it. The 4S is significantly faster, of course.

Birthplace of the Web

The computer Tim Berners-Lee used to invent the World Wide Web, photo by Robert Scoble.

The web's inventor offers a few words in tribute to Steve Jobs, whose company NeXT created the platform on which the web was invented.

Steve Jobs: The Crazy Ones

Does this ring true for you?

Created by: Online Schools

Perceptive Pixel demos 82" multi-touch display

Vancouver Cleanup: Post-Riots

Vancouver Cleanup: Post-Riots, a set by Maurice Li on Flickr.

A much nicer side to a great city.

Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Round Two

The Future of Collaborative Visual Communications

They Got it Right

Japan Earthquake Swarm Google Earth Animation

The World Has Changed...Just a Bit

Doing the Unlikely

Image source: Apple

Apple has managed to do something everyone else so far has failed at: make UNIX usable for non-geeks. In fact, Apple has turned UNIX into a mass-market consumer operating system. How? iOS, which powers the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, is UNIX at its core. The typical iOS device user doesn't need to know this, and frankly, they don't care so long as their devices work properly. iOS shares core code with MacOS X, so there's a non-trivial degree of reusability between codebases, and lessons learned on iOS are transferred to MacOS X and vice versa. This is only to be expected, since both iOS and MacOS X trace their ancestry to NeXTSTEP, the platform on which Tim Berners-Lee invented the web in 1990. So UNIX is alive and well...and thanks to Apple, popular. Not bad for an OS first developed in 1969. For historical context, scroll through the UNIX timeline.

Is How We Read Changing?

Doing the Right Thing

On Dec. 19, 2010, I ordered three items from the Canadian online Apple Store for my brother-in-law's Christmas present. The package was delivered on Dec. 22 to his home in Metro Vancouver. Unfortunately, one of the three items I ordered, an Apple Remote, was not in the package. Today I called Apple to follow up. The automated interactive voice response system took my order details, which I spoke in complete sentences as requested, then transferred me to a customer service agent, Stacy, who apologized for the oversight and arranged to have a free replacement shipped at no charge to my brother-in-law's address. The entire interaction was pleasant and took just a few minutes, consistent with the positive user experience Apple strives for in all of its products and services. Attention to detail is what sets Apple apart from many other organizations. It's yet another reason I'm a long-time Apple customer.

Almost Like New Again

The old is new again

Last week I made an appointment at a nearby Apple Store to resolve issues with duplicate contact and calendar data on my iPhone. The staffer who helped me noticed my late-2007 Macbook was missing a sliver of plastic from the front edge of the top plate that supports the keyboard and trackpad. According to him, certain MacBooks had quality issues with the plastic used for this part of the case, so he offered to replace the part overnight at no charge even though the computer was well past warranty and I'd bought it from the refurbished section of the Apple Online Store.I got my computer back today. The keyboard and trackpad—indeed the entire top plate—were brand new, as promised. The outer case had been cleaned and polished, so scratches and scuff marks from almost three years of daily use were gone. The display surface was also the cleanest I've seen since I first got the computer. The entire unit was returned to me in better physical condition than when I handed it in for repair.

I've been an Apple customer for 15+ years. Apple's not perfect, but it sure gets a lot of things right.