The Lone Sysadmin

I’m glad to see the iPad is announced. It looks like an interesting device, not quite a notebook, not quite an iPhone. I, however, don’t see how it’s anything beyond a portal to give Apple more money.

Please, if you see I’ve made an error here let me know in the comments. Thank you!

1. AT&T. Seriously, a “breakthrough” deal with AT&T is like being the fastest reader in remedial reading class. You’re still in remedial reading class.

2. No Flash. It’s astonishing how much stuff I watch in Flash on my laptop, and it being missing on this device is going to be a big hole. Lots of stuff is in YouTube, but not everything, and HTML5 isn’t going to solve this problem for quite a while, either.

3. You still need a desktop to dock this thing to, for anything beyond basic downloading or web browsing. Despite what some apps can do (including iWork), it really is just a standalone viewer of content.

4. The dock and keyboard setup is a kludge. It appears clunky, certainly not easily portable, and looks like it’ll fall over when you try to click on something by touching it. I’m skeptical. I think a netbook or cheap laptop will continue to smoke the iPad for anybody who needs to type anything. Heck, you can add an external USB keyboard and a mouse to a netbook.

5. E-books with DRM. There is no mention of being able to use anything but EPUB format books. I’d like to be able to read things from Project Gutenberg, for example, or anything that an independent party might like to push out. Furthermore, it looks as if EPUB doesn’t work well for technical books or books that need precision graphics placement (comic books, for example).

6. No user-replaceable batteries, though it’s not a huge deal because you can charge just about anywhere. If their battery life figures aren’t inflated it should be enough for a day’s use. Plus, with a tablet I’m anticipating third-party form-fitting add-ons that boost battery life. I worry about wear on the battery, though — after a year or so of daily charging batteries lose significant capacity.

7. It is still tied to the draconian App Store policies. Apple still controls who can put what on this device, and their policies are not consumer-friendly. Take Google Voice as an example. Maybe Apple should watch their first commercial, “1984,” and see what their message was then.

8. No multitasking. On a real computing device you can switch between apps and not lose your place. I understand the implications for battery life and whatnot, but I’d like the option to quickly switch between apps, like an SSH client and a web browser, and keep my sessions.

Looking at Apple’s list of things they think the iPad can do better:

Browsing: netbooks for the win. A netbook has Flash and can run any web browser, not just the Apple-prescribed browser and technologies.

Email: netbooks for the win. The external keyboard is a kludge, not portable, and I’m guessing they added it because typing on the screen sucks.

Photos: I’ve changed this based on new information in the comments. I didn’t realize that the iPad had a camera connector, so I’ll dub this a tie. Netbooks are more flexible and can run more software packages, but the display & interface on the iPad will likely smoke a netbook’s. What does remain to be seen is if iPhoto or something like it will be ported to Windows. If that happens it’s iPad FTW.

Video: netbooks for the win. Aside from the lack of Flash on the iPad, which disables most Internet video players, you are only able to watch video encoded with Apple-prescribed codecs.

Music: iPad. The iPod is the standard, and the iPad will draw on that heritage.

Games: iPad. The games for the iPhone and iPad are so-so, but netbooks really don’t have the ability or interface to play anything.

eBooks: libraries for the win. A paperback book doesn’t take any power, can be read in many differing conditions, isn’t made of toxic waste, isn’t locked to a carrier, doesn’t have a monthly fee (though one would argue your library has a fee in the form of taxes), can be loaned to your cousin, is available at millions of locations, has an easy-to-use interface, can be dropped on the floor or crushed in your luggage, and can be donated to or borrowed from a library or a book swap when you’re done with it.

I think, for now, I’ll stick with a netbook and a paperback.

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“I’m filling out a survey. Can you tell me if we have a cloud?”

“Yes, we do,” I reply.

“We do?”

“Absolutely.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I’d know — I built it.”

“You built it? No, I think the survey wants to know if we have a real cloud.” Well, thanks a lot.

“We do have a real cloud, and it’s the same one I’m talking about. In fact, we have two clouds, in two different locations. They’d probably be best described as ‘private clouds.’”

“Well, there isn’t an option for private clouds, so I’ll just say no.”

ARGGGH. Ten minutes pass…

“Hey, I’ve got another question. Do we use virtualization software?”

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Dear people using the term “Y2K10,”

Please realize it’s actually one character longer and significantly more confusing than just typing “2010.” Yes, yes, I know it’s not nearly as hip and cool, but I’m sure you will survive. You may even come to appreciate using these commonly-understood terms when you notice an increase in your readership, due to suddenly being understandable.

Also, while we’re talking about years, please be aware that a new decade started on 1/1/2010, despite what you might have heard from people who don’t regularly remember that some numbering starts at zero. We may not have wanted, or remembered, them to be, but years 2000 to 2009 were actually ten (10) distinct years. Hence the ‘dec’ part of the word “decade.”

Lastly, Dave Hayden of Panic has a very informative post on blue moons and calendaring systems. Turns out that December 2009 did not have a blue moon, which was news to me.

Thank you for your attention to these matters.

:-)

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Good post over at marco.org on why Microsoft Windows Vista hasn’t sold well. The most striking paragraph:

Our industry has collectively taught average people over the last few decades that computers should be feared and are always a single misstep from breaking. We’ve trained them to expect the working state to be fragile and temporary, and experience from previous upgrades has convinced them that they shouldn’t mess with anything if it works. They’ve learned to ignore our pressures to always get the latest versions of everything because our upgrades frequently break their software and workflow. They expect unreliable functionality, shoddy software workmanship, unnecessary complexity, broken promises from software marketers, and degrading hostility from their office’s IT staff.

It isn’t just average people that fear computers. From what I’ve seen, the general IT staffer fears them, too. Hiding behind the mantra of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” they refuse to patch, ignore service packs, eschew firmware updates, and deliberately keep their systems two to three years behind. It’s really no surprise; it’s exactly because of the unreliable functionality, shoddy software workmanship, complexity, and broken promises from vendors. VMware, Red Hat, Oracle, IBM — you name the vendor and their software sucks. So people find a combination where the problems are a known quantity, where the house of cards doesn’t fall over every day, and they don’t touch it again for years.

I’m not saying it’s right, or a good idea. I’m just saying I get it.

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Dear Vikings,

I hope he waffles about retiring and pisses you guys off as much as he did with the Packers & Jets. Congratulations on signing a complete jackass.

…Me

I think this t-shirt sums it up nicely:

(my apologies to my non-U.S. readers for rambling on about stuff like this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if even you knew the ridiculous story)

Popularity: 1% [?]

If you were thinking about using Mozilla Weave I definitely suggest backing your bookmarks up first. In my case, I have no bookmarks anymore, and couldn’t add any bookmarks again until I removed the plugin.

Interesting concept, but the implementation obviously sucks. Especially since it removes things (things == everything) without asking. At least it logged all the bookmarks it deleted…

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Q: What’s the easiest way to get rid of malware on Windows[0]?

A: Not to get it in the first place.

A couple of other observations I made while cleaning a friend’s computer:

1. The malware was detected by my friend because it was closing windows. Any window that could be used to fix the infection was closed by the malware. That doesn’t seem to be a very productive strategy for staying installed.

2. The Avast BARTPE CD creator rocks. Luckily, a part of my organization that does more desktop support for customers has a license for it. It’s really nice to boot off a CD to fix everything.

3. I started with the Avira free antivirus scanner. It is worth what you pay for it. I couldn’t get it to switch to the right screen resolution so I could see the buttons to trigger a scan, the English edition is in German, and there are no command-line utilities that work (or documentation to indicate what I should be doing). In the immortal words of Maddox: Terrible. F.

4. I really like how malware authors are taking out ads for antivirus products on Google. Search for “avast” or “avira” and the sponsored links at the top of the results are not reputable sources…

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[0] Pre-emptive snarky comment: “Windows sux!” or “Linux wouldn’t have this problem” or “Apple r00lz!” — yes, we know, in a perfect world you’d be the benevolent emperor and would require everyone to use some other far-superior OS.[1]

[1] All OSes suck.

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Quick quiz: What’s really annoying at 5:30 AM?

All computers.

Other acceptable answers include all humans, all software, and/or everything.

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