iphoting's Sink

Today, I drove to the West and back to the East through heavy rain, and along the way, I saw accidents, and reckless and inconsiderate driving behaviour. Honestly, I don’t think speeding in general is the main cause of traffic accidents. The main cause of accidents should be attributed to two causes: 1) inexperienced driving, and 2) inconsiderate and reckless driving behaviour.

Inexperienced Driving

Although I can say that it is not easy to pass the practical driving test in Singapore, I sincerely believe that the difficultly is misplaced or mis-emphasised. To pass the practical test, a candidate must not accumulate more than 18 “penalty” points, and these points are awarded based on the severity of the mistake committed, ranging from 2 to 4 points, and a special category of instant failure. There is a very great emphasis on performing routine checks and observations within the vehicle for safety, i.e., moving your head when looking at the rear-view mirror, followed by the side-mirror, and then turning your head 90º to check your blind-spot. This is entirely unnatural and drivers will avoid doing it when they actually pass their driving tests.

What needs to be tested is not the action but the reaction to the observation of danger. How will you react when faced with a contingency situation? Is safety a primary motivation for your reaction, or just reacting without consideration?

For example, when faced with a vehicle breaking ahead, some drivers switch lanes without checking for traffic in the adjacent lane, while others have to jam brake and subsequently increase the safety distance. While both reactions are non-ideal, the latter reaction will result in less accidents as the third party involved (the car behind) would have greater reaction time than in the former case (3rd party: driver in adjacent lane).

The practical driving test in Singapore should be split into 2 practical tests. The first, being the vehicle technical handling test, while the second, taken approximately 1 year after passing the first, is an experience and competence test. Passing the first test gives candidates a “provisional” license that will expire 2 years after passing the first test. Provisional licence holders will require the “p-plate” to be displayed at all times and will only have 12 merit points available for deduction.

To convert the provisional license to a full license, provisional drivers will be required to pass the second test before the expiry of the provisional license but not earlier than 1 year from passing date. Should they not be able to pass the second test before the expiry of the provisional license, an extension of 1 year should be granted upon proof of a future booking for the test.

In the second test, the technical capabilities of the candidates are a prerequisite and assumed. Thus, the test can focus more on interactions between other road users in areas once inaccessible in the previous test, such as expressways and other crowded areas.

This way, competence and experience of drivers who actually have a full license will be ensured. People who “just happened to pass” will be forced to drive with a “p-plate” until they can past the second test, for the safety of everyone else.

Inconsiderate and Reckless Driving

It was pouring heavily and it was dark. Yet, there still are drivers that weave in and out of traffic, without their headlights and without signalling.

Exasperating! Exterior lights on a vehicle are for increasing visibility to other road users, not as christmas tree decorations. The significant increase in safety from turning on exterior lights greatly trumps the marginal increase in fuel consumption. For everyone’s safety, please, if the lighting conditions are poorer than a regular fine day, just turn on exterior lights. It’ll be easier to spot you from my side mirrors.

As for signalling, I understand that you may not want to signal when changing lanes on an empty road, but it’s no excuse when cars are tightly packed. That little flick of 3 fingers to signal while changing lanes can actually reduce accidents and save lives.

So, it’s no surprise that whenever it rains any tiny or heavy bit, there will bound to be accidents along our expressways. Until driving habits and graciousness can be improved, we can expect more accidents ahead, whenever road conditions deteriorate a single bit.

In this second post, I shall share some of my thought on iOS 5 that was announced in WWDC 2011.

iOS 5

With the launch of iOS 5, I can consider iOS to be a fully matured mobile OS platform with little missing usability-related features. Out of the 10 mentioned, there are 3 features that I find very significant.

Notifications

Yes, we’ve all heard it. Delivered late and copied. Most importantly, Apple is not famous for being the first (maybe even for the iPad), they are famous for copying, improvising, and perfecting ideas already out in the market. Chances are, Apple’s implementation is top-notch. It is a shame and disgrace that there are companies that imitate but end up with a half-past-six implementation.

It is also good to know that Apple does look around the market for ideas and solutions to problems apart from developing on them in isolation. I believe that much of Apple’s official solutions are inspired by the work of the JailBreaking community.

I remember that in the days before the iOS SDK was released, jail breakers have found a way to get apps onto the OS. They created their own App Store (named Installer). The app installation UX looked very similar to what we are all used to today.

News Stand

I like their system-wide solution to managing auto-delivery of reading materials, somewhat like the Kindle, without the costs associated. This sets the stage where I can already foresee a future where all our newspapers and magazines are delivered to our iPads, rather than our doorsteps.

iMessage

Taking a page out of RIM’s (the maker of BlackBerry) book, iMessage is Apple’s answer to RIM’s BBM. BB’s initial attraction was its BBM service which allowed inter-device multimedia communication, free-of-charge. What better time than now is it to tap capture RIM’s dwindling market-share for its BBs?

While it may be true that it will only work with iOS devices, we should also not underestimate the install-base and its potential for growth. Given that iMessage is integrated with and supersedes the SMS Messages app, communicating between iOS devices (for free) will be frictionless, while non-iOS recipients will receive (chargeable) SMSes, seamlessly. There will be very little reason why iOS users will not choose to communicate via Apple’s iMessage service.

Yes, Whatsapp does the same thing and its cross-platform, but their server availability is flaky at best. Thus far, I have yet to experience an outage of Apple’s push notifications service, ever since it was launched. I can’t say the same for Whatsapp. At the rate this goes, Whatsapp will be the messaging platform for non-iOS devices.

With iMessage and the soon-to-be-3G-enabled FaceTime, we can see Apple relegating mobile service providers (carriers) to just an “ISP”, putting them back in their rightful place for retarding mobile innovation for a good decade. For all you know, these mobile carriers may just have to offer data plans by default with a mobile minutes and text options as “value-added services”.

That concludes my remarks on iOS 5. Thoughts or comments? Let me know in the commenting section below.

On 6 June, Apple announced three items—Lion, iOS5 and a fruition of a vision Steve Jobs mentioned in the 1997 WWDC closing keynote I linked to a few days back on my Tumblr—iCloud. The keynote yesterday was one of the longest in recent years; the full stream is available from Apple, an 8-minute long condensed version available on Gizmodo.

I have a few thoughts on each of the products that was announced. In this post, I will cover Lion, and in a subsequent post, iOS 5, leaving iCloud to the last post.

Lion

10 features were chosen to be presented at the keynote. I believe they were chosen to impact developers more than non-developer customers. 7 out of the 10 features demonstrated required developers to adopt new APIs in their applications in order for the features to work as advertised. Hence, end-users may see the features mentioned “typical”.

AirDrop

Of particular significance to me, I like to highlight AirDrop. It is quite revolutionary despite its easy-to-use looks as the amount of technology under-the-hood to get this feature off the ground is no small feat. If you’ve transferred files between devices via either WiFi or Bluetooth before, you would appreciate AirDrop a lot more. Assuming that it works as advertised, gone will be the days of sneaker-net or ad-hoc wireless connections.

Auto Save, Versions, and Resume

With Apple’s attempt to make computing even easier for everyone else, Auto Save, Versions, and Resume, can be considered the first attempt by an OS to implement a system-wide solution with a user-friendly and transparent interface. While this can be seen as a small technical step, it is however, a giant leap in terms of usability and system resilience. Users can now actually trust their computers to remember their work, and no longer have to shepherd their computers with ⌘-s to save their documents as a routine. After all, we use computers for automation, not the other way around.

As for Resume, this feature removes the concept and requirement for users to manage and remember state in their applications. Everything is just as they were when you’d left it. This, in user experience (UX) design, is the principle of least surprise.

Full Screen

Windows had the ability to maximise windows since Windows 95. The Mac never embraced the one-window workflow as it is a royal waste of screen estate. However, with the rise of non-document-based applications, like iPhoto, it now makes much more sense in providing an immersive app experience.

With the sale of portables exceeding desktops, the average screen size has dropped to around 13-15“. These screen sizes are perfect candidates for full screen applications. On the contrary, it would be stupid to use Safari in full screen on a 23” screen—you’ll be seeing more whitespace than content.

Multi-Touch Gestures

Seen as a novelty by some, a life-saver by others, I believe that Multi-Touch Gestures is a way Apple can innovate and differentiate itself from of their PC competitors. To really understand what I mean, try using a PC-laptop trackpad for extended periods of time. The experience on the PC just feels clumsy and erratic. The most important thing is that Apple is betting against Microsoft. Such gestures cannot be executed easily and comfortably with a touchscreen display, 90º upright, and are best executed on the horizontally, on a trackpad.

Mac App Store

The most amazing of all, technically- or usability-wise, is the delivery of the Lion Mac OS update through the Mac App Store. At US$29.99 with App Store rules (install on up to 10 authorised machines), it is the cheapest non-mobile OS upgrade ever. The price just makes piracy impractical, and largely removes financial friction associated with upgrading. Most amazingly, this is probably the first time that I witness an OS being successfully upgraded in-place without the need for restarting and booting to an alternative boot device.

This delivery method does away with physical 3rd-party retail channels, allowing Apple’s dream of interacting directly with all its customers. This way, Apple would be able to fully own the whole user-experience, from discovery, to purchase, and after-sales support. Assuming that they’ll be able to successfully deliver, this seamless instant-gratification will be hard to replicate by other competitors, i.e., Microsoft. I’ll say that this is one step in eliminating the middleman within their distribution channels, moving towards a fully electronic and seamless distribution method, protecting the environment at the same time.

In short, I believe that Lion is designed especially with portables in mind, especially the MacBook Air. It’s also the first keynote where all the machines used for presentation demonstration were portables.

With that, I conclude my thoughts on Lion, the cheapest and most paradigmatic-shifting OS in the non-mobile sphere. Feel free share with me your thoughts in the commenting space below.

I don’t know about you, but my uneducated and uninformed hunch tells me that the flooding in recent days is not solely caused by the weather—it is too convenient an excuse to use. Something else must have a hand in it.

Referring to this picture found on the PUB Marina Barrage web site (click to enlarge):

The image shows the enlarged catchment area after Marina Barrage is brought online.

I recall seeing another graphic at the Marina Barrage visitor information panels that shows the water catchment areas in Singapore before the construction and completion of Marina Barrage. I cannot find the image anywhere, but I’m very sure that Singapore is split into a few zones where each major reservoir has a designated catchment area surrounding it.

Of particular interest, the areas which began flooding right after the Marina Barrage came online were those that were new to the enlarged catchment zone.

I suspect that the rise in the water-table, caused by the Marina Barrage’s purpose of enlarging the water catchment area, coupled with intensive underground works, i.e., KPE, Circle Line, Downtown Line, contributed to the increase in flooding incidents within the recent year. Adding to that, they must have also lacked plans to increase drainage capacity to address issues as raised above.

Honestly, I am willing to accept any form of flooding (due to unusual weather conditions) as long as the infrastructure is designed to support it and will gracefully degrade to provide limited service.

Summarising John Gruber in his post, “Why Windows 8 Is Fundamentally Flawed as a Response to the iPad”:

Apple’s radical notion is that touchscreen personal computers should make severely different tradeoffs than traditional computers — and that you can’t design one system that does it all. Windows 8 is trying to have it all, and I don’t think that can be done. You can’t make something conceptually lightweight if it’s carrying 25 years of Windows baggage.

Jared Newman disagrees by claiming that a Tablet being all-in-one, with both the new Windows 8 interface and the old windows interface integrated, will be more successful:

What Microsoft demonstrated on Wednesday is exactly what I want in a computer — a lightweight tablet UI that’s meant for casual computing and a powerful, classic Windows that allows me to work.

I disagree with Newman on this count as his premise is untenable: “There will be demand for touch-based apps simply because of how many people are already using Windows.”

Just because you are a Windows user does not mean that you will use the new Touch UI add-on as the classic Windows interface is still available. There is a tendency for people to fall back to familiar grounds, despite new improvements that could be had in learning and employing new technology.

Furthermore, why would anyone use the new Touch UI interface when there are hardly any applications written for it? While Newman claims that “Microsoft has proven willing to grow its app ecosystem by paying developers” (as seen in Windows Phone 7), that doesn’t explain why 3rd-party applications on WP7 are still lacking in quality and quantity—What app would you use for GPS running, SSH, VNC, Tweeting, Facebook or Things?

So really, creating an ecosystem isn’t as simple as paying a few developers to port their stuff and leaving a legacy interface behind for “compatibility reasons”. Microsoft hasn’t succeeded, but Apple has. Windows 7 will just be another Windows 7 with its new Touch UI relegated to an “Apple Dashboard-like” position in the OS.

For the past 3 years, I’ve been a using Things for Mac together with Things for iPhone companion app for managing my day-to-day tasks. In the past year, I’m starting to find the development pace of Things to be a little too slow for my tolerance.

The desktop application has a few serious short-falls (inflexibilities) that really limit the way one can organise tasks. For example, there isn’t a way to order sequential tasks except by creating a project. You can’t nest projects, neither can you arrange them as though they are tasks. From the way the company, CultureCode, functions, it seems unlikely that they will be rethinking the architecture of Things any time soon.

Another annoying thing about Things is that their sync solution between the desktop, iPhone, and iPad applications is extremely cumbersome. It requires the desktop application to be the gatekeeper and sync-hub of all other mobile devices, which is impractical in this day and age. Imposing such requirements to ensure data integrity (data loss do occur!) across three devices is ridiculous and renders the mobile devices useless once either of them have been out-of-sync. Their solution to this problem, in the form of Cloud Sync, has been in the works for almost 2 whole years! I’m finding it hard to justify waiting any further when competing products are beginning to surface, namely, OmniFocus and The Hit List.

For a moment in time, I did give OmniFocus a spin and found it overly complex, cluttered and ugly. I loved the clean look of Things and would not like to give it up unless I really had to. Over the Air (OTA) sync is one of them. Furthermore, OmniFocus mobile companion products, for both the iPhone and iPad, are sold separately and are rather expensive. Then, I decided that it’s best that I give OmniFocus a miss and to remain with Things.

Two years ago, The Hit List (THL) was in beta and it came with the 2009 MacHeist bundle. It was a little buggy and in public beta then, but it looked promising. Development suddenly stopped in 2009 and their last blog post was dated September 2009. Nothing was heard nor written about THL since then, leaving many to believe that the developers have given up.

Then, on 1st June 2011, literally out of the blue, THL’s Twitter account sprang to life and announced that THL 1.0 is released. The iPhone companion app has also been submitted to Apple for review. Life seem to have been injected into the project and THL has since seen its second bugfix release. With the license key from the MacHeist bundle, I decided to give THL another try as I have already paid for it, more than 2 years ago.

My first impression of my second trial of THL was a reminder of how similar it is to OmniFocus. I’m inclined to see THL as a lighter and leaner sibling of OmniFocus. Given that OTA sync is already delivered out of the box (albeit at $20/year), and that the iPhone app is currently being reviewed by Apple, THL has already offered more functionality than Things and its companion app combined. Furthremore, THL has a cleaner interface compared to OmniFocus and its single-character keyboard shortcuts are a plus.

Now that the summer holidays are here, and that my task load is a lot lower, any task manager migration, if any, must be done before the start of my school term. After evaluating THL as a Things replacement, I decided to take the plunge and to migrate over to THL from Things completely, after ensuring THL’s feature parity with Things.

So, to Things, I bid farewell.

It has come to my attention that my recent hiatus from writing has caused my grammar department to suffer. To be honest, I too was surprised by the grammatical mistakes. I have never expected myself to make those elementary mistakes.

I shall thus aspire to blog more frequently to keep my English in shape. Readers, please kindly point out any mistakes you see in the comments. Thanks!

This morning, I woke up to a rather curious and surprising announcement, directly from Apple itself, regarding the contents of WWDC keynote:

At the keynote, Apple will unveil its next generation software - Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS® X; iOS 5, the next version of Apple’s advanced mobile operating system which powers the iPad®, iPhone® and iPod touch®; and iCloud®, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering.

There can be multiple reasons for doing so, but one thing that is certain is that this is a first time that Apple pre-announces the content of their keynotes.

While I would not know their true intentions, I have three suspicions for them doing so.

First, set the tone for the rumour mills to follow, reducing wild speculations that lead to unnecessarily high false expectations, which severely affects their stock and reviews when they are not, and are not meant to be met.

In some of their previous Keynotes, analysts have remarked that they are underwhelming. Truth be told, these expectations were possibly set by rumours mills and could be unrealistic as Apple never speculates nor comment on their future plans. By pre-announcing what Apple will talk about, it gives rumour mills some degree of scope and restrain from speculating too far, keeping consumer expectations in check, leaving them with a prime target—iCloud.

Secondly, it could just be technically impossible to launch an iCloud service “live” during the Keynote without making preparations that can be seen by outsiders, like changing domain ownership. By pre-announcing, Apple refocuses their “wow” strategy of the keynote on possibility of the iCloud service rather than the fact that Apple is to launch the iCloud service.

Thirdly, this allows Apple to set the stage most aptly for an “Oh, one more thing” announcement.

Then, as if to fan the rumours of a Keynote that’s too content overloaded, Apple released another press release on new versions of iWork on the same day, a few hours later:

Apple® today announced that its groundbreaking iWork® productivity apps, Keynote®, Pages® and Numbers®, are now available for iPhone® and iPod touch®, as well as iPad®.

On the day of the keynote, you would know how the rumour mills were being steered.