-zm

On Hacking

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 18:29:32 -0400

Wow. Crazy article.

Not sure if the Woz/Jobs intro is exactly apt; hindsight tells us that while Woz may have been disenchanted (and that as a true uber ultimate hacker, he probably stumbled upon this decades earlier and significantly harder than most hackers), it probably did have a bit more to do with the crazy personalities going on there – Jobs’ insanely focused and hurtful drive and Woz’s desire to not be involved with the business of Apple.

Rather, I think the article hits the nail on the head in its conclusion:

“There will always be hackers. We may soon see genetic hackers, organic computing hackers … who knows? They’re the ones on the fringes who push things a little further and faster. But their role in personal computing has been forever changed. Now that its big business, they may be happy at that.”

Their role changed because computing changed the world and indeed became even bigger business. Simulatneously, the “creative force” left the room, replaced with big business and other processes that are entirely disinteresting for a true hacker.

Now clearly the hacker spirit will endure as long as there are ways to push things that little bit further/faster. Often times, those improvements are valuable contributions to be spread, and the hacker spirit meets (in some way) with the entrepreneurial spirit. This is beneficial and has led to some of the world’s greatest success stories.

But the hacker spirit and the entrepreneurial spirit do have differences; different goals, priorities and countless other subltites of art that the non-hacker might miss. Often times, as businesses grow, that’s exactly what take place.

I definitely can’t claim to have the answer, and no one’s probably that much closer to the solution than when the article was written. But it’s best to keep an eye out for the problem and steer clear of it at all possible.

In the meantime, I wish that those in the startup community would avoid trivializing the term “hack” left and right, omitting the creative force in the process. Analyzing customer traction and marketing data isn’t hacking. Writing a few lines of code for your run of the mill social networking or daily deals startup one afternoon isn’t hacking. This isn’t to say that those things aren’t important. Quite the contrary; teams and structure and 85% of startup events? Beneficial, but not hacking.

This isn’t about making hacking elitist or limited to any technical context; rather, it’s about flashes of brillance and the gem that emerges. Just like it was in 1986. Just like it’s always been and always will be.

(Mis/Not)-understanding the criticism of Apple's iBooks Author EULA

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 03:42:42 -0500

(Mis/Not)-understanding the criticism of Apple's iBooks Author EULA:

It seems that Jim Dalrymple can’t understand why people were unhappy with the iBooks Author. This is confusing; you may disagree with people’s take on it, and that’s normal in both the tech press and in the Apple community (I’m reminded to some healthy debating at last year’s SecondConf about whether or not Mac App Store / Sandboxing was the end of the world). But being completely confused about this?

Jim mostly makes the same arguments he made last week, which continue to be unpersuasive to those of us on the flip side. To channel Jim, “I’m not sure if [he] just misunderstood”, or if he’s simply repeating them to convince himself they’re true, which is the exact problem with that sort of assumption that everyone must just be freaking out for no reason.

A recap:

Apple is providing free tools for authors to create books. If, however, you create an iBook using Apple’s tools and you want to sell it, then you have to use the iBookstore and give Apple its cut. That sounds fair to me

Except this isn’t about being fair or not; Jim’s mostly a great writer and I’ve enjoyed having the Loop in my newsfeesd, so it’s confusing to me that he deliberately keeps the analysis at a 4th grade playground level. This isn’t about being fair, it’s about the fact that Apple is doing something rather unprecedented in software development: making a move toward’s content ownership with the EULA of a tool.

Disclaimer: I am not your/yet a lawyer and nothing is legal advice

You can export all of the text and use Amazon’s tools to create a book.

Nor is the situation that cut and dry. As Jim Dovey (who did a lot of technical digging and analysis into the new iBooks format) wisely pointed out on Twitter

“Let’s say you have a book which has lots of layout needs, and want to add one iBooks-only feature, you must build it twice. Another problem is that people will spend their time creating perfectly-fine-in-everything-else ePubs using this tool.”

I’m not 100% confident that Dovey’s outlook is right, but I’m not definitely not sure that it’s wrong, and from an ownership perspective, this is really worrisome. I imagine that you could claim that Apple won’t try to actively exercise the more draconian approaches that the EULA text might allow, but then why write it that way? Apple’s not the type to rush things, so this EULA probably means someone thought it through and decided this was the best approach. That’s not a good call.

Jim (Dalrymple…having both the Jims be Jim D is difficult) eventually concludes that this is the same as iOS, an analogy which really isn’t accurate to the situation.

On the App Store I may have to pay Apple $99 for access to the tools beforehand, and cut them in on the profits in exchange for hosting, payment processing, marketing and other things to use the app store, but I can do anything I want with an .ipa; sell it on Cydia, distribute it ad-hoc or enterprise (for profit), or do anything else that I’ve been able to do with compiled data since the dawn of computing. Tons of people push the bounds with what you can do with non-App Store functionality, and it’s good for the ecosystem that alternative distribution innovation keeps happening.

Truth of the matter is that Apple’s move really is unprecedented. There are some disagreements about the merits of people’s different arguments (many about file formats, but Gruber’s covered that and I tend to find his analysis persuasive), but to argue that this isn’t even understandable and that people’s reactions were completely unwarranted? Come On

Old school

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:44:52 -0500

Old school:

Horace Dediu (twitter, found via MG Siegler) graphs an interesting chart.

It mostly focuses on product sales and not so much on integrated platforms, which is fine. However, I think you get some more interesting results if you consider it in terms of platforms.

Apple obviously benefits, so I suppose one could argue that the fanboy in me prefers this change, but I think it makes sense as well. Anyone using an iPad has the same availability to their content that they did in 2001 with the iPod, especially if they’re running on the Macintosh, while I think Next might have NSSomething to say about the idea that their platform is just gone.

It’s also why I’m quicker to give Microsoft a bit more time in the PC space to get adjusted. Windows 8 is going to be interesting, and will effect the tablet space in some way, we’ll see.

The fact that it’s personal computing gives Google a bit less time on the graph, with the Android side of things. Personally, I’d give them some credit for search and the mindshare they have with consumer, but I’m also a software guy, so that’s to be expected.

An ode to some headphones...in stanza form

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 04:17:00 -0500

I stopped by Skullcandy’s booth today after hearing that they had the dance floor locked down in Vegas this week, both with new headphones but also as hosts of one of the most exciting events going down tomorrow evening.

I missed out on scoring Eventbrite tickets, but they’re running a giveaway with some last minute invites. While this photo is clearly A-list material, I figured I should spruce up my submission with some limericks. Here’s what I came up with before some evening one cocktails sent all my poetry into “lady from nantucket” land:

I’d love to win tickets to the Mashable Bash
You can no longer get in with just cash
So I am writing limericks to post on Twitter.
Here hoping that Skullcandy says I’m a winner
and that my photo and poems make quite a splash. .

I learned about the contest and went to the booth right after
and I’m really a fan of the Mix Masters
While I’m not trying to be a Hater,
I preferred them to the Aviators.
The MMs are now the headphones I’m after.

First Post!

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 12:37:01 -0500

So…I’m blogging again.

This came about in a number of ways. One could call it a New Years Resolution, although that wouldn’t be technically correct. You see, I’ve blogged before, most notably during my teenage angst/emo/whatever the hell you call that horrible time. Even after I closed the book on that phase, I’ve wanted to get back into writing things down, but I’ve fumbled a lot with the platform aspect phase: I thought about doing my own CMS, played with iWeb, and looked into hosting my own installation of WP or something of the sort. Everything seemed to get in the way of actually putting my thoughts into words.

Fast forward to last month. I’ve begun work on an iOS app for a development house whose clients want to integrate a variety of social networking sharing into the user experience. Obviously, Facebook and Twitter are no-brainers, but the client also mentioned Tumblr as an option they’d like to support. I was initially quite skeptical, as I’d only ever seen Tumblr used for photo “like/retweet”-style reposting and even then only among a younger demographic. Soon after, I was quite surprised to discover that some blogs I frequently read (e.g: MG Siegler’s Parislemon) are backed entirely by Tumblr.

So here’s a bit of an experiment, partially to get back into blogging, partially to check out how well Tumblr works, and partially to ~~rant~~ comment on various topics in technology, law, gaming, sports, and whatever else crosses my mind.