iMessage Beta: My Thoughts

Today Apple dropped a bomb and announced a new update coming to OS X this summer called Mountain Lion. Mountain Lions are both cool and a bit scary so I'm thinking that's where this update may stand, but we'll see.

We've all been expecting tighter integration between OS X and iOS and this appears to be a huge step in that direction. One of the applications that I've always thought would make the most sense in that connected state was iMessage. iChat is really a pretty awful application and the fact that it has remained essentially untouched for years is a good indicator that Apple has thought the same thing.

Today you are able to download the beta of iMessage for your Mac if you want to give it a try. Of course I grabbed it right away. I've been messing with it today and here are my initial day one thoughts. They're a bit mixed, but this is a beta version so a lot of these things could certainly change before final release so keep that in mind.

It's All Blurry

The line between texting, chatting, video calling, etc. is blurring. This is good, I think. It's a little strange and is taking some getting used to, but essentially iMessage appears to have the ability to sync message with all your devices.

If someone sends you an iMessage to an email address you have connected to iMessage (your Apple ID perhaps) that message will go to your Mac if you have iMessage open and it will also go to your iPhone. If you retrieve the message on either device the new message notification is gone on the other.

Nice, but sitting at a coffee shop with my phone on the table next to me and iMessage open on my Mac I get double notification for each message. It's kind of annoying actually. I'm sure the people sitting around me are super impressed that my phone keeps vibrating and I just keep ignoring it. A little notification customization may fix this, but I haven't found a way to pull it off just yet.

Also, if someone sends an iMessage to your iPhone number then you'll only receive that on your phone. Is that bad you ask? I don't know. Probably not, but that sort of un-blurs the line a bit.

A big positive to this is the ability to continue conversations through multiple devices. If I'm using iMessage on my Mac and need to leave the computer I can seamlessly continue the conversation on my iPhone without anyone knowing the difference.

Only Apple-ites

Now being able to text from the Mac is a big selling point for iMessage. That's awesome, but it only works with other Apple users. Specifically iMessage users. This isn't a major deal to me as a majority of the people I text heavily are iPhone users, but it puts some heavy restriction on its functionality and still forces me to use different services and methods for communicating with different people. That's a pain in the ass.

Video and No Voice, I think

iChat was able to do voice calls, which believe it or not I used from time to time. I'm not seeing a method for conducting a voice call with iMessage which bums me out a bit.

Video calls can be made via FaceTime which makes sense I think. Again, these are restricted to Apple users.

It seems like Apple is viewing FaceTime as the future of phone calls and that is probably a valid prediction.

Final Thoughts of iMessage Beta

So far I think it's pretty great, but for some reason it still doesn't feel quite right to me. It's not connecting the dots for me like I was hoping it would.

I've been thinking about this and to be honest I can't really figure out exactly what would be the ideal situation for me. I like some of the things that iMessage does and then others I don't. This is probably a good indicator that Apple is wandering off into uncharted territories once again. I don't even know what I want. Maybe I'll realize it if/when I get it. For now I guess it's cool to see something in a completely different direction (or multiple directions).

The restriction to only Apple users does kind of suck. If iMessage could be more open on some level it would immediately become at least twice as cool. FaceTime was built on open video standards but Apple still restricts its usage. Maybe there's hope of that service as well as iMessage opening up a bit the future.

Overall, it's fun to see some of the drastic things that Apple has in mind. They've got a pretty good track record of changing the way we do things. We'll see if they can pull it off again. For now, color me cautiously skeptical.

I Like Demos

I'm not a huge gamer, but I own an Xbox 360. I'll dabble from time to time, but it's turned into my primary Netflix watching device. A huge interface update was released a couple months ago and recently I decided I should probably expand beyond my Netflix watching and scope out what else this streaming video machine can do.

I went into the games area and did some wandering. The one thing that I thought was so great was the demo or trial feature available on most of the games. I've always had that problem with Xbox games. They're so damn expensive that it's hard to swallow a $50 purchase to just try one out. So after losing my Blockbuster card I just quit paying attention (yeah, that's a joke...I still have it...ok, that's a joke too). Reviews are great, but I like to try stuff out and I don't like to pay a large sum to try something out either. I end up just avoiding something I could potentially love.

I really wish the iOS App Store, and even more so, Mac App Store would figure out a way to easily allow for demos like my Xbox does. There's a lot to be said about a demo. Have you ever caught yourself staring at the $9.99 purchase button on the App Store entry of an application you think you'd love, but just aren't completely sure, trying to figure out if it would be worth it, bouncing back and forth between reviews, only to end up deciding it probably isn't worth it? Or is it? No, probably isn't. But what if it is? It could save you 30 seconds a day. Ok, probably not worth it.

Yeah, me neither.

Developers offer demos of their applications outside of the Mac App Store all the time. It's nearly standard practice. The Mac App Store seems like a perfect way to manage demos. It handles new installs and re-installs and updates just fine. Why not demos?

I do a lot of application reviewing and as the App Store takes a bigger hold it's getting more and more difficult to find demos of the applications I want to try out. No, "lite" version on the App Store don't count. That's cheating.

I was going to say I think I'd end up with a lot more applications, but the reality is that I'd probably have about the same amount, but they'd be ones that I actually used. I've purchased several apps over the years where I can say had there been a demo for me to try I wouldn't have purchased. So maybe bad developers wouldn't make as much money?

Well, this is going nowhere. I can't really find much of a point in here other than I think there should be demo capability built in the Mac App Store so this is essentially just a bitch session. Sorry. Thanks for listening though.

Oh, and if you know someone that works at Apple see what you can do. Also, an OS X bluetooth update would be nice too. That thing really pissed me off the other day too. Thanks.

I've Found a Purpose for "Check-ins"; Excitement Ensues

That title may be a little strange depending upon where you live, your technological prowess or you desire to let the world know what you're doing every waking moment of your life. Check-ins and status updates are an extremely common activity and I've struggled to figure out the need and desire to do this, but I think I may have discovered an actual use. I know, exciting isn't it?

I've relocated recently from a small town to Chicago and after doing this I decided to take another look at the whole status updates thing and with that I decided to throw in checking-in to places as well. While the status update thing has been still a bit of a mystery to me at this point (I'm not giving up yet), I think I have found a legitimate use (or even two) for checking-in.

When I talk about checking-in, I'm referring specifically to foursquare. I know there are other applications in the field and even Facebook now includes such a feature, but foursquare was there first, so my I pledge my geek allegiance to them (first at least).

I've had the iPhone app for some time on my phone and I think I used it once just to check it out more or less. The last couple weeks I've used it quite regularly to simply keep track of the restaurants, bars and coffee shops I go to. Chicago (and any large city for that matter) has essentially an endless crop of establishments and I feel that it is my duty to check out as many as possible and then document which are the best (by my standards). I guess it makes sense to document ones that suck too so I don't make the same mistake twice. No need for that yet, but there could be.

In the small town where I came from this could be done quite easily in my head. Not so much here. I haven't repeated a venue since I've been here and the list of places to try grows faster than my wallet can keep up with. And there's something (probably a defect) in my personality that likes to keep track of things like this.

I've also chosen to send my check-ins to Twitter. To be honest, I always thought this was a bit annoying when seeing these in the stream from other people, but I'm only using it for checking-in to certain locations so it won't get as spammy I don't think. And as a side effect I get a little more action in my Twitter stream (still working on that). You won't see me checking into bus stops or trains or my house or anything like that. That's still dumb.

Foursquare includes some other functionality that is quite cool. I'm making lists of places I've been so I can stay better organized and I'm also utilizing the explore feature to find and get to new places. In fact, I found the coffee shop I'm writing this from via that feature.

The app is great, which is really helpful in getting me to use it, plus I derive some genuine functionality from it. I think it'll maintain its space as a regularly used app for me while I'm living in a big city. So, I'm now on board with check-ins. At least partially.

Journaling App Journey

Writing a personal journal hasn't been something that I've always done. Even recently I wouldn't say that I've actually been journaling, but rather just writing each day. I've been doing 750 Words writings nearly every day for the better part of the last year. While the theory behind these is to do a brain dump in the morning to clear your mind for the day, these entries have turned into more of a journal that I write at some point during the day. At some point I realized there really wasn't a whole lot of value in returning to previous entries. That's part of the process of these writings, but I felt like I could get more out of it. I enjoy the metrics (totally accurate or not) that are automatically generated and there are some methods to track some other more custom metrics. I tried this for a while as there were some other things I wanted to track, but I quickly fell out of that habit.

With my new lifestyle I decided to try out an actual journaling application. There are many options in the field and the three I zeroed in on were MacJournal, Day One, and Chronories. 

MacJournal is very well regarded and after some research seemed to be a little more robust than I really needed. Day One and Chronories were the two finalists in my mind. Those were appealing for very different reasons. Day One is a barebones, impeccably designed journaling application that also has accompanying iPhone and iPad apps. Chronories is what you might call a new-age journaling application. It utilizes technology to accumulate data as well as allowing actual journal writing.

These are two areas that appeal to me. I love minimal, focused applications like Day One and I'm also really interested in the self-analysis Chronories would allow. After more deliberation than was healthy, I decided on Chronories. In the end I thought it would be most interesting to track some data about myself as a I embark on a career change and a big lifestyle change. 

I'm only a couple days into using Chronories, but here's a basic rundown of it's capabilities. Each day's entry is contstructed from a combination of automatically compiled data along with a little manual intervention. After a bit of configuration and adjustment, Chronories can record things like the music you've been listening to in iTunes, the people you've emailed and chatted with, the temperature where you're at, your mood, the applications you've been using and several other other things. Some of these items can be manually added to and tweaked to record exact what you're looking for. Along with all of this there is also a space for an actual written journal entry.

Some standard report type views are set up so that after you've accumulated some data you can look back not only from an entry by entry point of view (calendar view), but also from many other angles. You could correlate your mood to the temperature for example. That sounds pretty cool to me and the process to completing an entry seems quite easy considering the amout of info that is recorded.

Regardless of what application or method you use a journal is only useful if you actually use it. We'll see how Chronories goes, but the combination of automatic and manual entry should make the process easier. More on this as my journaling continues on this year. 

Will Pay for App

A recent tweet by, developer of Instapaper, Marco Arment mentioned that he had been getting hit up for promo codes for his latest and most significant update of his application, Instapaper. The messages claimed that they "loved his application" and he was in turn questioning why they wouldn't just buy his application if they loved it so much. Valid argument.

I've had this discussion with a lot of people the last couple years regarding paying for applications and I've realized that I run up against a couple of common push backs to paying for applications. I've had mixed results in explaining the value in paying for the applications we use and love.

One is that of the younger person that inevitibly grew up in the Napster/Pirate Bay era of pirated music and software. They got crafty using what was a fairly new tool when they became interested (the Internet and World Wide Web) in locating what they wanted and downloading without repurcussion or thought of impact for free. This builds up an expectation that can be really harmful to artists and developers. That "why pay when I can get it for free?" mentality kicks in without the thought of what impact those decisions have on developers and artists.

The other is the flat out cheap person. The mentality seems similar, but the bottom line is that they just don't want to spend any money if they don't absolutely have to. In the beginning they get pissed at any additional cost past the device they just purchased on the recommendation from their tech savvy nephew. I've run into this one mostly with people of older generations.

Apple has done a great deal to "right the ship" so to speak. Platforms have been provided that make the process of selling and purchasing insanely easy for both sides of the transaction. Of course there are still a wide variety of methods for pirating, but at least now a simple, makes sense process is in place.

Apple has simplified the transaction so much that I've found it is easier to get people to see my side of the argument, which is that paying for the applications you use is incredbily beneficial to everyone. In the Appstore world applications are priced very competitively (in some cases I would argue too cheap) so the price of applications becomes less of a hurdle. It's easier to prove that a $0.99 app is worth the purchase to my 70 year old uncle than a $30 piece of software.

There will always be free applications and I have no gripe about those and I actually use a couple regularly. There are different strategies developers employ and reasons for offering applications for free and that is fine and an entirely different discussion all together. What I find interesting is when a developer decides to change their pricing model and start to say charge $0.99 for an app that was previously free and the user community (or at least some of it) is up in arms about it. I don’t have apps on my iPhone that I don’t use and if I use an application and it benefits me I just can’t see complaining about throwing a dollar at a developer who worked hard to create a useful tool.

I have absolutely no problem paying for an application if it in fact useful for me. If it isn’t then I don’t need it and won’t download it simply because it’s free. I have had some luck in swaying people to my side of the fence. New users will push back at first, but eventually see the validity in what I’m saying and how simple and affordable the Appstores.

Paying $4.99 for an application as amazing and useful as Instapaper is just a no-brainer. It’s a carefully designed and built application that serves a fantastic purpose for many people. Not only that, Marco is an independent developer (like many, many iOS developers) who puts a lot of care and time into making his application the best it can be. He cares and you can feel it. Paying for his work only encourages his continued efforts and judging by what he’s already done, the application will most definitely become even better. Marco gets compensated and his users continue to get a great product. It’s a win-win.

If the app is useful to you, cut back on one triple-caramel-mocha-latte (or whatever) this month and pay for it.