Nearly everybody plays a computer game such as Solitaire from time to time. Have you ever had this deja vu feeling you’ve played this same game before? Did that initial “deal” look unsettlingly familiar?

Have you ever yelled at a computer game, “who shuffled this?”

My irritation with this led to remembering all the nasty little complications we’ll “overview” in this article.

There’s a reason for “bad shuffles.” To make each game unique, computers depend on random numbers.

If you don’t play computer games, you still probably realize security passwords are also just random numbers and letters. There’s a more serious side to this discussion. Random numbers are essential to secure password generation, encryption, and even national security.

The core idea to a series of random numbers is unpredictability. Knowing what one number is, should give us no clue what the next number will be.

As explained in Wikipedia’s entry on Random number generation, scientists, mathematicians, statisticians and programmers recognize two general “types” of random numbers:

1. “True” random numbers, generated by sampling some natural random process, such as the flip of a coin, toss of the dice, or sampling the states of quantum bits. But if you think about it, many physical phenomena in the real world that appear to be random are truly not. The shape of the lava blob at each instant in time in the popular 1960′s “Lava lamps” is always dependent on its shape in the previous instant.

“Wheels of fortune,” lottery ball tumblers, roulette wheels and card shuffling machines are examples of mechanical “true” random sequence generators which, when not rigged, do a better job than most of the “stock” functions supplied with personal computers and server-based user functions.

2. “Generated” random numbers use mathematical algorithms, some highly ingenious, to generate sequences that are for most purposes indistinguishable from true randomness. But, because they are generated by a predictable or programmable process, they are also called “quasi-random” numbers. Our desktop PC’s and Macs use simple random numbers to display arbitrary screensaver images on our monitors.

When I was in pre-computer high school math, we all used the “CRC Standard Mathematical Tables and Formulae” book. (Amazon still sells them!) There were pages and pages of random number tables in the back of the book. They were probably generated in some university laboratory somewhere. They were very random. But, if you had the tables, and you knew what the 2,573rd random number was, you always knew what the 2,574th number was going to be. To generate a UNIQUE random number series, you also had to devise an arbitrary random lookup scheme.

I’ve written any number of computer and web programs for personal and private use that depend in some way on random numbers. For simple tasks like a random quotations generator or photo banner carousel, one can call the Perl rand() function to pick a quote at random out of the entire collection. You can call another function to generate a random “seed” to plug into rand(), or you can just give it a “seed” like server time (“1347727038″) which increments uniquely every second.

The thing is, a poorly designed “seed” may always return the same starting number and random number sequence every time you start the program. This can lead to those “bad shuffles” of your card game. Or, the next time you call server time, one second in the future, it will return “1347727039″ which means we are off to a bad start right away!

I NEVER try to write my own code for password generation, secure hashes, or anything involving identity protection, privacy or file and data security. Instead, I use canned industrial-strength functions like 128 and 256-bit MD5 (which itself can be hacked today if you have a powerful enough computer and enough time).

Having said all that, I once wrote my own random number generator to see how well I could do it.

The following isn’t a workshop or tutorial. It’s just to show you, very roughly, one or two simple techniques that might be used. Here’s a rough outline of what I remember doing (and it is very crude):

1. Pick a unique number, say, server time: 1347727039
2. scramble the digits: 0719743723
3. square it: 518031026797901000
4. Extract the middle 10 digits: 3102679790
5. square that: 9626621879274440000
6. take your required number of digits out of the middle: ’9′, or ’218792744′ or whatever you need.

The serious programmer or statistician can see several flaws in the assumptions my simple algorithm uses. For example, the “scramble” action itself assumes access to some sort of randomizing process. Ultimately, since any process, once guessed, can be repeated, these numbers are at best quasi-random.

Unless you have a doctorate in math theory, there are hidden pitfalls to trap the unwary, and that includes me. One would avoid division, for example. The fraction 5/9 generates the horribly un-random series .55555555555 … Seven is another weird divisor. If you subtract a preset number like ’1′ from a result that happens to end in ’000′, you get ’999′ which is not what you were hoping for! Are your sequences always even numbers (bad)? Odd numbers (bad)? Do they include an expected distribution of prime numbers not divisible by anything else? (Good).

As the Wikipedia article emphasizes,

A “random number generator” based solely on deterministic computation cannot be regarded as a “true” random number generator, since its output is inherently predictable.

Nevertheless, it worked pretty well for whatever my requirement was at the time. But remember, home-brew techniques can’t be counted on to be truly random or truly secure (if security is your purpose).

Some years back I wrote a Perl password generator calling a stock MD5 checksum generator. I posted “Random Password” to this website where you can still find it in the Front Page  “Utility” menu. These days, most password vaults like 1Password will generate very secure unguessable passwords of arbitrary length.

A final word on security: password protection is NOT the same as encryption. A password just disables the file:open command until the password is authenticated at the document or application level. I’m sure you can still read many or most common pass-protected documents with one of the disk utilities that can read the hard drive directly, bit by bit. The thing is, you won’t know, because password program companies never guarantee file security. So, to protect against identity and data theft on a hard drive or other local storage media, NEVER entrust your personal financial, banking, medical or other sensitive files and data to a simple password.

Encryption scrambles the whole document or vault storage space with sophisticated algorithms that could take a NASA supercomputer weeks to crack. Password vaults like 1Password or RoboForm aren’t just password protected; they securely encrypt all data.

Lastly, if your card program doesn’t shuffle well enough, try another one!

Readers are free to check their own resources and form their own conclusions. Below is my own comment, which I posted to GigaOM.com today. It is still in the moderation queue – a necessary evil these days – but I felt it worth repeating.

I think the proposal to replace juries with a tribunal of experts in patent disputes is more dangerous than the ills it proposes to remedy. (1) the patent system is itself a legal process, and to exclude plaintiffs from due process would be wrong. (2) Empaneling a jury free of bias and susceptibility to being swayed is the job of the trial attorneys; (3) ”Experts” can be biased too, but there is no appeal from that, and (4) a panel of programmers would look at the code, determine that different subroutines and methods had been called, and conclude that therefore it is impossible that a look and feel issue could have been copied.”

– Alex Forbes

—–
LINKS:

• GigaOM: 3 reasons juries have no place in the patent system
• Slashdot: Why Juries Have No Place In the Patent System

Litigation over who can own and patent design concepts, even when centuries old, is completely out of control.

It’s instructive to glance at a quick Google search for “slide lock patent” — you’ll get over 4 million hits.

Almost every “object” in our modern software graphic user interfaces has an exact analog in the old-fashioned mechanical world of cabinets, drawers, handles, pulls, latches, catches, files, folders, desktops, and locks.

From today’s SlashDot:

“In a move that is likely to have wide-ranging implications for patent rulings around the world, a High Court Judge in the UK has ruled that HTC did not infringe on a number if Apple’s patents. ‘He said Apple’s slide-to-unlock feature was an “obvious” development in the light of a similar function on an earlier Swedish handset.’ Two other patents that Apple had claimed were infringed were ruled invalid, while a third was found not to apply to HTC. A statement from the Taiwanese firm said: ‘HTC is pleased with the ruling, which provides further confirmation that Apple’s claims against HTC are without merit. We remain disappointed that Apple continues to favour competition in the courtroom over competition in the marketplace.’ Apple declined to comment on the specifics of the case. Instead it re-issued an earlier statement, saying: ‘We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.’”

I’m not taking sides here, partly because Asia is notorious for disrespecting American software copyrights and patents. Mostly, on a deeper level, something is horribly out of control across both oceans. We’re all trying to patent drawer pull analogs and the “look and feel” of natural woodgrain laminates.

The evolution of the software slide lock has been long in coming. Its design purpose was to provide a protective control someplace in between completely open access and a compete userid/password lockdown. The idea is to prevent the user from accidentally triggering an action or changing a setting they didn’t intend to, without being overly intrusive.

• DOS and Linux users will remember the ubiquitous command-line question “Are you sure (Y/N)?”
• Mac and Windows users will remember the old two-button “dialog boxes” that used to pop up, asking us, “You are about to permanently change your Administrator Password,” presenting the iconic “OK” and Cancel buttons.
• Since Snow Leopard or somewhat before, Apple had adopted a graphic symbol of a tiny padlock. You had to click that symbol before you could change a user setting or preference. You could click the symbol again to re-lock.
• Currently I see the new “slide locks”in the Apple Store, and on my iPad. Its larger size facilitates “gesture” inputs on touch-screens. The requirement that we intentionally slide a slider to unlock, further safeguards against unintentional unlocks on either smart devices or older Mac and PC mouse-click technologies.

There are many ways to write a better or faster algorithm, app or entire operating system. I strongly support copyrights and patents for original software code. I’ll grant there are few things more discouraging than writing a snazzy new software slide lock, only to see it go viral a few months later. We also saw these same issues back in the 1950′s as car manufacturers shamelessly copied styles from others, but we never saw Buick suing Lincoln or Packard because of the occasional, more-than-passing resemblances of their chromed front grilles.

Making litigation even more fractious is the fact that patent systems differ worldwide. The same infringement lawsuits must often be filed in China, Holland, the UK, Belgium, and the USA.

I suspect a solution will need an international consortium of legal and industrial cooperation. It may require complete removal of protection for purely cosmetic enhancements which intentionally mimic older mechanical hardware analogs. Or, it may evolve a new limited-term patent category for intangible puffery, say, for one year. That would allow some design exclusivity without stymieing creative design.

Let’s think one last time about the cabinet and furniture hardware industry. For “pulls” – handles to open drawers, cabinet doors and the like – we can think of the hundreds and hundreds of available designs we’ve seen. Chromed. Brass. Round. Square Ornate old English, Scandinavian minimalist, and on and on. The older we are, the more designs we can remember. And then there are the matching hinges – concealed, ornate, heavy-duty, and so forth. How far should laws allow the patent system to go?

The basic design process was all the same: start with a mechanical drawing or wax sculpture. Make a die or investment casting. Stamp or cast them out by the hundreds of thousands, in catalogs featuring thousands of different designs. If we’d opened all those designs up to the patent and litigation process, would we ever have made it into the 21st century? Whether fabricated by investment casting or software subroutines, They’re all just handles, latches, pulls, and locks.

We need to clean up our byzantine, gone-amok legal systems that determine what can be patented, not to mention freeing up choked worldwide legal systems which really should be deploying their resources on much more pressing concerns.

• Thank you, I’ve just been searching for information about this subject for ages and yours is the greatest I have discovered till now. But, what about the bottom line? Are you positive in regards to the source?|What i do not realize is in fact how you’re no longer really a lot more smartly-preferred than you might be now. You are so intelligent.
• I just like the helpful info you supply in your articles. I will bookmark your weblog and take a look at once more here regularly. I am fairly sure I will be told a lot of new stuff proper right here! Best of luck for the next!
• Is there somematter that the internet cannot do? I’ve been able to get four commercial real estate classes in the past three days.
• You are actually a excellent webmaster. The web site loading pace is amazing. It seems that you are doing any unique trick. Moreover, The contents are masterwork. you’ve performed a great task in this topic!
• hi!,I really like your writing so so much! share we keep in touch more approximately your article on AOL? I require an expert in this house to solve my problem. Maybe that is you! Having a look forward to see you.
• Generally I do not learn post on blogs, however I wish to say that this write-up very compelled me to try and do it! Your writing style has been surprised me. Thanks, quite nice article.

As you can see, most of these bogus posts aren’t even scripted in the United States. They are inanely and generically friendly without saying anything about the article to which they might appear to be responding. That’s because they’re mass-mailed to blog-land, and linked to sleazy websites, some porno, some for trash products and services. If you click one, someone gets paid a fraction of a rupee or a yuan. It’s all a parasitical numbers game, fleas on the back of the great lumbering internet.

They also appear to be able to defeat or otherwise circumvent CAPTCHA, but I have a couple of other mechanisms that ensure they never get posted. I delete them periodically like a gardener pulling weeds.

There is a $29 conversion utility by Flip4Mac for Mac QuickTime, but I never edit movie files. I found a free player-only version at Microsoft (embedded below), and it worked seamlessly for me. (Reboot your Mac after installation):

• SOPA – Wikipedia
• Slashdot
• Rackspace CEO
• Rackspace Blog

This bill would allow copyright holders or the U.S. Justice Department to seek a court order which goes against internet providers (instead of just against individual offenders) when websites are accused of “enabling” copyright violations or counterfeited goods.

The bill does require a court order before enforcement of its provisions. But by all accounts the bill is poorly written and vaguely worded. So it should not be too hard to find sympathetic judges to issue those orders based on personal interpretations of loosely worded law.

One of my questions was: what would prevent copyright holders from seeking redress now? The Millennium Digital Copyright Act currently allows copyright holders to ask internet providers to take down specific content that’s in obvious violation of copyright law. In fairness, many providers view this as infringement of First Amendment rights, or an impossibly onerous burden of policing and adjudication, or both. Most would not be expected to be too cooperative with efforts to involve them in efforts to censor their subscribers’ content in any way. And they have a point. This kind of censorship, so prevalent in the far east and parts of the middle east, is used to strengthen totalitarian regimes and neutralize or eliminate dissent. It appears SOPA would partially dismantle protections for websites that act in good faith.

We should not miss noticing this is just a new example of one segment of our “free enterprise system” trying to legally ensnare another segment into doing its bidding.

SOPA advocates claim the bill is not aimed at sites like YouTube which host all manner of content (usually excerpted snippets) uploaded by the public. But, SOPA does not appear to have any protections that would prevent action against a site on the YouTube model if a plaintiff felt like it.

So it is strange indeed that the SOPA bill was introduced by Lamar S. Smith, Republican U.S. Representative from Texas. Smith’s own website prominently banners his aim of “lifting the burden of regulations that is strangling small businesses.”

The “counterfeited goods” provision is also interesting. It has nothing to do with online piracy as the public understands it; it has to do with the intellectual property of the pharmaceutical industry (drug patents), such as Pfizer, which is involved in committee hearings. SOPA could completely block U.S. citizens from gaining online access to Canadian and other international pharmaceutical sites. It is currently already illegal to ship prescription drugs from outside the U.S. whether or not a legitimate doctor’s prescription is supplied. SOPA could prevent you from even viewing those sites:

True censorship:

When Congress placed new restrictions on fees banks could charge retailers for debit card usage, a Bank of America spokesman howled this was “unwarranted interference” with the bank’s ability to conduct its business. BofA then announced its intent to impose a $5 monthly “swipe fee” on its customers, but backed in face of a howl of public protest and boycotts.

The Republican Party, the party of favor for corporations and big business, has long charged moderates and liberals with exactly this kind of “unwarranted interference,” going so far as to claim Big Government is destroying America. Yet, where their own business and lobbying interests are concerned, conservatives and their sponsoring corporations are capable of being even more interventionist than their more moderate political opponents. SOPA isn’t just bad law. SOPA doesn’t actually accomplish what it claims to do. What it instead accomplishes is disturbing. It’s a stealth attack on freedom – a very dangerous thing for business, the country, and informed citizens of any political persuasion.

In researching this error I noted quite a bit of chatter from other Office for Mac users. Microsoft’s own support page for this issue was unhelpful. Google’s Help forum listed a similar issue but my problem was with my POP accounts, not with Google’s IMAP account. Solutions seemed in short supply. I had this problem on my MacBook Pro running Lion 10.7.2 – but not on my Mac Pro desktop with the same app, OS and settings.

Microsoft suggests checking to see you have an internet connection. If you are reading their web support page, they helpfully point out that you already do. They suggest checking your DNS setting in Networking, and rechecking your server and port settings in Outlook “Accounts.” All of mine were correct and agreed 100% with the Outlook for Mac 2011 settings on my Mac Pro.

My Apple MAIL works fine with the same settings. My settings also worked fine for years under Office 2007 and Windows 7.

Remember, this is Microsoft, not Apple. Others had tried all this without getting any closer to the problem.

I resolved my issue with what I call the “Dave Anguay Method.” Dave taught me this trick many years ago. He was setting up new networked workplace printers on our corporate PC laptops on a Windows server. If you can’t get the setting to work, don’t waste time asking your Administrator to “fix” it. Delete the bad account or connection, and re-add it.

I deleted my 3 inoperative POP mail accounts and re-added them manually. Everything works fine. Thanks again, Dave.

I am a great note–taker: to-do notes, checklists, reminders, dashed-out thoughts and drafts for that Great American Novel. As I use different machines for different locations and tasks, finding where I put that note is not always that easy. Yes, I do file syncs, but not every day. I also use (and thoroughly recommend) the indispensable Dropbox for Cloud file syncs across multiple devices and locations.

But I’ve wanted to get away from that text file syndrome for a long time. Individual text file notes are under-the-hood equivalents of Post-It Notes on the refrigerator. Notepads and note organizers have long been a dime a dozen. I even wrote a crude one in C once. Apps come and go so fast I went back to huge folders of text files back in the 1990′s.

I hope Evernote sticks around. I found it by accident in the Apple App Store, while looking for something compatible with the Notes app that comes on the iPad. I found Evernote instead, which is much, much more robust. It’s available for Mac, PC and mobile devices: iPad, iPhone, Blackberry and DROID. I now have it on all my computers. Best of all, they all talk to one another via the Cloud. No more file syncs, no more lost notes. This isn’t a full review, but …

I’m already awarding it Summitlake’s Five Stars.

As I wrote a nephew,

And I hope you’ll check it out too. Below is a screen shot of my app (Grabbed on the iMac) with my starter set of my own notes. A place for everything at last, and everything in its place. You can subcategorize your notes by Notebooks, and you can create as many of then as you want. You can access the same notes in the same format anywhere on any machine or platform, and you can also access your notes on the Web. You can export backups of your notebooks to the local hard drive.

Users are even assigned a free individual email address which will post directly to your free Evernote account. And so you will still find it on any one of your Evernote machine or device installations next time you open Evernote. Not bad for a free app.  This app (and the services behind it) are certainly worth a bona fide retail price.  I can’t even find where I might send a PayPal donation. I think the implementation of this idea is pure genius. Cheers!

We’ve all had a chance to review his life on TV newscasts, TV specials, online articles and analyses, and tributes. The number of tributes exceeded anything I hoped for or expected. Even at news sources I normally distrust, coverage was positive yet balanced and told a remarkable story that will be retold many more times in coming decades. I think iPad2 turned out to be a brilliantly fitting way to launch the post-Jobs era. It embodies all the design elegance, under-the-hood power and user-friendly simplicity he devoted his life to.

Too few of us read and enjoy The New Yorker perhaps, but as one dedicated fan of that magazine, I can recommend their October 17, 2011 online article “How Steve Jobs Changed,” by James Surowiecki. Surowiecki is an accomplished writer and financial analyst who writes the magazine’s The Financial Page. Read Surowiecki article

But this post is about my first impressions of my iPad, even though its rationale is for me closely connected to reading my weekly The New Yorker on iPad and, eventually, all my other periodicals.

I was introduced to my first hands-on iPad experience by a friend whose eyesight issues may be worse than my own. He bought iPad to help rectify that. I find myself limiting reading sessions with print periodicals, either because of poor-quality newsprint, or lighting and glare issues with high-quality glossy magazine pages such as are mailed to me by The New Yorker and National Geographic. My friend says he can’t read a regular newspaper at all any more. I get all my in-depth news online, and for free, at sources such as BBC, Huffington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Scientific American, PolitiFact and MarketWatch.

I’m fine with reading news on computer flat-screen panels. But I never cared for being chained to a computer chair to read books or magazines at length. I’ve already started downloading my The New Yorker issues to iPad, and find them eminently easier to read and navigate than those paper editions. This is a vast improvement over early industry efforts to find a suitable ebook format for periodicals.

I ordered the basic 16GB Wi-Fi model iPad. I don’t have 3G on my Verizon account and I’m unwilling to pay the monthly charges for it. 3G is great for iPhone, perhaps, and for people always on the go. Even if 3G was free, my lifestyle is such that I’d seldom be in a location where I’d have any need for it. Obviously, if you are “mobile” – move around a lot away from home and take your devices with you – the Wi-Fi + 3G model would be best for you.

Wireless Networking

A wireless discussion is old hat to younger generations. I’ll discuss connectivity briefly for the rest of us.

The difference between Wi-Fi and 3G: Wi-Fi is the wireless home network currently used in most homes around the network to connect to the internet and with other computers and devices on the home network. 11n is the current protocol, and it is much better than anything available a couple of years ago. Wi-Fi typically has a range of a few hundred feet at best. 3G extends the range of services available from cellular providers such as Verizon, AT&T or Sprint, making possible “on the road” internet connection, mobile TV, video on demand, and location-based services. In short, 3G can eliminate the need for any home network at all, though Americans still pay dearly for 3G.

The iPad isn’t a handheld computer and isn’t meant to be. It can’t do much without a Wi-Fi or 3G wireless connection. You need an internet connection to connect to and surf the internet on Safari, set up and send mail, download apps, download eBooks, or all the other things I’m discovering I can do with my iPad. Yes, even Facebook. I can run business apps on iPad, though I probably won’t. That’s more than I can do with my legacy Kindle, though I’m still a Kindle fan too and have purchased several books in Kindle format (and I’m writing one of my own, too.)

Public Wi-Fi “hotspots” are nearly ubiquitous in places frequented by travelers and coffee-shoppers. I first connected to public Wi-Fi in the Seattle Airport in 2008, with my horrible old Vista laptop, while waiting for a plane transfer.

Obviously we aren’t going to be roaming around the home or drive to a coffee house with an Ethernet cable attached to a smart device. And iPad doesn’t come with an Ethernet connection anyway.

When I bought my iPad I no longer had a home wireless set up anywhere. I own an Apple Airport, still in the box, but couldn’t see the point of setting it up. I’m still hard-wired for fast CAT5 Ethernet (the familiar blue and yellow cables) in both Phoenix and Castro Valley. It’s fast – much faster than Wi-Fi – but it’s “tethered.” Earlier experiments with wireless were frustrating, slow and unreliable. I had yanked all that out a couple of years ago.

A nephew guest had already set up a Belkin 11n wireless router in my Phoenix home and left it here for me. It’s plugged into my Ethernet router, so wireless devices can still share resources previously available only on devices’ shared folders on my existing wired CAT5 network. The Belkin 11n wireless router is utterly reliable – I have never had a drop-off – and it works all over the house and yard. It’s secure, and it’s plenty fast enough for downloading an app or even a 186MB magazine. In fact, I’m getting dependent on it. I’ll be setting up my Airport Wi-Fi in Castro Valley for the duration of my stay there. But I’m keeping fast CAT5 10/100 Ethernet too.

Using My iPad

This can’t be about how to use an iPad. Besides the fact there are plenty of ebooks on the topic, the whole point of the evolution of the Apple Desktop metaphor, in all of its reincarnations, is that you shouldn’t need a manual at all. The “manual” for an iMac was about ten 3×5 pages. The “manual” for an iPad is a single sheet of glossy 3×5 stock. You turn iPad on and just start using it. You learn by looking around and trying out the features. There is an operating system, under the hood, but you never see it unless you adjust your Settings.

You may be thinking, “Oh no, I always read the manual before using any device. It’s just the way I learn.” No, not this time. iPad makes it fun to break old learning habits (and it’s not a PC – you can’t break it.) But if you’re determined to dig in your heels, download iPad: The Missing Manual from O’Reilly, as an ebook – Print editions not available!

I used iPad Settings to connect to our local wireless network, which iPad found automatically – I just typed the router password to join the network. This level of ease is where manuals really start getting in the way of the real learning process. You’re supposed to be training your eyes and fingers, not your inductive reasoning skills. Just do it.

Books and Magazines: So far, I’ve downloaded the New Yorker app and the most recent three issues. I’ve installed the Kindle for iPad app and downloaded all my previously-purchased Kindle ebooks from Amazon onto my iPad. I compiled my book draft, the BIO project, in epub format (using a free online service) and loaded it into my iPad. The formatting of my book is just gorgeous — far more professional than the same source code compiled for my first or second-generation Kindle.

With all due respect to Amazon, I realized I was just using my early model Kindle to inspect and QC my draft autobiography. I’d purchased several Kindle ebooks, including my beloved Poirot and Sherlock Holmes mystery stories, but I’ll be damned if I was spending any time in the living room reading on my early gray-scale Kindle! Navigation was just, well, a pain in the ass. It was a good effort, but crude when compared to Apple iPad2 touchscreen “inertial scrolling” and finger-swipe technology that makes reading on iPad even easier than turning the pages of a hard-bound book. I’ve read about the color Kindle Fire, due November 15, which is going to be improved in more ways than color, and more fun to use. I actually pre-ordered one, too. But when I got to thinking about all the other ways I could use a very smart tablet, I canceled that Amazon order and bought my iPad2 at the online Apple Store.

Photos: I’ve loaded a ton of my photography images onto iPad. As with the magazine presentations, the clarity and richness of color photography is just stunning!

E-mail: I set up my gmail account on iPad and it works great. The visual graphic keyboard is the largest and best I’ve seen for a smart device, and I’m learning to use it with some proficiency. For more serious text entry one can also use a wireless keyboard via native iPad Bluetooth connectivity. I have an extra Apple wireless keyboard I can just leave on the coffee table when I want to write articles or longer e-mails.

Writing Notes: I’m a great jotter. I often get ideas or hear collectible quotes while watching TV and write them down on anything handy. In the past I’ve keep spiral notebooks and note pads everywhere. Sometimes I’ll dash into the computer room to write an article stub on the fly during a commercial. iPad (of course) has a great NotePad.

Music: My main music collection is in excess of 300GB of WAV files on iTunes (both Mac and PC). It plays through either PC speakers or a home entertainment system. iPad will never replace this. I have loaded a few songs onto iPad. Using the built-in “iPod” app, I monitored “The Belgian Detective” by Christopher Gunning, and Bach Cantata #208 played by Yo-Yo Ma. Playlists are presented in the friendly format familiar to anyone with iTunes. The sound is creditable for such a device. You’d not want to monitor Virgil Fox on the Royal Albert Hall pipe organ in London, playing Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, without plugging ear buds, an amp or a headset into the 3.5-mm stereo headphone minijack. I easily connected to iTunes at the Apple Store to download my previously-purchased songs. Regarding Apple Store, I do tend to favor CD’s and the bulky uncompressed WAV files, but I also appreciate that I can cherry-pick individual songs when I’m not sure I’m interested in the whole album.

Facebook: if I want, my Facebook app lets me monitor my Wall or post seamlessly.

Internet: Safari’s built-in and works well. You can also download a Firefox app, and probably Chrome too. Large web-pages (like this one) are scaled to fit the iPad tablet. As web developer I was first concerned, then relieved and delighted. Thanks to iPad’s brilliant high resolution display, I’m easily able to read pages and posts, navigate with hyperlinks and the javascript nav bars, view the pictures and slide galleries, and enjoy the surfing experience everywhere just as I do in the computer chair. Commercial and news sites work equally well.

Apps: There are loads of built-in Apple iPad apps. Apple iCloud is also rolling out for online storage, similar in concept to DropBox freeware I use on my Macs and PC’s. I have some interest in free secure storage for a limited number of my non-sensitive personal files. Even though Apple and Amazon servers are secure, one should not upload sensitive data (financial and password files for instance) to Cloud storage without encrypting it.

Sync: you can easily synch your files with your desktop machine or other devices, across the network or even via USB.

There are also over 140,000 downloadable third-party apps at the Apple Store and many of these are free, since they enable third-party services including magazines, ebooks, and other content services.

It’s true. The iPad2 is slim, elegant, and invites hands-on exploration. There is undoubtedly some way to accomplish almost all tasks an average user could imagine.

Yes, there are still plenty of good reasons to keep that desktop or laptop Mac or PC. Multiple-core CPU’s, terabytes of storage and 24″ flat panel displays are a few of them. Off the shelf, you can’t compile C code on iPad, write and upload Perl scripts and HTML pages, run Photoshop or edit image files, run batch programs for UC Berkeley’s Project SETI, or many of the other off-the-wall projects I run on my desktop machines. But there’s probably an iPad app for many of those tasks too. I won’t run my personal finances on an iPad, though there’s an app for that too. I won’t write or compile that Great American Book on iPad, but I can write as many draft pages or chapters on iPad as I like.

iPad2 lets me take my tasks wherever I happen to be in the house. Sure, I own that laptop, which runs Vista and is slow, and I hate it. iPad2 is instant-on. On iPad, I can find or return to any app or task in a flash, and start using it. That’s the Steve Jobs concept of Simplicity in a nutshell.

“More than just a big iPhone”

I don’t own an iPhone and may never own a smart phone. My two issues there are monthly cost of operation and display size. Early iPad critics feared iPad was really just a big iPhone. In theory you could configure an iPhone or similar smart device to do anything one can do on an iPad (they run the same iOS.) For me, monthly cost and display size would always be the show-stoppers. If you are very mobile, and can easily read a handheld smart device display, must have instant connectivity everywhere, and can only afford one device, well, then, iPhone, Blackberry or DROID may be the way to go. I have an older-generation LG cell phone, and I hate it, so I’ll probably replace it with an even simpler phone. A JitterBug style simple-phone for senior citizens is all I want for mobile telecommunications.

So I’m not quite clear on what the iPad can do you absolutely can’t do on an iPhone. In my case that’s problematic anyway, since I’m unlikely to adopt any such small device for input and output, except to field a phone call on my Senior Citizen simple-phone.

Once you actually get your hands on someone’s iPad2 and try it out for a few minutes, you won’t want to give it back. I have a feeling I’m going to love my iPad2 all the more as I use it.

©2011 Alex Forbes

As I predicted in that article, only days after the passing of Apple’s Steve Jobs, even hardball political commentary broadcasts like Inside Washington were rediscovering how many ways Steve Jobs will continue to influence how we conduct our daily lives. One commentator said that people who used to read real newspapers and real magazines now read the online edition on their iPad. I’d like to take that a step further and say I know people who never used to read real newspapers or real magazines, who’ve started devouring serious professional news resources on their laptops and iPads.

It really doesn’t matter if one does or doesn’t “like” Apple. Some of us have a contrarian distrust of anything that becomes too iconic, too popular, or attracts anything that smells like a cult. Some people may feel all the credit given to Jobs somehow diminishes the real innovations of the many others in other competitive industries. And of course most homes, and the entire business community, still run on the Windows platform.

My point is simple. It doesn’t matter whether we like Mac or PC. It doesn’t matter whether we’re a techno-geek who only speaks Linux, or a baby boomer still trying to figure out how to copy and paste and send those e-mail things. It doesn’t matter whether we carry a laptop, tablet, e-reader or iPod-type device.

Whatever we do and however we do it today, in 1984 Jobs changed the course of how the world does things. Every device you see, touch, listen to or consult uses graphic metaphors introduced to the mass consumer in a neat little package called “the Mac.” Perhaps you like Windows? I use both platforms. Windows isn’t a copy of the first Mac OS, it’s just a direct descendant of every concept introduced by Macintosh.

Today I’d like illustrate the debt of gratitude we really do owe Steve Jobs and his Apple team. Some of us are too young to remember those early Mac days. Many of us, including oldsters like me, can feel free to simply take for granted the incredible palette of instinctive tools we use in interacting with our Macs, PC’s, iPhones, iPads and iPods and all such similar devices. That’s as it should be.

As I wrote in my earlier article, one of those things we absolutely take for granted today, as we should, is our “user-friendly interface.” We expect our devices to lead us logically and intuitively into the tasks we need to accomplish, and we expect to discover new things we can do with our devices on the fly, as we use them – not after hours of poring through volumes of old-fashioned user manuals.

Prior to Apple II, the pitifully few “home computers” that existed were hand-wired electronics cases, usually kits, with glowing lights to indicate states and results. Despite my college background on FORTRAN, I had no curiosity about them. Those were workbench toys for true geeks. The idea of a “practical” home computer was then an oxymoron.

From Wikipedia:

In 1977 Apple II married the QWERTY keyboard, color TV monitor, 5″ floppy disk and printer capability to a modest 6502 processor chip and 16K of RAM. Wozniak wrote its Apple OS. This spawned the first commercial software, such as Dan Bricklin’s VisiCalc spreadsheets and basic word processing applications we could recognize and use today.

This in turn primed homes and the workplace for downstream devices like Radio Shack’s TRS-80, Atari for music and gaming, and, in 1981, the great and iconic IBM PC. Although there were tech-intensive ways to load data into machines via floppy disk, these machines generally required users to first input commands and data into their machines via a series of command-line questions and responses in early DOS versions, which in turn owed its heritage to Unix. The Apple II had an improved command-line interface, but we still typed a response, a menu selection number or our data into the Apple, just like its imitators.

Macintosh changed all that forever in 1984 with its GUI or “graphics user interface.” Jobs saw “concept” prototypes of all this at Xerox PARC. His genius was recognizing that (1) anyone could learn to use this, and (2) he could improve upon that, mass-produce it elegantly, and deliver it affordably to anyone.

What the hell is a “graphic user interface?” As obvious as the question seems, what we see on the screen is only the tip of the iceberg. The real power is underneath.

Starting with the Mac, it’s the iconic graphic representation of tasks we previously performed by typing commands into a black-and-white command-line interface. Its hallmark is intuitive ease of use enforced by consistent deployment and conventions across all applications that run on a given operating system. And it’s no accident that most of those conventions were commercially introduced or invented at Apple. The very idea of a powerful “user” rule book to impose standardization on how the interface is presented to us was Apple’s invention and they enforced it in-house and with the software shops. The built-in code toolkit to make it easy to program under Apple house rules was awesome. Apple called it their “human interface guidelines,” and it changed the industry – and how we use the devices – forever.

It also changed how we communicate forever. What follows is old-hat gospel to veteran Mac and PC users, but I mention it here because we have a whole new generation of users fortunate enough to be able to take all this for granted, like electricity and running water in my parents’ generation.

Whether you scroll through iTunes with a swipe of finger, enjoying that free inertially-loaded scrolling, or use two fingers to zoom in on a selection, or click “Yes” on a Mac or PC, that’s part of an interface. In no particular order, here, from Macintosh, are some of the software tools we’ve come to expect everywhere:

• Mouse, from Xerox PARC, and the idea of coordinate mapping the whole screen: everything you can click, drag, select, zoom, expand, resize, minimize, draw, fill, color, cut, copy, paste, insert, open, save, find, search, or jump to with a mouse. Touchpads also first appeared on Macs.
• Click-able shortcuts or aliases
• Fonts and typography: Jobs revitalized the whole typography industry, starting with the Geneva typeface, designed by Susan Hare for Apple.
• Menus: yes, hierarchical drop-down, collapsing and pop-up menus started with Mac.
• Dialog boxes, “OK” and “Cancel” buttons, text fields, radio buttons and checkboxes: prior to Mac, users typed answers to a series of command-line questions, such as “Continue (Y) or Cancel (N).”
• Color (Macintosh LC, 1990)
• Icons, to represent files and directories instead of listing filepaths like C:\WH var\www\cgi-bin
• “Folders” to represent directories and nested subdirectories of files
• Task bars and palettes for task display and selection, using these icons
• Computer art and graphics design, with products such as MacPaint and MacDraw, which spawned commercial Adobe graphics programs.
• Apple did not invent e-mail. But America Online launched the first modern mail portal, just in time for Macintosh. A Windows AOL version was offered some time later.
• “Finder,” later known to Windows users as “Windows Explorer”
• Control Panels
• Music. I bought my first Mac in 1985 or 1986 and I’d heard claims it played tunes. I expected something crude. When I found the software that played Bach’s “Ode to Joy” so beautifully, I was overwhelmed by unexpected surprise.
• Consumer laser printers

In fact, the entire “desktop” metaphor came from Mac. Everything we needed to perform a task or access our files was visible or accessible from the desktop. On our modern web browsers, whether Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, or Chrome, they all inherit the lineage of the original 1994 Netscape interface, which in turn satisfied user expectations by adapting all the “web object” concepts from the Macintosh inventory of standardized user tools and controls.

Windows 95 came out in August 1995 and there were any number of well-deserved crude jokes about Microsoft’s first answer to the Mac OS. Anyone who’d ever used a Mac knew (1) where the Windows OS features came from and (2) already knew how to use the Windows desktop and user interface. We Mac-heads taught a lot of users how to use their PC’s. One of the steepest teaching hurdles was trying to convince PC users not to be afraid of their machines!

How did this uniformity come about? Was it simply plagiarism? Absolutely not. It was common sense. First of all, the Gates organization had already thoroughly integrated the Mac metaphors into Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel for Macintosh. Word and Excel for Windows only came along later, actually, with the new Windows 95 GUI.

This could have been turned into a huge crisis for both Apple and Microsoft, but it didn’t. Business users would have revolted if Microsoft had to “reinvent” all the graphic metaphors and keyboard sequences – that would have been like reversing clutch and brake pedals on the automobile. Most of the complaints I hear today from people switching between iPhone, DROID and Blackberry are that things aren’t where we expected to find them. It could have been much worse. On your car’s Garmin or other GPS device, what if the roadmap symbols and graphics were different for each of the 50 states?

Happily, desktops are still always desktops, recycle bins are still the Trash, and shortcuts still jump you to that file or app buried six layers deep in file managers. When you swipe that high-resolution display on your handheld device, that’s just an improved metaphor for the old-fashioned scroll bar (also Mac). Just “doing it differently,” to avoid lawsuits, would have brought incredible levels of chaos to personal computing. That would have crippled the whole industry and retarded its remarkable transformation of home and office. We should be grateful that such a desktop polyglot never happened.

The whole point of such innovation, in one sense, is that in today’s world we all get to feel entirely free to take it for granted – as we should. You won’t find user group meetings in rented halls trying to teach each other how to use their iPods and iPads. I’m just lucky I’ve been around long enough to enjoy watching it all happen.

And it’s happening all over.

Nature [#2505H] 10/9/2011: The Desert Lions (PBS): “In the Namib Desert on Africa’s wild and forbidding Skeleton Coast, Philip Stander, a Namibian carnivore specialist, first spotted these desert lions …”

At the end of the show, we watch Stander trying to coax two marauding lionesses away from a Namibian village. If those desert lions get too close to the village’s herd, they will be shot. He hooks up a loudspeaker on his Land Rover so he can divert them away from the village. He’ll use the recorded sound of a male lion roar. Into his vehicle’s PA system, he plugs his iPod. The lionesses hear the recorded roaring, and leave the area.

Thank you, Steve Jobs.

copyright 2011 by Alex Forbes