Chatswood

Typical summer ahead (Taken with instagram)

TextWrangler 4.0

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the venerable BBEdit from Bare Bones reaching it’s 20th birthday. It may have been easy to overlook the fact that it’s younger, freer sibling TextWrangler has just rolled over to version 4.0.

I’m a BBEdit user, but if I’m going to be working on someone else’s Mac for whatever reason I’ll quickly grab a copy of TextWrangler to ensure that I’m in a somewhat familiar editing environment. So if you’re needing BBEdit goodness, but are on a strict budget, then it’s definitely worth grabbing TextWrangler from either the Bare Bones site, or from the Mac App Store.

"Up to" charges for "Up to" services

I’m not sure who these wispa folks are, but they raise a similar point to one that I’ve been making lately to whoever will listen:

If your supermarket charged you full price for ‘upto’ a Kg of sugar, or the service station charged you full price for ‘upto’ a gallon of petrol they would be prosecuted.

(via The Register)

We pay for an “up to 16Mbps” service. Unfortunately my ISP - BT Total Broadband - and the underlying wholesale provider Openreach have not seen fit to install ADSL2 hardware in our local exchange. This mere technicality means that my “up to 16Mbps” service is instantly constrained by the 8Mbps limit on ADSL Max technology.

We pay £26 a month for a service that, through no fault of our own, can only deliver 50% of the promised¹ service. That’s bad enough, but we’re still talking theoretical limits here. Our actual delivered service is just over 6Mbps with a fair wind. So what we actually get is not 16Mbps, but just 37.5% of that. Other BT Total Broadband customers on the same package will pay the same amount, yet they may get 100% of the promised service.

We actually fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. A good friend is also a customer with BT Total Broadband, and therefore is also signed up to a service that is advertised as being up to 16Mbps. His actual delivered service is 0.5Mbps. To save you doing the mental arithmetic, that is just 3.125% of the maximum theoretical service. Yet he pays 100% of the price.

Back in 2009 the UK government said in their budget that they would commit to ensuring that everyone in the country would have access to 2Mbps broadband by 2012 though they’ve now said that will be 2015. We still have people unable to achieve that target. Worse still, these people are being forced to pay prices similar to those paid by users of next-generation broadband services.

Not going far enough

I not only agree with what wispa are saying in their campaign, but I feel that they are not going far enough. Not only should people be paying a price proportionate to the service they receive, but those receiving a service below the governments “target” of 2Mbps should not be paying a single penny. And yet the campaign from wispa only covers the concept of people not getting the full “up to” service.

There is an even wider problem that is becoming more prevalent as next-generation broadband services are being rolled out. Amongst my friends, family and colleagues there is a huge disparity amongst the level of broadband services available. Some people have Fibre To The Cabinet, some have ADSL2, some have just regular ADSL, some have 3G wireless, and some have nothing.

The strange thing is that many of these differing levels of service cost around the same price. As an example, at home we only receive regular ADSL - this will cost about £18 a month for up to 16Mbps and 40GB allowance². According to BT’s Infinity product pages the base level package is also £18, but this includes up to 38Mbps and the same 40GB allowance.

We pay the same price for an inferior service. Why? Because we live in an area that is simply not covered by the FTTC technology. That seems unfair to say the least, yet when the question is asked of BT, their answer is often the same: it comes down to the business case. They will simply not extend the reach of their FTTC offering because it is cost prohibitive.

Who costs the most?

Let’s think about this for a minute. While I accept that I am probably simplifying things greatly here, the costs to BT for each customer will come down to the several major groupings: ISP running costs, bandwidth, network infrastructure, and exchange hardware. So how might these costs vary between users on ADSL and Infinity products?

• It will cost the same to run as an ISP whether your user is on ADSL or Infinity. The cost of an email accounts, support, portals, etc should all be the same. If anything support for Infinity users will be higher as this is the newer technology, and more prone to confusion and problems.

• Bandwidth costs should be the same to them although it could easily be argued that a user on a fast Infinity connection will consume more of your bandwidth, certainly on “unlimited” allowance packages.

• Network infrastructure is where things will differ. Backhaul should be the same, but paying for new fibre cabinets and the fibre optic cabling to them costs a lot. The network infrastructure is the same as it always was for ADSL users, it’s only the new Infinity users that incur this cost.

• Exchange hardware will also see a large difference. ADSL hardware is available in most, if not all exchanges, and would likely have been paid for at this stage, less some ongoing maintenance costs. Conversely, the Infinity hardware is new and expensive, and is where the real cost lies.

I think it’s fair to say that it costs a lot more to sustain a customer on an Infinity package over a customer on regular ADSL, yet both sets of customers pay the same price. I think that what wispa should be campaigning for is not only an end to the “up to” problem, but that customers on older, inferior products should not be effectively subsidising customers who take a newer, superior product.

As I mentioned earlier, often when I ask BT why they don’t offer me Infinity, they say it’s because there is no business case for it. They say it’s not economically viable.

I now say - why don’t you use the excess money you get from me paying the same price as an Infinity service, and instead of treating it as profit, treat it as a down-payment on the new hardware you need to provide me with a better service. Maybe wispa can adapt this into their campaign as well.

Books: Bits vs. Atoms

Jeff Atwood recently wrote a fantastic piece on the current standard of eBooks:

Because I love words, I want to love eBooks. I want to buy lots and lots of eBooks. But unless the publishers are willing to treat eBooks with the same respect and care that they give to their printed books – and most importantly of all, adjust their pricing to reflect the brave new economy of bits, and not an antiquated economy of atoms – they’re destined to eventually suffer the same fate as the Encyclopedia Britannica.

This article couldn’t be more correct.

I’ve recently decided to stop buying print books under most circumstances¹ for reasons that include both personal convenience, and a desire to consume less resources.

Unfortunately, as Jeff has pointed out, eBooks just aren’t 100% there yet. Traditional novels are fine from Kindle/iBookstore, but I read a lot of technology books, and the instant you get into screenshots or diagrams the formatting goes straight out the window. Many of the tech-related publishers are providing the option to go for PDF instead but this still feels like settling for second-best until they get their act together.

(Mac) App Store Upgrades

There’s been a bit of discussion on the 5by5 Network recently about the lack of upgrades on the Mac App Store sparked by a recent blog post on the subject by Wil Shipley.

I see this from both sides. As a consumer I naturally want software to be as cheap as possible, and I can’t deny that the concept of “free upgrades for life” is not appealing. Yet, on the flip side I write software for a living, and the idea of getting paid once and having no upgrade revenue stream is not a nice one.

The folks at 5by5 (specifically John Siracusa and Marco Arment) have covered most of the salient points, so I recommend having a listen back to the latest episodes of Hypercritical and Build and Analyze.

Some of the discussion has pointed out that one possible option is for a developer to release “version 2” as a new application and remove the previous version of the application from sale. This has two drawbacks for existing users (which have been debated at length, but I’ll recap):

• if they want to upgrade they feel cheated at having to pay for a new app without the availability of an upgrade discount;
• if they chose not to upgrade they are unable to get application updates for their existing application as it has been pulled from the store.

Discounted upgrades are gone

First things first - I think that the old pricing model of a high initial purchase price followed by discounted upgrades is probably gone, and a natural successor would appear to be a consistent price for new and upgrade purchases.

There will inevitably be some pushback on this. Developers won’t like it for the obvious reason - their initial revenue will be lower and they’ll be forced to think longer term. This is a completely natural reaction and it will probably take some major players to set the trend - maybe this is where Apple are leading with their own price drops as they move applications into the App Stores.

I feel that this is a good way to work though it will require a bit of thought from app developers with regard to their longer term strategies - it’s about taking lower margins with higher volumes. It’s about taking a lower purchase price for the initial version but actually taking a higher “upgrade” price for subsequent versions.

Customer opinion could be divided depending on whether they are new or existing customers. New customers will love the fact that the initial prices seem lower - they’ll feel that they’re getting a bargain. Existing customers will hate the fact that they have to pay the same amount for upgrades as new customers will pay.

Overall it’s still a good deal for the customer. They will be buying into an ecosystem which places emphasis on long-term investment in software. Increased volumes means lower prices on average. And of course, paying for upgrades should ultimately mean higher quality software.

Maintaining multiple versions

Of course, this discussion is still meaningless when the App Stores don’t offer a good way to maintain multiple versions of a product.

If a developer followed the model above and charged the same price for each version (i.e. no discounted upgrades) there is still the dilemma about whether to leave multiple versions in the store at once. As a developer I find this unappealing because it leads to confusion amongst potential purchasers. Yet removing the old version is not really an option as it has a negative impact on customers who don’t want to upgrade for at least two reasons:

• they are unable to get bug fixes to a product they paid for;
• if they move to a new computer they are unable to re-download a product that they still legitimately own.

This is where Apple need to make a change to the App Stores. If they won’t go to the trouble of implementing upgrades, then I propose that they give developers the opportunity to mark an app as being “retired”.

A retired app should no longer be purchasable by new customers. In fact it should not appear in the App Store to people who do not already have the app in their purchase history. Only those who have purchased it before should be able to re-download it to a new computer, or obtain updates.

This still isn’t a completely straightforward process for developers (or for customers) as the new version is technically a different application, and as such poses issues for data migration between versions. Also customers will need to be informed of new versions, possibly through annoying alert dialogs in the old version.

Still, if Apple allowed applications to be marked as “retired” this would be a big start. In the meantime, you could always raise the price of your old version to $999.99…

Being a Dad Changes Everything

Simon Wolf wrote:

Finally I bought a new helmet. I’m not a huge fan of them but I like my daughter to wear one and I need to set a good example for her.

For me this sums up everything that there is to being a dad. When the subject of bicycle helmets came up in the past, I always swore that I’d never wear one. I trotted out the old fallback position of “I never needed one when I was a kid, I don’t need one now, and my kids will never need one either.”

Now that I’m actually a dad, my position has changed. From here on I’ll do whatever is necessary to set a good example for my daughter. How times changes.

iTunes in the Cloud vs iTunes Match

John Gruber added an update to this post in which he explained that he had mixed the terms iTunes Match and iTunes in the Cloud. I think the easiest way to differentiate is as follows:

• iCloud: this is Apple’s overall cloud strategy that encompasses the ability to store application data and a media locker in the cloud;
• iTunes in the Cloud: this is the iCloud component that allows you to re-download material from your media locker. This includes books, apps, music, TV shows and (depending on where you are) movies;
• iTunes Match: this is the subscription service by which Apple allow you to music files not originally purchased from iTunes to your media locker.

Maybe it’s not 100% accurate, but it’s enough to keep it straight in my mind.

Keeping a Clean Desktop

While listening to the recent Mac Power Users podcast on using Hazel I got the impression that host Katie Floyd wasn’t a fan of using the Mac Desktop as a storage location for files.¹ I’ve heard this opinion before - often accompanied with disparaging remarks suggesting that it is an uncouth and savage practice, befitting more of Windows users than of elegant and refined Mac users. This just isn’t the case - for a start Windows users are people too, and just think about it: if we weren’t supposed to use the Desktop, why would Apple have made it just a regular folder?

I can be a bit of a cleanliness freak when it comes to my hard disks² but surprisingly I’m actually a fan of throwing documents on the Desktop as a working storage area. If I’m working on a document, downloading some material or even just trying something out I tend to leave things on the Desktop while I’m working on them.

I see this as being akin to the real world - when I’m working with paper documents I tend to spread them around me in order to have the material within easy reach. I want to be able to do the same with the Mac Desktop so that I don’t have to root around in folders for the relevant files.

Too Much Hassle?

I guess some people might find it tough working with the Mac Desktop. Sometimes it can be hard to arrange windows so that you can quickly open documents or move them about, especially when it comes to Macs with smaller displays like MacBook Pros and Airs.

My advice to people is to take advantage of Exposé - especially on newer Macs with gesture support. I use the “Spread with thumb and three fingers” gesture to access the Desktop and have immediate access to my files for double-clicking or drag-and-drop operations.

Admittedly dragging and dropping can be troublesome at times. To drop into an open application you generally need to drag the item over the dock icon for the application, wait for it to show the open windows for the application and then hold the item over the desired window until it comes to the foreground. This can be cumbersome, so it’s worth grabbing Yoink from the Mac App Store. Once installed it provides a handy tray you can drag onto quickly, then Cmd-Tab (or otherwise navigate) to your desired application and drag from the Yoink tray into the application.

Keeping It Under Control

Of course, there’s always a danger that your Desktop can get out of control if you start using it for multiple active projects. The best way to combat this is with a bit of discipline, but if you need a hand you can always turn to Hazel for some help.

At present I use a two-level indicator as to the relevance of a file on the desktop. After two days of inactivity Hazel marks a file with an Orange label so that I can see that it hasn’t been used recently. After a further two days of inactivity Hazel marks the file with a Red label as a final warning.

Ideally though my desktop would be reasonably clear at the end of every day so that I can start from scratch every morning. Again Hazel could come to the rescue, by automatically clearing items from the desktop at the end of the working day. The rule shown below is the start of a system for implementing this:

The idea here is that I can have multiple projects organised according to label colour. At the end of the working day Hazel will sweep all files on the Desktop with a Blue label into the Blue folder. The next time I go to work on the project I can just drag the items back onto the Desktop to start again. It’s a bit like keeping your real life working papers in boxes - at the end of the day you just sweep the papers off the desktop and into the box. Next day, dump the contents of the box onto the nice clean desktop.

See - working on the Desktop is not just for savages.