Officially, Siri is in beta and while performance is beyond expectations, it’s limits are not hard to find. The most obvious such limit is the always-on requirement for an internet connection. Your provider’s coverage and ubiquitous Wi-Fi notwithstanding, the devil is in the details. Put simply, much of the Siri magic relies on an Apple server. Obviously, when your connection goes down, Siri goes down with it. Worse than that, though, is what happens when Apple’s server becomes overloaded due to exceptional usage: Siri responds cryptically (if at all) about some sort of network connection error.

This is not a show-stopper unless it’s Monday morning after the weekend’s launch of the new iPhone and you’re trying to show your co-workers what Siri can do. As often is the case, you will resort to anecdotal evidence about the time you told Siri to wake you up from an afternoon nap or the iMessage conversation you had without touching the keyboard (both of which the new iPhone handled with aplomb).

We can assume that as usage normalizes and Apple adjusts, this limitation will become less of an issue. Still, as long as a remote server is required, you can expect Siri to stumble when there is a drastic increase in usage. My prediction is that the first major update to Siri will cause another bout of sluggishness as users are again attempting to find Siri’s boundaries.

Another limitation of Siri is the “lack” of 3rd party app support. If you cared about this sort of thing in 2007 when the original iPhone was announced, then this probably feels awfully familiar to you. Just like the original iPhone, there is a specific list of apps with which Siri is capable of interacting. Also like the original iPhone, there is 3rd party support it’s just not in the way everyone is expecting.

The original iPhone launched and it’s 3rd party app catalog was essentially limited to Google’s greatest hits — those being Maps and YouTube. Today’s iPhone has capability limited only by the imagination of the platform’s developers thanks to the launch of the App Store in 2008.

The storied success of the App Store has everyone begging for Siri’s integration with their existing collection of apps. Siri’s natural-language interpretation is so good, you actually feel like you should be able to say things like “send a tweet” or “check in at my current location.” Siri feels so natural but is confined to certain apps and because apps make the iPhone capable of anything, Siri feels held back in comparison.

This limitation, though, is not necessarily a bad thing. For now. Special care needs to be given to the handling of 3rd party app support for Siri. The App Store is replete with apps that mirror or improve existing functionality of iOS apps that are included by default. Thus, the problem becomes, how does Siri handle such requests as “remind me to call my mom in an hour” when it’s possible to have multiple apps for reminders.

I think that what will happen is that Apple will repeat what it did with the original iPhone. Sometime in the next year, Apple is going to release an SDK for the Siri platform. And, as with all iOS apps, Apple will retain strict control of what apps can and can’t do with Siri.

It seems obvious that Siri will eventually be able to integrate with other services like Facebook or Fandango. What is less obvious is how to deal with overlap. I envision Siri add-ons being categorized and given access to certain classes of commands/requests. However, it seems very un-Apple-y to have to say which app or service you want Siri to work with so the roll-out of 3rd party support is likely to move forward at a slow and careful pace.

You’ll notice that I didn’t say “Siri will eventually add 3rd party app support,” this is because it is already integrated with data sources outside of Apple’s control. For example, Yelp is used to list and rank nearby restaurants. Also, Wolfram Alpha handles a lot of information requests not related to what’s stored on your iPhone (i.e. How tall is Mt. Everest?). Siri already has a carefully selected group of 3rd party apps baked right in just like the original iPhone did.

Clearly Apple’s goal is to make Siri as much a part of iOS as touching the display is today. Because delighting customers in a consistent way is tough business, Apple is not going to want there to be any confusion. For example, it would be unacceptable for Siri to ask the user “which Twitter client should I use to post this update?” Just like with iOS’s touch navigation, the goal will be to simplify. If iOS is about reducing the complexity of a touch interface, then Siri is about reducing the complexity of a voice interface.

If forced to guess I could see some sort of settings panel to specify defaults to handle such overlaps in functionality. But even that is a bit of a stretch and could become overly-complex very quickly. That said, Siri will definitely be able to do more in the near future.

I’ve had a lot of fun and a lot of frustration playing with Siri. I really think that just like iOS and multitouch changed the way people think about interacting with their phones, Siri is poised to do the same.

Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Generally, I agree with the “rise to greatness” sentiment. In fact, one particular point that sticks out being that Macs do not receive an annual design refresh and there is no reason to expect the iPhone will be any different. I hadn’t really taken this into consideration and being that the iPhone 3GS did not include a design refresh, it makes sense that the fifth generation iPhone  would also not include a design refresh.

However, the “fall from grace” opinion is where I start to take issue. For example, Zach Epstein for BGR writes:

Apple was a company that could do no wrong. Phones that dropped every other call…

Any issue with calls dropping has more to do with the carrier that you are forced to use than with the actual phone itself. I’ve heard no complaints of such issues with Verizon users where call quality is far above what AT&T is able to deliver.

Location tracking scandals… Antennagate… A week or even a day later, all was forgiven and Apple would continue on its path.

Both of these scandals were only forgiven once Apple collected all of the facts concerning the issue that was reported after which Apple issued a statement that instilled confidence in consumers and investors. Both of these scandals were, in this writer’s opinion, blown out of proportion and were only so explosive due to Apple’s media attraction. Apple is likely the most scrutinized company in consumer electronics and if there was still a problem, you can be certain that the internet would be ablaze with page view-driving link bait.

The piece has several other points that are just as senseless, read on for my take…

[On Tuesday] the company’s iconic co-founder was nowhere to be found.

Apparently Zach did not receive the memo that Steve Jobs is no longer the CEO  at Apple. It makes complete sense that Tim Cook was in the spotlight because any other scenario would have painted a picture of Apple’s board lacking confidence in the new CEO. I’d wager all my shares of AAPL that Steve Jobs was not very far away from the event, but it would have been a mistake to put him on the stage.

Yes, investors were seemingly disappointed by Tuesday’s announcements…

If investors were disappointed by Tuesday’s announcements, then that would signal a sell-off of AAPL shares. Or so you’d think…

That Apple only closed down half a percent on Tuesday exhibits confidence in the company’s management, strategy and portfolio more than it does disappointment in the iPhone 4S.

In other words, investor’s are confident in Tim Cook’s leadership (sans Steve Jobs) and the company’s overall strategy (of which the iPhone makes up a staggering portion) and this outweighs the steaming pile of crap that Apple announced yesterday. Did I get that right?

Zach continues to quote several other analysts with admittedly tepid reactions but none go as far to say that Apple is another minute closer to midnight. He goes on to point out that several analysts are unfaltering in their belief in Apple’s strategy and agree with Apple’s plan to continue to sell the 3GS at a carrier-subsidized price of $0.00.

But an interesting takeaway from yesterday’s announcement may simply be that Apple has fallen from grace in some respects. Apple is fallible, even if the 4S ends up being a success.

John Gruber’s response exactly mirrors my own reaction: “So even if it’s a success, it’s a fall from grace?” In what world does that even make sense? I guess that’s one way to guarantee you’re right, by ignoring all evidence to the contrary.

There were skeptics after Apple unveiled the iPhone in 2007, and after the iPhones 3G, 3GS and 4 as well.

And they were all wrong. The iPhone 4 has become the most popular phone in the world. Not only that, but the 3GS (which like the 4S did not include a design refresh) is currently sitting at the #2 spot. That’s right, the iPhone 3GS is not only two and a quarter years old, it features a hardware design that is three and a quarter years old. Somehow, that hasn’t stopped it from nearly dominating the market.

Naysayers said Apple couldn’t cut it selling just one or two smartphone models, and now Apple owns two-thirds of global smartphone industry profits. Led by Apple’s gray-haired iPhone 4, which launched in June 2010, Apple sold more smartphones last quarter than any other vendor on the planet.

If the leader-of-the-pack iPhone 4 is “gray-haired,” I’d be curious to know what Zach thinks of the iPhone 3GS. Tell me, what other phones came out in 2008 that still look as good today as the 3GS. Further, what else was released in 2009 that is still for sale and comes even close to competing with the success of the 3GS? I’m pretty sure there was some sort of HTC Galaxy Slider One or something that was released, but I can’t remember what it was called and I certainly don’t see them being used by anyone.

The numbers will do the talking over the next few quarters, and I expect Apple’s iPhone sales to continue on the same skyward path right up to next year’s iPhone 5 launch and beyond.

Apple, who has fallen from grace and has investors questioning whether they have lost it is still going to dominate the rest of the industry? It seems like Zach changed his mind half-way through writing this piece of garbage. Either that or he simply never believed what he was writing in the first place, which I have a hard time accepting given the strong language used throughout the piece.

Zach ends the piece thusly:

Apple may have fallen from grace in a way, but until competitors can even come close to approaching the allure surrounding Apple devices and the user experiences they afford, don’t expect the company’s grip on the industry to loosen at all.

Again, Apple has fallen from grace, yet for some reason it doesn’t matter because their competitors are still lagging and we can expect Apple to maintain dominance in the industry.

Was I disappointed that Tuesday’s announcement didn’t include a design refresh? Absolutely. Do I think it matters even slightly? Not even a little bit.

Call me cheap if you want, but I don’t think the sum total of functionality is worth $15. I do, however, think it is worth the $10 which is currently being charged. In any case, after tinkering around with the Facebook for iPad hack, I had the thought that this same trick might work for enabling Beejive on my iPad. Using iFile on my jailbroken iPad, I modified the binary, restarted, and BOOM Beejive for iPad loaded without issue.

The process I used is from The Next Web:

1. In Cydia, search for the iFile app and install it.
2. Open iFile and navigate to var > mobile > applications > directory.
3. Open the iFile settings using the cog wheel icon at the bottom of the screen and switch ‘Application Names’ to ‘on’.
4. This will allow you to see which folders relate to which apps. Find the Beejive folder and open it. Inside that, open Beejive.app.
5. Find the ‘Info.plist’ file and tap on it. Choose ‘Property List Viewer’.
6. Find the ‘UIDeviceFamily’ option and select it.
7. Change the value here from ’1′ to ’2′ and tap ‘Done’.
8. Reboot your iPad and then open the Beejive app.

I was surprised that this worked and I’d be willing to bet there are other apps where this same trick would apply. I’m not necessarily endorsing the refusal of paying developers their fair share, but if you are wanting to check out an app that is seemingly non-universal, this isn’t a bad option.

This droplet works thanks to the magic of HandBrake’s command-line utility HandBrakeCLI. Simply drag any movie and drop it on ToATV and HandBrake will convert it to a format compatible with the AppleTV 2 and then add it to iTunes. The output movie is added to iTunes by being dropped in: ~/Music/Automatically Add to iTunes so it will not be moved if iTunes isn’t running — it will get added to the library when iTunes starts again.

The only pre-requisite is that you have HandBrakeCLI installed in: /usr/local/binI am using Snow Leopard 10.6.6 and iTunes 10.1, so let’s pretend like those are the minimum requirements.

Go to the Downloads section to grab a copy of ToATV 0.1.

If you want to further automate things, you can create a Folder Action that will watch for files of a specific type in a given folder. When those files are added to the folder, the Folder Action can be configured to open them with ToATV. If you’re interested in seeing my Folder Action, I’m happy to post it. I’m still trying to tweak a few things so it’s not really ready for “prime time.”

First, a little background. For the uninitiated, Adobe makes some excellent content creation software. Not the least of which includes Photoshop (the pre-eminent image/photography editing app) and Flash (one of the most ubiquitous ways to develop and distribute on the ‘net).

Unfortunately for Apple, development on Flash for Mac OS has lagged behind its Windows counterpart for quite some time. This has become an obvious thorn in the side of Steve Jobs. Evidence of this exists in Mac OS X 10.6 including a feature that maintains stability of its web browser (Safari) in the event of a Flash-induced crash.

The friction between Apple and Flash (and subsequently Adobe) really came to a head in 2007 when the iPhone was released with lack of Flash support in its mobile version of Safari. Long story short, there has been a constant back-and-forth between the two giants and the battlefield has been in the media with no end in sight.

C.K. believes that a strong move for Adobe would be to port Photoshop to the iPad. They have a strong brand in Photoshop and a well-designed/developed app at a good price would sell like hotcakes. I am inclined to agree with C.K. but I also think Adobe can do more.

1. Re-tool Flash to take advantage of HTML5 and CSS3

For starters, recall that Flash is used to make it easy for developers to create rich and engaging experiences on the Web. I believe there is still a market opportunity here but it will require Adobe to abandon Flash as a proprietary form of content. Instead, Adobe will use its Flash chops to create content using the latest web technologies available with HTML5 and CSS3.

Adobe isn’t making money on the distribution of Flash-created content so it stands to reason that embracing the future of the Web and pushing the bounds of imagination (as they did in the 90s) would result in a solid win for Adobe.

A bonus is that Apple has no filter on web content that is viewed with mobile Safari (as it does with its App Store). Using this knowledge, Adobe could pioneer the web-as-platform movement and really stick it to Apple and its App reviewers by enabling developers to release whatever they want without any interference.

2. Take advantage of the iPad as an accessory to Photoshop

Many users of Adobe’s application Photoshop also make use of drawing tablets from such companies as Wacom. The devices are simply flat “screens” (most of them don’t actually display anything) that allow the user to interact with Photoshop using a “pen and paper” inspired interface.

Adobe could create a “tablet interface” that makes use of the iPad and it its Wi-Fi connection. Wacom’s least expensive tablet which features an LCD screen is $999, which is a large pill for anyone to swallow. Apple’s iPad starts at half of that price and includes hundreds of features not seen on Wacom’s Cintiq line of tablets.

Granted the iPad is not as full-featured as the Cintiq (it features a slightly smaller screen and a lower resolution), at $49 for a (theoretical) wireless, tablet-based, Photoshop-interfacing application it’s hard to ignore. There may be other development hurdles here — for instance, a Photoshop “server” would have to be running on your computer in order for the iPad app to work.

Still, a multi-touch tablet interface to Photoshop that is built on top of a gadget many people already own isn’t something that is easily ignored.

In summary, Adobe has several areas to explore before throwing in the towel and, in my opinion, should really stop their childish Internet whining. After all, Apple could easily purchase Adobe (ADBE market cap = ~$19B at the time of this writing) using its stock pile of cash reserves and still have a measly $20B leftover.

What could iPad offer me that I wasn’t getting from my own array of gadgets? The answer is simple and keenly Apple: panache.

@

I did a fairly standard install of Ubuntu Server 9.04 on a 2.8Ghz P4 with 1.0GB of RAM. The only optional software I selected was the LAMP option (Apache, MySQL, and PHP) and the SSH option. Getting everything working was pretty simple, the WordPress install itself was a cinch. I also did the standard export/import of all my posts. The last thing I did was drop in my old wp-content folder because I have my theme and some other custom images in there as well as my plugins.

After it was all said and done the only thing I had a little trouble with was getting pretty permalinks working again. As you’ll recall, I’ve covered this topic in the past. The process is essentially the same with a few marked differences that required some research.

First, to enable Apache’s rewrite module, you have to create a symbolic link as below rather than updating httpd.conf. In newer versions of Apache, many of the settings/configurations are pulled out of httpd.conf because the file was getting increasingly large.

cd /etc/apache2/mods-enabled
ln -s ../mods-available/rewrite.load ./rewrite.conf


The other step that is different is enabling the AllowOverride directive. With Ubuntu Server’s implementation of Apache2 you have to navigate to /etc/apache2/sites-available and edit the file default as below (thanks):

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all

But, it is for a fact that the best optical quality is delivered by prime lenses … because they use a smaller number of glass elements inside the lens, which means lesser loss of quality, and hence better pictures.

I personally prefer the 35mm prime for my Nikon’s DX sensor — while more expensive, it is a more true 50mm replacement. Using a 50mm prime on a DX sensor is the equivalent of using a 75mm lens on film. For my taste that limits the lens just a little too much.

A few choice photos taken with my 35mm:

@.

****** Google Wave ******
**** By Aron Trimble ****
I would really like to join Google Wave,
I think that I could help make it behave.
I’m a big fan of Google’s new service,
and bugs do not make me at all nervous.
I saw the video of Google Wave,
It’s technology that I really crave.
Please accept my request for an invite,
It would bring me joy and it would excite!
And once you finish reading this sonnet,
You must get off your butt and get on it;
Let me participate in this beta!
I surely will give you lots of data.
Oh please let me join in on Google Wave,
And let me have the tech that I so crave!

If you’d like to sign up for Google Wave invites, go click the link and fill out the form.