Apple said it took “courage” to take away the 3.5mm headphone jack from the iPhone 7. And then none of this courage was on display with the MacBookPro that removes the USB ports, the Thunderbolt 2 ports, MagSafe port and SD card slot to replace them with four USB-C ports…and left the 3.5mm headphone jack there. What?

Instead of taking the chance with the iPhone 7 to converge on USB-C for the connectivity, Apple decided to stick with Lightening. I was also mildly annoyed that when they moved from the old 30 pin connector they went to Lightening but it was obvious there were some advantages over the USB options at the time. Now with USB-C many of those advantages have disappeared and having USB-C would make it a standard connector. They’re not going to do that because Apple makes money changing people for the “Made for iPhone” brand though I don’t see why they couldn’t continue to do so with USB-C but it’d obviously not be as well controlled. 

One of the other issues that going to USB-C could have solved would have been one of the first USB-C accessories: the wired headphones for the iPhone 7. Tied with the USB-C only MacBookPro you’d have the first connector that works out of the box. This would be a synergy between the Mac and the iPhone that Apple is supposed to be the go to platform on.

Of course it’d take “courage” to shy away from the “Made for iPhone” profit. Maybe Apple has some more spare?

For a while now I’ve had an Amazon Echo which is powered by Amazon’s Alexa platform in my living room and for much longer Siri on my phone. Having the two is interesting to see how each of them behave in different situations, which bot understands what I’m saying versus the others. Now while Alexa doesn’t always understand generally it isn’t offensive (usually isn’t offensive anyway [NSFW]), Siri on the other hand will quite happily quip back at me something snarky.

Read more

Building on my previous post about knowledge, understanding and complex reasoning I’d like to present a practical example of how taking basic knowledge and piecing information together to form understanding helps to resolve problems. And how building understanding of multiple connected areas allows for complex reasoning and complex problem solving.
Read more

One of the concepts that has perhaps stuck with me most from high school is the differential between knowledge, understanding and complex reasoning. It is perhaps the piece that stood out for me from high school maths and it really was the composition of the exam. However I feel it’s a valuable distinction to make and helps guide that learning process. Essentially the three form a pyramid with knowledge on the bottom, understanding in the middle and complex reasoning forming the capstone. The exams were functionally composed of these three sections: knowledge, understanding and complex reasoning. Each tested different aspects of learning the topic and appeared proportionally to where they existed on the pyramid.
Read more

For the most part I’m usually happy with NAB Internet Banking. They have a reasonably nice web interface and it also scales down reasonably well onto a mobile device. Functionality wise it has a lot of capabilities including some I wished Wells Fargo had (international transfer being the primary one) and I’m yet to find myself wanting from it. However there are some quirks and it seems just recently, I hit all of them.
Read more

Today Apple announced their plan on changing the way the textbook industry works. To achieve this they’ve released a new tool called “iBooks Author” which provides a WYSIWYG interface to building ePUB files. Essentially the rub is that while you can use it to build content and you can give it away for free in any of the formats you want, if you want to sell it you have to use the iBookstore. But let’s take a look back at the product for a second.
Read more

Once upon a time I was a happy Telstra customer. I had switched to Telstra from Optus after the release of the iPhone4 having realised that I was paying Optus the same amount of money as Telstra was charging to effectively get the same level of service, perhaps even a little less from Optus than what Telstra offered.
Read more

At Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) in 2007, Steve Jobs came on stage to announce a launch date for the very first iPhone and to announce how developers would build applications for the iPhone. His announcement was that his suggested way of developing for the iPhone was to write web apps (it is a couple of minutes in). So what was the reaction to that?
Read more

Today was the nail in the coffin of the Samsung Galaxy S that I use at work to do Android based testing of the library’s future work in the mobile area. The device is a stock device running Android 2.1 (Samsung’s updater app cowardly refuses to upgrade it to 2.2 for some reason) however as the device is for testing and since it has WiFi built in I’ve decided to use that. It isn’t connected to the cellular data network (or even have a SIM card) and this has lead to some interesting problems.
Read more

It sounds like a line that you get given when you probably don’t have a chance at what ever it is. But it is the sort of line I would have liked to have seen from the insurers this evening. Almost every insurer said “I’m sorry, we can’t insure you over the phone” to my online quote and encouraged me to call them. What I would like to see is a call back facility. Suncorp in particular has a 24 hour phone line I can ring so why not ask me what my phone number is and offer to call me in the next 10 minutes based on their call centre load. In fact if I’m going to call them now then that is the same thing! Depressing!