On Steve Jobs and the Future

Tonight I got home from a long day at work, still a little befuddled about the news of Steve Job's passing, put some music on and started writing this post. Let me explain why this is significant. To begin writing, I picked up a MacBook Air off the couch, opened it up, and within about 5 seconds I was clicking around in Blogger. 5 seconds and it's ready to go! To put on music, I slipped my iPad out of my bag and fired up some tunes. The album was purchased from an iPhone via the iTunes store, the largest music store in the world. iCloud pushed these purchased songs to my PC and added them to my iTunes library without any intervention on my part. This iPad controls iTunes on the PC, pushing the music to various Airport Expresses and an Apple TV. For the simple act of relaxing at the end of the day to do some writing and kick back to some tunes, Steve managed to make this complicated scenario happen so easily I didn't even need to think about it. This may not seem like a big deal, but the enabling technologies for this have had a profound impact on our daily lives, and not just for music.

I never was an Apple guy. I've been building and over clocking my own PCs for about 7 years and have never even owned an iPod. Now look at me, nearly my entire personal digital life is run by Apple devices. Is this because of rabid fanboyism? Nope. I liken my rabid adoption of Apple products to the reason I drive a Prius. I don't think I'm saving the environment; far from it, that thing has a super nasty battery that's going to need disposing of. I drive it because that's the way I think a car should be designed. It looks like it does primarily for low drag and has nearly the lowest drag coefficient on the road. Regenerative braking makes sense; why are you other morons just throwing all that kinetic energy away?! Turning the engine off when stopped makes sense. All these other cars are boring (well, at least the ones that I can afford); I prefer to have one that is interesting from an engineering standpoint. That said, I don't like Apple products blindly, I like them because they're extremely innovative. They define and create markets for things we didn't even know we wanted. They simplify and greatly enrich many aspects of my life. And as an electronics engineer, I can't get enough of that kind of technology. This is why most everyone else loves these things; they improve the quality of your life by making things simpler and more enjoyable.

Famously, Steve was presented with the enabling technologies for for a touchscreen display with their ubiquitous scrolling features. 

"I thought, 'My God we can build a phone out of this'"

                                                                         - Steve Jobs

They did, and it changed everything. You can thank the original iPhone for the slew of Android smartphones on the market today. Smartphones existed before iPhone, but nobody cared. They were bulky, hot, and had crappy UIs. Apple's new phone was minimalistic and focused on the most important aspect of these devices that is frustratingly still overlooked today by their competitors: the user experience. Until this device, everyone else had gotten it wrong. The original iPhone looked good, the graphics were buttery smooth, it was shockingly responsive to touch in a way no other device was, and it was stupid simple to use. It completely redefined the smartphone market and spurred tons of innovation in the marketplace as other manufacturers scrambled to compete. Without Steve's vision for the iPhone, where the heck would we be? What would have made these other companies finally stop making Razr's and try to make something awesome? Where else would this innovation spark have come from? Who knows.

Then there was the iPad. Today, over a year and a half after it launched, people don't want tablets; They want iPads. Here is a market that was completely dead. Before the original iPad, manufacturer after manufacturer would try to cram a desktop OS on a big, bulky tablet with a horrible resistive touch screen. They were terrible, luckily the irritating experience was cut short by battery life of only a few hours. And just like what happened in the smartphone market, suddenly the rest of the industry starts getting 'innovative'. The first CES after the iPad was announced was LOADED with new tablets. And guess what, nobody has been able to touch the iPad in either user experience or hardware. The only one that comes close is by Samsung, but it's already too late. Over 70% of the market is swallowed up by iPad sales, the rest get to play catch-up in that remaining 30%. The market is now flooded with tablets, but nobody can differentiate themselves from the iPad. It'll be interesting to see how the newly announced Amazon Kindle Fire will do, due to it's extreme price differentiation (only $199!) and brand reputation. But even that device can only compete on price, nobody else can touch Apple's hardware and user experience.

Two year ago people didn't even know why they wanted a tablet. Even the tech community was skeptical when the original iPad was announced. Steve made this case for needing a third device between your smartphone and your computer. Nobody got it, why would you need that? The answer: Instant on, portability, and usability. Nobody understood the convenience of having this little slate that's always on and ready to go. And now, you can reach over, pull this thing out of the couch cushions and browse the web, watch a movie, or video chat with someone all in the blink of an eye. It's really quite amazing when you think about it. Apple saw that. Steve saw that. Nobody else saw that.

Although right now this appears a little under the radar, the MacBook Air is changing the laptop market. Several years ago, people stopped buying desktops and started buying laptops instead. Then there was this horrible race to the bottom where they became cheap piece of junk. Netbooks popped up then, as a laptop alternative for just a couple hundred bucks. Sounds good right? Well netbooks died out because as it turns out, people don't want a slow, tiny, piece of junk. The MacBook Air hits a $999 sweet spot in the market, right in between where the super cheap netbooks were at and where the $1500 mainstream laptops of a couple years ago live. They're super light, super fast, and easily the nicest pieces of laptop hardware I've ever used. Take a look at all the laptops that will be released soon by other manufacturers. They're all 'ultra books', aka super light and fast laptops. Intel is pushing new chips for them as well. Just like iPhone and iPad, here come the flood of MacBook air wannabes.

Now think about how smartphones have affected our lives. In my particular demographic, most everyone has a smartphone and they're on these things all the time. It's to the point where folk's dumbphones become novelties and topics of conversation. Through these devices we stay extremely connected via direct communications and via social networks. Check-ins, photo uploads, status updates - They all enrich our social lives. How many times have you checked in somewhere only to be notified that another friend happens to be down the street? It happens to me all the time, and it's great. These technologies allow us to passively keep up with far more people than we could actively, and I think that's very valuable. They let us share much our lives in an extremely fast and convenient way and keep us connected.

So where does this leave us? It's not just the products that have been developed, it's the way that they've affected our lives that's important. We need more new things like this to keep marching forward. Apple, under Steve's vision and guidance, has been dropping game changer after game changer into the consumer electronics industry. All the other manufacturers seem to be playing catch up. While still important, all these competing products still aren't getting us closer to the game changers, they're just more of the same trying desperately to differentiate themselves. 

Who leads us from here? There are so many companies out there that make beautiful hardware, and many that can write great software, but which company or individual is going to be able to point the entire industry down the path of progress and innovation? Who's going to see past trying to cram more RAM in a smartphone and come up with something that truly improves our day to day lives? It's tiring to watch the continuous parade of Android phones being released every week. They're all basically the same. There's nothing wrong with that, but that's not the future. That's the present, and Apple brought us here. 

Thanks for taking us here Steve, you truly changed everything. You once said,

"A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."     

                                                                                           ...Who's going to show us now?

iPhone 5 Predictions

Tomorrow, three very important things are happening: First, MuteMath is releasing their third album, Odd Soul. Next, Jack's Mannequin is releasing an amazing new album, People and Things. And lastly, Apple is going to announce a couple new phones.  Before I start wildly speculating on what these phones will be,  let's have a listen to one of the tracks off People in Things.

Now that you're all jazzed up by emo piano rock, let's talk rumors. The rumors and speculation for Apple's next iPhone have been the most varied and confusing of all the releases. They range from boring (barely an upgrade from iPhone 4) to crazy-go-nuts riduclous (being exclusive to Sprint). Go read any 2 random tech news sites - they'll all report different crazy rumors. John Gruber described this the best:

"Bottom line on iPhone rumors: Apple has effectively kept everyone in the dark."  @gruber 9/21

So what do we know for sure? Well, nothing really, we've only got a big pile of rumors. Going through them all, there are a few things that stick out as all but certain:

• The 5MP camera is getting bumped up to 8MP.
• The processor is is getting bumped up to a dual core A5 (same as iPad 2) from the single core A4 that resides in the iPhone 4.
• A new system-wide voice control feature will be unveiled, called Assistant. 

There are conflicting reports that there will be an iPhone 4S device that looks very similar to the iPhone 4 but with upgraded internals, an iPhone 5 with a drastically different hardware design, both, or a cheaper iPhone 4 released alongside a fancy iPhone 5. I have some thoughts on this...

Right now, the two choices you have for iPhones are the 4 for $199 or $299 on contract, or the iPhone  3GS for $49.99. Although iPhone 4 is extremely popular (it seems like everyone I meet has one), they are actually selling a ton of 3GS devices as well due to their super low price point. It makes sense for Apple to keep pushing back last years model, or one similar to it, down to this price point as sort of a gateway drug into the ecosystem. For that reason alone, I'm confident that they will be releasing not only a new flagship device in the $199-$299 range, but a lower end sub-$100 device along side of it.

The name iPhone 4S seems all but confirmed, but it's unclear if that will be the name of the device we're expecting as the iPhone 5. I think it very well could be. It doesn't make sense to me for the 4S to be the lower end device, not if it's going to have the upgraded processor, RAM, etc that is expected. It makes more sense for them to make the lower end device either the iPhone 4 as it is, or a slightly cheaper version of it. If they loaded it up with all the new goodies, there wouldn't be enough differentiation between it and the flagship model. Plus a 4S would likely cost more to manufacture than the 4, making it even more difficult to hit that sub $100 sweet spot.

If the 5th iPhone will indeed be called the iPhone 4S, then it will likely incur all the internal upgrades that have been rumored, but it is unlikely that there would be much of an external upgrade. The 3G and 3GS are indistinguishable, and I would expect that the 4S branding would imply something similar. The external design changes rumored included it being much thinner, maybe even a teardrop shape, and having a larger display with the same resolution and > 300ppi. Making the device thinner sounds great, and it's possible that they could do this without affecting the size of the battery. Making the screen larger would also be a good move, as Android phones in particular have been getting larger and larger with each generation. And as long as they maintain > 300ppi, they can still call it a 'retina display' because you still can't see the pixels. Sounds good to me. 

Rumors about the new iPhone looking just like a 4 could be valid, but they also could just be because iPhone 5 internals could fit in an iPhone 4 housing, and when a hammered software engineer accidentally leaves a test one in a puddle of tequila, nobody will know it's the new one. I think that the iPhone 5 or 4S or whatever they call it could look very similar to the 4. I don't believe they'd keep the 4S branding if they made the phone look much different, so if it does get a facelift, it'll be called 5 instead of 4S.

Instead of saying it's impossible to tell what's going to happen tomorrow, I'm going out on a limb and and venture a practical guess, and then a sexier one.

Practical Guess

•  Apple will unveil a new iPhone that looks similar to the iPhone 4 called the iPhone 4S.
• It will run the A5 processor and have an 8MP camera.
• It will be available with 32GB and 64GB on-board storage options. 64GB should now be feasible since single chip 64GB NAND flash has been ready for mass production since the beginning of the year. They skipped the storage bump from 3GS to iPhone 4 and I don't think there are any technical reasons for them to skip it this time. 
• It will NOT be 4G LTE equipped, but will be both CDMA and GSM capable (e.g. the same hardware will run on all carriers). Instead, it will have HSPA+, which that hot yet misinformed T-Mobile chick will call 4G anyway. It's still 3X the data rate of the current generation hardware; I'll take it.
• The current generation iPhone 4 will become the entry level phone, cost below $100, and may have  its design changed slightly to make it cheaper.

Sexy, Hopeful Guess

• Apple unveils iPhone5, which has a screen that takes up nearly the entirety of the front bezel and a slick, thin design. It will have all the spec bumps listed in my iPhone 4S guess above.
• Then they unveil the iPhone 4S, which is a faster version of the iPhone 4 that runs on both GSM & CDMA networks and comes in at the sub $100 price point. 

Back in January I correctly predicted that they'd bump the summer refresh to a later date to avoid releasing a new device so close to their Verizon debut. Maybe I'll get it right again! Who knows. Actually, we will, tomorrow. You can laugh in my face then. And if I'm wrong, I really hope it's because of a dramatic and awesome redesign like this. The folks at This Is My Next / The Verge are the best in the business; I hope they're right again, but I'm not so sure.

Per usual, I'll be watching the liveblog on both Ars Technica and This Is My Next. I'd suggest you do the same.

Addendum (10/4/11) - I forgot to mention that the reason Apple won't be moving to LTE for these new phones is two fold. 1) LTE isn't quite done rolling out across the country, and like 3G, they will likely wait until it is commonplace. This may also have to do with reducing idiot customer complaints about not getting LTE service on their phone when they simply don't live in an area with it. 2) LTE radios chew up batteries. Take a gander at all those Android phones, desperately differentiating themselves from the iPhone with LTE. They have awful battery life. Combine this with relatively poor LTE coverage (the radios will work harder and thus chew through batteries even quicker) and you have a sad battery life situation. This simply isn't a tradeoff Apple will make until the radios get better. Super excited for today's announcement!

Guide: Replacing the iPhone 4 Lock & Power Button

Although I've captured the replacement of the power/lock button on my iPhone 4 across a number of posts, I want to condense it all here. It's not a terribly difficult repair, just a bit of a pain. 

The Problem

The power & lock button on the top of your iPhone 4 appears to be stuck or does not click. In some cases, it may still register a button press if you push on it hard enough, as was the case with mine, but there is no more clicking action. Most of the threads I've found on the 'tubes regarding this issue diagnose it as being 'stuck'. It's not stuck, in fact there really isn't a way to get it stuck. The mechanical button that lives under the metal button cap is broken, and no longer provides any clicking action.

If you have this issue, the first thing to do is march into the nearest Apple store with big, glistening puppy-dog eyes and ask them to swap the phone out for you. If you've already done repairs on this phone, or otherwise voided your warranty, you'll be out of luck. It never hurts to ask though.

What You Need

The button lives on a flex cable assembly that must be completely replaced. The part is cheap, about $20, and can be purchased from iFixit for the AT&T device here and the Verizon device here. The repair I did was on a GSM (AT&T) iPhone 4 so I can't say how the process varies for the CDMA (Verizon) device.

What you most likely don't need (something I figured out when I first tried to fix this problem) is the button cover. The description just says 'button', and although it's true that this is the thing you push, it doesn't actually have the electrical contact inside. It's just a metal cover, doesn't really break, and is really just in the way of your finger and the actual button underneath.

      

This thing on the left, you don't need it. This thing on the right, buy it here. Photo credits: iFixit

The actual button lives on the top right part of the flex assembly (it's on the underside in the photo, since it has to fold up to mount to the top of the phone). This piece also contains the proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, and a secondary microphone (used for ambient noise canceling). I really don't see how the button cap could break, the thing is pretty sturdy. There is that little metal bar that you can see in the photograph, which swivels around, but you'd be hard pressed to break it. If you want to be safe, since it really is a huge pain in the ass to take the phone apart, pick up both pieces since the total cost is still only $25.

How to do it

Here are my detailed instructions: Go ask iFixit. They have excruciatingly detailed instructions and high res photos to guide you along. I've used their guides and parts exclusively with great success. Also, see my other posts on my shot glass strategy for organizing screws.

Related Posts

Lock Button Replacement Failure

Fun With iPhone 4 Button Replacements

Network Upgrade - So many spatial streams!

Way back in February, I freaked out and decided my network was due for an upgrade. Really jumped right on that research, eh? I've been living with this network since then, in all of it's 2MBps glory. After further investigation, it looks like it's a combination of these chincy Trendnet N adapters and the WRT54GL getting old. Whatever the case may be, I'm ready for an upgrade in a big way.

Taking a look at what's out there right now for simultaneous dual-band routers with guest networks, the Linksys E4200 by Cisco sticks out like a sore thumb. With the exception of 450Mbps G (300Mbps on G, 450Mbps on N), it has all the features and performance I could ask for. A quick search on DD-WRT support found that 'Support for the E4200 is still very much a work in progress,' so it looks like stock firmware is the only way to go. I've always had great luck with Linksys products, particularly the WRT54GL which I've recommended and installed for numerous people, including myself. 

Putting in my due dilligence, I checked out offerings from the other big players in the router space.

• TRENDnet: These guys put out the TEW-692GR, which can do 450Mbps on both 2.4 and 5.0 GHz but there was very little user experience out there on the 'tubes. I couldn't find enough reviews by legitimate, trusted sites to even think about it.
• D-Link: First of all, D-Link's website really sucks. Also, they also make way too many different routers. They should take a hint from Linksys and have a half dozen-ish clearly differentiated pieces of hardware. I've had bad luck with these guys in the past, so I'm going to stay away this time too.
• Asus: I hadn't even thought about a router from these guys (they're into everything these days!) until I saw them pimping DD-WRT support on a banner ad. Their flagship product is the RT-N56U, which also happens to be, if I may, the absolute sexiest router I've ever seen. Look at this thing! I digress. None of Asus' offerings support 450Mbps N, nor do they have guest networks. Next.

RT-N56U - It's like a space ship landed to beam the internets into your head.

• Netgear: The only real contender against the E4200 is Netgear's WNDR4000-100NAS N750. It has all the same features with equally sketchy DD-WRT support. What I like about this particular piece of harware is that it stands up vertically instead of laying flat. The E4200 looks like a dinner plate and takes up all sorts of space. Amazon and Newegg reviews were basically the same, as were the regular reviews strewn about the 'net. An interesting point: This guy supports IPV6 tunneling and the E4200 does not. This is a bummer, but not anything decisive. 

The real differentiator came with the adapters. With all this 450Mbps talk, you'd think there would be a plethora of choices for the wireless adapters on the PC side. Well, you'd be (and I was) wrong. 450 Mbps wireless N requires three spatial streams, and for whatever reason that additional 150Mbps stream is just too much for the majority of adapters. Turns out that only Trendnet sells 450Mbps adapters; one USB 2.0 and one ethernet. The only other way to achieve these data rates is with a mini PCI-express card from Intel. So with a grand total of one adapter to choose from (who want's ethernet? My MacBook Air doesn't even have ethernet.), which of these two routers has the best compatibility with Trendnet's USB offering, the TEW-648UB? 

The best I information I could gather regarding compatibility with these two routers was in, of all places, Amazon reviews. There were numerous success stories with the E4200, and nothing mentioning the N750. In Newegg's user reviews I found no mention of the E4200, but a negative comment about compatibility with a similar Netgear router. Now, I don't put much stake in user reviews unless there are hundreds of them in agreement, but this choice was really a coin toss. I'm going with the handful of commenters who had good luck. 

Final answer: Cisco E4200 with Trendnet TEW-648UB adapters. Ordered. Boom. Let's see what happens.

Disaster: Home button replacement results in tragedy.

[Click to enlarge]

See that little guy in the middle, all alone? The connector with a short piece of flex connecting to nowhere? That's what happens when you accidentally pinch an iPhone 4 screen's digitizer cable between the screen and phone body then try yanking on it. Without this little guy, the phone won't register touches on the screen. Sadly, this is non-reparable; the entire screen needs to be replaced... AGAIN! The upside to this is that non-defective screen assemblies with white bezels exist now, so at least I'll have a working proximity sensor while maintaining the sexy white & black iPhone look that makes the ladies go wild. The new screen should arrive later in this coming week.

In the mean time I'm slumming it with my old 3GS. I've only been using it for a half a day and I'm already disgusted with the quality of the display and the pixel density. I have a whole new appreciation for the 4's screen which is still, over 1 year later, the best display on the market.

I did manage to replace the home button, which was a breeze (provided we ignore the fact that I ruined the phone in the process). The disassembly process goes really quickly now, since this is the fourth time I've had to do it. Since I still haven't verified that the new button works (it clicks, that's a good sign), I can't tear apart the defective one to see what happened to it in case I need it. However, I do have the broken one that iFixit replaced for me, so I took it apart.

Home button upside-down and disassembled along with another one right side up.

It's a really simple thing. Two wires pass through a thin flex cable onto the back side of the button. One wire connects to a printed metal ring, the other passes underneath to a concentric, printed metal circle. The part that does the clicking is a dome shaped piece of metal glued to a flexible piece of clear plastic. The outer edge of this dome makes contact with the metal ring on the back of the button and the clear plastic holds it in place. When you push the button, the dome presses against the mounting surface behind it, warps inward (click!) to short the two printed metal circles together. 

Since the moisture sensor near the home button of my phone is lit up red, it's likely that some moisture got in between the button and the dome and corroded it, making it a crappy contact. That would explain the intermittent nature of the problem. If it's anything else, this replacement will have been useless. Womp.

Here's to iPhone 5 surviving a whole year without my intervention.