UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

As titillating as apocalypse stories may be, I’ve never really believed that the world is going to end on the winter solstice in 2012, as “predicted” by the Mayan calendar. I don’t think they really predicted the end of the world; that’s just as far in the future as they bothered to calculate. Any culture that couldn’t anticipate needing to account for four-digit years a mere 30-odd years in advance should surely understand that kind of shortsightedness.

And so we have this grand new CGI-fest of an apocalyptic vision, 2012. Frankly the biggest surprise to me is that John Cusack would have anything to do with such a piece of overblown shite as this, but I suppose he’s an “A-lister” now, so it’s part of his pact with the devil.

Anyway… this movie looks like a grand spectacle, with a dreadful story. As usual with movies that are grand spectacles. Never mind that it’s set off on the wrong foot from the very beginning of the trailer — the Mayans were not the world’s first civilization. It’s not about making sense; it’s about setting up whatever minimal pretense is necessary to justify the image of an aircraft carrier smashing into the White House on the world’s biggest tsunami. But I think the best moment of the trailer is the highly symbolic shot of the crack spreading across the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, right between the fingers of God and Adam. How come no Hollywood blockbuster writer ever thought of that before?!

I snapped these photos yesterday in the parking lot of the Lyndale Rose Garden in Minneapolis. Why, at a garden with huge displays of flowers, fountains, sculptures and more, would I bother taking not just one but multiple photos of the pay machine in a parking lot?

Fonts.

In particular, ever since I saw the documentary Helvetica, I’ve been observing instances of the use of Arial — that abomination of a Helvetica knockoff Microsoft foisted upon the world by being too cheap to license Helvetica for Windows — on public signage. In days gone by, the default, almost ubiquitous, font on all sorts of public signs was Helvetica. But in the modern PC era, these signs often use Arial, the readily available not-quite-lookalike, instead.

But this pay machine is something else entirely. It displays a schizophrenic mix of Arial and Helvetica.

The most readily distinguishable difference between Arial and Helvetica, as I’ve noted before, is the capital R. So this pay machine immediately caught my attention with the giant “PAY HERE” sign at its top, immediately recognizable as Arial. I also noticed that the taped-on “ATTENTION” sign (which frustratingly informed me that the credit card function was not working) was in Arial as well.

Next I noticed the pasted-on Dymo labels below the change slot, which were printed in Helvetica.

The instructions printed on the machine, presumably by the manufacturer, are in Helvetica, albeit an ugly, artificially compressed version. So it would appear that the “PAY HERE” sign was a Minneapolis add-on and not part of the original unit.

Last night some tornadoes tore through the countryside near my hometown of Austin, Minnesota. Some brazen stormchasers captured this incredible footage:

Update: It looks like Austin itself was hit too, judging by this slideshow.

If you don’t own an iPhone, you’ll probably fall into one of three categories regarding the topic of this post:

1. You assume the iPhone already has copy-paste, and are surprised to learn it’s just been added as part of the new iPhone 3.0 software, released today.
2. You think everything Apple makes is overhyped and under-featured, and the prior lack of copy-paste is a perfect example of that.
3. Huh?

But for those of us who do have an iPhone, it’s been a long time coming, and now we can experience it. To understand the philosophy at Apple, and why this feature was previously unavailable, you need to realize that Apple thinks big, and “big picture.” They want the iPhone to be a success for the long haul, and they want to transform the very nature of the smartphone. Deny Apple’s impact if you like, but I think it’s hard to argue that they haven’t done exactly what they set out to do. The iPhone isn’t intended to do everything, and, if you want to tinker with the system, you already know Apple products are not necessarily for you. But what the iPhone does, and does well, is provide a consistent, polished, and intuitive interface, and it uses that interface to deliver a “game-changing” experience.

With that in mind, we can begin to understand why Apple hesitated to offer copy-paste. The iPhone completely breaks from traditional user interfaces in a number of key ways. And if that new interface is going to be a success, it demands a radical rethinking of how certain things work. There simply is no straightforward way of adapting a mouse-centered activity like copy-paste to the touch screen interface. So Apple decided to take their time to get it right.

Did they? I think so. Let’s take a look at how it works.

In the first image, we see the article I was reading — an RSS feed from Brand New, displayed on the Google Reader website in Mobile Safari.

One cool feature the iPhone interface has always had — but that you may not know about — is the magnifying glass. When you’re typing, you can touch and hold your finger on any spot in the text to bring up the magnifying glass, which makes it possible — and easy — to place the cursor in a particular location. Now the magnifying glass appears in text you’re reading as well. As you move it around, it highlights individual words.

When you release your finger on a particular word in the text, the magnifying glass disappears and is replaced with the copy block. Note the blue dots in the upper left and lower right corners. These are your drag points.

When you start dragging, the magnifying “strip” (as I’ll call it) appears, allowing you the same character-level precision as the cursor in the magnifying glass when editing text. Let go, and the copy button reappears. Just tap that button to add the highlighted text to the clipboard.

To paste the text (for example, into an email), you use the same touch-and-hold technique to bring up the magnifying glass. When you release, a new set of buttons (like the copy button) appear, allowing you to select, select all, or paste. Tap paste, and your copied text appears.

Overall, it’s pretty good. I’m not the most imaginative when it comes to things like this, so I would never have envisioned this solution, nor can I immediately think of ways to improve it. It feels perhaps a bit clunkier than I would like — and appears to still be a bit buggy; when I tried to recreate the process I had gone through taking these screenshots, I found the magnifying glass stubbornly refused to appear.

Assuming the problems I had getting copy-paste to work were a fluke (maybe a restart is in order), I would give Apple an A- for this implementation. If it is in fact buggy and not quite ready for prime time, I’d drop that to a B+. Still, if I had to come up with a solution for this problem myself, it would be worthy of an F-.

(Yes, I know there’s no such thing as an F-. You don’t need to point that out.)

Daring Fireball tipped me off to an interesting new site, Hunch.

Hunch is a site to help you make decisions. Naturally the first question I tried out with it was one of Gruber’s suggestions: Should I buy an Apple iPhone or a Palm Pre?

It became pretty clear to me as I answered the dispassionate, objective questions, what the answer was going to be. And I was right:

However, the reality is that I own an iPhone, and have scarcely even considered looking at a Pre, even for the sake of simple curiosity. So while the questions Hunch asked seemed dispassionate and objective, and let’s for the moment assume that they are, the experience leads me to a few questions of my own:

1. Who wrote the questions? And how did they verify the accuracy of their answers?
2. What criteria led them to choose the questions they did? Were there any other suitable questions that were omitted? Do the questions asked reasonably cover the scope of factors that may go into the decision?
3. How are the questions weighted? Assuming they are not weighted at all, should they be? And should the weight of the questions be left to the user, rather than the author?

These are just a few of the many questions not answered by the Hunch experience.

I’m not at all suggesting that the site is a bad idea, or that it’s necessarily poorly implemented. This is just some food for thought on the merits of taking someone else’s advice when making a personal decision. It also reminds us to be wary of fully placing our trust in the All-Powerful Oz Internet. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.