An Unexpected Post - Out In The Dark

My friend Michael Mayer just finished making this film.
Come check it out!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Out-In-The-Dark-%D7%A2%D7%9C%D7%98%D7%94-%D8%B8%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%85/235557469872298?sk=wall

The Einstein Word Processor

It was December 1991, and I was ecstatic. You see, my military service in the IDF was in the Nahal. At the time this meant that a significant part of the service was not in the IDF itself, but in some Kibbutz.
So by December 1991, my 'real' military service was over, and all I had to do was stay at the Kibbutz for several months, and teach kids from junior high schools about the expulsion from Spain (which happened in 1992, so in 1992 we 'celebrated' 500 years).
So we prepared to teach them, and we planned tons of fun activities, and we had to write them down on a computer. This was the first computer I had to use since my high school days (1986) and the Commodore 128.
THE word processor to use back in the day was Einstein writer (see picture above), naturally the computer itself ran on MS-DOS.
I don't know why I knew this, but I knew that before I write anything at all I should read ALL of the help file <Alt H>, so I did.
Never regretted that one.

Let Me Start From The End

But first let me explain this picture. When Ehud Barak was the Prime Minister of Israel (1999-2001), he was well known for saying to anyone who spoke at a meeting to 'Start from the End, or Start from the Bottom Line'. I think this exemplifies his somewhat abrasive, but sometimes useful way of thinking, but we have not gathered here to talk of Ehud Barak.

So my 'Start From the End' goes something like this. Last Saturday, I wanted to upgrade my (legally bought) Windows XP to an (illegally downloaded) Windows 7.

I had no problem downloading and installing it. But it ruined my access to the partition of Ubuntu Linux  (11.10) I had.

So no problem. I re-installed Linux, which was a good thing, because I had a zillion partitions, and asked it to install itself on all of the hard drive.

Big mistake. As far as Microsoft is concerned. the shiny new win 7 would not install itself on a partition that is not NTFS. 

Thus, for the first time in something like 17 years, my main computer does not even run Windows.

That tells you something about what I think of Microsoft products right now.

But still, I think Microsoft made some great products over the years, and I have used many of them. 

Let the upcoming series of posts be some sort of a Eulogy to this great company.

And once again, let me Start from the End: I think Microsoft made more great products over the years than Apple has.

Trying to Assess the Role of Apple as a Company

I started this series of posts with my review of the Steve Jobs Biography. Walter Isaacson, the writer of the biography, was indubitably impressed with Steve Jobs as a person, and with Apple a a company. While I am also impressed with certain accomplishments of Jobs and of Apple, I don't think that all of the inventions that Isaacson mentions in the biography as world changing really are.

For example the iPod never really made it from where I'm standing, and the iPad is an OK tablet, but I doubt that it will be a major tablet in say five years. The role of Apple and Jobs in portable music players as well as in tablet devices is of innovation and popularization for sure. They are the first company who really made money on these things, but ultimately they are not the ones making most of the money on them.

The same goes for the mac computer and the mouse aided Graphical User Interface (BTW, Malcolm Gladwell makes some really interesting points about this story). They made the macs, but the person who really popularized the Graphical User Interface is none other than Bill Gates. I doubt he'll get a fancy book after he dies, and maybe that is why I plan to discuss my life with Microsoft Computers starting next week.

So What is Apple's greatest product? I think it's the Apple ][, the computer that started the Personal Computer industry, and embraced open technologies!

Apple and Foxconn

While in my younger days I was a student of Economics, and all that interested me was economic efficiency, as that would surely increase Justice and Equality in the long run, now I am not so sure that efficiency in the be all and end all of all things economic.

Apple has gotten a lot of fire recently for the conditions of its workers, especially in the Foxconn factory in China. I think that if one consumes any product, it is certainly a legitimate interest how the workers making this product feel, how many hours they work in a day etc.

I also think that China is probably very happy to have the Foxconn factory, and that overall Chinese people including the majority of the workers in the factory are happy working in it. I hold these opinions after reading some articles about these issues, but your mileage may vary.

Furthermore, for some reason Apple is being criticized for the working conditions in Foxconn, and yet other US tech companies are not. I find this very weird.

So far I think that This American Life have managed to show the most complex and interesting picture of this story.

Having said all that, I think that the picture painted by the Steven Jobs Biography, of Steve Jobs as a 1960's hippie is plain ridiculous if he had known half of what we know about Foxconn, and if he didn't know, he had no excuse for not knowing.

Personal Good News

I'm sorry, that I did not post on time this week. On the excuses side, I now have a newborn son!
The above picture is for illustration purposes only, I think I'll let him decide when to upload pictures, which should take at least a week or two.
He is healthy, happy most of the time, and weighs a bit more than seven pounds. His mother is also fine, though the birth itself was not the easiest thing in the world, probably it was harder for her than it was for me.
I think I'll have more to say about the birth itself in a future series of posts about science, but that would probably take at least a few months.
Anyway, next week I hope to be back on schedule, and keep discussing Apple, and soon we'll get to Microsoft...

A Surprising Conclusion

Honestly, when I started writing this series of posts, or even when I wrote last week's post, I did not think that this would be the conclusion of this series of posts about me and the different Apple products I use, but here it is:

I think my next desktop is going to be a Mac Mini.

The reason for this is the new iBooks software and the new authoring tools issued by Apple.

Now the funny part, the part that made me think a lot is why I'm going to do this. You see, I'm annoyed about the Apple EULA as much as the next guy, and I'm annoyed at the fact that I can't BUY books from iBooks (or from Google Books for that matter) probably more than the next guy.

So why am I willing to go along with this?

For two main reasons:

1. I think the books that I plan to write and sell are important enough that I will use the best available (and cheap or free) tools to make them.
2. I'm sure I can use the Apple software and then somehow export the files to a format that I can sell on other bookstores.

This whole thing taught me that I have my own ideology, and that it is not directly related to Apple's 'Style' ideology, or the Linux 'Open' ideology. I mean I don't mind Style, and I certainly don't mind Open, but this is not what I'm about.

What am I about? we'll get to that in a few months...

How I Got an iPhone 4

So I had my iPhone 3GS for almost a year, not a bad machine, like I said last week.

Then my daughter had this great idea on one of the cooler days last October. Why not go to Anabeh park? I liked this thought: I spend one afternoon a week with my kids (my son likes to play with my iPhone at least half that time), and the Anabeh park is a mere 20 minute walk from their school.

Here is a picture of the park:

See the lake in the middle? That's our suspect. Because right after we rented a boat (again my daughters' idea) see suggested that we steer it so that we'll be at the business end of the fountain that you see in the middle of the lake. Even though my phone was in a fairly watertight bag it started acting funny after that.

I asked for it to be sent for a checkup at the lab, next thing I know I get an iPhone 4 back!

Needless to say I was very pleased, and the rest of the staff at my cell carrier were a bit pissed: "How come you got that, and we didn't? What did you say was your problem? What was it exactly? We want to say the same thing!"

What can I say, the iPhone 4? Not a bad machine.

What Can I Say? The iPhone is a Good Product!

So on November 2010, I walked into an Orange (the name of my Israeli cell carrier) store, and told them I was tired of my Nokia 5800 'smartphone'. I won't go into the details of why I did not love it, but I didn't. I asked them if they could offer me something better.

They said sure. Because I was a student I could get an iPhone for 149 shekels a month (about 40$), and if I talked that amount I would pay no extra charges. At the time I was really in awe with Google (more about Google later in this series), so I asked if there were any Android smartphones available. There were, but they were more expansive. I have no idea how that made economic sense, but only about now Android phones and tablets are beginning to be cheaper than their iOS counterparts here.

So I said, OK I'll get an iPhone (3GS). I've had it for about a year (now I have the the iPhone 4, but more about that next week). 

Though some people are not too thrilled that I can't be reached whenever I'm next to my children (because they play with it), it's a good machine.

I've bought apps, I've bought Kindle books and read them on it, I took some really good pictures (not on any artistic level, just pictures I'm happy with). I can read mail. I'm very pleased.

It's the first Apple product that I actually owned, and I like it.

But does it live up to the hype? I'm not so sure!

So once again, it's hard to call something 'insanely great', because we are all looking for different things, and facing different limitations (remember no iTunes here, but also severely limited podcasts, no buying videos etc.)

So going back to the subject of these posts, Steven Jobs.

There can be little doubt that the man pushed the envelope, with the iPhone, with the iTunes store, with the original mac etc. but other guys pushed too, and some of them were nicer, or just plain pushed harder IMHO.

Steve was one of the good guys (in terms of contribution to society), but I don't think that he was the BEST or anything like that.

Back in 1993, I really Wanted a NeXT computer

It is starting to be a recurring theme in this series of posts: I appreciate the Steve Jobs products that were somehow 'open', and I think less of the products that embrace closed technologies, and 'walled gardens'. It's a good thing that this is a recurring theme, because I believe in it.

Now don't get me wrong, back in 1993, I had no money, and I had no personal computer. I could not afford even a 'regular' PC, much less a Next Cube. Furthermore, it was not possible to get this computer in Israel, and importing one personally was not an option for me. But I could dream, and in my dreams, a 10K$ NeXT machine was a prominent feature.

So when in late 1993, Steve Jobs announced that the NeXT company will focus on the NeXTSTEP operating system (and stop producing the NeXT computer itself) - a cool UNIX with an even cooler Graphical User Interface, I was not really sad, because I thought to myself: 'Hey, maybe this thing will find its way to a computer near me!'.

I a way it did. I'm sure that NeXTSTEP was an inspiration behind some of the more 'Graphical' and 'Friendly' Linux distributions, and I have been using Ubuntu Linux for about two years now...

Also, I think some of the inspiration for Android, came from NeXTSTEP but I plan to write about Android later here, so that'll have to wait.

I still think that NeXTSTEP looks cool though...

'Insanely Great' or why the iPod Classic never made it in Israel

Getting ready to write up this post, I wanted to make sure that I was not making this up. I mean, I knew I never had an iPod Classic, I know none of my friends ever did, but I wanted to make sure that this was a 'global' Israeli phenomenon.

I think I can safely say that it is. For Example, the Hebrew Wikipedia article about iPod, tells you about the iPod classic, but has no Israeli articles or reviews of it, or indeed any references to iPods, before about 2006. One of the things, the article does say about the iPod classic, is that it is the only iPod that (still) does not support Hebrew.

This goes in line with something that I think is incredible - there is no iTunes store in Israel. I mean sure, you can get apps for your iPhone, or iPad, or iPod touch, only you can't get any music (or videos or non-free books).
I recently had two talks about this subject. The first one was with my 14 year old cousin, who has an iPod Touch for several months now - he did not know that you can't get iTunes on it...
The second talk was with an aspiring Israeli musician (also a distant relative through marriage), he did know that we can't get iTunes, but still thought that it is just about the greatest thing on earth, because it enables him to SELL music. He also said that the reason we can't get it in Israel has to to with the Israeli Artists association. I have no idea if this is true.
But the bottom line I think is clear. the iPod may have been a wonderful thing in the USA, but it never really made it here. So sorry Steve, there is no such thing as an 'Insanely Great' product. What is wonderful in some part of the world, may not work at all in another part of the world, for whatever reasons...

Doing the booklets for NOAM

NOAM is the youth movement of the Movement for Conservative Judaism in Israel. For many years I had been involved with this youth movement, and the last major project I did for them was back in the mid 1990s.

How Does an Israeli Youth Movement Work?
Basically you have 16-17 year old teenagers doing 'activities' once or twice a week to lower ages of teenagers (10-14 year olds).
These activities are supposed to be 60-90 minutes long, and combine serious values education and discussion with games.
A lot of the young instructors find it quite difficult to prepare these activities, and thus many Israeli youth movements write up the activities ahead of time in booklets.

So What Did You Have to Do With All This?
In the summer of 1994 (I was 24 at the time), I became the person responsible for education in the NOAM youth movement. Till then, NOAM had only two booklets, containing the yearly subjects for all the youth ages. these booklets contained 20 activities each, max.
I wanted to have five booklets with 24 activities for each of the grades 4-8, so 120 activities together. All of us wanted to write these up fairly fast, so that they will be available for the new year, and they were.
One fine day in October 1994, we printed out something like 500 pages of educational stuff, from our computers, and then later sent them to be printed in a print shop. These were all Word files, nothing to do with Apple.

So How Does This Relate to Apple?
Over the course of the year, and the work of the young instructors, there was a lot of feedback from them, and that had to be implemented back to the booklets. tHis newer version was also more graphically intensive and that was too much for the old PCs to handle, and so we had to have macs to print these newer booklets.
At the time there were only macs in the Educational Center in Kibbutz Hannaton, so me and my girlfriend (you knew she knew about macs from the previous post), went there, and for about a week we worked on the new booklets.
We finished a few minutes before Shabbat.

But Can It Do Any Calculations?

If the last post dealt with the year 1987, this one deals with the year 1991.
What did I do in the mean time?
I finished High school after the 11th grade (this is not due to any particular brilliance, that was the law in Quebec Canada at the time), and studied Physics for one year at the Technion. At the end of that year I met my girlfriend.
Then I went to serve my country in the IDF (I served in the Nahal Brigade, which was not only a brigade then, but more on that maybe some other time...).
So in 1991 I was nearing the end of my military service, and my girlfriend who was also a soldier at the time, served for the IDF spokesperson. In 1991 this was high honor indeed because in the Gulf War, the IDF spokesman (that was their name at the time) pretty much ran the country.
Anyway, she invited me over to see the latest and greatest computer they had - the Macintosh II. They used to print an English language newspaper than, depicting the IDF in a positive light. They used their Macs for Desktop Publishing, and it could really do pretty amazing things back then (especially compared to the PCs, that could barely print one shabby font of Hebrew on Dot Matrix printers).
It also had a screen saver - flying toasters.
I was really impressed, but being a science buff I had to ask - Can it do any calculations? it must be able to print really cool graphs of functions or something?!
Try as we might, we did not find any such piece of software on the machine. My girlfriend was a bit annoyed that I kept asking that. I'm afraid this was not the first time that I annoyed her, nor the last time.

Interlude - My Commodore 128

While I do not intend to cover my entire history with personal computers when speaking about Steven Jobs and Apple Computer (mainly because I want to cover some of it when discussing other famous tech people), it is important to mention some things just now:

• I had a Sinclair Spectrum from late 1983, until very early in 1985. Then my entire family moved to Canada, and I did not own a computer until late 1986.
• In late 1986, I had a Commodore 128, for a few months, and then I moved back to Israel in August 1987 (the rest of my family returned a year later).
• I did not own a copmuter from late 1987 till 1995 (except for several months during which I had a commodore Amiga, great computer, but it was outdated by then).
• There are many reasons why I did not have a computer for such a long time, but the two main ones are my military service in the IDF, and lack of money during my studies for BA at the Hebrew University.

There is really not that much to say about the Commodore 128. It was a fine computer. The rest of my friends, though interested in many things scientific and technical, did not really care that much about computers, asnd so, I did not use it that much.
However, there is one impotant thing I should mention: during almost my entire life, my handwriting was illegible. Even as early as Grade 4, my mother had to use a typewriter to write my term papers (details may or may not follow in some future post). My Commodore 128, was the first computer on which I used a modern (well semi modern, we are talking CP/M here) word processor.
I never looked back...

The Greatest Feature of the LISA

I just realized that as I'm writing this 'biography of Steven Jobs from my side' I'm sort of going through my personal history with personal computers.
Anyway, I think I saw the LISA in Israel in the spring of 1983, that is a few months before I had my own personal computer.
At the time going to industry fairs to see computers was one of the best ways to interact with them.
So I was hanging out at this fair, like I did many times before. That is me and a bunch of my friends were asking sales reps all kinds of questions, and watching product demonstrations.
It was basically us, say two ogr three kids from the Seventh Grade, and several dozens of 'serious business people'.
I think none of the sales reps had any hope that we would buy these computers (the LISA sold for something like 10,000 dollars at the time...), but in our defense I could say that the reps liked talking to us better than to the 'srious business people' because:

1) We were really excited about their computers.
and
2) We sort of understood them, which was not true for the 'srious business people'.

Anyway, I was watching this gray suited woman (highly unusual in Israel at the time, because of the suit, not because of the woman), giving a demonstration of the LISA. All the 'Serious Business People' were excited only about the fact that there was this garbage can, and you could throw your files into it (that's right...).
I distinctly recall her being slightly exasperated (after all she was trying to sell a 10,000 dollar Machine), when she said: 'look, the garbage can is NOT the LISA's greatest feature'.
I don't know if she was right though. After all it is all that is left of the LISA.