Vox hasn't kept my interest as much as I thought it would, so I've decided to consolidate all of my blogging back at carpeaqua. If you'd like to keep up with what I'm doing, both personally and professionally, be sure to subscribe.
One of the hardest things for me as a blogging Apple employee always had to be watching the public misapprehend the company's intentions while remaining prudently silent. Apple is slowly opening the lines of communication to its stakeholders these days (witness the recent series of letters from Steve to Apple customers--a veritable deluge of communication by Apple standards!), but in general I think it has traditionally done a far worse job of managing its relationship with its loyalists than many ostensibly less enlightened companies. As a result its reputation has often suffered unnecessarily.
The latest example I've seen of this is the consternation over Apple's failure to seed the Leopard GM build to developers. A lot of the negative reaction toward this that I saw on Twitter was probably, at its root, based on an assumption that is frequently fed by Apple's poor standards of communication: that Apple as a whole disdains (or at least disregards) third party developers, and therefore as a matter of policy the company had decided to deny developers the GM (perhaps to extract more money from them?).
Well, I may not work there now, but I did work in the OS division of Apple for several years (I even briefly worked as the liason to a major third party developer, Adobe), I'm pretty familiar with how things work there, and I'm still in touch with a lot of people who worked on Leopard. And I don't believe for a minute that this was true. I'm convinced that the key fallacy behind this, and a lot of other mistaken ideas about Apple, is the idea that the company always operates as a homogenous entity, and that everything it does is as a result of some company-wide, top-down animus. The reality is usually a lot more mundane.
I have known this to be true in cases where people give Apple too much credit as well as not enough. One of my favorite examples was a post of Dave Winer's some time ago in which he saw Apple's addition of a certain feature to a certain Apple app as evidence of a brilliant, fully-meditated stratagem of Apple's to dominate a certain market. I had been privy to some of the discussions about adding the feature in question, and my perception was very different. Rather than coming from on high as part of some master plan, the initial feature request Radar had originated with an enthusiastic low-level employee from an entirely different team, and it was initially denied because the right people didn't see the value in it. It wasn't that Apple as a whole decided that it wanted to dominate a new market--it was, at least initially, the idea of just one person operating independently.
By the same token, on the negative side, I suspect that the explanation for the missing seed (pure speculation on my part, to be fair) has nothing to do with any malicious or greedy organizational intent (or even plain old indifference) on the part of Apple, but rather with the fact that the time between the GM build and the Leopard ship date was likely too short to make an advance seed practical. I would guess that the OS people were quite motivated to get the product in the hands of the consumer as quickly as possible (and meet the difficult October deadline) without introducing any unnecessary delays. If the particular Apple employees in charge of seeding were out of line in this situation, I would guess it was only in the sense that they understimated the importance of such a seed in many developers' minds in their hurry to get an already delayed release out the door.
My point in all of this, I suppose, is that when it comes to interpreting Apple's actions, Ockham's razor is usually the best guide: the simplest explanation is to be preferred. Apple, like any company, is composed of a large number of pragmatic individuals, most of whom don't have any sort of agenda beyond trying to do their job and meet what are usually pretty demanding project deadlines. The scary Japanese guy who thinks AppleScript engineer Chris Nebel has an anti-Japanese agenda and is trying to sabotage AppleScript localization would be better off assuming that any perceived sins on Chris' part are sins of omission. And the people who were haranguing Apple over its disdain for developers would be more fair not to ascribe malice to something that could be easily explained by ignorance.
Of
course, this wouldn't be as much of a problem if Apple could just get better
at communicating with its customers and developers. Here's hoping that
things like Steve's DRM letter and iPhone refund are the start of a
move away from Cupertino's obsession with total secrecy, and that
misunderstandings like this can be resolved or avoided altogether
through reasonable dialogue in the future.
At the end of one of my last days working for Apple, some co-workers and I met for drinks at Santana Row, in San Jose. By this time, everyone knew I was leaving, so of course everyone was asking what I was going to do next. I made some unenthusiastic noises about possibly working for a San Francisco startup that was trying very hard to recruit me, but I'm sure I didn't sound too convinced, because it wasn't too long before my friend Mike chimed in with "I know what I'd do if I were you." When I asked what, he said: "I'd buy a Canon 5D, the 50mm 1.4 lens, and hit the road!"
Around the same time, I was IMing with my friend Sarah about my uncertain future plans, and, completely unprompted, she echoed Mike's sentiment that I should get some distance from San Francisco for awhile. I think she felt (rightly) that it was the best way for me to get some perspective on my situation.
Now, both of these friends know me pretty well, and I'm sure they both knew that deep down, hitting the road was precisely what I wanted to do. I had felt so constrained by my job for so long that by the time I quit, my spirit was, to paraphrase Led Zeppelin, crying for leaving. Combine that with my lingering sense of personal and professional disillusionment toward the Bay Area, and a good, long break and change of scenery was pretty much the only way I was going to get my enthusiasm back.
So I told the starup I wouldn't be working for them (with the help of a little just-in-time confidence boost from my friends Mai and Courtney), bought the camera gear, and did exactly what Mike suggested. Living mostly off income from my shareware app, PodWorks, I've since traveled extensively in California, Colorado, New Mexico, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Chicago, and Spain. As anyone who has been following my Flickr stream has seen, I've had a pretty amazing run. Among the highlights:
- I hiked on spring snow with my Dad in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado.
- I scaled the Great Sand Dunes in Southern Colorado.
- I followed in Ansel Adams, Georgia O'Keefe, and Paul Strand's footsteps by taking sunset photographs of Mission San Francisco de Asis outside Taos, New Mexico.
- I had my first kiss with a long-distance crush (now my girlfriend) by lamplight in Central Park, then spent a magical weekend in the art deco, Central Park West apartment of my dreams (all of which is such a good story that it merits a post of its own!).
- I drank in some of the best bars New York City (and therefore the world) has to offer (including probably my all-time favorite, Milk & Honey).
- I got excited about being an indie Mac developer again at Wolf Rentzsch's already-legendary C4 conference in Chicago, while enjoying the company of my brother Bobby and good friend Sarah.
- I took my East Coast girlfriend on a tour of my favorite part of the West Coast--in a ridiculously souped-up Shelby Mustang convertible, no less.
- I celebrated my 30th birthday in Barcelona and at a beautiful Mediterranean villa with two of my best friends. We drank Estrella Damm by the pool and ate at some ridiculous restaurants.
- I spent a week with my sweetie in one of the vanishing landmarks of New York Bohemian cool, the Chelsea Hotel, before the forces of gentrification could take it over completely.
In total, I've spent probably 100 out of the 180 days since I've left Apple on the road. And, while I've finally grown a bit travel weary of late and I've started thinking about where and how to settle down again, I've finally come home with a renewed enthusiasm and entreprenurialism, and a realization that I've been priveleged to enjoy the kind of freedom in my travels that most people only dream of. I may slow down for awhile, but you can bet I won't stay put for long.
1 video. 52,000 views in 12 hours.
I usually use Vox to post personal stuff, and carpeaqua to post nerdery. With the insane schedule I've kept over the past few months, putting updates on either site has been a taxing situation.
What will you remember most about this summer?
Rain. Rain. Go. Away.
The following tips were collected from a Facebook group named "You Know You've Lived in China Too Long When...". Perfectly funny. Enjoy it~!
1. You’re at an expensive western restaurant and don’t even notice the guy at the next table yelling into his cell phone
2. You enjoy karaoke
3. You walk backwards in the park listening to a transistor radio
4. The China Daily is your source for hard hitting, fast breaking, investigative journalism
5. You smoke in crowded elevators.
6. All white people look the same to you
7. You like the smell of the bus.
8. You find state-employed retail staff helpful, knowledgeable and friendly
9. You no longer need tissues to blow your nose
10. You find western toilets uncomfortable
11. You throw your used toilet paper in the basket (as a courtesy to the next person)
12. You think that the heavy air actually contains valuable nutrients that you need to stay healthy
13. You think a 30 year old woman who carries a Hello Kitty lunch box is cute
14. A sexual pervert is a man who prefers women to money.
15. It’s OK to throw rubbish, including old fridges, from your 18th-floor window
16. You believe that pressing the lift button 63 times will make it move faster
17. You aren’t aware that one is supposed to pay for software
18. You are not surprised to see your tap water run dark brown
19. You tell your parents their house back in your home country has bad feng shui
20. You think that a $7 shirt is a rip-off
21. You always leave tray and trash on the table when you are in Starbucks because you insisted it is the way to keep everyone employed
22. You buy an XXXL T-shirt in store when you returned home
23. You take large sum of cash whenever you go hospital in home country
24. You have no reservations about spitting sun flower seeds on the restaurant floor
25. You think it’s silly to buy a new bike when it’ll get stolen soon and stolen bikes are half the price.
26. You’d rather pay the 10 yuan for an all night stay at the internet cafe than the 30 for a taxi home.
27. You feel cheated if you don’t receive a full head and shoulder massage when getting a haircut
28. You blow your nose or spit on the restaurant floor (of course after making a loud hocking noise)
29. You no longer wait in line, but go immediately to the head of the queue
30. It becomes exciting to see if you can get on the lift before anyone can get off
31. It is no longer surprising that the only decision made at a meeting is the time and venue for the next meeting
32. You no longer wonder how someone who earns US$ 400.00 per month can drive a Mercedes
33. You accept the fact that you have to queue to get a number for the next queue
34. You believe everything you read in the local newspaper
35. You have developed an uncontrollable urge to follow people carrying small flags
36. You regard it as part of the adventure when the waiter correctly repeats your order and the cook makes something completely different.
37. You are not surprised when three men with a ladder show up to change a light bulb
38. You look over people’s shoulder to see what they are reading
39. You honk your horn at people because they are in your way as you drive down the sidewalk
40. When car accidents become a source of heartwarming humour
41. When shopping at Carrefour some laowai stares you down for catching you looking into his basket while you wonder to yourself what laowai’s eat
42. You have figured out that it is actually the Taiwanese who are running this country
43. You have a pinky fingernail an inch long
44. You burp in any situation and don’t care
45. You start to watch CCTV9 and feel warm and comforted by the governments great work
46. You think Pizza Hut is high-class and worth queueing for
47. You have learnt how to detect someone is in a hurry behind you, and now have the ability to not only walk very slowly but also grow eyes in the back of your head, so when they start to overtake on the right hand side, you automatically cut in and walk very slowly directly in front of them
48. When you are able to jump the queue because the idiot laowai left 2 centimeters between themself and the person in front of them
49. You have absolutely no sense of traffic rules
50. You start calling other foreigners Lao Wai
51. You start cutting off large vehicles on your bicycle
52. The last time you visited your mother, you gave her your business card
53. You think no car is complete without a tissue box on the rear shelf and a feather duster in the trunk
54. You go to the local shop in pajamas
55. When looking out the window, you think “Wow, so many trees!” instead of “Wow, so much concrete!”
56. Pollution, what pollution?
57. You think “white pills, blue pills, and pink powder” is an adequate answer to the question “What are you giving me, doctor?”
58. Someone doesn’t stare at you and you wonder why
59. Firecrackers don’t wake you up
60. Your family stops asking when you’ll be coming back
61. You wear out your vehicle’s horn before its brakes
62. You buy a top-of-the-line karaoke machine
63. Forks feel funny
64. Chinese remakes of Western songs sound better than the originals
65. You get homesick for Chinese food when away from China
66. You realize that smiling and nodding is Chinese body language for, “Go away; leave me alone.”
67. All the top-level government officials you befriended for guanxi purposes when you first arrived are retired and living in your country
68. After being in an accident, you tell the ambulance driver which hospital to take you to
69. Your company offers you a job in your native land, and includes regular “Home Leave” to China as an incentive
70. You think of “salad” as diced apples in mayonnaise
71. You don’t bother to take the sticker off the lenses of your fake Ray-Bans
72. You only wear a suit when you dig ditches or do home repairs
73. Your handshake is weakening by the day
74. You compiled a 3-page list of weird English first names that Chinese people of your acquaintance have chosen for themselves.
75. Your collection of business cards has outgrown your flat
76. You and a friend get on a bus, sit at opposite ends of the bus, and continue your conversation by yelling from one end to the other
77. You cannot say a number without making the appropriate hand sign
78. You like the taste of Green Tea and Chivas
79. You start recognising the chinese songs on the radio and sing along to them with the taxi driver
80. You feel insulted when you enter a restaurant and only three waiters welcome you
[ For long, I cannot access Vox.com at all without proxy. Firefox showed the "connection reset" page every time. What I can do is to wait for the day Great Firewall removed Vox.com from its black list. Dammit. ]
I'm listening to Linkin Park's latest album Minutes to Midnight... and thinking about how I find new singles, albums, and artists nowadays.
Why this Linkin Park album? Because it includes the theme song from Transformers the movie, What I've Done. Blockbusters are the most obvious way how we find some good music. However, it's not the best way because of the huge delay on the process of communication.
TV shows are much faster and more helpful than its silver screen competitor. The first Facebook page I opened is Brett Dennen's profile, which was being maintained by his fan. Lots of passers-by left same messages on the page as me: "I heard your song Ain't No Reason from House M.D. yesterday."
Millions of TV shows, which could be downloaded via BitTorrent from the feed-sharing sites like IsoHunt or PirateBay, are transmitting the latest highlights of American cultures to the outside world day by day. For people in the countries where it's forbidden to have satellite dishes at home, say China, BitTorrent and eMule are the most important online tools they cannot live without.
Lots of my friends set Verycd.com as their default homepage. On Verycd, which was founded by some Shanghai natives, Chinese eMule users can find zillions of gigabytes of resources like the latest movies, television shows, albums, digital books and magazines.
The top DJs and music critics in mainland China consider Verycd as their bridge to the outside world. Thanks to the efforts of 0day organizations, the newest music from all over the world could be found on the frontpage of Verycd, even days ahead of the official releasing date.
As Fortunes magazine said, we're running from the age of searching, to the brave new world of discovering. Definitely, the music discovering engines like Pandora.com are pretty cool and useful for the American internet users. But the answer from their Chinese counterpart? Doubtless, Meiju - It's how they called American TV shows.
What's the best practical joke you've pulled or had pulled on you?
Submitted by Mike Schwartz.
This is complete proof that my family is a bunch of smart asses. For 6 months, my brother knew I wanted the iPhone and demanded he work the launch so he could sell it to me. I didn't want to deal with a salesman who was going to try to upsell me a bunch of stuff. I just wanted to come in, buy my phone, and leave. Who better to do that than my brother?
So I wait outside of the AT&T store for 8 hours on the iFriday. I get inside, Cody grabs my phone and tells me the price. I hand him my Visa and he runs the charge.
He looks up at me slowly: "Your card was declined."
My heart jumped out of my throat and I let out a massive gasp. He then started pointing and laughing at me.
"Got ya!"
