Jon Alper's probably insufficiently humble opinion

Macworld|iWorld thoughts and reminiscences

There are several great articles reviewing last week’s Macworld|iWorld and I would urge you to read these two in particular:

Christopher Breen of Macworld.com’s “Macworld Expo is dead, long live Macworld | iWorld”

And Ted Landau, of The MacObsserver’s “Macworld | iWorld Reinvents Itself”

To those, I’d like to add this:

This year’s Macworld|iWorld was, and will be marvelous to me because it reminded me of QuickTime Live!

QuickTime Live! was managed by Paul Kent, the same person who’s been in charge of Macworld content for IDG for several years. QuickTime Live! was the drop-dead-best trade show experience I have ever had.

QuickTime Live! was a small event held, if I recall correctly, for three years before it was merged into and ultimately digested by WWWDC.

Sure, there were ‘vendor-driven’ how-to sessions (and some good ones too!) and there was an exposition hall with products and tools you could see, touch and discuss with their makers but the ‘expo’ was hardly the main thrust. The expo portion was sort of a ‘visual aid’ and a ‘chance to do some business’ but it was the sessions, the content and the social interaction that defined the show.

Sessions were great. Yes, some were WWDC-like in that they were ‘how-to’ sessions run by a tool-maker (including Apple). Sessions like those are important and happened and I think will continue to happen at Macworld|iWorld. But, and probably in part by dint of Apple’s QuickTime Team being smaller than Apple as a whole and, frankly, exceptionally kind and smart folk, there was a looseness, a comfort level in those sessions you rarely see at WWDC (except from Sal Soghoian  who always manages an epic, enlightening and endearing WWDC presentation)

WWWDC, is an Apple Developer Relations event. The conference is toeing the corporate line and has a *necessary* agenda about not just what but how. Apple isn’t typically inclined to get into matters of content and entertainment goals. They are there to teach and evangelize ways of working that advance the platform in specific ways. They are there to sell and teach at the same time. Apple’s WWDC audience is overtly the developer community and covertly the press and Wall Street. That’s not to say WWDC doesn’t have ‘fun’ but it’s always a managed sort of fun.

QuickTime Live! was special to me because the general thrust of the sessions was much more self-critical, self-effacing and, in many cases, driven by the theme of ‘project post mortem’. “Here was a project I worked on and here’s what I learned that might spare you some heartache” was the undercurrent of most of the sessions (and all of mine). People were honest about their experimentation. Presenters were keen to teach *and* learn.

QuickTime Live! (at its best) happened at The Beverly Hilton in LA and combination of Paul’s brilliant management setting the above general tone of the sessions and a quirk of architecture led to what I have called the “lobby bar phenomenon”.

The ‘lobby bar’ was just a bar with an adjacent ‘conversation pit’ where attendees used to informally convene share projects, ask advice, boast of success or admit failure. It was located in a way that, like Moscone West’s floor lobbies, all traffic had to flow past it.

The interaction in the lobby bar was social and it encouraged people to engage as peers. Yes there were parties. Yes there were Krispy Kreme Donuts in in the mornings but what happened there was an almost continuous collaborative conference session with fluid topics driven by what was just presented in a formal session moments before and what the community shared enthusiasm and interest in as it happened to just pop up. The communities and conversations formed around shared areas of interest and experience and they happened across industry, national and cultural boundaries.

QuickTime Live! was a profoundly special experience for me because it fostered meaningful community, knowledge sharing and a deep sense of camaraderie in the attendees. People I met taught me things, introduced me to people I later hired to consult on projects I was working on and, I hope, learned from the sessions I presented.

The QuickTime Developer community didn’t just go to see the latest toys and tools. We didn’t just go to take or teach a class in a technology or tool. We went to move relationships from virtual spaces (list-servs and web sites) to real face to face interaction. We went to spend time with like-minded people we liked and respected. We went to teach, learn and collaborate and have fun working. I do mean working. While there were parties at QuickTime Live!, they were hardly the main point.

We went with questions and came home with ideas.

The Macworld|iWorld I enjoyed this year embodied that spirit. You could feel it in the sessions, at the tables in each floor’s lobby at Moscone West. You could feel it at the musical performances, the art exhitions and at the sessions.

I saw people seated around tables in the lobbies really talking to each other. Saw them not just resting their pounding trade-show-feet or post Cirq Du Mac hangovers but talking, sharing, introducing each other . I ran into old friends, was introduced to new ones, connected with the faces to match the Twitter handles. I saw small companies showing their products. I was able to make designers and developers of those products smile genuinely when I told them what I loved about their products or react to what they demonstrated with feedback and ideas. I was able to ‘do some business’ on the show floor. I was able to discover new things. I wasn’t getting yelled at by Power Computing. I wasn’t getting ‘spun’ by Apple.

My session, though more sparsely attended than I liked,  had people with great questions.

I was there too briefly. I wanted more.

The way I see Macworld|iWorld evolving based on what I saw this year will move even more toward my QuickTime Live! ideal. I am really looking forward to next year!

Disclosure: I have been an attendee and usually speaker at Macworld Expo every year but one for close to twenty years. I was a speaker at all but the first QuickTime Live! and even did a ‘day keynote’. I’ve watched Macworld Expo show go from happening twice a year on the left and right coasts (and Japan and UK) to just once a year in San Francisco. I was there for the move from Boston to New York and back to Boston. I have been involved through at least two different management entities being in charge. I have had the good fortune to work pretty closely with Paul in the past and even served on his Macworld Expo Customer Advisory Board. I have ‘skin in this game’ and I care but I mean it… Macworld|iWorld was and will be something special.

I have mixed feelings about even trying to write something today. Andy Ihnatko did it far better than I will. Ted Landau did it far better than I will. John Siracusa did it far better than I will.

I’m going to try anyway.

I cried today. I’m crying now. I’m crying over the death of a ‘celebrity’ I’ve never met. I’ve only done that once before when John Lennon died. I’ll do it, I think, only once more when Harlan Ellison passes which, I hope it won’t be for a long, long time.

I’m crying because somebody who mattered is gone. Somebody whose work has profoundly changed my life is gone. Somebody whose values helped shape my own is gone. I’m crying because the world is a lesser place without him.

I had at least two opportunities to meet Steve Jobs and to the visible relief of my friends at Apple who offered to introduce me, I declined both times. My joking retort “I think that would be career limiting for me.”

In truth, it’d probably have gone fine. I’d have just said “Thank you” or some such and it would have been over in a blink. My point in declining wasn’t fear of meeting a celebrity. I’ve met lots. My point in declining wasn’t a real fear it could damage my business relationship with Apple. I’ve had amazing good luck on that front. My point in declining was not to abuse the largesse of my friends making the offer. *They* had more important things to ask of Steve than taking a moment to help them play ‘good host’ for me.

I’m not crying right now out of some childish hero worship. I’m crying because the world, my friends at Apple, and I  have lost a man who made a difference because of his talent, dedication and courage. I’m crying because there are too few like him.

He enabled, he set an example, he demanded, occasionally with well documented combativeness and he mattered. For all this, I admire and will miss him.

Too few people care. We’re all flawed. Be strong. Keep your passion and don’t let people ‘nice’ you to death. Be courageous. Do what you know is right and remember small things matter.

(A note about the graphic. It’s stolen from Apple’s home page. Nothing I could have done would be as elegant and, if they object to my use of it, it’s gone in a heartbeat and with no complaint from me.)

I had an interesting Twitter exchange with a friend a few days back that got me thinking about iOS vs MacOS and iPad vs iPhone. While I am still brewing a comment on the whole iOS ‘AppStore Subscription Policy’ bruhaha and I think, by now, my concerns about the Mac App Store are well documented.

The “why is my iPhone unlike everything else I’d buy from Apple?”  question I’ve had in my head is starting to gel for me.

My Macs are mine. I own them and I own licenses to all the software I run on them and I, almost rabidly, avoid software that’s a service as opposed to a product.

My Macs are means of creation as much or more than tools of communication. They are, in some measure like pocket knives, chainsaws or jackhammers.  They’re tools, potentially dangerous tools. They need to be treated with respect and care lest things go wrong and they fail me or become a means by which I harm myself or others.

To really use my Macs, I need to respect the freedom I have to do with them as I please . I need to know and revel in the risks my incompetence may make me have to cope with. I’m, in large measure, on my own and enjoy the freedom that comes with that risk.

True Personal Computers, by shear dint of their flexibility, the nearly infinite possible combinations of software and hardware, are both more powerful and more brittle and potentially dangerous.

My phone, on the other hand, it had better just work. It had best never surprise me. It had best demand no management time. Demand no thought on my part beyond remembering to charge it. I shouldn’t have to wonder whether an App I install on it is phoning home, logging my usage, or at risk of bricking my phone.

My phone, realistically, I rent it.  A phone has no value beyond the network. It’s a communications tool not a creation tool.  Sure, I’d buy an unlocked phone if I could.  I’d keep a coupla-three SIM cards laying about and swap as mood and locale dictated like most of the rest of the world can, but, even if I had that flexibility, the phone, absent a ‘service’ is useless.

Because I must accept the co-mingling of service, software and hardware to actually be able to really use it as a phone, I have some expectations about what I need to put up with to get the best experience of that I can. I need, to a point, to accept that carriers must impose limitations on me.

911 service has to work. I can’t be allowed to risk munging up AT&T’s routing. I can’t be allowed to hack my way past their billing. I suck it up and deal when I agree to a service because I expect a Telco to be regulated and I expect them to be reliable. My phone needs to be much more like a the old rotary dial/mechanical bell behemoth that plugs into the wall in my living room than I would ever let my computers be.

It works for me to have some constraints imposed on me, on the telco by the government and yes, by the OS vendor of the phone. If I get three updates a week among the twenty or so third party apps I use on my phone. Wahoo, they cost me a buck, maximum twenty apiece. I expect them to be disposable and most of them are. When they break? I’ll pick something that competes and figure the lost buck or two is cost of doing business.

I don’t make things on my phone. My work isn’t at risk. My access to a working communicator trumps my need to protect and control any ‘on the phone’ work product and, therefore, I do no actual work, creation of data, on my phone.

Yes, of course I have a Calendar, Notes, and Contacts on my phone but they’re the walk-around copy. Worst case? I lose a day. If I snap a picture of Big Foot? I’m going to email it to myself and sync my photos because no way do I risk losing that. Big Foot aside, data created on the phone is small, rare, and usually much less important than my need to know I can make a call, or send an email.

I also store nothing personal or truly private on my phone.  I could lose the phone. The lock code I set could be bypassed or the phone picked up before the 5 minutes elapses to set it down the road to self wiping.

My computer? No! It’s mine, it’s mine to break, to modify, to abuse, to hack at, to control, modify if I want to. What I do on my computers, I have  only myself to blame if I don’t have a backup.

My work, my photos, my writing, my music, the unreleased gems from bands I’ve worked with over the years. It’s mine and my need to control it, protect it, create it, destroy it, back it up. encrypt it, decrypt it, hack it wins out over all else.

I’ll set my own tie off points when I climb my digital Everest on my computers. I’ll fall, or not, on my own strengths and weaknesses because I own it, and the consequences of my actions. I will not allow my data to be locked away where I can’t convert it, transform it, reformat it, disseminate it, or destroy it. My computers are means by which I exercise and express my freedom.

iOS protecting me from myself on my phone? Fine with me. It’s a phone in the end.  I need a phone to be a safety net more than I need it to do my own weird bidding.

iOS on iPad? I don’t own an iPad.  Even the wildest, most optimistic speculation about the coolness of iPad 2 doesn’t have me itching to buy one.  Why? Because, in the end, very little I could make on it would be worth saving the burdens of cost, weight and shorter  battery life of a  MacBook Pro in my current lifestyle.

If I travelled more? If I gamed more? Sure, I’d love an iPad but then, I’d know I wasn’t ‘buying’ an iPad, I’d know I was renting one. I’d make the compromises that come with the ephemeral engagement inherent to renting rather than owning.

You rent a house on the Cape to spend two weeks a year care-free on vacation  every summer.  If it’s not available, you rent another one or decide it’s a Vermont summer and not a Cape Cod one.

If you buy a vacation home you do it, at least in part, to feel you have your own personal escape. The work involved in owning it, it’s part of the value. Beach erosion aside, what you invest pays back a return over your lifetime and maybe pays off for others.

I’m on something north of my twelfth personal Mac. 95% of what I put into my first Mac in terms of blood, sweat and tears is still there, being mine, on the Mac I’m using to type this. This won’t be true of iPad, iPhone or any iOS device unless Apple completely changes their thinking and that’s ok.

The rules of MacOS are not, and should never be the same as those for iOS and you should know which set of rules you’re buying into when you decide which, or both, to buy.