I’m not alone in that. I’m surrounded daily by people who do the same, people who push themselves to unreasonable limits, who contort themselves into unnatural shapes in an attempt to find some sort of validation. It’s an easy habit to fall into, but I’m trying very hard to avoid it. You see, I’m on the verge on a new stage in my life, one that is going to challenge me in ways that I’ve never been challenged. In the face of these challenges, I think it’s important to know who I am and what I believe. If I don’t know that, then I don’t know anything, and never will.

I have enjoyed growing up, and I continue to enjoy it. My impression is that this sentiment is rare. I often hear people say, “I’m not ready to grow up,” “I’m okay not being a grownup for a while longer,” “I just want to enjoy being young while I can.” That’s never made sense to me. It makes even less sense when I hear it from people older than me. I lead a rich, satisfying life, and that has not come from clinging to adolescence. Maybe I’ve been too aggressive about it occasionally – I haven’t so much drifted into adulthood as forcefully charged into it. But I can’t fathom living my life any other way. I get no enjoyment from all-day parties and late night bar crawls. Whether by choice, experience, or nature, those things don’t speak to me, and never have. I know that about myself. It makes it easier, growing up.

I struggle sometimes with how much of myself to share online. Share too little, and you’re a stiff professional with no personality. Share too much, and you’re indulging in the Internet’s destructive excuse for a support system. I wonder if this dilemma will exist a few years from now, when our social mores have undergone a further shift. For now, though, it makes it difficult to know where the line is. I try to adhere to a simple rule: share less online than you would face-to-face.

I know I would tell you this and more, if we were to meet in person, so I am happy to share it with you now: I am happy to be an adult. I’m sure I appear overly serious and occasionally boring. I don’t particularly care. I’m happy being an adult, happier than I was being a teen, and more fulfilled than I was as a college student. I’m happy pursuing things that most people wouldn’t pursue, happy setting priorities most people wouldn’t set. I still have fun with friends, still enjoy myself, but the terms have changed, as they are wont to do, and I am fine.

So it goes.

Clicky Keyboards — Shawn Blanc.

Great post by Shawn Blanc, wherein he reviews three mechanical keyboards, including the Das Keyboard on which I am typing. With this post, Shawn proves once again why he is a professional Mac nerd and I’m only an amateur.

The new iPad’s Retina display is genuinely stunning, the best I’ve ever seen, but it has spoiled me. Apps that haven’t been updated for it just don’t look right. Noteshelf, unfortunately, is one of them. The problem is that Noteshelf had become a crucial element of my workflow over the last few months. I kept waiting for its developer to release an update, but started watching its competitors as well. Last week, one of them came through.

Notability, by Gingerlabs, has been around for a while, and earned a reputation as a solid productivity tool. Its latest update brought with it full support for the Retina display, and made it the single best notetaking app I’ve ever used.

I think it’s imortant to explain why I need a dedicated notetaking app. I’m sitting in class sessions for a good chunk of every week, listening to lectures that I’m expected to remember. A lot of my classmates try to retain information by typing it into their computers or iPads for future reference. I’ve done so myself, but the problem is that when I take notes that way, I’m doing it so that I can come back to them later. I’m not actually learning when I do that; I’m making appointments to learn later.

That’s not the purpose of taking notes, at least not for me. To steal Field Note’s tagline, I’m not writing things down to remember them later; I’m writing them down to remember them now. For me, typing doesn’t equal retention, and no matter how detailed my notes may be, I always have to come back to them to understand the lecture I’ve just sat through.

When I take notes by hand, I’m much more selective about what I write, and can recall it much more easily later. I remain engaged in the lecture as I hear it, and walk away from it with a greater understanding of the material. It’s a system that works better for me, but the problem with it is that I hate keeping track of notebooks. That’s why Noteshelf was such an appealing solution, and it’s why Notability works so well for me now.

Notability’s flow and responsiveness make my stylus feel like a fountain pen. It’s digital ink is second to none, on par with Fifty Three’s Paper app. It’s wonderful to use and adaptable for a variety of contexts. It’s also a great tool for marking up PDFs – something I have to do quite often, thank you HBR readings. Most of all, it does what all great iPad apps do – it gets out the way and lets me do what I need to do. It makes the device invisible, leaving only the experience, and for that, I love it.

Notability is available on the App Store. If you’re someone who prefers the experience of taking notes by hand but wants to cut paper out of your life, give it a try.

The Das Keyboard can’t work with the iPad. It’s a wired keyboard, not a wireless one, and it needs two USB ports to function. (Other USB gadgets can plug into the side of the keyboard.) But its utility to me comes from how this current version of the iPad has changed my workflow and my beliefs about what my computing needs will be going into the future.

Shawn Blanc had a great post up last week where he wrote, “My MacBook Air is now my “desktop” and my iPad is now my “laptop”.” These are the lines I’ve been thinking on as well. My MacBook Pro, for all intents and purposes, has become a desktop computer. I don’t take it out with me anymore. Everything I used to need it for on the road, the iPad can now do. Why carry the extra weight?

It’s still a useful machine, but the jobs I hire it to do these days are very different than they were even a year ago. Media editing and management remains its primary task, but writing is a close second. And when I think about what this machine will do going forward, I think that’ll be the majority of it.

Writing on the iPad is still a little tough. A Bluetooth keyboard makes it easier, and I’ve written plenty of school assignments on it, but at this stage, it’s a machine for libraries or coffee shops. If I’m out and about, it’s what I need, but if I’m going to write for extended periods, I want to be home, I want to be alone, I want to draw the blinds, I want a cup of coffee at my side, and I want a bigger screen. If computers are increasingly becoming machines for dedicated tasks, my MacBook Pro is still my dedicated writing machine.

My writing workflow is continually evolving. Until about a year ago, I used Word like everybody else. Then I switched to Pages, which I used on both my Mac and iOS devices to compose my business school reports. Most of my longform writing takes place in iA Writer these days, although this post was composed in Byword. When I’m sitting down to write, I just want to write. And when writing becomes the primary task of a machine, I think it’s important that the machine be as well-suited to that task as can be.

The MacBook Pro that I own was purchased in July 2011. It’s the spring 2011 unibody model with a 13″ screen and a built-in backlit keyboard. All things considered, it’s not a bad keyboard. I’ve seen people refer to it as the Chiclet keyboard, given that each key is about as thick as a piece of gum, but it did a good job for what was essentially a general purpose machine.

Now, though, I open my MacBook Pro when I want to write, and when you’re writing thousands of words a day, the built-in keyboard starts to feel a little less comfortable. Apple’s own Bluetooth keyboard doesn’t feel much better. Still, I didn’t think much of buying a replacement until I started hearing about the Das Keyboard. I believe Chairman Gruber mentioned it on an episode of The Talk Show, and was intrigued by the concept.

The key to the Das Keyboard is its use of mechanical switches. The current Apple keyboard features scissor-switch keys, which uses two pieces of interlocking plastic to trigger the typing command on the computer. The advantage of the scissor-switch key is that it is very compact, which is why you commonly see it in laptops. But back when I was young and old people were my age, mechanical-switch keys were the gold standard in keyboards. Rather than sending a specific signal through a unified keyboard membrane, mechanical-switch keys each feature a standalone physical trigger. This means that each key requires more force to depress. However, the feedback you get from each press is infinitely more satisfying.

The Das Keyboard, like the Apple Extended Keyboard before it, uses incredibly loud mechanical switches. The sound of the keys, coupled with the physical feedback felt with every press, results in a much more fulfilling typing experience than Apple’s scissor-switch model. Regardless of what you’re typing, you feel better about typing when using a mechanical keyboard. Your words flow more naturally, your fingers move more freely, and the experience of writing on your computer is easier, more enjoyable, and more satisfying. That may seem small to someone who just types emails or URLs, but to an aspiring novelist, it’s a huge deal. It’s also something I wouldn’t have thought of before my desktop – err, laptop – became a dedicated writing machine.

I mentioned in a previous post that I didn’t know if I’d ever buy a laptop again. The Das Keyboard is giving me one more reason to doubt that I will. An iMac or Mac Mini seems much more likely at this stage, as I continue to delegate which tasks I would like which computing device to perform. Thanks to the iPad, having a mobile Mac is becoming less of a priority for me, and it’s in the dedicated desktop environment toward which I am moving that the Das Keyboard will be an asset.

And like I said, it types like a dream.

Following up on my previous post about stagnation and video game culture, I’m linking to this week’s episode of Hypercritical, in which John Siracusa (eventually) discusses changes in gamer culture over the last two decades. I wish he didn’t rely so heavily on film analogies, he’s spot-on in his dissection of the war between mainstream gamers, hardcore gamers, and the nerds like us. Great listen, as usual.

Except we didn’t. This morning, the professor sent an email to our class reminding us to include a brand concept map in our report – something that the assignment itself didn’t make clear. To make matters worse, I had left my MacBook at my apartment, figuring I wouldn’t need it today. Oops.

All I had with me was my iPad. For a moment, I thought I was in trouble. Then it hit me: my iPad was all I needed.

I opened my Dropbox app and pulled down the report as it stood. It was a Word doc. I imported it into Pages, made a couple adjustments to the formatting, and was good to go. Then I opened Keynote. Pulling information from the initial report, I constructed two brand identity maps in about ten minutes. So I had my report and my brand concept maps. The trick was getting them together, since Keynote can only export in three formats (PDF, Keynote, and PowerPoint), and none of those can be embedded inside a Pages document. So what do I do?

I go to the App Store. I didn’t even think about it. I just assumed that whatever problem I had, the App Store would be able to fix it. I opened the search field and began typing “PDF to JPEG.” Before I finished, results had already appeared. The first one was called “PDFtoJPEG.” I scanned its description quickly. It would do the job. I downloaded the app and imported my PDF concept maps. A minute later, I had what I needed, embedded them into my Pages document, saved it as a PDF, and sent it off to my professor.

What amazed me about the process is how easily I was able to solve what not long ago would have been an insurmountable problem. In the old days, leaving my computer behind would have meant disaster. Now it wasn’t even an inconvenience, and I’m not sure I could have done everything I did on the iPad as quickly on my MacBook. (Incidently, every app I used was universal, meaning that if needed, I could have done all of this on my iPhone.)

The iPad is slowly but surely replacing my MacBook for everything, not just recreation. I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever buy a laptop again.

I’m a huge fan of Jonathan Blow, think Braid is the best game of the last five years, and am salivating over The Witness. You have to deal with the sort of pretentious writing style that goes hand in hand with The Atlantic, but it’s worth it.

Part of this goes back to the industry’s obsession with being taken seriously as “art,” and to the people in charge, “art” means “like a movie.” And in the pursuit of being “artistic,” developers are focusing more on cut scenes, on emotional connections, on dialogue and voice acting and narrative to entice people to endure a game than ever before. Look at a series like Uncharted or Mass Effect. Why do you play them? Because you want to see what happens next. Is that an invalid reason to play them? No. But I would argue that if the gameplay were great, you wouldn’t care what happened next, because you’d be too busy enjoying what’s happening now.

I won’t confine this to a “you” thing either. I’m as guilty as anyone. I love the Batman “Arkham” games. Arkham City is a brilliant piece of work. But there are times I wonder if it deserves all the love I give it. There is a strong narrative that moves the piece forward, and that’s what keeps me playing. I don’t play for the gameplay, because the gameplay boils down to “press X now and Batman does something incredible.” That’s exciting, it’s thrilling, but it’s not fun, and it isn’t enough to keep me hooked (which may be why I’ve barely touched the challenge maps).

Developers focus on story over gameplay because it’s easy. It’s not difficult to create a passable story for a video game if originality isn’t a high priority (and as most games hitting the market prove, originality isn’t a high priority). It’s much harder to create a novel gameplay innovation that hooks you long enough to play from start to finish. It’s also much harder to convince the literati that gameplay innovations are “art,” and it’s made worse by the fact that the industry has never really felt comfortable defending them as such. But what else can we call Tetris but a work of art? Or Pong? Or Pac-Man? Did you play these games just to “see what happens next?” No! You played them because they were fun. No, scratch that: they are fun.

Does that mean there’s no place for narrative in games? Of course not. Braid is a game with a compelling narrative. Portal is a game with a compelling narrative. But you play those games because the gameplay mechanics make you want to play them. You’re not really worried that Mario may not rescue Princess Peach. You’re more concerned with how the heck you’re going to climb that giant town as gravity changes every five seconds.

I think that’s the purer approach to gaming, because it defines a game by the characteristics that make it an art form unto itself, rather than by co-opting ideas from another medium. It’s the action, the gameplay that keeps you coming back, that makes you pour hours into a game, and the games that do that well are the ones that have that special timeless quality to them, the ones to which we keep returning. Super Mario Bros. is as great today as it was twenty-five years ago. How many games today are going to endure that long? Very few. And the ones that do won’t be the Mass Effects or the Uncharteds, these interactive movies that are almost embarrassed by the fact that you have to press a button now and then to move them forward. They’ll games like Braid, like Portal, games that have innovated where it matters – in the gameplay. Maybe you come for the story. You stay for the gameplay.

So let’s stop apologizing for games that don’t have fully-realized cut scenes, or a forty-hour plot, or branching decision-dependant stories. Let’s stand up for the games that have the guts to go one step further, to build a fundamentally new paradigm of how a game can and should be played. Let’s define video games as art on their own terms.

Source: The New York Times

Earlier today, Google unveiled its heads-up display (HUD) product, Google Glass. Basically, it’s a web-connected version of Geordi’s VISOR from Star Trek, or maybe Marty Jr.’s media glasses from Back to the Future II. The Internet is buzzing with speculation about whether it will be the next iPhone or the next Segway, and some pundits (you know the ones) are predicting doom for Google’s competitors.

There are a number of ways to look at a product like this, and the one with which I as an MBA student feel most comfortable is the Rogers’ Five Factors model, which has historically been a reliable predictor of the diffusion rate of new technologies. I think it would be valuable to analyze Google Glass within this framework.

Rogers’ Five Factors include:

1. Perceived relative advantage over competing products
2. Compatibility with existing values and experiences
3. Complexity and ease of use
4. Trialability and opportunity to try before purchasing
5. Observability in the real world.

Let’s give the product itself the benefit of the doubt and assume for the sake of argument that Google Glass will work exactly as promised. Regardless, the success of Google Glass will depend on the extent to which it fulfills the requirements of each of these factors. Let’s run through them one by one.

1. Perceived relative advantage over competing products

Here we need to analyze Google Glass not by its form, but by its function. There aren’t many available HUD displays on the market, but there are a number of products that allow people to access online information on the go. Smartphones are the most obvious comparable, and for the sake of argument, we’ll say that the iPhone is and will remain the industry standard for smartphones for the next couple of years.

What is Google Glass’s relative advantage over the iPhone? First, it removes the step of having to take the item out of your pocket to access information. Second, it provides that information to you in real time in a true “augmented reality” fashion. Those are the two primary advantages – albeit not advantages that people are demanding right now. (Then again, if Ford had asked people what they wanted…) Whether or not these are actually seen as advantages by the market remains to be seen.

Where does Google Glass fall short of the iPhone? Well, not being connected all the time is not necessarily a bad thing. Information overload could become a serious issue with Google Glass, especially if Google stays true to form and tries to make its money on ads layered over your vision. It’s kind of a goofy-looking product, and not terribly discrete (although this might change with time). And we don’t know what Google Glass will cost, which makes it difficult to judge whether you’ll be getting a good bang for your buck.

This issue will become more clear with time, but at the moment, Google Glass doesn’t appear to have a tremendous relative advantage over its primary rival. That doesn’t doom it, of course, but I think we need to see more to be really convinced that this a product that will truly enhance our lives.

2. Compatability with existing values and experiences

Google Glass is attempting to create a new category of product. That’s a good thing, but many successful new categories are derivative of older ones. The smartphone was born out of feature phones. The post-iPad tablet was born out of the smartphone. There was a logical progression from category to category, and that made the new ones easier to understand.

Google’s got a harder challenge ahead of it, because the only products that Google Glass resembles are fictitious. In terms of actual usage, we aren’t used to the idea of putting on a pair of digital glasses that connect us to the web. It doesn’t align with prior experiences, and that’s a real barrier to adoption, especially for normal people. Over a long enough period, that could change, but time is a factor in the success of a product, and it might not change quickly enough for Google Glass to succeed.

There’s also the question of values. Do we want to be connected to the web all the time? I don’t mean in the sense that we have phones in our pockets to check our email. Do we want to have the Internet – and more specifically, Google’s idea of the Internet – sitting between ourselves and the real world? Are we ready for that type of augmented reality? There’s not a lot of evidence to suggest we are. I think it’s a bridge too far for most people. Again, maybe that changes over time, but there are some serious challenges that need to be overcome for this to work.

3. Complexity and ease of use

Here, we really don’t have much to go on. I don’t want to spit at the idea that a HUD may be a better, more efficient way of interacting with the Internet. You can’t do that without sounding like the guys who spat at the Macintosh because it didn’t include a command-line interface. Usage patterns changes, and better methods are of interaction are sometimes non-obvious. At first blush, I’m skeptical that this is going to be genuinely better, but it’s going to be a wait-and-see category.

4. Trialability

This is going to depend on distribution. If Google sells Google Glass entirely through its online portal, hoping the appeal of the product will be self-evident, it will fail. Google Glass will need to be played with in order to sell, and Google doesn’t really have the ability to make that happen right now. It could go through cellular carriers or through big box retailers like Best Buy, but I’m not convinced either will provide the sort of experience this product needs. Those retailers are good and letting you buy things you know you need. They’re not great at helping you understand things that you don’t know you want.

This is why Apple’s retail group is so important to its ability to launch new products. When the iPad launched, people needed to play with it understand its appeal. Apple was able to make sure that everyone who wanted to try an iPad could. Google doesn’t have a comparable trial service. It needs one to sell Google Glass.

5. Observability

In some ways, the fifth factor is a cheat, because it order for something to be observable, it has to fit the prior four factors well enough to make it into the wild.

Google Glass needs to sell. It doesn’t have to sell a ton, but it needs to sell enough for people to see it in public. We’ll look at the iPad again. Shortly after the iPad launched, you started seeing people with it in coffee shops or on subways. I was an early adopter, and actually sold three friends on the product after they saw me use it. This sort of observability is critically important to persuading normal people to buy a product.

Where are you going to see Google Glass? In the Bay Area, probably, and among hardcore technies. Elsewhere? I’m not sure, and I’m not sure how people will react to seeing it. I don’t know if enough of these will be in the wild to actually close sales for people. (And of course, closing sales is key to make a product observable in the first place.)

So where does that leave us? If we give Google Glass a ranking from 1 to 5 on each factor, with 1 being low and 5 being high, what would we see?

1. Relative Advantage – 2
2. Compatability – 1
3. Complexity – ?
4. Trialability – 2
5. Observability – 2

Within the context of Rogers’ Five Factors, Google Glass doesn’t look promising. Is that the final word on the product? No. Does that mean that the entire HUD category is going to fail? No. But it does mean that Google has some serious challenges to overcome, that it may take quite a bit of time for HUDs to make an impact on the mass market, and that Google may not be the company that reaps the rewards.

“This means Apple’s total cash should still grow by more than $35 billion this year.”

Great analysis from Horace Deidu.