I would like a signal strength grapher, that plots out your signal strength on a little chart over time, much like Windows CPU usage meter.

The idea is that if I’m waiting for a call and I’m out somewhere. I can turn on the meter, drop it in my pocket for a minute, then pull it out and see if the phone was getting proper reception while it was in my pocket. Likewise, women could use this to determine signal strength in their purse, etc.

There’s a few different ways this feature could be implemented other than this, but this seems the most straightforward. Another way could be to have a special ring that lets you know you’ve lost signal; but that seems like it could get annoying.

... what PC developers have been doing to them for years.

Safari for Windows is out. And so far, I’m not liking it. I am a PC user, but I own a Mac machine as well and I’ve used Safari on it a fair amount.

So what am I hating about it? First and foremost, Apple broke the golden rule that every PC software developer that ported to the Mac was shamed for doing: Apple has forced their OS’s s look/feel and UI conventions onto another OS. Take this screen shot of the Safari for Windows Preferences panel:

Tuesday, all anyone could talk about (including myself) was the iPhone. But the iPhone wasn’t the only piece of news; Steve Jobs also announced the availability of AppleTV. Clearly it wasn’t on people’s minds and Apple’s stock dipped during the announcement of Apple TV before skyrocketing when Jobs was talking about the iPhone.

But I believe we are being blinded by the bling of a sexy new gadget and overlooking the facts on these new devices, because Apple TV is the real gem of this Macworld. Here’s why. Read the rest of this entry

I’m not going to explain the details of the iPhone. To find out about them, go to Apple’s site. I’m going to take a stab at how its keyboard might work.

If the Quicktime/Flash demos on Apple’s site are to be believed, this phone is going to change everything: Voicemail with on-screen UI, menu options without overloading, gestures for mouse-like operations, and more.

However one thing that some people may be skeptical about is the on-screen keyboard. It looks like it is quite small and difficult to type on, especially without tactile feedback to let your fingers know you’ve touching the right key.

This is a comment I posted on the blog zuneinsider, where the question “where will we be in 1 to 5 years?” was asked. I decided to repost my comment here as well.

I want an MP3 player that I don’t have to use. No one ever says “I love to use my radio”. They say “I love listening to music”.

Right now, all I associate my iPod with is maintenance. I gotta make sure it’s charged. I gotta make sure it’s synced, and I gotta do a fair amount of spinning and clicking just to get some music playing. On the PC I gotta answer little dialog boxes for store updates and downloads, which appear at the worst time. I gotta check the screen to make sure it’s okay to unplug it, or I may hurt the little thing. Keeping a working iPod in my life is more trouble than owning a pet.

So, when are these things actually going to become easy to use? When is using an Mp3 player going to be just as easy as using a radio?

At the end of the day, it’s not about the iPod, or the Zune. It’s about the music, and any time I spend “using the player” is just taking away from “listening to music”. Less is more.

In 5 years, that’s where we should be. Listening to music, not fussing with dialog boxes and cables.

(And a full mia clupa here: I’ve worked on a few MP3 players, but it’s not easy to cause a sea-change.)

Here’s a tip: A “progress bar” should go from left to right, and never go backwards.

Yours doesn’t. It goes from left to right, and when it just about reaches the end, it hops back to the beginning with a new “status” message, so it never really shows you how far along you are. That’s retarded. Literally.

Apple announced the iTV -- a set top box that will play iTunes movies and shows on your TV. Details are blurry at the moment, since it was just announced hours ago and it won’t ship until 2007, but from what I understand it’s 300 bucks but still requires you own a computer and have it turned on and running. I think I’d be fine with that but I don’t think that’s going to fly with the iPod generation. Read the rest of this entry