Since the dawn of the iPhone, it has been revered by just about everyone who first slid their finger across its smooth glass surface – including myself. Even with its few, long-lasting short-comings (Copy and Paste, anyone?). However, just yesterday, Apple decided to announce the bucket of water they would douse on of the last remaining flame, ushereing a bloom of black smoke from the most popular mobile OS: multitasking. For the longest time, Apple has defended the decision to prevent this level of context switching from the handheld primarily to prevent poorly designed software applications from hogging all the resources on the device (amongst other things). As someone who has ever owned an old Windows CE device, I for one can understand and appreciate this decision. Still, everywhere you turn today, people are talking about the same thing: The new iPhone OS, out this summer, will finally handle multitasking. The question I ask is should it? And I ask this with proof from the limited multitasking that is available in iPhone 3.
April, 2010
9
Apr 10
iPhone 4 can finally multitask. But should it? Live experiment proves not.
5
Apr 10
Building an Internal Combustion Passion Engine
Perhaps one of the toughest challenges of running an organization with a large tech team is how to kindle the passion it takes to make great products. Tougher still is understanding what it takes to foster this passion in the first place. I’m not talking about the default actions it takes to make sure everyone on a team wakes up in the morning and has it in them to make it to their first meeting on time with a good attitude. I’m talking about the passion that makes people think in the middle of the night about a problem. The kind that keeps the best interest of the company in the forefront of their mind with all the decisions they make. The fire that burns that makes you want to skip lunch to break through the solution you’re working on and if you do take a break, it’s spent excitedly cheering with your peers over yet another solved problem. It’s true passion; it’s natural, unteachable and unbridled.