Speaking of bad experiences, Tim Cook has recently gone on record talking about how Apple treats specification checklists and why people buy products:

“In the PC industry over the years, the way that companies competed were in two things: specs and price. People would say, 'I've got the largest drive,' or 'I've got the most megapixels.' The truth is that customers want a great experience and quality—they want that 'a-ha' moment,” Cook said. “These [specifications] are things that technology companies invent because they can't have a great experience, so they talk about the specs of something. […] The customer experience is always broader than that which can be defined by a simple number.”

Jacqui Cheng wrote that article and it’s all worth a read. She covers everything Tim said at the Goldman Sachs Technology Conference last week.

I bet Microsoft isn’t happy.

When it comes to backups, I’m certainly not perfect, but most of the good ideas I read online are put into practice in my setup. I use Dropbox, Time Machine, SuperDuper and multiple computers, so I feel my data is pretty secure.

When it comes to my website, even though Squarespace are awesome, I feel obligated to store some kind of backup of my data myself. For this reason, every two weeks, I export my blog’s content and store it in Dropbox. It takes about a minute to do and is certainly worth the time.

The XML file Squarespace generates is fine for importing into a WordPress installation, although I have no plans to do so. Opening the file in a text editor and performing a search is likely the only use I’ll have for this feature, but I enjoy knowing it’s possible. Squarespace supports importing from WordPress, so I have to imagine an exported WordPress XML file created by Squarespace is 100% supported by Squarespace when importing. I will test this out myself.

If you use Squarespace, I highly recommend performing this export as often as you think necessary — just in case Squarespace happens to lose your data.

A good way to tell if someone is a nerd is to check how many tabs are currently open on their main computer. If the number is greater than 10, there’s a good chance you’re looking at a nerd’s machine. Using this measurement, I certainly fall into this exclusive camp. Whilst being a nerd is often extremely beneficial, it comes with some drawbacks. One of these is the performance losses when more than a few tabs are open in Safari on OS X. I’ve suffered with this problem for months and have recently found a few simple steps to take to avoid it altogether. The biggest culprit is Flash.

It has become normal for me to have upwards of 20 tabs open at a time on my Mac. Doing this would very often bring the entire machine to its knees, forcing me to quit Safari and re-launch, loading each tab again. Over time, this procedure became tedious and I have been looking for a simple solution to stop my browser getting bogged down when used heavily. I’ve found an answer.

The first step is to completely uninstall Flash from the system. I performed a search for “flash” using Alfred, but I’m sure a Spotlight search in OS X would locate the uninstaller, too. Ensure Flash is completely uninstalled before proceeding with the next step.

Secondly, to avoid issues when playing YouTube videos, install the Safari extension YouTube5. This replaces Vimeo, YouTube and Facebook video players with a much nicer alternative. It also makes YouTube videos play without hitch - when Flash isn’t installed, YouTube will often refuse to play a video even though it’s technically possible. YouTube5 solves this problem for me.

The last step to enjoying a more responsive browser even whilst under heavy load is to install this Open in Chrome Safari Extension. As it sounds, this Safari extension makes it extremely simple to open pages Chrome, from Safari. Google’s browser contains Flash within it — so if you’re viewing a page which requires Flash (which you’ve uninstalled), you’re now just a button press away from viewing it with no issues. This is the “cheat” step for running a Mac without Flash installed.

I also use Open in Chrome to fix some quirky behaviour with YouTube5. Occasionally an embedded YouTube video will disappear from a page when the YouTube5 player tries to load. If this happens, all I need to do is press the button in my Safari toolbar and I’m viewing the page in Chrome straight away.

It’s worth noting that installing the Safari extension for Open in Chrome isn’t enough — there’s also a small “helper” application which must be running. Drag the included app to your Applications folder, then launch System Preferences > Users & Groups, navigate to Login Items and ensure the helper app is set to run automatically when you login. Once that’s been set, you will want to launch the app so it’s running straight away.

When you next reboot, the helper app will automatically run and you’ll be good to go.

I am yet to find a problem with this setup. The Safari extensions do not seem to impact performance of the browser and running Chrome occasionally is a small price to pay for faster browsing most of the time.

I find myself always keen to find better ways to write. Whether it’s using different apps or working in a completely different location, chances are I’ve tried it, or thought about trying it.

After recently reading Matt Gemmell’s excellent article about writing tools, I decided I should heed his advice and pick up a bean bag to help me think whilst writing. This is how Matt uses his:

I repeatedly throw it up at the ceiling and catch it, and it’s strangely therapeutic. I can often resolve a narrative, structural or inspiration issue within a few minutes, using this. It’s my first port of call when I freeze up during writing, and I use it to recharge my brain during an editing session.

Set of 4 bean bags for PE, games, training

£3.38

Buy on Amazon

I don’t write in quite the same way Matt seems to: my approach is much more “spew out as many words as possible for half an hour, then edit and refine until everything makes sense”. The bean bag comes in handy primarily whilst refining.

Unfortunately, I had to buy a set of four bean bags, rather than just one. As I’d predicted before the bags arrived, my go-to writing bean bag is the blue one. My second favourite colour bag is red. I find the green and yellow to look reasonably unpleasant: I don’t really want them sitting on my desk.

Throwing a bean bag up to just below the ceiling is an extremely fun game to play, which takes my mind off what I’m currently writing about. After a minute or so playing like this, I often find myself having “eureka!” moments, whereby I realise exactly which word I was looking for. This is why I bought them; they delivered what I was expecting. Your mileage may vary.

The bean bags fit in my hand well and have surprisingly similar proportions to an iPhone 5: if you want a size guide, the bean bags are approximately 10cm wide by 15.5cm long. The iPhone 5 is about 5.75cm wide and 12.5cm long. The smell of the bean bags wasn’t pleasant initially, but I’ve had my blue bag out in the open for less than a week so far and the smell is starting to fade. I imagine any odd, artificial smells will completely disappear within a month.

The texture of the beans is firmer than I expected. To give a rough impression of what each bean feels like, imagine a dodecahedron made from tough plastic, about a quarter the size of a pea. The beans are not round; when squeezed tightly and played with in my fingers, “clicks” can be heard as the beans pop past each other. When talking about the entire bag though, the individual texture of one bean becomes largely irrelevant. Together the bag feels about half-full of beans, giving it a pleasant weight and texture. Squeezing the bag as tightly as possible doesn’t result in an uncomfortable feeling and I’m not the slightest bit worried about the bag splitting.

Overall, even though I’m primarily using just one of the packaged four bean bags, I’m happy having paid £5.83 including delivery. I’m pleased about the purchase and I recommend these specific bean bags if you’re looking for writing help. They’ll also be fine for more traditional bean bag use, I’m sure.

Squarespace updates itself surprisingly regularly, which is one of my favourite features of the platform — so long as the updates are improvements. So far, they all have been.

Google Verified Authorship is having your Google+ account tied to your Squarespace account. It’s fairly simple to set up, but I found the instructions provided in the “account settings” area of Squarespace to be quite confusing. The support team provided me with a link to this easy guide. If you’re running Squarespace 6 and would like to help improve your SEO, here’s what you have to do. It’s simple.

Speaking of interface design, it’s pretty neat that Canonical (the folks behind Ubuntu) are taking public input on the design of the core applications for Ubuntu for phones:

Canonical is taking community input on what the core applications (e-mail, calendar, clock/alarm, weather, file manager, document viewer, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter) should look like.

Designers looking to make a name for themselves certainly have an opportunity here. Check out the gallery for some interesting interface ideas. My two cents? Designers should stay away from YouTube, Facebook and Twitter apps. I wonder how “community input” will go down when Canonical shows Twitter the suggestions for their client. Probably not well.

Louie Mantia rarely vents his thoughts on design in a way other than via twitter. This recent essay of his is a refreshing change. He discusses “The S Word”, visual design and app interfaces. It’s a good read. This struck me:

More importantly, a visually distinctive app such as Game Center, Find My Friends, Podcasts, or iBooks helps you to remember which app you’re in. The colors, textures, and environment paint that picture instantly. (When I look at an Android phone, it’s often hard to remember which app I’m in because most default apps look the same and use the same colors and theme.)

I couldn’t agree more. The most memorable apps tend to be the ones with the most personality. I’m reminded of Dustin Curtis’ recent blog post:

I've settled pretty firmly in the camp of thinking that interfaces should mimic social creatures, that they should have personalities, and that I should be communicating with the interface[.]

Apps which are the most fun to use tend to be opinionated.

Rosa Prince has the scoop over at The Telegraph:

Sir John Butterfill, a former Conservative backbencher, received £15,000 back after previously announcing that he would return money which he had received to help run the servants’ quarters at his Surrey mansion.

Sounds like Butterfill really needs the cash.

I don’t know where to begin with this article given to us by ZDNet writer James Kendrick entitled “ThinkPad Tablet 2: Inking in Windows 8”. Armed with a Lenovo tablet PC (inspiringly named Tablet 2) and a video camera, Kendrick takes to YouTube to demonstrate the capabilities of the new tablet and, presumably, “inking”. (I have no idea what “inking” is, but surmise it’s something to do with drawing on a tablet with my fingers and a pen; à la ink on paper. I enjoy doing this already with an iPad app appropriately titled Paper.)

The article and video feel like adverts for both Lenovo and Windows 8. Starting from the point Kendrick calls the Tablet 2 “very light”, continuing past the point he exudes that the device is “very very thin” right until wrapping up with “really cool, I’m impressed with this tablet”, I don’t think Kendrick is giving readers a fair impression of what the tablet offers or how it compares to the competition.

The Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2 weighs 1.3 pounds — but Kendrick doesn’t mention the iPad Mini weighing almost exactly half that whilst discussing thickness. (The Retina iPad weighs in at 1.44 pounds.) In fact, the only time Kendrick mentions the iPad — or any other tablet — is when comparing the physical dimensions of the Tablet 2. He calls the device “very very thin” during the video. It’s 2.6mm thicker than an iPad Mini and 0.4mm thicker than a current generation iPad. Sure, it may be “very very thin” when compared to a laptop from ten years ago, but what are we comparing this device to? There is not enough context, leading the whole piece to feel skewed and lacking integrity.

Let’s get to the meat of the video. It’s clearly about “inking” — it’s in the title, after all. So, what does Kendrick think of using the included pen whilst playing with the Lenovo Tablet 2? Here are his own words, transcribed by yours truly from the video:

“A good use for this pen on Windows 8 is in the Desktop because all these controls and menus that you see are really tiny, so this makes it a very easy way to manipulate when the fingertip is just too big.”

Does it sound like Microsoft thought about people without pens? It’s worth noting here that this tablet does not ship with a pen, according to Kendrick. It’s optional. Not all Windows 8 devices will be available with pens, either. Suggesting the pen is valuable because it allows you to interact with Windows 8’s broken desktop interface is the epitome of sweeping the real issues under the carpet. Windows 8 has a lot of problems.

Kendrick finds it “odd and quite strange” that Microsoft hasn’t updated Windows Journal to support the touch UI in Windows 8. I think it’s an embarrassment to the company. Microsoft is a software giant, shipping devices without appropriate software. Kendrick sounds genuinely surprised when Windows Journal correctly recognised his handwriting. Considering the app has been around since 2002, always having been designed to be used with a pen, I’d have expected that to be a pretty nailed feature by now. Personally, I was more surprised at the ten-year-old user interface of the app: why was Journal not updated for Metro?

Windows Journal is included in Windows 8, yet Microsoft — a software company — hasn’t optimised their software to work within the UI constraints of their own operating system. Windows 8 is a clunky mismatch of touch-first elements and pointer-first elements. Styli just happen to behave more like pointers than fingers.

Microsoft is not having a great year.

If you count the iPad as a PC, guess what happens? Apple ships almost twice as many PCs as the second manufacturer, HP.

In this delicious article for The Industry, I take a look at two new Basecamp apps for iPhone. The short version? If you want the best iPhone Basecamp app, buy Camp.