1. The first illustration is from our current iBird Pro app. On an iPad 3 I opened the Portrait and page and enlarged the head of the Acorn Woodpecker as it is now, so you can see how it pixilated on the iPad 3. (It would look this way on any iPad).

2. In the 2nd photo I made a new image of the Acorn Woodpecker so its height is equal to the height of the iPad (1536) (overall 1229 w x 1536 h). I then imported into the iPad 3 Photo Gallery and zoomed in to about the same size as the one in iBird. Compare the differences. Is it not amazing?

Since the iPad 3 is actually 264 dpi I could make the image even higher res and it would look even better.

3. Bytes wise the larger images takes up 230K which is pretty large. Let’s assume this was the average for all our images (which may be close to correct). So if you multiply this by the current 1300 drawings in iBird it would be about 300 MB for all illustrations. That might not be so bad an increase in app size since we are already at 600 MB for Pro with about half this being the sounds.

But if we also do this to photos then we have to add 3,000 files and that is another 900 MB or 1.2 GB. Add in our sounds you are talking about a 2.5 GB iBird app.

At first I thought this would be too big to try to sell then my marketing brain kicked in like this. We are planning to do iBird HD for the iPad completely over, starting from scratch. This app will have a new UI to replace the sucky one in HD. We use the SAVE algorithm (SAVE stands for Smart Attribute and Value Elimination and is covered by this patent: http://www.google.com/patents/US7363309). Let’s say we let this app be 2.5 to 3 GB.

We may call it iBird HD Ultimate.

We would let it replace the current iBird HD and it becomes our super-sized native iPad bird app (current iBird HD Pro owners see it as a free upgrade). Perhaps it becomes the King of birding apps in the iTunes app store and nothing will ever touch it.

How cool would that be?

Thoughts?

Mitch

Current iPad

Hi Res iPad

Normally I have shied away from allowing my personal tastes to leak into this blog. I came to Barnes and Noble today to review the development schedule for our current iPhone app but I have been wrestling with some personal questions I feel like sharing, even if it’s to the small audience who reads this blog.

The Future of Apple without Steve Jobs

I’ve just finished reading Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired–and Secretive–Company Really Works by Adam Lashinsky. A few months ago I devoured Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. I really loved Walter’s book and didn’t want it to end. Having known Steve and written about him on this blog the book resonated with the Steve I knew (Lessons I Learned From Steve Jobs). Walter’s book gave me more insights about who Steve really was, since my impressions came from when he was just starting out and while I followed Apple’s products (which I used in my business since the day the Lisa came out.) Walter “opened the Kimono” as they say and showed how much more complex a character he was then the persona presented in the press.

The first hundred pages of Adam Lashinsky’s Inside Apple seemed to rehash a lot of what I had learned but was still very interesting because it showed how other people saw Steve. And in taking that approach Adam caught a side of Jobs that Walter didn’t focus on. The real meat of Inside Apple starts in Chapter 8 – Apple After Steve and that is what really grabbed me and made me wonder if there was way more to Apple and Jobs than Walter had revealed. In this chapter I really began to understand that as great as Apple is, the companies product development is “single-threaded”. This is a term from the CPU chips in today’s computers – they are capable of running multiple processes or routines in parallel, and each can run independently without interfering with another. Apple on the other hand runs like a single process when it comes to product development. When Steve started on a new product he would pull talent from other divisions and those divisions woud feel the pain. For the iPad (which became the iPhone before it was released as a tablet) he pulled people off the Mac OS and as well all know the OS was delayed.  Steve’s focus might have had the intensity of a thousand lasers but he could only focus on one product at a time. And this, Adam Lashinsky says, will have to change if Apple want’s to survive in the long run.

I don’t want to ruin the Inside Apple book for you so I am not going to give much away about it other than to recommend it highly. But I do want to explore some of the thoughts I’ve had since I finished the part about “Apple after Steve”. One thing that became really clear to me after reading it was that Steve’s dictatorial rule over Apple created people who were highly motivated but a great amount of that motivation came from fear. Fear of failing Apple, fear failing your coworkers and most of all fear of failing Steve. I am not saying Apple is a good or bad place to work just that its not for a lot of people. It’s even more of a puzzle to me how Apple has been able to retain so much great talent. But what helped me understand that is what Adam made so clear; the people that are retained at Apple are not really entrepreneurs. They are more great generals, captains and lieutenants in an army.  Its not an incubation environment like say General Electric where dozens of managers went on to great riches with their own businesses. Apple’s talent seems like a religion in that to leave Apple is like leaving your church.

Steve’s Remarkable Talent for Home Runs and Who Will Keep It Up

Besides all the great things that are said about Jobs many of them can be found in other leaders. But the ones that are truly his alone are his ability to visualize the kind of products people would fall in love with. Now in my life I have seen lots of inventions grow up to be incredibly successful: autos, televisions, computers, etc. And looking back in history the inventions like electricity, the telephone, and even radio seemed huge but in a certain class of invention that everyone who heard about it instantly knew it would be a huge success. Talking over wires? Very few people thought that would fail. Watching movies in your home that are transmitted over the airwaves? That is a no brainier anyone would want. But when I think of the products Steve created they are all in a class that require a great deal of explanation before you can grasp their value. And really until you use his products you won’t fully grasp what makes them so special. I’m thinking of the iPhone. The task of explaining to a alien why it turned the existing smartphone market upside down would take a lot more effort then explaining why the television was such a success.

So with Steve running Apple he brought not just incredible vision but the guts to take the risk to build the vision. And not just a crude version of it but one that is elegant and tested over and over until its perfect. Like Adam I really wonder now that Jobs is gone how will Apple fair at this magical process? With no one like Steve to say “its crap start over” what will happen to new products being developed? But we know from Walter’s book that Steve claimed he had “cracked the code” for how to make an Applesque flat panel television. And if he was willing to spill that fact to Walter its probably not unlikely that the company had gone far down the development path. So what about the Apple TV?

Will the Apple iTV Be As Huge a Success As the iPhone?

A useful thought experiment is to consider the rumored Apple iTV and what we would expect to come out of Apple if Steve was still around to guide its development. This product is supposed to break Apple into the flat panel television market and at the same time like other Apple products, to turn the market on its head. And we all know what a terrible job manufacturers like Sony, Samsung and others are doing with Flat Panels. Sure they have got the prices a lot lower and they are getting skinner everyday. They suck fewer watts. But the UI for a flat panel television still sucks big gas. Pick up any modern TV remote and you’ll know exactly what I mean. And it’s not just the remote its the entire television. Have you taken a recent look at the back of one the big LCD panels? They are a ugly mess of black plastic and randomly laid out connectors with labels that are unreadable without a magnifying glass. The cooling vents dominate the back along with the mounting screws for the wall bracket that none of the come with.

And its not like no one else is trying to build the Flat Panel television of the future. Have you tried Google TV?  I have two of them in different rooms and one of my coworkers has one in her home. Can we learn anything from Google TV? As much as I want Google TV to be a success I am sorry to report that the one thing we can learn is how NOT to build the television of the future. Google is certainly making a valiant effort but the product is really a mess. I just got the 5th update to my Logitech Revue (mistake number 1 Google is not using the Motorola engineers to do the hardware) and it did not go well. Anyway I digress.

Apple’s iTV will come in a remarkable custom box with with small wheels on the bottom of the flat panel so it rolls out with a gentle tug.

You should already be able to already visualize how the Jobsian Apple iTV will look. It will be a dark slab of gorilla glass with no sharp edges, wrapped in a white sculptured case that looks like it came from the future. Instead of needing a razor knife to cut into huge amounts of brown cardboard and two people to haul it out of the box and Styrofoam wrapper, Apple’s iTV will come in a remarkable custom box with with small wheels on the bottom of the flat panel so it rolls out with a gentle tug. Roll it out and remove its black cape and you’ll gasp at a visually stunning tactile work of art. It will have an amazing wall bracket like nothing ever seen that doubles as a stand so you can set it up and watch immediately.

Siri TV and Your Personal Concierge

There will be just one power button on the iTV and everything else will be controlled by talking with your own personal TV concierge at Apple. When you first turn it on Siri will begin the conversation with you, gently guiding you along though the initial set up. She’ll first help you to get iCloud working so Apple’s servers can get involved with the install. Then a support person from Apple will join in the chat to make sure your set up goes smoothly (what you didn’t’ expect that? Your paying twice the price of a television from Japan so you better have a personal concierge.)

Now if you think this is my double chocolate cheese cake and Americano talking your vision glasses need to be cleaned. There is nothing I have described that could not have been built when Steve was alive and in his prime. I have no doubt that at least 10 versions of this product are sitting on a table in front of Johnny Ive while he walks around them over and over, looking at the TV while its OFF from every angle.

This FAQ is written for the newest version of iBird Pro for Android: version 2.0.9 and 2.0.10.  Unless you are already a very patient and hard to ruffle person, I suggest you jump down and read my earlier post iBird 2 for Android Troubleshooting FAQ. This was written in Nov of 2011 and will not only cover issues with pre 2.0.9 iBird Pro but also help you get through the non trivial issues that arise when dealing with Android software.

FAQ You are installing iBird version 2.0.9 and get the message below:

The  message “iBird encountered an error and is unable to create or download the database….etc” means something has gone wrong during the installation of iBird. We are working on a solution to prevent this but for now to fix this you need to uninstall iBird from your device (phone or tablet), remove any iBird database folder that may have been created, and try to install the app again and sync its database. The rest of this FAQ explains how to do that and gives tips on how to make sure the sync is successful.

Tips for Downloading the iBird Database

iBird’s database is very large, pushing towards 600 MB. We often get complaints about its large size. Less frequently we get complaints that there are not enough illustrations, photos or other content. The deal is you can’t have both large amounts of data and small size. You want higher resolution? Then you have to accept that data is going to consume more space on your phone or tablet. Why not just put it on a server and download as needed some people ask? Because that means you wont be able to view it in the field where there is no WiFi or cellular connection available. Maybe someday when telecommunications is so ubiquitous that everyone has there own personal satellite in orbit a server solution will work. But for now downloading the database is the only good solution. And it’s really not that hard as long as you take a few precautions before you start. Here are some tips to help increase the odds of not running into trouble.

1. Only download the iBird database over a fast WiFi connection. DO NOT USE YOUR CELLULAR CONNECTION. Because most cell carriers are metering the download of data, if you go over your monthly allotment you will incur additional costs.
2. Monitor the download and be prepared to intervene if there are problems. Some networks will intentionally slow down your connection when they sense you are “hogging” the bandwidth, particularly DSL type of internet services, so you need to keep an eye on the progress of your iBird synchronization. (BTW we are not alone in the approach of downloading the database as a separate process from installing the app. The Audubon app uses the same approach.)
3. Insure you have at least 1 GB (One gigabyte – 1,000 megabytes) of space available for the iBird database. While it only uses half that, as it downloads it may put part of the files in a temporary part of your memory so at times you can have twice the space consumed. Once the database has finished it will take up the advertised amount.
4. Set the Display Time out setting to Never or as long as you are allowed on your device.
5. If you have problems downloading please don’t leave a 1 star review that says “This product is a !@#$%^ and won’t download”. Instead take the adult approach and write to our support group using the form we have prepared to help us do a good job. Here is the link: iBird Support Form. If you just want to drop us a quick question you can use the email address support@ibird.com. But we warn you – if you need more help you will have to fill out the form and we will send you to it.

When Syncing My iBird Database Stalls

Its not uncommon for the database to stop downloading in the middle of the process. We are working on a programmed solution to this but for now we have put together this quick tutorial on how to cure the problem manually.

Go to the More Page to Sync the Database

Step 1. Go to the More Page to start the synchronization (downloading) of the database.

Step 2. Read the instructions.

Step 2. Read about the different ways to sync the database. You can sync in small sections by selecting then syncing all the birds starting with the letter A, then move to B, and so on. Or  you can Sync All the birds at once. You can even sync one bird at a time by just opening its species page and waiting for the data to download.

Step 3. Press the Sync All button to start the download

Step 3. Press Sync All to sync all the birds in the database. You will need to monitor the progress.

Step 4. Monitor the downloading. If the progress bar stalls press the hardware back button than press Sync All to resume.

Step 4. Monitor the progress bars as the download continues.

If the progress bar stops and does not move for more than a few minutes press the  hardware Back button then press the Sync All button again. You will see iBird verify the species that have already been downloaded and the bottom progress bar will move. Once it gets to the first bird that was stuck the progress should resume.

How to Start the iBird Installation Over

Some people have found that iBird gets in a state such that it can’t finish the installation or synchronization. Or it gives an error that there is no SD Card and you know that you have an SD Card and its got plenty of room. In this case the best solution is to start over. Here is how to do that.

Know Your WiFi Bandwidth

One of the first thing you need to do is make sure you have a good connection to the internet with a fast WiFi. We have seen many situations where the customer thinks they have a fast WiFi only to discover upon testing this is not true.

Why is bandwidth important? Because iBird is a really large database. In fact it’s too large to store in the Google Market. To understand this lets calculate how long it takes to download a 600 MB set of files over a 1 Mbps connection, which is typical of a wireless router connected to a DSL network. Assuming a byte is about 8 bits a 600 MB file is 600 x 8 or about 4800 megabits. 4800 megabytes divided by 1 megabits per second = 4800 seconds. In minutes this is 4800/60 = 80 minutes  or 80/60 = 1.33 hours. Call it 1-1/2 hours. Because there are several thousand files that make up the iBird database there is a good deal of overheard so that the actual download will be even longer. Consider a 50% efficiency the download time can double to 3 hours.  If your bandwidth is 2 Mbps you can assume your download will be 1-1/2 hours and if its 6 Mbps it will take 3 / 6 or 1/2 hour  or 30 minutes. I have a cable connected to a very fast router and speedtest.net says my bandwidth for download is 20 Mbps so should I expect it to take 3 / 20 = .15 hours or 9 minutes? I wish. The problem is the tablet or phone can’t process files as fast as my bandwidth seems to allow. The best I have been able to get is around 15 to 30 minutes.

Keep in mind that some ISPs will slow down your network if it thinks you are hogging the bandwidth and so the calculations can go out the window. Another factor are the servers that stores the files for iBird. If there is a lot of traffic on them it could slow the download time. We see this sometimes when a new update is first released and thousands of customers are attempting to update at the same time.

To test it you can download another app from the Market. My favorite is speedtest.net. Run this app a few times and make sure your bandwidth is as fast as we described in the previous section. If its lower take a look at your router to see if its using the right protocol or talk to your Internet ISP and see if they can explain why its not faster.

1. Uninstall iBird. Use either the Market uninstall button uninstall the app from Settings using Settings→Applications→Manage Applications→iBird Pro then press the Uninstall button
2. Remove the iBird Pro folder. Use a third party file manager app from the Market. My favorite is Astro File Manager. Find this app in the Market, download it then use it to locate the folder iBird_Pro on the SD Card. If you don’t have a physical SD Card you can find it in the folder mnt/SDCard.
3. Now since you have already purchased iBird you can go to the Market again, search for it by typing “iBird” in the search box.
4. Now go ahead and reinstall iBird. When it is done resync the database.

Hopefully this time your installation and syncing will work better.

If you continue to have problems please contact our support team and we will work with you.

FAQs from iBird Users

One wise user recommended disabling “automatic updates” for iBird in the Google Market. Reason? If this setting is ON (the checkbox is checked) Google Market will try to install a new update to the app in the background. That could lead to problems, for example if you are on a slow network, don’t want to incur the costs on a cellular network, or if you happened to be in the field. If  you keep automatic update OFF the Market will still let you know if there is an update when you go to My Apps in the store. But it will be up to you to start the update so you can do it when you have a fast WiFi connection. Note iBird will still let you know if there is a database update because we do that in the app. And of course you can press the Later button to do the database update some other time.

Click to see at Amazon

I mean that in a good way. Yesterday my Kindle Fire appeared in the mailbox. I immediately unpacked and set it up to see how it compared to other tablets as a field guide for birding.  I downloaded iBird Pro from the Amazon app store and this is a review of what I found. I’m going to keep this short.

Caveat: I believe I can write intelligently about the Kindle Fire because as an app developer I’ve tested our Android product on about 20 different tablets to date. (In a future blog I’ll compare those devices.) I’ll start by giving you a quick overview of the good and the not so good about the device for the average person contemplating a purchase.

Overall Kindle Fire Pros and Cons for Anyone Buying a Tablet Today

After using the Kindle Fire for a day I am extremely impressed and 100% convinced it will turn the entire tablet market upside down.

In doing so it will grab a lot of share from Apple (and help Google in the process to dominate the mobile market). The most impressive thing about this device is its price of $200. Most tablets on the market cost around $500, so a $200 tablet is amazing. Compared to the iPad the Fire is missing a lot of features but on the other hand its incredibly low price may prove many of those features superfluous to most people.

iSuppli pegs the Fire’s build cost at $209.31 while Piper Jaffray puts it at $250.

The strategy of Jeff Bezos is brilliant: sell the hardware at a loss and make it up by sales of Amazon products though the Kindle. Using the Kindle to buy products in the Amazon store is a breeze, the browser is customized specifically for that purpose. We’ll have to wait and see if the profits can make up for the losses.

Pros for Everyone

• $200 price is a steal – half the norm today for tablets
• Solidly built and rubber back makes it less slippery
• Customized home page works fairly well – a little too sensitive
• Android interface has been super customized and simplified
• The device was almost instantly useable because it came with a custom email address
• Screen is gorgeous, bright, colors well saturated
• No hardware buttons to wear out or menus other than start/sleep
• Email was easy to set up
• Speed is fast enough for several apps to run simultaneously
• Nice drop down menu at screen top of important settings like WiFi, brightness, sync
• Has a standard headphone jack

Cons for Everyone

• No camera, microphone, GPS, Bluetooth or memory-card slot
• No hardware buttons or menus other than start/sleep
• Keyboard keys very small and easy to make mistakes
• Off switch is too easy to hit by accident
• Touch screen is hesitant and sometimes stubborn
• Keyboard is overly sensitive – too easy to type wrong characters
• Audio quality is good but volume is lower than other tablets
• No cellular or whisper net (like Kindle book readers)
• WiFi a bit wonky
• Animation and screen swipes are a bit sluggish but not that bad (to me)
• Screen is a finger print magnet and needs a glare reducer when used in bright light
• Only 8 GB of memory can be used up quickly by magazines, books and apps
• Heavy compared to the newer 7 inch tablets (e.g. Sony Tablet)
• Unconventional and customized Android interface takes some getting used to
• A bit sluggish and taps don’t always register but this is version 1.0
• Registration process was not clear – came with an email address
• No hardware volume control but slider easily accessible
• Amazon store is lacking several important apps but there is a way around this (2)
• Store doesn’t rank apps and is missing some really important ones (3)
• WiFi gave inconsistent results when used with AT&T WiFi inside Barnes and Noble! This was the case in the first store I tried but the next day at a different B&N it worked fine.
• Custom “Silk” browser is not as fast as I was led to believe, won’t resolve some pages and sometimes stalls
• The mail program really needs to be improved, I had a hard time using it
• No privacy – you can’t clear your browser history so anyone can see what you visited and the last app you used shows as the first icon in the home page carousel

Looking at the Pros and Cons list you might conclude that there are way  more things I don’t like than I do like. Actually I made up the list of Con’s with other tablets in my mind at the time, and it’s human nature to find things wrong easier than things right. So don’t take the imbalance as a negative. I’m convinced that most of the Con issues will be fixed in subsequent Amazon updates.

Kindle Fire Pros and Cons Specifically for Birders

These are the things people who like to bird will want to be aware of about the Kindle Fire.

Overall compared to other tablets the Kindle Fire offers the best cost and value tradeoff for birding.

The only real competitor to the Kindle Fire, in this birder’s opinion, is the new $199 iPod touch, which is not a tablet, but a smartphone minus the phone. While the iPod touch has a superior interface and can fit in your pocket its small screen means it’s not as good for reading books and surfing the web, so a personal choice has to be made carefully between these devices. The other 20 tablets I’ve used are either too heavy, too big, or too expensive. If I had to pick one “high-end” Android tablet today it would be the new Sony. It has a beautiful hardware design, and is amazingly light weight. It is great for arm-chair birders who don’t mind spending $500. The other tablet I would consider if I was not concerned about cost would be the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 running Android Honeycomb 3.2. I recently upgraded my Galaxy tab from OS 3.1 to OS 3.2 and it was a huge improvement.

Pros for Birders

• Screen still readable in sunlight
• Light weight – about the same as Sibley or Nat Geo printed book
• Birding apps run well and are very easy to install
• Cost is really low ($200) which means you get all the extra values of a tablet in a book reader
• Will fit in a large coat pocket
• Battery life decent, will last for at least 8 hours of continuous  use

Cons for Birders

• No camera, microphone, GPS, Bluetooth or memory-card slot
• Heavy and thick (1/2 inch) means won’t fit in pants pocket
• No external storage card means limits to what can be on device
• Changing volume is difficult in the field as there is no hardware control
• Volume really is too low – needs an audio amp for birds to hear well
• Entering text in a bird app is harder than it should be as keyboard is so sensitive
• Definitely needs a case in the field, dropping it will crack the screen (1)
• Battery life not as long as other tablets – maybe good for a day of heavy use

My Impressions of the Kindle Fire

The big surprise for me when I unpacked the Kindle Fire was it was already turned on!  Which was confusing because it was not clear what to do next. There was not one sheet of paper describing how to start the device and I could not find an on/off button. Eventually I found the tiny button next to the charger receptacle on the bottom edge and when I pressed it the title Kindle Fire on the screen started rippling and I took this as it starting up. Still this is not grandmother friendly. The packaging gives an impression of cheapness and an “I really don’t care what the user experiences when they open my product for the first time”.  I think Jeff Bezos does not have the sensitivity of Steve Jobs when it comes to presentation. Or maybe he will after he reads this review (yeah dream on).

The next surprise was the Kindle Fire opened what looked like a registration screen and already had an email address for me set (name@kindle.com). There was a link called Deregister but I was not sure what to do so I pressed it and it let me enter my normal Amazon user name (but not a password). However later I discovered the @kindle.com address was still enabled. I was able to press Deregister again and this time when I entered my normal Amazon email account it actually took. You really want to change the Kindle Fire account email address right away otherwise the apps you download will have to be re-downloaded. Apps are always associated with the email address you log into the Fire with.

Next I was presented with a WiFi setup screen that didn’t show my main WiFi account. I had to take it closer to the router to get a stronger signal. I think there is some weakness in the WiFi hardware and this is why I gave it a “wonky” note in the Cons section.

The last surprise was before I got to the home page the Kindle Fire needed to be updated with new Amazon firmware.

This update process took a half hour to download and install. When it rebooted the device there was a long period where I could not tell if it was starting up or stuck. Amazon left all the waiting indicators off the design which will have you scratching your head at times wondering what its doing.  Amazon could have included a tiny low cost LED that blinked when the device was busy, or just used the customary spinning cursor, but perhaps they have reasons for dropping activity indicators I can’t fathom.

One thing is clear about the Kindle Fire: it’s the first true competition to the iPad. Imagine you are an Android tablet manufacturer today. Lacking Amazon’s huge online infrastructure the only way you can compete is by adding new hardware features. And that means raising the price which will just push more customers into Amazon’s grip. And while Apple can counter Amazon’s store with its iTunes ecology the iTune’s store is only good for media like music and video and software like apps. Jeff Bezos says Apple’s approach is to sell hardware at high margins while Amazon’s approach is to sell everything at low margins. Both approaches have pros and cons but if you think about it Amazon’s more varied product strategy gives them insurance should people tire of the excitement around tablets and smartphones.

There are many extensive reviews on the Internet about the Kindle Fire (for example see David Pogue’s excellent and amusing Fire Aside, Other Kindles Also Shine.) These reviews are not all as positive as mine but I think that’s because there authors are trying to compare the Fire to an iPad or expensive Android tablet by features rather than ecology. In such a comparison the Fire won’t win. There are also a lot of debates about whether the Fire is an iPad killer and several other controversies. However it is my opinion that if you are a birder you will be VERY happy with the Kindle Fire.

One recent review in the New York Times (As Kindle Fire Faces Critics, Remedies Are Promised by David Streifeld, Dec 1, 2011) raises some interesting points regarding the different impressions people have. It reminds me of the story of the blind men describing an elephant by touch. In various versions of the tale, a group of blind men (or men in the dark) touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one feels a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then compare notes and learn that they are in complete disagreement. One reviewer is particularly negative.

“I feel the Fire is going to be a failure,” Mr. Nielsen, of the Nielsen Norman Group, a Silicon Valley consulting firm, said in an interview. “I can’t recommend buying it.”

This particular review, in this writer’s opinion, Mr. Neilsen seems to have got stuck touching the tail of the elephant. It’s always easy to find things wrong with version 1.0 of any software product and that is why I recommend you stand back and see the product as dynamic and evolving.  Mr. Nielsen seems foolish to underestimate Amazon and discount the Kindle Fire.

The Tablet Arm’s Race

Right now there is a major fight to be king of the tablet between Amazon, Google and Apple with Samsung quickly gaining traction on everyone. This epic battle is unlike those of the past that relied on who offered the best hardware. Today all companies have access to roughly the same hardware technology and so these companies are looking for other ways to win the tablet battle. Right now Apple owns most of the market from a profitability viewpoint by choosing a strategy of the best hardware, the most fun interface and its iTunes and iCloud ecology.  iTunes offers a huge number of apps, songs and videos which are now, though iCloud, seamlessly integrated with the iPad hardware (you no longer have to sync your iPad to a computer running iTunes). While Apple has had an enormous lead in the market and its hardware has super high margins, the field is rapid shifting because of Google’s Android OS. The recent addition of iCloud is Apple’s attempt to make the use of the iPad even easier than before, and to allow all your media and apps to live in the cloud instead of taking up room on your device.

Both Amazon and Google are attempting to unseat Apple’s lead in the tablet market by jumping beyond just media. While they both provide music and video stores, Amazon beats Apple with over one million ebooks plus an online supermarket with unlimited products you can buy. Think of Amazon as the Walmart of the tablet makers. You would think that with Amazon having such a killer infrastructure that Google is handicapped in this race.

Never Underestimate Google

Right now Google is working very hard to bring Near Field Communication or NFC to the Android standard. NFC is the ability to for devices to be used as credit cards by communicating with card readers in stores. They call this an open commerce ecosystem and the official name of the feature is Google wallet. Thus Google hopes to leap over Amazon by allowing any Android tablet or phone to tap into every store in the world that takes credit cards. Thus rather than being limited to just the products that Amazon has in there warehouse you have access to every store that offers an interface to Google Wallet. That is a huge vision.

Google also has YouTube which they are attempting to turn into a television network on the internet and they are working on Google TV to bring every Google product to your living room flat panel television.

With such a competitive race it’s very difficult to choose who will be the winner but one thing is certain; consumers are going to be offered amazing products as companies fight for their allegiance.

Despite Amazon never giving out the units sold of any Kindle model (unlike Apple who loves to brag about their awesome numbers), analysts are predicting that the company will sell between three to five million Fires this quarter.

Notes
(1) I bought the Belkin Verve Tab Folio for Kindle Fire, Purple case because it had good reviews on Amazon, it’s leather and I like the color purple. However there are many choices.
(2) Search the web and you’ll find how to trick he Kindle to download apps not in the Amazon store and I am not describing jail-breaking the tablet (Nonetheless I take no responsibility for this and your on your own if you do it).
(3) The apps are on there way I am sure, just be patient.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPcz9Y17iCc]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIAVbBhyDvY]

Below – Photo Center Screen Shots
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More about iBird Pro

As we strolled down the Greenbrae Boardwalk on a beautiful day in April 1976 Steve Jobs could care less about Snowy Egret’s gliding inches above the salt marsh. His focus was relentlessly on the unreleased Apple II.

In Steve’s words the Apple II was going to make the Apple One which I had bought from his garage “look like shit”.

I found his comment confounding since I’d spent the last 3 months building a weather station with the Apple One and it was supposed to be the reason we were meeting.

But I will never forget something Steve said that would go on to become a basic principle of all his future work. When he and Woz unveiled the Apple One in 1975 at the Homebrew Computer Club at Stanford its most amazing feature was the “high resolution” two color graphics. This was 280 x 192 pixel display mode that you had to load from the cassette storage interface. While it only offered four colors–green, violet, black and white–this was far ahead of anything you could buy on the market. Now 280 x 192 is pathetically low res in light of today’s HD displays but for guys like myself in the mid seventies it was totally astounding. It meant I could draw charts of the height of tide, wind speed and solar energy over time for the weather station.  That, and the fact I was writing a book about Graphics on the Apple, was what had dragged Steve to drive his VW Bus to meet with me.

But he was not interested in hearing about the weather station and its PIA interface to the Apple’s 6502 processor. Spittle formed at the corners of his mouth as he looked at me with a laser focus.

“We have come up with a way to get 16 color graphics on the Apple II with only 2 chips; no one has managed to do anything like that before.”

I asked why that the number of chips was so important and Steve looked at me like I was a classic “bozo” which was his word for anyone who was not a genius. “Minimizing chips is the cornerstone to the success of the Apple computer. Look at all the other S-100 machines out there are you will see they are stuffed to the gills with parts. But lots of chips means lots of heat, many more points of failure and worse of all high cost.”

Lesson 1. Minimization coupled with elegant design is the key to the success of any product.

This idea of minimalism coupled with outstanding performance and beauty would come to characterize everything he worked on in the future. Steve knew in his gut that the color aspects of the Apple II would delight his customers. Climbing with him on the roof of my houseboat to show the wind speed propeller made of 3 cook’s tablespoons I would have never thought that one day this man would change the world and touch millions of people like no one had in the history of technology.

Steve Jobs was 9 years younger than me and he seemed like a 21 year old kid too full of himself. Yet the hardware that he had created along with Steve Wozniak had so captured my imagination I could not help but feeling awed by his vision. Steve was impressed with what I had done with the Apple One and he was aware of the fact I was a rising star of the computer book publishing world.

“Mitch come down to our Apple headquarters and I’ll give you an Apple II because THAT is the the computer you need to write your graphics book on about.”

Original Apple Office 1976

A month later I drove down to Cupertino to meet with Steve at Apple’s new head-quarters at 20863 Stevens Creek Blvd, Cupertino Way. He introduced me to Steve Wozniak. I loved Woz, he was a sweet energetic engineer, who at the time seemed to be the alter ego of Jobs. I brought my Apple One with me and he offered to solder the wires to make the second PIA work.  I could see Jobs was driving the design goals but Woz was an engineer who, like my friend Larry Brown, could make silicon chips do magical things. Today people don’t know the difference between PNP and a PIMP, but back in the seventies every one was focused on electronics and digital chips were drastically altering the design of everyday things.

Steve offered me a job running the Apple documentation department. He said today’s computer manuals were crap and if I took the offer I could participate in changing the world. And I would become a millionaire from the founding stock options I would get. I told Steve I was thrilled with that idea and asked if I could start a little later than the other people since the drive from Greenbrae to Cupertino was about an hour on a good day. Steve looked at me with a smirk and said “Mitch look around the office and tell me what you see under the desks”. I saw some kind of dark lump and so I asked him what it was. “That is a sleeping bag. No one goes home at Apple, we work 24/7, because that is the only way the world will get changed. If you work here you have to live nearby.”

That was a huge issue for me. I loved the nature of Marin, Mt. Tam where I hiked every weekend, I had a girlfriend in Fairfax and I just didn’t like the Cupertino asphalt jungle. I know today you read that Steve always said follow your dreams and don’t let the noise of other people confuse your vision, but this was already etched in my mind by the Zen philosophy I had studied, as well as the gurus I followed.  I had paid my dues writing manuals and wanted to be an author, not a manual writer. Plus money wasn’t everything to me, I needed to enjoy what I did and feel I was creating something great. I had already started a company with Larry that sold biofeedback kits, and from that I’d caught the bug of working for myself. Plus I thought one day I might be a millionaire on my own.

Of course had I taken Steve up on his offer I might have been a multimillionaire but whose counting?

So I thanked Steve for such a great offer but turned down the job. He was not happy with me. I already knew that you don’t piss Steve off so I asked if I could write some articles about the Apple as well as my Computer Graphics Primer and he tasked me with doing an article comparing the Apple II to the Commodore 64. I remember him saying he wanted me to slice the Commodore into tiny pieces with a razor knife until it was bleeding. That seemed like a pretty intense and scary analogy.

I never finished that article.

Stay tuned for more Lessons I learned from Steve.

In Memory of Steve Jobs by Nigel Hall

I suspect everyone who has used an Apple product over the past few years will be touched by the death of Steve Jobs, but for those of us who’ve had the pleasure of working with Apple devices day-in-day-out, it’s especially affecting. The outpuring of condolences and memories on Twitter and blogs across the Internet and across the world is something you don’t see everyday. Steve Jobs found a way to touch many people’s lives, but I want to focus on the way he has specifically touched birders.

A few years ago I had the privelege of working alongside Mitch Waite, developer of the iBird apps. Mitch and Steve Jobs’ lives have curiously intersected in different ways over the years, but if it wasn’t for Steve, there would be no iBird. And if it wasn’t for iBird, there’s a good chance you might not be walking around with an electronic bird guide in your pocket.

The first incarnation of iBird was called Winged Explorer and Mitch developed it for Windows Mobile computers. It was something of a hobby, but an inordinately expensive one. And it failed miserably. People didn’t take to Windows Mobile and very few copies of Winged Explorer were sold.

Enter the iPhone.

As soon as the iPhone hit retail stores, Mitch started to get requests from birders to rewrite Winged Explorer as an iPhone app. Having spent several years and untold amounts of money developing the app for Windows, Mitch was in no mood to go off and spend more money converting the software to work on an untried device. But, birders persisted in calling him and he eventually relented.

iBird Explorer took off like a rocket and was used by Apple in their early iPhone TV ads. Apple liked iBird because it was a perfect example of the kind of innovative new application that the iPhone made possible.

It’s fair to say that if iBird Explorer had not been rewritten to run on the iPhone, birders would not have the amazing choice of apps that they have today. Publishers of paper field guides, like Peterson, Sibley, Audubon, and National Geographic, have always resisted technology and it’s difficult to imagine them taking the risk to invest in putting their works out as apps, had iBird not lead the way and shown that it could be done. And iBird would never have happened if it wasn’t for Steve Jobs and the iPhone.

So, whether you use one of Apple’s mobile devices or an Android or Blackberry phone, if you’re a birder, give a moments thought to Steve Jobs and his remarkable acheivments. He changed birding.

Nigel Hall

iBird for iPhone

iBird for iPhone is an electronic field guide for birders.  A powerful search engine allows you to identify birds by their attributes (size, color, family, song, etc.).  It contains a rich database of bird species that includes color illustrations, photographs, range maps, bird call recordings, identification information, habitat information and more.  iBird is also an Apple universal app, which means that even though it is an iPhone application it runs in full screen on the iPad.  iBird is the perfect field guide for birds for the iPhone, with the added convenience that it runs in full screen on the iPad.

iBird for the iPhone also has a cool Photo Center feature that lets you import your own photos to the species pages so you can show them off. It also lets you share them on FaceBook or Twitter with your own comments directly from the phone. There is also a spectrographic display of the audio bird calls so you can see lots more information in them.

iBird HD for iPad

iBird HD is an iPad application that contains all of the search features and information from iBird for iPhone. Unlike iBird for iPhone, iBird HD is a native iPad application, so it was designed with the larger screen of the iPad in mind. Therefore it supports multiple device orientations (landscape and portrait views), multiple pop-ups and windows for more information on a single screen and in general provides a better user experience on the iPad. The HD stands for High Definition and refers to the fact the illustrations are 720 pixels tall, which is a format used by large panel televisions.

iBird HD also allows you to compare birds side-by-side, this feature is not available in iBird for iPhone.  This feature allows you to list the attributes of up to three birds side-by-side so you can easily identify differences between the species.

Searching for Dummies

iBird HD also has a more powerful search function since it uses Mitch Waite Group’s SAVE algorithm which stands for Smart Attribute and Value Elimination. This search technology is covered by US Patent 7,363,309 (see Note 1 below) and was developed by myself and Robert Levy, a programmer who was only 17 years old at the time we filed for the patent! To fully appreciate the beauty of algorithm lets first review the search method used by the majority of birding apps including our own iBird for the iPhone.

The simple way to build a search engine is as a series of filters; you pick a characteristic, such as shape and the filter narrows the database to just those birds that match that shape.

You then pick a second characteristic, such as color, and the search engine filters the shape list to birds with just that color. Can you see a flaw in this approach? What if none of the birds in the list of matched of shapes in the first filter match the color you pick in the second filter? You get “no matched birds” as a result. Now this might not sound like a big deal since you can just try a different color until you find one that matches but if you do that you are guessing and guessing can take a long time. Its a messy and inefficient way to search. The problem is similar to the way Google and all search engines work today–you pick a keyword or phase to search and you either get a million links back or you get the message “sorry nothing matches your phase”.

The SAVE Method of Search

SAVE is a method that narrows down the search criteria as you select attributes of the bird you are trying to identify and never gives the “no matched birds” result.

The importance of the SAVE method is you are always guaranteed to find a result, meaning you can’t get a blank screen with “no birds matched.” For example, if you select the shape of the bird as “duck-like”, SAVE will eliminate blue from the list of primary colors, since there are no ducks with blue as a primary color. This is “value” elimination. In the iPad the color values that won’t yield results are grayed out so they can’t be tapped. The other thing the algorithm does is eliminate attributes that won’t contribute to the search results or will give a no matched answer. For example ducks are not backyard feeder birds, so if Duck is picked as a shape the Backyard Feeder attribute is eliminated on the iPad. So the SAVE feature lets you know which attributes will yield search results and which won’t. If an attribute of the bird has been eliminated, then you know that one of the attributes you previously selected may be wrong.

SAVE makes the iBird HD search feature great for those birders who want to focus on identification and is a fantastic teaching tool.

Which One Should I Buy?

If you only have an iPhone and never plan to buy a iPad there is no choice, the iPhone version is what you want. If you own an iPad or plan to buy one in the future you could buy the iPhone version first. Since it will run full screen on the iPad you will be able to see the full size illustrations and photos. However if you are a birder who wants to learn to identify like the experts iBird HD for the iPad would be a good app to buy. Also since it was designed from the ground up for the iPad it has a more sophisticated 3 window display and provides more information on the screen at one time than the smaller iPhone screen. This means less button pressing for you. If you don’t plan on taking lots of hikes were the portability of the iPhone is a benefit the iPad version would also be a good idea. We sometimes refer to iBird HD as perfect for “armchair” birders, as a replacement for  textbook and for those who really want help in learning to identify birds.

Comparing Features of iBird for iPhone to iBird HD for iPad

Notes
(1) Smart Attribute and Value Elimination Search or SAVE is a patented parametric search algorithm developed by Mitch Waite Group and Robert Levy. This method of use is covered by one or more of the following patent(s): US patent number 7,363,309 and foreign equivalents.

(2) Includes Illustrations, Photographs, Slideshow, Range Maps, Bird Call Recordings, Identification Information, Ecology Information, Similar Birds and Interesting Facts.

• The connection to the internet dropped or decided to slow to a crawl
• The App icon gave the message “Waiting” and would not continue
• The  battery in your device died or the application crashed
• You ran out of patience waiting for the download to finish
• The device went to sleep in the middle of the download
• Your wife yelled at you to change the babies diapers NOW

Customers of iBird–and most likely of other large birding apps such as Audubon, Sibley and others–all have huge apps that occasionally or frequently need to be updated. And when that happens they usually look for the Tylenol before commencing.

Lumps Are Not All the Same Size

Here at Mitch Waite Group we have had our share of suffering customers who let us know they were unhappy trying to update their app. Whether the app be on the Apple or Android platform, the complaints usually fall into one of the categories in the bullets listed above. Why are there so many problems with these mobile device updates? After all when you update a program on  your PC or Mac it’s a pretty straightforward process. In fact most of the time you can walk away and come back later to see if it’s done.

The reason that apps are harder, fall into one or more of these categories:

• Mobile devices are not normally connected directly to the Internet over Ethernet
• Mobile devices use WiFi which is often unreliable and slow
• Mobile devices have slow processors and not much RAM as compared to desktop or laptop PCs so everything takes longer
• Mobile apps are not well designed for update processes

This last point, Mobile apps are not well designed for update processes, is one that large apps are particularly plagued with. Take iBird Pro – on the iPhone iBird Pro is over 500 Megabytes. That is 1/2 a Gigabyte. Its a lot of space. For example if you have a metered cell phone plan of 200 MB a month and try to download iBird over it you will eat up your entire allotment and be charged for the overages. If you have a 10GB a month plan you will eat up 5% of it with this one download.

Who Do You Love: Apple or Google?

Apple developers with large apps will tell you that they love Apple a lot more than Google (who licenses the Android OS to the carriers) for one big reason. Apple bundles the content of an app with the program itself, puts them in one file and then hosts that file on their servers. Google on the other hand limits the size of the app they will allow to be placed on there servers to 25 Megabytes. There are statements on the web from the last Bootcamp that Google increased the maximum size of an app all the way up to 4 GB. However we have not been able to confirm that. So as a developer, up to now, if your app is larger you must find a way to get around this.

Automagic Downloads: the Bird by Bird Installer

Given iBird Pro’s database is 500 MB we had to come up with a way to handle the Android app size limit. The way we did it was to unbind the database from the application. The way it works is like this: When you download an iBird app from the Market you are basically getting the main application without the database. Once the app is installed you are taken to a screen in iBird where you can download the illustration, photo and sound files (what we call binary data). You are given the option to download all of the content or just some of the content (for example all species which start with the letter A).  We also made it so you can skip doing this download process. In which case when you actually go to a species page in iBird the very first thing that happens is the binary data for that bird is downloaded automagically.

Now if Google has actually increased their app limit to 4 GB would we want to bind the database back to the app and let them host the whole thing for us like Apple does? The simple answer is no. The reason is as follows.

The Benefit of Separating Content from Application

The advantages we get as developers and pass on to our customers when we separate the database from the content are:

• We can update the database and the user doesn’t have to reinstall the entire app to get these changes.
• We can modify the app and the user doesn’t have to download 500 MB of data  to get these changes.
• We can make even tiny or minor changes in the database and the customer can download them quickly and with little effort or interruption.

The negative side of separation are:

• We as developers have to pay to host the database
• The place we host the database has to be a fast server so customers don’t have to wait a long time for the delivery

Now that we have discovered the Content Delivery Network MaxCDN who now host our Android database we have solved both the above negatives.

Show me an Example

Here is an example of how we present the separation when the app starts. This shows the iBird Lite app starting up and the message received that a database update is waiting. The customer can skip it for now and do it later if they wish.

But Wait — There is More

As  you can see in the message for this update we added 18 new photos. A link is provided for seeing what photos we have added. You can try it now if  you like:

http://bit.ly/iBird_Lite_db

We used Google docs, specifically a spreadsheet for this list. If we had included more features we could list them here as well.

Mitch

End of the Story?

Maybe not. Stay tuned for more as we continue to advance and improve the database update process.