Dear Apple, please make my wishes come true!

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In April I wrote a blogpost about iCloud and some features I wished for. At WWDC 2012, on June 11th I was happy to hear that some of the features I wished for actually had come true. Like an easier way to move documents from your Mac computer to iCloud. But I still have more wishes.

Dearest Apple, you know that I have been in love with you since April 1989 when we got our first MacPlus. I am one of the most loyal Apple customers you have on this planet. But, I am starting to get a bit annoyed about two things.

  1. iCloud and the possibilities to move stuff between my devices. You have come up with iCloud as the solution, but it’s hard to understand how to use that solution and even harder to explain to others that are not as experienced as I am. The solution is not crystal clear and the fact that it only works for documents made in Apple’s own software, iWork makes the situation complicated. That’s why every iPad user I know also use DropBox. Please Apple: we are a lot of people using your devices that need simple solutions to move documents between our devices (or get access to them from different devices) and we also have the need to share documents with others. 
  2. iWork; I get the feeling that you have stopped developing the OS versions of iWorks because you have been so excited about the iOS versions. And of course, I appreciate your enthusiasm about iOS – but we are a lot of people outside Infinite Loop that like to work with Pages, Keynote and Numbers, we are professionals and we want our software to work as fine as we expect from a company like Apple. I notice small faults all the time. Today it was about the spelling check in Keynote. It doesn’t matter how much I try to change the language from Swedish to English – the spelling check still goes for Swedish. I try to report the faults I notice when they occur, but, today I realized that I no longer expect iWork to work flawless. And that is a bad sign.

Otherwise I think you do a marvelous job and I am especially happy about Tim Cook and his way to handle things. Apple is in good hands and I have confidence in you.

BTW – if you want my opinion, you know that I’m always available, right? *nod nod hint hint* (Like if anyone at Apple should ever read my blog, but a Gotlandic woman can always make a wish…)

Oh? Google+ isn’t social media – well that’s a relief!

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As you might have noticed I wrote about Google+ and the lack of dialog in it’s news feed. I also pointed out some interesting statistics about how people use Google+ – or rather, they barely don’t use it.

Today I read another article stating that Google+ isn’t social media, it’s an extension of Goggle’s search engine and a complement to the other tools Google offer.

Horowitz believes as more users ”upgrade” to Google+ — which essentially just means letting Google know who you are — it’ll become clear to them that Google’s many services become much more useful. And at some point they’ll find the Stream. 

”When Google knows that I’m a man, and I live in this zip code, and I went to this school, and I have these interests, my entire experience gets better,” he explains. ”You will discover our engagement is massive, and guess what? Your friends, family and loved ones are already here. It’s not as if we need to acquire users. We just need to bring them into the light.”

I’m not paranoid and I’m not uncomfortable with different companies collecting information about me on the Internet. I can see why it’s done and I can also see that it sometimes makes my life easier.

But Google is pushing it too far. They have become the biggest spy network on earth. I have started to use DuckDuckGo or Yahoo more often as an alternative to Google. Ironically I write this blogpost in Blogger that Google owns… Right now I feel like Google is a virus that has spread all over the world and now when we all are affected by it, we can’t get rid of it.

Some people claim that Apple is pushing their ecosystem too far with software, hardware, services and content – but you have to ”pay the ticket” to get inside. Google is everywhere even if you never paid anything to get caught up in it’s network. You ARE stuck like glue in the huge Google spiders net without any intention to be it.

For years I have felt that I buy Apple devices because I don’t want to bother my mind with all the choices and uncertainty that follows when you buy PC and Android. Some people call that giving up one’s freedom and commit to the ”Apple religion”. Some people would even say that Apple is evil because of this. I chose Apple because they offer the best and I feel great to be an Apple-lover.

Now I’m starting to feel that I also pay for my freedom to not get secretly used by companies like Google. I know, I can’t fully get out of Google’s net, but at least I can use other search engines.

I might shut down my Google+ account as well. I don’t really use it. But since I am Swedish, I think it could be handy to have ”something like Facebook” where I only write in english. Maybe I have to find something else?

I can also move my blogs. But I like Blogger! The same goes for YouTube. I like to use YouTube… It’s so annoying that Google owns all of it!

I don’t know about Google Reader though: if someone knows a way to get a similar service for finding news – please tell me!

Apple secrets in books

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I have read the book Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson and even if Apple is one of my biggest interests and even if I admire the things Steve Jobs have done, I must say that it was a real trying test to read this book. I think you probably could have cut out a third of the text and got a much better book. I felt like I was running marathon after marathon reading it… I did learn a lot of interesting things by reading it, but in between it was a fight.

I have read two other books about Apple. The first was The Macintosh Way by Guy Kawasaki and that book was very inspiring and made me laugh at almost every page. It was a pleasure to read it!

The last book I read was Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky and that book taught me a lot about organization and showed a very different way to run a company. If you are interesting in the way Apple works it’s not easy to find out because of their secrecy rules, but I think this book is so far the best in putting the pieces together so that you can see the system and not only the pieces. I strongly recommend it. In the video above you can see an interview with Adam Lashinsky.

What will happen after iWork.com?

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Please Apple, don’t just stop the service with iWork.com! So far that is the best way to share and comment documents created in Pages, Numbers or KeyNote. iCloud is not an alternative – it just doesn’t work in that way!

My secret wish and big hope is that you Apple-guys are working on a new solution in which the functions in iWork.com are integrated in iCloud. That would make iCloud a killer app!

So, dear Apple guys, please give us a new function! Let me be able to choose Share in Pages and then my document will be uploaded to iCloud. Just as it works with iWork.com it will be possible to invite another person to look at the document, comment and also to download it as Pages, Word or PDF. And at the same time it will of course appear on the devices I have connected to iCloud.

And, while you are developing the iCloud services, why not add a really good chat function so that we can both comment on notes AND chat with each other when we need to work on a document together.

Actually, when I’m talking to you Apple-guys I have another wish! To make it easier to use iCloud from computer to iPad there should always be an option to save the document in iCloud when you work on the computer. I want it to be an option, because if I work on big documents, then I might not want to have it neither on iCloud nor my iPad.

Thank you Apple-guys! I’m so glad that you have read this and I look forward to those new functions in iCloud.

Oh, I guess I have one more wish… That is: I wish that any of you Apple-guys who works with iWork or iCloud reads this. But I guess that’s too much to wish. Sigh…

Virus, virus… neverending story

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A Swedish newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, warns about more virus attacks in smartphones. Why not tell the truth that it’s of course an Android problem and not a smartphone problem? How can it be so hard to admit that Apple makes better products and that part of the quality is better protection against viruses?

But, okay, even Apple’s apps can have faults. The creator of Path felt pretty dumb a couple of weeks ago when there were a lot of fuzz about them downloading their users contacts… And of course, the article writer in Dagens Nyheter mentions that so that we shall not believe that iPhone is so amazing good.

It must be hard to be a journalist that feels the duty to remain neutral and therefor has to find something bad to write about iPhone. That thing with Path and the contact information got the public attention quite fast and as I understand it, they fixed the problem.

According to the article in Dagens Nyheter and the company F-secure, 1639 new viruses for Android smartphones was found in december 2011. Congratulations Android-owners! Congratulations to the freedom and openness in Android’s system. Really, really good that you don’t have stupid controls. I can really understand how that is a valuable argument when you buy your smartphone.

Check this diagram that I found at Asymco’s blog. It shows how sales for smartphones has developed.
Okay, I am of course protecting the right to buy any smartphone you want to buy, but I can’t understand how Android can continue to protect their ”open attitude” towards apps and by doing that open up to welcome virus attacks?