Photo Corners headlinesarchivemikepasini.com
A S C R A P B O O K O F S O L U T I O N S F O R T H E P H O T O G R A P H E R
Reviews of photography products that enhance the enjoyment of taking pictures. Published frequently but irregularly.
Two Simple Lessons
12 June 2013
And so it goes, wrote a colorful character [Fn 1] who went his way not long ago. We don't know where he went (where writers go, we suspect) but we do know what we're left with. A couple of lessons from Adobe's move to the cloud and Apple's peek at both iOS 7 and Mavericks, the next version OS X. And they are:
- People do not like paying a monthly fee.
- People are weary of social networking hogging center stage.
The first comes to us courtesy of Adobe. The company's switch to a subscription model to its services and products (including a healthy dose of social networking) has stirred up more dust than Billy Martin at home plate.
It didn't matter that the monthly fee was 1) discounted and 2) not higher than buying the regular updates would have been. It still hit people like a bill from their cable company. [Fn 2]
People just don't like paying yet a monthly fee.
The second lesson is slowly being drummed louder and louder. Only panhandling survives as a businesses without a Twitter account or Facebook page. To their credit, panhandlers don't expect anyone to like them. And a simple, unobtrusive cardboard sign represents the closest thing to tweeting that they do.
Social networking has, indeed, made panhandling look respectable.
But even if you enjoy tweeting and wake up every morning with a smile on your Facebook page, there's still a chance you depend on your calendar, contacts and email applications to get you through the day.
That's what people were worried about after the iOS and Mavericks preview at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference this week. And you don't have to be a GTD [Fn 3] cultist to appreciate their point.
There are long-standing problems with Apple's Mail program (which, despite having been around for ages, has never been called "venerable"). And this update, like the last, doesn't plan to address them. The Address Book/Contacts and Calendar also have their list of issues, again unaddressed. [Fn 4]
Instead, the keynote focused on features "geared to one's social life," as one person put it, suggesting to another that "Maybe the whole social networking thing is some nefarious scheme of the NSA?"
People are weary of social networking hogging center stage.
Two simple lessons as the dust starts to settle and we join our regular programming, Business As Usual, in progress.
And so it goes. Which, we hasten to point out, did not, in our colorful character's mind, refer to life everlasting.
Footnotes
[1] Kurt Vonnegut turned the phrase into a refrain worthy of a Greek chorus in Slaughterhouse Five. Get it in this edition.
[2] Ctein argues the benefits to subscribers of paying by the month.
[4] One exception to the trend is Apple's turn away from its own AFP file sharing model toward Window's SMB file sharing, despite a slew of legacy issues, in Mavericks.