Since then I’ve used a Kensington SlimType and then eventually the Apple Bluetooth keyboard. In addition to my affection for typing on my desktop keyboard, I had also become quite accustomed to typing on a laptop. Both of the keyboards that I migrated to were of the laptop style, so it wasn’t something that was hard to adjust to, but I have frequently thought back fondly to my days of banging away on old “Clacky”.

A Friend Rekindles An Old Flame

A few weeks ago my good friend, Mike Rohde, tweeted that he had just purchased the Das Keyboard and I was curious as to why. His reply?

He recently landed a book deal with PeachPit Press and with the long hours of typing ahead, he felt he needed a new tool to help ease all the hours of typing that he’s expecting, or so I would assume.

The Das Keyboard is a modern keyboard and uses a similar buckling spring that the old IBM Model M keyboards used. They’ve recently announced a Mac version and after seeing what Mike opted to purchase a thought occurred… “Could I still use Clacky if I wanted to?”

Testing On The iMac & The iPad

My first test was to simply attach the PS/2 to USB adapter to the end of the extremely long cable and plug it into my 27″ iMac to see if my desktop would even recognize the keyboard, much less, let me type. Standing behind my computer, I plugged her in and then walked around to sit down. My screensaver was up, so I had to enter a password to get to the desktop and was able to enter the password on Clacky! Test 1 complete.

The next test was to see if I could use Clacky on my 1st generation iPad. Adding the USB adapter from the Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit, I fired up the iPad and waited. There was an error message stating that my device wasn’t compatible, but I launched the Notes app and typed a few strokes and was surprised to see that it worked!

Of the two writing environments that I would find myself in, I could easily use my IBM Model M. Amazing.

Why Did We Break Up? Oh Yeah…

The instant I started typing, it felt like home. The feel. The sound. All of it came rushing back and I felt guilty for leaving Clacky in storage for so long. It was akin to remembering an old flame and wondering why it is that you guys broke up in the first place. And then you remember why.

1. She’s Loud
I’m on the phone a good bit for work and I often type notes while I’m talking. There’s no way that I could do that discretely with Model M. It’s not that I’m trying to type in secret, it’s just that it’s distracting to the other person on the phone.

Granted, I could always keep my Apple Bluetooth keyboard on the side, for when I’m on the phone, but I don’t know that I would want the additional clutter of a second keyboard.

2. She’s Missing That Special Something
I use the Command Key all the time on the Mac and not having it makes it near impossible to use my desktop. I also use function keys quite a bit and need the “fn” key to access some of the speciality keys.

There are options to remap another key to take the place of the Command Key, or the “fn” key, but it’s just too big of a stretch — literally. Since I use the “Ctrl” and the “Alt/Option” key as well, I would have to use a key that’s in a completely different location from where I naturally look for it with my fingers.

3. She’s Fat
The Apple Bluetooth keyboard and the Apple Magic Pad both fit inside the footprint of the IBM Model M with room to spare. Now, I’m not so much of a minimalist that the footprint is a deal killer. It’s the fact that it changes my orientation beyond just using the keyboard.

I’ve become quite accustomed to not having the numeric keypad on my keyboard. The track pad fits nicely in the space typically reserved for the keypad and I like how my hands fall when I’m working. Having the keypad back means that I have to reach out for a mouse, or trackpad and it just feels awkward to me now.

Since switching to the smaller keyboard, I’ve had fewer back issues and I think it’s due in large part to the change in my setup. It’s been years since I’ve been to the chiropractor and I used to go about every 6 months for a tune up.

So Is Clacky Going Back To Storage?

NO. Sure there are a lot of negatives and for day-to-day typing, I just can’t see using Clacky. However, there is a scenario that I can see all those negatives falling away — extended typing.

I have a new user manual project that is coming up soon and I can definitely see using Clacky to make quick work of that project. Also, I can see wanting to break her out when I’m writing blog posts, such as this one. Often times I think they’re going to be short and sweet, but inevitably they turn into much longer entries and having such a beautiful typing experience is a real bonus.

In both of those examples, I’m doing extended typing where I’m not shifting focus (cmd + tab) into other applications and I’m limiting my distractions (phone calls) so that my sole focus is on typing. In these scenarios, Clacky is the perfect companion.

Case in point, I’ve typed this entire blog article on the iPad using WriteRoom. There’s no Command key on the iPad, so it’s not missed, and I’ve been able to simply focus on typing. Thanks to the built-in support for DropBox, the article was continually synched to my desktop and I was able easily bring it into MarsEdit and add the images and the few remaining links. Overall, it was a very seamless experience.

My Dream Keyboard

The Apple Bluetooth keyboard will be my main keyboard for the foreseeable future if for no other reason than the fact that it’s quiet. However, I can imagine having a secondary keyboard that is stowed away and brought out when longer typing sessions are required. Here’s what that dream keyboard would look like…

1. Buckling Springs
Spending this afternoon typing on Clacky has been _so_ much fun, so my dream keyboard would have to have these keys.

2. Small Footprint
I like the abbreviated style of the Apple BT keyboard and don’t need the keypad, so I would want the same format

3. Mac and Special Keys
Having the Command and Option keys, as well as the audio and brightness keys are a must.

4. Wireless
I’ve become spoiled by Bluetooth. All of my import devices are wireless: keyboard, track pad and mouse. Not having a tangled mess of cables is really, really nice.

Now that I’m thinking about it, if you took the Apple BT keyboard and put buckling keys on it, I’d be in heaven!

Additional Photos & A Video

If you’d like to see the rest of the photos I shot, as well as a video of what the keyboard sounds like when typing, you can view them on my Flickr page at this link.

The differences between what I have now and the new 27″ i7 are:

• A processor that is .6 GHz faster
• 2MB less L3 Cache
• Upgraded video card with quadruple the RAM (2GB vs. 512MB)
• HD FaceTime camera
• (2) Thunderbolt connections

Last time it was easy scoff at, but I have to admit that this time has me scratching my head a bit. I even went so far as to price the value of my current machine on Gazelle (screenshot) to see how much I’d have to come up with.

$2,730.16 – New 27″ iMac w/ Tax
$1,132.00 – Current 27″ iMac
————————-
$1,598.16 – Difference

With that much of a gap, it just doesn’t seem worth it for the upgrade. The difference alone is enough for a MacBook Pro.

So do I have any buyer’s remorse? Absolutely not. I’ve had this machine for almost a year and a half and if my 2007 MacBook is any indication, I’ll be using this bad boy for many years to come.

If I were to replace my 27″ i7 iMac today, I would get the following:

• A processor that is .13GHz faster.
• Memory that is 266MHz faster.
• An upgraded video card (ATI Radeon HD 5750) with twice as much RAM (1GB).

All-in-all, that’s not a huge bump and certainly one I can live with. This iMac is still the most insanely powerful, gorgeous computer that I’ve ever owned. I often feel unworthy to own such a pristine piece of technology, but there’s no way I’d ever think of giving it up either.

• Perking Up: The Coffee Economy Awakes
• iPhone Web Development
• Honoring Apple from 1976 to the Italian introduction of the iPad
• StreetMuseum
• Tina Fey’s greatest comedy moments

I guess I could have called this entry, “Today’s Distractions”.

After calling tech support, I found that the fastest way to resolve the issue was to locate an e-mail the company had sent me back in 2006 with specific information that would allow them to verify that I was indeed the owner of the account.

That’s when a larger problem reared it’s ugly, ugly head — e-mail archives.

I tend to hang onto things, especially when they are digital because they take no physical space. This is especially true of e-mail. I save every e-mail sent to me and I’ve been doing that from day one. As simple as that may sound, it’s been a long and winding road through a variety of e-mail clients I’ve used over the past 15 years.

As you might imagine, over the past decade and a half and I’ve not always been successful in brining my e-mail archives along with me. I have several “islands” of digital data stored in one program’s format or another. These drives have been pulled from old computers and are sitting in desk drawers, or on shelves somewhere. I could resurface Route 66 with my good intentions of going back to import my e-mail from the old program I was using into the new shiny program that I just had to try.

Right now I’m migrating back to Apple Mail from Postbox and this time I’ve vowed to do things right. I’m taking the extra time to bring my archives with me and it’s a tedious process.

How I Import My Thunderbird (Mac) E-mail Into Apple Mail (mail.app)

1. Run the Remove Duplicate Messages Thunderbird Add-on to shrink down the archive and remove duplicate messages, if any.
2. Break up my yearly archives into quarterly archives so that the file sizes aren’t so huge by moving all e-mails within a specified date range (Jan 1 – Mar 31 for example) into their quarterly folder
3. Right-click each folder I’ve touched and choose “Compact”
4. Find the location of my profile (~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.default/Mail/Local Folders/) and drag the archive I’m importing to the Eudora Mailbox Cleaner icon on the dock, which imports the archive into mail.app. I do this one archive at a time.
5. Launch Apple Mail, find the imported folder and choose “Mailbox \ Rebuild” from the top menu
6. Move the imported e-mail to the proper archive folder “On My Mac”.
7. Rinse and repeat as needed

Bear in mind, this process is something that has evolved over time. My first several efforts yielded very poor results, but as I tried one method after another, I whittled away at the issues plaguing me until I arrived at a proper solution that works well for me. As I write this, I’m currently working through my 2007 archives, with 2006 being my last archive.

The real question is how I’ll bridge to my other digital islands and import old e-mails from The Bat! and Eudora. Those are of course in Windows and I’m sure will each yield their own special kind of hell as I tear up the road that led me back to these near-forgotten artifacts.

So What Do You Do?

As the last of my 2007 archive is being rebuilt in Apple Mail, I can’t help but wonder what other people do. Am I alone in not wanting to discard past conversations and hang on to these little tidbits? Assuming I’m not alone, how do you handle your archives? Do you use MailSteward, or similar tools?

John Gruber of Daring Fireball posted a link on his web site to Triplog/1040. For those of you not familiar with Gruber, he’s well known for his expertise regarding the Mac OS user interface. His opinion of TripLog was summed up nicely with “Check out the UI on this upcoming iPhone app from Palm OS developer Stevens Creek Software. This is not a joke. (Via Macworld.)”, but he also posted a photo on his Flickr page which generated a lot of heated discussion in the comments. This was the snowball that started rolling downhill.

Having come from the Palm OS world a little over a year ago, I wasn’t that surprised by the UI of TripLog and the other Stevens Creek applications because they reminded me of my Palm OS days. That being said, once I took a second look, it was clear that TripLog/1040 and Handy Randy don’t measure up to the standards of most Mac Software. Mac users are more accustomed to refined interfaces and elegant solutions to complex problems. That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of applications out there that are rough around the edges, but for the most part Apple has made it easy for apps to look good. That approach to good design has followed to the iPhone, but if you’re not a Mac user some of the nuances may be a bit foreign to you and you might miss them.

Luckily for Steve Pratt, the designer behind TripLog, 37 Signals picked up the thread and used it as an opportunity for positive feedback in their article “Learning from ‘bad’ UI. I have to applaud 37 Signals for not only seeing the opportunity, but for acting on it and steering the conversation from a bash session to an actual discussion. The article also bore fruit with several redesign ideas from Raphael Campardou, Paul Walker and Paolo Passeri.

Will these have any effect on the TripLog app itself? They already have! Stevens Creek has posted a video showing how to use the application and in it I noticed that the UI is much improved. It’s not perfectly polished, but it’s very much improved. Unfortunately, MacWorld’s TripLog Review focused on the current version and thus Stevens Creek is still having to defend their application, which is a shame.

Stevens Creek makes excellent software and I suppose the take away here is that application design for iPhone has raised the bar from the days of Palm OS. Design options were limited in the Palm space so it was easier to focus on the functionality of the app over the look and feel. With the expanded palette of the iPhone developers are going have to focus more on the side of application development that often gets the least attention — the user interface. It definitely plays a key role in an application’s success and Mac users have a poor tolerance for bad UI.

My only hope is that this experience doesn’t scare away Stevens Creek, or any other Palm OS developers from developing for the iPhone. I think there is a world of opportunities for Palm OS developers to leverage their applications and broaden to a whole new market – both for the mobile and desktop space.

If you’re interested in iPhone UI design, here are a couple of other articles I ran across while this story evolved:

• Edward Tufte’s iPhone Design Review
• User Interface Design – Taking the Good with the Bad

In case you missed the announcement, Apple released its next generation iPods and one of the new features was the ability to play videos. In addition, they announced that they were now making available for sale music videos and select television content from ABC and Disney. This was HUGE news, because it was the first step in what will probably become an avalanche of content. For now though, there’s only 3 shows from ABC (Lost, Desperate Housewives, and Night Stalker) and 2 from Disney (That’s So Raven, and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody), but with those two large networks signed up, it’s only a matter of time before other broadcasters belly up to the bar.

Now I could lose myself in the possibilities and the excitement of what’s to come, but given that the menu that is currently available for TV is fairly small, I think I’ll refrain. Why? Because it’s clear that the powers that be want to make sure that this model is viable. By releasing only three shows a piece, the broadcasters clearly want some proof before they go whole hog and provide more content. I was expecting to have to wait six months before the results came out, but Apple announced on October 10^th that they had sold over 1 Million videos in 20 days. Whaaa?!? :O

Now, keep in mind that this number included music videos as well as television shows. I would think it a safe bet that most of the content was music videos over TV for the simple fact that if you’re going to buy a single and the artist has released a video for it, why not just buy the video? Sure it’s $1 more, but you can listen to the song just the same, or view the video if you prefer. That being said, since television content is included in those numbers, it does prove the point that consumers are willing to purchase television that they can just as easily see for free.

This means that the networks may finally see the light and decide to release more content via iTunes and other networks may jump on board. Well, some are already making steps to just do that. CBS announced that they were considering iTunes. They’re still working out the deal, but the CEO definitely sees it as a strong possibility. In addition, the BBC announced that they too are looking at releasing all of their programs via download 7 days after they air. Not only that, but they’re thinking of doing it for free. Cue mashby’s happy dance

So it looks like the events that I thought were years away are actually happening today. Who would have thunk it? I’ve given the iTunes video a spin and I have to say that it works very well. I much prefer having the ability to download the content when I want it and having it on my desktop in under 30 minutes. I’m already using iTunes to manage my music, so having it manage my video content works great for me too. If more of my content becomes available, I’d gladly buy it versus using BitTorrent if for nothing else than for the ease of use.

Money aside, there is also a thriving brand of video content called IP TV that is helping to make downloadable TV more commonplace. IP TV is much like a video version of a podcast and it’s allowing just about anyone to create their own television show. You can subscribe to the content just like you would a podcast the only difference being that you’re watching video instead of listening to audio. The best part is that it’s free. So even if you’re not one to plunk down $2 per episode, you too can enjoy downloadable video. Personally, I’m subscribed to Digital Life TV, Tiki Bar TV and Systm. The quality of the productions is pretty good and I could easily see this content being produced for network television.

So there’s a lot of free content out there, which is great, but for those must-see shows, I’ll gladly fork up $2 a show. Does everyone want to pay for content? Definitely not, but I believe a larger percentage will choose paying for content over using alternative methods becasue it’s easier and it’s legal. It’s the same logic behind paying for music and it’s definitely paid off in spades for Apple and the music industry. Give the public a legal alternative and they’ll take it. Will there still be plenty of people using illegal methods, sure but in those demographics, there isn’t a lot of money to be made there.

Most of the illegal downloads are being done by teenagers for the simple fact that they don’t have the money in which to buy content. In high school and college, most of my music came from swapping albums and recording cassette tapes of them, or by taping the radio. That’s the very nature of being young, you trade your time for money (or lack thereof). Teenagers don’t have money, but they do have time, so they spend it trolling for the content that they crave. As you get older, you find that you have less-and-less time, so you begin to trade money for time and spending $2 is a bargin to buy the television show that you missed because of other commitments.

That’s exactly what I’ve done in buying episodes of “Lost”. I don’t have to worry about missing an episode, or remembering to set the VCR because I know that iTunes will have it the next day. “Lost” airs on Wednesday night and on Thursday morning it’s on iTunes ready for me to buy. Once purchased, I can watch it on my computer as easily as I can my TV. With so much of my time being spent in front of the computer, this isn’t a big deal for me. If I were to purchase one of the latest iPods, that content would sync with the iPod and allow me to watch it on the go. OK, I know what you’re thinking and yes the screen is small so I don’t see many people watching their favorite shows on the iPod iteslf. However, what I do see is taking that same iPod and hooking it up to the TV to watch my show. Now THAT’S easy to do.

In time I think Apple will release other products to make watching downloaded content on your television easier. With the interface that Apple created (FrontRow) with it’s new G5 iMac, there’s very little stopping them from coming out with a Mac Mini for the TV. Or they could even choose to release an updated version of the AirPort Express that would handle video in addition to audio.

Until then, living on the cutting edge of this technology is quite comfortable. No band-aids needed here.