How We Knew Steve Jobs Wasn't Returning: End of Life Thoughts

When Steve Jobs took his most recent medical leave, in January 2011, we knew that he wasn't coming back. This was obvious from the letter that he sent to Apple's employees. Unlike a tweet, that's casually written, his medical leave message was very carefully worded. The key was in the last paragraph:
"I love Apple so much and hope to be back as soon as I can."

If Steve had any realistic expectations of returning, that sentence would have read, I love Apple so much and I'll be back as soon as I can.

Hope is a dirty word for people like Steve Jobs.

It's very sad to think that, even though the end may not be days or weeks away for Steve, it's clearly very near. If there was a reasonable chance of his return then his resignation wouldn't have been effective immediately. Another tell is the fact that he mentions life in last week's resignation letter:
"I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple."

End of life issues are never easy to confront. It changes how you perceive reality.

End of Life
When I was young, I used to look at the elderly and think, "Don't you wish that you were young so that you could see what the future holds many decades from now?" Then, I was diagnosed with late stage, wide spread cancer which had metastasized. My perception of the elderly immediately changed to, "If only I could have a chance to experience life for as long as you have." My insight into life was a complete paradigm shift.

When facing your own end of life issues, you think about some things that you never considered such as where, when, or how you want to die. For me, it was on a hill overlooking the San Clemente Pier at sunset.
Some end of life thoughts are strikingly odd. For example, when looking at a bug on a bush in the backyard I was struck by the realization that these "lower" forms of life could outlive me.

Revelation
One epiphany that gave me some relief was the fact that everything in the universe has a life cycle. Death, as final as it is, is completely normal on an absolute level. It doesn't matter if you're religious or atheist – you can simply look at everything – living and non-living – from plants and animals to the stars and planets and realize that at some point in the future they will no longer be around. It's simply the way of the universe.

Fortunately, for me, my story ends, literally, with a cure for cancer. But, as robust as life is, Steve Jobs reminds us that "life is fragile."

Carpe diem.

Gray Listing Spam Blockers

Large e-mail service providers, such as Gmail, have the ability to crowd-source identifying spam since they have millions of users which results in few false positives. But, what do you use if you're a small time e-mail service provider?

A poor-man's technique to stop spam is called gray listing.

Here's one implementation of how it works...

If the gray listing e-mail service provider hasn't received any e-mails from the sender recently (say, within the last two weeks) they will tell the sender's mail server to try again later. This isn't a problem since the e-mail protocol (SMTP) is designed to keep trying for a couple days before giving up.

As long as the sending mail server waits a small amount of time (say, ten minutes) before trying again, then the e-mail will go through on the second attempt. If the sender has recently sent an e-mail to the recipient's e-mail address then the e-mail goes through on the first try since the sender's e-mail address is on the gray list. (The e-mail is black listed first, then it's white listed. Black + White = Gray)

Because of how this works, users sometimes notice the first two e-mails, sent from the same person (who hasn't sent an e-mail in the past two weeks) may be delivered out of order if the e-mails are sent within a few minutes of each other. (I've personally seen this happen, but it's rare.)

The reason that gray listing works so well is that spammers rarely configure their servers to try to deliver an e-mail more than once. If spammers did configure their e-mail servers to try multiple times then their spam servers would be overwhelmed.

Last Day At Apple

I wonder if Steve Jobs had his photo taken in front of the 1 Infinite Loop HQ like I did on my last day at Apple in 2007?

Here's to the Crazy Ones

East Coast Earthquake

Did you hear that there was an earthquake on the East Coast, today? Kind of hard not to hear about it.

I saw this post about the earthquake devastation in D.C. which made me laugh.

At first, when I heard all the brouhaha, I rolled my eyes and said, "Oh, please, it's only a 5.8."

But, in retrospect, I doubt that East Coast building codes are up to California's standards when it comes to earthquake-proofing their structures. On the other hand, California, which has never recorded a hurricane, would do poorly in a storm of that magnitude. It just depends on what you're used to.

The Good, The Great, and The Bad Business Models

Lately, there's been a lot of complaining about AT&T because they "streamlined" their text messaging plans. In other words, they removed their cheapest plan thereby raising the rates for the casual "texter."

There are three basic business models when it comes to pricing technology over time:

1. Good: Lower your prices as your technology costs decrease like Amazon Web Services (pass along the savings).

2. Great: Keep your prices the same, but add new features like Apple (innovation).

3. Bad: Increase your prices, even as your costs decrease, without adding new features like AT&T (elasticity and conversion costs).

A college buddy, who worked for a large telecommunications company, explained the wireless carrier's business model best: Squeeze every possible penny out of every single customer.

It reminds me of the last time I ordered a home land line. The cost for caller ID was $7.99/month, but, the operator told me that this feature would be increasing to $9.99/month, for all customers, in two months. Seriously? A 25% increase just to display a 10 digit number on my phone?

From 2005 to 2009, as the costs for delivering text messages decreased, the wireless carrier oligopoly raised the prices to send or receive a single 160 character text message from 5¢ to 25¢. No new features were added – the wireless carriers simply realized that they could keep upping their prices without adding new features.

It was the iPhone that brought visual voice mail to market and it was when Google Voice relaunched Grand Central that we had the ability to send and receive free text messages using both our phone and computer. These two simple features could have been implemented by the wireless carriers years earlier.

Continually raising prices to see what the market will bear is a perfectly legitimate business model, but it really ticks off the customer. Like a big, faceless, bank, you almost hope that these companies will fail. I say almost, because any punishment, fine, or bankruptcy will be passed along to the customer.

We hate these businesses only as long as poetic justice doesn't come out of our own pocket.

Scrolling In Mac OS X Lion

One of the first things that people notice when upgrading to Mac OS X Lion is that scrolling works the opposite way that it used to worked.

Without a doubt, this will seem backwards – at first. Most people have said that it takes several days to get used to the new format. But, why change a paradigm that's work for the last quarter century?

The answer is simple and most people haven't really noticed that this is the exact same way that scrolling works on the iPhone. Before Lion, if you wanted to scroll down a web page, you'd have to grab the scroll bar and pull it down. The metaphor was that you were pulling the window down the page to view the content "below the fold."

Now, the metaphor has been changed to match the iPhone and a layer of abstraction has been removed. Instead of pulling a window down to view the content, you now pull the content up to see it. No more window model – it's just you and your content.

Give it several days to a week to see if you get used to it – it's like learning to drive on the other side of the road. If you use the iPhone, then you'll probably get used to it and not notice it in the same way that you never noticed that the iPhone worked the opposite way.

But, if you really can't stand it, you can change the settings back to always display scroll bars in the General part of System Preferences.

Bark for Your Rx

Tonight, my wife asked me to get a pill for her that was in the kitchen which reminded of a funny story...

Several years ago, my wife and I were were in the kitchen just before bedtime. I had taken out a pill for the dog and put it down next to the kitchen sink. It took me about 30 seconds to get the peanut butter from the pantry so that the dog would swallow the pill. When I turned around to pick up the dog's pill, it was gone.

As my wife was putting down a glass of water, I asked her what she did with the dog's pill. Yup, you guessed it, she mistook the dog's pill for her own and swallowed it.

I called the San Diego Poison Control Center while my wife tried to "retrieve" the pill.

If you haven't had the opportunity to call the Poison Control Center then be prepared to answer a lot of questions – this is not an organization you call anonymously. But, it's more than worth the time it takes to answer their questions in exchange for the service they provide.

It turned out that there was nothing for us to worry about since the antibiotic that my wife swallowed was meant for a dog that weighed about a dozen pounds. There were no shortage of jokes about this incident that night.

I Love Big Government (Sans the Debt Ceiling)

I love big government! Seriously, I do. And I bet that our country's forefathers would love it too.

Just think about everything we have, today, that's paid for by the federal government through our taxes. I'm talking about the really useful stuff. We can drive across town or across the country without paying a penny to the federal government for using their roads – it's already been paid for. (Hmm, is this socialism? Should all roads be toll roads?) Think about potable running water, electricity, air traffic controllers, original funding for the Internet, bridge and building inspectors etc, etc. – I'm talking about our entire county's infrastructure and capacity. These are good things.

What we hate (and I'm speaking for our forefathers, too) is inefficient, ineffective, government waste. Pick your favorite government agency that you love to hate. You don't have to dig too deep to see the "rusty cannon" syndrome: Doesn't work and can't be fired.

Think about the stereotypical federal or state employee who religiously works only 9-5 (actually 8-4) and not a minute more. They're just "putting in time." I've seen this first hand – at 4:03 p.m., they are gone; like lemmings off a cliff. Not all of them, but enough to notice without looking for it. Left behind, after the bureaucrats head out the door, are the contractors. While you might think that the contractors are working late for the money, many are on a 40 hour per week budget. To go over that budget requires prior, written, approval. Long story short, the contractors end up eating their costs, in the short time, to keep their consulting gig in the long term.

When I worked at Apple iServices' iConsulting division, I was on a project at a large federal agency in the D.C. area. One day, at lunch, an Apple coworker of mine, who also happened to be a former Marine, pointed out how dull and depressing it was in the government cafeteria. The atmosphere was the complete opposite of the excitement and electricity we felt at Apple's Cupertino campus cafeteria (Caffe Macs). Keep in mind that I'm not talking about the Apple of today, either. I'm referring to the Apple of ten or twelve years ago when the stock price dropped in half, literally, overnight, during the Dot-com crash and the stock price continued down from there. Those were Apple's dark days, before iTunes, iPod, and the digital hub strategy. That was a time when Apple was 25x smaller than it is today.

Politicians

Never mind politicians – they're too easy of a target. And, believe it or not, they are some of the smartest people in the context in which they operate. There's just no easy way to win an election in order to get a job in politics, at any level, from municipal through federal. Don't get me wrong – politicians are not blameless – but they really do have to work hard, from time to time – at least to get the job. Keep in mind that they get their job because we, their constituents, gave it to them. If you don't like your duly elected politician then blame your co-constituents.

In the U.S., bigger is better. I've lived off the economy in dirt poor developing countries and seen, first hand, what bad infrastructure and maintenance looks like. In these countries, you can tell the no-bodies from the some-bodies in each village because the person with the most body fat is the leader. More power equals more food. While money is good, food is better. You can't eat money. These developing governments, at all levels, are brittle and, just like the recent Arab unrest we saw earlier this year, it doesn't take much to go from order and rule of law to riots and insecurity.

No American citizen wants to sacrifice any of their own entitlements to reduce the deficit. Boaters would hate a new tax on their boats, pilots would hate to pay user fees at airports, and hard working, salt of the earth, commuters would hate car and gas tax increases. Why not tax the upper class at a proportionally higher rate? Well, that is what we do and the rich can still make a good argument, in their defense, at least in theory.

Solutions?

What's the solution to reduce the national debt? Practically speaking, there probably will never be one. The solution will be death. It's no different than when a person overextends themselves with mortgage and credit card debt. You either generate more income, tighten your belt, or declare bankruptcy. The problem is that, unlike an individual, the U.S. can't get bankruptcy protection and the other two options are just as unlikely.

Throughout history, every singe currency eventually becomes debased. You'd be hard pressed to find a compound interest calculator that can compute how much a dollar would be worth 1,000 years from now at 3.6% interest (the current rate of inflation). The result is so large that it "does not compute." We're literally talking about more money than the world has ever seen. (If you really must know how much a dollar would be worth at 3.6% interest over a thousand years, the answer is $2.3 quadrillion. But we're "only" talking about the "short" quadrillion scale.)

How much is all the money in the world? Around $50 trillion – or 45x less than the compounded interest of $1 a thousand years from now. Could you really see today's U.S. dollar being worth more than 45 times all the money in the world?

Perhaps Bitcoin – or something similar – will replace the U.S. dollar over the next few decades. After all, most countries use a fiat currency and Bitcoin aims to be a currency that's the equivalent of an electronic gold standard. Whatever currency replaces the dollar, hopefully, it will be a peacefully planned transition like the Euro.

My point is that working for a company that's flirting with bankruptcy, declining market share, and relevancy was still an order of magnitude better than working as a bureaucrat for the federal government.

Don't Forget Your Pilot's Guides!

I recently upgraded my airplane's panel with an Aspen EFD1000 along with some other engine and transponder avionics. Now, instead of "steam" (analog) gauges, I get many of the benefits of a glass cockpit.

Since nearly all of the avionics have been replaced in my plane since it was built, the original airplane manual, which must always be on board the aircraft while in flight, is no longer current. The simplest solution to this problem is to carry the pilot's guides for all of the equipment that's been installed over the last four decades. Obviously, this can be bulky since it includes manuals for the autopilot, GPS, radios, PFD, transponder, engine monitor, tachometer, etc.

iOS to Lighten the Load

Since I never fly without my iPad and iPhone I realized that I could add the pilot's guides – which are all available in PDF format – directly to my iPad and iPhone.

There are two simple ways to add a PDF to your iPad or iPhone so you can read them in the iBooks app:

1. E-mail the pilot's guides, in PDF format, to yourself as an e-mail attachment. When you receive the e-mail on your iPad or iPhone open the PDF attachment, click on the arrow in the upper right, and select Open in "iBooks" which will copy the PDF to iBooks. I've created another "collection", in iBooks, called Aviation, in addition to the two default collections (Books and PDFs), and moved my pilot's guides into this new collection.

2. Drag the pilot's guides, in PDF format, to your iTunes library. The next time that you sync your iPad or iPhone with iTunes, check that each PDF manual is selected under the Books tab, in iTunes, to be sure that it's transferred to your iPhone or iOS.

More Than You Bargained For

The beauty of having these PDFs on both devices is not just that I have two copies with me when flying, but also that I can bookmark pages on one device and those pages will be bookmarked on the other device after syncing with iTunes. Also, most of the hardcopy pilot's guides tend to be printed in black and white by the manufactures to save costs, but the PDFs are in full color.

Additionally, I can run a text search to find what I'm looking for in case I hadn't already bookmarked it. So, how do I lean out my airplane's engine, during cruise, to 100° rich of peak? No problem, it's a snap to find that page in my pilot's guide since I've bookmarked it.

But why stop with my pilot's guides since I also bought the FAR/AIM in the iBookstore, too? The only feature that's missing for the PDFs is that you can't highlight text, as you can in a regular iBook. So, my FAR/AIM, which is not a PDF, but, rather, a genuine iBook, is not only well bookmarked but also "highly" highlighted.