Hypercritical

This past year was an eventful one for someone like me who has already passed most of the common milestones of adulthood (college, marriage, home ownership, children). The highlights:

• I started a weekly podcast with Dan Benjamin, named after this blog (which, in turn, was named after something I wrote for Ars Technica in 2009). I’ve been amazed by the popularity of the show and the quality of the listener feedback and participation. Special thanks to Jeremy Mack, creator of showbot.me, and Justin Michael, creator of 5by5illustrated.com.

  I’ve also become a devoted fan of several other podcasts on the 5by5 network, co-hosted by Dan Benjamin: Back to Work with Merlin Mann, Build and Analyze with Marco Arment, The Ihnatko Almanac with Andy Ihnatko, and The Talk Show with John Gruber. And for dessert, Roderick on the Line with John Roderick and Merlin Mann.

• Though it started in 2010, The Incomparable, a geek ensemble podcast on which I’m proud to be a semi-regular guest, really hit its stride in 2011, with some great episodes about Star Wars (ANH part 1 and part 2; ESB part 1 and part 2), Pixar (part 1 and part 2), giant fantasy novels (The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear), plus a bushel of episodes about Dr. Who and other TV shows and movies.

  I enjoy being on this podcast all out of proportion to the number of listeners it’s managed to gather. If you have even a fraction of the fun listening as I do recording this show, you should definitely give it a try. (And if you’re already a listener, why not rate it or write a review in iTunes?)

• In June, I made my first trip to WWDC in San Francisco, which was also my first trip farther west than Colorado. Ostensibly, I made the trip because I was afraid that Mac OS X 10.7 Lion would be released after WWDC but before Apple published videos of the sessions for non-attendees. (I rely on the information presented at WWDC when writing my Mac OS X reviews for Ars Technica.) But really, going to WWDC is something I’d always wanted to do.

  The trip was expensive, and I had to take time off work to do it, but it was so worth it. I saw what turned out to be Steve Jobs’s final keynote presentation. I met tons of people in person that I’d known for years online, and made several new friends. I also got to talk to a handful of famous (well, “nerd famous”) people in the Apple community that I’d never imagined I’d ever have any contact with. I refuse to name-drop them, lest it cheapen the experience (and no, sadly, Steve Jobs was not one of them), but the suffice it to say that it exceeded all my expectations. I’m not sure when or if I’ll make it to WWDC again, but it’ll be extremely hard to top my first time.

• Apple’s release of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion in July meant that my trip to WWDC was indeed a wise choice. In the two years since my last Mac OS X review at Ars Technica, the site has grown tremendously. Amazing feature stories on all sorts of subjects were pulling in huge traffic numbers, well beyond what my past Mac OS X reviews had drawn. I worried that the audience for my brand of tech writing was no longer significant enough to matter.

  When my Lion review was published, I was grateful to be proven wrong. Thanks to everyone who continues to read what I write. Thanks for indulging my idiosyncrasies and continuing to hold me to the same high standards that I demand of the things I write about. And thanks to everyone at Ars for so many years of loyalty and for building an amazing publication that I’m proud to be even a small part of.

• Steve Jobs died in October, and it affected me more than I’d expected it to. I wrote about it on Ars, talked about it on my podcast, and still think about it pretty regularly.

Some smaller 2011 milestones:

• My seven-year-old son finished Ico, his first three Zelda games (Wind Waker, Ocarina of Time, and Twilight Princess) and is deep into his fourth (Skyward Sword), with only a little help from dad on the harder bosses. His gaming education is coming along nicely.

• Hardware upgrades: MacBook Pro 15-inch replaced with a 13-inch MacBook Air and a 27” Thunderbolt display; 4th generation iPod touch replaced with an iPhone 4S; Canon PowerShot S3-IS replaced with a Canon PowerShot S100. Hardware firsts: first SSD, first camera that can shoot RAW, first iPhone. (Note: the iPhone is my wife’s, not mine.)

• I almost posted more than one thing to this blog.

The following movies were released in the summer of 1982.

• An Officer and a Gentleman
• Annie
• Blade Runner
• Conan the Barbarian
• E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
• Fast Times at Ridgemont High
• Firefox
• Poltergeist
• Rocky III
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
• The Road Warrior
• The Secret of NIMH
• The Thing
• Tron

Is it just nostalgia, or does that lineup positively trounce any summer in recent memory? What a perfect blend of popcorn summer blockbusters, kid-friendly films, and just plain great movies. Can anyone find a summer that beats this one?

Here’s my brief entry in the speculation derby surrounding the departure of Mark Papermaster from Apple. Assuming Papermaster is out at least partially due to the iPhone 4 antenna and not some completely unrelated matter, and assuming Apple really did know about the iPhone 4’s antenna problems even before Papermaster was hired, it may seem strange or even unfair that he’s ended up as the fall guy. I won’t comment on the fairness of the decision, but I can certainly imagine a scenario where his ouster is well within the expectations of a job as a high-level executive in a big corporation.

Imagine the following events. Papermaster is hired by Apple and put in charge of the iPhone 4 hardware. He’s brought up to speed on the project, including the unique characteristics of the external antenna. At some point later, a final decision has to be made on the design: go or no go?

While it’s clear that the buck stops with Steve Jobs on all decisions at Apple, that doesn’t mean he makes all the decisions. This is why Apple hires people like Mark Papermaster in the first place. It’s reasonable to expect that Jobs would defer to the guy he fought to hire when it came to this question. And so Jobs would ask Papermaster, is the design ready to go or not? And what about that antenna touching issue? Is that a big deal, or will most people not even notice?

Now imagine that Papermaster tells Jobs that, yes, it’s a real limitation in the antenna design, but that the advantages—increased range and room for a bigger battery—more than make up for it. Now imagine Jobs pushes further: “While you may feel that way, Mark, will the public agree? Will this end up being an issue?” And now suppose Papermaster says no, it won’t be an issue.

Either implicitly or explicitly, Papermaster would be putting his reputation on the line. This is what his job is all about: making decisions. This particular decision is not about technology or manufacturing; it’s a judgement call about how the public (and press) will react to something. But that’s part of his job too. And the harder he fought for this particular decision, the more he’d have on the line when he turned out to be wrong.

Anyway, like I said, this is all just speculation. I really have no idea why Mark Papermaster left Apple. But I find the scenario described above eminently plausible. Furthermore, if it were true, I don’t think it would speak ill of Papermaster. Executive management at this level is a high-stakes endeavor. The rewards are big, but so are the risks—and no one can be right all the time. If you’re the new guy and this is your first big call on the biggest project in the company, well, you can end up back in the job market much sooner than you expected. C’est la vie.

Many years ago, I recall talking with some of my Mac-nerd friends about how strange it was, after Apple’s near-death experiences of the late 1990s, to be living in a world where it’s just assumed that any tech luminary will mostly likely use a Mac. A year or two later, Tim O’Reilly gave a name to this prognostication technique: watching the “alpha geeks.”

This trend of Mac adoption among alpha geeks was a sign of good things to come for Apple, and generally a bad sign for its competitors. Today, James Gosling’s departure from the remains of Sun brought to mind a similar trend—one that’s not so good for Apple.

These days, when a high-profile technical professional leaves his position at the company where he’s done his most important work, everyone’s first guess as to where he’ll end up is…well, do I really have to name the place? The point is, it’s not Apple.

(This mostly applies to programmers and other engineers. People on the more creative side of the technology world are much harder to predict. But then, who can truly fathom the mind of an artist?)

There are many trend lines that contribute to a company’s overall trajectory, and nearly all of Apple’s are still pointing in the right direction. But the emergence of Google as a huge gravitational sink for engineering talent in the past five years has definitely put a kink in at least one those graphs.

2012 is an awful movie. I knew this when I added it to my Netflix queue, but I wanted to stay up to date on the latest in computer-generated apocalyptic destruction. I’m a fan of special effects in general and stories about the end of the world in particular.

All the boxes were ticked: absurd “science,” impossible escapes, a nonsensical plan to save humanity, familial and romantic problems resolved during the crisis, unintentionally slapstick character deaths, etc. What I didn’t expect was how upsetting it would be—which is to say, that it was upsetting at all.

The most heartless, lizard-brained humans are pre-teen boys. Teens and young adult men have usually built up a tough emotional core, but are generally too distracted by puberty to ever match the hardness of their unenlightened, toad-exploding youths. As men age, they become progressively more sensitive. The biggest spike (or dip?) in the graph occurs when a man becomes a father.

In my experience, this manifests itself most noticeably in a reduced ability to enjoy any story where children are in peril. And so it was for me with 2012. As bad as the movie was, I was still bothered by the repeated use of children in danger as a dramatic device. This, despite the fact that there is never any mystery about who will live and who will die in any given scene. My brain understood, but my body still twinged.

So let this be a lesson to you, young men. You may feel tough now, and you may remain rational and intelligent your entire lives. But you will age, and someday you may even become a father. When you do, watch out. You too—yes, even you, you, and you—will someday become an unintentional victim of your own emotions. (A “mush,” as I’ve heard it called.)

It’s Not You, It’s Me

I always ponder this situation when I see a movie or read a book. It seems to me that our ability to enjoy a story depends on our personal experiences to a degree that people don’t want to consider. For example, a common occurrence on this Internet of ours to encounter an impassioned screed condemning some work of fiction as offensive. Like clockwork, this is followed by a retaliatory condemnation of the offended party as “too sensitive” or “crazy.” The phrase “give me a break” is featured.

The overall point that the inherent worth of a work of art is not determined by the bad reactions of a few people is pretty solid. But the glib denigration of the offended party is definitely on shaky ground. The unfortunate truth is that, through no fault of the artist or the viewer, entire avenues of entertainment can be closed off by life experiences.

If your wife died in a car accident, you may find yourself unable to enjoy movies that feature car crashes. If you had an abusive parent, you may be upset by any scene where a parent yells at a child. And yes, if you simply have one or more happy, healthy children, you may not even be able to smirk your way through a comically bad disaster movie which happens to feature children.

None of this has to reach the level of trauma (e.g., a veteran being unable to watch war movies). In fact, it’s most insidious when it’s much less dramatic, just a mild pin-prick of discomfort happening entirely outside—and often in opposition to—your conscious mind.

And is this the fault of the artist? Is the comedy actually less funny because there’s a gag involving turbulence on an airplane? And on the other side, can you really blame the viewer? I say no on all counts, as long as everyone involved has a clear head about the situation. For the viewer, that means no blanket denunciation of a work of art based solely on your own unexamined emotional reaction. For the artist, that means understanding that some people will be legitimately upset by your creation for reasons beyond your ability to predict or control.

So yeah, thumbs down on 2012, but not because I’m a father of two and a giant mush. It’s bad for all the usual reasons a movie is bad: script, story, characters, etc. Maybe if you don’t have kids, you can appreciate it as a “good ‘bad movie.’” Maybe.

Finally, lest you young men get depressed about your inevitable futures as wussy old(er) men, there is actually an upside. A good movie that happens to intersect with your newly altered emotional landscape can be made all the more better by the interaction. For example, I enjoyed reading The Road, which is a much more intense story of the apocalypse and a child in danger than 2012. Here’s hoping the movie adaptation doesn’t suck.

I’ve never considered Obama a very good speaker. It may be because he speaks slowly and pauses a lot, all of which drives my fast-talking-Italian-New-York-native-self up a wall. Whatever the reason, my low opinion of his speaking ability meant that I was willing to believe that the Obama teleprompter gibes could very well be indicative of a real problem. Those jokes fed my fear that Obama lacked substance, that he was just a pretty voice able to dazzle people (though not me, apparently) with speeches he didn’t write or fully understand.

That fear was put to rest by Obama’s recent performance in front of a gathering of Republicans. No teleprompter, no questions received ahead of time, no softballs. I was amazed at how well he did when I read the transcript. When I watched the video, I still didn’t like his delivery (maybe I should have watched it at 1.5x) but it’s good to know that our president has a brain in his head.

That’s what was important to me regarding the teleprompter issue, and that’s why I care little about what Sarah Palin does unless it changes my existing opinion of her. Learning that she wrote notes on her hand before a speech doesn’t do that, and it sure as hell has no effect on what I think Obama’s use of the teleprompter does or doesn’t signify, regardless of which situation is more likely to resonate with the American people.

I have a blog where I write about technology stuff, and I have a Twitter account where I write about whatever strikes my fancy. When I want to write something non-tech-related that’s longer than 140 characters, I have a problem. Maybe Tumblr (or something like it) is the solution? We’ll see.

Update: Of course, now I just spent 20 minutes futzing with Tumblr themes (before giving up when I realized that I won’t be happy with the results without investing many, many more hours) instead of writing the the post that motivated this little excursion in the first place.