Now that the show is over officially, I’ll give my overall review of the show. Brian will give his review here

My overall impression. Apple was accurate with it’s theme of the show: Something in the Air

Something in the Air tonight indeed. It’s called vaporware, or as another person put it…Engineering by Powerpoint (or in this case keynote). Some were Betas, meaning they are actually programs, but the vendors expect users to find the bugs. So many vendors were showing off product and then said “This isn’t out yet…but we expect to ship in…March…December…next Macworld.” That’s usually followed with “Buy our product now and we’ll give you the next version when it ships.” Here are some of the guilty:

Equinox: Tubestick (viewing HD TV on your Mac) and iSale 5. However, they are forgiven for having a great press pack…more on that later.

Neat Receipts for Mac: they expect to be fully compatible with the Mac…by December ’08.

Intuit: No new version of Quickbooks (does anyone trust it?) and replacing Quicken with another money managment program called Quicken financial life: “some time in the third quarter 2008 we’ll have a beta”

Retrospect X: they gave out cool glasses known as “Retrospecs” to pacify the fact they still don’t have a Intel native version. Public Beta available. Gee…I’d trust a Beta of backup software…not

Avery: they will have design software for the Mac. Sign up for the Beta, but if you do, you have to agree for us to Spam you.

Thus I passed on this.

Now Software: Nighthawk. It was in beta at Macworld 2007 and still is beta in 2008. Yawn. Give up already!

iBank 3: Supports downloads from banks, just like Quicken. Will be released “in the next few weeks.”

Garmin: Beta Software to access your GPS from the Mac (have I mentioned how upset I am mine was stolen!!!)

Micromat TechTool: All they could say is if you buy version 4.0 now, you get a free upgrade to 5.0 which will ship on DVD “some time in the future”

Google Picassa: great booth, great products…still waiting.

The other theme that continued and expanded was iPod and iPhone cases. Every Tom, Dick, Harry, Jane, Sally and on and on had a take on the same basic theme of a wrap around silicone case. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Some differentiated themselves with features like “feet” or ” easy access slider”, but still the same. Mike just got a Nano and wanted a good case, I really had no clue. They all looked the same to me. Rough estimate is about 30% the show is cases for your iPhone/iPod cases, with another 10-15% cases for your laptop. Pratically every non case vendor I spoke with were annoyed that this is the “iShow” with the ocassional Mac product thrown in. At this point, I’m not sure if I’ll go next year, and IDG (the company that puts on Macworld) will have to make some changes and either limit the amount of case vendors, or have seperate shows. This is after all MacWorld, not AppleWorld, and while these products have value to Mac users, they don’t help promote Mac Products…which is a key goal of Macworld.

MacWorld tradition at the end of the show is to flicker the lights, applaud, and then begin the teardown. Macworld was split between two different buildings this year (Moscone South and Moscone West), but teardown began at about 30 minutes before the end of show and there was no applause…just security guards at 4:15 kicking out people who shouldn’t be there.

In sum, there wasn’t “much there” this year. If you factor out the companies merely announcing their intention to sell a product at some later date, and the companies selling the same basic iPod silicone case and zipper bag, not much to report on.

So as was last year’s tradtion, I’ll give my “Best of Show” along with some other commentary

Best Program:
Busysync: it won one of the “Best of Show” awards. It allows you to sync *and* edit iCal info without buying .mac. The next version (more vaporware…but he’s forgiven because the product is cool right now), will sync with Google Calenders.
(runner up) SereneSaver: it gets a strong mention because it was the first program I installed on my laptop. Serene Saver is an active background that helps you relax. I always look for ways to relax! Check it out.

Best Swag (swag is free stuff):
Drivesavers: to be fair, I was given access to their VIP room as a vendor, but apparently they gave this out on the showroom floor as well: bag, luggage tag, buttons, coffee cups, mouse

Best Press Kit:
Equinox: These were the guys a few years back that had no press kit, refused to give out a review copy and were generally rude. This time I got a Macbook case, a free copy of their Leopard Mail Templates, a USB massager, printed information, and apparently demos on a 1 gig USB flash drive. Only problem…image was corrupt on the flash drive. Oh well.

Best Booth in terms of information:
Dr. Bott: because they showed my company logo.
Serious answer: Parallels. Great demos, fun swag (stress balls), lots of knowledgable people

Best Booth as far as cool factor
Belkin: they used this same booth last year, but the created an entire house on the showroom floor. Wow.

Best Booth to annoy the daylights out of you
Skullcandy: they were blasting their music non stop–right next to the pzizz booth and annoying all the people in Moscone West.

Best booth to theoricetically take a nap in:
Pzizz, which is a program to “program” you to relax or be energized, used these cool Metronap pods, but IDG in it’s brillance placed them next to Skullcap. According to multiple vendors, skullcap told people to go away when asked to turn down the music.

Best surprise no show to the show:
BareBones software: These guys have been there as long as I can remember. Really great T-Shirts. Heck, they even had a product to announce. Personally, I chalk it up to a bad PR firm: Pearce Communication I spoke with the Naomi once…very pushy and over the top. Bad decision not to show this year BareBones!!! You and your T-shirts were missed. If she tells you to give away iPod cases instead, please fire her on the spot.

Best thing about the show:
The contacts I made. I got about 75 business cards this time of not just PR people, but engineers and tech support people. This helps me with my clients, because I can wade through the phones trees and outsourced call centers to get to the right person to get me the information I need for my clients.

Best booth that I wish I saw a few weeks ago:
Gadgettrak: helps you recover stolen laptops, iPods and GPS. Unfortunately not an easy thing to test.

Best time for the show:
I was done in about six hours. I established contact with every booth that 1) didn’t have an iPod case, 2) had something that would interest myself or my clients and 3) I understood what they were talking about. I was still exhausted.

BestMacs?:
Despite us being in the same place many times, we couldn’t hook up to actually see each other in person. The fact that AT&T’s network near the Moscone was overwhelmed with iPhones meant we couldn’t easily call or text each other.

Watch this space for more reviews of all the great products I’ll be getting in the mail

Here are my photos so far. Why is it version 5.?. Well, it’s my fifth Macworld and it’s day one.

Brian’s been blogging quite a bit about Macworld: Check out his thoughts as well.

I’m writing this from the Media Center at the show, starting day 2. In general, I was unimpressed with the show so far. The fact I was able to see most everything in about six hours is evidence there wasn’t anything to write home about, figuratively and literally. I’ll reserve final judgement until I finish the show. My initial thoughts is “evolutionary” not “revolutionary”. I have a term for stuff like this: “with sprinkles”. It refers to that episode of the Simpsons in which Homer gets enticed to eat donuts because it now has sprinkles. Most of the items I saw added a few bells and whistles and called it a new product. Many vendors said “Now we are compatible with Leopard” or “Now for iPhone”. Yawn. We kind of except that, it’s been out for a while.

More later!

So you didn’t get an iPhone? Sorry. Maybe it was the cost. Maybe it was your cell phone contract. Maybe it’s AT&T’s coverage where you live. Or maybe you just don’t like buying a 1.0 version of anything. For me, it’s all the above.

However, with all those smug people walking around with their $600 Newton 3.0′s you can one-up them. What you have right now can be better than an iPhone. Yes I said it–you’re better than they are. At least my therapist is telling me to deal with my jealously by saying this.

Let’s start with the iPod. How can you extend the capabilities of your iPod to compete with the iPhone? Yeah, you’ll need to carry your phone and iPod around, but if you drop your iPod or your phone you’re still out much less money. Unlike your cell phone, the iPhone doesn’t come with accidental damage insurance like other cell phones. For a few bucks a month and a fifty dollar deductible, I’m back in business after a date with the pavement.

Don’t forget that the iPhone holds much less music than your standard iPod. A four gig iPhone isn’t going to carry much stuff, but a well configured iPod has music, podcasts, videos, and more. Size is an issue! What’s the point of a iPhone if it neuters your digital lifestyle?

With all that extra space on your full iPod what can you put on it? Want to watch YouTube videos on your iPod? No problem, Jax by Joesoft (a division of Prosoft Engineering) does that! It installs into iTunes and allows you to easily transfer videos to your iPod. Not only will it do that, but it will synchronize your Apple Mail, Word Documents, and PDFs. Heck, it will even download weather forecasts, driving directions, gas prices, movie showtimes, and stock quotes. Apparently the 3.0 version will tell you the next president, but Joesoft is working out the bugs on that (just kidding…maybe). Oh, and Jax works with an iPhone too, but that’s kind of redundant. While Jax’s content can’t be updated live, that’s fine….you’ve got your mobile phone for that. Be sure to check out Andy Inkahto’s “iPod Fully Loaded” which will help you get even more out of your iPod.

Flipping over to the phone side, most modern mobile phones have the ability to surf the web and that ability will close the gap for live content for when you haven’t synced with Jax. Google is the leader in mobile content. Point your cell phone browser to http://m.google.com to access most of Google’s content in a format easy to read on most devices. This means that you not only can you do searches, but you can access your email, calender, driving directions, movie times and even live YouTube videos. Be sure to use Spanning Sync to sync your iCal with your Google calendar so you have your iCal on both the phone and the iPod. This all sounds very iPhonish to me–without buying anything new. More advanced phones that support J2ME can download Google apps to give a complete Google experience on the phone. Who needs Safari if you can access all of Google? Things don’t look pretty on your average mobile phone…but considering the iPhone is using previous generation data speeds, using your Razr on a 3G network phone means you can’t read the New York Times as pretty as on an iPhone, but you’ll be done reading in half the time!

What about some of the cool features like visual voice mail that lets you pick out individual voicemails to listen to? Not a problem. Sign up with GotVoice at http://www.gotvoice.com. This service in both free and paid versions will retrieve your cell phone voice mails and put them in MP3 format to download. After signing up go to http://m.gotvoice.com and pick and choose which mp3 to listen to. Can’t listen to mp3s on your cell phone? No problem, just use http://www.simulscribe.com and Simulscribe will transcribe your voicemails and send them to you in SMS format. With the iPhone you can only read who sent you the message, with Simulscribe you can actually read the message. iPhone…do you need a hanky…are you actually crying?

Ah, but what about when Steve Jobs showed off finding Calamari in San Francisco (yuck, calamari). He searched for “seafood”. No problem. Send an SMS message to 46645 with the parameters “seafood restaurant, San Fransisco” and get a Google listing back with local places. Ironically, when I did this the top result was Farallon, which any Mac historian can tell you happens to be the name of a very famous Mac company that invented the PhoneNet connectors and Timbuktu Pro - which became part of Netopia and now Motorola, which is a cell phone company!

With a few key websites and pieces of software, you can simulate much of the iPhone experience without having to trade in either your phone or iPod. Want both at the same time? Superglue and Velcro are possible options, but do that at your own risk. That hybrid , though, still probably weighs less than the iPhone. Be proud you aren’t burdened with the limitations of an iPhone…until your cell phone contract runs out at least. Then feel free to look down upon the rest of us with your new iPhone!

This article used with permission by the Lawrence Apple Users’ Group. The original article written by David Greenbaum aka DoctorDave™ or incorrectly Dr. Dave can be found here. RSS Feed for Dave’s writings

Apple came out with the iPod and for the first time successfully extended its brand of computers. The Newton was a failure because it was too complex to understand and too difficult to use. At the time, I thought the iPod was a joke. I had a Nomad Jukebox which easily worked with Mac and PC, had replaceable rechargeable batteries, and easily fit into existing CD cases. The iPod was overpriced, less powerful, and less compatible. I was wrong because it wasn’t about how functional it was, but how people felt about it. It was the same concept of the disposable camera: more expensive than buying film but easy to use.

With the iPhone, I still believe it is an inferior product. I said at MacWorld, and I’ll say it again, the first virus in the “wild” that self-replicates and installs without requiring the user’s password will be via the iPhone. The iPhone will be popular, highly configurable…and to be easy to use, bypassing much of the Mac’s security. In addition, I don’t want my phone to crash, because my cell phone company already makes my phone frustrating by dropping calls all the time. You thought the screen of the Nano was susceptible to scratches…just wait to people start abusing their phones. Of course, with the iPhone, the scratches won’t just be aesthetically displeasing, but the phone will cease to work.

That being said, I think the iPhone will be successful. The iPod and iMac are now brother and sister, made from the same genetic stock with common traits. iTunes is the glue that holds these two products together and extends the reach of Apple. At WWDC, Apple made it clear that even the Leopard operating system will be more like an iPod and iPhone, using the visual and stylistic elements common to all three. It will be a short matter of time, before the touch screen features of the iPhone extend to an iPod and then to an iMac. The ability to shift from portrait to landscape mode on the monitor will also be a common element.

In the near future, the difference between an iPhone, iMac, and a iPod will simply be the software it runs. Learning one product will instantly make you an expert on all the others. This is a common user experience in other walks of life. Even if you’ve never been to someone’s home, you generally know that hot water is on the left and cold water is on the right. If you drive a Toyota Corolla you have a pretty good idea where the key features on a Toyota Camry are.

To further extend this common experience, Apple is creating more software for Windows to train the next generation of Mac users. Already, a user of iTunes instantly understands how to use iTunes for the Mac. They then extend that experience to iPhoto and iDVD. The minute they actually use a Mac, they have a better experience because the iTunes philosophy and experience is becoming more and more a part of the operating system. The first time a majority of Mac users heard the term library to refer to a collection of information on their Mac was via iTunes.

Boot Camp for the first time was Apple saying, “If you can’t beat them join them.” If people insist on running Windows, we are going to do a better job of it than Microsoft does. We are going to create a Windows experience better than Microsoft can deliver: the ability to run Windows software on your Mac. Now the best machine to run Windows is Mac.

Safari is a further extension of this philosophy and a risky one at that. Their plan could fail if Safari doesn’t create the cult following of Firefox. Internet Explorer is lousy, we know that. Netscape is the Woolworth’s of browsers—simply couldn’t compete though people use it for nostalgia value. Safari will have to be significantly better than Firefox to win Windows users over. I personally don’t think it’s going to happen. Safari on Windows is still Windows, and whether it’s Apple’s fault or Microsoft fault Safari crashed, people will blame Safari and it will hurt Apple’s brand image. People will still buy iPods, but won’t look at the Mac with reverence and awe and will view it as another computer susceptible to the same problems Windows users have. If Safari is lousy on the PC, then it’s lousy on the Mac…and therefore because the Mac relies on Safari, their Mac will suffer crashes just as often as a PC. It won’t, but the perception will still be there from Windows Safari users.

However, if Safari is successful on the PC, I firmly believe Apple will extend their reach to the ultimate on the PC: Finder for the PC. Then Apple will truly have it’s cake and eat it too. Unsuccessful, and they’ll be caught with pie on their face.

While Leopard is certainly a nice operating system and a definite improvement over Tiger, there’s not too much that is truly exciting from a user perspective, the way, say Spotlight was in Tiger. From a developer perspective, there is a lot of cool new features under the hood that will make for some really great applications in the year ahead, but as an end-user, Leopard doesn’t offer very much that is new beyond some “eye candy” and some evolutionary improvements in the Finder and built-in applications (such as Safari), including a more 3-d look in the Finder and some new ways of browsing files and networks.

While watching a Steve Jobs keynote is always a highlight, this year wasn’t nearly as exciting as years past, probably because there was nothing hardware-related. When you think about it, the last truly “new” Mac Apple introduced was the Mac Mini, almost three years ago. Since then, all new Macs (with the slight exception of the Macbook) have been the same old form factors with faster and different internal hardware (moving to Intel was a big deal — but of more interest to geeks then normal users). Consistancy and solid improvement over time are worthy accomplishments, but “exciting” they are not. The iPhone was pretty exciting, but there was no news about the iPhone at WWDC beyond Apple’s encouragement for developers to write web applications for the phone. Many developers have been very disappointed with this because a “web app” is just a glorified bookmark in the iPhone’s Safari browser — it is not a real application that would show up on the phone’s main screen.

Still, keep in mind that WWDC is not as much for the public as for software engineers, and like I said before, there are many under the hood improvements in the OS I can’t talk about, and these promise some brilliant new third-party applications in years ahead….so don’t replace your Mac with a Dell just quite yet :-)

Then, since the business is run out of the home, I run a full and complete backup of critical files to DVD. I keep this in the glove compartment of my car parked at the airport. If a disaster happens while I’m gone, actually most receipts and stuff and electronically stored, so I can be up and going with that. I also turn off the myriad number of devices in the house so I don’t waste electricity. Printer, scanner, monitors, etc. I however do leave my Mac on for remote control purposes via Timbuktu. If I was traveling during the summer, I’d probably unplug some stuff in case of surges. At this point, our TV is not HD, my Mac is a 2.0 dual g5, and my printer is 20 years old. All the stuff is insured…so nature..go ahead…buy me new stuff without committing insurance fraud.

Because I need my Mac running so I can remotely control it, I do reboot my Mac…give it a nice fresh clean start before I leave town. I also move my Mac files to my Macbook and most importantly, my Palm database to my laptop. Ah..what playlists for the plane? 3 hour or so flight. Do I want soft relaxing music? like My new age collection? How about Matisyahu. Yeah, he’s always good for inspiration. Setting an alarm on my iPod, the standard clock radio, and my watch. Not going to miss the flight! Am I OCD? Maybe a little I’ll also bring a book for when they say “As we begin our decent into San Fransisco, please turn off all portable electronic devices”. The Change Functionwas recommended to me, so I’ll read that.

Already checked in online and printed my boarding pass. Midwest Airlines says 10am flights get the fresh baked cookies. My flight leaves at 9:45. Cookies? Don’t know. Better bring a protein bars with me to eat. I pick my flight via seatguru. I’ll get there early enough so I can try for the exit aisle. Best seat on the plane generally.

So what’s the plan?? Get off the plane and take a cab to Moscone. Probably $50. Ouch. Cabbies make more than I do an hour. That’s kinda sad. Actually my father, z”l, was a cabbie in NYC. I’ll arrive at check-in and hopefully will have a press pass. The rules this year are extremely draconian. You need a permission slip from your employer. The passes don’t cost anything–IDG just doesn’t want someone who writes a blog for their high school wasting their time. Since I freelance, it’s a catch-22. Can’t get the pass unless I have the approval of the editor, and the editor doesn’t want to commit to a story. I do have a backup plan. Passes are free if you sign up online…so I already have my backup pass. Why are Press Passes a big deal? Well in theory they are backstage-style passes that get you into anything. However, first year I went I had both badges on. When I wore my DoctorDave™ badge, I wasn’t treated as well as a “trusted member of the media“. Vendors simply treat press people better at the booths. You get LOTS of free stuff (aka swag) and you make better contacts. I printed the email that said I was qualified just in case.

I’ve printed out the map and will spend the first hour or so doing a quick walkthrough. Does something particularly strike my eye as innovate. What’s the theme this year? Who isn’t there that should be? Who am I surprised to see ? It’s like when you walk into a party…you first check out who is there, what refreshments are being served, and of course the food.

I’ve got a standard canvas shopping bag to hold all the information I’ll be receiving. First year I was carrying stuff in the plastic bags vendors give you. Not only does the plastic cut into your hands…but then the handles break and you start playing 52-pickup.

I also bring with me a pre-addressed Priority Mail Flat Rate box so I can ship the materials back to myself in Lawrence. First year I went, I barely was able to bring all the stuff back I pull out the business cards from any informational packets I receive and keep them with my carryons, so that way if the materials are lost in the mail, I have the contacts at the companies so they can be resent.

I’ve got a short list of questions and information clients have asked me to research, such as “Is there a way without a server to print a cover page WITH the name of the document, billing code and pages after each print job?”. What’s up with Freehand. Is Adobe killing it? Don’t know. What accessories are there for the Macbook and Macbook Pro. I hate the way black Macbook shows oils from the skin.

The show started on Tuesday, but I always go towards the end of the show (Thursday and Friday) for a few reasons. Primarily it’s because of my clients. I don’t like leaving them that long! Also towards the end of the show, the excitement and craziness is less. People are tired. The line around the iPhone won’t be as long. Less crowds also people are more eager to chat at the booths. Little known secret. Vendors hate to haul stuff back. About an hour before show closes, they’ll sell you stuff cheap just so they don’t have to box it up. You can always get a deal or two. I’ll tell you more about the culture of show end on Friday.

So now I just got to decide whether to try to sleep…or just forget about the whole thing, stay up and do paperwork so I sleep on the plane?

Tomorrow evening I’ll try and post my first day impressions of the show. I should be able to get up close to the iPhone. My biggest concern with the iPhone. Scratches. With all that surface area…wow. That just seems like an accident waiting to happen. Speaking of accidents. How are you going to dial with your fingers while you are driving?

With blinding speed, companies upgrade their technology products and this holiday season will find lots of consumers with new computers, MP3 players, and printers. The hidden side effect of all this progress is tons of electronic waste. E-Waste consists of working monitors, computers, and printers that get stuck in the closet, basement, or garage until you move or decide to do spring cleaning and drag the item to the curb.

Fortunately in Lawrence, when e-waste is taken to the curb, it tends to disappear before the garbage trucks come to dump it in a landfill. A landfill is about the worst place computing technologies can go. E-waste contains lead, mercury, cadmium and other hazardous materials that affect the water we drink and the land we farm.

Before putting your e-waste to the curb, try to find a place to donate it. Lawrence is both cursed and blessed with a glut of good working computers. In Lawrence, most organizations usually won’t accept computers older than three to five years nor will they accept Macintoshes, though such computers can surf the internet and word process. To be fair, many organizations get many computers and don’t always have the IT resources to utilize donations. If you get “no” the first time, try calling a few weeks later as needs may have changed. Obviously ,reuse is not only a worthy goal but often leads to a tax deduction

If you can’t donate your e-waste, you might contact local, regional ,or national recycling companies. These places range from above board, noble and ethical to the downright sleazy. The sleazy operations charge you a small sum of money, they take what can be used to resell it for a profit and then take the left over and put it in a landfill. Ironically, the landfill might be the safest for the items as the alternative can actually be worse. Some “recyclers” take e-waste and use third-world labor to remove the valuable metals with techniques that are both dangerous to humans and the environment. These operations make sneaker sweatshops look like a walk in the park, pardon the pun. In fact, the Basel Action Network, www.ban.org, found computers from the Kansas Department of Aging in Lagos, Nigeria as well as various confidential data on donated hard drives .

To make sure your recycled computers end up in the right place, Bob Akers, Marketing Director of Surplus Exchange, www.surplusexchange.org, recommends asking five questions: 1)What happens to the items turned in to recycle?, 2)Are any retired electronics sent overseas?, 3)Can the recycling center offer a certificate of destruction?, 4) Do you have a reuse program? If so, how is it structured? 5) Are you approved by the EPA or KDHE? – Do you have letters of support on file? Non-profit recycling organizations like The Surplus Exchange are able to give you a potential tax deduction if they are able to use the equipment you donate. Given their civic mentality, they realize the value of older equipment and use older equipment to help non-profit organizations.

Even though manufacturers push consumers to buy new computers, they often ignore the impact to the environment. States such as California, Arkansas, Maine, Maryland, and Minnesota have e-waste laws on the books and Washington currently has pending legislation. Seeing the trend of moving to reduce e waste, companies like Dell and Apple will take your old computer back at no charge (HP charges a fee), hopefully to be recycled. On the manufacturing side, organizations like Greenpeace are campaigning to reduce the hazardous materials used in electronics. In fact, Greenpeace has created an Apple parody site at www.greenpeace.org/apple to encourage Apple to be more “green”.

If you have trouble ecologically disposing of your computing technology don’t rule out simply giving it away on online forums such as Larryville’s swapmeet (www.larryville.com), free classified ads online (craigslist.org) and in print (ljworld.com), and Freecycle (www.lifeinlawrence.com). Free computers go quickly on these forums, working or not. Computer hobbyists love to take a crack at fixing computers.

However you choose to get rid of your e-waste, be careful of any data that is contained on the system. Items such as hard drives, PDAs, and cell phones need to be completely erased of data. If you can’t securely erase the item, work with a recycler that will. If your computer won’t boot and thus you can’t erase the hard drive, remove the hard drive and save it as a backup or have a friend completely destroy it.

Whether you decide to donate your compute, recycle, or simply give it away, you can help prevent e-waste from piling up and damaging the environment.

So the next time you look at that stack of computers in the basement or in the office closet, think about the environmental impact of those units and what you can do to make sure the e-waste doesn’t end up back in our drinking water.

This error is the result of a real situation that any web surfer runs into on ocassion: sometimes a server is just plain busy, and rather the rejecting the connection entirely, it sends partial data and then gives up. When this happens, you can usually just hit “reload” and the page will then load just fine.

Anyway, click here to view the offending error:

The worst Mac error

Let’s pick this horrid error message apart, a line at a time.

Safari can’t open the page “http://support.apple.com/batteryprogram”

This is the most accurate part of the error message.

The error was: “lost network connection” (NSURLErrorDomain:-1005)

An overly technical explaination that is meaningless to the average user and doesn’t really explain what happened. The error code only adds insult to injury.

Please choose Report Bug to Apple from the Safari menu

The user has just been told that an error occured. Rather then be given tips on solving the error or an explaination of what is going on, they are instructed to stop what they are doing and contact Apple to report the error. Very unfriendly, especailly given that this is not a bug in Safari, and reporting it to Apple is a waste of everyone’s time.

Of course, Safari’s inability to properly handle dropped HTTP server connections is indeed a bug. Maybe if everyone who saw this stupid error dialog reported it as such to Apple, they’d fix it, right? Or at least improve the error message…

“Note the error number and what you did before you saw this message.”

“Well, I jacked the flux capicitor up to 48 gigawatts and set the phase dilation matrix to 110% of nominal.”

Really, I clicked on a link on a web page. You know, like every user in the history of Safari who has stumbled across this dumb message.

I don’t want to be accused of simply whining, so in that spirit, here are two ways Apple could handle this common and predictable situation (dropped HTTP connection).

The easy way

Just change the error message to actually be informative and useful:

Safari can’t open the page http://support.apple.com/batteryprogram. This often happens when the web site you are trying to visit is very busy. Please click “Try again” to try to open the page again. If this problem still occurs you may wish to wait a few minutes and try the site later.

Follow by two buttons: “Try again” and “Back to previous page” (or something like that).

This error message clearly tells the user what happened in non techie detail, and gives two logical and helpful suggestions for what to do next.

The hard way

Considering that the usual reason for these errors is a busy or slow server on the other end, Apple should have Safari automatically retry the connection when this error is encountered, ideally without the user even seeing what is going on. They could provide a preference in Safari’s advanced settings to control this behavior, giving the user the option to turn on or off “automatic busy site reconnection” (or whatever Apple calls it) and setting the maximum number of retries before giving up (I would set a hard maximum of 5 or 10, to avoid turning Safari into a DoS tool.)

(this post cross-posted to my own blog at mikesilverman.com