Twit Tweets About Tech

I call it "Addled Existentialism... With A Toolbar"

As much as I like to think of this site as a tech-blog, I also have to be realistic about a few matters. The most important of these is that I am not an early adopter, not as a rule. I'm of the opinion that nobody gets a product right on the first try. Unless you're resigned to buying the same product twice, it's best to wait until all the bugs are ironed out. Sure, I still have my first generation PSP, and while improvements were made since then, I still like mine, almost more than the Vita. The other matter of importance is that we've reached a point in product development, particularly on the software side of things, where this "extended beta" paradigm is not only acknowledged, but deserves to be nurtured. Yeah, day one patches are annoying, but at least they get patched to begin with. Yeah, it gives developers an easy out on the QA and deadline fronts, but it also opens them up to a wider spectrum of feedback they may not have had before. 

I was going to do a write-up of Fifty-Three's latest update to Paper, its native app meant to accompany their Pencil stylus. In the interest of full disclosure, I've been very impressed with the support I've received from Fifty-Three and I appreciate them going above and beyond the call of duty in resolving a small issue with connectivity I was having with a stylus I'd purchased over a year ago. I have genuinely used the Paper app in the workplace when discussing design challenges with coworkers. All that said, the Pencil is not my favorite stylus. It is the second, once tied with Adonit (who are now dead to me for reasons I'll get into another time), paling in comparison to the ever-versatile Sensu Brush. Obviously, that is not a fair comparison, but that's my point when I talk about the Paper app, and why I decided to take a different approach to discussing its recent overhaul. 

I am not the person this app was made for. 

Paper is not an art program. Their Twitter feed may have you believe otherwise, but this is not the primary, or even secondary, function of the app, talents of the users notwithstanding. Paper is a productivity app, and a very simplistic and accessible one to boot. It is Microsoft One Note for visual thinkers. It is Evernote for doodlers. It is Powerpoint/Keynote on the fly. It is Post-It Notes without the litter. It is a dry erase board without the noxious fumes and notable lack of portability, fume-induced out-of-body experiences notwithstanding. 

If apps were physical items you had to visit a brick-and-mortar store to purchase, Autodesk Sketchbook would be at Michael's and Paper would be at OfficeMax. However, apps are not physical items and there's generally only one store you get all of them from. Given that they're not physical items, some consumers view this as anti-them, taking away their precious ownership... that they didn't really have to begin with because that's a sales receipt and not a stock certificate. The point is that the law rightly treats digital media as physical ones as its ultimately a human (or team thereof) producing it on their own time and dime for others to use, but that doesn't mean they're used in the same manner, much less produced. If I bought a game on my Sega Genesis and it was a glitchy, slowdown-riddled mess that may have even had a level or two that were simply impossible compared to what came before, that was your lot. Now, 20-some years after the fact, the lead programmer for Sonic 3D Blast is revisiting his old game and updating it. It won't be available in physical form (yet), but any user with a PC running an even half-decent emulator will be able to play this game that once may have been charitably described as rough round the edges. While I only rented Blast back in the day, I'm honestly excited to see a game I thought was impressive get that extra little bit of polish it needed. Why throw something away when it can be fixed? 

After summarizing all this in a brief tweet, someone commented: 

Ok so I am not the only one. Did the same: 2 emails. I found huge productivity loss with Paper 4 due to regressions and bugs.

I'll give this guy the benefit of the doubt (i.e. anonymity) that he wasn't fully paying attention to the original tweet, namely the part where I specify that the gripes I have with Paper's 4th iteration are cosmetic. What may not have been so clear is that I consider these faults cosmetic because I was trying to view Paper as an art app rather than a productivity app. As for it being a productivity app, the blame-shifting here is hilarious. Sure, it utterly bites (bytes?) when a piece of tech essential to your job doesn't work, but holding up Paper on some kind of pedestal makes you look more than a little inept. There's a reason I still carry a Moleskine and a handful of pens in the same bag as my tablet. 

To put this in perspective, here's a funny-if-pitiful story about when I worked for T-Mobile in customer service. I once got a call from an especially irate customer who wanted 60,000USD. He wanted 60K from us as compensation because of a business deal that fell through. Said unspecified business deal fell through because a text message was delayed by an equally unspecified amount of time. I can't emphasize enough that his complaint was that the SMS text was delayed briefly. Unless you were an early adopter of the iPhone or you've never known a time when smartphones looked like the illegitimate offspring of a graphing calculator and a toy keyboard, you've probably experienced a text not showing up the instant the other guy hits send. 

What kind of business banks a five-figure deal on a text message? 

Seriously, you're either so financially secure and well-off that it's a risk you're as willing to take as you are to shrug off as small potatoes if it falls through, or you're so desperately incompetent you can't even make a call to confirm someone got your urgent, time-sensitive message on time.