The only way

A female friend of mine (and my wife) was dumped via text message a few months ago. That's not cool. What jerk does that to a girl? Actually in this case I knew the boy, and he was perfectly nice. I was even the one to prod the boy to ask her out in the first place.  But he lacked adequate social skill to handle the situation, and he lacked compassion to care enough even to followup in person when she asked to talk.

As long as it was someone else (and not us ourselves who was the offender) it's easy to look at this situation and say the offender was a jerk.  Love is one of the most complex emotions and therefore one of the most sensitive conversations to have.  If we treat it as if it were just a random topic we risk offending the person who's sharing with us.  We know this to be true because if we were sharing our heart with someone and they dismissed us, especially if they'd recently been very open to us, we couldn't help but be hurt.

All things being equal, given the choice we'd all chose friends we can meet in person over friends we will only ever talk to over the phone or email or txt.  We want to invest in people who can interact and maybe physically help us, and who we can physically help.  Because that's what friends are, people who can be there for us.  Virtual interactions are fine but they can only supplement human interaction and aren't meant to take the place of it.  We weren't designed for that.

For those of you who agreed that the boy in the first paragraph above was a jerk for dumping my friend via text, I suspect not many of you would consider him any more of a gentleman if he had sent his brother or sister or friend with a verbal message that he had single-handedly decided that their romantic relationship was over.  Or if he had wrote a blog post (or a newspaper article or a book) and arranged for her to find out by reading it.  For the important things, it matters to discuss them in person.  Preferably face to face, and only when that's not physically possible then by phone might be acceptable.  In the digital age, the concept of real time & synchronous (two way) are important.  Virtual non-real time (email, chat, txt) aren't ideal because they don't allow true interaction, plus they lack both body language and tone.  The important messages just have to be discussed in person, it's the only way that can result in a mutually positive outcome.

This isn't a new concept, it's timeless.  God knows it because He designed us (Genesis 1:27).  At first He walked with us (Genesis 2:16-17, 3:8-9, 4:3-7) but we ruined our relationship with Him and eventually He only talked to some of us (Genesis 12:1) and then only through messengers, called angels (Exodus 23:20, Joshua 5:13-14, Judges 6:11-12) and through prophets (1 Samuel 3:10-11, Isaiah 6:1, Ezekiel 34:2).  (The role of a prophet is to tell God's will more so than it is to tell the future.  Telling the future is just a form of proof that the prophet speaks for God.)  But we are rather sinful and often just don't get it, even when love is staring us in the face (Isaiah 1:2-3).

So why do Christians think there's only one way to Heaven, or one way to God?  This is a common question from non-believers.  Besides the fact that the Bible says so (Acts 4:11-12, 1 Timothy 2:5) there's a simple bit of logic to realize.  God loves us, and all the intermediaries (angels and prophets) He sent just couldn't get through to us.  The fact that He loves us is really, really important, and it's quite unique among all major religions (at least until there came copycat religions).  This message had to be delivered in person, and that's where Jesus came into the picture.  That's the original reason for what we now celebrate as Christmas.

But Christmas is only part of the story.  Jesus didn't come to Earth just to hang out and tell us parables.  He knew what had to be done.  Because God is holy and just, every time we sin we separate ourselves from God.  But God loves us, He wants to be connected to us, but He's holy and we're not.  So the only way to be reunited is for a payment to be made for the sin.  Us humans have worked out a similar system in every culture: break the law and pay a fine, bigger crimes require separation from society, and extreme crimes sometimes result in capital punishment.  Thousands of years ago God established a pattern of atoning sacrifice to the Israelites: when you sin, make up for it by sacrificing something of value.  But sacrificing animals was never enough.  Every time we sinned a new sacrifice had to be made, and we just keep on sinning.  So God decided to come in person and be the ultimate sacrifice, once and for all.  Jesus came to Earth with a mission.  He volunteered to leave paradise (Isaiah 66:1-2) and come to Earth as a pauper (Luke 2:12, Matthew 9:11).  He knew what He was doing (Matthew 16:21) and who He was coming to be with (Genesis 6:5-6, John 2:24-25) but He came anyway (Romans 5:8).

And then we have the gall to say dumb things like "there has to be another way" or "I would rather find my own way."  This is just more of the same to God.  His lament about our disdain for His heart was recorded in Luke 13:34.  The idea that Jesus is our only savior is not simply common arrogance shared by all Christians.  If there was another way, do you really think He would have come here and modeled a sinless life just to die a brutal, violent, murder on our behalf?  If there was another way then God had better things to do than become human just to take our punishment for us, and I'd think He'd just say "let them be saved that way, that way is good enough, I'll skip the 30 years of poverty followed by brutal murder" (Mark 14:32-36). And don't think that just because it happened two millennia ago that you have any excuse to demand God act again, now, in your lifetime, in an equally radical fashion. What He did 2000 years ago was good enough once and for all (1 Corinthians 15:22, Hebrews 10:10) that's why He left eyewitnesses (2 Peter 1:16-18, 1 John 1:1-3) and a written record: so we'd still know about it today and thank Him for it, love Him even.  It's not supposed to be a drag when He says He's the only way (John 14:6), He's reassuring us.  He's saying "no one else is coming for you, but I have, I created you, and I'm pursuing you with My love.  I love you enough to suffer the consequences of your sin so that you can be with Me forever."  No other God nor any form of deity has ever made an offer that good, and yet He still allows us to choose.  Do we accept His offer, or reject it?  And if we accept it, do we keep this offer for ourselves or do we share it with the world?  This is what Christmas and Easter are annual reminders of: God cared enough to come in person and tell us how much He loves each and every one of us (John 3:16, Galatians 3:28).  This is why the angel declared that famous evening:

Luke 2:8-14: There were shepherds in the same country staying in the field, and keeping watch by night over their flock. Behold, an angel of the Lord stood by them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. The angel said to them, "Don't be afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be to all the people. For there is born to you today, in David's city, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. This is the sign to you: you will find a baby wrapped in strips of cloth, lying in a feeding trough." Suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army praising God, and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men." (WEB)

The biggest leap forward since the original

Go Apple.  iPhone X.   I'm trying really hard not to be cynical. Apple is a good company, really. They produce good products that do what they claim and last. They're not junk. I will never forget the awesomeness of the iPhone 4 and iPhone 6 designs, the bold "jet black" of the iPhone 7, and the truly revolutionary marketing of iPhone 6 with ginormous marketing photos of their product (not those stupid dumb little teeny photos that most marketers offer). But they're clearly coasting this year. Makes me wonder if they've lost their touch.

Their CEO, Tim Cook, made two claims at their annual product launch last week.  Two dumb little sentences that if they'd left out, I wouldn't be cynical.  But those CEO speeches are written weeks and months in advance, and are very carefully crafted.  With these sentences Apple is going out of their way to (yet again) prove to the world how devoted their fans are, and that the fans will drink any "kool-aid" they serve up (no matter how bad).

The product launch video is at https://www.apple.com/apple-events/september-2017/, and as videos go it's perfectly fine. High quality, clearly good planning of the event, nice new venue. But here we go. At 1 hour 16 minutes in, Mr. Cook says "our teams have been at work for years on something that is important to all of us: the future of the smartphone. The first iPhone revolutionized a decade of technology, and changed the world in the process. Now, 10 years later, it is only fitting... to reveal a product that will set the path for technology for the next decade." At 1:17:50 he continues "This is iPhone X.  It is the biggest leap forward since the original iPhone." You've got to be kidding me. One of my favorite articles I read in my masters class had this excerpt in it:

Here's the thing about innovation: I'm not sure any of us needs a definition. We don't need a journalist to tell us what it is. Or who really gets it. Innovation is like obscenity: We know it when we see it. It's hard to miss when paradigms shift.
-http://www.informationweek.com/it-leadership/innovation-is-executive-porn/d/d-id/1111194

If he'd left these exaggerations out of his speech, I'd have nothing to be cynical about.  iPhone X is a decent product. But it's nothing innovative. It's new features are:

• edge to edge screen (something almost every other manufacturer has dabbled in for years)
• wireless charging (something every other manufacturer has had for years)
• facial recognition (Samsung did even better earlier this year)
• super retina display (Samsung has had higher for at least 2 years)

And that's what he calls "the biggest leap forward" since the original device?? Then at 1:21:25 Phil Schiller says removing the home button "is a big step forward in the iPhone user experience." Now instead of pressing the home button we swipe up from the bottom of the screen. He follows by saying "it's incredibly smooth and once you do it for the first time, you'll know there's never been a better way." Really? Last I checked, swiping takes more effort than touching. And let's not get into how old all this is to Android users, especially those who've installed alternate launchers.

And lastly, to add insult to injury, they're charging a whole grand. Yeah right. Sorry Apple fans. The 10th anniversary was supposed to be the year for the iPhone. What a let down. I mean, if you want a thousand dollar phone, and you want it to be an Apple, then great, I'm happy for you, go for it, it is their most impressive yet. But don't try to brag about it's technology. It's not cutting edge. Unlike the original iPhone, there's nothing new here here at all.

God helps those who help themselves?

The title of this blog post is one of those famous Bible quotes that's not really in the Bible.  But could it be?  When does God help lazy people in the Bible?  There's no good quote, but the theme isn't far fetched.  Let's look at some famous people God helped (or carried out His plan through).  Pay close attention to the vocabulary used.

• Noah - Genesis 6:14-15 (make)
• Abram - Genesis 12:1 (go)
• Moses - Exodus 3:10 (go, bring)
• Joshua - Joshua 1:6 (lead)
• Gideon - Judges 6:14 (go)

And it wasn't even limited to the Old Testament:

• Acts 5:18-20 (go)
• Acts 12:7-8 (follow)
• Romans 2:6 (do)
• 1 Timothy 6:18 (deeds)
• James 3:13 (deeds)

When we read the words, we see that God commanded people to do work.  These people are famous for God helping them but it's only our modern, lazy, post scientific revolution paradigm that makes us think God will take care of us so that we will have an easier life.  That's what garage door openers and self closing trunks are for, but isn't why God intervenes in the world.  He intervenes to carry out His plan, which like Noah and the rest, involves a lot of hard work.  While it's tempting to give Gideon a hard time for asking for the wet fleece and the dry fleece, he asked for those demonstrations out of fear, not laziness.

Not everyone who doesn't act is lazy.  Some of us honestly believe that praying hard and often is good enough.  Now I get it that Jesus was big on prayer.  But the only time Jesus ever came close to saying "just pray" was in a specific case of direct, toe to toe spiritual warfare.  This example was so specific it's dangerous to ever use this as an excuse that we should ever "just pray".  Certainly prayer is important, and just so you don't think I'm anti-prayer or that I think nothing of prayer, here are some of Jesus's positions:

• Matthew 6:5-13
• Mark 1:35
• Mark 9:29
• Luke 5:16
• Luke 6:12

I'm just so tired of hearing people (over my lifetime) saying something like "we just need to pray."  Granted, that's important, and granted when we are out of options then maybe all we can do is pray.  But we are on the verge of sinning if we have the capacity to act and yet we choose only to pray.  As if to ask God to step in and do our job for us.  If you are a parent, and you just asked your teenager to wash their own dinner plate off, and they responded "mom/dad, I sure wish that you would wash this plate so I can watch TV", how well do you think you'd like hearing that, and do you think you'd actually grant your teenagers request?  Not many of us would.  If you're going to pray, fine, but don't kid yourself that praying gets you out of working.  Prayer is the "air cover," or the administrative overhead, to the actual work.

We so want life to be black and white but it's more complicated than that.  It's important to pray.  Just like it's important to have a Biblical worldview.  (Remember, Biblical worldview only comes from actually reading your Bible and remembering what it says, then taking it seriously.)  But neither (nor even both of these together) are enough.  We must do good work too.

• James 2:14-26
• Romans 12:9-13
• Matthew 7:21

Thomas Edison (the guy who invented both the light bulb and the municipal power grid) said something cool.  "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." What opportunities does God have planned for us today?

Genesis 1 & 2

I've heard it claimed that the order of creation in Genesis 1 and 2 are contradictory.  My initial response was that Genesis 1 is the account of all of creation, whereas Genesis 2 is retelling the story from Adam's perspective, even though it's written in the third person.  I am working on making my own translation of Genesis 1-11 for publication on Kindle, and I came across a detail that is more plausible to interpret as a contradiction.  It's still not a contradiction, but it's "more plausible," and for those of us who are just looking for contradictions, it's close enough.  But close enough isn't good enough.  Let's review together.  Here's the important text from Genesis 1:24-27.  (This copy of the text below is from the Amplified translation, which is an extremely literal translation, more so than NIV, KJV, etc., and not necessarily the translation I prefer to read from but is in many ways the closest to the original. I have added the "[1]" and "[2]" for reasons you'll see below, and I've removed parenthetical text that is found in the Amplified translation, for simplicity sake of this article.)

Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kind: [1] livestock, crawling things, and wild animals of the earth according to their kinds”; and it was so. So God made the wild animals of the earth according to their kind, and the cattle according to their kind, and everything that creeps and crawls on the earth according to its kind; and God saw that it was good and He affirmed and sustained it.  Then God said, “Let Us make [2] man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them have complete authority over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, and over the entire earth, and over everything that creeps and crawls on the earth.” So God created man in His own image, in the image and likeness of God He created him; male and female He created them.

If we accept Ussher's calculations with genealogies in the Bible, these events happened about 6,000 years ago.  But this text is not 6,000 years old.  It is attributed to Moses, as revealed to him by God.  Moses was born about 1,500 years before Jesus was.  Paper wasn't invented until after Jesus was born, there certainly weren't any printing presses back then, and tablets were made of stone or clay, not silicon & glass.  Limited hard copies would have been created, making each extraordinarily expensive.  This is why it was such a big deal in 2 Kings 22:8 that they found a scroll (full story is 2 Kings 22-23).  So God told Moses, who wrote it down (discussed at length in my other blog post), which was eventually copied by others, and the oldest surviving copy is probably in the Dead Sea Scrolls (http://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/featured-scrolls) which are dated to around the century before Jesus was born.  In Genesis 2:18-19, we see:

Now the Lord God said, “It is not good for the [1] man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable and complementary for him.”  So the Lord God formed out of the ground every [2] animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.

Since I added the [1] and [2] you've probably already noticed the seeming contradiction.  In Genesis 1 we read about the animals first, then man, and in Genesis 2 we read about man first, then animals.  But if we're going to get nit picky and claim to point out technicalities, then we need to be professional about this and put on our scientist hat and be thorough.  Because we don't want to leave ourselves open for a counter attack, air tight arguments work much better.

A few months ago I sent an email at work.  Someone had asked me a question on a topic I had some experience with.  I sent them a link to a presentation I'd made.  I told them in the email, which I sent in July, that I had made the presentation back in January.  In the presentation there is a title slide, which also has a date.  The date is not the date the presentation was created, it's the date it was last updated.  The date on the title slide said May.  But it doesn't say it was last updated in May, it just says "May."  So if the recipients of my email wanted to be nit picky, they could have written back to me and been critical and distrustful and pointed out a contradiction in my understanding and representation of reality.  Fortunately they weren't so, but if they had been I could have easily explained away what they could have perceived as contradiction.  That's the case here with Genesis 1 and 2.

In Genesis 1:24, God tells us on day 6 He started off creating the land animals.  It specifically says in Genesis 1:26, "then" He talked about making man.  This wording implies a sequence, an order of events.  One started before the other.  Genesis 1:25 indicates that all the land animals (at least all the various kinds of land animals) were created before God talked about making man.  Back in Genesis 1:11​ we read about God creating plants on day 3, and even earlier in the chapter it says when God made the Earth, the land, and the waters.

In Genesis 2:7, God tells us how he made Adam.  It says he made Adam after making the Earth, the ground, and water.  This is aligned with the order of creation in Genesis 1.  In Genesis 2:5-6 it said there were no plants, but it doesn't say Adam was created before the plants, the story just moves from Genesis 2:6 to Genesis 2:7 without explaining what happened in between.  It had no obligation to.  Remember when we consider Genesis 2 as a whole, it's clearly explaining the dawn of time from Adam's perspective.  Adam didn't necessarily care on what day the plants were created, or that the plants were created before the Sun and stars were, or that the Earth was at first all water.  Why would he care?  Therefore why would it be in Genesis 2?  There's no contradiction here.

In Genesis 2:8, there's a sentence that, if we're being critical (as in negative) then we could shout out "wait!"  It almost sounds like God made Adam before he made the Garden of Eden.  But if we keep reading Genesis 2:9-15​, we see that whoever wrote this text was using the literary technique of a flashback.  Genesis 2:5-8 is one line of thought, then the author recalibrates, and sort of starts over and gives another line of thought in Genesis 2:9-18.  Notice in Genesis 2:19, that the author doesn't say "then," he says "now."  This is significant, because it means he is yet again doing another recalibration/flashback.  Genesis 2:19-25 is a third line of thought.  So even though the text of Genesis 2 structurally mentions the creation of Adam before it mentions the creation of the other land animals, it's not implying nor explicitly saying that Adam was created before any of the others.  There's no contradiction here.

Remember, the whole Bible was written before the printing press.  This means it was written before publishing companies, and had no editor.  The whole Bible is written more in the style we today recognize as blogs than as books.  A great example of this is Luke 3:18-22, where the author, who was a doctor (a.k.a. a scientist), writes about John the Baptist being put in prison right before Jesus was baptized.  However Matthew 14:3-11 says John was executed in prison and Matthew 3:13-17 clearly explains that John was the one who baptized Jesus.  There's no contradiction here when we recognize the fact that this wasn't reviewed by an editor first.  And we know that it would be hypocritical to say a writing can't be accurate if it's not reviewed by an editor.  These were letters, little different than blogs, and amateur blogs at that, not professional blogs where people make a living crafting well articulated messages.  Luke could have even very well wrote his letter while traveling (Colossians 4:14, 2 Timothy 4:11, Philemon 1:24).  And lastly, the whole Old Testament was first written on scrolls.  They weren't written on lined paper bought in a package of 500 sheets using a number 2 pencil with a new eraser.  They weren't typed on a laptop where non-linear editing is standard.  They were written on a scroll with a pen, and once they wrote something they couldn't go back and insert an extra sentence they'd accidentally left out.  They just had to keep writing and try to make their story cohesive.  And they probably didn't know what they were writing would be scrutinized by a hostile audience 2+ millennia later.  They were just writing what they knew in hopes of passing it along.

This article was written as an expansion of a main feature I call my Creation versus Evolution FAQ.  I hope they can be of help to your understanding of our Creator, and how easy it is to take Him seriously (believe His word, the Bible) if we are only willing.

Sucker for technology

Image credit: Samsung

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 is $100 off this week. I was really tempted. I even blogged about how cool it was back on April 7th. I was thinking tonight how I could justify buying another tablet... Then it occurred to me, I really love my S8+. I really hope they keep every design feature of the Tab S3 in the Tab S4, but ditch the physical buttons like they did with the S8. If they do that, and release the Tab S4 in less than a year, then I'd kick myself for having bought the Tab S3. So I have to wait. But Samsung, keep the all glass design, the all black look (even the sides/edges), the 4 speakers, and the awesome display.

I looked up some stats on phonearena.com:
The S2 8" is 272g and 5.6mm thick.
The S3 9.7" is 429g and 6mm.
The NotePro 12.2" is 753g and 7.95mm.
The latest iPad 9.7" is 478g and 7.5mm.
The iPad Pro 12.9" is 692g and 6.9mm.

It is available from Verizon.  Oh so tempting, but $700 from Verizon plus $30 activation plus $20 per month, and only $500 flat for WiFi only.

Daddy's new toy 2017

I did get my new toy on Friday and it is awesome. As I described a few days ago, this is the year for hardware to shine. The awesomeness of the S8 (S8+ in my case) is impossible to either explain by text or even photos. The user experience is beyond text or still photo. The tactile feel of the glass front and back, the practically seemless flow of glass and frame, the soft edges and curves, the image quality of the screen, and the responsiveness of the processor culminate to an experience that doesn't translate into text or photo.

My new all black phone came 10 years 1 month and 1 day after I added a black theme to my website (for the Rock subdomain, here). It was the fifth and final theme, the only one I've added any content to since then. I've wanted an all black phone to match and gotten closest with the Note 4, but this S8+ is surely the best yet. Also remember my post in September 2014 for the inevitable cell phone design, here, where I described the ultimate design being one that made the device look like it was just a single, solid, piece of glass. Here's a photo of it on my kitchen counter, a closer up image of it on a table, and then how it looks on my car dashboard. Visually it fits the description.

Of course for demonstration purposes I had the Always on Display off, which I normally keep on and find very useful. And FYI, the vent clip I use for my phone in my car is from iKross and is the only valid style of car vent mount on the market, here, because it can be used one handed. I seriously don't understand why there are no copycats out there.

Not only is the phone itself all black, but Samsung allows us to theme it, and no surprise, I picked an all black one. This way the software and the hardware look like they were made for each other.

And while I was at it, here's a photo of how big the screen is. It may or may not look like it in a photo, but in person, this is huge.

To quantify some of the radical hardware upgrade, here's a couple numbers. The S8+ has a physical body 0.8% bigger than the iPhone 7+ but has 12.7% more screen. That's huge. For anyone still holding on to Samsung's battery problems in last fall's Note 7, don't forget Apple has had their share of problems, too. The iPhone 4 antenna made Apple the laughingstock of the industry for a while (here), and they've recently had their own battery issues (here). I'm not really trying to pick on the iPhone, just using them as a comparison since iPhone is the single best selling smartphone in the world (and Android is the single most popular operating system in the world of smartphones).

Earlier in April I was wondering how many times a day I check my phone. The question is in the context of amortizing the cost of the phone over a one year period. I installed an app and found over the last 2 weeks I've checked my phone an average of 75 times per day. If we say we can allocate a penny per check, then over 365 days that's $274. 2¢ would be 548, 3¢ = $822, and 4¢ = $1,095. Similarly (yet opposite) since this phone will cost me $420 a year and I check it 75 times a day, then that's 1.6¢ per check. If you only paid $200 for your phone but only check it 20 times a day, then you're paying 2.7¢ per check. If you pay $200 but only check it 4 times a day, you're paying a whopping 14¢ per check. So while my phone is expensive, I get my use out it.

I do love the feel of glass front and glass back phone. In the case of the S8+, the glass on the back is too thin, causing it feel like plastic. It should probably be an extra half millimeter thicker. It's so obvious I noticed the first time I picked it up out of the box. That was Friday, and Monday I found a CNET article that essentially confirmed it, here. When I showed another techie friend the first thing they said was it felt like plastic. I think making the back have as good of glass as the front would be worth any extra thickness. The S7 felt great, the S8 (or now the S9) should too.

By the way, I was pleased to see that another manufacturer has embraced the design style that Apple started with the all black iPhone 7 and Samsung followed with the S8. A company called Xiaomi is releasing a phone called the MI6 that looks beautiful. It's out in China this week and in the US in May. I've never heard of them, but this looks awesome. Especially if the price tag is less than $400 like some websites claim: here. It's not waterproof, but I like the idea of an Android phone that looks this good and is half the price of the S8. Not for myself but for consumer choice.

The biggest missing feature from both iPhone 7 and S7

I'm a fan of consumer choice. When Samsung pushed the envelope of big phones I rejoiced. I have big hands and my eyes sometimes want something bigger to look at. The iPhone set the standard in 2007 with a 3.5 inch diagonal screen. In 2010 the iPhone 4 was arguably the best design of their 3.5" models. In 2012 Samsung released their Galaxy S3 at 4.8" diagonal. It was huge. In 2011 they released the Note, the biggest phone on the market, with a 5.3" diagonal. I love the big screen, but it's ridiculous that big should preclude small.

In 2014 Apple caved and the iPhone 6 was big. The 6 Plus was even bigger. Samsung's latest S8 and S8+ are their biggest yet. But why have both these companies stopped making small phones? If they make the regular and a plus size, how about a mini? Especially Samsung who makes an "active" version of their flagship phone, and the "J" cheaper versions.

Not everyone has big hands and wants to watch movies on their phones, therfore not everyone wants big phones. I've seen advertisements for bras that were designed with pockets to fit those cute little iPhones. How many women in the world are or would prefer to walk around with neither purse nor pockets? Answer: a lot. But they should have a phone with them. (You should especially agree with that statement if you make a living making or selling phones.) How many people have small or medium sized hands? Answer: a lot. When you double the size of the phone, you make it harder for most women to carry it directly on their body, and even uncomfortable to use. Come on Apple and Samsung (and every other manufacturer) add an iPhone 8 Mini and Galaxy S8 Mini as part of your standard product line from now on.

As an example, here's a photo of my hand and my wife's:

And while we're on the topic of size, let's point out that both iOS and Android still look the same on 3.5" screens and on 6" screens. The standard method of handling this is just to display at higher resolution. Can the operating systems please catch up and scale better, with an option to make everything on the home screen smaller? Namely, fit more icons and use smaller fonts, and in the case of Android, make sure the widgets scale proportionally too? Because while some of us buy big phones because our eyes are getting older and we need bigger text, none the less for the rest of us big icons and big text is what we do for toddlers and children. Big kids and grown ups can read small print. Now, I'm a fan of consumer choice, so make sure there is an option for scaling, don't just change the default.

All Black

The natural state of paper is white (or light) so naturally the highest contrast ink is black. Reinforced by the fact that the easiest ink to make is black (as opposed to the opposite, which is white, or a random color like red or blue). Because ink is a manifestation of color, or pigment. Blend all the colors together and you get black, because pigment is subtractive.

Image credit: Adobe

The natural state of a computer screen is black, so naturally the highest contrast pixels will output white. Because pixels outout light. When they're off, no light means darkness (black). Blend all the colors together and you get white, because light is additive. (Interesting link explaining the difference.)

Image credit: Adobe

On a piece of paper, anything not white is supposed to be there to be processed by your brain and interpreted as either information (meaning) to be communicated, or aesthetics to convey branding, style, and other feeling/ perception. On a digital screen, anything not black should fit the same description. Screens are the opposite of paper for the fundamental reason (physics) described above. Too much software these days is made either ignoring this principle or pandering to customers who think it's too complicated.

Devices that are all screen, like TVs, tablets, and smartphones, should be built with all black bodies. I don't mean some cheap looking dull grayish blackish frame, I mean dark black that harmonizes well with the screen when it's off. This is because the device is nothing more than a carrier. The device, the hardware, is meant to be a comfortable pleasing input. The screen (the software) is the only output, therefore the only thing that should be specifically designed to attract attention. Like the old saying that a child should be seen and not heard (meaning they should be present in the company of adults but well behaved so as to not interrupt the peaceful conversation of the adults). A well manored child will receive high praise for successfully doing what they're supposed to, even without them doing their best to attract attention. Similarly, the hardware of a device that is all screen should get its praise by quietly doing what is needed without demanding its own attention. If the designer does their job well, the unassuming black device will earn plenty of praise.

For tablets and phones, the most impressive user experience will be when the device feels like it's just all one piece of material. Since the best screens are glass, it makes sense that the whole thing be glass. If that's not sturdy enough then just the front and back should be glass. The iPhone 4 and Galaxy S7, S8, and Tab S3 fit these descriptions. May they not be the last.

Images credit: Apple
Left: model 4, right: model 7

Once the device is designed to blend in with the screen when it's off, we may ask how to make the screen blend with the device when its on. The way to do this is with dark themed apps that exploit the properties of light and ignore the concepts of pigment. The user should always have choice to customize to their personal style, but to demonstrate design excellence the device should come standard with backgrounds that help fool the user into thinking the device is all one solid, strong piece of material. Apple made some cool backgrounds with their iPhone 7 (including the blue blob). May these inspire many more.

   

Images credit: Apple

The reason not just any black background will do is we must show of the awesomeness of the display (the screen). This isn't the 1980s and we're not running 640x480 with 50 pixels per inch and using dot matrix printers. It's almost 2020 and a good display these days rivals the quality of a laser printer. Laser printers output at 600 dots per inch and a good phone has at least 200. (Microsoft Windows still assumes all desktop monitors are running at 72 pixels per inch.) The iPhone 7+ has 400 and the Galaxy S7 has 575 pixels per inch. The stock wallpapers (including live wallpapers) should show this off in all its glory with ultra high resolution and high detail photography that harmonizes with the physical device beautifully. The Apple fighting fish, blue blob, and purple flower (from the iPhone 6) are great examples. OK world, let's see some more :)

Image credit: Apple

For example, Motorola, maker of the flip phone that rocked the the world (the Razr) and the insanely thin Moto Z Droid (a whopping 26% thinner than the iPhone 6 but the same 5.5" screen size), how awesome of a device could you make if you took these design principles just a little more seriously? Good luck to us all.

The year hardware finally blew software out of the water

For a long as the computer had existed our imaginations have exceeded our capacity to express it. When the personal computer came around in the 1980s, Steve Jobs was one of the first to realize that computers could (and should) display text in more than one font.  Displays running 640x480 pixels at a ridiculously low pixels-per-inch were the standard for over a decade.  Then the Pentium set new standards with 1024x768 displays and Windows 95 entered a new era of visual computing.  The world wide web connected us like never before and experienced a revolution of it's own when Steve Jobs again rocked the world with the iPhone. (Remember a wide screen iPod, a phone, and a revolutionary internet device, on YouTube here.)  iOS and Android made us drool over our phones, but the software continued to press the envelope of what was possible given the available hardware. And the hardware was usually dumb looking.  It rarely looked like technology of the future.  The iPhone 4, the iPhone 6 and exceedingly rare other devices were worthy of science fiction writing from the 20th century.

I saw this year's model of Samsung's Galaxy Tab S3 at the store today.  It is beautiful.  It puts an iPad to shame.  It was clearly designed by the same company that made the S8 (set for release 2 weeks from today, I preordered it tonight).

It's impossible to explain how glorious it feels and looks.  The feel of matching glass on front and back is just amazing.  The nuance of how they made the side frame metal and match the color and tone of the glass makes for a wonderful unibody appearance that exceeds the iPad because it affords the strength of metal on the edge and the look, sheen, and feel of glass on the front and back.  It truly looks like something that is a work of science fiction, like something that jumped right of the screen from Tron Legacy or Star Trek.  (iPad's curved back may make it easy to pick up off a table, but that's the end of the pros.)

Running more than full HD and 9.7 inches diagonal with an HDR display and four built in speakers, and a processor that delivers silky smooth graphics (I don't even care what the processors is, it delivers) this thing pumps out the sensory experience to the max (for a tablet).  But it's running Android.  Not that I dislike Android, I like it better than iOS and to an extent Windows.  But for a piece of hardware like this, Android 7 visually presents the experience of a child's toy from the early 2000's.  iOS would too if you somehow forced it on there, and so would Windows.  Now that our hardware has almost caught up to my design expectations (both the S8 phone and this S3 tablet) it's time for someone to theme Android in such a way that the OS lives up to the hardware.  A game that hardware manufactures have been playing catch-up on for a decade and this year finally took the upper hand.  At least Samsung has.  Now we'll see if anyone else follows suit.

Image credits: Samsung

Design Delays

Samsung has gotten a lot of criticism for what they did with the fingerprint sensor. In the S7 it is on the home button, but the S8 has only a virtual button and is near bezel less, so it had to move. Putting it on the back is logical next best option, but their choice baffles most of us. Here's what it really looks like.

The problems are (a) the fingerprint sensor is right next to the camera lense and (b) it's still small (just rotated 90° from the S7). Now I don't know what is under the hood and what challenges they faced in moving this sensor, but it can be done differently. Here's how LG did it.

I can see not wanting to copy or be accused of copying. So how about this?

This design will take care of both criticisms A and B above, and would make the fingerprint sensor be in the better place for us right handed people who hold our phones with our left hand. My pessimistic hypothesis is they've already thought of this and are just waiting for the S9 to do it. The current state may just get annoying enough after a year that people will upgrade just because of it.

In the same vein, I've wondered why the iPhone doesn't have wireless charging yet. My pessimistic hypothesis is Apple is developing a new wireless charging standard that's incompatible with existing standards but works as good and allows them to continue selling proprietary chargers. Sure, they'll claim it's some percentage better than the industry standard, but that wasn't the point, it wasn't about helping the consumer, it's about market control. I don't have to respect that.

Remember my post from Sept 2014 about the inevitable cell phone design...

New toy coming soon?

Image credit: Samsung

The Samsung Galaxy S8 looks nice.  I thought I'd compare it to some other leading phones and some other historical references.

Model	Weight (g)	Length (mm)	Width (mm)	Depth (mm)	Surface Area to Depth Ratio	Direct Compare
Moto Z	136	153.3	75.3	5.2	2,224	-22%
iPhone 6+	172	158.1	77.8	7.1	1,732	0%
iPhone 7+	188	158.2	77.9	7.3	1,688	3%
S8+	173	159.5	73.4	8.1	1,445	20%
S7 Edge	157	150.9	72.6	7.7	1,423	22%
Note 4	176	153.5	78.6	8.5	1,419	22%
Pixel XL	168	154.7	75.7	8.6	1,363	27%
iPhone 6	129	138.1	67.0	6.9	1,341	29%
iPhone 7	138	138.3	67.1	7.1	1,307	33%
S8	152	148.9	68.1	8.0	1,268	37%
S7	152	142.4	69.6	7.9	1,255	38%
Pixel	143	143.8	69.5	8.6	1,166	49%
S3	133	136.6	70.6	8.6	1,121	54%
iPhone 4	137	114.3	58.6	9.3	720	141%
iPhone	135	115.0	61.0	11.6	605	186%

Model	Year	Diagonal (in)	Screen to Body Ratio	Vertical Pixels	Horizontal Pixels	PPI
S8+	2017	6.2	83.32	2960	1440	529
S8	2017	5.8	84.26	2960	1440	570
Note 4	2015	5.7	74.39	2560	1440	515
Moto Z	2016	5.5	71.77	2560	1440	535
Pixel XL	2016	5.5	71.22	2560	1440	534
iPhone 6+	2015	5.5	67.91	1920	1080	401
iPhone 7+	2016	5.5	67.58	1920	1080	401
S7 Edge	2016	5.5	76.09	2560	1440	534
S7	2016	5.1	72.30	2560	1440	576
Pixel	2016	5.0	68.88	1920	1080	441
S3	2012	4.8	65.82	1280	720	306
iPhone 6	2015	4.7	65.71	1334	750	326
iPhone 7	2016	4.7	65.71	1334	750	326
iPhone 4	2010	3.5	55.77	960	640	326
iPhone	2007	3.5	52.35	480	320	165

Data credit: Phone Arena

Getting excited to preorder...