Disposable Printers and the Electronic Graveyard

My dad coined that term "the Electronic Graveyard" sometime in the 80's and wrote about it in the mid 90's, as a way to describe our basement... not the whole basement, but a significant portion of real estate in the basement which contained a heap of practically useless home audio, video, and "modern conveniences" such as vacuums, toasters, microwaves and other stuff that plug into the wall. For some reason, these devices were too good for the garbage, so they got a semi-permanent resting spot in the basement. In fact, after a while it almost seemed like we enjoyed the very nature of the pile and celebrated the addition of another abandoned appliance. There were only a couple of reasons why these devices would be added to the EG:
1 - It wasn't broken, it was just replaced by something better... which is why it couldn't rightly be just thrown away. So we'd place it down in the "bogey basement" (my sister's term) in hopes that one day it would somehow evolve into something more useful or be adopted by some poor soul who was more than two generations of technology behind us.

2 - It was broken. These were the items which deserved to be either fixed or thrown away.

So let me focus on these broken items (as if you had a choice of how long it takes me to get to my point). Throwing these items away just seemed wrong... first, because the item clearly still had some value - maybe 10% of it's replacement value on eBay for some hobbyist who also had a broken one and needed some parts - but this is where the "cycle of not worth it" continues - since just the effort to package the item seemed more than this broken device deserved. The other path - fixing the broken item - was deemed as a "good money after bad" approach, since the cost of even asessing the remedy would clearly be more than we'd need to spend getting a brand new one.

And finally - this is my point. I have a respectable electronic graveyard which is secular - allowing only printers onto its grounds... but it's not in my basement - it's amongst the living, in my home office. One on the floor below my desk, one on top of my kid's toy box which contains all the annoying, loud toys which we just assume they never see again (or not until they're strong enough to lift that all-in-one Epson Printer which now just feigns printing when connected). That Printer was $99 originally. It would cost $65 for someone to look at it to assess the problem (not fix it - assess it). The one on the floor, unfortunately, is a $350 large format photo printer which won't even turn on. Since I discovered that large format is not something I do at home, this printer could be replaced for about $$150 - $200.

So - now what. Two broken printers.
One thing I discovered, after about 10 months, is that they probably won't magically start working. My wife actually abandoned that approach after 4 months or so and brought home a perfectly operable $99 HP. And that raises the main question: Are printers now disposable? Are all things electronic so cheap to produce and purchase, and so non-trivial to fix, that we should just create a better infrastructure to dispose of them when they're "done"? I'm assuming there are fairly inaccessible recycling programs for electronics - but, back to the "cycle of not worth it", it would take me the better part of a month to find one... I've considered attempting my own program of launching these things into an upper orbit, but figure my neighbors wouldn't approve of the testing phase which would probably see a printer or two crashing through their roof to end up on their kitchen table due to a failed rocket booster or some such nonsense.

The iphone is perfect, but the Mac is not

So far my experience with my iPhone has been almost perfect - that is when it is not connected to a laptop/desktop. Here's why....

I buy the iPhone, convinced that it will be the perfect device and accepting the possibility that it might be the trigger to get me to move over to a Mac.

We have a mac at home with all our music and photos on it, but I use my IBM work laptop for everything else (all work, all the time, basically)...
The iPhone will not do anything (sans emergency call) without activation - and that can only be done via iTunes.... so
- I plug my phone into the Mac... nuthin. Check connections, surf, search, read, AHA! Simple... I have to upgrade to iTunes 7.3!... so
- I do. Online download - it's a snap... this mac is great....
- Plug the iPhone back in... nuthin. Check connections... surf, search, surf, read.... ahA! I missed this the last time! I need to upgrade my OS to 10.4 !! Darn! Oh well... I can accept that.. I've had this Mac for over 2 years... so...
- It was too late the day I bought the iPhone to go back to the Apple store... and there was no chance that I could wait to try my iPhone... so... since I already got iTunes for my PC a while back as part of a Quicktime upgrade...
- I plugged my iPhone into the PC... and VOILA! Activation begins and ends within 5-10 minutes and my AT&T transfer of my phone number is done within 20 minutes... wow. That WAS easy.... so
- No music... and just a few photos (misc ones I had handy on my PC... but I can live with that... a couple of days later........
- Went to the Apple Store... bought OSX 10.4!
- Got home and installed OSX 10.4... not a simple proces, since I got what's known to Mac lovers as "Kernel Panic" - sort of the same thing as when you microwave your popcorn too long and you get that burning buttery-chemical smell - only without the smell - just the panicked kernels... anyway...
- Turns out to be my external hard drive and i surf, read, surf and never find anything... just figure it out myself.
- Got it! 10.4 runs! ... so,
- Plug in the iPhone! .... "sorry... this device requires OSX 10.4.10"...
- Wait! I have 10.4. uh...(click 'about this mac'... )... 10.4.6. great.
- Go to apple.com... download 10.4.10 - 170 Mb... ugh... 30 minutes later, it's still installing... ugh... finally! installed!
- plug in phone.... again... "Sorry... iTunes cannot start - you need to download the latest version...". UGH!!!
- Go to Apple.com... look for updates... download... install...
- plug in phone.... (yawn)... nuthin.... kick the Mac.... nuthin...
- Surf, read, surf... "try restarting the machine" says one help entry... so
- I do.
- plug in phone..... (yawn)... itunes comes up.... phone is recognized... wow... (yawn)...
- Remember I Synced the iphone with my PC earlier - and got all my contacts on my phone now... this is relevant to the next step...
- try to drag some music on the iPhone... no go... right, it's the sync thing... i pick an itunes directory to sync some music... "Are you sure you want to erase everything off this iPhone to begin syncing to this computer? You can only sync to one computer."... ARGH!!!
- gave up.

Like i said... my iPhone is incredible - but so far, it's living in sin with my PC.
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Don't wait for a feature - write it yourself...

Had to share this, for those of you who don't see the Google Docs & Spreadsheets blog... A spreadsheet filter application was developed using the Spreadsheets API by an intern (go Alex!) on the spreadsheets team. Really valuable when you often work with just a few rows in those large-ish spreadsheets which have many (many!) rows of data...

This app lets you create a bookmarkmarklet (that's a bookmark created by dragging a link to your bookmark bar on your browser) to any of your spreadsheets... it should be self-explanatory - but you basically just feed it the URL of your favorite published spreadsheet...

I got one

I never expected to want one, but once I saw the iPhone in action, that urge to own one just kept gnawing at me... I gave in... hey, I needed a new mobile provider anyway (nice try JR).

I was fully expecting to have the "why did I do that" regret after 24 hours - but given the experience so far - including the transfer of my mobile number to AT&T - there will be no regret. In fact, I may need two of them ;) The only thing that almost ruined the experience was that the iPhone actually would NOT activate using my home Mac... it requires OS/X 10.4 (I'm on 10.3) even though the newest iTunes version (7.3) installed/works find on my OS. So... without hesitation, I used my IBM Laptop with iTunes installed and, bang. Done.

If I had to pick my favorite experiences in the first 12 hours since activation, it would have to be first the reading of my GMail account via POP. The speed was great (full signal from home now - unlike my pathetic 2 bars from T-Mobile) and the zoom-in capability (I love that!) gave me easy access to my first PDF (the invoice from the Apple Store!).

The other obvious highlight is MAPS... the pics in this post show it as good as I could in a minute or two... i can create my own maps using My Maps - and then access it on the road... I created one for a tour of NYC a few months ago - and that's the one shown in these pics. wow.
More to come on this, I'm sure.

Darn... I forgot to mention the new Doclist we launched last week... I've been trying (really!) to avoid too many posts related to the Docs & Spreadsheets product... But this time, I'm surprised at my own self-control - 'cause I love this new doclist... Have you tried the search bar type-ahead yet... Muah!! Ron explained it well in our team blog, so I'll stop there...
I know we had a fairly low bar to meet, and we still need a bunch of features people want (including me), but it is a huge improvement...

Anyway - that was just catch-up...

the real reason for this post is to profess my way-too-early love for the yet-unproven, barely-seen iPhone! I finally got my hands on one today for about 4 minutes. Do you think I called my mom? No. I should have. But I forgot this thing even lets you make calls... I immediately went to docs.google.com to check out the doclist - and then, as fast as I could, opened a spreadsheet... and, Voila! There it was!



In it's full browser glory! (calm down, JR, you geek-loser). The proud owner of this particlar iPhone got it away from me long enough to show me how to zoom in (wow... just like Jeff Han's Demos on the big screen), and that's when I snapped this second picture... oh... what's that... a "trying to reach google.com" message... oh - right - Ajax communication in a collaborative edit session don't yet work on the iPhone browser... oh well... full disclosure is always best anyway - besides, viewing the spreadsheet worked beautifully! So just don't try to edit remotely yet... So now - what to do... buy v1.0 and risk the yet-unknown new product-itis symptoms - maybe a battery failure re-call or a cracking-screens problem? or wait to get the perfected v2.0 in a year... hmmm.... Nah... this is Apple... v1.0 is good enough!