At this point it is important take a detour and define what I mean by work before moving on. We often hear that device A is good for content consumption and device B is good for content creation. I don’t like that particular dichotomy. It’s flawed. It implies one or the other. I’m not interested in either. I’m interested in getting work done. I’m interested in productivity. That’s it. Both consumption and creation can be used for productivity. Creation is not synonymous with productivity. This distinction often gets lost whilst talking about these issues². I’m definitely not creating when I’m reading a textbook on a tablet, but I’m certainly being productive.

And this brings us back to the iPad, getting work done, and feeling claustrophobic.

The general consensus is that that a tablet is a great (greatest?) device for content consumption but not particularly great for content creation. This is where the distinction between creation and productivity comes to play. As I mentioned earlier, productivity requires both consumption and creation. The thing is you can do a lot of creation on the iPad. You can make charts. Edit pictures. Edit markup. Write documents. The problem arises when you try to be productive. When you try to get work done. You can’t. Because anything but the simplest of tasks requires a work flow. Most work is not one isolated task. It’s a set of interconnected tasks. It requires taking an output (“creation”) from one task and using it to start a different task. And the iPad is absolutely, unforgivably terrible at maintaining work flow. This is the point where folks declare, “a tablet isn’t for content creation”³, but what they really mean is you aren’t be as productive as you ought to be. Here’s the thing though: it’s not a tablet limitation. It’s an iPad limitation. Well, an iOS limitation. It’s the lack of a file system.

The iPad’s greatest failure is the lack of a file system⁴. Ever since its inception, numerous articles have been written about iOS’s approach to data storage compared to traditional paradigms. The topic was recently revived in the blogosphere when Ole Begemann quoted Jobs from 2005:

“Now, e-mail, there’s always been a better way to find stuff. You don’t keep your e-mail on your file system, right? The app manages it. And that was the breakthrough, as an example, in iTunes. You don’t keep your music in the file system, that would be crazy. You keep it in this app that knows about music and knows how to find things in lots of different ways. Same with photos: we’ve got an app that knows all about photos. And these apps manage their own file storage… And eventually, the file system management is just gonna be an app for pros and consumers aren’t gonna need to use it.”

The key thing is that this is pretty much how data storage is implemented in iOS: in a walled, per-app basis. Jobs liked his silos. But silos are disastrous for getting work done. Every piece of datum in its own app-shaped prison. Thus the claustrophobia. A lot of folks chimed in with their thoughts on the Jobs quote. There are couple that stand out to me. The first one is from Dave Winer:

“…there’s no reason the same browser shouldn’t be used for all types of data. It does not have to be a “wall.” All your stuff ends up inter-relating anyway. Do you use the emailer to send music files? Yes of course….”

The second one by Peter Kelley in a hacker news thread:

“With the current iOS model, content is organised by the app that created it, not by the project it’s related to. So if you’re doing work for multiple clients, or collaborating on different internal projects, all of your content is spread out between different apps, and there’s no easy way to gather it all together for the purposes of sharing, archiving, or backup…

…I agree that the way in which the filesystem is exposed to users on desktop OSs can be confusing, but I really think they need to find a way to allow people to organise their files better. Dropbox has essentially become the filesystem for iOS – it’s a way around the limitations, and a lot of apps use it.”

Even though I’m stating the problems in term of impediment to work flow and productivity, Dave Winer and Peter Kelly describe the same problem from different perspectives. And that’s the source of my claustrophobia: All my creations (data modified or made by an iPad app) are trapped in their walled apps unable to communicate with any other app. I can create just fine thank you very much. I just can’t get work done. There is no default way to share the same piece of datum between apps on the same device. If there is no easy way to share data, the work flow stops, and productivity stops. Creation doesn’t stop. Productivity stops. The beautiful presentation that wasn’t beautiful because I couldn’t access a video rendering made in another program. The PDF that I had copied to Documents To Go that needed to be annotated but wasn’t because I couldn’t open it in GoodReader. The list can go on. In its little isolated app, I can create (or modify) as Jobs designed. But I can’t have a work flow. Again, I can create. But I can’t be productive.

At this point, people will point out my fallacy. “My programs can communicate with each other. I can use Dropbox, GDrive, iCloud to get my work done just fine.” But that’s just the thing — when you have to go through a third party to just get two applications to talk to each other your system is broken. It just doesn’t work.

The reality is most apps do implement support for these syncing platforms. That doesn’t mean the iPad is magical and it just works. It means that software developers were able to find a fix for iOS’s broken storage system. But this is also the reason the iPad isn’t lauded as a great device for productivity (not creation). People have to go through a minimum of two third-parties (the ISP and the cloud storage provider) to access the identical piece of datum on two different apps in the same device. And that’s just too big a barrier for a fast work flow. Small files, usually text heavy files, are easy to sync via the cloud. At best each file is a few megabytes. But as soon as the files start getting large, it just slows down the work flow too much to get work done. You need to edit and include a large object (video, image, etc.) into a presentation? You’ll need a program to edit the file, and another to embed it. It will take too much time to go through the cloud and sync changes. Better switch to a computer and get stuff done.

That’s the whole problem. All my creations are locked away behind some app, unable to be opened or modified by another app. The easiest way to appease that claustrophobia is to switch to a computer. But that’s the thing. If the iPad didn’t have this particular storage paradigm, it would be much more useful for productivity that requires creation as part of the work flow⁵. I don’t believe it’s a tablet problem. I think it’s an iPad problem. Can it be fixed? I think so.

Obviously, the easiest way to fix this problem is to just expose the user to the traditional file system. But we know that Jobs (and presumably, post-Jobs Apple) was not a fan of the traditional file system. So we can assume this solution won’t be implemented. We also know the current paradigm is designed with the idea that an app should handle only the data it has context for: the Music app handles music, Photos handles images, and so on. Really, the best compromise at this stage would be to create a context based abstraction layer. Something like the following:

On the left is the current storage paradigm. On the right, a new one. Numbers signify different apps or data. Colors signify different usage contexts

Instead of a per-app based storage paradigm, there should be a per-context or per-data type storage pool. If two apps need access to the same data type, both of them should have permission to that particular storage pool. A different app that deals with a different data types will have access to a different storage pool. This is just one compromise that hides away most of the complexities of the file system but allows folks to be productive; an improvement over the current paradigm that hides away complexity at the cost of productivity.

Apple needs to fix this problem soon. Android tablets might be struggling but if Windows 8 catches on, consumers might realize that tablets can be used for “content-creation” driven productivity. All they needed was a bit more room to breathe.

——–

Proprietary cable

The good thing about Android devices is the use of the standardized micro-USB cable. I’ve never needed more than one cable. This has been particularly useful when I travel: I don’t need to bring an extra type of cable to charge my Nook Simple Touch. With the inclusion of an Apple device, the cable count goes up. A minor, but needless annoyance.

Mail’s threaded inbox

I use Gmail as my primary email account. I think the conversation view is the best update to emailing in the past decade. The Mail client that ships with the iPad has a conversation view. But I noticed that emails that are not in the same folder aren’t added to the conversation view. For example, my replies (that are cached/ synced in the ‘Sent’ folder) don’t appear in a conversation that sits in my Inbox. Bit of a downer, but it’s something that can easily be fixed. The PC/Mac application ‘Postbox’ also has a similar conversation view, and it includes emails in different folders in a thread. It’s nice when things work as expected. iPad’s Mail should fix that soon. I should point out that the iPad Mail client’s conversation view works with any email account. Android’s non-Gmail mail client does not (the last time I checked).

Keyboard

I think the keyboard that ships with the iPad could use some serious work. I think this is where Android does something much better. First of all, the default Android keyboard (from ICS) has a better error correction mechanism than the iPad’s mechanism. Instead of one choice that is automatically accepted if you hit space, you can choose the prediction, or two other choices. It’s very aggravating to spell names then look up to realize something completely different being displayed. It’s easy to fix in Android, not so much on iOS.

Another thing I like about Android, which won’t happen in iOS is the ability to use any other keyboard. I’ve been using SwiftKey for a while now, and it’s fantastic. I don’t want to talk about why it’s so great, but one thing that I miss is that it has this feature where if I swipe across the keyboard, I can delete the previous word. I often find myself swiping the iPad keyboard before realizing that doesn’t do anything.

The other peculiarity I noticed was that the keys are always in caps. SwiftKey changes from small to caps when I hit shift key. It’s an easy visual cue as opposed to a small indicator on the shift button on the iPad keyboard.

Figure 1: The iPad keyboard alongside the SwiftKey keyboard. Notice that by default, SwiftKey’s keys are not in caps. Also note the spelling correction mechanism, similar to one found in default Android ICS.

I do like the ability to split the keyboard in landscape view. It’s great for typing whilst holding the device and walking, or propped up in bed.

You can’t put Newsstand in a folder

I just didn’t like all the apps splayed across the desktop (home screen), so I put them all in a folder. I can put everything inside a folder, expect for Newsstand. I found that to be curious. At first I thought it was because the Newsstand magazines are downloaded from the App Store, so it’s just a specialized folder for magazine type apps. But the Newsstand magazine apps can’t be removed from Newsstand either. So the entire thing is a bit of anomaly.

Twenty to a folder

As I was dumping all my applications in one folder, I hit a limit at 20 apps. I guess it’s limited by the amount of screen space. Would have been nice to not have a limit or an option to disable such limit (Yes, to the curious among you, I was trying to recreate the Android App Drawer). I can see that Apple set it up just so that folks don’t have to scroll at all. Oh well.

Apps get added to second screen

This one actually annoyed me as I downloaded new apps. Although my first screen is almost completely devoid of apps, all new apps are added to the second screen. Why? They should just go to the first open space in the first screen.

No sorting by ratings

I think the App Store as well as Google Play (and amazon.com) could learn a lesson from the fantastic Newegg.com store. You can sort by anything and everything based on specifications. But more to the point, you should be able to sort reviews by ratings, versions, length of ownership, etc. I did like that you can choose to view ratings for the current version and all versions. It’s a step in the right direction.

Back, done, setup, and other navigation cues on top

I’m very fond of the four buttons on an Android device (three persistent buttons on ICS). That’s three extra buttons than an iOS device. I absolutely love the ‘back’ and ‘search’ button. I love the ‘back’ button because it’s always there, and mostly every app uses it properly: you press it and expect to go to the previous screen. Apple alleviated the need for a back button by enforcing good habits in programmers I suppose. In iOS apps, the back button is always found on the top left of an application. I think it works well for a phone, but it’s probably a lot more convenient to have that ‘back’ button on the bottom panel in a large tablet. Regardless of how I held the device, I had to move my hands to the top of the device (and sometimes across the screen) to hit that button. Either by chance or good planning, Android tablets have the ‘back’ button on the bottom, which makes it much more accessible.

I miss the search button as well. I usually just treated the search button as a launcher like Launchy for Windows, or the search field in Windows Start Menu. Everything gets indexed (documents and music as well) so it’s one access button to almost everything. iOS and Android ICS don’t have that search button, which is a bit of a bummer. iOS does have a very good search feature on the left of the home screen, but because of having only one button, accessing it is a two-step affair at a minimum.

The third Android button not found in iOS is the ‘menu’ button. It might have been a good idea when Android started—I liked it initially as well—but really no one knows how to use it so it leads to a very confounding user experience from one app to another. I’m okay with it being removed in Android ICS. iOS apps usually have a settings button on the top bar in an application; just like the back button, it would be nicer for this to be in a panel along the bottom.

You can’t change defaults

I downloaded the browser ‘Dolphin HD’. I wanted it to be default handler for links. There is no system setting to make that happen. It’s another nice feature in Android that I don’t expect Apple to be bring to their platform.

Device name

You can name your iOS device. It shows up on the network. It’s a nice change from the random strings of numbers that an Android devices identify with. As far as I know, I couldn’t even change the device name with Cyanogenmod ROM on my Android phones.

Figure 2: Naming devices! As any self-respecting geek, I name my devices properly. The Android device shows up as <unknown>. The printer shows up as BR…

Multitouch gestures

If there’s one thing that PC users are missing out on, it’s gestures on Mac OS X. From two finger scrolling to four finger mission control, it’s just fantastic. The iPad has the four-fingered gestures for app switching, and it’s great. iPhones and Android phones should figure out how to implement it. The Dolphin HD browser has some gestures, and it works well on Android phones, but aren’t particularly convenient on the iPad (Probably because the gesture button is not towards the bottom, unlike the placement in Android phones). I think gestures in general would be a great boost to any platform, let alone four, or five-fingered gestures.

Battery life

It’s great. For the first few days I didn’t have too much time to play with the device (work!) but after four—four—days the battery life was at 30%. Yes it was basically standby, but good luck getting a Windows PC last on instant-on standby for four days with still plenty of battery to spare. Just great.

That’s it as far as first impressions are concerned. There’s obviously more to talk about, the fancy display, the apps, the syncing… I plan to talk about all those things in greater detail one I’m more familiar with the device and place it somewhere in my workflow.

The web works on advertising. Most websites have some sort of advertisement. Closely associated with advertising is the concept of tracking cookies. These are small text files that an ad company leaves on users’ computers to collect information about them: the sites visited, the articles clicked on, etc¹. These tracking cookies allow advertisers to build a personalized profile of any user based on their browsing behavior to tailor ads according to their apparent preferences.

It’s not just advertising companies that like to track users’ movement across the web. Data collection companies use cookies to track movement across the web for analytics. Data collection by analytics companies can be used for two purposes. The first purpose is to provide website developers with more information about their audience: how a visitor landed on the page, what keyword search landed them there, was it through Facebook, etc. An example would be the service provided by Google Analytics, something I have deployed myself. The second purpose is to track the user himself: just like an ad company, tracking user movement across the web can be valuable data. An example would be the tracking done by Facebook on any site where a “Like!” button can be seen.

In and of itself, this behavior seems like a fairly reasonable compromise. A person visits a set of sites, and an ad company or data company collects some information that helps both advertisers and the end-user: the user might see ads relevant to their interests, and the ad company might attract a better click-through rate. However, one can quickly see how this behavior can be exploited by any company. If the collection company (ad or analytics) chooses to keep the data for long-term usage, it can become a privacy and security risk for the user. And that is exactly what has happened.

Companies — like Facebook and Google — have pushed the pendulum a bit too far towards their side by trying to collect every possible iota of user information on the web. They already have a lot of user data: emails, private messages, favorite bands, TV shows, etc. In one sense or another we as users have given them explicit permission to take and use this data. However, the practice of collecting data through a user’s browsing behavior seems a bit more sinister: most users are unaware of the practice, no one really knows how long the information is kept, or who this information is sold off too — of course it’s being sold, that’s why information is collected, to be sold to the highest bidder. I’ve only pointed out Facebook and Google, but there a plenty of other, less well-known companies that are in the same business.

The good news is that as users we can take some simple steps to minimize this tracking. The (more) bad news is that we have to be proactive about it. There are plenty of browser add-ons that claim to reduce tracking and increase privacy and security. Using a Firefox add-on called Collusion (by Atul Varma) we can actually visualize this tracking behavior, and see if these add-ons provide any tangible benefit.

Visualizing Tracking

In order to do these tests, I visited particular articles on 18 fairly common sites² using Firefox 10.0. I set up separate profiles for each configuration, and repeated each run 3 times. The Collusion add-on uses information on known trackers from privacychoice.org to construct a connectivity map showing sites that collect and store your information. Known trackers are shown with red dots, other connected sites are shown in grey; it’s unknown whether they collect and store information. I visited the websites using several different settings and add-ons in Firefox to see how the tracking behavior is modified.

My first run was using the default installation of Firefox 10.0. The results can be seen in Figure 1 below. There were an astonishing 66 trackers collecting information from the 18 visited sites. The largest tracker (largest red dot) was ‘Scorecard Research’ with 28 connections, followed by ‘doubleclick.net’ (Google) with 25 connections, and ‘Nielsen Netratings’ with 21 connections. I was expecting a large number, but 66 confirmed trackers are still a bit too much from just 18 sites.

Figure 1: Connectivity map of the default Firefox 10.0 installation.

As most of the trackers were associated with advertisement firms, I decided to use the popular add-on Adblock Plus (by Wladimir Palant) for my next run. As Adblock Plus prevents the actual third-party site code from loading, I assumed that it would suppress tracking cookies. And that’s exactly what happened. Loading the same 18 sites/ articles produced a very different connectivity map this time. Only 9 trackers were detected (Figure 2, below). The largest tracker was again ‘Scorecard Research’, followed by ‘Nielsen’ and then ‘Quantcast’. The number of connected sites for each was 14, 9 and 7, respectively. So just using Adblock Plus drops tracking by seven fold. Quite impressive results from just one add-on.

Figure 2: Connectivity map of Firefox with the Adblock Plus add-on.

After installing Adblock Plus, I installed a spate of add-ons that don’t target non-advertising networks in particular, but are still useful for privacy and security. They were HTTPS-Everywhere, Beef Taco, and Better Privacy. HTTPS-Everywhere (by the EFF) forces a secure connection on sites that provide that option. Better privacy deletes ‘supercookies’ on exiting the browser. Supercookies can be a number of different things, but Better Privacy deletes Flash based objects (called LSO). One caveat though, by default it deletes all stored Flash objects, so if you play Flash games, you’ll have to manually whitelist that site. The last add-on, Beef Taco (by John Hobbs), sets permanent opt-out cookies for ad networks. Because it doesn’t target other types of tracking cookies, I didn’t run Collusion to visualize how it changes the connectivity map. In hindsight, it would have been a good idea.

The next anti-tracking add-on I installed was Disconnect. It’s a fairly new add-on compared to the rest and I had heard good things about it, but it was a bit disappointing. As it can be seen below (Figure 3), the number of confirmed trackers increased to 12. The top three trackers were the same as Adblock Plus, but their connected sites were now read 12, 8, and 6. It seems that Disconnect only focuses on social networks in particular, and perhaps that’s why it isn’t particularly effective. Maybe Disconnect interfered with the above mentioned add-ons and caused an increase in trackers from 9 to 12.

Figure 3: Connectivity map of Firefox with the Adblock Plus, HTTPS-Everywhere, Beef Taco, Better Privacy, and Disconnect add-ons.

For my next run, I used an older add-on called Ghostery (by David Cancel) instead of Disconnect (the other add-ons were still in place). Ghostery has a very large blacklist of third-party cookies that isn’t enabled by default. I enabled the entire blacklist, some 850 sites or so before visiting the same 18 sites. The results were fantastic. Only 1 confirmed tracker remained. It was outbrain.com, connected to cnn.com. So a 66 fold decrease from the default Firefox installation!

Figure 4: Connectivity map of Firefox with the Adblock Plus, HTTPS-Everywhere, Beef Taco, Better Privacy, and Ghostery add-ons.

After the Ghostery run, I did another run with all the aformentioned add-ons enabled simultaneously (the “kitchen sink” if you will). The results were similar to that of of the Ghostery configuration: only 1 tracker remained. My last run was with a very old piece of software, something I’ve been using since the dinosaur days called SpywareBlaster. It’s a blocklist that stops many browsers from loading known malware. It didn’t affect the connectivity graph either, but in this case that just might be because the 18 sites I visited were well maintained, safe sites. It’s blocklist is probably very useful when visiting the dark corners of the internet (I’m sure everyone ends up at a strange unheard link every now and then).

Here’s a sumary of the results:

Conclusions and Recommendations

For most of my recommendations to actually work, you’ll have to be using Firefox. I’ll come back to other browsers in a bit.

Based on my results, at a minimum, I’d recommend installing the following add-ons for blocking tracking cookies: Adblock Plus & Ghostery. Installing Adblock Plus comes with a warning though. After installing it, the amount of ads you’ll encounter will drop pretty close to zero. In alot of cases this improves the browsing session greatly, but it directly affects the money the site owners make. As such I’d recommend whitelisting sites that you visit frequently. It can be done by clicking on the adblock plus icon in the menu as selecting ‘Disable on sitename…’:

Figure 5: How to whitelist frequently visited sites in Adblock Plus.

By default Ghostery just shows the trackers, it doesn’t actually disable them. This can be changed by going to the ‘Firefox’ button > Add-ons > Ghostery > ‘Options’ button. In the general tab, click the ‘3pes’ tab and check all the categories to disable all third-party cookie communcaiton with their respectve servers. In practice, I keep ‘Google Analytics’ and ‘Disqus’ enabled as I use those services often. Most folks would probably want to enable (keep unchecked) Facebook and Twitter plugins as well. These social plugins are found in the ‘Widgets’ category under the ‘3pes’ tab. More astute folks will notice a ‘Cookies’s tab next to the ‘3pes’ tab. This has similar functionality to the earlier mentioned Beef Taco add-on. I haven’t experimented with it, but I expect it to serve the same purpose. You can choose to disable all the cookies, or install Beef Taco to accomplish the same goal. While in the Options menu, you might as well hit the ‘Advanced’ tab and change the ‘Show Alert Bubble’ to less than 5 seconds from the default 15 seconds. I find the default setting a bit too long for my tastes:

Figure 6: Ghostery Advanced Options.

Adblock Plus and Ghostery do a very good job of blocking tracking cookies by themselves. Browsing will be much safer just with these two add-ons installed. The other add-ons I used in this post’s runs provide other benefits that are useful, but not necessary for blocking tracking cookies. I’d still recommend installing them, but for other reasons.

Lastly a note on browsers. I’m partial to Firefox myself, and I think it holds up well against most other browsers. The only other browser worth using (at least in Windows/ Linux) is Google Chrome. In my opinion it has two great features that Firefox doesn’t: sandboxing and individual process per tab. On the other hand, it gives the user much less control, and it’s a bit of a laggard in add-ons for privacy and security. It does have Adblock Plus³ and Ghostery add-ons, which is great. But I’d still say use Firefox. Either way, install some of these add-ons, and start browsing safely!

——–

A few weeks ago two very contentious pieces of legislation, called SOPA and PIPA, failed to pass Congress (one bill was in the House, the other in Senate). The bill was paid for by industry lobbyists and had no regard for how it would disrupt the internet. A lot has been written on the topic, probably the most accessible summary is by Elliot Noss on tucows. Long story short, after months of grassroots protests in the technology blogosphere, finally the big internet companies (Google, Wikipedia, Reddit to name three)² stepped in, and enough awareness and backlash was created that the bills were tabled.

I want to focus on the aftermath of the whole thing. The first link is an editorial by Cary Sherman, the CEO of RIAA, in the New York Times. It’s just amazing how well written that editorial was. If I had not been playing close attention to whole thing for months, I’d have been easily hoodwinked. I’m sure the average NYT reader who read that must have said, “yea, he sounds very reasonable”³. The reality is that the statistics are distorted just the right amount to bend the truth but not be an outright lie. I’d provide a rebuttal, but Nate Anderson has a fantastic deconstruction on Ars Technica. I’m already recommending these articles by posting links to them, but just to be emphatic, please read the Ars Technica response, it covers a lot of ground (and truth).

The only additional thing I’d like to highlight from Sherman’s editorial is the following:

Wikipedia, Google and others manufactured controversy by unfairly equating SOPA with censorship.

The Ars Technica response does critique this as well, but there’s more to this story. In the eyes of the RIAA, MPAA, or the publishing industry, there are only two stakeholders in the game: them (“old media”) and technology companies (“new media”). The old media companies think if they can design laws to prevent new media’s growth, they can continue with their old, outdated models. They consistently forget the new stakeholders in the game. Us. In his editorial, Sherman consistently rails upon these technology giants for influencing us; it hasn’t occurred to him that because of the open internet, we have become a stakeholder in this business. Even after SOPA/PIPA, he failed to see the reality:

The conventional wisdom is that the defeat of these bills shows the power of the digital commons. Sure, anybody could click on a link or tweet in outrage — but how many knew what they were supporting or opposing?

He’s saying “conventional wisdom” as if its not really the truth. Again, he keeps assuming that we are passive. There to be influenced. It’s his companies versus their companies. The audience doesn’t fit into the worldview. It used to be like that before the digital age. A passive model. They would produce things, we’d consume them. Cable bundles we’re not interested in? Doesn’t matter, its an all or none package. DVD advertisements? Doesn’t matter, we can only consume. A CD with 1 hit and 9 fillers? Doesn’t matter, we can only buy the CD. In the internet age, all these models became obsolete. It wasn’t Google, or Apple, or whoever influencing us. We influenced them. We did things differently because we had the option to do it for the first time ever. And then the technology companies came in and filled the void. We wanted only one song, Apple made sure we could buy just that song. We wanted to see ‘just the good parts’ of SNL, Youtube was more than happy to accommodate us.

The new reality is that there are no gatekeepers to success. Producing content and consuming content aren’t two separate processes anymore. Before the advent of the digital age, they were nice, separate processes. If a person (us) wanted to make something, they would have to find these gatekeepers: a record label, a movie studio, a publishing house. Now, not only can we comment and criticize something, we can edit it and distribute it ourselves⁴. If we don’t like it, we can make it. These companies don’t realize that. They keep thinking we’re an audience to be won over. Create enough hurdles, and we’ll turn away from new media and back into their system. But the system changed. They still haven’t got the memo.

 


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Footnotes:


1. ‘consume’ is a term that gets thrown around a lot in tech circles; for the uninitiated it’s basically things that are done passively, that is there is no feedback, e.g. reading a book, watching a movie, listening to a song. I’m sure folks will quibble about the details, but that’s a good enough working definition. back up ↵
2. Unlike Wikipedia, Google and Reddit are not non-profits, so they had a bit less noble reasons for the bill to not pass. back up ↵
3. I don’t mean to disparage the “average NYT reader”. From personal experience, by the time technology news makes it into the New York Times it’s already old news in technology circles. That’s the beauty of the internet. Accommodates niches like never before. back up ↵
4. Copyright, remixing, CC licenses are obviously another huge topic by themselves. For another day… back up ↵

The truth is that the current Pakistan team is not capable of getting that number one ranking. It’s a good team. It has always had a bounty of talent. Under Misbah-Ul-Haq, it has also become disciplined. There is no infighting. This isn’t a handful of talented individuals playing cricket. It’s a team playing cricket. This was most evident on the field during the past series. Early during England’s second innings in the third match three catches were dropped. There were two things to notice when these drops occurred. Firstly, the guys who dropped the catches weren’t annoyed; they were in anguish. Adnan Akmal, who’s kept remarkably un-Akmal-ish this series, dropped a thick edge off Strauss. What followed was new: he shook his head in disappointment, too ashamed to look up. That wasn’t fury. That was disappointment in letting the team down. The second thing to notice was that after these catches were dropped, the team didn’t lose the plot. In previous years (Australia 2009 comes to mind), the cricket would get sloppier, the fields would get defensive, the players lax. On the fourth day, Misbah continued with the attacking field, and the bowlers maintained their impeccable focus. Umar Gul was precise, ball after ball, over after over. And Abdur Rehman? 36 overs on the trot, and nary a bad ball. He was spectacular. This camaraderie, this work ethic, it’s unprecedented in Pakistan cricket. If it can be maintained, the team can move further up the rankings. But all these matches are being played in Asian conditions (1). What about the England, South Africa, and Australia?

A lot of the commentators have focused on how Pakistan’s spin attack has been effective because of the turning pitches. Or that the English players couldn’t cope. Or the spinners won’t do great in foreign conditions. That the bowling would be rendered ineffective in England or Australia. The reality is that, hands down, the Pakistani bowling attack is the most comprehensive in the entire world.

In UAE, the spinners were spectacular. The first match was won far before the pitch started turning. The spinners were sublime with their variations. If Ajmal was weaving a web on one end, Rehman was tightening the noose on the other. It is easily the best spin attack in the world right now. Obviously the spinners overshadowed the pace men in this series. Will they get assistance from the pitches late in the match in Australia or England? No, but that’s where the fast bowlers come in.

We already saw the skill and precision with which Umar Gul bowled. During the first match he was warming up as I’d like think, but by the third Test he was firing with unerring accuracy. His line and length were immaculate (2). He was unlucky to get the five-for in the first and last match. It’s a pity that the other two bowlers, Junaid Khan and Aziz Cheema, didn’t get a chance to perform; particularly Cheema in the first match, who bowled well even if he had little to show for it.

These two will probably get a chance to perform overseas. The conditions in both England and Australia will assist them. Besides the preceding three players, Pakistan also has Wahab Riaz and Mohammad Talha. Admittedly, Riaz is a bit erratic, but it never hurts to have a 140-plus kph bowler in English and Australian conditions. The bottom line is that the Pakistani bowlers will thrive in any condition. In turning pitches, the spinners will do great. In seaming and bouncy pitches, the fast bowlers will take over (3). So the current Pakistan team has the team discipline and the bowling attack to thrive. That just leaves us with the batting.

Simply put, the Pakistani batting lineup won’t be winning matches in foreign conditions. In the first match Pakistan posted a winning total because everyone contributed. There were no big scores, but every batsman performed. Unfortunately, Pakistan didn’t win the last two matches because the batting was great; they won because England’s was wretched (4). Pakistan’s batting holds up well enough in Asian conditions, but it won’t hold up in seaming conditions (5). Of the younger players, only Mohammad Hafeez and Azhar Ali seem to have the potential to thrive. Taufeeq Umar, Asad Shafiq and Adnan Akmal definitely need some more work. Perhaps it’s time that the PCB finds a replacement for Taufeeq Umar. He looks like a duck with one leg wading in water. The moment the ball seams or swings, it’s a matter of when he’ll get out. On the other hand, I don’t know where to stand on Shafiq. He’s clearly no Umar Akmal when it comes to batting with flair, but he seems to have a better head for Test batting. As he showed in the second Test match, he is more than capable of occupying the crease, something that the younger Pakistani batsmen need to learn. The PC should consider dropping Taufeeq and replacing him with Kamran Akmal as an opening batsman. He’s a fairly aggressive player and should be able to handle the opening position (6). He’s got less talent than Umar Akmal when it comes to batting, but he plays a slightly less rash game. It just might be the right combination alongside Hafeez for a great opening combination.

The last remaining weakness that needs to be addressed is the wicketkeeper, or as the position should be called these days, wicketkeeper-batsman. Adnan Akmal is the best wicketkeeper from the Akmal clan. Conversely, his batting is the worst of the bunch. At the moment we don’t seem to have a better option. I’d like for him to stick around. Play with a straight bat, and no need to chase the wide balls (7). Maybe he can be a permanent fixture. There is also Mohammad Salman, but he hasn’t been given a chance to play yet. It seems like the Akmal brothers have a monopoly on the wicketkeeping position. Maybe the PCB should disclose that agreement soon.

The last problem for Pakistan’s ascent to the top is probably the trickiest one of all. It’s the lack of upcoming tours in the next couple of years. They play two series this year, then another next year. By then Misbah and Younis, the backbone of the batting order, will be quite old. And sooner or later time catches up with everybody. Misbah has been fantastic for Pakistan. I could talk about his effect on the team, but Gary Naylor from the 99.94 blog did a much better job:

…a captain who, like Mike Brearley before him, appears to sail through a match hardly noticed, yet is everywhere for his team, geeing up and calming down, advising here, cajoling there. This is a team in Misbah-ul-Haq’s image – good, but not great; talented, but not mercurial; and, most of all, committed to the execution of winning cricket. He has been the world’s most important cricketer since assuming his nation’s captaincy and has hardly put a foot wrong on or off the field – and no praise is too high for the man.

It’s hard to replace someone who has done this much for Pakistan is such a short time. But this team, “good, but not great”, can get to the top. We just have to start planning now.

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Footnotes:


(1) UAE is not sub-continental, and UAE is not home, regardless of what the commentary teams and press would like us to believe. back up ↵
(2) Or as Boycott kept saying, “the corridor of uncertainty”. back up ↵
(3) This timely analysis by S. Rajesh on Cricinfo is an absolutely must read. Really drives home the point about Pakistani bowlers being the best everywhere. back up ↵
(4) And Pakistan’s bowling was spectacular. back up ↵
(5) I’m convinced that the Pakistan team will cope better in bouncy conditions compared to the seaming conditions, when they seem to be utterly baffled by which ball to chase and which ball to leave. back up ↵
(6) Statistically, he averages 35.8 from 9 innings as opener compared to his overall average of 30.8. back up ↵
(7) I guess that’s good advice for literally any batsman. back up ↵
(8) Oh, the song that inspired the heading: Matt Kearny, “Where We Gonna Go From Here”.