first i tried a scenario where the internet in my iphone gets cut off without me knowing and i go ahead and edit the phone number of a contact. later that day i'm working on my pc and i get email from the same contact telling me the number she just gave earlier was wrong and she gives me the correct one. so i go on my icloud and update her number. note i did not know that my inernet was down a while ago. so when i turn on my iphone, there is now a conflict. which one should the icloud respect? the latest one right? so i verified it and APPLE PASSES WITH FLYING COLORS !!! but it's a database. it's easy to sync databases.
now let's see how they do with text file. i have a very important notepad on my iphone containing the list of materials i need to buy the next time i go to home depot. one morning, i updated the list by adding 2 lines, editing one of the lines, and removing another line. but without my knowledge, my internet connection was down so it had no way of syncing to the icloud. later that night, i'm in facebook looking at the bikini pictures of my male facebook friend and i realized i need to buy materials for my automatic gate opener project and instead of updating the list on my iphone, i just updated the list on my icloud because it's much easier to type on the laptop keyboard. i updated it by adding 3 lines. the next day, i'm in home depot so i access the list. now here is apple's conundrum - which update will it respect? if it's like the contacts database where it respects the latest one, then my updates yesterday morning will be gone. THAT'S BAD !!! if it respects yesterday morning, then my updates last night will be gone. THAT'S ALSO BAD !!! so the best it can do is merge the 2 versions which is impossible to do using artificial intelligence because unlike the database, the lines and words of a text file do not have date stamps and text files have no uniform structure. of course artificial intelligence can attempt to merge the 2 text files to a certain extent but it will look so ugly and will only confuse the user. so what is apples solution? IT CREATED A DUPLICATE FILE - so now there are 2 copies of the list in my icloud - the one with my updates yesterday morning. and another copy containing the updates last night. I CAN LIVE WITH THAT !!! i don't mind doing the merging myself as long as none of my updates are lost. CONGRATULATIONS APPLE !!! i will now celebrate by eating an orange.
now, what if the notepad i'm maintaining now has more than 50 lines? example - list of ideas for my next project. to make matters worse, 2 weeks have gone by since my last update that caused conflicting versions (between the version saved in my iphone when the internet connection went down and the icloud version that i updated) such that i've forgotten what were my updates on the 2 copies. do i have to painfully go through the 50 lines of each copy to figure out the differences? it may be impossible for artificial intelligence to perfectly merge 2 different text files, but it should be very easy for artificial intelligence to tell me the difference between 2 text files. it can even be smart enough to know that if i delete the first line of 2 similar files, it won't moronically declare all lines are different (which happens if you use the dumb algorithm of comparing line by line). if you are a unix user i'm talking about the lovable "diff" command that can intelligently tell you which lines have been added, deleted and different between 2 text files. so if there is a simple app that could diff 2 notepad files, i can just look at 4 lines instead of looking at 50 lines of both files (even then if i moved lines all over the place i could still easily miss some changes - which could be disastrous if what i missed could have been the most valuable idea for my next project). right now i could easily go to a pc and cut and paste both files to a text file and run the diff on a console or command prompt. but what if i'm on the field? this means - APPLE SHOULD HAVE PROVIDED AN APP OR A DIFF FEATURE IN NOTEPAD. i searched for this app but there is none so i will create one and sell it in itunes for $1.. this will make me $3 richer because only 3 people in the world will need it. hahahahaha !!!
now, what if the notepad i'm maintaining now has more than 50 lines? example - list of ideas for my next project. to make matters worse, 2 weeks have gone by since my last update that caused conflicting versions (between the version saved in my iphone when the internet connection went down and the icloud version that i updated) such that i've forgotten what were my updates on the 2 copies. do i have to painfully go through the 50 lines of each copy to figure out the differences? it may be impossible for artificial intelligence to perfectly merge 2 different text files, but it should be very easy for artificial intelligence to tell me the difference between 2 text files. it can even be smart enough to know that if i delete the first line of 2 similar files, it won't moronically declare all lines are different (which happens if you use the dumb algorithm of comparing line by line). if you are a unix user i'm talking about the lovable "diff" command that can intelligently tell you which lines have been added, deleted and different between 2 text files. so if there is a simple app that could diff 2 notepad files, i can just look at 4 lines instead of looking at 50 lines of both files (even then if i moved lines all over the place i could still easily miss some changes - which could be disastrous if what i missed could have been the most valuable idea for my next project). right now i could easily go to a pc and cut and paste both files to a text file and run the diff on a console or command prompt. but what if i'm on the field? this means - APPLE SHOULD HAVE PROVIDED AN APP OR A DIFF FEATURE IN NOTEPAD. i searched for this app but there is none so i will create one and sell it in itunes for $1.. this will make me $3 richer because only 3 people in the world will need it. hahahahaha !!!
(for more of my knowledge bombs, click the "ian's knowledge bombs" banner at the top of this article and choose any article in the table of contents that piques your interest)
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