But one thing that caught my eye was the possibility of Apple adding 3G networking to their portables.¹ Don’t get me wrong; I love this idea. I really love this idea. Ubiquitous Internet connection? Where do I sign?

Unfortunately, this plan has holes in it, but that’s not Apple’s fault. As they’ve done in the past, AT&T and other carriers will undoubtedly want users to pay for their phone connection and the connection their laptops will use. Two devices, two data plans, and those data plans aren’t cheap.

I know I’m being idealistic, but I’m waiting for the day when wireless companies aren’t allowed to run roughshod over customers by charging them unreasonably high prices for services that are sub-par (especially on the international stage). Per-minute billing is an outmoded idea, and text messaging rates are utterly ridiculous. But until customers finally stand up and say they are unwilling to accept the pricing strategies of the major telcos, things aren’t going to change.

Charging a customer per device by insisting that each device requires its own data plan is tantamount to saying that every computer in your house requires a separate Internet connection at a rate of $30 per month. I’m quite certain people wouldn’t stand for that, so why is it that we collectively allow wireless companies to set painfully high prices for similar services?

Sure, 3G connections aren’t designed for use as full-blown Internet connections capable of downloading video and audio to a laptop. At most, I’m sure AT&T would like you to use your iPhone’s data plan to download no more than five gigabytes per month. In fact, the terms of the contract state that your unlimited access is limited to five gigs. Handheld devices aren’t meant to suck down as much data as a full-size computer, so it’s reasonable for AT&T to expect you to use your data plan for moderate downloading.

With this in mind, I’d be willing to shell out an extra $10 per month to use a laptop with my current data plan. Networks have to be maintained, infrastructure has to be expanded, and these things cost money. Luckily, word through the grapevine suggests that AT&T is already amenable to the $10 price point for tethering.

While I’d love to pick up one of these rumored 3G-enabled MacBooks, the pricing strategy behind the data plan will determine whether it’s a feature I even bother to enable. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want AT&T to let me use my existing data plan for other devices with a very nominal fee tacked on. Not only would I appreciate it, but I’m sure their other customers would see it as a forward-thinking move and a step toward engendering some good will toward their brand. And these days, a company like AT&T could use all the brand-bolstering it can get its hands on.

Wait, what? Oh, right. Distractions. Computers provide us with lots of them.

So it’s a welcome change to use a device that lets me completely focus on one activity. I hadn’t realized just how distraction-free the iPhone was until Birdhouse came out.

After crafting a few tweets, I noticed I was giving the act of writing my full attention (even though I was only writing small bits of content). Nothing else was tugging at my attention from another window or a dock or a menu bar. The experience felt very similar to actual writing, and it’s as close as I’ve ever come to achieving that feeling using anything outside of pen and paper.

Taking a broader view, all of the iPhone’s apps let you do this (save for those that show distracting ads). When I use Tweetie, I’m viewing my friends’ tweets, or I’m looking at the trends list. When I have Evernote open, I’m creating a new note or viewing an existing one. It’s usually one app, one action, and one content type at a time.

I think this is related to the positive experiences users have had with the iPhone. It’s definitely why the iPhone is my platform of choice for vegging out on the couch. There’s something comfortable and relaxing about being able to settle into a single app at a time, almost like sitting down with a magazine.

Aside from making users comfortable, distraction-free computing correlates to faster completion of tasks, which gives users a feeling of accomplishment. “Look at how fast I found this restaurant.” “I just checked the feed stats for every site I operate in a matter of seconds.” And when you boost the user’s confidence in this way, he or she will quickly move from novice to expert without any coaxing. Once you’ve got a happy, confident, expert user, you’ve guaranteed yourself a customer for life.

This is why Apple is selling so many phones.

Distraction-free computing sort of came to the iPhone by accident because of the limitations of the phone’s hardware. It only has enough oomph to serve one app at a time, but instead of being a hindrance, it makes the platform more compelling (at least to me). It’s an example of less-is-more, and other small electronics manufacturers should be paying attention.

Hopefully, as the iPhone hardware evolves, Apple will be careful about what changes are made to the interface and the way users are allowed to interact with applications.

And should the iPhone OS spread to other portable tablet-sized or netbook-sized machines, I hope Apple continues to keep things simple.

Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC) today announced it would alter plans to test Consumption Based Billing, shelving the trials while the customer education process continues.

“Customer education process.” Let that euphemism sink in for a second.

Throughout the PR nightmare, TW claimed that the costs of maintaining Internet service-related infrastructure was getting to be too much for them to handle. A believable point, until a report was released by Ars Technica showing that Time Warner is spending $40 million a year on their Internet business and $3 billion a year on television service.

Let’s get down to brass tacks, here: Time Warner has its priorities skewed. They’re trying to cut Internet consumption to push people back to the idiot box, which is their cash cow thanks to advertising. The Internet, as TW perceives it, provides no direct revenue stream; TV, on the other hand, brings in lots of cash via purchased airtime.

Couple that misnomer with the advent of sites like YouTube, Hulu, NetFlix, and a host of other streaming video services, and you’ve got a panicked board of directors who are too freaked out about the money they’re losing ($16 billion last quarter) to be anything other than short-sighted.

It’s the recording industry all over again. Here we have a bunch of people who have little or no understanding of the technologies they’re trying to regulate holding the reigns of future innovation. Instead of educating themselves, revamping the system in favor of something newer and better, and working to establish a new business model, Time Warner is digging a trench and settling in for the long fight.

And their first volley over the top killed DOCSIS 3.0, a planned super-high-speed broadband service that would have allowed home Internet connections to reach speeds of up to 50 Mbps.

Alex Dudley, VP of public relations for Time Warner, said via Twitter that DOCSIS 3.0 was tied to the consumption-based billing service. To be 100% clear: there is no reason that a technology upgrade would be hopelessly coupled to a new method of billing. Not ever.

The timing of the decision to kill DOCSIS 3.0 and the tone of TW’s representatives make it obvious that what we’re seeing is corporate retaliation. TW doesn’t get to charge customers outrageous rates? Customers don’t get faster broadband. It’s a temper tantrum fit for a two-year-old.

I mentioned earlier that TW has a fair bit of control over innovation because of its position as a service provider. What troubles me about this metered bandwidth situation is that without broadband in the home that can be used in an unencumbered way, some exciting ideas–some of which are already starting to become available–might fail. Services like DropBox, which allow you to store large quantities of data on the web and sync it across multiple computers, might become useless because of the strain they would inadvertently put on a user’s wallet via his or her broadband bill.

Still more troublesome is the idea that, should tiered service be rolled out, another media conglomerate will have stifled a newer, better technology in favor of the tried-and-tested money maker. Content delivery via the Internet will slow considerably, and before you know it, many people will be parked back in front of the television instead of watching the latest spark of creativity on Vimeo or the newest media mashup on YouTube.

And the boredom of sitcoms-interspersed-with-commercials will be delivered over the same infrastructure that was, according to Time Warner, strained beyond belief when we were using it for watching more interesting (and non-revenue-generating) content. Time Warner won’t have to innovate, and their greed will be sated by a mass of unhappy users.

Unhappy users who will likely switch to AT&T UVerse or Verizon FIOS once their contracts with Time Warner are up.

When it comes to desktop Twitter clients, I’ve been pretty outspoken in my disdain for apps like TweetDeck. Twitter is meant to be an uncomplicated tool. You type a short missive (or maybe you incubate it for a bit), you send it, you’re done. You read the updates other people have posted. Easy.

From the screencast preview, it looks like Tweetie captures these core ideas while layering on additional features in an unobtrusive way.

Complication

Twitter users—people who honestly use Twitter—don’t have a need for the multiple panes of updates, replies, direct messages, and groups that TweetDeck provides.¹ It’s overkill and ruins what should be an otherwise breezy and light experience. While I realize that choosing (or not choosing) to opt into information overload is a personal decision, applications that wrap around and subsequently over-complicate something as simple as Twitter undermine the original intent of the software.²

Further Complication: Adobe Air

To make matters worse, TweetDeck is built using Adobe Air. Air is to application development as Flash is to building a real Web site. Sure, the end result functions as you might imagine, but you can’t shake the feeling that something isn’t right. TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop and Twhirl don’t feel like real applications because Adobe Air does little to encourage adherence to human interface guidelines (unlike Apple’s Xcode environment). Air applications end up feeling tacky and cheap, like a knock-off of real software, just like Flash-based Web sites end up feeling like a technological cop out.

And since Air-based apps are essentially Flash in a different box, they can’t take advantage of OS-specific goodies. For example, if the developers of Twhirl wanted to let you minimize the app to the menu bar in OS X, they wouldn’t be able to.

Then there’s the problem of making Air and its applications work. The screenshots below are the result of my first attempt to install Air and TweetDeck earlier today. The fact that Adobe requires a non-standard and OS-independent installation process for Air-based applications is ludicrous and high-handed, as it further separates Air apps from the standard operating system experience that users are accustomed to.

Error #1: Something went wrong. Helpful!

If Adobe wants this much control over how people interact with software, maybe the company should concentrate on building an operating system instead of forcing users to install, use, and remove software in a way that they are unfamiliar with.³

Simplifying, but Not

Twitterrific, while feeling a bit outdated these days, is still my go-to desktop Twitter client because I can tuck it away in the menu bar and not worry about it. The developers adhered to a few standard user interface guidelines, and the resulting application feels like it belongs on my computer right along with iTunes, Safari, Textmate, and everything else I use. No separate installation process, no third-wheel background applications, no non-standard user interface controls; Twitterific is simple software for a simple service, and to me, that’s pretty fantastic.

Tweetie looks set to be what Twitterific should have evolved into. That is, the app provides more features while retaining a streamlined interface. Many of TweetDeck’s hallmarks are present in Tweetie, but rather than turn on the information fire hose, Tweetie’s UI remains uncluttered and focused on one specific type of content at any given time thanks to a clever filtering mechanism.⁴ Tweetie’s developers understand the importance of context.

While atebits could have whipped up a version of Tweetie with Air in probably the same amount of time it took them to code it with Cocoa (or less), they likely would have sacrificed a number of features that make the application so compelling. The OS-specific touches that make the app look solid—for example, browser integration through bookmarklets and what appears to be the use of Core Animation—wouldn’t be present.

So, yes, I’m excited to get my hands on Tweetie tomorrow for a number of reasons. But most of all, I’m excited to see a new Twitter desktop client that was built with attention to detail and a real programming language.