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Domain: pfeifferreport.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to pfeifferreport.com.
Comments · 16
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Supporting study
Well, it's not about dual monitors, but Apple wanted a study to show that having a lot of screen space matters to promote sales of their 30" display (drool). You can find the report at http://pfeifferreport.com/.
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Links on ROI of multiple monitors, from Google
Report by consulting company hired by apple (benchmarking data between monitor sizes and ROI related info)
http://pfeifferreport.com/Cin_Disp30_Bench_Rep.pdf
New York Times Article
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/20/technology/20bas ics.html?ei=5090&en=6fc17b9bf54ea2ef&ex=1303185600 &adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1169 331633-thFPjylVxCrYamq2v9S3Vw
Microsoft Related Info
http://research.microsoft.com/displayArticle.aspx? id=433 -
Re:Here's a study
Apple had a study done on the use of large monitors as well. The results are here. Jakob Nielson didn't like the methodology, but still explained some of the productivity impacts.
Basically, figure out how much what you want costs, and then argue that it makes you x% more productive where x is a percent of your salary higher than the cost of what you want. Then it becomes a cost-saving measure. -
Does Vista do anything right?
Is there anything that Vista does right? It's not just that it's more resource intensive, and less stable than XP - it's also less usable. Check out this report, vista is less intuitive, has higher menu latency, and has more "friction" than XP/OS X. This is not just about the OS being "pretty." For a product that is used every day by millions of people this will substantially impact productivity.
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Perfect productivity killer, just like Vista Aero
Remember the research paper on Slashdot awhile ago that says the Windowze Vista Aero interface is SLOWER than XP and 2000?[1] The extra half-seconds added to each and every mouse click is going to make Vista look like a turbocharged OSX.
[1] http://pfeifferreport.com/trends/trend_vistauif.ht ml -
In the interest of balance...
MS spends millions on usability testing, are we all to be so stupid to conclude that their research in this area is not somewhat valid?
In a word, yes. Although I don't think keeping a healthy amount of skepticism regarding Microsoft's human interface research is "stupid."
Bruce Tognazzini has long taken Microsoft to task for their methodology. Tog, who used to work for Apple, believed in using real, objective metrics -- video of users, using stopwatches to measure time intervals, etc. Microsoft relies more heavily on questionnaires and other subjective criteria. In other words, to contrast the two approaches, Apple's approach is that the stopwatch never lies; Microsoft's approach emphasizes what users think makes them fast or more productive, rather than what actually makes the users faster or more productive.
But really, this all boils down to the logical fallacy of assuming that just because a corporation spends a lot of money on something, they spent their money well (instead of, say, spending the money as a smoke-screen to appear that they've done their homework).
The points about menu speed and mouse precision are actually valid ones, though the article probably doesn't explain these issues as well as it should. The mouse precision issue isn't so much a product of the mouse's resolution, but rather, the way in which Microsoft handles things like cascading/hierarchical menus, icon hit zones, and the like. Tog wrote an excellent article about Fitts' Law which gets mentioned every so often, and it's still a good article which really reams Microsoft on a number of points. Pay attention to Question 6 and its answer, for example; this directly bears on menu performance and indirectly on how the mouse is used by typical users.
For those too lazy to follow the link...When I specified the Mac hierarchical menu algorthm, I called for a V-shaped buffer zone, so that users could make an increasingly-greater error as they neared the hierarchical without fear of jumping to an unwanted menu. As long as they are moving a few pixels over for every one down, on average, the menu stays open. Apple hierarchicals are still far less efficient than single level menus, but at least they are less challenging than the average video game.
The Windows folks instead leave the hierarchical open for around a half-second before jumping down. Thus, as in so many of the other areas of their OS, they mimic the Mac without getting it right. They have decoupled cause and effect by 1/2 second, a long, long time in human-computer interaction. If you happen to get to the hierarchical within that half-second, the Windows behavior is indistinguishable from the Mac. If you don't, the behavior is just weird and few users can figure the rule out.
To be fair, Tog also takes Apple to task, especially since Apple broke some of its own UI guidelines in OS X.
All that said, my personal experience with Windows 2000, Windows XP, and the Vista previews I've seen seems to indicate a general negative trend with UI responsiveness. Menu rendering lag is especially bad in XP, though I will concede that some of the problem may be due to the insane system load imposed by my (corporate mandated) anti-virus software.
Of course, since you're a MS partisan, you'll deny everything I've just said, but I figured I'd inject something here just to try and add a little balance.
Closing note: Since TFA is lean on details, I actually followed the link in TFA to the source material only to find out that it's strictly for-pay. (You can download a PDF of the table of contents for free, but that's not very useful.) So I can understand why you'd find the article to be "a very subjective review with no hard facts." It's not even that -- it's an executive summary of someone else's work. I'm simply not willing to fork over the money to read someone else's analysis. -
Research the source before making conclusions...
Before getting into a lengthy discussion regarding the pros and cons of the report, maybe we should consider whether the report is even a valuable source of information?
1. It was put together by http://pfeifferreport.com/, presumably by the principal Andreas Pfeiffer.
2. The website looks like it was created by a teenager using frontpage.
3. The Vista/MAC UI comparison report is, apparently, the only reports in the last 19 years this company has done as can be seen here: https://pfeifferreport.com/store/index.php
4. I can find no notable mention of Andreas Pfeiffer anywhere. He claims he's an industry expert, but I have no idea what he is basing that on. Contrast this by googling on John C. Dvorak, a real IT industry expert, and you'll see what I mean.
You decide, but for my money I wouldn't put too much weight on the report.
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Research the source before making conclusions...
Before getting into a lengthy discussion regarding the pros and cons of the report, maybe we should consider whether the report is even a valuable source of information?
1. It was put together by http://pfeifferreport.com/, presumably by the principal Andreas Pfeiffer.
2. The website looks like it was created by a teenager using frontpage.
3. The Vista/MAC UI comparison report is, apparently, the only reports in the last 19 years this company has done as can be seen here: https://pfeifferreport.com/store/index.php
4. I can find no notable mention of Andreas Pfeiffer anywhere. He claims he's an industry expert, but I have no idea what he is basing that on. Contrast this by googling on John C. Dvorak, a real IT industry expert, and you'll see what I mean.
You decide, but for my money I wouldn't put too much weight on the report.
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Re:Formated : The actual report from Pfeiffer
Or, if you could actually download the PDF
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Re:Menu Latency not necessarily harmful
This is the report in full, it seems.
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Re:Original report unavailable
Actually, it's here: http://www.pfeifferreport.com/trends/UIF_Report.p
d f
The bias of Pfeiffer is laughably absurd. They're nothing more than a shill consulting firm in business to do your lying for you. In this case, they are paid Mac liars. There are others happy to do your pro-PC lying for you. Employees like to employ outside consultants because their lies seem more convincing to management.
In 46 pages there was not one quantifiable, objective benchmark for anything they're attempting to convey nor one objective description of what they are measuring. Of the measured data, all is irrelevent because of their failure to compare hardware explicitly and their failure to define what is acceptable response and what is unacceptable. Finally, it's revealing to note that all of their positive examples were Apple ones while all their negative examples were Microsoft ones. Is there any doubt when they say that they are trying to quantify why Mac users consistently say that Macs are easier to use? Ridiculous.
One of the greatest jokes on the entire test is where two users, one Mac and one PC, are tasked to draw in Photoshop (yes, Photoshop!). The PC user is slower and more error-prone. Proof!
I refuse to believe that OS X inherently has more accurate mouse placement than Windows...not that they provided evidence to the contrary. It's simply one of their absurd claims. -
Here's the ACTUAL report
Straight from the horse's mouth, without the childish Mac fanboy commentary given by "IT-Enquirer".
That said, I'd call the validity of the report itself is in question, given that they're not comparing apples to apples, but instead are running the tests on different machines. Perhaps even more importantly, they've failed to state the memory of the machines used, failed to take the opportunity to remove variables such as hard drive speed, etc. Their report attempts to sidestep these numerous issues by claiming that the tests aren't hardware dependent - but given that every single one of their tests gives a result based on length of time to complete tasks, it should be staggeringly obvious to anybody that a higher-specced machine will fare better.
I'd like to see a comparison between machines of the same cost, or machines specced to use identical (or near-identical) hardware. As is, this report is utterly useless. -
Re:Original report unavailable
It is there (pdf link).
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Re:On What Hardware?
I was wondering the same thing.
I was able to find the full report as pdf linked from this page which also summarize the results:
http://pfeifferreport.com/trends/trend_vistauif.ht ml
The document states that the tests were done on a Dual 2.8Ghz Dell Dimension workstation, and a 3.2GHz Dell XPS workstation, a dual 2Ghz iMac, and a GHz Mac Pro. No futher details on the hardware is given (RAM?), and while these four systems are listed the benchmarks provide only one set of numbers for each operating system. -
Article Link
The article is unavailable for free. http://pfeifferreport.com/store/product_info.php?
p roducts_id=42 to buy it, for only 499 euro. Anyone have some cash to burn? Steve Jobs? Karma whores? -
You need to read
X is old? I think not. The MacOS dates to roughly 1984; the first commercial release of X was in 1986. Tired?
You must be, since we're not talking about MacOS 1-9, but MacOS X, which is a complete rewrite.
As for "redo[ing] the whole GUI system using Apple's source", that's a laugh. I don't know what graphics system OSX uses, but I suspect it's either X-like or MacOS-like.
Wrong. Ignorant people like you are the reason for the FUD against Apple.
We're talking about multi-user machines here, remember? X is what you wanted to get rid of, and MacOS is built with the assumption that you've got one machine, one framebuffer, and one user (and one GUI!) in your "computing environment", none of which is necessarily true anymore, making it an unsuitable starting point.
MacOS X's imaging system is going to be based on Quartz.
Report 1, Google search