I mean, sure, your '$600 toy' isn't as powerful as a laptop... As long as people keep purposefully misquoting the iPhone price, I will keep disregarding the rest of their posts.
For once I can say it; Steve Jobs is wrong. Slow content is better than no content, Mr. Jobs. But alas, you already knew that, because you've included the EDGE network with my iPhone.
I am in Instructional Designer and churn out a billion flash-based products a year, some of them even targeted for cell phones. Amazing how Adobe has the insight to include preset sizes and compression schemes to fit a number of different cell phones out there -- the iPhone conspicuously not one of them.
Excellent post. I had a Social Studies teacher back in high school who swore that Earth was inhabited by aliens, and would go so far as to show us Leonard Nemoy tv shows that "proved" it. He, however, knew his boundaries, and never included his personal opinion about aliens on tests or homework. Most of us were able to separate his personal beliefs from the academic requirements of the class. I think he was fired though, because he made some Christian parents mad.
And this, my friends, is why we NEED a Federal Department of Education. More specifically we need a national curriculum, to ensure all the backwoods parts of our great nation aren't left in the backwoods for the rest of their existence. Blame economic disparity on mean Republicans if you must, but the real reason behind it is the disparity present in our various local curriculums (yes, that is an accepted plural).
Stupid science, having a different opinion than me again;) Well, to your credit, user interface design can be considered a "soft science" at best! I only wrapped my research up in a more "scientific" sounding educational context. In my experience thus far even Education is still a hard sell as a science.
I'll avoid personal opinion debates and just point out that there have been so many studies over the past 20 years with Apple pretty much being the leader of the pack in anything related to user interface, it isn't hardly worth my time to reiterate here. Do we seriously need ANOTHER study to point to the obvious? I'd send you my grad research, but it's mostly on how learning transfer is improved through good design (plus, it hasn't been signed off on yet). Although it isn't OS X vs. Windows per se, it does borrow heavily from concepts gleaned from Apple human interface guidelines. In my study, when applying Apple-based human interface guidelines to Interactive Multimedia Instructional lessons (self-paced, no instructor), learning transfer increased in every iteration, usually around 70%. Maybe I'll delve into the Microsoft guidelines I saw posted online a few weeks back and see if they add to, detract from, or have no affect on my findings...but I digress...
As you and I both point out, personal preference plays a huge role. Someone tech savvy with a foundation in Windows is going to be fine there. I even use some of the more tricked out keyboard shortcuts in Windows (but not before having to figure out what they are). But NEW users will learn Applekey+Q = quit much faster than they'll learn Alt+F4. Once they realize that Q=quit, they intuitively figure out that S might just mean "save". In any case, what you find "unintuitive" about pressing applekey+O to "open" a file is based largely in your investment in Windows traditions, but pretty intuitive to anyone without a strong windows foundation. I think you and I have a fundamental difference of what "intuitive" means. Being able to figure it out based on previous successes and failures, through trial and error, learned outcomes and expected behaviors is what makes something intuitive, not just giving a system a whole lot of powerful (yet convoluted) keyboard controls.
Here's another example I like to use since I used to live in England. Opt + 3 for the pound symbol on a Mac may not seem intuitive, but compared to the ASCII key combination of alt+ 163, it's a dream combo. Wash and repeat for nearly ANY special character. The Option key on a Mac, combined with any of the number row keys gives you some sort of special character, whereas if you push the Windows key (in the same relative location as the option key for Mac) then some key combo that isn't valid, you launch the start menu and whatever else you have imbedded in there. This goes completely against the rules of user interface design in that no object should have two seemingly unrelated functions (one launches the start menu, the other does a million unrelated things--everything from locking your terminal, to launching the "run" command, to opening/closing/minimizing some/all windows, and that, only IF you press the correct combo). Who knows where it takes you if you fat-finger or make a mistake. With OS X, you see the character, and you erase it if it is the wrong one and try another one. This is why it is intuitive. When the user is confronted with an unexpected result, the user can easily backspace and experiment with another combo. Not so if you've pushed the Windows key and locked your workstation instead of launching Notepad as you intended. So much stuff can happen in Windows if you push the wrong shortcuts without giving the user any indication of what they've done.
Don't get me started when it comes to typing foreign language characters either! Option U for "umlaut" plus the letter you want to have an umlaut on makes a hell of a lot more sense than alt + 0196, 0203 , 0207, 0214 Ü,0220 (uppercase letters) and
alt +0228 ë0235 ï0239 ö0246 ü0252 (lower case). In the time it took me to look up those Alt codes in Windows, I could have finished my German language email;-)
Ahh I see. I guess you could say, ONCE you know the keyboard shortcuts (and practice them a lot, given the endless myriad of combinations) Windows 'might' have better keyboard navigation for power users. However, I can teach somebody pretty much every essential keyboard shortcut in MacOSX in half the time as Windows, and their retention will come twice as fast. Mac shortcuts are intuitive (applekey+q=quit) as opposed to the windows variations (alt+f4, wtf?) In other words, lack of documentation (or not, you just haven't looked) doesn't matter, because figuring out keyboard shortcuts on your own is faster and more intuitive with Mac OS X (plus every short cut is clearly labelled in the menus). Also, there are no "two-step" keyboard shortcuts in Mac OS X that are so prevalent in Windows. (I'm sitting at home now, so pardon me for not having a tangible example, but the gist is many times in Windows I find myself doing one shortcut to open a menu item then a second shortcut to pick the item in that menu).
I will grant you one thing; personal preference and "what you know" will definitely make you faster by using keyboard combos of your preferred platform over the other. I'm just stating from a clean slate, a new user will adapt to the OSX ways MUCH faster.
Well stated! My guess is the other guy is a programmer, complete with propensity to blame the user for everything, and that you are more of a people manager. And to the guy a few lines down, I have to call BS that "most" States issue tickets to the owners of stolen vehicles who don't secure them properly. Evidence?
you get the phishing you deserve Nobody, no matter how stupid, is ever guilty of being a victim of a crime. Nobody deserves phishing, period. Quit blaming users and start prosecuting criminals.
1) No financial institution should ever ask for your email address. Huh? How am I supposed to communicate with my online bank if they don't have my email? Statements like this are why I think the balance between security and convenience are out of whack (too far to the security side). The 'risk' of giving my bank an email address is far outweighed by the convenience of banking from the comfort of my living room.
Enter - hit the default button. Closes all those annoying "OK" dialogs.
Space - hit the currently selected button. Like a left mouse-click, but for the soul.
Tab - Switch between buttons/check boxes/tabs/etc in a form. Use arrow keys to select an option from a series of radio buttons.
Shift+Tab - Switch between buttons/check boxes/tabs/etc, but going the other way.
Windows+R - Bring up the "Run" dialog.
Windows+E - Bring up Explorer.
Windows+D - Minimize everything to your desktop. (Or restore everything again.)
F1 - Help.
CTRL+C or CTRL+INS - Copy files/selected text/etc. to clipboard. (Sorry, meta+C.)
CTRL+V or SHIFT+INS - Paste files/selected text/etc. from clipboard.
ALT+F4 - Close current program or dialog box.
CTRL+SHIFT+ESC - Bring up task manager.
CTRL+ALT+DEL - You should know what this does. Also brings up "Windows 2000" style login from the welcome (user selection) screen in XP. His point exactly. He asked for quick AND easy, not a huge jumbled mess of a bazillion key combos. My gripe (which has been an easy target since 1995) with Windows is that there is no rhyme or reason or consistency with any of the keyboard "shortcuts". When is it CTRL? When is it ALT? Who uses the Windows key anyway? What a mess!
even though that means the Dock takes up about three times as much screen real estate as Windows' taskbar. True, however, you can fit about three times as many icons in the dock as you can the taskbak. Seems like a fair trade-off.
I have replaced Safari with FireFox on every friend and family mac I get my hands on. So did I, but I've put them all back to Safari. A week is all one needs to tire of the incessant hanging beach ball and crashes in Firefox. I'm so tired of the "feature" that lets me restart my session where I left off the LAST time Firefox crashed, that I'm full-time back with Safari.
Convenience will always trump security, even if it shouldn't.
Gee, who would have thought that a web browser written by Apple for its own OS running on its own hardware would be faster than a collaboration of sloppy code written by crusader geeks that have been fighting Microsoft for the past decade (and not paying attention to Apple much)?
Using source code developed by your own company doesn't mean you are "crippling" other software. This is the most lame slashdot summary this month.
Yes, but I'm pretty sure AMD sells more than just chips for personal computers as well, which is a point that seems lost on this thread. I have plenty of wealthy neighbors, thanks to AMD, and not many of them are too worried about job security at the moment.
Maybe I'm biased because I live in Austin, but AMD chips to be FAR more prevalent than anything produced by IBM lately. The only IBM chip I see at this moment is sitting inside my 8 year-old Macintosh in the corner...oh wait...forgot, that one is actually a Motorola chip.
Now that the "war" is over, can I get just a "little" bit of content for Blu-Ray rentals? I was in one of the major chains this weekend, and they had more PS3 games based on movies than they did Blu-ray rental titles! I can PLAY (insert name of recent blockbuster flop) on PS3, but I can't watch it in high definition yet?
If privacy doesn't matter to somebody, than it simply doesn't matter. No amount of evangelism will change that. My life is pretty boring and I take zero precautions with my "identity" online (other than use Mac OS X and simple passwords--even those are really not necessary in many cases). People shouting about "security" are like people who tell other people they should buy Car Model X, because it is safer than Car Model Y, when the buyer is interested in features OTHER than safety. I always harbor a hint of skepticism when I meet security obsessed people. What do YOU have to hide, anyway? Stealing money from my bank account is one thing, but looking at pictures of me that I willingly put on MySpace is harmless. I put them on MySpace for people to look at. That's the whole point.
I'm sure somebody will whine about netbots or something, but as far as I know (I might be wrong), being an MS-free Mac OS X user, I don't think I'm contributing much to this problem.
Well if you blokes would actually buy an Apple product or two, they might have more incentive to sell products there. I really liked the Apple Store in Manchester, and they did a really good job at pointing out the strengths of Mac OS X, but the stores in Leeds and other cities were really lame (and expensive!). As far as I could tell, the three years I lived there (2004-2007), Apple computers were about as popular as NASCAR racing and American Football are in the UK.
I lived in North Yorkshire (middle of nowhere) and I wasn't even able to get a regular voice signal at my house (on top of one of the highest hills in the area, no trees), let alone a 3G one!
FTA: "Sorry, First Adopters--Better iPhone Is On The Way"
What am I to be sorry about? I've been using a really great phone since August. My option was to not be using a really great phone over the past seven months. Gee, Forbes really nailed this one!
Given alternatives this would be a non-story. Unfortunately, we have no real alternatives because of oppressive practices in the cable industry, so this is a huge story. I live in Austin, which is a fairly robust technology city, yet my choices in broadband are what again? Oh yeah, Time Warner. I can drop Time Warner and get Dish Network (their HD content and recorder kills Time Warner's options) but what am I to do for broadband?
Slashdot Mirror
I am in Instructional Designer and churn out a billion flash-based products a year, some of them even targeted for cell phones. Amazing how Adobe has the insight to include preset sizes and compression schemes to fit a number of different cell phones out there -- the iPhone conspicuously not one of them.
Excellent post. I had a Social Studies teacher back in high school who swore that Earth was inhabited by aliens, and would go so far as to show us Leonard Nemoy tv shows that "proved" it. He, however, knew his boundaries, and never included his personal opinion about aliens on tests or homework. Most of us were able to separate his personal beliefs from the academic requirements of the class. I think he was fired though, because he made some Christian parents mad.
And this, my friends, is why we NEED a Federal Department of Education. More specifically we need a national curriculum, to ensure all the backwoods parts of our great nation aren't left in the backwoods for the rest of their existence. Blame economic disparity on mean Republicans if you must, but the real reason behind it is the disparity present in our various local curriculums (yes, that is an accepted plural).
As you and I both point out, personal preference plays a huge role. Someone tech savvy with a foundation in Windows is going to be fine there. I even use some of the more tricked out keyboard shortcuts in Windows (but not before having to figure out what they are). But NEW users will learn Applekey+Q = quit much faster than they'll learn Alt+F4. Once they realize that Q=quit, they intuitively figure out that S might just mean "save". In any case, what you find "unintuitive" about pressing applekey+O to "open" a file is based largely in your investment in Windows traditions, but pretty intuitive to anyone without a strong windows foundation. I think you and I have a fundamental difference of what "intuitive" means. Being able to figure it out based on previous successes and failures, through trial and error, learned outcomes and expected behaviors is what makes something intuitive, not just giving a system a whole lot of powerful (yet convoluted) keyboard controls.
Here's another example I like to use since I used to live in England. Opt + 3 for the pound symbol on a Mac may not seem intuitive, but compared to the ASCII key combination of alt+ 163, it's a dream combo. Wash and repeat for nearly ANY special character. The Option key on a Mac, combined with any of the number row keys gives you some sort of special character, whereas if you push the Windows key (in the same relative location as the option key for Mac) then some key combo that isn't valid, you launch the start menu and whatever else you have imbedded in there. This goes completely against the rules of user interface design in that no object should have two seemingly unrelated functions (one launches the start menu, the other does a million unrelated things--everything from locking your terminal, to launching the "run" command, to opening/closing/minimizing some/all windows, and that, only IF you press the correct combo). Who knows where it takes you if you fat-finger or make a mistake. With OS X, you see the character, and you erase it if it is the wrong one and try another one. This is why it is intuitive. When the user is confronted with an unexpected result, the user can easily backspace and experiment with another combo. Not so if you've pushed the Windows key and locked your workstation instead of launching Notepad as you intended. So much stuff can happen in Windows if you push the wrong shortcuts without giving the user any indication of what they've done.
Don't get me started when it comes to typing foreign language characters either! Option U for "umlaut" plus the letter you want to have an umlaut on makes a hell of a lot more sense than alt + 0196, 0203 , 0207, 0214 Ü ,0220 (uppercase letters) and
alt +0228 ë0235 ï0239 ö0246 ü0252 (lower case). In the time it took me to look up those Alt codes in Windows, I could have finished my German language email ;-)
I will grant you one thing; personal preference and "what you know" will definitely make you faster by using keyboard combos of your preferred platform over the other. I'm just stating from a clean slate, a new user will adapt to the OSX ways MUCH faster.
Most people don't know what an URL is or how one works, so telling them to check their URL won't do anything to stop phishing.
Well stated! My guess is the other guy is a programmer, complete with propensity to blame the user for everything, and that you are more of a people manager. And to the guy a few lines down, I have to call BS that "most" States issue tickets to the owners of stolen vehicles who don't secure them properly. Evidence?
Convenience will always trump security, even if it shouldn't.
Using source code developed by your own company doesn't mean you are "crippling" other software. This is the most lame slashdot summary this month.
Yes, but I'm pretty sure AMD sells more than just chips for personal computers as well, which is a point that seems lost on this thread. I have plenty of wealthy neighbors, thanks to AMD, and not many of them are too worried about job security at the moment.
Maybe I'm biased because I live in Austin, but AMD chips to be FAR more prevalent than anything produced by IBM lately. The only IBM chip I see at this moment is sitting inside my 8 year-old Macintosh in the corner...oh wait...forgot, that one is actually a Motorola chip.
Now that the "war" is over, can I get just a "little" bit of content for Blu-Ray rentals? I was in one of the major chains this weekend, and they had more PS3 games based on movies than they did Blu-ray rental titles! I can PLAY (insert name of recent blockbuster flop) on PS3, but I can't watch it in high definition yet?
I'm sure somebody will whine about netbots or something, but as far as I know (I might be wrong), being an MS-free Mac OS X user, I don't think I'm contributing much to this problem.
Voice dialing is needed? I haven't used it in the 35 years or so I've been using telephones.
Well if you blokes would actually buy an Apple product or two, they might have more incentive to sell products there. I really liked the Apple Store in Manchester, and they did a really good job at pointing out the strengths of Mac OS X, but the stores in Leeds and other cities were really lame (and expensive!). As far as I could tell, the three years I lived there (2004-2007), Apple computers were about as popular as NASCAR racing and American Football are in the UK.
I lived in North Yorkshire (middle of nowhere) and I wasn't even able to get a regular voice signal at my house (on top of one of the highest hills in the area, no trees), let alone a 3G one!
What am I to be sorry about? I've been using a really great phone since August. My option was to not be using a really great phone over the past seven months. Gee, Forbes really nailed this one!
Given alternatives this would be a non-story. Unfortunately, we have no real alternatives because of oppressive practices in the cable industry, so this is a huge story. I live in Austin, which is a fairly robust technology city, yet my choices in broadband are what again? Oh yeah, Time Warner. I can drop Time Warner and get Dish Network (their HD content and recorder kills Time Warner's options) but what am I to do for broadband?