To the people who like good suits, caviar, and fancy cars, they'll have reasons, and claim you don't "get it" -- and some of those reasons ARE semi-legitimate -- fine tailoring, drape of cloth, rareness and/or difficulty in harvesting of quality caviar eggs, road performance, general aesthetic... again, nothing purely practical, but not purely made up either.
Brands are complex. They are a short hand way of broadcasting a story about ourselves to the people around us. Relatively few brands (at least for middle class Americans) are PURELY about "I have money to burn" -- I think about the designer jeans back in the day.
Anyway, PURE brand-for-expense-sake is rather rare, there's almost always some level of excuse -- I'd even say in Apple's case the "excuse" is more legitimate than in a lot of things, but then again I'm a computer and gadget geek. But you're right that in most cases, the added expense of the "luxury" version is not 100% justified in features over the "utilitarian" option, but is in part a way of advertising money to burn.
I think you have a sophomoric view of the psychology of "cool", punctuated by your almost incoherent analogy.
In mainstream American culture, waste for its own sake is not cool.. we almost ALWAYS justify a flagrant consumer purchase with the benefit of the product, no matter how small or inconsequential (or sometimes, real -- or sometimes in between) the benefit of the product might be relative to the cost. And often, it's that justification that IS the interesting bit -- in Apple's case, a specific respect for certain aesthetic design principles.
Your hypothesis would is stronger for the equipment itself, which can be outward and conspicuous, than the upgrades at hand, since those are largely hidden. (I'm not sure of the #s but it would explain too why Apple laptops seem more popular than the desktops -- greater visibility.)
I don't subscribe to your faux conspiracy theory that "cool", as a concept, is "designed", that it's an artificial construct designed with intentionality to an end.
It's kind of like that "what are you rebelling against" "what have you got?" -- with Apple products you're siding against lowest common denominators that grandparents and families might use and corporate drudgery, using a brand to tell a story that has to do with designers and creative people.
Apple may exist "to" make Steve Jobs wealthy, but that's not the interesting part, the interesting part is HOW they are doing that. I mean, obviously: people have no vested interest in Steve Jobs' bank account, and it's not like we're talking hyper-conspicuous wealth displays like Gucci inscriptions and embedded precious jewels -- so Apple has had to cultivate its core through a specific aesthetic and design sense, and the rest of what you say follows only then.
(For the record I have an iPhone, 'cause it really is a stand-out device in terms of functionality and slickness, but am not that fond of OSX and its sense of the dock (not to mention lack of keyboard grace relative to Windows))
I developed a system to make pretty ice blue translucent sculptures, by extending Conway's Game of Life, but plotting "time" in the 3rd dimension: (in Java "Processing" language) http://kisrael.com/2007/10/21/ is the basic version, http://kisrael.com/features/java/conwayice2/ is a bigger version that lets you set the initial seeding options.
Heh, sorry for picking up an old thread, forgot to check if you replied.
Some of this conversation points out the challenges of a UI meeting different types of working styles.
Like, never noticing that checkboxes don't get placed in the tab order-- you never notice but I do this all the time, especially on a web form. The mouse has always been central to the Mac experience, so I kind of understand the logic (and can recognize that "space" to set/clear a checkbox is not as handed-down-from-God intuitive as it feels to me) but the fact remains, I would prefer not to let go of the keyboard to find the mouse, figure out where the mouse pointer was, and bring it to he form just for a stupid checkbox.
I'm not really a fascist 'I need to do EVERYTHING from the keyboard' but still when I'm on a Mac or my work Linux box, I miss how in Windows I can set up my start menu so I hit the windows key, then the first letter of the app I want to launch, or use the cursor keys and enter.
Like I said, I find the Mac way of switching windows very App-oriented and not task-oriented. Often (esp. w/ firefox tabs) it works out to about the same thing (despite your claim of "much faster") since I have around one window per application, but for those times I don't, I would much rather alt-tab through all open windows as homogeneous, sorted-by-last-use group rather than mentally make it a two step process of ok, get to the right app, ok, now go the right window.
F11 I had forgotten about, and I probably shouldn't gripe about a different key press. I'm not sure I would like "restore all", usually when I want that kind of clean slate I prefer to then bring apps back one by one. I'll have to try it out on my iBook and see how I feel about it.
Besides, with Windows I never know if restoring one window will restore just that window or several others alongside it. For example?
I prefer the Linux way in this: Modifier1+drag for move, Modifier2+drag for resize. Couldn't be simpler. Which window manager is this? are the modifiers alt and ctrl or what? Anyway I've grown pretty used to grab the title bar to move, an edge to resize. And would argue it's simple than remember modifiers, in terms of better mental chunking, but I guess it's what you're used to.
Re: "Consistency"... I guess I don't see how it's all that more consistent yet.
Sometimes, especially on my iPhone, I get the feeling like I'm running against some fascist Apple designer... sometimes this is good, like Jobs anti-button mood that ended up with a single "home" button instead of Palm's "home, and this app and that app and that other app" buttons. Other times it just grates, like the fact that I'll probably NEVER get a little counter telling me how many characters my currently edited SMS is, no matter how useful that would be for twitter or not annoying buddies w/ split messages, because some Apple designer wants me to be thinking at a more abstract level. (And never mind my speculation why landscape mode is so sparsely supported, even when having a wide keyboard would be a huge plus!)
I agree we can say "to each his own" and respect different opinions, but I'm still interested in some of the details!
Here's one thing that annoys me on my iphone and I remember it ties in w/ how OSX does things: they don't let you tab to and press space to enter a checkbox, checks just aren't in the tab order, you have to take your hands off the keyboard and use the mouse.
And I just find alt-tab to cycle through windows (combined with a decent intuitive "FIFO" type ordering that figures you most likely want to bounce back to the last window you were looking at) easier than what I think I remember OSX having, one key to switch to the app, another to switch through the open windows of the app.
and one key to clear the desktop and start with a clean slate w/o closing windows
and then stuff like only the corner is draggable to resize a window
(6) they really like right clicking;-) (yes I know, supported in the OS now, but only somewhat in the hardware)
I think "3" is a bit of the strongest one; Windows has had very decent "power user" support, in terms of consistent keyboard control, and I prefer the start button/task bar combo to the dock. So things like not being able to maximize a window etc get annoying on my iBook, even as I intellectually see it's a different philosophy, and admire the aesthetics, the fact is the OS matters less than it ever did, 80% of my life online is firefox and terminal windows, and the other 10% I'm used to the solutions (apps) I have accumulted for windows.
Not to mention stuff like Video Codecs and what not.
OSX is great but not everyone who passes on it is juvenile.
Yeah, for me Windows seems to have a stronger tradition of consistent keyboard support. I think; some of that is what I'm used to.
I also think the start button / task bar combo is a stronger concept than the all in one dock, and in general find Apple's approach to window management to still be very Application oriented rather than task based.
That said I don't like all that "make the trakpad do everything"... I end up accidentally firing off a ton of commands that I don't mean to.
Unfortunately you can't always have a lot of faith in the expense/durability correlation!
On average, yeah, expensive stuff can last longer. But durability in the long run is very hard to get accurate information on, and everyone knows about the expensive gadget that breaks after a few weeks and some cheapie stuff that lasts forever.
touch type t9? some guys can i guess but i wouldn't want to count on it
two finger scrolling doesn't feel natural to me, and i hate most gesturey tricks w/ the trackpad (even "tap to click") which are too easy to accidentally do. scroll down w/ the space, please, and I'll figure out something else for page up...
Just noticed your reply. We can probably agree to disagree on some of this, especially since I don't want to be seen as recommending this bad practice! but to answer "How can you guys even read that? easy -- SQL is very verbose. My eyes are pretty good at throwing out all the puncuation, and the words that are left tell the whole story
But yes, you're right, the medium and long term maintenance are where you pay the cost for this, but for the first pass, it probably is the "cheapest" way to go, or in those cases where you get lucky and you don't have to change it. And I still say ("select * from blah where stuff = " + var1 + " and lol = '" + var2 + "';"); is more readable than ("select * from blah where stuff = ? and lol = ?;", var1, var2); because of the ordering of it, and the need to put things back
I've been getting out of "direct SQL", usually working with toolkits, so I haven't seen much with the "@parameterName". Who uses that? Do you still need to put arguments in a pile at the end?
I'm involved in a site called Glorious Trainwrecks... not just dedicated to the glorious bad days of awful 90s shareware, but featuring a monthly Klik of the Month Klub "write a game in two hours!" game jam. (Most of the people use Klik & Play, this crazy great awful Windows 3.1 era game construction kit, but any system is allowed... I do most of my stuff in the Java IDE + library Processing...)
People who dig this stuff are welcome to join the 'wreckers!
these things are the size of one of those standalone DVD players, which is a little annoying because most of them skip the optical disk. So for me, they're mostly just surfing machines, like my Fujitsu tablet PC...
The real hallmark of early BASICs was relying on line numbers.
It was a real revelation to see some Amiga BASIC code in a magazine without!
Then some recent stuff like Batari BASIC which is basically a pre-processor into 6502 ASM showed how closely it maps to ASM - in fact, given that Im surprised compiled BASICs weren't more popular especially on slow home computers back in the day!
And of course Batari BASIC showed me line #s still weren't important, just fancy labels really.
dead people don't really care, one way or another.
Probably too late for me to have much of a say but: dead people, and specifically this dead person might not care, but people who are alive NOW but planning to be dead some day might care very much. Also people who know and cared for this now-dead person might care very much.
You don't have to get into supernatural mumbojumbo to hold some level of "living on after death" in terms of the lingering impact you have on the culture or microculture around you, and that is why this very difficult problem matters.
I agree there's no excuse for it, but in your second paragraph I don't agree with your logic 'til the final parenthetical remark.
In development, it often IS simpler to start with a single hardcoded SQL query (probably cut and paste from your DB tool, and then if your language supports + or . for string concat, it's easier to just do a "+variablename+" where the hardcoded value was -- plus, it keeps the flow of the SQL 'sentence' in correct order, rather than that kind of weird "sprintf()"ness you get when you have placeholder ?s in your string and a list of variables at the end.
Mind you, I'm not defending this; it's still a D,U,M thing to do, but also it is a lazier route, it doesn't really "take more time to develop, harder to read and maintain" like you said.
I guess I don't hear it enunciated correctly enough.
Still -- epinephrine ? nephritic ? That's a badly programmed spellcheck. If anything there should be a heuristic... "beginning consonants are less rarely misspelled than the vowel-y bits" There are other words too where a simple vowel swap makes the suggestions truly ludicrous.
Thinking about this, the way you take out small skyscrapers and other buildings in Earth Defense Force 2017 would probably trigger WTC flashbacks in someone susceptible to that. (A single rocket blast does the trick, and it looks a lot like the old CNN footage...)
"The intent was to make it so more people could be positioned infront of a screen."
[Citation needed]
What you're talking about is such a big expense: not just the lens, but maybe a whole remodel, that I think you have to take into account the idea that the movies were desperate for gimmicks to compete with TV, to do what TV couldn't, that they brought in the idea of filling the audience's field of view as much as possible. And I think it works, to a large degree.
I think your "argument from anatomy" bit is suspect. With people's foreheads and cheeks in the way, life is more L/R as you suggest. Even if it's not at the far extent of our side vision, 16:9 etc gives opportunities to let stuff happen away from the focus of the action and generally be more scenic. Maybe widescreen movie buffs actually aren't just a bunch of me-too morons!
"First, it probably won't be too long before they don't have screens and use some other output device (hologram, VR, eye sized screen)."
Err, what do you consider "too long"... decades and decades?
I think you're too cynical about consumers. They make semi-rational decisions. Sure they might get sold on the latest trends, and if a trend is "cool" enough, availability of other options can suffer a bit, but still manufacturers are in competition, and while a certain trend may not be good for certain subgroups (like coders, but even in this case it's debatable) things won't sell if they don't seem to be a compelling thing relative to the competition.
With talk of "a few metrosexual stylists" vs. "actual usability and requirements", you seem to be claiming an "objectively better" stance that I don't is justified. Half of what you talk about is an issue only for people who run most stuff full screen. Even on websites, very few let their content expand horizontally to fill the available space.
There are pros and cons to both. With a wide screen you can set things up so the main workspace is like it always was but you can let other things run to the side, and take advantage of perephriel (god why is Firefox's spellcheck so retarded?) vision.
Even the original poster's rant is misguided. I really doubt this is a conspiracy against coders. It might be a bit of a numbers game, but I think it's also what sells and feels cool.
I'm not sure if 4:3 is all that magic or just what it was easy to make earlier generations of CRTs do; TV was certainly more confined than what the movies of the time offered.
(Heh, I *was* irritated when I got a pulldown screen for my video projector that only goes 16:9, since so much of what I do is older 4:3 video games... still, I got over it.)
The anonymous coward who responded to you is a dork. You're absolutely right, English is full of little geegaws, some of which aren't technically necessary but help emphasize a point or express a mood. "I personally believe" is just a watered down "I believe", and is probably roughly equivalent to adding "but YMMV" at the end-- meaning here's a statement, I recognize it's open to debate, but that's not a debate I think is worth getting into.
If the "Miss South Carolina" line had been funnier, I'd be willing to give it more of a pass.
Slashdot Mirror
"Why are suits caviar and fancy cars cool?"
To the people who like good suits, caviar, and fancy cars, they'll have reasons, and claim you don't "get it" -- and some of those reasons ARE semi-legitimate -- fine tailoring, drape of cloth, rareness and/or difficulty in harvesting of quality caviar eggs, road performance, general aesthetic... again, nothing purely practical, but not purely made up either.
Brands are complex. They are a short hand way of broadcasting a story about ourselves to the people around us. Relatively few brands (at least for middle class Americans) are PURELY about "I have money to burn" -- I think about the designer jeans back in the day.
Anyway, PURE brand-for-expense-sake is rather rare, there's almost always some level of excuse -- I'd even say in Apple's case the "excuse" is more legitimate than in a lot of things, but then again I'm a computer and gadget geek. But you're right that in most cases, the added expense of the "luxury" version is not 100% justified in features over the "utilitarian" option, but is in part a way of advertising money to burn.
I think you have a sophomoric view of the psychology of "cool", punctuated by your almost incoherent analogy.
In mainstream American culture, waste for its own sake is not cool.. we almost ALWAYS justify a flagrant consumer purchase with the benefit of the product, no matter how small or inconsequential (or sometimes, real -- or sometimes in between) the benefit of the product might be relative to the cost. And often, it's that justification that IS the interesting bit -- in Apple's case, a specific respect for certain aesthetic design principles.
Yeesh.
Your hypothesis would is stronger for the equipment itself, which can be outward and conspicuous, than the upgrades at hand, since those are largely hidden. (I'm not sure of the #s but it would explain too why Apple laptops seem more popular than the desktops -- greater visibility.)
I don't subscribe to your faux conspiracy theory that "cool", as a concept, is "designed", that it's an artificial construct designed with intentionality to an end.
It's kind of like that "what are you rebelling against" "what have you got?" -- with Apple products you're siding against lowest common denominators that grandparents and families might use and corporate drudgery, using a brand to tell a story that has to do with designers and creative people.
Apple may exist "to" make Steve Jobs wealthy, but that's not the interesting part, the interesting part is HOW they are doing that. I mean, obviously: people have no vested interest in Steve Jobs' bank account, and it's not like we're talking hyper-conspicuous wealth displays like Gucci inscriptions and embedded precious jewels -- so Apple has had to cultivate its core through a specific aesthetic and design sense, and the rest of what you say follows only then.
(For the record I have an iPhone, 'cause it really is a stand-out device in terms of functionality and slickness, but am not that fond of OSX and its sense of the dock (not to mention lack of keyboard grace relative to Windows))
Just to pimp some of my own work:
I developed a system to make pretty ice blue translucent sculptures, by extending Conway's Game of Life, but plotting "time" in the 3rd dimension: (in Java "Processing" language)
http://kisrael.com/2007/10/21/ is the basic version,
http://kisrael.com/features/java/conwayice2/ is a bigger version that lets you set the initial seeding options.
AAUGH! I CODE LIKE A GIRL!
would this indicate anything odd happening on the shuttle, or just wear and tear on the pad itself over the years?
Some of this conversation points out the challenges of a UI meeting different types of working styles.
Like, never noticing that checkboxes don't get placed in the tab order-- you never notice but I do this all the time, especially on a web form. The mouse has always been central to the Mac experience, so I kind of understand the logic (and can recognize that "space" to set/clear a checkbox is not as handed-down-from-God intuitive as it feels to me) but the fact remains, I would prefer not to let go of the keyboard to find the mouse, figure out where the mouse pointer was, and bring it to he form just for a stupid checkbox.
I'm not really a fascist 'I need to do EVERYTHING from the keyboard' but still when I'm on a Mac or my work Linux box, I miss how in Windows I can set up my start menu so I hit the windows key, then the first letter of the app I want to launch, or use the cursor keys and enter.
Like I said, I find the Mac way of switching windows very App-oriented and not task-oriented. Often (esp. w/ firefox tabs) it works out to about the same thing (despite your claim of "much faster") since I have around one window per application, but for those times I don't, I would much rather alt-tab through all open windows as homogeneous, sorted-by-last-use group rather than mentally make it a two step process of ok, get to the right app, ok, now go the right window.
F11 I had forgotten about, and I probably shouldn't gripe about a different key press. I'm not sure I would like "restore all", usually when I want that kind of clean slate I prefer to then bring apps back one by one. I'll have to try it out on my iBook and see how I feel about it. Besides, with Windows I never know if restoring one window will restore just that window or several others alongside it. For example? I prefer the Linux way in this: Modifier1+drag for move, Modifier2+drag for resize. Couldn't be simpler. Which window manager is this? are the modifiers alt and ctrl or what?
Anyway I've grown pretty used to grab the title bar to move, an edge to resize. And would argue it's simple than remember modifiers, in terms of better mental chunking, but I guess it's what you're used to.
Re: "Consistency"... I guess I don't see how it's all that more consistent yet.
Sometimes, especially on my iPhone, I get the feeling like I'm running against some fascist Apple designer... sometimes this is good, like Jobs anti-button mood that ended up with a single "home" button instead of Palm's "home, and this app and that app and that other app" buttons. Other times it just grates, like the fact that I'll probably NEVER get a little counter telling me how many characters my currently edited SMS is, no matter how useful that would be for twitter or not annoying buddies w/ split messages, because some Apple designer wants me to be thinking at a more abstract level. (And never mind my speculation why landscape mode is so sparsely supported, even when having a wide keyboard would be a huge plus!)
I agree we can say "to each his own" and respect different opinions, but I'm still interested in some of the details!
Here's one thing that annoys me on my iphone and I remember it ties in w/ how OSX does things: they don't let you tab to and press space to enter a checkbox, checks just aren't in the tab order, you have to take your hands off the keyboard and use the mouse.
And I just find alt-tab to cycle through windows (combined with a decent intuitive "FIFO" type ordering that figures you most likely want to bounce back to the last window you were looking at) easier than what I think I remember OSX having, one key to switch to the app, another to switch through the open windows of the app.
and one key to clear the desktop and start with a clean slate w/o closing windows
and then stuff like only the corner is draggable to resize a window
anyway. what do you like about OSX kbd control?
(6) they really like right clicking ;-) (yes I know, supported in the OS now, but only somewhat in the hardware)
I think "3" is a bit of the strongest one;
Windows has had very decent "power user" support, in terms of consistent keyboard control, and I prefer the start button/task bar combo to the dock. So things like not being able to maximize a window etc get annoying on my iBook, even as I intellectually see it's a different philosophy, and admire the aesthetics, the fact is the OS matters less than it ever did, 80% of my life online is firefox and terminal windows, and the other 10% I'm used to the solutions (apps) I have accumulted for windows.
Not to mention stuff like Video Codecs and what not.
OSX is great but not everyone who passes on it is juvenile.
Yeah, for me Windows seems to have a stronger tradition of consistent keyboard support. I think; some of that is what I'm used to.
I also think the start button / task bar combo is a stronger concept than the all in one dock, and in general find Apple's approach to window management to still be very Application oriented rather than task based.
That said I don't like all that "make the trakpad do everything"... I end up accidentally firing off a ton of commands that I don't mean to.
Unfortunately you can't always have a lot of faith in the expense/durability correlation!
On average, yeah, expensive stuff can last longer. But durability in the long run is very hard to get accurate information on, and everyone knows about the expensive gadget that breaks after a few weeks and some cheapie stuff that lasts forever.
touch type t9? some guys can i guess but i wouldn't want to count on it
two finger scrolling doesn't feel natural to me, and i hate most gesturey tricks w/ the trackpad (even "tap to click") which are too easy to accidentally do. scroll down w/ the space, please, and I'll figure out something else for page up...
Oddly, the iPhone is also worse of a PDA... no Tasks, and good luck trying to back up your notes.
I do miss my old Palm, even as I groove on the iPhone.
Just noticed your reply.
We can probably agree to disagree on some of this, especially since I don't want to be seen as recommending this bad practice!
but to answer "How can you guys even read that? easy -- SQL is very verbose. My eyes are pretty good at throwing out all the puncuation, and the words that are left tell the whole story
But yes, you're right, the medium and long term maintenance are where you pay the cost for this, but for the first pass, it probably is the "cheapest" way to go, or in those cases where you get lucky and you don't have to change it. And I still say
("select * from blah where stuff = " + var1 + " and lol = '" + var2 + "';");
is more readable than
("select * from blah where stuff = ? and lol = ?;", var1, var2);
because of the ordering of it, and the need to put things back
I've been getting out of "direct SQL", usually working with toolkits, so I haven't seen much with the "@parameterName". Who uses that? Do you still need to put arguments in a pile at the end?
I'm involved in a site called Glorious Trainwrecks... not just dedicated to the glorious bad days of awful 90s shareware, but featuring a monthly Klik of the Month Klub "write a game in two hours!" game jam. (Most of the people use Klik & Play, this crazy great awful Windows 3.1 era game construction kit, but any system is allowed... I do most of my stuff in the Java IDE + library Processing...)
People who dig this stuff are welcome to join the 'wreckers!
these things are the size of one of those standalone DVD players, which is a little annoying because most of them skip the optical disk. So for me, they're mostly just surfing machines, like my Fujitsu tablet PC...
The real hallmark of early BASICs was relying on line numbers.
It was a real revelation to see some Amiga BASIC code in a magazine without!
Then some recent stuff like Batari BASIC which is basically a pre-processor into 6502 ASM showed how closely it maps to ASM - in fact, given that Im surprised compiled BASICs weren't more popular especially on slow home computers back in the day!
And of course Batari BASIC showed me line #s still weren't important, just fancy labels really.
Probably too late for me to have much of a say but:
dead people, and specifically this dead person might not care,
but people who are alive NOW but planning to be dead some day might care very much.
Also people who know and cared for this now-dead person might care very much.
You don't have to get into supernatural mumbojumbo to hold some level of "living on after death" in terms of the lingering impact you have on the culture or microculture around you, and that is why this very difficult problem matters.
I agree there's no excuse for it, but in your second paragraph I don't agree with your logic 'til the final parenthetical remark.
In development, it often IS simpler to start with a single hardcoded SQL query (probably cut and paste from your DB tool, and then if your language supports + or . for string concat, it's easier to just do a "+variablename+" where the hardcoded value was -- plus, it keeps the flow of the SQL 'sentence' in correct order, rather than that kind of weird "sprintf()"ness you get when you have placeholder ?s in your string and a list of variables at the end.
Mind you, I'm not defending this; it's still a D,U,M thing to do, but also it is a lazier route, it doesn't really "take more time to develop, harder to read and maintain" like you said.
"I would expect this to start changing in the next 24 monhts."
Are you just making the consultant joke, or are you serious?
There seems to be an understanding that newspapers and magazines got it right: the eye gets tired when columns are too wide.
I don't even hear the "usability" geeks arguing "let it be as wide as possible and trust the user to resize the browser" any more.
I guess I don't hear it enunciated correctly enough.
Still -- epinephrine ? nephritic ?
That's a badly programmed spellcheck.
If anything there should be a heuristic... "beginning consonants are less rarely misspelled than the vowel-y bits"
There are other words too where a simple vowel swap makes the suggestions truly ludicrous.
Thinking about this, the way you take out small skyscrapers and other buildings in Earth Defense Force 2017 would probably trigger WTC flashbacks in someone susceptible to that. (A single rocket blast does the trick, and it looks a lot like the old CNN footage...)
"The intent was to make it so more people could be positioned infront of a screen."
[Citation needed]
What you're talking about is such a big expense: not just the lens, but maybe a whole remodel, that I think you have to take into account the idea that the movies were desperate for gimmicks to compete with TV, to do what TV couldn't, that they brought in the idea of filling the audience's field of view as much as possible. And I think it works, to a large degree.
I think your "argument from anatomy" bit is suspect. With people's foreheads and cheeks in the way, life is more L/R as you suggest. Even if it's not at the far extent of our side vision, 16:9 etc gives opportunities to let stuff happen away from the focus of the action and generally be more scenic. Maybe widescreen movie buffs actually aren't just a bunch of me-too morons!
"First, it probably won't be too long before they don't have screens and use some other output device (hologram, VR, eye sized screen)."
Err, what do you consider "too long"... decades and decades?
I think you're too cynical about consumers. They make semi-rational decisions. Sure they might get sold on the latest trends, and if a trend is "cool" enough, availability of other options can suffer a bit, but still manufacturers are in competition, and while a certain trend may not be good for certain subgroups (like coders, but even in this case it's debatable) things won't sell if they don't seem to be a compelling thing relative to the competition.
With talk of "a few metrosexual stylists" vs. "actual usability and requirements", you seem to be claiming an "objectively better" stance that I don't is justified. Half of what you talk about is an issue only for people who run most stuff full screen. Even on websites, very few let their content expand horizontally to fill the available space.
There are pros and cons to both. With a wide screen you can set things up so the main workspace is like it always was but you can let other things run to the side, and take advantage of perephriel (god why is Firefox's spellcheck so retarded?) vision.
Even the original poster's rant is misguided. I really doubt this is a conspiracy against coders. It might be a bit of a numbers game, but I think it's also what sells and feels cool.
I'm not sure if 4:3 is all that magic or just what it was easy to make earlier generations of CRTs do; TV was certainly more confined than what the movies of the time offered.
(Heh, I *was* irritated when I got a pulldown screen for my video projector that only goes 16:9, since so much of what I do is older 4:3 video games... still, I got over it.)
The anonymous coward who responded to you is a dork. You're absolutely right, English is full of little geegaws, some of which aren't technically necessary but help emphasize a point or express a mood. "I personally believe" is just a watered down "I believe", and is probably roughly equivalent to adding "but YMMV" at the end-- meaning here's a statement, I recognize it's open to debate, but that's not a debate I think is worth getting into.
If the "Miss South Carolina" line had been funnier, I'd be willing to give it more of a pass.