I agree with a whole lot of what you are saying, but I do think there is one non-fashion-trend reason to at least tone down skeumorphism, and that is pixel real estate. Drawing icons so that they look like realistic 3D objects requires more pixels. When you're on a phone with limited screen space, that's not the best idea. However, I'm not an absolutist here. Skeumorphism does help to clarify the meaning of things sometimes. If all you see is a colored rectangle, there's less that intuitively conveys interactivity suggestions such as 'you should push this'.
Hopefully things will tend to converge around a balanced approach.
I'm not against named arguments, but I hate the way they are delimited with space and colons. It would be readable if it were being used in a magazine article, but I find parsing its intent with my own eyes very difficult.
It's funny, I was going to list XCode as the biggest obstacle on the Mac. There are actually lots of great dev tools you get for free on the Mac... Shark, GuardMalloc, etc.
And to be fair, XCode does some things well. But the real meat and potatoes areas of development, Xcode is an absolute abomination.
Here's an example... I can't go to the expressions window and edit an existing expression. I also can't copy/paste that expression somewhere else to edit it. I can give up and use gdb: print x and that's ok I guess, but it's not a persistent, updated value.
Here's another example... When debugging in large projects with subprojects, when I try to dig down into data structs I often get messages that data fetch timed out. This is after sitting around with a beach-balled UI for several minutes.
I want to stress that I'm an equal opportunity critic btw. I have plenty of complaints about VS on Windows. But overall, XCode gets in my way and frustrates me far more than VS.
I have to strongly disagree. The 3D transition wasn't really a transition. It was the beginning of a totally different franchise. The 2D Metroid games were great (and they still are). There's just nothing in Metroid Prime like the arcade-style simplicity and precision of control that 2D allows. 2D games just have a certain appeal that can't be achieved in 3D no matter how many pixels or Gflops you throw at them. Nevertheless Metroid Prime was such a perfect combination of 1st person shooter and puzzle-solving/exploration. The subtleties of mood and sense of wonder the 3D Metroid games are able to convey is so far beyond anything in 2D Metroid games that I just don't think they can be compared. Honestly, it blows me away that anyone could play MP and come away with a "meh" reaction. But to each his own.
I feel the same way about the Zelda franchise. It's really 2 franchises. The puzzle-solving/power-ups/exploration is shared between both. But games like Minish Cap are just too different from something like Twilight Princess to truly deserve comparison. (I'm a big fan of both btw).
What's crazy though is that the same people who go to museums like that to edu-ma-cate their kids would never vote for Giuliani if they actually paid any attention to his views on abortion or civil rights. Of course since they never got past seeing Bush as a folksy cowboy type who they'd like to share a beer with, I'm sure they'll never see Giuliani as anything other than "that 9-11 guy".
But as I say, I don't think those people are going to vote for the Democrat anyway. Maybe Edwards is the exception to that, I don't know.
I agree with you on most of what you said. I'm actually leaning towards Obama at the moment, but my opinions will likely be influenced by the way he votes on the upcoming "show Bush the money" capitulation... er.. resolution. I actually voted for Edwards last time (by the time the election got to California it was clear Edwards or Kerry were my two choices). But I have reservations about Edwards' vote to authorize the war. And even though I know he apologizes for it now, it is my biggest obstacle to supporting him. He was in a position to stop the war, and when it counted, he let us down.
Obama on the other hand spoke out against the war at the right time, but also was not in the difficult position of having to vote when he did. Now he is. To me, Obama and Edwards are like mirror images so far... but what could solidify or weaken my support for Obama is his upcoming vote. We'll see things go.
As far as the Dems needing a white male candidate... I'm not so sure. I may be optimistic, but I think that race has become much less of an issue with the US population as a whole than it was even 10 years ago. Sure, there will be states in the South with lots of scared bigots voting for the white guy... but those people would vote Republican anyway. I honestly think Obama has a real shot if he gets the nomination.
However it plays out, in the general election I will vote for whoever seems most sincere and pragmatic about towing our country out of the ditch into which Bush drove it. It won't be an easy task.
I am really enjoying Wii Zelda TP so far. Targeting objects on screen is a great addition, and the wiimote speaker definitely makes for better immersion in the game. However I do have to say that I miss the free camera control from Windwaker (and apparently Z:TP for Gamecube). There are times when I'm running around and I want to be able to see what's behind me or to the side. I don't understand why they couldn't have added a control setting for this in which the wiimote was used for camera control while moving.
That said, it's still a fantastic game. And I think the Wii itself has a ton of potential not only for fun little party games, but also for more hardcore FPS games and yet nonexistant genres of creative interaction (that might not even really be games in the traditional sense).
It's great to be wary of conflicts of interest like this, and it is possible that that is Boxer's motive. But I have followed her for a while, and I think that she, unlike Feinstein (the senior senator from CA) is motivated by the public good.
Also, Northrop Grumman does have locations in California but it also has offices in Virginia, Maryland, and Mississippi. Furthermore, I'd be willing to bet that all of NG's competitors also have locations in California. It's just a natural location for testing on the West Coast.
You do get both. But I agree that 2) is the most important part. It would be fine if everyone just put a big X on a box next to their chosen candidate or issue. Really not that hard.
Ok, true. You CAN do this with one click. But it still requires more than clicking and letting go...
Probably the reason you haven't heard this complaint before is because it's so hard to express (consider how long it took for you to understand what I was getting at), and because it has a relatively easy workaround.
It really wouldn't bother me if it were something I didn't do very often, but because it is probably the most common Finder task, I want it to be as fast and easy as possible.
Anyway, being unnecessarily picky about UI has been part of the Mac design paradigm since the beginning.
I have a feeling that one reason it's not there is the possible confusion caused by having an 'up' button next to 'back' and 'forward' buttons... especially in column view... but to be honest this is already confusing since in column view one might expect that clicking the 'back' button would always be the same as 'up'. But it's not.
Anyway, I if you always use column view you essentially always have an 'up' with a single click already since there's always a folder for it in sight.
I just like bitching about this because I use like to use List view.
click, (path list pops up), find path just above the one I'm in (i.e. in Unix terms./..), then click again. That's not a single click. but rather 'click, scan popup menu, find./.., click again'.
As I say, I'm sure I sound like I'm being unnecessarily picky, but this button has been the 3rd button on the Windows file browser at least since '98, it's there in most GUI browsers for Linux... It just isn't there on the Mac.
That is still not an 'Up' button. I appreciate the suggestion but people always suggest either the path pop-up (via command click toolbar or the add-on button) or 'Ctrl-up arrow'. But none of these methods is an 'Up' button.
Maybe I'm being picky but I don't want to command-click, or wait for a pop up list of dir's or use the keyboard to go up a directory.... I just want to have a single-click way to do this. It's such a common task... I just can't figure out why it's not there. I've also tried using an applescript executable and dragging it's icon to the finder bar, but that always seems slow to execute, and the average user is not going to do this... It just ought to be there. It's as though Apple just left it out to try and keep from being like Microsoft. errrgggg.
You may not like Fox News, but people at least have the choice to follow them or not. That hasn't always been the case with PC.
What does that even mean? PCism is a silly thing in as much as it attempts to water down one's words. But who doesn't have the choice to speak in a politically correct way? You might get verbally reprimanded by someone for not being sensitive, but it's that person's right to tell you what they think too.
I think the West Coast should secede as well. We can call ourselves Pacifica. We will consist of California, Oregon, and Washington, and maybe we'll throw in Hawaii.
We'll see how the rest of the country does without Silicon Valley, Hollywood, a butt-load of produce and agriculture, and the west-coast shipping ports.
The red states can subsist on their "moral values".
I've had this idea for a while and I figured sooner or later someone would do it for a cell phone.
I'll bet that Nintendo's making a game where each player's rules/actions, etc. are displayed on the DS. They have to find other people in the physical world. When they get close enough, the wireless will know and they'll get points or whatever.
I think he's a sensationalist. Not a crackpot. He takes things that people should be noticing and asking questions about and he writes in big bold BLOCK CAPITALS WITH LOTS OF EXCLAMATION POINTS(!!!) so that people will pay attention. I honestly do think it's odd that the entire Bin Laden family got to fly home after 9-11 while all other flights were grounded. I think that's worth asking about. So does Moore. If that's innuendo then fine... You draw your own conclusions. My conclusion is that this country's leaders (in particular the Bushes) are way too cozy with rich Saudi royals who control the oil. If that's a crackpot idea then pass me my tinfoil hat and call the luny bin.
Problem is, if it's not sensational and overdone people don't seem to pay attention. I agree that Moore is light on balanced reporting and heavy on mood setting. And in his books he's heavy on comedy. But again, you've got to throw the public some delicious laughs or tasty dramatics or else they won't go near the bland facts. This goes for Jon Stewart as well.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with a whole lot of what you are saying, but I do think there is one non-fashion-trend reason to at least tone down skeumorphism, and that is pixel real estate. Drawing icons so that they look like realistic 3D objects requires more pixels. When you're on a phone with limited screen space, that's not the best idea. However, I'm not an absolutist here. Skeumorphism does help to clarify the meaning of things sometimes. If all you see is a colored rectangle, there's less that intuitively conveys interactivity suggestions such as 'you should push this'.
Hopefully things will tend to converge around a balanced approach.
I'm not against named arguments, but I hate the way they are delimited with space and colons. It would be readable if it were being used in a magazine article, but I find parsing its intent with my own eyes very difficult.
Here's my problem with it:
-(void) what: (int) kind of: (int) bullshit isThis;
IMO, that is very difficult to read. And try doing a multi-file search for calls to it.
IDEs can overcome the search problem, but the readability problem remains.
Fine language in many ways but I call 'Boo' on the method syntax.
Obviously you hold the phone with your penis.
It's funny, I was going to list XCode as the biggest obstacle on the Mac. There are actually lots of great dev tools you get for free on the Mac... Shark, GuardMalloc, etc.
And to be fair, XCode does some things well. But the real meat and potatoes areas of development, Xcode is an absolute abomination.
Here's an example... I can't go to the expressions window and edit an existing expression. I also can't copy/paste that expression somewhere else to edit it. I can give up and use gdb: print x and that's ok I guess, but it's not a persistent, updated value.
Here's another example... When debugging in large projects with subprojects, when I try to dig down into data structs I often get messages that data fetch timed out. This is after sitting around with a beach-balled UI for several minutes.
I want to stress that I'm an equal opportunity critic btw. I have plenty of complaints about VS on Windows. But overall, XCode gets in my way and frustrates me far more than VS.
Prison's not a dump truck. It's more like a series of metal bars.
I have to strongly disagree. The 3D transition wasn't really a transition. It was the beginning of a totally different franchise. The 2D Metroid games were great (and they still are). There's just nothing in Metroid Prime like the arcade-style simplicity and precision of control that 2D allows. 2D games just have a certain appeal that can't be achieved in 3D no matter how many pixels or Gflops you throw at them. Nevertheless Metroid Prime was such a perfect combination of 1st person shooter and puzzle-solving/exploration. The subtleties of mood and sense of wonder the 3D Metroid games are able to convey is so far beyond anything in 2D Metroid games that I just don't think they can be compared. Honestly, it blows me away that anyone could play MP and come away with a "meh" reaction. But to each his own.
I feel the same way about the Zelda franchise. It's really 2 franchises. The puzzle-solving/power-ups/exploration is shared between both. But games like Minish Cap are just too different from something like Twilight Princess to truly deserve comparison. (I'm a big fan of both btw).
What's crazy though is that the same people who go to museums like that to edu-ma-cate their kids would never vote for Giuliani if they actually paid any attention to his views on abortion or civil rights. Of course since they never got past seeing Bush as a folksy cowboy type who they'd like to share a beer with, I'm sure they'll never see Giuliani as anything other than "that 9-11 guy".
But as I say, I don't think those people are going to vote for the Democrat anyway. Maybe Edwards is the exception to that, I don't know.
I agree with you on most of what you said. I'm actually leaning towards Obama at the moment, but my opinions will likely be influenced by the way he votes on the upcoming "show Bush the money" capitulation... er.. resolution. I actually voted for Edwards last time (by the time the election got to California it was clear Edwards or Kerry were my two choices). But I have reservations about Edwards' vote to authorize the war. And even though I know he apologizes for it now, it is my biggest obstacle to supporting him. He was in a position to stop the war, and when it counted, he let us down.
Obama on the other hand spoke out against the war at the right time, but also was not in the difficult position of having to vote when he did. Now he is. To me, Obama and Edwards are like mirror images so far... but what could solidify or weaken my support for Obama is his upcoming vote. We'll see things go.
As far as the Dems needing a white male candidate... I'm not so sure. I may be optimistic, but I think that race has become much less of an issue with the US population as a whole than it was even 10 years ago. Sure, there will be states in the South with lots of scared bigots voting for the white guy... but those people would vote Republican anyway. I honestly think Obama has a real shot if he gets the nomination.
However it plays out, in the general election I will vote for whoever seems most sincere and pragmatic about towing our country out of the ditch into which Bush drove it. It won't be an easy task.
I am really enjoying Wii Zelda TP so far. Targeting objects on screen is a great addition, and the wiimote speaker definitely makes for better immersion in the game. However I do have to say that I miss the free camera control from Windwaker (and apparently Z:TP for Gamecube). There are times when I'm running around and I want to be able to see what's behind me or to the side. I don't understand why they couldn't have added a control setting for this in which the wiimote was used for camera control while moving.
That said, it's still a fantastic game. And I think the Wii itself has a ton of potential not only for fun little party games, but also for more hardcore FPS games and yet nonexistant genres of creative interaction (that might not even really be games in the traditional sense).
It's great to be wary of conflicts of interest like this, and it is possible that that is Boxer's motive. But I have followed her for a while, and I think that she, unlike Feinstein (the senior senator from CA) is motivated by the public good.
Also, Northrop Grumman does have locations in California but it also has offices in Virginia, Maryland, and Mississippi. Furthermore, I'd be willing to bet that all of NG's competitors also have locations in California. It's just a natural location for testing on the West Coast.
Cheers,
-Jack
The OVC is all about leaving a paper trail...
http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/our_solution
You do get both. But I agree that 2) is the most important part. It would be fine if everyone just put a big X on a box next to their chosen candidate or issue. Really not that hard.
Replaced?
>> Wait, how do I dial a phone that only has one butan?
Hmmm... if only there were a way for a phone to choose a number using only a dial.
Ok, true. You CAN do this with one click. But it still requires more than clicking and letting go...
Probably the reason you haven't heard this complaint before is because it's so hard to express (consider how long it took for you to understand what I was getting at), and because it has a relatively easy workaround.
It really wouldn't bother me if it were something I didn't do very often, but because it is probably the most common Finder task, I want it to be as fast and easy as possible.
Anyway, being unnecessarily picky about UI has been part of the Mac design paradigm since the beginning.
I have a feeling that one reason it's not there is the possible confusion caused by having an 'up' button next to 'back' and 'forward' buttons... especially in column view... but to be honest this is already confusing since in column view one might expect that clicking the 'back' button would always be the same as 'up'. But it's not.
Anyway, I if you always use column view you essentially always have an 'up' with a single click already since there's always a folder for it in sight.
I just like bitching about this because I use like to use List view.
The 'Path' button is:
./..), then click again. That's not a single click. but rather 'click, scan popup menu, find ./.., click again'.
click, (path list pops up), find path just above the one I'm in (i.e. in Unix terms
As I say, I'm sure I sound like I'm being unnecessarily picky, but this button has been the 3rd button on the Windows file browser at least since '98, it's there in most GUI browsers for Linux... It just isn't there on the Mac.
That is still not an 'Up' button. I appreciate the suggestion but people always suggest either the path pop-up (via command click toolbar or the add-on button) or 'Ctrl-up arrow'. But none of these methods is an 'Up' button.
Maybe I'm being picky but I don't want to command-click, or wait for a pop up list of dir's or use the keyboard to go up a directory.... I just want to have a single-click way to do this. It's such a common task... I just can't figure out why it's not there. I've also tried using an applescript executable and dragging it's icon to the finder bar, but that always seems slow to execute, and the average user is not going to do this... It just ought to be there. It's as though Apple just left it out to try and keep from being like Microsoft. errrgggg.
Why after 3 updates to OS X is there still no one-click way to go up a directory? It's the most common task in file browsing!
If they'd just give me a nice 'Up' arrow in between the forward and back buttons I could forgive all the other reasons for Finder X's suckiness.
That said, I use PathFinder whenever possible.
What does that even mean? PCism is a silly thing in as much as it attempts to water down one's words. But who doesn't have the choice to speak in a politically correct way? You might get verbally reprimanded by someone for not being sensitive, but it's that person's right to tell you what they think too.
I think the West Coast should secede as well. We can call ourselves Pacifica. We will consist of California, Oregon, and Washington, and maybe we'll throw in Hawaii.
We'll see how the rest of the country does without Silicon Valley, Hollywood, a butt-load of produce and agriculture, and the west-coast shipping ports.
The red states can subsist on their "moral values".
Are these the same "activist judges" that put Bush in the White House to begin with?
I love how "activist judges" always seem to be the judges that disagree with the person calling them that.
I've had this idea for a while and I figured sooner or later someone would do it for a cell phone.
I'll bet that Nintendo's making a game where each player's rules/actions, etc. are displayed on the DS. They have to find other people in the physical world. When they get close enough, the wireless will know and they'll get points or whatever.
This could be extremely fun.
I think he's a sensationalist. Not a crackpot. He takes things that people should be noticing and asking questions about and he writes in big bold BLOCK CAPITALS WITH LOTS OF EXCLAMATION POINTS(!!!) so that people will pay attention. I honestly do think it's odd that the entire Bin Laden family got to fly home after 9-11 while all other flights were grounded. I think that's worth asking about. So does Moore. If that's innuendo then fine... You draw your own conclusions. My conclusion is that this country's leaders (in particular the Bushes) are way too cozy with rich Saudi royals who control the oil. If that's a crackpot idea then pass me my tinfoil hat and call the luny bin.
Problem is, if it's not sensational and overdone people don't seem to pay attention. I agree that Moore is light on balanced reporting and heavy on mood setting. And in his books he's heavy on comedy. But again, you've got to throw the public some delicious laughs or tasty dramatics or else they won't go near the bland facts. This goes for Jon Stewart as well.