I disagreed with practically everything you considered a problem.
Okay.
It's not really that bad man.
Yeah, it is. It's really bad. As an interface designer, and someone who thinks about this stuff all day, I can spell out for you why it is in fact a bad design, point by point, the same way a programmer can with a piece of bad code. Please don't take this the wrong way - I'm not ego stroking. There's just no other way to put it.
Having said that - everyone, everyone has an opinion on visual things. So if it works for you, I say, go for it.
That screenshot linked from the second review... oy, vey.
Somebody was commenting on the interface in an earlier thread but I had no idea... MSN's opposing gradients from hell clash with the XP Luna scheme really, really badly.
Go look. Can you read those tabs at the top-right? Music... ra... radio... movies & tv?
Also - find the transport controls! They are hiding in the worst place possible, at the lower-left corner, which is exactly the last place your eye goes to when scanning the sea of text in the main window. This decision probably hinges on simply not making the thing look too much like iTunes.
God, I get angry just looking at this thing.
What is wrong with them? More money than God and they still can't manage to find a visual design that isn't completely retarded. Reversed text mixed with plain. Tabs - which don't look like tabs - separated by an arbitrary hierarchy. All controls with meaningful functions crammed into a too-small area at the bottom of the window, which sits mashed nicely against your taskbar, which is usually crammed with widgetry as well.
To say nothing of how the MSN Music Store works, I can say that iTunes (and WinAMP, and Audion) knock the shit out of this.
Wasn't there a link on slashdot a while back about a guy who built a crypto system using lava lamps as the (truly random) seed values? (maybe not - search turns up nothing)
I remember seeing that, and thinking, hey, not all ideas that emerge from a cloud of dope smoke are bad.
I'm a liberal. I also am a firm supporter of the 2nd Amendment, and in fact own multiple firearms. Why? Because I believe there may come a time where I need to defend my ideals with violence. I look at my intellectual forbears like Samuel Adams, George Washington, Mahatma Gandhi (not as peace as you believe!), Malcolm X, and other political agitators. Frequently changes can come about through peaceful means, but when peaceful means fail and tyranny rears its ugly head, then blood must be spilled.
How sad it is, that I can read these statements by you and see no contradiction whatsoever, while simultaneously knowing that a vast number of your fellow citizens would see a great disconnect.
I have to ask though... that last sentence...
when peaceful means fail and tyranny rears its ugly head, then blood must be spilled
My question is two-fold:
1. At what point would you say this criteria is met?
2. Do you draw a distinction between what happened at the dawn of the United States, and what is happening in Iraq right now?
The real problem with airport security is that too many politicans (hounded by Islamic pressure groups) think that nationality profiling is "racist". There is nothing racist about (1) checking the bags and bodies of all non-American citizens from the USA and (2) performing a less intensive check of American citizens. The threat is from the Middle Easterner, not the average American.
It is racist. What you are debating is whether or not this racist practice is a good idea, from a security point of view. It is true that the threat from a person of Middle Eastern origins is probably greater now, but how long do you think that will last, especially of security is stepped up on those people?
Really, I don't think it would be that hard to find a few American sympathizers that Al Qaeda could convert. The US is a big place. They use female suicide bombers in Israel now because of just this kind of pressure.
Unfortunately, because nationality profiling is considered "racist", the TSA has contrived an insane screening process whereby a handicapped American citizen, who could never be a threat to anyone, is subjected to an intensive check of all body cavities. At the same time, the airport screeners are forbidden, by TSA regulations, from intensively checking more than 2 Middle Easterners (i.e. without American citizenship) per flight.
The handicapped thing of obviously out of line. The message if purposeful I think - 'nobody is exempt'. But screening based on race won't make you any safer. All other points aside about unfair screening, its just a feeble and easily defeated measure.
Insane? Yep. You can blame the spineless politicians who refuse to stand up to Islamic pressure groups, La Raza, etc.
You know, I really have a hard time believing that the political atmosphere in Washington right now would provide much resistance to 'Islamic pressure groups'.
All "Redundant" mods will be meta-modded "Unfair" until the mods can prove they know what "redundant" means.
Somebody mod this guy Redundant for using the word Redundant twice, then mod me Redundant for using it one more time than that. If the worst should happen and I use the word Redundant again, then any child responses to this message shall inherit their own mod of Redundant.
In Apple fans, DRM finally found it's adapters. Everywhere else it has reared it's ugly head, it has been spat on, rejected, hacked, and mod-chipped. Every type of consumer has rejected it for the power grab that it is - for the fact that control over their information, their computers, and their communication is something they reserve onto themselves. But not Apple fans. For them, DRM came from a higher place, a divine being, something that simply could not be wrong. Turning over control to Apple is as natural and right as anything could be, and they will spit upon those who would reject such an arrangement (not just now, but read the comments that followed Jon's hacks).
You know I agree with a lot of your points - but the above is way off the map, man. Besides simply conflating all 'Apple fans', you've revealed a little bias of your own with that flowery divine-being rhetoric.
Let me put it this way - I know a lot of people who are new to the iPod, love it, and - here's the very crucial bit - they have not noticed the DRM. It just has not come up. They buy music they like off iTMS, selection is not bad, they don't have more than 5 Macs and they've been burning CDs of everything to their heart's content. I had to tell a lot of these people that there was, in fact, DRM.
So while the people you speak of certainly do exist, what do you say to the VASTLY larger proportion of PC and Mac-based iPod users who just haven't noticed the DRM because it doesn't get in their faces?
Very true. One interestiong thing of note, it seems that the info about what you burned on to CDs is not stored on the computer but on Apple's servers, so therortically apple knows exactly how many times you burned what track.....I wonder how they "share" that info with?
Well I think it actually comes from the CDDB/Gracenote, and Apple has licensed that stuff so iTunes can identify discs.. yeah, its there in the About iTunes window.
But you raise another fun little conspiracy theory that I have about iTunes - the Star Ratings thing. I wonder if Apple collects, or is thinking about collecting, the ratings on songs that people voluntarily (and honestly, one would think) rate within their own iTunes collections. They already have the iMix feature, and it's pretty prominent in the interface. I don't know how useful those ratings would be, all things considered, but ask yourself: would you accept a discount at the iTunes music store in trade for your opinion on the new Band X album? I might.
You can't get away with making up facts like that! That's just plain wrong. The Tandy100 was the size of a small notebook. It was 30 (w) x 21.5 (D) x 4.5 (H) CENTIMETERS.
Ah, you are right, I was hasty in reading the spec.
Although i think my point still stands, its not a PDA.
Oh, and this: Now, I know that Apple trains you folks to spread disinformation on blogs, but you won't get away with that here.
That's fuckin hilarious. Now, I know Microsoft trains you folks to talk about Apple training other folks, but you won't get away with that here.
Not quite! I'm a big fan of PDAs and portable computing. I've owned many PDAs, including Newton Messagepad 110 (which Apple gave me when I was working at Adobe), but before that I had a Tandy 100 and an HP 100 both of which pre-dated the Newton by quite a bit.
That's a bit of a stretch... the Tandy 100 measures 30" wide x 21.5" deep, sounds like a C64. Not sure about that HP thing but neither one had pen input, which was really the impetus of the whole PDA thing.
Although I would agree that Apple gets credited a lot for inventing things they didn't really invent... more often than not, it was a case of Apple getting the implementation of an idea right, or right enough to be exciting, the first time.
By that definition then you can delete c:\program files\internet explorer with no ill consequences: forget the fact that 99% of IE is in DLLs in c:\windows\system - look ma, the icon has gone!
There are three responses to this.
1. WebCore is not like Microsoft's implementation. I refer you to Apple's page on the matter. If you just read the first paragraph or two, you'll see what I mean.
2. If I delete IE, the system will effectively break - from a user's point of view - in many ways. If I delete Safari.app, nothing will break.
3. Even if 'only deleting the icon' wasn't actually deleting 'all of Safari' - as long as functionality doesn't break, who cares? I can go install and use other browsers to my heart's content, nothing bad happens, so where's the problem?
No you can't, not unless you also delete WebCore at which point the help center will break (along with a few other things, I suspect).
Deleting Safari will not 'delete WebCore'. Help and other things that use it will still work fine. WebCore is a set of libraries and files independent of Safari.app. You can even switch to OmniWeb after deleting it, which also uses WebCore; still fine (this is what I have done).
Funny you say that... that's exactly the reason I chose the Amiga over the PC, back in the day.
Me too.. and, while we're at it, I'll nitpick a chunk of the otherwise-excellent article at DF:
The Macintosh was indisputably years ahead of every other PC platform in terms of user-interface design. The mouse pointer. The desktop metaphor. Overlapping windows. Icons. WYSIWYG word processing. Ten years later, every desktop computer in the world offered similar features; but in 1984, they were only on the Mac.
The Amiga had all this, along with much better colour support, far superior sound hardware, some rudimentary hardware acceleration for graphics, and pre-emptive multitasking.
What they didn't have, was a parent company with any scruples, so out it went... but the Amiga 1000 smoked the Macintosh back in the day.
The article ignores the fact that Apple has licensed FairPlay from Veridisc [64.244.235.240]. It was not created in-house. Now, they may have negotiated themselves an exclusive license for some period of time, and more power to 'em, but this is NOT "Apple imposing an Apple-proprietary standard" as some would have us believe.
T'would be an excellent point, sir, were it only true.
VeriDisc's FairPlay and Apple's FairPlay are not the same thing. Apple's version was indeed developed in-house, as a custom QuickTime-compatible DRM wrapper.
Why do you think Real is browbeating Apple these days over 'opening' the iPod, when they could have otherwise just gone to VeriDisc and bought a license?
.. and we know the difference between a superficially rigged voting system that looks secure, and one that is a sham. I mean, these people should really get a clOMIGOD a GIRL
Hey Attorney Generals - how about you let me decide if P2P is 'dangerous' or not?
This letter is ridiculous. They talk about things like: the way P2P allows people to raid your files when your computer is off.. It would be really funny if it wasn't coming from one of the higher US legal forces.... which makes it kind of scary.
I am especially amused by this whole tone of 'you P2P companies need to educate your users' while displaying only the most tenuous grasp of the Internet within the letter itself. They list P2P as an Internet 'alternative;. Riiiight.
Does it really matter if it will play dvd movies?If you can afford a $300+ console, you can afford a $50- dvd player.
For most, no. But I like to play my games via component input, and my TV - like many - only has one set of component INs. So if I want component output for both games and DVDs, it matters.
Another minor (or major, depending on perspective) point - tmobile's data plans are unlimited data so it doesn't matter. Ringtones, voice memos, etc - they all come over the internet. (or via the usb cable - which is where bluetooth would come in)
See, my service provider tries to rape me for $0.50 per 'picture' transfer - thats camera pictures alone, regardless of rez - but the unlimited data of T-Mobile makes that moot; I see your point.
It's all rather surprising, considering Woz is on the board, still a big Apple nut (which has the best built-in OS BT support), and he's such a mobile phone freak. They must think they have a good reason for not including it... maybe even pressure from the providers.
Sorry, but I think you don't get it. I have had a hiptop for 1.5 years now, and I really like it. This _IS_ the most functional pda/cell device out there. Perhaps bluetooth would be nice, but I don't really care - it would be of no use for syncing, because the device is already connected to the internet. You will sync with danger's servers, not with your device....Sync is finally coming. This is one hundred percent T-Mobile's fault, not Danger's. There have been several sync solutions ready to ship for quite some time now. The only holdup is T-Mobile.
That sucks though. Bluetooth is a very low-cost part and makes a huge difference.
I was just offered a free phone by my provider (in Canada) to replace my T68i. There was only one choice that had BT; if it wasn't available, I would have written off the whole new phone and kept my old one.
It's just so flexible, but not only for syncing. Add BT to the HipTop and you suddenly get:
- syncing of contacts, calendar, and notes regardless of what your service provider gives you
- ability to transfer images, themes, ringtones, voice memos, and games back and forth (again, independently)... vital, if you ask me, to use the camera function and not get billed for data transfer
- ability to use the phone as an incredibly feature-packed remote control: I use mine for my Powerbook DVD player, iTunes, PP/Keynote presentations, iPhoto slidehsows... heck the thing even locks my screen wheh I walk away from it using proximity detection
- ability to transfer all the above items to the myriad other BT-enabled devices
- ability to play games over BT
- ability to surf via BT through my mobile phone from the PowerBook
It's a huge omission if you ask me. I love the HipTop but until they offer BT, its a nonstarter for me personally.
Said 'prehistoric' lawsuit is/was the basis for most of the entire past 20 years of computer growth.
Look, I don't really feel like sparring over this, I just disagree. I don't think the PC BIOS takes into account many many other things that were at least as momentous: TCP/IP, the GUI, etc. ad nauseum. I know what you are getting at but putting it all on the BIOS is a little thin. There are more platforms than IBM PC, one of which spawned the web.
And, genius,... why thank you,
...Firmware (thats a BIOS) IS SOFTWARE.
Yes it is, on a fucking ROM, which is attached to your motherboard, and sold as hardware. Kind of like an iPod.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay.
It's not really that bad man.
Yeah, it is. It's really bad. As an interface designer, and someone who thinks about this stuff all day, I can spell out for you why it is in fact a bad design, point by point, the same way a programmer can with a piece of bad code. Please don't take this the wrong way - I'm not ego stroking. There's just no other way to put it.
Having said that - everyone, everyone has an opinion on visual things. So if it works for you, I say, go for it.
Somebody was commenting on the interface in an earlier thread but I had no idea... MSN's opposing gradients from hell clash with the XP Luna scheme really, really badly.
Go look. Can you read those tabs at the top-right? Music... ra... radio... movies & tv?
Also - find the transport controls! They are hiding in the worst place possible, at the lower-left corner, which is exactly the last place your eye goes to when scanning the sea of text in the main window. This decision probably hinges on simply not making the thing look too much like iTunes.
God, I get angry just looking at this thing.
What is wrong with them? More money than God and they still can't manage to find a visual design that isn't completely retarded. Reversed text mixed with plain. Tabs - which don't look like tabs - separated by an arbitrary hierarchy. All controls with meaningful functions crammed into a too-small area at the bottom of the window, which sits mashed nicely against your taskbar, which is usually crammed with widgetry as well.
To say nothing of how the MSN Music Store works, I can say that iTunes (and WinAMP, and Audion) knock the shit out of this.
And, uh, hope no offence was taken at the dope smoke comment (I didn't mean any).
I remember seeing that, and thinking, hey, not all ideas that emerge from a cloud of dope smoke are bad.
How sad it is, that I can read these statements by you and see no contradiction whatsoever, while simultaneously knowing that a vast number of your fellow citizens would see a great disconnect.
I have to ask though... that last sentence...
when peaceful means fail and tyranny rears its ugly head, then blood must be spilled
My question is two-fold:
1. At what point would you say this criteria is met?
2. Do you draw a distinction between what happened at the dawn of the United States, and what is happening in Iraq right now?
It is racist. What you are debating is whether or not this racist practice is a good idea, from a security point of view. It is true that the threat from a person of Middle Eastern origins is probably greater now, but how long do you think that will last, especially of security is stepped up on those people?
Really, I don't think it would be that hard to find a few American sympathizers that Al Qaeda could convert. The US is a big place. They use female suicide bombers in Israel now because of just this kind of pressure.
Unfortunately, because nationality profiling is considered "racist", the TSA has contrived an insane screening process whereby a handicapped American citizen, who could never be a threat to anyone, is subjected to an intensive check of all body cavities. At the same time, the airport screeners are forbidden, by TSA regulations, from intensively checking more than 2 Middle Easterners (i.e. without American citizenship) per flight.
The handicapped thing of obviously out of line. The message if purposeful I think - 'nobody is exempt'. But screening based on race won't make you any safer. All other points aside about unfair screening, its just a feeble and easily defeated measure.
Insane? Yep. You can blame the spineless politicians who refuse to stand up to Islamic pressure groups, La Raza, etc.
You know, I really have a hard time believing that the political atmosphere in Washington right now would provide much resistance to 'Islamic pressure groups'.
Somebody mod this guy Redundant for using the word Redundant twice, then mod me Redundant for using it one more time than that. If the worst should happen and I use the word Redundant again, then any child responses to this message shall inherit their own mod of Redundant.
And... one after that.
3:53pm. Right-o.
You know I agree with a lot of your points - but the above is way off the map, man. Besides simply conflating all 'Apple fans', you've revealed a little bias of your own with that flowery divine-being rhetoric.
Let me put it this way - I know a lot of people who are new to the iPod, love it, and - here's the very crucial bit - they have not noticed the DRM. It just has not come up. They buy music they like off iTMS, selection is not bad, they don't have more than 5 Macs and they've been burning CDs of everything to their heart's content. I had to tell a lot of these people that there was, in fact, DRM.
So while the people you speak of certainly do exist, what do you say to the VASTLY larger proportion of PC and Mac-based iPod users who just haven't noticed the DRM because it doesn't get in their faces?
You will live to reap the sorrows.
Ha! Woe, indeed. Please.
Was reading too fast. You are right.
Well I think it actually comes from the CDDB/Gracenote, and Apple has licensed that stuff so iTunes can identify discs.. yeah, its there in the About iTunes window.
But you raise another fun little conspiracy theory that I have about iTunes - the Star Ratings thing. I wonder if Apple collects, or is thinking about collecting, the ratings on songs that people voluntarily (and honestly, one would think) rate within their own iTunes collections. They already have the iMix feature, and it's pretty prominent in the interface. I don't know how useful those ratings would be, all things considered, but ask yourself: would you accept a discount at the iTunes music store in trade for your opinion on the new Band X album? I might.
Ah, you are right, I was hasty in reading the spec.
Although i think my point still stands, its not a PDA.
Oh, and this:
Now, I know that Apple trains you folks to spread disinformation on blogs, but you won't get away with that here.
That's fuckin hilarious. Now, I know Microsoft trains you folks to talk about Apple training other folks, but you won't get away with that here.
Not quite! I'm a big fan of PDAs and portable computing. I've owned many PDAs, including Newton Messagepad 110 (which Apple gave me when I was working at Adobe), but before that I had a Tandy 100 and an HP 100 both of which pre-dated the Newton by quite a bit.
That's a bit of a stretch... the Tandy 100 measures 30" wide x 21.5" deep, sounds like a C64. Not sure about that HP thing but neither one had pen input, which was really the impetus of the whole PDA thing.
Although I would agree that Apple gets credited a lot for inventing things they didn't really invent... more often than not, it was a case of Apple getting the implementation of an idea right, or right enough to be exciting, the first time.
There are three responses to this.
1. WebCore is not like Microsoft's implementation. I refer you to Apple's page on the matter. If you just read the first paragraph or two, you'll see what I mean.
2. If I delete IE, the system will effectively break - from a user's point of view - in many ways. If I delete Safari.app, nothing will break.
3. Even if 'only deleting the icon' wasn't actually deleting 'all of Safari' - as long as functionality doesn't break, who cares? I can go install and use other browsers to my heart's content, nothing bad happens, so where's the problem?
Deleting Safari will not 'delete WebCore'. Help and other things that use it will still work fine. WebCore is a set of libraries and files independent of Safari.app. You can even switch to OmniWeb after deleting it, which also uses WebCore; still fine (this is what I have done).
Me too.. and, while we're at it, I'll nitpick a chunk of the otherwise-excellent article at DF:
The Macintosh was indisputably years ahead of every other PC platform in terms of user-interface design. The mouse pointer. The desktop metaphor. Overlapping windows. Icons. WYSIWYG word processing. Ten years later, every desktop computer in the world offered similar features; but in 1984, they were only on the Mac.
The Amiga had all this, along with much better colour support, far superior sound hardware, some rudimentary hardware acceleration for graphics, and pre-emptive multitasking.
What they didn't have, was a parent company with any scruples, so out it went... but the Amiga 1000 smoked the Macintosh back in the day.
T'would be an excellent point, sir, were it only true.
VeriDisc's FairPlay and Apple's FairPlay are not the same thing. Apple's version was indeed developed in-house, as a custom QuickTime-compatible DRM wrapper.
Why do you think Real is browbeating Apple these days over 'opening' the iPod, when they could have otherwise just gone to VeriDisc and bought a license?
[runs away and hides]
This letter is ridiculous. They talk about things like: the way P2P allows people to raid your files when your computer is off.. It would be really funny if it wasn't coming from one of the higher US legal forces.... which makes it kind of scary.
I am especially amused by this whole tone of 'you P2P companies need to educate your users' while displaying only the most tenuous grasp of the Internet within the letter itself. They list P2P as an Internet 'alternative;. Riiiight.
Not sure how it'll be done in the PS3, but in the PS2 the sound chip does double-duty as the PS1 CPU.
PS3, it'll probably have an Emotion Engine just handling the controller ports. :)
For most, no. But I like to play my games via component input, and my TV - like many - only has one set of component INs. So if I want component output for both games and DVDs, it matters.
See, my service provider tries to rape me for $0.50 per 'picture' transfer - thats camera pictures alone, regardless of rez - but the unlimited data of T-Mobile makes that moot; I see your point.
It's all rather surprising, considering Woz is on the board, still a big Apple nut (which has the best built-in OS BT support), and he's such a mobile phone freak. They must think they have a good reason for not including it... maybe even pressure from the providers.
That sucks though. Bluetooth is a very low-cost part and makes a huge difference.
I was just offered a free phone by my provider (in Canada) to replace my T68i. There was only one choice that had BT; if it wasn't available, I would have written off the whole new phone and kept my old one.
It's just so flexible, but not only for syncing. Add BT to the HipTop and you suddenly get:
- syncing of contacts, calendar, and notes regardless of what your service provider gives you
- ability to transfer images, themes, ringtones, voice memos, and games back and forth (again, independently)... vital, if you ask me, to use the camera function and not get billed for data transfer
- ability to use the phone as an incredibly feature-packed remote control: I use mine for my Powerbook DVD player, iTunes, PP/Keynote presentations, iPhoto slidehsows... heck the thing even locks my screen wheh I walk away from it using proximity detection
- ability to transfer all the above items to the myriad other BT-enabled devices
- ability to play games over BT
- ability to surf via BT through my mobile phone from the PowerBook
It's a huge omission if you ask me. I love the HipTop but until they offer BT, its a nonstarter for me personally.
Longhorn - it's the new Copeland!
Look, I don't really feel like sparring over this, I just disagree. I don't think the PC BIOS takes into account many many other things that were at least as momentous: TCP/IP, the GUI, etc. ad nauseum. I know what you are getting at but putting it all on the BIOS is a little thin. There are more platforms than IBM PC, one of which spawned the web.
And, genius,... why thank you,
Yes it is, on a fucking ROM, which is attached to your motherboard, and sold as hardware. Kind of like an iPod.
Linux could be renamed to 'Eclipse' just based on what its doing to Sun...