I don't know.... Productivity is pretty cut-and-dried; pretty commoditized. Productivity suites don't get people exited or fired up about their computers.
Brian Proffit responded in his own Linuxplanet column that just targeting what works for some other system is selling Linux short. Rather than trying to recreate what's working on Windows, the really exiting developments occur when someone decides to make an app that lets people do something totally new.
And I personally believe that the distribution houses could benefit a lot more from pumping developers into nutty cutting-edge projects than into StarOffice or anything that has a "K" tacked uncerimoniously onto the front of its name.
Not that I have some brilliant idea in mind, of course, but in addition to the dozens of productivity-oriented app projects that are out to mimick what everyone in the Windows world already has on their computers, there are forward-looking projects like video editing (ie, Broadcast2000) that are aiming for markets that haven't been commoditized already.
I think Apple has already thought about this. That's why they're focusing on "tomorrow's" killer apps, in media, rather than today's, in documents. So it's not "you should get a Mac; they can do everything a PC can do... but they're not a PC", instead it's "you should get a Mac, they can do all sorts of neat stuff a PC can't do." That wouldn't be a bad thing for people to say about Linux, would it?
As has been commonly noted, the vast majority of people couldn't care less about their OS, they only think about it for a few moments while waiting for their applications to fire up.
With that in mind, consider where Linux applications come from: they can either be written from scratch, or ported from existing software. And frankly, the commercial software stores and catalogs are where most computer buyers find their applications.
(The point of this post, BTW, is to suggest that Linux tends to make big gains from the willingness of Unix software vendors to port. So feel free to stop reading now if you want....)
O.K. So think about this: Linux has at present acheived its greatest penetration in the server arena. At first it had only native software. Then one by one the commercial software vendors in this space (i.e., the database vendors) ported their products to Linux and established it as a heavyweight.
Next down the line from servers: high-end workstations. We're seeing a lot of porting from commercial Unix apps in the graphics arena; every few days some new 3D app or rendering solution gets announced. Partly that has to do with SGI being so gung-ho, but it's made easier by the fact that porting from one Unix clone to another is a simpler task. The scientific stuff is different, since it's wrapped up in academia and government research. But I take the high-end graphics package porting to be a significant event; it follows the same pattern that the server market experienced with Linux.
So, then, where does this trend leave "the desktop?" Well, there aren't currently too many commercial software products on desktop Unix systems because there aren't any desktop Unix systems. To speak of, anyway. But that's about to change. OS X is forcing Adobe, Macromedia and who knows who else to port their apps to Unix (more or less).
The porting trend says when the high-end workstation market is about as Linux-saturated as the server market is now, the dekstop Unix software houses will have the momentum they need to port their stuff to Linux en masse. So, in short, I'm not worried.
Hmm.... It's only just now dawned on me that I didn't use the word "inertia" in this post after all.
For some reason, reading this article reminded me of the NewsRadio episode where Dave berates Bill for putting off work on his "Real Deal with Bill McNeil" commentaries until the last minute, whereupon he always ends up complaining about the inadequacies of various objects in the booth....
Bill: Well, I for one thought last week's piece, "Microphones, Why Do They Have To Be So Close To Your Head?" helped a lot of people!
I use two SyncMaster 900IFTs, and they match very well, to these eyes at least.
Well, in the design world what's really important is that the monitor output matches the printed output; that's what color matching is all about.
Physical systems like Pantone were created so that, for spot colors anyway, we could all know that we were working with the same color because we referenced it with a number, and everyone who had a Pantone swatch book could look at an identical print. So we all have a common frame of reference. Of course, that only applies to spot colors and professional plate printing. With CMYK, even if your printer is Pantone calibrated, you still have to do the proofing stage to make sure the balance is right.
In the desktop-publishing/PC world, the final output is not done by a printing press with Pantone inks, it's done on a desktop inkjet. So specifying a Pantone color doesn't gain you anything, as printers vary wildly in there outputs. Hence the need for software (like Apple's ColorSync) that comes with a vast database of "color profiles" and can automatically map one device's capabilities to another (ie, your monitor -> your printer for prrofs, and then your monitor -> The Big Printer for production usage). It's not providing a common frame of reference, but relative mappings.
I hadn't heard of that Caldera Graphics product; it sounds interesting, but as it appears to have been written by ESL, I'm not sure I'm getting all the details accurately. Any Francophones out there?
The title of this article was so disgusting that I didn't even want to read it. Besides, I thought that we had finished beating that coffee-proofing horse back when the Cube (or is it CUBE...) was still just a rumor.
My biggest worry (on Apple's behalf): I just don't see that this "prosumer" market actually exists.... All of my experience seems to divide people neatly into two camps: the power-lovin' gadget-buyin' geeky types, and the fuzzies (that's a term we used to use for non-Science majors back in college), who just want the cheapest, last intrusive way to check their email possible.
Perhaps Apple is right, and there is an undiscovered market segment out there that just has to be targeted. But I don't see it. The geeky types like the technology itself; the fuzzies see it as a neccessary tool (or evil) to accomplish the task at hand. Are there people who fall somewhere in between? If so, by all means, speak up and tell us how you relate to the CUBE 9or is it C.U.B.E....).
If, by "the old computer," you're talking about Blue Pacific, I believe that White is an entirely new system.
The "old" systems, though they aren't the most powerful, are still used every day (and every night, too) by a wide variety of projects. There is a heck of a lot of research going on around the clock at LLNL.
When they mention the nuclear simulations, that may be the biggest problem that they tackle, but there is no shortage of smaller (relatively speaking) projects which need CPU cycles on a regular basis.
I told him to challenge the assumption that he had complete freedom under the totalitarian structure of his workplace. I asked him to dig up a story on the parent company or a majority stockholder of his newspaper. Something really incriminating, which is easy since so many large corporations are involved in criminal activity.
If he got the article printed, then I would concede the argument to him, but if it got censored, or if he felt repurcussions for challenging the authority of his workplace, then I win.
Well, this kind of thing actually happens quite a lot. In my Mass Media Ethics Seminar, we are studying several very high profile cases.
Formost, the Janet Cooke case: Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke stirred up tremendous controversy and public outcry with a series of articles called "Jimmy's World", about an eight-year old child living in DC who was already addicted to herion. It was very poignant and resulted in a lot of public action being taken in the drug war in DC.
Unfortnately, Cooke won the Pulitzer (it was the 70's; I don't remember which year), and during the process of writing up the story on her win, it came out that she had falsified several items on her resume, and what's worse, the story itself. That's right, Jimmy never existed, the whole thing was a lie. The Pulitzer was revoked, and Cooke dismissed.
Now for the juice: the reporter who broke the story was also with the Washington Post. The Post ran a front page, fully disclosed article on the entire affair, even though it directly harmed their own reputation.
If you're interested in more recent examples, there's the LA Times' advertising-buys-the-news fiasco with the opening of the new arena last year (but I don't know that one as well). Despite what your reporter may have said, the media is free to run stories critical of it's own employers/owners, and when the ocassion arises, it does so.
Since when do I have to have it explained at least once?
I'm looking at the row of icons at the top of the Slashdot menubar, and here's what I see : a penguin, some kind of ring of PCs encircling Earth, the Apple logo, the Slashdot logo, and the SGI logo. Four of those are obvious, the fifth is not. Maybe you like being confused the first time, but I say the "Internet" icon is awkward and unsuccessful.
In response to your question, I don't think the floppy icon is a good one. But I do think that the scissors icon, the printer icon, the B and I are successful.
From a graphic design standpoint, a work's purpose is to communicate, and it either succeeds or fails in that every time someone looks at it; in the communication business there is no forgiving a failure because it was the audience's first/second/third time. And an icon is not and abbreviation, it is a pictorial label: a graphical medium for communicating the purpose of the button on which it resides. It succeeds or fails on its ability to communicate, not on its powers of abbreviation.
Man, am I glad to see that Eazel is concerned with actually testing their products with real users. This is something I give dearly for other people to do. Take NaN for instance: Blender is a great program, but it's interface is mind-bogglingly indecipherable.
And every time someone (for instance certain DE teams) talks of copying the interface of a successful program to use as the starting point for their OSS version, I have to roll my eyes. What for? Do we think that the UI teams at Microsoft and Adobe are infallible?
I mean, take a look at the tool icons in Photoshop: half of them are references to wet darkroom printing, something that in a few years it will be nigh-impossible to find experience with among their customers. A little testing would reveal in a matter of minutes that the majority of Photoshop users don't know why there are two tools shaped like a human hand, and two tools that look like magnifying glasses, nor why one of the hands is labelled "Burn" and one of the magnifying glasses "Dodge."
And don't get me started on the 30,000 tiny buttons sitting along the toolbar(s) in MS Word. If it takes a "tooltip" to explain what the icon represents, then the icon is a failure.
Last week's discussion about how programmers don't make good UI designers could take a lesson from this: if all else fails, you test it and see what works. That isn't rocket science. I happen to believe that the major impediment to good interface design in Open Source software isn't an inherent incapacity in the programmer mindset, or a matter of different "personality types", but simply not remembering to think about the interface. Two chapters into Norman's The Design of Everyday Things will convince even the most self-depreciating hacker among us that he already knows a lot about interface design, he just doesn't know that he knows. You're a user every day, after all.
My last semester as an undergraduate, one of the books we read in our Seminar class was "The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald A. Norman. I'd link to it at BN or somewhere, but since I'm not a "partner" and would get no kickback, it's not worth the trouble. Look it up.
This book was great. The author approaches the task of designing an interface from a very practical standpoint, and comes up with recommendation after recommendation. I could list a bunch of buzzwords, like Consistency, Feedback, Metaphors, Mappings, and so on, but it's really better to just go read it, and take in all of the examples as well.
The examples, while not from computing, are geared towards observing where real-world device interfaces have failed, and then dissecting them to see what the root of the problem is.
On the other side of the fence, at all costs steer clear of the book "The Media Equation" by Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass. I mention this because I have seen it recommended in response to this type of question before. It is utter crap; the worst pseudoscience I have ever been forced to read. Every "conclusion" these two have drawn is a presupposition, and their evidence doesn't support it. Fight the urge to look at it just to "see what I'm talking about."
So my answer is, get a copy of D.O.E.T. and keep it on your desk. Read it when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, when you get up in the morning, and before you go to bed at night. Write it on the doorposts of your house, and upon your gates...but avoid of "The Media Equation" like your life depends on it.
I've been using MD7 for a few months now, and I have to say that supermount has been quite a disappointment. Did I need help mounting floppies? CD-ROMs? What a timesaver that has been! Big whoop.
Until it can handle my zip drive (which it can't) it's hardly worth parading all over the promos and ads....that and the fact that their "100 days" of tech support seems to refer to the time you'll be waiting for a response makes me wish I hadn't shelled out capital for the convenience of a box of CDs.
On the other hand, the.6 million "Mandrake" stickers that came with the power pack were certainly worth the price of admission.
So what's it going to take before we cut back on the "here's what the EFF/2600/non-US-citizens should do" comments and actually start collectively campaigning for the repeal of the DMCA?
Bad laws should die. It happens all the time. But we shouldn't just sit waiting for them to; not if we have a stake in the outcome.
The article mentions that the numbers may be misleading due to the fact that downloads aren't counted, and that they don't account for multiple installs off of a single purchased Linux prod.
What <i>I'd</i> like to see is how the data would break down if it took MP into account -- my guess is that "Unix" numbers would shoot up considerably, since Sun hardware for instance is so MP-centric. And that might be a more telling statistic than the number of boxes alone.
(Of course, it might be more interesting <u>still</u> to see how it all breaks down by MFLOPS....)
am I the only person who doesn't see how the AOL/Netscape merger nullifies the DOJ case?
I mean, what's the idea: that the merger erases any past wrongdoings on Microsoft's part? Since when? If they broke the law, they broke the law. End of story. Any behavior on Netscape's part after the fact doesn't change what happened.
ie, if Peter robs Paul, and then Paul dies naturally, can Peter have the robbery charges dismissed just because they "aren't relevant in light of new circumstances" ???
Slashdot Mirror
Brian Proffit responded in his own Linuxplanet column that just targeting what works for some other system is selling Linux short. Rather than trying to recreate what's working on Windows, the really exiting developments occur when someone decides to make an app that lets people do something totally new.
And I personally believe that the distribution houses could benefit a lot more from pumping developers into nutty cutting-edge projects than into StarOffice or anything that has a "K" tacked uncerimoniously onto the front of its name.
Not that I have some brilliant idea in mind, of course, but in addition to the dozens of productivity-oriented app projects that are out to mimick what everyone in the Windows world already has on their computers, there are forward-looking projects like video editing (ie, Broadcast2000) that are aiming for markets that haven't been commoditized already.
I think Apple has already thought about this. That's why they're focusing on "tomorrow's" killer apps, in media, rather than today's, in documents. So it's not "you should get a Mac; they can do everything a PC can do... but they're not a PC", instead it's "you should get a Mac, they can do all sorts of neat stuff a PC can't do." That wouldn't be a bad thing for people to say about Linux, would it?
Nate
With that in mind, consider where Linux applications come from: they can either be written from scratch, or ported from existing software. And frankly, the commercial software stores and catalogs are where most computer buyers find their applications.
(The point of this post, BTW, is to suggest that Linux tends to make big gains from the willingness of Unix software vendors to port. So feel free to stop reading now if you want....)
O.K. So think about this: Linux has at present acheived its greatest penetration in the server arena. At first it had only native software. Then one by one the commercial software vendors in this space (i.e., the database vendors) ported their products to Linux and established it as a heavyweight.
Next down the line from servers: high-end workstations. We're seeing a lot of porting from commercial Unix apps in the graphics arena; every few days some new 3D app or rendering solution gets announced. Partly that has to do with SGI being so gung-ho, but it's made easier by the fact that porting from one Unix clone to another is a simpler task. The scientific stuff is different, since it's wrapped up in academia and government research. But I take the high-end graphics package porting to be a significant event; it follows the same pattern that the server market experienced with Linux.
So, then, where does this trend leave "the desktop?" Well, there aren't currently too many commercial software products on desktop Unix systems because there aren't any desktop Unix systems. To speak of, anyway. But that's about to change. OS X is forcing Adobe, Macromedia and who knows who else to port their apps to Unix (more or less).
The porting trend says when the high-end workstation market is about as Linux-saturated as the server market is now, the dekstop Unix software houses will have the momentum they need to port their stuff to Linux en masse. So, in short, I'm not worried.
Hmm.... It's only just now dawned on me that I didn't use the word "inertia" in this post after all.
Nate
For some reason, reading this article reminded me of the NewsRadio episode where Dave berates Bill for putting off work on his "Real Deal with Bill McNeil" commentaries until the last minute, whereupon he always ends up complaining about the inadequacies of various objects in the booth....
Bill: Well, I for one thought last week's piece, "Microphones, Why Do They Have To Be So Close To Your Head?" helped a lot of people!
I probably have that quote all wrong, though....
Nate
Well, in the design world what's really important is that the monitor output matches the printed output; that's what color matching is all about.
Physical systems like Pantone were created so that, for spot colors anyway, we could all know that we were working with the same color because we referenced it with a number, and everyone who had a Pantone swatch book could look at an identical print. So we all have a common frame of reference. Of course, that only applies to spot colors and professional plate printing. With CMYK, even if your printer is Pantone calibrated, you still have to do the proofing stage to make sure the balance is right.
In the desktop-publishing/PC world, the final output is not done by a printing press with Pantone inks, it's done on a desktop inkjet. So specifying a Pantone color doesn't gain you anything, as printers vary wildly in there outputs. Hence the need for software (like Apple's ColorSync) that comes with a vast database of "color profiles" and can automatically map one device's capabilities to another (ie, your monitor -> your printer for prrofs, and then your monitor -> The Big Printer for production usage). It's not providing a common frame of reference, but relative mappings.
I hadn't heard of that Caldera Graphics product; it sounds interesting, but as it appears to have been written by ESL, I'm not sure I'm getting all the details accurately. Any Francophones out there?
Nate
Here it is. It's a funny choice for a mug shot, if you ask me....
Nate
The title of this article was so disgusting that I didn't even want to read it. Besides, I thought that we had finished beating that coffee-proofing horse back when the Cube (or is it CUBE...) was still just a rumor.
My biggest worry (on Apple's behalf): I just don't see that this "prosumer" market actually exists.... All of my experience seems to divide people neatly into two camps: the power-lovin' gadget-buyin' geeky types, and the fuzzies (that's a term we used to use for non-Science majors back in college), who just want the cheapest, last intrusive way to check their email possible.
Perhaps Apple is right, and there is an undiscovered market segment out there that just has to be targeted. But I don't see it. The geeky types like the technology itself; the fuzzies see it as a neccessary tool (or evil) to accomplish the task at hand. Are there people who fall somewhere in between? If so, by all means, speak up and tell us how you relate to the CUBE 9or is it C.U.B.E....).
The "old" systems, though they aren't the most powerful, are still used every day (and every night, too) by a wide variety of projects. There is a heck of a lot of research going on around the clock at LLNL.
When they mention the nuclear simulations, that may be the biggest problem that they tackle, but there is no shortage of smaller (relatively speaking) projects which need CPU cycles on a regular basis.
Check out http://www.llnl.gov/llnl/06news /feature-techno.html for all the cool non-nuclear stuff they do at Livermore.
Nate
...and hi to Brooke if you're out there at the lab again. How's the rice?
If he got the article printed, then I would concede the argument to him, but if it got censored, or if he felt repurcussions for challenging the authority of his workplace, then I win.
Well, this kind of thing actually happens quite a lot. In my Mass Media Ethics Seminar, we are studying several very high profile cases.
Formost, the Janet Cooke case: Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke stirred up tremendous controversy and public outcry with a series of articles called "Jimmy's World", about an eight-year old child living in DC who was already addicted to herion. It was very poignant and resulted in a lot of public action being taken in the drug war in DC.
Unfortnately, Cooke won the Pulitzer (it was the 70's; I don't remember which year), and during the process of writing up the story on her win, it came out that she had falsified several items on her resume, and what's worse, the story itself. That's right, Jimmy never existed, the whole thing was a lie. The Pulitzer was revoked, and Cooke dismissed.
Now for the juice: the reporter who broke the story was also with the Washington Post. The Post ran a front page, fully disclosed article on the entire affair, even though it directly harmed their own reputation.
If you're interested in more recent examples, there's the LA Times' advertising-buys-the-news fiasco with the opening of the new arena last year (but I don't know that one as well). Despite what your reporter may have said, the media is free to run stories critical of it's own employers/owners, and when the ocassion arises, it does so.
Nate
I'm looking at the row of icons at the top of the Slashdot menubar, and here's what I see : a penguin, some kind of ring of PCs encircling Earth, the Apple logo, the Slashdot logo, and the SGI logo. Four of those are obvious, the fifth is not. Maybe you like being confused the first time, but I say the "Internet" icon is awkward and unsuccessful.
In response to your question, I don't think the floppy icon is a good one. But I do think that the scissors icon, the printer icon, the B and I are successful.
From a graphic design standpoint, a work's purpose is to communicate, and it either succeeds or fails in that every time someone looks at it; in the communication business there is no forgiving a failure because it was the audience's first/second/third time. And an icon is not and abbreviation, it is a pictorial label: a graphical medium for communicating the purpose of the button on which it resides. It succeeds or fails on its ability to communicate, not on its powers of abbreviation.
Nate
And every time someone (for instance certain DE teams) talks of copying the interface of a successful program to use as the starting point for their OSS version, I have to roll my eyes. What for? Do we think that the UI teams at Microsoft and Adobe are infallible?
I mean, take a look at the tool icons in Photoshop: half of them are references to wet darkroom printing, something that in a few years it will be nigh-impossible to find experience with among their customers. A little testing would reveal in a matter of minutes that the majority of Photoshop users don't know why there are two tools shaped like a human hand, and two tools that look like magnifying glasses, nor why one of the hands is labelled "Burn" and one of the magnifying glasses "Dodge."
And don't get me started on the 30,000 tiny buttons sitting along the toolbar(s) in MS Word. If it takes a "tooltip" to explain what the icon represents, then the icon is a failure.
Last week's discussion about how programmers don't make good UI designers could take a lesson from this: if all else fails, you test it and see what works. That isn't rocket science. I happen to believe that the major impediment to good interface design in Open Source software isn't an inherent incapacity in the programmer mindset, or a matter of different "personality types", but simply not remembering to think about the interface. Two chapters into Norman's The Design of Everyday Things will convince even the most self-depreciating hacker among us that he already knows a lot about interface design, he just doesn't know that he knows. You're a user every day, after all.
Nate
This book was great. The author approaches the task of designing an interface from a very practical standpoint, and comes up with recommendation after recommendation. I could list a bunch of buzzwords, like Consistency, Feedback, Metaphors, Mappings, and so on, but it's really better to just go read it, and take in all of the examples as well.
The examples, while not from computing, are geared towards observing where real-world device interfaces have failed, and then dissecting them to see what the root of the problem is.
On the other side of the fence, at all costs steer clear of the book "The Media Equation" by Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass. I mention this because I have seen it recommended in response to this type of question before. It is utter crap; the worst pseudoscience I have ever been forced to read. Every "conclusion" these two have drawn is a presupposition, and their evidence doesn't support it. Fight the urge to look at it just to "see what I'm talking about."
So my answer is, get a copy of D.O.E.T. and keep it on your desk. Read it when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, when you get up in the morning, and before you go to bed at night. Write it on the doorposts of your house, and upon your gates...but avoid of "The Media Equation" like your life depends on it.
Nate
Until it can handle my zip drive (which it can't) it's hardly worth parading all over the promos and ads. ...that and the fact that their "100 days" of tech support seems to refer to the time you'll be waiting for a response makes me wish I hadn't shelled out capital for the convenience of a box of CDs.
On the other hand, the .6 million "Mandrake" stickers that came with the power pack were certainly worth the price of admission.
Nate
Bad laws should die. It happens all the time. But we shouldn't just sit waiting for them to; not if we have a stake in the outcome.
The article mentions that the numbers may be misleading due to the fact that downloads aren't counted, and that they don't account for multiple installs off of a single purchased Linux prod.
What <i>I'd</i> like to see is how the data would break down if it took MP into account -- my guess is that "Unix" numbers would shoot up considerably, since Sun hardware for instance is so MP-centric. And that might be a more telling statistic than the number of boxes alone.
(Of course, it might be more interesting <u>still</u> to see how it all breaks down by MFLOPS....)
am I the only person who doesn't see how the AOL/Netscape merger nullifies the DOJ case?
I mean, what's the idea: that the merger erases any past wrongdoings on Microsoft's part? Since when? If they broke the law, they broke the law. End of story. Any behavior on Netscape's part after the fact doesn't change what happened.
ie, if Peter robs Paul, and then Paul dies naturally, can Peter have the robbery charges dismissed just because they "aren't relevant in light of new circumstances" ???
Not in this country....
Nate
(who's going to offer the bounty for the best performing implementation :-)
Well, I for one am willing to put up $20 US towards it right here and now... Seriously!
Nate
*