users. Let the users tell you what is good and bad. Build the interface to match the user.
The interesting thing here is that your evidence doesn't match the examples.
Microsoft puts every single thing they do in front of users, and tests it to death. Apple puts some really smart, good designers in a room and they do what they think is best. (overly simplified, but you get the idea)
One of the first things Jobs did when he came to Apple was to kill the UI research group. They have a unified, attractive and logical interface because they keep it tightly controled and don't let groups of just anyone come in and tell them to change things. They're also secretive to the point of paranoia, which means they'd never be able to do user testing groups before launch of anything.
Microsoft is bland because every single thing they do is tested over and over and over again with user groups, which gives them a lot of data, but means they end up with the lowest common denominator on everything.
You can make your own decision on which is better.
I actually read something that made the case that Microsoft was too consumer focussed. This is around the time when MS had just got the security religion and the person said that until then, nobody was asking for security in their focus groups and market research, just features and compatibility with older software. Geeks were asking for security, but they made up a relatively small number of people in the market. When worms,viri and root-kits and all that started being more and more prevelent, people started asking for security, and so MS started doing security.
Short version: Ask your users what they need all you want, but you're always going to be a reactive organization, and you're never going to surprise anyone, because they'll always just get what they ask for. If you make educated guesses what they need, you'll sometimes blow them away with something awesome.
Basically what the subject line says: stay away from anything you can get at Best Buy and you'll probably be golden. That means Lattitude not Inspiron from Dell, and so on. What you lose in 'features'. (better speakers, media buttons, graphics, shiny palmrests and so on) will be more than made up in quality
I know HP and Dell right now have extra battery 'slices' which can take your battery life over a full work day, and even into the 12 hour range, which is fantastic. Other accessories are mostly USB therse days, so not as much a concern for most as they might be for you.
The fun thing is that apparently you're at more of a risk of suicide when you're starting to get better than when you're actually depressed.
The problem being that when you're depressed enough, you get to this great place where you don't actually have enough resources to kill yourself, you kind of feel like it's too much effort. You also think that you're such a bad person that you deserve to feel bad, so it wouldn't be right to pull the trigger.
When you start getting better, you get to the point where you still feel worthless, but can actually get out of bed long enough to seal up the garage doors.
Yeah, no clue what that is. Not that it should matter though.
I mean, I have a freakin' Batchelor of Arts in Drama for gods sake and I'm now (four years out of University) working as a senior business consultant in an IT organization and making some reasonable money.
So yeah, your degree - no matter what it is - is a foot in the door, nothing more. The rest is up to you.
Because it's easier to make something simple that does less. Or, to put it another way, if you want to make something simple, user friendly, transparent and have as many of its features discoverable as possible, take out features.
This is not a slam at Apple. It's very very hard to make decisions like taking out features, but it really does make for a more streamlined experience for people. The only drawback is that some small percentage of your users will get to the point where the omissions cause them to not be able to do what they want to.
The only way to fix that is to either have a kind of 'advanced mode' for those users or just tell them to use something else.
And after millions (billions?) of dollars spent by the government and by us, and a whole lot of confusion, ten years later there would be just one again because they'd merged/failed or bought each other. In fact, the only people that would really do well would be the major shareholders of the companies who would of course (as always) make off like bandits. Just like Bell.
Re:"at war with my parents over who is in control"
on
Bringing Up Bill
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· Score: 1
Exactly. Look at what happened with Apple when Steve wasn't there. (who apparently is even more of a tyrant than Bill)
As someone who worked at Rogers told me once, "never underestimate the power of a megalomaniac billionaire for getting things done".
As of right now they're saying they can save it for at least 19 years and still be viable. The numbers change for the simple reason that they've been doing it now for 19 years and know that the stuff that was put in vats when they started is still viable and have no way of proving that it will last longer than that.
At least this was how it was explained to me.
The person who taught our pre-natal class spoke very briefly about it and said that she did know someone who died at 22 of lukemia who very likely would have been saved by stem cell therapy and so was quite a big booster of the process. There are problems with this argment, but that's what she said.
In any case, the status in Canada seems to be that there is no national bank but Canadian Blood Services is looking to perhaps start doing it. Alberta does it automatically for every child born there, and anyone in Canada can donate cord blood to the Alberta bank.
The public bank in Alberta (and the Canada one presumably if they ever get it off the ground) will give the cord blood out to whoever needs it and is a match for. If your blood was donated, there's a reasonable chance that there'll still be some of your own left there that you could get back, but of course there's no guarantee that it wouldn't have been given to someone else.
I think anybody from any large organization has a story that's almost exactly the same. And for some reason, they still happen.
Just last month someone in my organization (67000 employee provincial government) sent an email to everyone something about elves. The responses were absolutely predictable with everything from people saying please take me off this list, people saying me to, and a whole lot saying that you should never reply all to messages. I started giggling when the swearing and people saying 'This is funny' started.
It died down, as these things often do. Two weeks later it all started again when some people got back from vacation and tried to get thselves off the list.
I'm absolutely positive that Outlook must enable you to put permissions on lists so that not everyone can send email to all the lists.
I think both (all?) are really just different mediums which a sufficiently skilled artist can work within.
I look at games which are the (in my mind) best examples of different eras: Hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy, Leisure Suit Larry and Grim Fandango. Each was devastatingly difficult, and I don't think a good point and click game (Grim Fandango) loses by you being able to click on things, nor does LSL lose by the player being able to see things instead of them being described when you saw them. The Bad games were because when new technology came out, people tried to adapt the same kind of puzzles to the new medium, which didn't work. You only got good stuff when people came up with different kinds of puzzles that simply weren't possible earlier.
The same things happen in any artistic endeavour. It's not just games.
No, the "Free Market" doesn't care one way or another, by its very definition, about monopolies, or fairness, or the rights of consumers, or anything else like that.
Which is why I, and many other people, think that some intervention on the free market is a good thing so that the consumers don't get boned. The discussion then just becomes how much, when and where that intervention happens
In general, regulated industries can sustain higher prices and have less competition than unregulated ones. That's not o say regulation does not have a place; but to think it results in lower prices to consumers is wrong
Precisely. And when you're talking of transporting people on public roads, lower prices is not the primary factor when developing policy; safety is. lower prices is good ONLY when it doesn't result in lower safety...
It is indeed protectionism, absolutely, but not necessarily in the way you think it is.
The rules absolutely are draconian and absurd the way they're written, but I understand the intent. If there were no rules whatsoever, then we'd have a situation where someone could run an unlicenced taxi company or even a bus company. While I can't see that anybody is being harmed by ride sharing as intended by the carpooling website (and in fact there are considerable environmental and economic benefits) it might not be too much of a stretch for someone to use a site like that to pick up some extra money driving people around on the weekends, or people doing it full time even... And at that point, you have what could become a huge problem. In Toronto we have a highly regulated taxi system, and some of the vehicles and drivers they have working them sometimes scare me. I don't even want to think of what could happen if anybody could pay $1500 from the used car lot and legally start picking up passengers for a fee. Or, for that matter, arrange for rides every day from Hamilton to Toronto in a thirty year old school bus... (They seem to run around a thousand bucks on ebay)
Now, of course, my examples are to a certain extent ridiculous... However, these are the kinds of things that are absolutely something the government must guard against and they are something that the current regulations guard against. The regulations, however, also guard against other things (intentionally or not) that they shouldn't.
Conclusion: The regulations AS THEY ARE WRITTEN go too far and should be adjusted in some way that makes it possible for private citizens to take someone else with them when they go from city to city and get some help with gas money but absolutely does not allow for someone to operate an unregulated taxi, limo, or bus service. I don't know what the wording should be, but anyone on here (and I've read a few things like this) who suggest that stupid regulations like this should be simply abolished should just compare the health of Canada's tightly regulated banking system to the health of the United States' loosely regulated banking system and have a ponder on the possible similarities.
Yeah, this actually might be one of the first I ever ran into.
If I remember correctly (and probably don't) the original was talking about a Mac in the grand old days of platform wars that really don't exist any more. They were talking about probably OS8 level technology here... Ah, it brings back the memories.
As a Canadian, I have to say that if the worst does come to pass... Well, let's just say that there is a whole bunch of concrete and razor wire standing by. Don't tell the americans about this though, they'd just get all pissy.
So, even if Vista was targeting current (2006) machines and wouldn't work well on old ones, then Windows 7 will work ok on machines up to three or four years old when it's released.
Exactly. See the classic advertising campaign for Burma shave ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave ) where seeing the first one really wouldn't do the brand any good at all. The Burma-Shave campaign could be considered one of the most successful of all time.
So, I think we really do have to wait and see if the ads have a payoff, but in terms of getting people's attention, they've done a brilliant job.
And not only are you talking about Microsoft, but you're doing it in response to an ad from Microsoft. Which was their goal (if you read the memo that's been going around)
For the last little while, the ONLY people who have been talking about Windows in advertisments is Apple. This is (from MS's perspective) not good. This ad wasn't to start telling people how good Windows is, this is a contentless piece that is made to start taking control of the dialogue.
If you respond to metaphors, here it is: Previously, everyone was gathered around Apple listening to them talk about "PCs". Microsoft has been talking, but nobody was listening because their attention was taken up by Apple talking constantly. This ad is the equivalent of Microsoft yelling "HEY, LISTEN TO US!" so that people will glance over in their direction.
Now they have a few seconds to do something that keeps people's attention and allows the dialogue to take place. Will they do it? We'll have to see, but remember that this ad is from the same company that did the initially just as derided Burger King ads which have now completely revitalized the BK brand so I wouldn't count them out just yet.
Well, given that the OS they're testing is the same as was used 4 years ago, the only variable is the environment they're putting it in, so the test (and the article reporting on the test) is interesting in how it reflects the current state of that environment rather than how it continues to reflect the state of the OS
Well, the $60.00+ ones most likely do, because really, if they didn't, they'd be unusable. The strings of LED christmas lights certainly do not, and they give me a headache just looking at them from across the street.
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users. Let the users tell you what is good and bad. Build the interface to match the user.
The interesting thing here is that your evidence doesn't match the examples.
Microsoft puts every single thing they do in front of users, and tests it to death. Apple puts some really smart, good designers in a room and they do what they think is best. (overly simplified, but you get the idea)
One of the first things Jobs did when he came to Apple was to kill the UI research group. They have a unified, attractive and logical interface because they keep it tightly controled and don't let groups of just anyone come in and tell them to change things. They're also secretive to the point of paranoia, which means they'd never be able to do user testing groups before launch of anything.
Microsoft is bland because every single thing they do is tested over and over and over again with user groups, which gives them a lot of data, but means they end up with the lowest common denominator on everything.
You can make your own decision on which is better.
I actually read something that made the case that Microsoft was too consumer focussed. This is around the time when MS had just got the security religion and the person said that until then, nobody was asking for security in their focus groups and market research, just features and compatibility with older software. Geeks were asking for security, but they made up a relatively small number of people in the market. When worms,viri and root-kits and all that started being more and more prevelent, people started asking for security, and so MS started doing security.
Short version: Ask your users what they need all you want, but you're always going to be a reactive organization, and you're never going to surprise anyone, because they'll always just get what they ask for. If you make educated guesses what they need, you'll sometimes blow them away with something awesome.
Probably not...
And yet another thing that used to not be permanently branded with one or more company's logo disappears.
When the last one disappears, will we notice?
Basically what the subject line says: stay away from anything you can get at Best Buy and you'll probably be golden. That means Lattitude not Inspiron from Dell, and so on. What you lose in 'features'. (better speakers, media buttons, graphics, shiny palmrests and so on) will be more than made up in quality
I know HP and Dell right now have extra battery 'slices' which can take your battery life over a full work day, and even into the 12 hour range, which is fantastic. Other accessories are mostly USB therse days, so not as much a concern for most as they might be for you.
The fun thing is that apparently you're at more of a risk of suicide when you're starting to get better than when you're actually depressed.
The problem being that when you're depressed enough, you get to this great place where you don't actually have enough resources to kill yourself, you kind of feel like it's too much effort. You also think that you're such a bad person that you deserve to feel bad, so it wouldn't be right to pull the trigger.
When you start getting better, you get to the point where you still feel worthless, but can actually get out of bed long enough to seal up the garage doors.
Yeah, no clue what that is. Not that it should matter though.
I mean, I have a freakin' Batchelor of Arts in Drama for gods sake and I'm now (four years out of University) working as a senior business consultant in an IT organization and making some reasonable money.
So yeah, your degree - no matter what it is - is a foot in the door, nothing more. The rest is up to you.
Because it's easier to make something simple that does less. Or, to put it another way, if you want to make something simple, user friendly, transparent and have as many of its features discoverable as possible, take out features.
This is not a slam at Apple. It's very very hard to make decisions like taking out features, but it really does make for a more streamlined experience for people. The only drawback is that some small percentage of your users will get to the point where the omissions cause them to not be able to do what they want to.
The only way to fix that is to either have a kind of 'advanced mode' for those users or just tell them to use something else.
And after millions (billions?) of dollars spent by the government and by us, and a whole lot of confusion, ten years later there would be just one again because they'd merged/failed or bought each other. In fact, the only people that would really do well would be the major shareholders of the companies who would of course (as always) make off like bandits. Just like Bell.
Exactly. Look at what happened with Apple when Steve wasn't there. (who apparently is even more of a tyrant than Bill)
As someone who worked at Rogers told me once, "never underestimate the power of a megalomaniac billionaire for getting things done".
As of right now they're saying they can save it for at least 19 years and still be viable. The numbers change for the simple reason that they've been doing it now for 19 years and know that the stuff that was put in vats when they started is still viable and have no way of proving that it will last longer than that.
At least this was how it was explained to me.
The person who taught our pre-natal class spoke very briefly about it and said that she did know someone who died at 22 of lukemia who very likely would have been saved by stem cell therapy and so was quite a big booster of the process. There are problems with this argment, but that's what she said.
In any case, the status in Canada seems to be that there is no national bank but Canadian Blood Services is looking to perhaps start doing it. Alberta does it automatically for every child born there, and anyone in Canada can donate cord blood to the Alberta bank.
The public bank in Alberta (and the Canada one presumably if they ever get it off the ground) will give the cord blood out to whoever needs it and is a match for. If your blood was donated, there's a reasonable chance that there'll still be some of your own left there that you could get back, but of course there's no guarantee that it wouldn't have been given to someone else.
I think anybody from any large organization has a story that's almost exactly the same. And for some reason, they still happen.
Just last month someone in my organization (67000 employee provincial government) sent an email to everyone something about elves. The responses were absolutely predictable with everything from people saying please take me off this list, people saying me to, and a whole lot saying that you should never reply all to messages. I started giggling when the swearing and people saying 'This is funny' started.
It died down, as these things often do. Two weeks later it all started again when some people got back from vacation and tried to get thselves off the list.
I'm absolutely positive that Outlook must enable you to put permissions on lists so that not everyone can send email to all the lists.
I think both (all?) are really just different mediums which a sufficiently skilled artist can work within.
I look at games which are the (in my mind) best examples of different eras: Hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy, Leisure Suit Larry and Grim Fandango. Each was devastatingly difficult, and I don't think a good point and click game (Grim Fandango) loses by you being able to click on things, nor does LSL lose by the player being able to see things instead of them being described when you saw them. The Bad games were because when new technology came out, people tried to adapt the same kind of puzzles to the new medium, which didn't work. You only got good stuff when people came up with different kinds of puzzles that simply weren't possible earlier.
The same things happen in any artistic endeavour. It's not just games.
No, the "Free Market" doesn't care one way or another, by its very definition, about monopolies, or fairness, or the rights of consumers, or anything else like that.
Which is why I, and many other people, think that some intervention on the free market is a good thing so that the consumers don't get boned. The discussion then just becomes how much, when and where that intervention happens
In general, regulated industries can sustain higher prices and have less competition than unregulated ones. That's not o say regulation does not have a place; but to think it results in lower prices to consumers is wrong
Precisely. And when you're talking of transporting people on public roads, lower prices is not the primary factor when developing policy; safety is. lower prices is good ONLY when it doesn't result in lower safety...
It is indeed protectionism, absolutely, but not necessarily in the way you think it is.
The rules absolutely are draconian and absurd the way they're written, but I understand the intent. If there were no rules whatsoever, then we'd have a situation where someone could run an unlicenced taxi company or even a bus company. While I can't see that anybody is being harmed by ride sharing as intended by the carpooling website (and in fact there are considerable environmental and economic benefits) it might not be too much of a stretch for someone to use a site like that to pick up some extra money driving people around on the weekends, or people doing it full time even... And at that point, you have what could become a huge problem. In Toronto we have a highly regulated taxi system, and some of the vehicles and drivers they have working them sometimes scare me. I don't even want to think of what could happen if anybody could pay $1500 from the used car lot and legally start picking up passengers for a fee. Or, for that matter, arrange for rides every day from Hamilton to Toronto in a thirty year old school bus... (They seem to run around a thousand bucks on ebay)
Now, of course, my examples are to a certain extent ridiculous... However, these are the kinds of things that are absolutely something the government must guard against and they are something that the current regulations guard against. The regulations, however, also guard against other things (intentionally or not) that they shouldn't.
Conclusion: The regulations AS THEY ARE WRITTEN go too far and should be adjusted in some way that makes it possible for private citizens to take someone else with them when they go from city to city and get some help with gas money but absolutely does not allow for someone to operate an unregulated taxi, limo, or bus service. I don't know what the wording should be, but anyone on here (and I've read a few things like this) who suggest that stupid regulations like this should be simply abolished should just compare the health of Canada's tightly regulated banking system to the health of the United States' loosely regulated banking system and have a ponder on the possible similarities.
Yeah, this actually might be one of the first I ever ran into.
If I remember correctly (and probably don't) the original was talking about a Mac in the grand old days of platform wars that really don't exist any more. They were talking about probably OS8 level technology here... Ah, it brings back the memories.
Speaking as someone who ran over and dragged his D series lattitude down the street and is still using it 5 years later, I completely agree.
nothing can hold back the Allouettes fans. What do you think plan B is?
As a Canadian, I have to say that if the worst does come to pass... Well, let's just say that there is a whole bunch of concrete and razor wire standing by. Don't tell the americans about this though, they'd just get all pissy.
They kind of have: They've said that the system requirements are pretty much going to be the same as Vista. http://www.google.ca/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=windows+7+system+requirements&meta=
So, even if Vista was targeting current (2006) machines and wouldn't work well on old ones, then Windows 7 will work ok on machines up to three or four years old when it's released.
Exactly. See the classic advertising campaign for Burma shave ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave ) where seeing the first one really wouldn't do the brand any good at all. The Burma-Shave campaign could be considered one of the most successful of all time.
So, I think we really do have to wait and see if the ads have a payoff, but in terms of getting people's attention, they've done a brilliant job.
And not only are you talking about Microsoft, but you're doing it in response to an ad from Microsoft. Which was their goal (if you read the memo that's been going around)
For the last little while, the ONLY people who have been talking about Windows in advertisments is Apple. This is (from MS's perspective) not good. This ad wasn't to start telling people how good Windows is, this is a contentless piece that is made to start taking control of the dialogue.
If you respond to metaphors, here it is: Previously, everyone was gathered around Apple listening to them talk about "PCs". Microsoft has been talking, but nobody was listening because their attention was taken up by Apple talking constantly. This ad is the equivalent of Microsoft yelling "HEY, LISTEN TO US!" so that people will glance over in their direction.
Now they have a few seconds to do something that keeps people's attention and allows the dialogue to take place. Will they do it? We'll have to see, but remember that this ad is from the same company that did the initially just as derided Burger King ads which have now completely revitalized the BK brand so I wouldn't count them out just yet.
Or a Ford dealership saying they'll take care of the service for your entire fleet of cars - Ford and Toyota - for one fee.
Well, given that the OS they're testing is the same as was used 4 years ago, the only variable is the environment they're putting it in, so the test (and the article reporting on the test) is interesting in how it reflects the current state of that environment rather than how it continues to reflect the state of the OS
Well, the $60.00+ ones most likely do, because really, if they didn't, they'd be unusable. The strings of LED christmas lights certainly do not, and they give me a headache just looking at them from across the street.