LISA satellites need to be stable to within 1 nm per root Hz of bandwidth. (It's been a while since I worked on it, so someone else is welcome to explain what exactly this means.) Suffice it to say that this is a tractable problem, and I would argue no more difficult than the Advanced LIGO designs currently being implemented. And you get more bang for the buck in sensitivity.
Please show me a good reference for LIGO expected detection rates. This is taken from a popular book, but the numbers agree with what I remember hearing from those working on LIGO.
Supernova (within our galaxy)
1 to 3 per century
Black Hole/Black Hole Merger (300 million light-years)
1 per 1,000 years to 1 per year
Neutron Star/Neutron Star Merger (60 million light-years)
1 per 10,000 years to 10 per century
Neutron Star/Black Hole Merger (130 million light-years)
1 per 10,000 years to 10 per century
Source: Einstein's Unfinished Symphony: Listening to the Sounds of Space-Time by Marcia Bartusiak
The interferometric GW detection systems have been under development for quite a while. These include the LIGO project in the US, the GEO in the UK/Germany, and Australia and I believe Japan and Italy have their own versions. LIGO started collecting data a couple of years ago. So now the guys in the UK turned on their instrument.
So what's the big deal?.. Well, there isn't one. Today's instruments are pretty damn bad. I don't remember the numbers, but you'd have to run them for quite a few decades in a row for a good chance to observe one event (it would have to be something big falling into a black hole somewhere relatively close to us, or a major supernova, or something equally rare.) Essentially, you are trying to measure a ludicriously small displacement (10^-16 cm) of a macroscopic object.
The good thing is, technology is continuing to improve, increasing the sensitivity. Furthermore, there's hope (subject to funding) of creating a space-based version of the experiment by bouncing laser beams between three satellites millions of kilometers apart. So is the GW detection imminent?.. Considering the scale and cost of the projects, it better be, but I (being a scientist and all) prefer to steer clear of that word. So provided the funding doesn't get cut, we'll very likely detect gravitational waves in a few years. But be prepared to wait.
When, oh when will iTunes allow me to search library from within a playlist??? Here's how this could work: from a playlist,
1. Say, Ctrl+click into search box
Do a search, screen would split into a search results pane on top, current playlist on the bottom.
2. Drag the song you want to where you want it in the playlist.
I hate having to:
1. Click "Library"
2. Click the search box
3. Drag the song to the tiny playlist name entry in the left-hand pane.
4. Click on the playlist name
5. Drag the song to where I want it in the list.
This is something everyone does quite often. Making such a common procedure take 5 steps as opposed to 2 makes no sense at all. Hello, Apple!
(And yes, I know you can open a playlist in a separate window, but it is klunky and only useful if you are building a list from scratch, not when you want to add a couple songs on the fly.)
The search bar is nice, but when, oh when will iTunes allow me to search library from within a playlist??? Here's how this could work: from a playlist,
1. Say, Ctrl+click into search box
Do a search, screen would split into a search results pane on top, current playlist on the bottom.
2. Drag the song you want to where you want it in the playlist.
I hate having to:
1. Click "Library"
2. Click the search box
3. Drag the song to the tiny playlist name entry in the left-hand pane.
4. Click on the playlist name
5. Drag the song to where I want it in the list.
This is something everyone does quite often. Making such a common procedure take 5 steps as opposed to 2 makes no sense at all. Hello, Apple!
The grand vision behind such projects is to make flexible information channels into a public utility. Now, how could the city use this infrastructure?
Well, it would simplify monitoring various aspects of the city operation, e.g. expired parking meters, traffic, air quality, etc. It would likely reduce the installation costs of police cameras in sketchy neighborhoods, red-light cameras, and so forth.
I'm not usually the one to wear tinfoil hats, but I think we'll see ubiquitous sensor networks in the future, and they will likely have some big-brother-ish uses to them. Free WiFi could be the first step to creating them.
I've been a happy user of Thumbs Plus for photo cataloguing/management, but I might want to migrate to Picasa. The trouble is, how do I migrate my existing database (keywords + comments) to Picasa?.. Anyone know the format of their database?.. I could export Thumbs Plus database in Access format, but if I can't hammer it somehow into Picasa, migrating wouldn't be an option...
The two major hardware issues are (1) installing an AP in the plane and (2) getting the signal to the plane from the satellite. Now, JetBlue already has hardware installed on every plane to get DirecTV signal. Aren't DirecTV satellites also used for satellite internet?.. So JetBlue might be ahead of the game in terms of hardware readiness. Plus, they already offer free WiFi in their JFK terminal. Wanna bet they will be among the first to offer this?...
...I personally was imagining commuters on the train glued to their cell phone screens watching Seinfeld reruns. What bothers me in the image is this massive escape from reality and from interactions with others. Vaguely reminiscent of the 1984 Apple commercial...
No more bugging my friends when I'm making plans on the fly in the middle of the city and asking them to Google something for me (address, event time, etc:) I'll just have my laptop in my car...
Hopefully other people will also find this productive... Then again, maybe we'll just have a bunch of bored jobless guys sitting in cafes and posting to craigslist personals.
My requirements for a phone are (1) FM Radio (2) Speakerphone (3) Bluetooth. So far, I always had to choose 2 out of 3. But that will change once the 6230 hits the stores (sometime in Q1 2004). It's also chock-full of all the semi-useless gadgetry (still/video camera, mp3 player). It's also not a Symbian-based phone. And it will probably cost an arm and a leg, at least initially. And I won't predict how it will sync with iSync. But still, it promises to be a pretty fun phone!
I was never a Mac-head, and what initially completely turned me off about Macs (back in the days of DOS) was their "less is more" attitude. No command line, one mouse button - sure, that simplified life for an average user, but not for me.
Now comes the iPod. I own one. It plays music. But I need more features. On a regular basis, I use FM radio and a voice recorder (and don't tell me to get a $50 attachement to record lousy quality mono audio). Why doesn't the iPod have those things? If iRiver has been implementing these features for years on their players, it should be trivial for Apple.
But it's not in their design philosophy. Stuffing it with features would, in Jobs' opinion, detract from its greatness as a music player.
Hasn't OS X taught Apple that you can design something that can both be minimalistic, and yet have enough features and power to satisfy any hard-core geek?.. Why can't iPod be like that?.. Unfortunately, I doubt it'll happen. I'm eagerly waiting not for the 4G iPod, but for the 2G iRiver iHP-120 -- that's a company whose products never stop evolving, and if they try hard enough they can make a UI at least decently comparable to iPod's.
"Niggardly" predates the negative connotations now associated with how the word sounds. People who have a problem with it are completely irrational. Just like it's stupid to advocate deprecating the word out of the language, it's stupid to advocate getting rid of well-rooted technical terminology. My main point is that there's a number of terms one could have used in the first place to communicate the notion of controller/controlled without anyone being upset.
If someone were to propose similar terminology today, it just wouldn't fly. A few decades back, it did, and it's here to stay. That still doesn't mean that it was the best choice of terminology.
I've dealt with plenty of hard drives in my life, and it still disturbs me a bit. The combination "Master/Slave" evokes negative emotions, because we all know the injustices and suffering inflicted by one group on another.
A lot of people will not make the connection, but to many other, it's an unpleasant concept to bring up, and they will be disturbed and offended. To them, "Master/Slave" would be the same as, say, "Hitler/Jews" for others.
Plus, the terminology isn't as clear as, say, "master/subordinate". Non-geeks will likely be thrown off way more by "master/slave" than by another choice of terms. And while all of them might be thinking "WTF??" as they read the label next to the drive's jumpers, black people have every reason to be pissed about it.
IMHO, this is the only way for Google to stay true to Brin's maxim, "Don't Be Evil."
For motivation, look at fast food industry. Ever since the 50's it's been one giant rat race of who's going to sell more burgers. It's led to the dominance of giant corporations, who now have a huge market share, sleazy business practices, and have created really shitty labor conditions for millions of workers to boot. The only "non-evil" fast food joint is In-N-Out (if you live in CA you know what I'm talkin' about:) They (a) make great burgers, (b) have the highest wages in the fast food industry and as a result have the highest customer/employee satisfaction ratings.
What's the point here? Well, In-N-Out is privately held, and have resisted multiple pressures to go public. Hence, no insentive to increase margins by depressing wages, to follow the latest trends in the industry by offering the Fast Food Fashion of the Season (be it bagelwiches, salads, tacos, etc)... They just make really good burgers.
So far, Google has done just that: focused on what its original purpose was -- to be a kick-ass search engine -- and done it remarkably well. But I doubt that after the IPO things will not change for the worse and we will have another Microsoft on our hands... Or McDonald's.
I concur. Lack of radio is a very annoying oversight. I'm a big fan of NPR, and I know a number of others who listen to it regularly. I recently got a cell phone with built-in radio, and am listening to my iPod much less often as a result (unless the NPR show really sucks, I'm too lazy to get my iPod out). I'm not too happy with this setup, though. So, one of the two things will happen: (1) I'll sell my iPod (or maybe give it as a gift to my sis:) and buy an iHP-120 or (2) I'll get a Nokia 6230 and a big MMC card when it comes out (Cell + radio + mp3 player + camera)...
I was stuck when working on a problem set; I Googled for a while and found out that there's a bunch of helpful info in one particular problems and solutions book. Curious about the book, I went on Amazon, and lo and behold, I can actually read the book. So, I look at the table of contents, find the relevant section, and search for the heading of that section. I can now read two pages from it. Not a problem; just pick a phrase on the second page and use it as a search query. Lather, rinse, repeat.
That, of course, would be impractical to do for more than ~4 pages (which was what I needed), but you get the point.
In a couple of hours I joined a few other guys working on the set, and it turned out they had just bought the book. There was a big "Doh!" when I showed them my printouts.
Now, if I actually found the book genuinely useful as a result of this experience, I'd buy a hardcopy. But I for now I think I'll stick with the current method. And I suspect many people might do just that: oftentimes there are references that aren't crucial to have, but convenient to turn to on a few occasions. The book search feature is perfect for those.
Well, iTunes is very functional, and very easy to use. This last point is very important for the less technical crowd, which Apple traditionally courted. (Plus, lots of non-techie people buy iPods just because it's an expensive toy that's chic at the moment.) I imagine that for a lot of people, iTunes will be the starting point for digitizing their CD collection.
I personally am not drooling over it too much, and am frankly a bit disappointed. It seems that Apple designers became so focused on implementing everything and the kitchen sink (ripping, burning, store, etc) that they overlooked making it into a quality music player. Yes, it has great playlist features. But this doesn't make it a great player.
As it stands, the iTunes' interface is simply too clunky (for playing music.) Much worse than Winamp, which is very compact yet functional. Winamp gives you full playback controls, shows the playlist, without taking too much screen real estate. I can put it where I need it, so that it's always at my fingertips, yet takes up minimum amount of space: it can run out of system tray; it can remain docked on top of other windows at the corner of the screen, just big enough to show controls and maybe a couple of playlist entries, etc. (With plugins you can get even more very convenient features, like global keyboard/mouse shortcuts.)
With iTunes, it's all or nothing. The full application has to be in the foreground if you want to browse through the playlist, or just have the playlist in plain sight. This is a pain in the ass. If you minimize the program to its compact size, you just get minimal controls; you can't see the playlist, and the program still wastes space on the taskbar as opposed to minimizing to system tray.
It shouldn't be hard to make iTunes do all that Winamp does right now in terms of UI. For starters, how about an option to display the playlist in the compact size? Not the entire title/genre/composer/blah/blah/ grid, just the title and the artist. Make the program minimizeable to tray. Implement global keyboard shortcuts. Give a few options for resizing/docking the compact view window. Then the program will truly be insanely great.
Streets and Trips is useful for short door-to-door trips. When I used it recently on a road trip across the country, several design shortcomings became obvious.
The most vexing: you can't measure the distance along your planned route. You want to know how far it is to a given city/gas station/motel? One would think that you'd be able to click on the location where you are now, then on the other location, and it would tell you the distance. Of course, that would be too obvious. What you really need to do is draw a free-hand line with the mouse, over the already highlighted route. This is inconvenient (esp. on a laptop touchpad in a moving car), clunky, and plain dumb.
Want the program to help you with your daily schedule? Sure, just set the time when you start driving, end driving (+/- several hours), and expected average speed. This is going to remain the same for the duration of the trip, and it's impossible to adjust on the fly (i.e. just type in the time when you actually started driving and having it adjust the times.) I could go on, but you get my point. It's useful, functional, but most road-trip specific functions are ill-thought through and largely useless.
First off, I thing that iTunes is a really good piece of software and I'll be a great help in organizing my music collection and syncing with my iPod. But it seems that Apple designers became so focused on implementing all the cool features (music store, ripping, burning, etc) that they overlooked making it into a quality music player. After all, how hard can it be; just slap on the play/pause/rew/ff controls and you are set. Right? Wrong.
As it stands, the iTunes' interface is simply too clunky for a music player. That's bad. Music player's UI should have a different look and feel than that of a "normal" application. Winamp is very compact but functional. It can give you full playback controls, show the playlist, without taking too much screen real estate. I can put it where I need it, so that it's always at my fingertips, yet takes up minimum amount of space: it can run out of system tray; it can remain docked on top of other windows at the corner of the screen, just big enough to show controls and maybe a couple of playlist entries, etc.
With iTunes, it's all or nothing. The full application has to be in the foreground if you want to browse through the playlist, or just have the playlist in plain sight. This is very inconvenient. If you minimize the program to its compact size, you just get minimal controls; you can't see the playlist, and the program still wastes space on the taskbar as opposed to minimizing to system tray.
Another feature of Winamp that I am not willing to give up are global keyboard/mouse shortcuts (I had to get a plug-in for that.)
It shouldn't be hard to make iTunes do all that Winamp does right now in terms of UI. For starters, how about an option to display the playlist in the compact size? Not the entire title/genre/composer/blah/blah/ grid, just the title and the artist. Make the program minimizeable to tray. Implement global keyboard shortcuts. Give a few options for resizing/docking the compact view window. Then the program will truly be insanely great.
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Oh yeah, the detection rates are given for LIGO I. LIGO II should improve the numbers dramatically. Which was my point in the original post.
LISA satellites need to be stable to within 1 nm per root Hz of bandwidth. (It's been a while since I worked on it, so someone else is welcome to explain what exactly this means.) Suffice it to say that this is a tractable problem, and I would argue no more difficult than the Advanced LIGO designs currently being implemented. And you get more bang for the buck in sensitivity.
Please show me a good reference for LIGO expected detection rates. This is taken from a popular book, but the numbers agree with what I remember hearing from those working on LIGO.
Supernova (within our galaxy)
1 to 3 per century
Black Hole/Black Hole Merger (300 million light-years)
1 per 1,000 years to 1 per year
Neutron Star/Neutron Star Merger (60 million light-years)
1 per 10,000 years to 10 per century
Neutron Star/Black Hole Merger (130 million light-years)
1 per 10,000 years to 10 per century
Source: Einstein's Unfinished Symphony: Listening to the Sounds of Space-Time by Marcia Bartusiak
The interferometric GW detection systems have been under development for quite a while. These include the LIGO project in the US, the GEO in the UK/Germany, and Australia and I believe Japan and Italy have their own versions. LIGO started collecting data a couple of years ago. So now the guys in the UK turned on their instrument.
So what's the big deal?.. Well, there isn't one. Today's instruments are pretty damn bad. I don't remember the numbers, but you'd have to run them for quite a few decades in a row for a good chance to observe one event (it would have to be something big falling into a black hole somewhere relatively close to us, or a major supernova, or something equally rare.) Essentially, you are trying to measure a ludicriously small displacement (10^-16 cm) of a macroscopic object.
The good thing is, technology is continuing to improve, increasing the sensitivity. Furthermore, there's hope (subject to funding) of creating a space-based version of the experiment by bouncing laser beams between three satellites millions of kilometers apart. So is the GW detection imminent?.. Considering the scale and cost of the projects, it better be, but I (being a scientist and all) prefer to steer clear of that word. So provided the funding doesn't get cut, we'll very likely detect gravitational waves in a few years. But be prepared to wait.
For more deets, check out www.ligo.caltech.edu
When, oh when will iTunes allow me to search library from within a playlist??? Here's how this could work: from a playlist,
1. Say, Ctrl+click into search box
Do a search, screen would split into a search results pane on top, current playlist on the bottom.
2. Drag the song you want to where you want it in the playlist.
I hate having to:
1. Click "Library"
2. Click the search box
3. Drag the song to the tiny playlist name entry in the left-hand pane.
4. Click on the playlist name
5. Drag the song to where I want it in the list.
This is something everyone does quite often. Making such a common procedure take 5 steps as opposed to 2 makes no sense at all. Hello, Apple!
(And yes, I know you can open a playlist in a separate window, but it is klunky and only useful if you are building a list from scratch, not when you want to add a couple songs on the fly.)
The search bar is nice, but when, oh when will iTunes allow me to search library from within a playlist??? Here's how this could work: from a playlist, 1. Say, Ctrl+click into search box Do a search, screen would split into a search results pane on top, current playlist on the bottom. 2. Drag the song you want to where you want it in the playlist. I hate having to: 1. Click "Library" 2. Click the search box 3. Drag the song to the tiny playlist name entry in the left-hand pane. 4. Click on the playlist name 5. Drag the song to where I want it in the list. This is something everyone does quite often. Making such a common procedure take 5 steps as opposed to 2 makes no sense at all. Hello, Apple!
In Russian "sassou" means "[I] suck". Looking at the design of the car, all I have to say is, you certainly do.
The grand vision behind such projects is to make flexible information channels into a public utility. Now, how could the city use this infrastructure? Well, it would simplify monitoring various aspects of the city operation, e.g. expired parking meters, traffic, air quality, etc. It would likely reduce the installation costs of police cameras in sketchy neighborhoods, red-light cameras, and so forth. I'm not usually the one to wear tinfoil hats, but I think we'll see ubiquitous sensor networks in the future, and they will likely have some big-brother-ish uses to them. Free WiFi could be the first step to creating them.
I've been a happy user of Thumbs Plus for photo cataloguing/management, but I might want to migrate to Picasa. The trouble is, how do I migrate my existing database (keywords + comments) to Picasa?.. Anyone know the format of their database?.. I could export Thumbs Plus database in Access format, but if I can't hammer it somehow into Picasa, migrating wouldn't be an option...
The two major hardware issues are (1) installing an AP in the plane and (2) getting the signal to the plane from the satellite. Now, JetBlue already has hardware installed on every plane to get DirecTV signal. Aren't DirecTV satellites also used for satellite internet?.. So JetBlue might be ahead of the game in terms of hardware readiness. Plus, they already offer free WiFi in their JFK terminal. Wanna bet they will be among the first to offer this?...
...I personally was imagining commuters on the train glued to their cell phone screens watching Seinfeld reruns. What bothers me in the image is this massive escape from reality and from interactions with others. Vaguely reminiscent of the 1984 Apple commercial...
No more bugging my friends when I'm making plans on the fly in the middle of the city and asking them to Google something for me (address, event time, etc :) I'll just have my laptop in my car...
Hopefully other people will also find this productive... Then again, maybe we'll just have a bunch of bored jobless guys sitting in cafes and posting to craigslist personals.
My requirements for a phone are (1) FM Radio (2) Speakerphone (3) Bluetooth. So far, I always had to choose 2 out of 3. But that will change once the 6230 hits the stores (sometime in Q1 2004). It's also chock-full of all the semi-useless gadgetry (still/video camera, mp3 player). It's also not a Symbian-based phone. And it will probably cost an arm and a leg, at least initially. And I won't predict how it will sync with iSync. But still, it promises to be a pretty fun phone!
I was never a Mac-head, and what initially completely turned me off about Macs (back in the days of DOS) was their "less is more" attitude. No command line, one mouse button - sure, that simplified life for an average user, but not for me.
Now comes the iPod. I own one. It plays music. But I need more features. On a regular basis, I use FM radio and a voice recorder (and don't tell me to get a $50 attachement to record lousy quality mono audio). Why doesn't the iPod have those things? If iRiver has been implementing these features for years on their players, it should be trivial for Apple.
But it's not in their design philosophy. Stuffing it with features would, in Jobs' opinion, detract from its greatness as a music player.
Hasn't OS X taught Apple that you can design something that can both be minimalistic, and yet have enough features and power to satisfy any hard-core geek?.. Why can't iPod be like that?.. Unfortunately, I doubt it'll happen. I'm eagerly waiting not for the 4G iPod, but for the 2G iRiver iHP-120 -- that's a company whose products never stop evolving, and if they try hard enough they can make a UI at least decently comparable to iPod's.
"Niggardly" predates the negative connotations now associated with how the word sounds. People who have a problem with it are completely irrational. Just like it's stupid to advocate deprecating the word out of the language, it's stupid to advocate getting rid of well-rooted technical terminology. My main point is that there's a number of terms one could have used in the first place to communicate the notion of controller/controlled without anyone being upset.
If someone were to propose similar terminology today, it just wouldn't fly. A few decades back, it did, and it's here to stay. That still doesn't mean that it was the best choice of terminology.
I've dealt with plenty of hard drives in my life, and it still disturbs me a bit. The combination "Master/Slave" evokes negative emotions, because we all know the injustices and suffering inflicted by one group on another.
A lot of people will not make the connection, but to many other, it's an unpleasant concept to bring up, and they will be disturbed and offended. To them, "Master/Slave" would be the same as, say, "Hitler/Jews" for others.
Plus, the terminology isn't as clear as, say, "master/subordinate". Non-geeks will likely be thrown off way more by "master/slave" than by another choice of terms. And while all of them might be thinking "WTF??" as they read the label next to the drive's jumpers, black people have every reason to be pissed about it.
IMHO, this is the only way for Google to stay true to Brin's maxim, "Don't Be Evil."
:) They (a) make great burgers, (b) have the highest wages in the fast food industry and as a result have the highest customer/employee satisfaction ratings.
For motivation, look at fast food industry. Ever since the 50's it's been one giant rat race of who's going to sell more burgers. It's led to the dominance of giant corporations, who now have a huge market share, sleazy business practices, and have created really shitty labor conditions for millions of workers to boot. The only "non-evil" fast food joint is In-N-Out (if you live in CA you know what I'm talkin' about
What's the point here? Well, In-N-Out is privately held, and have resisted multiple pressures to go public. Hence, no insentive to increase margins by depressing wages, to follow the latest trends in the industry by offering the Fast Food Fashion of the Season (be it bagelwiches, salads, tacos, etc)... They just make really good burgers.
So far, Google has done just that: focused on what its original purpose was -- to be a kick-ass search engine -- and done it remarkably well. But I doubt that after the IPO things will not change for the worse and we will have another Microsoft on our hands... Or McDonald's.
I concur. Lack of radio is a very annoying oversight. I'm a big fan of NPR, and I know a number of others who listen to it regularly. I recently got a cell phone with built-in radio, and am listening to my iPod much less often as a result (unless the NPR show really sucks, I'm too lazy to get my iPod out). I'm not too happy with this setup, though. So, one of the two things will happen: (1) I'll sell my iPod (or maybe give it as a gift to my sis :) and buy an iHP-120 or (2) I'll get a Nokia 6230 and a big MMC card when it comes out (Cell + radio + mp3 player + camera)...
I was stuck when working on a problem set; I Googled for a while and found out that there's a bunch of helpful info in one particular problems and solutions book. Curious about the book, I went on Amazon, and lo and behold, I can actually read the book. So, I look at the table of contents, find the relevant section, and search for the heading of that section. I can now read two pages from it. Not a problem; just pick a phrase on the second page and use it as a search query. Lather, rinse, repeat.
That, of course, would be impractical to do for more than ~4 pages (which was what I needed), but you get the point.
In a couple of hours I joined a few other guys working on the set, and it turned out they had just bought the book. There was a big "Doh!" when I showed them my printouts.
Now, if I actually found the book genuinely useful as a result of this experience, I'd buy a hardcopy. But I for now I think I'll stick with the current method. And I suspect many people might do just that: oftentimes there are references that aren't crucial to have, but convenient to turn to on a few occasions. The book search feature is perfect for those.
Well, iTunes is very functional, and very easy to use. This last point is very important for the less technical crowd, which Apple traditionally courted. (Plus, lots of non-techie people buy iPods just because it's an expensive toy that's chic at the moment.) I imagine that for a lot of people, iTunes will be the starting point for digitizing their CD collection.
I personally am not drooling over it too much, and am frankly a bit disappointed. It seems that Apple designers became so focused on implementing everything and the kitchen sink (ripping, burning, store, etc) that they overlooked making it into a quality music player. Yes, it has great playlist features. But this doesn't make it a great player.
As it stands, the iTunes' interface is simply too clunky (for playing music.) Much worse than Winamp, which is very compact yet functional. Winamp gives you full playback controls, shows the playlist, without taking too much screen real estate. I can put it where I need it, so that it's always at my fingertips, yet takes up minimum amount of space: it can run out of system tray; it can remain docked on top of other windows at the corner of the screen, just big enough to show controls and maybe a couple of playlist entries, etc. (With plugins you can get even more very convenient features, like global keyboard/mouse shortcuts.)
With iTunes, it's all or nothing. The full application has to be in the foreground if you want to browse through the playlist, or just have the playlist in plain sight. This is a pain in the ass. If you minimize the program to its compact size, you just get minimal controls; you can't see the playlist, and the program still wastes space on the taskbar as opposed to minimizing to system tray.
It shouldn't be hard to make iTunes do all that Winamp does right now in terms of UI. For starters, how about an option to display the playlist in the compact size? Not the entire title/genre/composer/blah/blah/ grid, just the title and the artist. Make the program minimizeable to tray. Implement global keyboard shortcuts. Give a few options for resizing/docking the compact view window. Then the program will truly be insanely great.
Streets and Trips is useful for short door-to-door trips. When I used it recently on a road trip across the country, several design shortcomings became obvious.
The most vexing: you can't measure the distance along your planned route. You want to know how far it is to a given city/gas station/motel? One would think that you'd be able to click on the location where you are now, then on the other location, and it would tell you the distance. Of course, that would be too obvious. What you really need to do is draw a free-hand line with the mouse, over the already highlighted route. This is inconvenient (esp. on a laptop touchpad in a moving car), clunky, and plain dumb.
Want the program to help you with your daily schedule? Sure, just set the time when you start driving, end driving (+/- several hours), and expected average speed. This is going to remain the same for the duration of the trip, and it's impossible to adjust on the fly (i.e. just type in the time when you actually started driving and having it adjust the times.) I could go on, but you get my point. It's useful, functional, but most road-trip specific functions are ill-thought through and largely useless.
First off, I thing that iTunes is a really good piece of software and I'll be a great help in organizing my music collection and syncing with my iPod. But it seems that Apple designers became so focused on implementing all the cool features (music store, ripping, burning, etc) that they overlooked making it into a quality music player. After all, how hard can it be; just slap on the play/pause/rew/ff controls and you are set. Right? Wrong.
As it stands, the iTunes' interface is simply too clunky for a music player. That's bad. Music player's UI should have a different look and feel than that of a "normal" application. Winamp is very compact but functional. It can give you full playback controls, show the playlist, without taking too much screen real estate. I can put it where I need it, so that it's always at my fingertips, yet takes up minimum amount of space: it can run out of system tray; it can remain docked on top of other windows at the corner of the screen, just big enough to show controls and maybe a couple of playlist entries, etc.
With iTunes, it's all or nothing. The full application has to be in the foreground if you want to browse through the playlist, or just have the playlist in plain sight. This is very inconvenient. If you minimize the program to its compact size, you just get minimal controls; you can't see the playlist, and the program still wastes space on the taskbar as opposed to minimizing to system tray.
Another feature of Winamp that I am not willing to give up are global keyboard/mouse shortcuts (I had to get a plug-in for that.)
It shouldn't be hard to make iTunes do all that Winamp does right now in terms of UI. For starters, how about an option to display the playlist in the compact size? Not the entire title/genre/composer/blah/blah/ grid, just the title and the artist. Make the program minimizeable to tray. Implement global keyboard shortcuts. Give a few options for resizing/docking the compact view window. Then the program will truly be insanely great.