The 3G/3GS had what sounds to be the same problem with poor reception when you hold the phone while touching the metal edge around the screen.
You can repeat this test as follows:
1. Put your phone into "field test" mode by dialing *3001#12345#* (curiously discontinued with iPhone OS4).
2. Note the signal strength when phone is sitting on a table.
3. Note the signal strength when holding it normally or just touching the metal edge - it's way lower.
4. Pinch the phone so that you are not touching the metal edge. Note that the strength returns to the level it was at while on the table.
I have personally not been bothered by this limitation with the iPhone 3G in normal use. When signal strength is really poor, I avoid touching the metal edge, but aside from that, it's business as usual.
I would be curious to know if the iPhone 4 is any worse than the iPhone 3G/3GS. Has anyone seen a comparison?
+1 for bullshit.
The demographic of people who own iPhones and iPod Touches is mostly made up of mainstream non-tinkerers who wouldn't know where to start pirating an app, even if they wanted to. I would venture to guess that less than 10% of owners could steal an app if they tried. Of those, I would guess that less than 10% would actually steal an app, given that they only cost a few bucks anyway.
How less than 1% manages to steal 3x more apps than the other greater than 99% buys is beyond me.
Scrum is a project management methodology. The role of Scrum Master is a lightweight project management role.
Would you make your best developer your project manager? Hopefully not, unless that person was even more valuable to the company as a project manager.
Choose your Scrum Master using the same criteria as you would a project manager, and leave your best developers developing if that is where they are most valuable to the company.
The logical conclusion of this is that, in the future, all men will one day look like hot women.
I therefore recommend heavy investment in X-ray glasses research. Please nudge your local decider-of-these-things.
In the meantime, we should encourage fashionistas to continue to deem that tight pants are IN.
I am assuming that your end goal is a peer-reviewed academic publication. I have three main points:
1. You can't do a usability study of "Gnome vs. KDE" - the scope is too large. To design a usability study that is conclusive and doable, you need to reduce the scope to something very specific. Focus on one aspect of the desktops at a time. Reducing your scope to one aspect of usability, like customizability, learnability, satisfaction, task performance, etc., is a good starting point.
2. You need to study techniques rather than brands. Academics really don't care if KDE is better than Gnome, but they do care if a technique used by KDE is better than a technique used by Gnome. You may want to start with an assessment of each to find where they have different techniques for similar purposes and target a set of differences.
3. Studies that look at specific, branded technologies usually do so because they want to take advantage of aspects of real-world use, like large-scale or long-term usage studies. Otherwise, it is usually better to just compare the interaction techniques using apps that you hack up yourself, as you can better isolate what you are trying to test. Make sure that your study is making use of the benefits of KDE and Gnome, which are that they have a large user group with users that have varying degrees of experience, they are used in real environments for real tasks, etc. If you are not making use of these things, then you might be wasting your time by studying existing desktops rather than making your own app that more rigorously looks at what you are trying to study.
It is certainly possible to conduct an academic usability study of KDE vs. Gnome in other ways, but it might be less of a cookie-cutter study design and might be harder to convince reviewers that it is rigorous. If you are going do to something that is out of the box, keep in mind that reviewers will be extra critical of your methodology and that your study design will have to be air-tight and your conclusions will need to be modest. Lots of really cool papers get rejected because they study too much at once, and the conclusions that follow are questionable.
As for the details, the best way to go about designing this study depends on where you are trying to publish it. Have a look at the conferences or journals that you want to publish to and see what similar work has been published before and how the studies were designed. Considering that the acceptance rates for good conferences is low (e.g. CHI is usually around 15%), it is best to tailor your work to match what has been successful in the recent (2-3 years) past.
The reason is that all of these software providers are paying the hardware makers to include their crap on the machines. This causes some terrible usability problems for end users.
For example, my sister recently bought an Inspiron laptop from Dell and called me complaining about pop-ups. I figured she had a virus or something, so I had her bring it over. It turned out that the pop-ups were from APPLICATIONS that Dell installed - demos that were asking for payment, garbageware asking to be updated and asking to be configured, etc. I ended up spending 2-3 hours removing and configuring stuff until I felt the machine was usable.
I expect that hardware sellers will one day hear a demand from end users for computers that work more like appliances. Until then, harware sellers will keep bowing down to $$ incentives from software providers to include their software in their builds.
No - my post implied that despite the fact that people were saying that the search business was wrapped up, Google came along with a better mousetrap and demonstrated that it was not true. A similar thing could happen to Ebay or Amazon, and I suggested that Google folks would be well-suited to pull it off.
...the Slashdot reader "evil MS plot" conspiracy theory that should have been posted here already, but for some reason wasn't.
Bill says, "To compete with Plan 9's multimedia support, we need to turn young girls in Pakistan into sweat shop programmers."
Steve replies, "Graaaghrgh!!", signifying his contrived air of excitement about the idea, but more importantly, his approval.
Bill says, "OK - find me a poster girl, and give her one of those certification thingies we make. Oh, and buy Slashdot so that we can put her on there too."
Disclaimer: This is a true story.
More importantly, it can't:
-don spandex
-play behind its head (23 fingers, but no head - wtf?!)
-wear armadillos in its trousers
-light itself on fire
-entertain groupies
-be pawned to pay rent
Isn't that what guitar is all about?
This thing sux.
Slashdot Mirror
The 3G/3GS had what sounds to be the same problem with poor reception when you hold the phone while touching the metal edge around the screen.
You can repeat this test as follows:
1. Put your phone into "field test" mode by dialing *3001#12345#* (curiously discontinued with iPhone OS4).
2. Note the signal strength when phone is sitting on a table.
3. Note the signal strength when holding it normally or just touching the metal edge - it's way lower.
4. Pinch the phone so that you are not touching the metal edge. Note that the strength returns to the level it was at while on the table.
I have personally not been bothered by this limitation with the iPhone 3G in normal use. When signal strength is really poor, I avoid touching the metal edge, but aside from that, it's business as usual.
I would be curious to know if the iPhone 4 is any worse than the iPhone 3G/3GS. Has anyone seen a comparison?
+1 for bullshit. The demographic of people who own iPhones and iPod Touches is mostly made up of mainstream non-tinkerers who wouldn't know where to start pirating an app, even if they wanted to. I would venture to guess that less than 10% of owners could steal an app if they tried. Of those, I would guess that less than 10% would actually steal an app, given that they only cost a few bucks anyway. How less than 1% manages to steal 3x more apps than the other greater than 99% buys is beyond me.
Seriously? These sound like next generation Valley Girl names, not self-respecting geek prefixes.
When using prefixes that end in 'a' or 'o', I feel macho. Megabyes! Teraflops! Yottapwnage! Yeah, baby!
From my cold, dead hands, Apple.
BTW, who thought of the cutsey name "Apple" anyway? Nice name. Pfft.
Scrum is a project management methodology. The role of Scrum Master is a lightweight project management role.
Would you make your best developer your project manager? Hopefully not, unless that person was even more valuable to the company as a project manager.
Choose your Scrum Master using the same criteria as you would a project manager, and leave your best developers developing if that is where they are most valuable to the company.
The logical conclusion of this is that, in the future, all men will one day look like hot women. I therefore recommend heavy investment in X-ray glasses research. Please nudge your local decider-of-these-things. In the meantime, we should encourage fashionistas to continue to deem that tight pants are IN.
Yeah - we are not loners, dammit. We work in TEAMS of male geeks. WTB hawt ladies...
I am assuming that your end goal is a peer-reviewed academic publication. I have three main points:
1. You can't do a usability study of "Gnome vs. KDE" - the scope is too large. To design a usability study that is conclusive and doable, you need to reduce the scope to something very specific. Focus on one aspect of the desktops at a time. Reducing your scope to one aspect of usability, like customizability, learnability, satisfaction, task performance, etc., is a good starting point.
2. You need to study techniques rather than brands. Academics really don't care if KDE is better than Gnome, but they do care if a technique used by KDE is better than a technique used by Gnome. You may want to start with an assessment of each to find where they have different techniques for similar purposes and target a set of differences.
3. Studies that look at specific, branded technologies usually do so because they want to take advantage of aspects of real-world use, like large-scale or long-term usage studies. Otherwise, it is usually better to just compare the interaction techniques using apps that you hack up yourself, as you can better isolate what you are trying to test. Make sure that your study is making use of the benefits of KDE and Gnome, which are that they have a large user group with users that have varying degrees of experience, they are used in real environments for real tasks, etc. If you are not making use of these things, then you might be wasting your time by studying existing desktops rather than making your own app that more rigorously looks at what you are trying to study.
It is certainly possible to conduct an academic usability study of KDE vs. Gnome in other ways, but it might be less of a cookie-cutter study design and might be harder to convince reviewers that it is rigorous. If you are going do to something that is out of the box, keep in mind that reviewers will be extra critical of your methodology and that your study design will have to be air-tight and your conclusions will need to be modest. Lots of really cool papers get rejected because they study too much at once, and the conclusions that follow are questionable.
As for the details, the best way to go about designing this study depends on where you are trying to publish it. Have a look at the conferences or journals that you want to publish to and see what similar work has been published before and how the studies were designed. Considering that the acceptance rates for good conferences is low (e.g. CHI is usually around 15%), it is best to tailor your work to match what has been successful in the recent (2-3 years) past.
Good luck with your study.
For example, my sister recently bought an Inspiron laptop from Dell and called me complaining about pop-ups. I figured she had a virus or something, so I had her bring it over. It turned out that the pop-ups were from APPLICATIONS that Dell installed - demos that were asking for payment, garbageware asking to be updated and asking to be configured, etc. I ended up spending 2-3 hours removing and configuring stuff until I felt the machine was usable.
I expect that hardware sellers will one day hear a demand from end users for computers that work more like appliances. Until then, harware sellers will keep bowing down to $$ incentives from software providers to include their software in their builds.
No - my post implied that despite the fact that people were saying that the search business was wrapped up, Google came along with a better mousetrap and demonstrated that it was not true. A similar thing could happen to Ebay or Amazon, and I suggested that Google folks would be well-suited to pull it off.
On the contrary to what?
Why would anyone want to use Google when AltaVista and Yahoo! are perfectly fine and people are used to using them?
Of course there is room for a new online seller. Ebay could certainly use a challenger, and who better to step up to the plate?
...the Slashdot reader "evil MS plot" conspiracy theory that should have been posted here already, but for some reason wasn't. Bill says, "To compete with Plan 9's multimedia support, we need to turn young girls in Pakistan into sweat shop programmers." Steve replies, "Graaaghrgh!!", signifying his contrived air of excitement about the idea, but more importantly, his approval. Bill says, "OK - find me a poster girl, and give her one of those certification thingies we make. Oh, and buy Slashdot so that we can put her on there too." Disclaimer: This is a true story.
More importantly, it can't: -don spandex -play behind its head (23 fingers, but no head - wtf?!) -wear armadillos in its trousers -light itself on fire -entertain groupies -be pawned to pay rent Isn't that what guitar is all about? This thing sux.
This will make a neat addition to the rapid prototyping toolbox for HCI researchers.