Nokia's sales have been poor because everyone is waiting for the new Lumia's. And regardless, the Nokia isn't the only phone running Windows Phone 8. It's coming out on HTC, Samsung and LG. There have been rumors that Microsoft will be developing their own phone and let's not forget Surface.
I caught a few games during the playoffs and I will admit that I found them fun to watch, but I'd attribute that to the fact that there was something at stake. In game 48 of a 160+ game season the sport is mind-numbing.
It's why I'll never understand Americans who argue that soccer is boring. Compared to what? A bunch of guys standing around in an open field waiting for a ball to fly their way? Or the ponderous stop-start stutter of football? I'm not knocking those sports, but I do think people need a bit of perspective.
But it's a safe bet that physics will make anything exciting.
I think a very important caveat here is that Glassdoor is a job search site. And like every job search site I've ever seen who posts average or median salaries they tend to inflate them. They'll claim the average income for a designer in NYC, for example, is $100k a year. Then you look at the job listings for the same position and you're lucky if they break $70k.
Their entire business model is based on getting people to look for work, so of course they're going to do whatever they can to make you believe everyone is earning more than you are.
People bitch about Office, but despite the alternatives no one switches. This isn't like Adobe products where there are no viable alternatives. Several years ago my company did try iWork. That experiment lasted roughly a year. It wasn't that it was bad, but it wasn't any better than Office and in some ways less robust.
My current company is currently a 90% Mac environment. We've had our computers roughly 8 months and in that time 3 of the 7 Macbooks we own have already had some kind of hardware issue. One wouldn't charge and the other two were USB related. On a more general level I hear people complaining about the OSX environment just as much as I've heard people complain about Windows in the past. I'm not suggesting Apple products are bad per se. My point is that when you're working with them on a daily basis they're not fundamentally better than anything else.
What hurt Microsoft wasn't the quality of their products per se, it was public perception. Without question Windows 95 through 98 had problems. But those were also operating systems in there relative infancy when computing environments were evolving at a rapid pace. OS9 was an unstable mess, from my experience more crash prone than anything from MS. OSX was a big improvement, but it wasn't perfect and took quite a few years to get good.
But going back to Office, it would have gone the way of Lotus Notes if it were as bad as people like to claim. I use OpenOffice at home, and while I think it's pretty good I don't think it's yet on par with Office.
Are you seriously comparing a brand new OS to a relatively minor update? Why don't you compare the OSX upgrade to a service pack from Microsoft? The extent of the updates are comparable, but in Microsoft's case it's free. And Apple has charged a good deal more for upgrades in the past, most of which I'd also consider minimal.
"Terrorism is not just people who kill human bodies, but who kill human feelings as well. The makers of this film have terrorised 1.6 billion people."
It seems Muslims, like a lot of Americans, don't understand what terrorism is. Terrorism isn't hurting someone's feelings. It isn't some lone gunman going on a rampage. Terrorism is an organized violent movement, targeting civilians, in order to intimidate the population into affecting desired policies.
There's a lot of moral equivalency being thrown around. Those assholes have a lot of audacity taking to the streets in protest considering that Malala Yousafzai was shot for speaking out against extremists. They can't bitch about hurt feelings or the even West in that case. That was a Pakistani girl speaking up about local problems. But then I suppose they'll blame "liberal" Western influences.
I'm reminded of how a lot of these guys keep dredging up ancient history, the Crusades, to justify their aggression towards the West. What relevancy does that have to anyone? Europeans have long since moved on. The West can't be blamed for violence that occurred 800 years. Nevermind that both sides in the Crusades were equally belligerent and it could be argued that Muslims started it all. Middle East had profoundly influential centers of learning until Muslim aggressors showed up and decimated it all, no thanks to evil Europeans.
By all standards we have more to be upset about than they do.
It's the same old problem with Taiwanese companies. They're capable of producing a great product but don't quite appreciate the value of consistency and marketing. They don't really define a vision and are too reactive; someone else comes up with a defining product and they rush to match it. Granted, HTC has done better than most. Usually Taiwanese companies flirt with the bottom, trying to offer a feature rich product on the cheap. You get good value but you never get the sense of a committed brand focused on quality. And the Chinese have taken over this space.
Historically, however, Taiwanese companies have had to fend for themselves. South Korean chaebols have enjoyed the benefit of government backing, enabling them to focus quality and design. It created a scenario in which they were able to build global, established brands in a relatively brief amount of time. Who would have taken a Korean brand seriously 15 to 20 years ago? It took Japanese companies closer to 30 years to establish themselves and they didn't have the competition Taiwanese are facing. HTC hasn't yet been able to define themselves as a prestige brand like Apple, or even Samsung to a lesser extent.
I do think HTC has one of the best custom Android skins on the market, superior to anything the Koreans offer.
I don't get it's popularity or why it was associated with this guy in the West. That whole genre has been around for at least a decade and began with the Japanese well before that.
Keep in mind that Foxconn is a Taiwanese company. That said, they're engaging in the same cutthroat business practices that most Chinese companies would. The distinction is that they make some of the world's most desirable consumer electronics and they're Taiwanese. So the Chinese government is less likely to clamp down and the likelihood of the western media hearing about it is slim. Not that the Chinese government isn't eager to get this strike under control, because it doesn't bode well for them in the long run. Many HTC phones are indeed manufactured in Taiwan where conditions are a lot better. But if you happen to have one made in China, chances are things aren't all that different than at a Foxconn factory.
The mechanization of the manufacturing process is a strong likelihood, especially for higher end products. Whether it reminds in China or moves elsewhere, it's not good for China. I suspect the weakening Chinese economy is a big factor in the strike. I wouldn't be surprised if there's pressure from the top to over deliver in order to keep foreign interests happy.
From the collection of photos shown on their website it would appear they were selected by an art student with an obnoxiously cynical view of humanity. The hold little meaning beyond this pervasive sense of negativity.
Let's take stock: Before and after photos of melting glaciers Grainy photo waves crashing on a pier with a bunch of people watching Some random ship in what appears to be the Suez canal An approaching dust storm during what I think is the dust bowl Barely decipherable cave paintings A mine Some nonsensical photo of a huge auditorium with 7 tv screens depicting highway interchanges A waterspout A blurry photo taken by a drone (presumably pre strike) Random kids standing in water, most looking away from the camera A rather strange looking room that looks like something from colonial times
I'm a human and I see no rhyme or reason in these photos beyond what I mentioned above. What the hell is an alien intelligence going to make of these? I think this is a neat concept, but that's a rather pathetic selection of photos.
Having upgraded my iPad 2 to iOS6, trust me, you don't want it. Forget maps, it's an unstable pile of garbage, Safari routinely locks up and occasionally crashes, as does the app store. I would hope that the iPhone 5 isn't experiencing the same problems.
Nevertheless, your argument does stand. My Intel iMac can't be updated to the latest OSX because of a 32-bit EFI. That means no further support for the OS I'm stuck running. I also expect that Apple will never patch the issues in iOS6 for older devices. They seem to believe that we should all always be migrating to the latest and greatest. Consumers are only exacerbating the problem; in only a few years time they have acquired a very disposable attitude towards their electronics.
Keep in mind that when Google Maps was first released there wasn't much out there in the way of competition. So buggy maps was still better than nothing.
Today there are quite a few good alternatives, so from the perspective of the consumer an app that isn't up to par is unacceptable. Especially when the previous app was far superior. Waiting another year still wouldn't have brought about sufficient improvements. Of course, Apple was stuck. If they had done a soft launch, making both apps available most people would just stick with Google Maps wiping out any potential market for Apple's app.
So Microsoft is being blamed for graphical limitations they had nothing to do with. From what I'm seeing the problem isn't that elements within the GUI are scaling poorly, it's that designers didn't account for the fact that some day someone might want to blow up their graphics on a much higher resolution display. It's ridiculous and unfair to blame Microsoft for this considering this would affect any high res display in any OS. What do you think happens when you run an iPhone 3 app on an iPad? By the logic displayed in this article that should also be Apple's fault.
Anyone with the most trivial experience in resizing photos will understand that this is an unavoidable problem. There's no practical way to fix it unless you rebuild the app to account for wildly varied resolutions. You could use vector art, but it's not a realistic solution for a lot of things. There's no elegant solution but hopefully the pixel density is high enough that these artifacts aren't all that obvious. This is one of those situations where it's on the third party developers can only fix the problem after it's arisen. Microsoft can't fix it for them.
I find it amusing that we needed MIT researchers to discover what a good designer with typographic experience could have told you. It's fundamentally not that much different than the thinking that has to go into selecting fonts for road signs. It's what drove the recent change from Highway Gothic to Clearview.
The problem is when designers and their managers are driven by being different and place the emphasis on style over functionality. Part of the challenge is selecting the right font for an implementation. Serif fonts are actually easier to read when dealing with large amounts of copy, but for quick identification a round sans-serif font with clear open space is more effective. The goal is to have a font with letters that are as distinct as possible. Of course there are added challenges when dealing with displays. A basic low-res display is going to limit options considerably.
That said, a far bigger problem than type selection is usability of the system. Touchscreens are the absolute worse type of interface because they demand full attention to operate. Even those operated by knobs and buttons, requiring menu navigation demand too much attention. It's become a fad to ditch other kinds of controls in favor of buttons, leading to consoles crammed with them and no real consideration for their placement. Physical controls need to be grouped in logically related clusters, and dials should be used more extensively. Hell, I think there's a good argument for toggle switches.
Throughout my career I've had to work on Flash files built by designers. Most programmers I've encountered consider Actionscript beneath them and refuse to touch it. Companies figure that since Flash is supposedly a designer's tool that designers should also code.
You haven't seen bad code until you've been exposed to a designer's creation. It's the most convoluted garbage imaginable. I'd always be handed half-finished, barely functioning junk that needed "minor" edits. It would inevitably turn into an excruciating nightmare trying to figure out what this incompetent had done. In the end I'd just redo the thing completely because it was less work than trying to decipher and modify the original mess.
I'm convinced one of the big factors that led to Flash's downfall was crap code from designers. I couldn't stand, as a designer, being expected to code Actionscript. It's why I stopped including it on my resume.
From a perspective of quality, expecting every one of your employees to code is about the stupidest thing you can do. But more importantly, it's inefficient and an incredible waste of resources.
The obvious goal of any police department is to prevent crime, not just react after it's happened. If the guy had just said something as a bad job I'd like to think he'd be questioned, at worst, and quickly released.
The thing that seems to be overlooked is that some evidence was found that doesn't cast this guy in a good light. He dropped out of school and was found in possession of a few guns. That, in conjunction with his comments makes this a concern. Obviously, that could all be a series of coincidences. But then, making terrorist threats is a crime. That said, I'd like to read the comments for myself.
For the record, anyone buying $270 sneakers is an idiot. I think back to when I was in high school and a pair of Air Jordans was over $100 putting them, after inflation, not far off from what these cost. My particular school had a high poverty rate, at least as the government defines it. Very few drove cars to school. It was a status symbol doing so, even if it was an old beater. But there were tons of kids walking around with overpriced Nike's. The trendy thing to do was to buy from a certain shop downtown which took advantage by marking everything up. So you'd have these kids competing on how expensive their outfits were. They'd boast about how much they spent on a jersey, baggy jeans and sneakers.
A handful of kids would go out and get a crap job paying $8 and would think that they were on track for a successful career, convinced that school was no longer important. This all so that they could sustain their spending habits. This was back in the days when beepers were all the rage. I can't imagine what the hell it's like now.
In the scheme of things to complain about, skeuomorphism is near the bottom. Once you get started down this path, you could start criticizing any aspect of design; beveled buttons, drop shadows, etc. However, all these things enhance clarity. In the purest sense Windows Phone goes in the opposite direction, taking a more minimalist, graphic approach. And they do it well, but if you take that path you have to commit to it.
At times I do like skeuomorphism. There's no reason whatsoever why an interface shouldn't have some visual flair. I've always been a fan of synthesizer software design specifically because they replicate physical controls creatively. It really depends on the context and the skill of the illustrator involved. The Address Book reminds me of a cowboy's chaps and the Library looks like something from shop class. But the fact that they went for a more physical look doesn't bother me.
It's not fundamentally different than web design. The best designs maintain interface consistency, but provide distinct visual cues to show you've navigated elsewhere. A unique theme doesn't inhibit that. The thing is, if Apple's design had instead been a grey monolithic sameness the hipsters would be complaining about the lack of variety.
I recall reading that some time ago De Beers had conspired with GE to fix the price of industrial diamonds. I've also been told that synthetic diamonds can be produced with higher quality than most naturally occurring diamonds, but their manufacture is kept at a relative minimum to keep prices high. Although apparently De Beer's monopoly isn't what it used to be, not that it means an end to price fixing or other questionable practices.
I grew up watching those little robots zipping around on the bridge of an Imperial star ship, so when I first powered up the thing I was a giddy. I felt like I was one step closer to the idealized future envisioned in my childhood.
Interesting to read this considering we got a Roomba about two months ago. iRobot clearly put a lot of thought into it's design, at least from a mechanical standpoint. It's fun to watch for the first 15 minutes. However, that amusement then turns to intense frustration as the damn thing keeps returning to the same area. Even worse is when it's in return-to-dock mode, gets within 5 feet of the dock and decides to go off in some random direction.
Prior to buying the Roomba I wasn't aware of how much competition actually exists. There are some robot vacuums which exhibit quite a bit more intelligence than anything from iRobot. They scan the room, then vacuum back and forth in neat lines, turning only where there's an obstacle. Those are impressive to watch and you feel like you're actually observing sort of machine intelligence. The Roomba doesn't feel any smarter than some battery powered toy with a bumper to detects walls. That said from what I've read those smarter vacuums aren't necessarily more effective. And they manage to get stuck just the some. And interestingly, some of the high end units out there uses the same random way-finding method as the Roomba.
I'd say a Roomba is better suited for a single-room space, like a loft, with little clutter. Otherwise you have to prepare your environment for your Roomba. And if you have multiple rooms you have to cordon off each space so that it's more likely to do a proper job. You end up devoting more effort than you should need to manage the thing. It does an adequate job, but it inconsistent from day to day. One thing I don't understand is why they haven't built in a power conservation mode, so that when it's trying to return to dock the vacuum will shut down and all it's powering is wheels and sensors.
Outside of the addition of some sensors and adjustments to the vacuum system, the design hasn't changed much at all. It still bounces off everything like it always has. There's so much potential there. It feels like the company has decided to focus their efforts on more experimental technology and use Roomba as a cash cow. In 10 years I would have expected smarter robots.
I'd be curious to know the details regarding this technology because it seems to me like it covers very specific functionality. I mean, how does Apple win here but Samsung loses on something as ambiguous as design. It gets me wondering if judges and juries aren't approaching these cases with the preconceived notion that Apple is an "innovator" and couldn't possibly have used someone else's technology. It seems most people's sense of innovation is dictated by how nice industrial design looks and feels.
I'm considering the new Nokia Windows Phone, whenever the hell it's released. I was curious to see what the iPhone 5 was all about and while I think it's a fine device I don't see much that I find compelling. Really, the biggest thing they've got going for them is the App Store, and I've got that covered with my iPad.
I've had an Android phone for two years and while I've been reasonably happy with it I'm not particularly compelled to stick with the OS. I've used Windows Phone 7 and I've been very impressed. I'd say it's the most innovative of the group, but Microsoft's tendencies do make me hesitant. It's why I'm not sold on giving up on Android.
One of the biggest example of stupidity exhibited by everyone but Apple is that they'll announce a device that won't be available for months, assuming they've even given a definitive date. I figure Nokia was trying to steal some of Apple's thunder, hoping people on the fence will wait. But it's annoying nonetheless.
I think the biggest risk going Microsoft is that the system flops and you end up stuck with a dead end device. But from a purely superficial, aesthetic standpoint, I've got to say it's appealing being able to buy a smartphone in yellow. Apple's industrial design is getting incredibly stale.
I'd say, considering your age, the most important factor is long term growth and job security. The danger in becoming too comfortable at a job is complacency. And when that happens you risk stagnation which means that if you end up losing your job one day you might not have the skills or experience to easily find a replacement. I think the question to ask is, where would you be if you stayed where you are and were laid off in 5 or 10 years. If you have complete confidence in the future success of your current employer, that's definitely an important consideration and might be a good reason to stick around. However, the promise of career growth doesn't necessarily lead to security if the new company is a mess.
Far more egregious than OS names is the numbering convention for the Xbox and Firefox. Xbox went from 1 to 360, presumably because Microsoft's marketing department couldn't stand to be stuck at 2 when the Playstation was already on 3. I'd like how they're going to address that one when they get to the next gen model; they'll probably go with a name instead. Firefox is currently at 15 when every update since about 4 has been incremental. I doubt they'd even have gotten to 5 by now were they following proper version numbering conventions.
The numbering convention for Windows makes some sense. Apple does even better, at least in terms of consistency. From a visual and usability standpoint the OS hasn't fundamentally changed since 10.1. And the code names, regardless of semantics, are distinctive and consistent.
I think communism works great at a community level but doesn't scale very well. It's why families who pool resources thrive. The allocation of resources is better defined. The incentive to contribute is stronger because the benefits are more apparent. It's communistic principles working within a larger, more capitalistic environment.
The problem when you try to do implement this on a national scale isn't due to people being forced into it. If anything, the masses are probably more likely to go along excepting they'll get something out of it. The problem is that you're eliminating incentive. If you're getting a stable allotment regardless of what you do, what's the reason to work any harder? The betterment of the nation is too abstract for most to appreciate.
And the fact of the matter is that humans will abuse any system they implement. You're always going to need some form of leadership and inevitably those who are connected with find a means to aggrandize themselves. People are pretty good at finding ways to cheat any system. So inevitably you end up with the haves and have nots, except that in communism it's institutionalized.
As always, the best approaches borrow from a wide variety of mindsets and implement them at levels where they fit best. And it's probably a sliding scale, requiring more or less of any particular element based on prevailing conditions. And when you account for cultural tendencies things get even more complex.
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Nokia's sales have been poor because everyone is waiting for the new Lumia's. And regardless, the Nokia isn't the only phone running Windows Phone 8. It's coming out on HTC, Samsung and LG. There have been rumors that Microsoft will be developing their own phone and let's not forget Surface.
Things are looking pretty good to me.
I caught a few games during the playoffs and I will admit that I found them fun to watch, but I'd attribute that to the fact that there was something at stake. In game 48 of a 160+ game season the sport is mind-numbing.
It's why I'll never understand Americans who argue that soccer is boring. Compared to what? A bunch of guys standing around in an open field waiting for a ball to fly their way? Or the ponderous stop-start stutter of football? I'm not knocking those sports, but I do think people need a bit of perspective.
But it's a safe bet that physics will make anything exciting.
I think a very important caveat here is that Glassdoor is a job search site. And like every job search site I've ever seen who posts average or median salaries they tend to inflate them. They'll claim the average income for a designer in NYC, for example, is $100k a year. Then you look at the job listings for the same position and you're lucky if they break $70k.
Their entire business model is based on getting people to look for work, so of course they're going to do whatever they can to make you believe everyone is earning more than you are.
People bitch about Office, but despite the alternatives no one switches. This isn't like Adobe products where there are no viable alternatives. Several years ago my company did try iWork. That experiment lasted roughly a year. It wasn't that it was bad, but it wasn't any better than Office and in some ways less robust.
My current company is currently a 90% Mac environment. We've had our computers roughly 8 months and in that time 3 of the 7 Macbooks we own have already had some kind of hardware issue. One wouldn't charge and the other two were USB related. On a more general level I hear people complaining about the OSX environment just as much as I've heard people complain about Windows in the past. I'm not suggesting Apple products are bad per se. My point is that when you're working with them on a daily basis they're not fundamentally better than anything else.
What hurt Microsoft wasn't the quality of their products per se, it was public perception. Without question Windows 95 through 98 had problems. But those were also operating systems in there relative infancy when computing environments were evolving at a rapid pace. OS9 was an unstable mess, from my experience more crash prone than anything from MS. OSX was a big improvement, but it wasn't perfect and took quite a few years to get good.
But going back to Office, it would have gone the way of Lotus Notes if it were as bad as people like to claim. I use OpenOffice at home, and while I think it's pretty good I don't think it's yet on par with Office.
Are you seriously comparing a brand new OS to a relatively minor update? Why don't you compare the OSX upgrade to a service pack from Microsoft? The extent of the updates are comparable, but in Microsoft's case it's free. And Apple has charged a good deal more for upgrades in the past, most of which I'd also consider minimal.
Frankly I'm surprised MS is only charging $70.
It seems Muslims, like a lot of Americans, don't understand what terrorism is. Terrorism isn't hurting someone's feelings. It isn't some lone gunman going on a rampage. Terrorism is an organized violent movement, targeting civilians, in order to intimidate the population into affecting desired policies.
There's a lot of moral equivalency being thrown around. Those assholes have a lot of audacity taking to the streets in protest considering that Malala Yousafzai was shot for speaking out against extremists. They can't bitch about hurt feelings or the even West in that case. That was a Pakistani girl speaking up about local problems. But then I suppose they'll blame "liberal" Western influences.
I'm reminded of how a lot of these guys keep dredging up ancient history, the Crusades, to justify their aggression towards the West. What relevancy does that have to anyone? Europeans have long since moved on. The West can't be blamed for violence that occurred 800 years. Nevermind that both sides in the Crusades were equally belligerent and it could be argued that Muslims started it all. Middle East had profoundly influential centers of learning until Muslim aggressors showed up and decimated it all, no thanks to evil Europeans.
By all standards we have more to be upset about than they do.
It's the same old problem with Taiwanese companies. They're capable of producing a great product but don't quite appreciate the value of consistency and marketing. They don't really define a vision and are too reactive; someone else comes up with a defining product and they rush to match it. Granted, HTC has done better than most. Usually Taiwanese companies flirt with the bottom, trying to offer a feature rich product on the cheap. You get good value but you never get the sense of a committed brand focused on quality. And the Chinese have taken over this space.
Historically, however, Taiwanese companies have had to fend for themselves. South Korean chaebols have enjoyed the benefit of government backing, enabling them to focus quality and design. It created a scenario in which they were able to build global, established brands in a relatively brief amount of time. Who would have taken a Korean brand seriously 15 to 20 years ago? It took Japanese companies closer to 30 years to establish themselves and they didn't have the competition Taiwanese are facing. HTC hasn't yet been able to define themselves as a prestige brand like Apple, or even Samsung to a lesser extent.
I do think HTC has one of the best custom Android skins on the market, superior to anything the Koreans offer.
I don't get it's popularity or why it was associated with this guy in the West. That whole genre has been around for at least a decade and began with the Japanese well before that.
Keep in mind that Foxconn is a Taiwanese company. That said, they're engaging in the same cutthroat business practices that most Chinese companies would. The distinction is that they make some of the world's most desirable consumer electronics and they're Taiwanese. So the Chinese government is less likely to clamp down and the likelihood of the western media hearing about it is slim. Not that the Chinese government isn't eager to get this strike under control, because it doesn't bode well for them in the long run. Many HTC phones are indeed manufactured in Taiwan where conditions are a lot better. But if you happen to have one made in China, chances are things aren't all that different than at a Foxconn factory.
The mechanization of the manufacturing process is a strong likelihood, especially for higher end products. Whether it reminds in China or moves elsewhere, it's not good for China. I suspect the weakening Chinese economy is a big factor in the strike. I wouldn't be surprised if there's pressure from the top to over deliver in order to keep foreign interests happy.
And iOS looks nothing like Palm OS.
My how we've forgotten history.
From the collection of photos shown on their website it would appear they were selected by an art student with an obnoxiously cynical view of humanity. The hold little meaning beyond this pervasive sense of negativity.
Let's take stock:
Before and after photos of melting glaciers
Grainy photo waves crashing on a pier with a bunch of people watching
Some random ship in what appears to be the Suez canal
An approaching dust storm during what I think is the dust bowl
Barely decipherable cave paintings
A mine
Some nonsensical photo of a huge auditorium with 7 tv screens depicting highway interchanges
A waterspout
A blurry photo taken by a drone (presumably pre strike)
Random kids standing in water, most looking away from the camera
A rather strange looking room that looks like something from colonial times
I'm a human and I see no rhyme or reason in these photos beyond what I mentioned above. What the hell is an alien intelligence going to make of these? I think this is a neat concept, but that's a rather pathetic selection of photos.
Having upgraded my iPad 2 to iOS6, trust me, you don't want it. Forget maps, it's an unstable pile of garbage, Safari routinely locks up and occasionally crashes, as does the app store. I would hope that the iPhone 5 isn't experiencing the same problems.
Nevertheless, your argument does stand. My Intel iMac can't be updated to the latest OSX because of a 32-bit EFI. That means no further support for the OS I'm stuck running. I also expect that Apple will never patch the issues in iOS6 for older devices. They seem to believe that we should all always be migrating to the latest and greatest. Consumers are only exacerbating the problem; in only a few years time they have acquired a very disposable attitude towards their electronics.
Keep in mind that when Google Maps was first released there wasn't much out there in the way of competition. So buggy maps was still better than nothing.
Today there are quite a few good alternatives, so from the perspective of the consumer an app that isn't up to par is unacceptable. Especially when the previous app was far superior. Waiting another year still wouldn't have brought about sufficient improvements. Of course, Apple was stuck. If they had done a soft launch, making both apps available most people would just stick with Google Maps wiping out any potential market for Apple's app.
So Microsoft is being blamed for graphical limitations they had nothing to do with. From what I'm seeing the problem isn't that elements within the GUI are scaling poorly, it's that designers didn't account for the fact that some day someone might want to blow up their graphics on a much higher resolution display. It's ridiculous and unfair to blame Microsoft for this considering this would affect any high res display in any OS. What do you think happens when you run an iPhone 3 app on an iPad? By the logic displayed in this article that should also be Apple's fault.
Anyone with the most trivial experience in resizing photos will understand that this is an unavoidable problem. There's no practical way to fix it unless you rebuild the app to account for wildly varied resolutions. You could use vector art, but it's not a realistic solution for a lot of things. There's no elegant solution but hopefully the pixel density is high enough that these artifacts aren't all that obvious. This is one of those situations where it's on the third party developers can only fix the problem after it's arisen. Microsoft can't fix it for them.
I find it amusing that we needed MIT researchers to discover what a good designer with typographic experience could have told you. It's fundamentally not that much different than the thinking that has to go into selecting fonts for road signs. It's what drove the recent change from Highway Gothic to Clearview.
The problem is when designers and their managers are driven by being different and place the emphasis on style over functionality. Part of the challenge is selecting the right font for an implementation. Serif fonts are actually easier to read when dealing with large amounts of copy, but for quick identification a round sans-serif font with clear open space is more effective. The goal is to have a font with letters that are as distinct as possible. Of course there are added challenges when dealing with displays. A basic low-res display is going to limit options considerably.
That said, a far bigger problem than type selection is usability of the system. Touchscreens are the absolute worse type of interface because they demand full attention to operate. Even those operated by knobs and buttons, requiring menu navigation demand too much attention. It's become a fad to ditch other kinds of controls in favor of buttons, leading to consoles crammed with them and no real consideration for their placement. Physical controls need to be grouped in logically related clusters, and dials should be used more extensively. Hell, I think there's a good argument for toggle switches.
Operation by touch alone should be the goal.
Throughout my career I've had to work on Flash files built by designers. Most programmers I've encountered consider Actionscript beneath them and refuse to touch it. Companies figure that since Flash is supposedly a designer's tool that designers should also code.
You haven't seen bad code until you've been exposed to a designer's creation. It's the most convoluted garbage imaginable. I'd always be handed half-finished, barely functioning junk that needed "minor" edits. It would inevitably turn into an excruciating nightmare trying to figure out what this incompetent had done. In the end I'd just redo the thing completely because it was less work than trying to decipher and modify the original mess.
I'm convinced one of the big factors that led to Flash's downfall was crap code from designers. I couldn't stand, as a designer, being expected to code Actionscript. It's why I stopped including it on my resume.
From a perspective of quality, expecting every one of your employees to code is about the stupidest thing you can do. But more importantly, it's inefficient and an incredible waste of resources.
The obvious goal of any police department is to prevent crime, not just react after it's happened. If the guy had just said something as a bad job I'd like to think he'd be questioned, at worst, and quickly released.
The thing that seems to be overlooked is that some evidence was found that doesn't cast this guy in a good light. He dropped out of school and was found in possession of a few guns. That, in conjunction with his comments makes this a concern. Obviously, that could all be a series of coincidences. But then, making terrorist threats is a crime. That said, I'd like to read the comments for myself.
For the record, anyone buying $270 sneakers is an idiot. I think back to when I was in high school and a pair of Air Jordans was over $100 putting them, after inflation, not far off from what these cost. My particular school had a high poverty rate, at least as the government defines it. Very few drove cars to school. It was a status symbol doing so, even if it was an old beater. But there were tons of kids walking around with overpriced Nike's. The trendy thing to do was to buy from a certain shop downtown which took advantage by marking everything up. So you'd have these kids competing on how expensive their outfits were. They'd boast about how much they spent on a jersey, baggy jeans and sneakers.
A handful of kids would go out and get a crap job paying $8 and would think that they were on track for a successful career, convinced that school was no longer important. This all so that they could sustain their spending habits. This was back in the days when beepers were all the rage. I can't imagine what the hell it's like now.
In the scheme of things to complain about, skeuomorphism is near the bottom. Once you get started down this path, you could start criticizing any aspect of design; beveled buttons, drop shadows, etc. However, all these things enhance clarity. In the purest sense Windows Phone goes in the opposite direction, taking a more minimalist, graphic approach. And they do it well, but if you take that path you have to commit to it.
At times I do like skeuomorphism. There's no reason whatsoever why an interface shouldn't have some visual flair. I've always been a fan of synthesizer software design specifically because they replicate physical controls creatively. It really depends on the context and the skill of the illustrator involved. The Address Book reminds me of a cowboy's chaps and the Library looks like something from shop class. But the fact that they went for a more physical look doesn't bother me.
It's not fundamentally different than web design. The best designs maintain interface consistency, but provide distinct visual cues to show you've navigated elsewhere. A unique theme doesn't inhibit that. The thing is, if Apple's design had instead been a grey monolithic sameness the hipsters would be complaining about the lack of variety.
I recall reading that some time ago De Beers had conspired with GE to fix the price of industrial diamonds. I've also been told that synthetic diamonds can be produced with higher quality than most naturally occurring diamonds, but their manufacture is kept at a relative minimum to keep prices high. Although apparently De Beer's monopoly isn't what it used to be, not that it means an end to price fixing or other questionable practices.
I grew up watching those little robots zipping around on the bridge of an Imperial star ship, so when I first powered up the thing I was a giddy. I felt like I was one step closer to the idealized future envisioned in my childhood.
Interesting to read this considering we got a Roomba about two months ago. iRobot clearly put a lot of thought into it's design, at least from a mechanical standpoint. It's fun to watch for the first 15 minutes. However, that amusement then turns to intense frustration as the damn thing keeps returning to the same area. Even worse is when it's in return-to-dock mode, gets within 5 feet of the dock and decides to go off in some random direction.
Prior to buying the Roomba I wasn't aware of how much competition actually exists. There are some robot vacuums which exhibit quite a bit more intelligence than anything from iRobot. They scan the room, then vacuum back and forth in neat lines, turning only where there's an obstacle. Those are impressive to watch and you feel like you're actually observing sort of machine intelligence. The Roomba doesn't feel any smarter than some battery powered toy with a bumper to detects walls. That said from what I've read those smarter vacuums aren't necessarily more effective. And they manage to get stuck just the some. And interestingly, some of the high end units out there uses the same random way-finding method as the Roomba.
I'd say a Roomba is better suited for a single-room space, like a loft, with little clutter. Otherwise you have to prepare your environment for your Roomba. And if you have multiple rooms you have to cordon off each space so that it's more likely to do a proper job. You end up devoting more effort than you should need to manage the thing. It does an adequate job, but it inconsistent from day to day. One thing I don't understand is why they haven't built in a power conservation mode, so that when it's trying to return to dock the vacuum will shut down and all it's powering is wheels and sensors.
Outside of the addition of some sensors and adjustments to the vacuum system, the design hasn't changed much at all. It still bounces off everything like it always has. There's so much potential there. It feels like the company has decided to focus their efforts on more experimental technology and use Roomba as a cash cow. In 10 years I would have expected smarter robots.
I'd be curious to know the details regarding this technology because it seems to me like it covers very specific functionality. I mean, how does Apple win here but Samsung loses on something as ambiguous as design. It gets me wondering if judges and juries aren't approaching these cases with the preconceived notion that Apple is an "innovator" and couldn't possibly have used someone else's technology. It seems most people's sense of innovation is dictated by how nice industrial design looks and feels.
I'm considering the new Nokia Windows Phone, whenever the hell it's released. I was curious to see what the iPhone 5 was all about and while I think it's a fine device I don't see much that I find compelling. Really, the biggest thing they've got going for them is the App Store, and I've got that covered with my iPad.
I've had an Android phone for two years and while I've been reasonably happy with it I'm not particularly compelled to stick with the OS. I've used Windows Phone 7 and I've been very impressed. I'd say it's the most innovative of the group, but Microsoft's tendencies do make me hesitant. It's why I'm not sold on giving up on Android.
One of the biggest example of stupidity exhibited by everyone but Apple is that they'll announce a device that won't be available for months, assuming they've even given a definitive date. I figure Nokia was trying to steal some of Apple's thunder, hoping people on the fence will wait. But it's annoying nonetheless.
I think the biggest risk going Microsoft is that the system flops and you end up stuck with a dead end device. But from a purely superficial, aesthetic standpoint, I've got to say it's appealing being able to buy a smartphone in yellow. Apple's industrial design is getting incredibly stale.
I'd say, considering your age, the most important factor is long term growth and job security. The danger in becoming too comfortable at a job is complacency. And when that happens you risk stagnation which means that if you end up losing your job one day you might not have the skills or experience to easily find a replacement. I think the question to ask is, where would you be if you stayed where you are and were laid off in 5 or 10 years. If you have complete confidence in the future success of your current employer, that's definitely an important consideration and might be a good reason to stick around. However, the promise of career growth doesn't necessarily lead to security if the new company is a mess.
Far more egregious than OS names is the numbering convention for the Xbox and Firefox. Xbox went from 1 to 360, presumably because Microsoft's marketing department couldn't stand to be stuck at 2 when the Playstation was already on 3. I'd like how they're going to address that one when they get to the next gen model; they'll probably go with a name instead. Firefox is currently at 15 when every update since about 4 has been incremental. I doubt they'd even have gotten to 5 by now were they following proper version numbering conventions.
The numbering convention for Windows makes some sense. Apple does even better, at least in terms of consistency. From a visual and usability standpoint the OS hasn't fundamentally changed since 10.1. And the code names, regardless of semantics, are distinctive and consistent.
I think communism works great at a community level but doesn't scale very well. It's why families who pool resources thrive. The allocation of resources is better defined. The incentive to contribute is stronger because the benefits are more apparent. It's communistic principles working within a larger, more capitalistic environment.
The problem when you try to do implement this on a national scale isn't due to people being forced into it. If anything, the masses are probably more likely to go along excepting they'll get something out of it. The problem is that you're eliminating incentive. If you're getting a stable allotment regardless of what you do, what's the reason to work any harder? The betterment of the nation is too abstract for most to appreciate.
And the fact of the matter is that humans will abuse any system they implement. You're always going to need some form of leadership and inevitably those who are connected with find a means to aggrandize themselves. People are pretty good at finding ways to cheat any system. So inevitably you end up with the haves and have nots, except that in communism it's institutionalized.
As always, the best approaches borrow from a wide variety of mindsets and implement them at levels where they fit best. And it's probably a sliding scale, requiring more or less of any particular element based on prevailing conditions. And when you account for cultural tendencies things get even more complex.