June 2007 Archives
Back when I were a lad, Macs - and Apple stuff in general - were very much a niche thing. Used mainly in design, pre-press and academic circles, they were nevertheless respected, although correctly seen as vastly overpriced (unless you had an educational discount).
They were attractive because they were extremely well designed, and had a number of killer features, such as WYSIWYG text and graphic editing. They also featured zen-like design hardware and software, which basically got out of your way and let you concentrate on your tasks.
Around the mid 90s, things started to go a little wrong, but even so, the basic philosophy (which owed far more to Jef Raskin than Steve Jobs) held good.
So what went wrong ? An 2007 iMac compared to a 1987 MacPlus is a bit like Paris Hilton compared to Ingrid Bergmann. The 2007 model screams "look at me!! I'm dazzling! aren't I coooool ??? look at all the cool people who hang out with me!!". The 1987 model was subtle, refined, and discrete. The Mac has become a fashion statement, a way to look wickedly on edge, to show how different you are. The fact that form has totally taken over from function seems to have totally bypassed the current generation of designers and mavens, who see no flaws, and tolerate no criticism. Of any Apple product.
Yesterday I was in a room with a small group of talented people. All of us demonstrated our slavish devotion to fashion with our $100 cool-tax black MacBooks. At some point, there was a suggestion that we should copy the latest Apple fad, the utterly pointless cover flow. I decided to keep quiet about that one, but later there was some comment about how the iPod is the epitome of UI design. I dared to voice my end-user opinion (which apparently I'm not entitled to have) that the scrolling lists, which may have been fine for the 5Gb model, are perhaps a little stretched on the 60Gb model. I got torn to shreds for daring to doubt the word of the Prophet, er, sorry, I mean the genius of Apple. I doubt that the same comment about a Creative MP3 GUI would have even registered anything other than a complicit smirk. This stuff worries me, seriously. Good design these days seems to equal "copy Apple", full stop, and good design at Apple is becoming increasingly rare (striking design is not necessarily good design).
This isn't particularly about my meeting yesterday, and is not specifically a criticism of the people involved, who are doing great work. But I'm beginning to see the day when I'm going to ask "do you use Macs?", and if the answer is "yes", slamming the phone down. In the design world, "Mac user" is converging with "slavish imitator".
Faded, scruffy, self-satisfied, overpriced, depressing... I wonder if these are the adjectives that the Thistle Hotel Brighton, where I have the misfortune to be sitting typing this, would expect to associate itself with ? Not by the look of their website, or of the self-congratulatory leaflets that litter the room, proclaiming all of the varied wonders which one can benefit from, all at a (large) price of course.
Three highlights: no minibar in room, hence no water. The drinks dispenser by the elevator has, of course, run out of water (a bargain at £1.50, anyway). Aircon "working", in the sense that is blasting out hot air, but not adjustable (at least the reception tried to help by giving me a different room, but it was exactly the same). And then, possibly not entirely Thistle's fault, but why should I be feeling generous, we have:
Oh, but at a price. And what a price. Here's an example:
Yes, 20p per minute. Compare and contrast with the last two hotels I stayed in, in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Tallinn, Estonia, which both had free Wifi. I would suggest that the Thistle charges extra for hot water, puts a meter on the lights, offers rental TV (or sorry, they've already done that) and rents out towels. At least that would achieve a level of consistency.
There will always be something of the Fawlty Towers about English hotels, it seems. And England.
(warning: bad hair day)
Trying to ramp up my use of Facebook this morning, so I've gone into my profile.
The contact panel is total rubbish. It fails to save data I enter (it has lost all my IM screen names twice, I had to enter my URL twice, etc). It doesn't recognise MSIDSN format for cell phone numbers, so "+417987565432" becomes "417987565432", and "41(0)7987565432" becomes "4107987565432".
It has a mind of its own as far as privacy setting are concerned.
I guess it works fine in California. Whatever. Do they still do testing in California, or is that soooooo Web 1.0 ?
Big fuss over in Mac developer land about Satan (Steve Jobs, apparently) not providing an SDK for the iPhone.
It would be interesting for them to take a look at my Nokia N73. Since I updated the firmware a few weeks back (in order to get a reliable bluetooth connection), every time I switch it on, it asks me for the data and time, giving a default of 01 Jan 06 00:00:00. It then announces it is installing some mystery application, which, 30 seconds later, it tells me it has failed to do.
Apparently I have some defective installer file on my memory card. Can I look for SIS files on my card, using the standard Nokia File Manager ? Nope. Can I delete installers from the Application Manager ? Nope.
I have installed exactly 4 things: Flash Lite 2.1, Wayfinder 7, an auto screen lock app (since, incredibly, the N73 doesn't have one) and a screenshot app. One of these is screwing up, wasting my time and stressing me out every time I switch the phone on (e.g after getting off a plane) when I just want to get on and make a call.
In theory I could set aside some time to investigate, but I don't have that time. The vast majority of smartphone - and any phone - users have one over-riding requirement: it has to work, always, and now. Fortunately Jobs, and Apple, gets this (although I still think the iPhone misses the point), but Mac developers quite clearly do not.
Feeling the heat from the iPhone ? Something called Nokia Media Transfer (beta) has turned up on Nokia's European site. Seems to add Mac support for recent N-series devices.
Why they couldn't simply add iSync support, as they have for a few E-series phones, will, I suppose, remain a mystery.
Hopefully whatever Mac support they do add will be considerably better than the dog's breakfast they burden Windows users with.
UPDATE: It works, and really well. I'm impressed.
Well, here we are again. Five months off-air and nothing to show for it. I originally took the whole site offline because it was just getting too much to manage. Then I decided to do a complete redesign. The trouble is, this is actually a pretty complex site, with quite a lot of legacy, and I just could not work out a strategy, let alone a design. I considered splitting it into two parts, but that means extra hassle and extra work. I considered moving it to a different host, but after signing up, I discovered that the new host didn't support remote login to MySQL (bloody stupid), so that was the end of that.
Finally it seems easier to go with the flow. Maybe I'll find a way to switch from MovableType, which really a pain in the neck, to something more manageable. Maybe I'll just fiddle at the edges. But hopefully I will be more active.
