Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 28th Feb 2009 11:47 UTC
A few days ago, Apple surprised everyone by releasing the first beta of Safari 4, the company's latest version of their WebKit browser. While I generally love Safari on the Mac (my browser of choice on that side of the fence), I've never felt as comfortable with it on the Windows side of things. In any case, this latest beta has made a very bold move in the interface department, and I'm sad to say that it's not for the better. Let me explain where it went wrong for Apple.
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Member since:2005-07-06
Again, he's the user.
Well no. He's _a_ user. One among millions, no more important or significant than most. There is no reason why his experience should be representative, or for his opinion to carry any absolute weight.
if his opinion is to be rendered useless
And that would be fine, had he presented his ideas as opinion. He doesn't. He makes absolutist statements leaving no room the concept of opinion. He is Right and Apple "got it wrong". Now that is certainly his prerogative and no doubt did it precisely to be provocative and generate comments, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't be called on the inanity of his rant.
Member since:2005-11-29
Well no. He's _a_ user. One among millions, no more important or significant than most. There is no reason why his experience should be representative, or for his opinion to carry any absolute weight.
No one is claiming it does, merely that the exact opposite also is not true. Perhaps I worded it wrongly, but that's the point I was trying to convey.
And that would be fine, had he presented his ideas as opinion. He doesn't. He makes absolutist statements leaving no room the concept of opinion. He is Right and Apple "got it wrong". Now that is certainly his prerogative and no doubt did it precisely to be provocative and generate comments, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't be called on the inanity of his rant.
I think a lot of what he wrote was written more like "X is Y in my opinion" or "I think X is Y", adding that tagline disclaimer after every thing he says, especially in what obviously is an opinion article, is impractical. To me, it seemed perfectly valid.
He even clarified, to calm any remaining doubts, that this was an opinion piece, specifically his opinion, I happen to agree, but like I've stated, UI design is extremely subjective so no one can ever be "Right".
Member since:2008-12-06
For heaven's sakes-- this is all splitting hairs. This is an editorial. An opinion. One opinion. Take it and agree with it or take it and disagree with it. That's really the point of the comments feature-- to agree, disagree, discuss, add more information. Commenting on the fact that he's just one user and that one user's opinion doesn't matter is all subjective. So what if OSNews stopped publishing editorials-- which are essentially the opinion of one person? I imagine life would get pretty boring around here at times. If you don't like the opinion, don't try to discredit the person whether arrogant or not-- use your own opinion to counter it, and even throwing in some facts to support your opinion is a great idea.
Huff. I wouldn't have said anything to feed the fire except this often happens here whether it's the opinion of an editor or the opinion of another commenter that sparks the tempest.
Edited 2009-02-28 20:01 UTC
Member since:2008-05-22
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:33 UTC
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
Linked by Anonymous on 06/18/13 22:26 UTC
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 22:25 UTC
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:45 UTC
"I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:32 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)".
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:58 UTC
"The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:52 UTC
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 21:03 UTC
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 20:46 UTC
"And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 17:32 UTC
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.More News »
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Member since:
2005-11-29
Sure you better now than Apple when it comes to software design.
This is an article about User Experience. Who would know better about User Experience than..oh I don't know, a user?
The "Apple knows best" argument is silly when you think about the amount of people who use their program.
Perhaps they did some usability testing, maybe they put some of the best guys in the field on the product, but your sort of blanket statement is misleading at best.
That makes zero sense, what are you talking about?
Chrome puts the Tabs on Top as a UI overlay, as opposed to a weird frankenstein mashup of Tab and Title Bar.
If you look at Chrome on Vista, they extend the Glass into the Client Area, and overlay the tabs ontop. You still have a region which you can interact with in the form of a title bar. Tabs are tabs and the title bar is a title bar.
what makes you think that you can tell you know better than some professionals with such arrogance? You don't write software, so you would not be better than a 6 year old in doing it, would you?
First off, that's a logical fallacy. You can't flatly say that because X believes that Y is true, then Y has to be true.
It's ridiculous to think like that, what is so wrong about someone else forming their own opinion about a product, and writing an article on it?
Let me get it straight. You are neither a software expert nor a professional in designing user interface nor even a software evangelist. You have absolutely no record on software UI design and engineering, so why are you pretending that you know about it? In other words, this means that when you allow yourself to judge about someone else work on software, please have the humility to do it in accordance to your competence.
Again, he's the user. One of those who ultimately has to deal with the product on a day to day basis, if his opinion is to be rendered useless, then what is the point of even making a product like this available to the general public?
You're being incredibly dense.
I do believe that there are good and bad aspects on this design (and come one trying to say that Chrome makes it better is totally stupid as the same fundamental problems arise with Chrome), but that should be said, not your collection of non-sense. Also you are certainly not old enough to
have such arrogance towards some people who certainly were coding when you did not realize that you were on Earth yet.
Chrome does not suffer from such problems, at least not to the glaring, and in my opinion, embarassing extent that Safari 4 does.
You've said arrogance many times in your post, but the only one coming off as arrogant is you.
For all the ranting you seem to do about UI design, you seem to be unable to grasp the concept of using color contrast to focus attention. The way Apple is doing it (At least on Windows) works, but it's not the best way to do it.
What? Read yourself.....　Again you fail to explain what you mean by spatial memory, spatial memory of what, tab title, location, content, what?
He pretty clearly says that it's the size of the tabs.
You're rushing through his words and losing your objectivity.
And why it does not wok on this design. You are just expressing your personal feeling without to explain why the implementation is flawed by design.
Look up the concept of spatial memory, and muscle memory. Basically, it boils down to the user not having to constantly readjust where his mouse should go to.
If you have a stationary target, you are more efficient, but if you have a moving target, such as a variable sized tab, and to add ontop of that, additional variable targets such as the Close Button and Move Tab button, it further complicates interaction.
Couldn't we argue that such behavior gives more feedback on what it is going on to the user? And what is the resize handle you are talking about? The handle does not serve for resizing the tab, but only to move it. And why you bother that they move, of course they move as tabs are added, and what? They belong to each tab, so the user does not need to follow their displacement every time he/she adds a tab.
Sure you can, you can also argue that the moon is made of cheese. It does not make it a good argument.
Also the handle for tabs in background only appears when you move your mouse over it, so how it moves does not matter because the user anyway sees what he/she has on the active tab.
Doesn't really matter if the size of tabs are constantly changing. Safari definitely has the more erratic behavior when it comes to this, as opposed to every other browser.
By the way what a real UI designer thinks about Safari 4?
http://blog.cocoia.com/2009/02/24/safari-4-ui-breakdown/
Read it and don't pretend that you know better than him.
You mean, there's an article written by a person. An authoritive subject on a completely subjective matter? Irrelevant.