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Facetime

I really like the way FaceTime was put together, much more than Skype or other video chat alternatives; specially for one factor: the lack of an ‘online status’!

Yes, many people have complained about this ‘missing feature’, but for me it’s, in fact, not a bug but a feature! I hate having the ‘always seeing eye’ that an online status puts on you. When you reach the office and you turn on Skype, everyone on your contact list knows that you reached the office. When you turn it down to go to lunch, everyone knows that you have gone to lunch. If you are late or early or simply not in the mood, your options are simply to go offline, in which case no one can contact you, or invisible, in which case no one knows that they can contact you, or put the ‘busy’ flag which in work hours is basically redundant and ignored.

FaceTime avoids this by basically being the equivalent of a phone. People don’t know when your phone is on or off, or ‘busy’. They simply call you. If you want to answer, you do. If you don’ want to answer, you don’t. That’s it. No pesky ‘online status’, no “why don’t you answer me if i just saw you change your status”, no nothing. It’s, essentially, a video-phone system.

Of course, there’s some drawbacks to this, such as not being able to have ‘asynchronous’ conversations as you have in ‘chats’. But that is where Messages enters. There, you can just leave a text message, and I will get back to you when it’s convenient to me. And you have all the ‘online status’ paraphernalia.

I used to read some articles, back when Messages and FaceTime were put on OS X, about why were they two different systems/apps. Back then, not having or using neither, I couldn’t really understood this question or essentially why Apple had done it this way.

But now? Really, Apple, great idea! Just leave it like this. It’s a great way and a great software to work.

Now, if you could just opensource the FaceTime protocol as you promised…

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No, I’m not going to download your bullshit app

In the “web vs. apps” war, I think you can infer which side I’m on. I wouldn’t download a BBC app or an NPR app for my computer. Why would I want one on my phone? Do I buy a separate radio to listen to different stations? No. The functionality is the same, the only thing that differs is the content. Apps ought to provide some actual functionality, not just blobs of content wrapped up in binary files.

Tom Morris

The worst thing in this fashion i’ve encountered was the Haaretz iPad app. Not only it provided you a worst visual design than the site, but it keep bothering me for a paid subscription and not allowing me to read news that were freely available on the website. I’m sure there’s some hidden wisdom on this sort of behaviour but i fail to see it.

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MacStories Interviews: John Siracusa

FV: Document syncing is indeed another subject I wanted to touch upon. You’ve written (and talked) about how you use Dropbox to manage files, but you obviously covered the new iCloud document storage in your Mountain Lion review. You mentioned how “segregating” document storage by application won’t likely surprise users accustomed to the iOS model. More than a year after the launch of iCloud on iOS, do you believe a unification of document storage is something Apple should consider for iOS 7? Where would you draw the line between consistency and frustration caused by having documents separated by app, only “connected” by an “Open In” menu?

JS: I’m not sure the problem can be solved by simply improving communication between silos, but if Apple doesn’t do something, Dropbox will continue to eat its document-syncing lunch. It would be nice if the model Apple came up with for iCloud document management solved most people’s problems, but it doesn’t.

Dropbox is obviously tailored to people who already understand files and folders. It’s tempting to view it as a “nerd solution,” with Apple on the side of the novice users. Philosophically, I think that’s true. But practically speaking, even expert users often find themselves stumped by iCloud document sharing across iOS and OS X. Unfortunately for Apple, Share Happens™ for experts and novices alike. And when it does, iCloud is nobody’s friend.

MacStories

Precisely! And you can add to that exact argument, Versions and the iCloud as default save location in Lion and Mountain Lion.

Something that was meant to be for a “virgin” user, that never actually existed, and for whom there will always be moments where his computing needs and workflow increases; and then, Apple’s current approach won’t just work and it will be an additional challenge for him. An useless additional challenge.

I recall the Oracle from “The Matrix” movies, and for anyone that perpetually tries to change this well established analogies and workflows, first think if the current model is so broken as you think; second, some day someone might come and devise a brilliant new system, but you’re not that someone.

If you saw the Matrix movies, you know Neo was actually the One. The purpose of the Oracle was to provide an additional mental barrier for Neo, if he was in deed the real One, he would overcome it just by being sure of himself. The same that thing should make most companies think and reflect if they need to drastically change the workflow of their clients (without any option!!) for something that, although not perfect, has been working really well the last decades. And on a basis that every schools in most countries teach students on to work on it!

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Guy Kawasaki on Android

Use the best tool is probably the best “tech-philosophy” out there. I think a good deal of company managers forget that most people think like that and assume that consumers are some sort of “herd” you possess and that won’t go away, no matter what stupid decisions you make to screw them over.

I do disagree on Guy on his opinions on widgets and the rest of Android all-over-the-wall approach though. But i strongly feel that it’s basically a matter of personal preferences and focus, not exactly what’s better technological wise. I’m a strong minimalist / just want it to work effectively /no fuss kind of guy when it relates to my phone.

I will rather have a simple cheap phone that does what a phone should do really well than have a crappy cheap Android phone that might be a reasonable pocket computer but a lousy phone. I love general purpose “full computers” but for some items i just want them to work really, really well. No fuss! My brief experiences with iOS were perfect on that matter. My experiences with Android were everything but that.

I have no doubt that my “first” smartphone will be an Android, though. iPhone’s current prices are absurdly expensive for my very slim wallet, and even though i had some hopes for WebOS and Windows Phone 7 (and even Blackberry) they all managed to drop the ball one way or another, (( considering my ideal of a phone )) which is a damn shame. However every time i open up my browser on my carrier’s available smartphones, i never find a single phone that i simultaneously really want or can afford. Maybe Blackberry with its recent skydiving prices and it’s new BB10 OS will do that i strongly doubt it.

PS: For any marketing department out there that somehow want to influence “all of the 20 daily readers” this website has, i’m perfectly happy to receive a free sampling of your smartphone line for analysis! (wink wink)

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State / Province

One of the infuriating thing when dealing with US based companies / institutions is the mandatory insistence on the “State / Province” field on Address insertion. For God’s sake, how hard is it to understand that not the entire world revolves around / is based on the same logic as the U.S.?

If you state yourself as an “international” agent/player/service/provider, then act internationally! Some countries, including my own, don’t actively have any State or Province. We just need the unique Postal Code and Town name. Seriously. It. Works. That. Way.

Don’t make me go around and invent something out my magic hat to write there. I don’t have a State or Province, besides my National State (AKA Country).

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The unlikely persistence of AppleScript

What makes it so surprising that AppleScript survived and remains a fully-supported-by-Apple technology today (including in OS X Mountain Lion) is that it was never loved by anyone. It was a fine theory and noble experiment, but it turns out that an English-like programming language didn’t really enable a large number of users to become programmers. And conversely, AppleScript’s English-like syntax often made (and to this day continues to make) things more difficult and confusing for scripters, not less.

Put simply, the number of programmers in the world who consider AppleScript their favorite language could fit in a very small car, or perhaps even share a bicycle. But, as noted, AppleScript was the only OSA scripting language that ever gained any traction.

Macworld

Automator, Services, Applescript and it’s UNIX base which allows other automation sequences using UNIX pipes, is what i love most of Mac OS X, and why i currently consider it the best (( or at least the less bad )) current operating system.

Applescript is indeed hard to master because of its lack of resemblance with any sort of standard programming language but Automator very decently allows for a quick way of putting an automatized workflow in place.

Just hope that Apple not only not kills it with its iOS’ification but takes some time to make it stronger, correct its deficiencies and implement some other decent scripting language support, such as Python.

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Big Words

The biggest issue I have with the original Nielsen’s post is that it uses an age-old trick to fool people into thinking this guy knows what he’s talking about, and far too many have taken the bait. That is, it hides the tenuous nature of its argument behind many, many big words and phrases. These all sound intelligent, thus the author must know what he’s talking about and you should believe him.

I’m referring to things like “cognitive overhead,” “added memory load for complex tasks,” and my personal favorite, “low information density.” That last one is classic because, as you know, what we’re all looking for is “high information density,” like those busy blogs and web sites where you can’t tell ads from articles and everything is blinking and screaming at you.

Dueling Views on Windows 8 Usability – Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows

Yes, it’s the messenger’s fault because he uses “big words”. Things so hard to understand as “cognitive overhead” or “low information density”… [sarcasm!]

I’m no usability expert, or english major, or even an english native speaker but somehow these terms don’t seem farfetched or undecipherable to me. Can i help with its translation to a “simpler english”? Allow me:

  • Cognitive overhead – Makes you think too much. Does this really require explaining? (( if it really does, think about your car. you can drive your car with a vertical line of buttons, randomly ordered and completely illogical such as “park,left,brake,accelerate,forward,right,reverse”; or you can simply have the logical and standard driving wheel, two foot panels and an automatic transmission selector. Which one do you think will have a significant “cognitive overhead” for the daily act of driving? ))

  • Added memory load for complex tasks – you have to memorize more/too much things to do some trivial tasks. And we are notoriously bad at memorizing complex,”illogical” paths for short-term/occasional use. In this case the original author was referring to the simple fact that because you can only see a single window at a time, (( or two in an unusable 80/20 split )) you have to memorize the information you want to act on, so that when you change applications you remember it to use it. Can we agree that this is cumbersome and inefficient?

  • Low information density – You have a lot of wasted area that doesn’t really help you. Somehow this was transformed into a pejorative “because we really need a full blinking flashy site right?” but Paul Thurrott failed to see that what you usually want is an adequate/reasonable level of information density. You don’t need to have the screen filled with blinking lights and numbers but you don’t need to have a 27″ screen filled with a colored background and a single central paragraph either. Sometimes you will want a “medium” information density (something around half to two thirds of your screen filled with info), and sometimes you might even want a really high information density, but i fail to se why would i ever want the waste of screen real-estate by present Metro apps.

On the whole Paul’s criticism of the original article is baseless and fallacious. Because the author uses some mild technical jargon he’s automatically wrong?

Also, Paul states:

“For example, Office was once designed so that all the toolbars were similar, with the assumption that this would aid users in moving from application to application. It sounds right. But it was based on absolutely no research at all, and over time, Microsoft found that users can handle completely different UIs. It’s why one person can use an Android phone, an iPad, and a Windows PC and never get confused. Completely different systems. But we’re just not that dumb.”

He’s right, we aren’t. But exactly because of that, we are also very careful regarding where we waste time learning new stuff or where we just stick to the old one that works. I love technology and trying out new stuff, but when i do find something that “scratches my itch” in a perfect/usable/understandable and reliable way, i tend to stick with it. Why would i waste my precious time learning some new X program that doesn’t really add anything new to my old program except the need of re-learning how to do stuff again? I’d rather spend that time learning some other new program/language/system that actually introduces me to new stuff and new things. What works, works. Keep it.

We can use and learn, and many times we even prefer, different user interfaces when we find it more practical or mode adjusted. The iOS and Mac OS X different approaches are a perfect example of this, I prefer the way iOS works on a touch small screen and i wouldn’t have Mac OS X interface on it even if i could. I realize that I use them for different purposes, with different goals and in different uses, so i prefer to have different interfaces with different strengths. I like some cohesiveness in both obviously, like the bottom Dock for instance, but overall if they are for different purposes they should adjust the way they work differently.

What Microsoft provides us with Windows 8, is nothing of this. It’s changes the way you did things on your old desktop system, with no particular benefit only to try to force you to use their touch products, where they fail absurdly because they didn’t went far enough and still drag all the desktop stuff behind. So instead of your old interface that you knew and worked and a new sparkling interface well thought for a new class of devices, you get a mishmash of both that serves no-one. Every time i see a Windows Explorer on a touch tablet i shudder. The great thing about an iPad is that it just works! It sits there quietly and i pick it up to check who was the cute actress on that movie/series/program and it’s there reliable and just as responsive as if unpacked 5minutes ago. Why, oh why, would i want to mess around in a kludgy, messy Windows Explorer window with tiny buttons and unresponsive experience!?

So, no, the fault is not from the messenger that actually did some research on the subject.

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Oh, So This Is Where You Use The Microsoft Surface

It’s simply an awful tablet. If you remove the keyboard and try to use in portrait mode, the thing is too long and too narrow. It feels heavy because it’s too thick, despite being about on par with the iPad in weight. But if you attach the keyboard, you then have to be sitting at a desk or table where you can prop the thing up. It’s not a lap computer, which is nutty because tablet computers are for untethering you from a desk, and laptops have the word “lap” in them for a reason. Only Microsoft could come up with a way to make a tablet/laptop combo that forces you back to your desk no matter the configuration you select.

Only Microsoft could make a tablet that’s actually desktop PC.

And as a desktop PC, it’s too small for work day computing. It’s a secondary device at best. iPad users won’t buy this instead of a new iPad. Laptop users will still buy laptops. Price sensitive Android users won’t bite for the price ($499+, but unusable without a keyboard which is an extra $119 for the less expensive Touch Cover option). E-reader buyers will look for something lighter.

Who, then, is this tablet/laptop for? And where the heck are you supposed to use this thing?

As for me, the Surface sits in my kitchen. And it works pretty well there for quick web searches, email checks, recipe lookups, a little YouTube and the like. There’s no point getting into details about how well Office performs, or the lack of apps available for the Surface with Windows RT, or other details – this is an occasional use machine.

Anyway, the kitchen not the worst place for an oddball computer to end up – the PlayBook, after all, quickly became the bathroom tablet. (That thing is the perfect size for leaving on top of the toilet.) But if I were to invest in switching to Windows 8 from OS X or iOS, I go for a “real” laptop or a “real” tablet, not this odd halfling creation which is, in reality, neither.

Sarah Perez – TechCrunch

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Portugal publishes open standards catalog. ODF, PDF and several other standards are mandatory.

The Portuguese Government has published the National Digital Interoperability Regulation [2], which defines the list of open standards to be adopted in the Portuguese public administration. This framework brings to life the existing Law of Open Standards [1]. It is part of the larger ICT reform program that aims to save 500M EUR/year while providing stimulus to the local economy.

We must stress the importance of the whole open standards adoption process and declare our explicit support for the way the interoperability regulation was designed. On one hand, there is some pragmatism to be noticed: the list of open standards is relatively short with priority given to functions where interoperability problems are a large concern. On the other hand, pragmatism didn’t mean lost of insight: there is no more than one open standard per functional category. This is something ESOP has always defended, as a measure to prevent incompatibilities that could bring the adoption process to a failure.

Choices have been made and ODF is the chosen open standard for editable documents. We think this is appropriate since ODF is implemented by several different vendors, in both open source and proprietary applications, across multiple operating systems. As a truly open standard, it can be implemented by any vendor that wishes to do so. This is a choice that will save money and avoid vendor lock in.

Other standards for formats and protocols include PDF, XML, XMPP, IMAP, SMTP, CALDAV and LDAP.

ESOP

Portugal Government actually has a sane decision.

Untill now every time i installed Libre/Open-Office on someone’s computer i set it up using .dox and .xls as standard save file formats. Not anymore. It’s about time the world get used to using open standards, and it’s about time most people install some free version of standards compliant officesuite on their computers if their MS Office is not ODF compliant. (( To be fair i think ODF has been supported in MS Office since Office 2007 but i’m not sure to which degree and not sure if it’s not an optional download from MS website. ))

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The amount of crap computer users have to put up with is incredible

This laptop comes with a fingerprint scanner, which is fairly easy to enroll in, but as soon as I installed Firefox, the HP software felt the need to add not only a plugin, but a toolbar icon. Worse, if I remove the icon, the plugin adds it right back. Even if I disable the plugin in Firefox, the icon will be added back, meaning it completely ignores both user preferences. Only completely removing the HP software got rid of it.

Then it was time to install some programs. Of course, Windows 8 doesn’t let you do that. SmartFilter blocked every attempt, telling me how it protected my PC from myself, and has no option to disable it from the dialog box. You need to go in the Control Panel to disable that, and when you do, you get a constant warning about your PC being at risk.

Now that Norton was gone, I personally happen to like Comodo firewall. So I go to download it, but the installer nicely tells me that this doesn’t work on Windows 8, and I need to download another file instead. However, this is their pro product, which basically means it’s filled with crap. It’s a good thing I noticed the tiny Customize Installer button because otherwise it would have: Changed my home page, subscribed me to something called GeekBuddy, enrolled me to their cloud program, change my DNS servers, and sent information about each scan it does to the company. The same was true with many of the applications I installed, like Adobe Reader trying to install McAfee, or QuickTime trying to sign me up for offers.

Next was time to get used to the new start screen. At first I didn’t like it, but I think it may actually be a decent idea. Of course I first had to remove everything so that I could put only my own software there. By now there were over 40 items on there, from the weather in South Africa, to some more games, and multiple links to their news, sports and other Bing related pages. I didn’t find any way to quickly clean it up, so I had to manually remove each icon.

Finally, now that everything had been uninstalled and reinstalled, I did a quick check of msconfig, which apparently in Windows 8 has been integrated into the Task Manager. Unsurprisingly, the amount of applications that had set themselves to run on startup was staggering. All sorts of crap like HP Messaging, QuickTime Task, Google Update, Apple Push, and so on.

Patrick Lambert – dendory.net