Happy New Year everyone. It’s now 2007 on the east coast. If you’re on the left coast, or one of those timezones in between (apparently Mac fans actually do exist in that land mass in between the two oceans), then pretend you read this one, two, three, or possibly more hours from now. This is a message from the future.
2006 was our first full year and we hope we’ve managed to make you one of the addicted loyal readers we hope to amass. Was 2006 as good to you as it was to us? 2007 is full of promise and hopefully we can put this silly iPhone/iPod Phone business to rest. What do you expect to see in this year? Will Apple finally crush Microsoft? Will the 12” laptop return? Will Leopard be the last OS we’ll ever need to buy? Will I stop asking stupid questions? Only time will tell, but you need to lay your rep on the line and tell us what will happen so we can start writing it up now.
Ah, satire, I may have to write you a letter to let you know that now that the Internet is here, your day is done (apparently taking David Pogue seriously wasn’t enough of a signal). Daniel Jalkut’s very funny Macintendo Family Values is now prefaced by a very long disclaimer. It makes me sad that it’s necessary, but I suppose it’s a fault of the text medium. Some people still take A Modest Proposal seriously.
We at Red Sweater Software were lucky enough to be among the first to learn of this unbelievable development, when the popular Nintendo character Yoshi bounced into the office and delivered the news, along with a complete copy of the previously confidential family values document. We are pleased to be able to reproduce this document publicly, in its entirety. As an indie developer, I’m not sure I agree completely with the “Product Then Platform” family value, but I can sort of see the logic.
It’s worth a chuckle, particularly if you’re all alone, hunched over your computer tonight.
Forget viral videos on Youtube. That’s not how you create product buzz. Instead, you capitalize on service slowdowns and spin it as “a positive”.
It’s actually created more positive buzz among analysts — traffic was so great it blew up the site. If anything it could be a positive — demand was better than they were expecting.
Indeed, whether it was dissatisfied users trying to cash in their iTunes gift cards or analysts discussing unprecedented sales, it all adds up to free publicity for Apple. It also reinforces the idea that iTunes is still the destination for online music. It’s so popular that Christmas morning overloaded it. I don’t need to name the competition because the news outlets haven’t mentioned them either. This is a feel good failure on Apple’s part.
In 2005, Apple paid Steve Jobs $1. In 2006, Apple paid Steve Jobs $1. Of course, it’s really still all about the stock options.
As an Apple fan, maybe I shouldn’t mention stock options. Instead, let’s all focus on how he got paid. Was it 12 easy payments of 8.3 cents? After taxes, was that 5.5 cents per payment? What about weekly at 1.3 cents? Don’t go spending that all in one place Steve.
When I first heard about iPod vending machines, I was skeptical. I understand that the iPod shuffle is inexpensive and even makes the perfect stocking stuffer or so I hear, I got coal, I don’t know what that’s about. On the other hand, I still don’t see it as an impulse buy item. To me, it’s still one of those items you put just a little thought into before putting your hard earned dollars onto the counter. That said, they seem to be making money hand over fist.
“We’ve done about $55,000 in a month in gross sales just for the one on Concourse A,” said Leopold, executive vice-president and owner Business Traveler Services. “This is becoming the future for some high-end products in places like airports where space is at a premium.”
That’s more than a couple iPods. Here’s the thing though. You swipe a credit card through the slot and the iPod of your choice gets delivered gently to your hands. Doesn’t it seem like an obvious target for abuse? With that stolen credit card in your hand, you can quickly get at least one iPod, no questions asked. I’m just glad I don’t have to walk by one ever day or else I’d feel compelled to give the machine the obligatory shake, hoping for a free prize.
[via Infinite Loop]
I must applaud Parallels for not resting during this holiday break. They’ve released another beta. It’s a bug fix release that doesn’t seem to add any new features.
Unfortunately, it didn’t fix my problems and I still can’t use my Boot Camp partition/disk. I would really hate to see this problem continue into full release versions. Until Parallels is full Boot Camp speed, being able to use a single partition in both environments is a must for anyone not interested in maintaining two separate installations.
Leander Kahney wrote Steve Jobs’ Best Year Ever a while back, but it seems more appropriate to share it with you now that the year is just about over. After all, what are the chances of Steve announcing something as the ball drops?
I think the underlying theme for the year was the Intel switch, which I think it’s safe to say, was an overwhelming success. I personally underestimated how well it would go. I thought Rosetta would have far more limitations and performance issues, so I’m glad to see my fears were unfounded. I’ve since replaced my Power Mac with a Mac Pro and I have no regrets. Bravo Steve.
Leander breaks it down month by month, but breaking it up that way comes off a little dry, missing the overall big picture.
The one-button mouse: its legacy has haunted Apple in many ways since the first two-button mouse hit the market. Apple was constantly seen as behind the times; even the introduction of the Mighty Mouse and its wireless successor did little to salve this open wound. Even though the Apple faithful knew that two-button mouse support had been in the OS since System 8 or so, critics regularly hit Apple at its "simplistic" one button mouse.
Andru at GearLive has put together the quintessential rationale for the one-button mouse:
I kid you not, ten times a day I would talk to someone who has never right clicked in their life. After they first do it, they will ASK YOU EVERY TIME if they should right click or left click. Now, though we may not be the typical computer user, Apple is always concerned with creating a user experience that is as intuitive as possible. Giving the average person a right mouse button is like giving a bald man a comb.This is a great idea, but it's unfortunately not true any more, even for Apple-designed applications. iTunes is particularly egregious in this regard: go into the Podcasts section and right click on an episode, you'll see a whole host of options that you can't get to from any menu.[...]
Apple has gone through great pains and great expense to study human-computer interaction. Because of these studies, one thing Apple insists on is that every feature of an application should be accessible through menu items. It’s great and even encouraged to create additional ways of accessing features, but at a bare minimum, you should be able to reach it from the menu.
Some argue that by this point, everybody understands the difference between right- and left-clicking—people who argue that have not, in my experience, worked in tech support. In ten or twenty years, that might be the case, but there are still some people who have a hard time getting the idea of clicking and dragging, much less two button clicking.
Around the time of the "15 Things Apple Should Change in OS X" piece, one user offered a counter-argument titled "The Genius of Apple's User Interface Themes." His rebuttal, unfortunately, struck me as not-quite-on-the-mark and I intended to write a response that was both incisive and insightful, along with a splash of flair.
Then I got distracted, apparently—probably by something shiny. This morning, I found the wind taken out of my sails by none other than my close friend and frequent collaborator Jason over at Doombot. As usual, Jason touches on most of the points that I myself was planning to make. Isn't he smart:
Tim (of the "Genius" article) argues that the violations described in the "15 Things" article must be both intentional and brilliant. He offers an analogy: if all your remote controls looked exactly the same, wouldn’t it be hard to figure out which remote control to use? But hey, I can make up weird analogies too: if your TV came with six remote controls and they all looked different, could you tell it apart from the remote for your VCR? Or: if your TV remote had buttons in the shape of a bear, a wombat, and a cherry, which would you use to change the volume? (Hint: second analogy may be less useful.)To his analysis I add this: Tim's argument is that variation makes it more useful to tell applications with different functions apart. That's true: I don't want my music player or my mail app to look like my web browser. But that's no excuse for using different scrollbars and button styles in places where using consistent widgets would work perfectly fine. That is, variation for the sake of variation seems to me both pointless and misguided.
