Paul Thurrott runs a site that discusses Windows UI (esp. XP and Longhorn):
“Now, because I present this information, I’m somehow labeled a Microsoft lover and/or an Apple basher. That’s silly. But Apple has done very little to make its UI better per se, beyond simple enhancements to what is, again, a classic desktop OS. There’s nothing wrong with that. Frankly, Apple’s crowd is technical enough to deal with it. But saying that such an OS is “easier to use” or “more elegant” than Windows is wrong. Mac OS X is attractive, and arguably “better looking” than Windows XP, though that’s a subjective declaration. But it is most certainly not “easier to use”. And that’s not “Apple bashing,” it’s just the way it is.”
I agree that Apple just brought a standard user interface to UNIX. But it is the first actually quite usable consumer grade user interface in the UNIX world ever. And this is something that some people believed would be impossible to do.
My personal experience about the activity centered approach of Windows XP is that it does disconnect the user from the computer by layering a webpage-like interface over the enourmous amount of control panels – adding more complexity instead of reducing it. It fails to create mental models that work and it prohibits the user to work with the computer creatively.
There is some merit in having more powerful control panels (which show you all mobile devices in one place for instance), but if that does not lead to less dialogs there is no real gain – it just looks more user friendly. There is no doubt that Longhorn will be more user friendly in that sense, but to claim MacOS X is “just attractive” is too simple.
OS X has to be compared to UNIX GUIs some years ago. The Aqua interface made UNIX accessible to consumers. The core OS is open source, many UNIX geeks love OS X because it allows them to work with their old stuff in new ways. That is something Microsoft fails to do.
A much better resource than Paul Thurrott’s site can be found on the X vs. XP site
“Allow me to give you some growth statistics: One year ago, when I started Technorati on a single server in my basement, we were adding between 2,000-3,000 new weblogs each day, not counting the people who were updating sites we were already tracking. In March of this year, when we switched over to a 5 server cluster, we were keeping up with about 4,000-5,000 new weblogs each day. Right now, we’re adding 8,000-9,000 new weblogs every day, not counting the 1.2 Million weblogs we already are tracking. That means that on average, a brand new weblog is created every 11 seconds. We’re also seeing about 100,000 weblogs update every day as well, which means that on average, a weblog is updated every 0.86 seconds.”
Published on
November 9, 2003 in
Tools.
Jake Savin is implementing FTP rendering for Manila:
“Parts of the code for this feature have been done for a little while now, but a few pieces had been missing, most notably the writing of your site’s RSS feed to the static server.”
Rendering a site via FTP has been working with Alan Germans FTP filewriters for many years now. No news. But the rendering process did not include any RSS files – and that is a feature I wanted for quite some time.
Spike Hall describes some structuring elements in knowledge creation efforts in classes:
- Formal Debate
- Each participant committed to active participation with a reward for doing so.
- Moral Dimension of Student Product: Students were assigned to an
- advisory committee advising a business on the negative impact of
- business activity on public health.
- Student activity within advisory committee constrained within a series
- of production stages.
- First stage: identify facts, debate solutions and propose a synthesis.
- Next three steps: Test the solutions against a prescribed set of principles.
- Final Stage: Provide an [executive] summary
This resembles some of the principles in a course guide (german) I have put online for my own seminars.
Dave Winer figured out that weblogs of presidential candidates don’t work. Dave Winer:
Yesterday I was interviewed about presidential weblogs.
Got me thinking. I keep reading the candidate weblogs, waiting to be inspired, or even interested. So far the only one worth pointing to, imho, is the DNC weblog. It’s the only one that’s engaged, in gear, doing stuff. I feel pity for poor John Edwards, trying so hard, but feeling strongly that his time could be spent in much better ways.
Then I figured out what the candidates aren’t getting about weblogs, and why it’s hopeless for them to do their own blogs, at least for 2004. When people say they want the candidates to blog, they’re not stating their wishes accurately. What they really want is to know the candidate as well as they know their favorite bloggers. If one writes publicly without editing every day for a few years, people get an idea of how your mind works. This builds trust, the kind of trust a candidate just can’t build in a couple of months of stump speeches.
I think this is inline with following statement from me (made here):
Oliver Wrede: Weblogs are not special because of their technology but because of the practice and authorship they shape. And it is a practice that will require a weblog author to be “connected” to processes, discourses and communities.
Published on
November 5, 2003 in
Tools.
This is what I love about the Userland stuff: it interoperates. Andrew Grumet is connecting Radio Userland with MovableType. Sleek.
I just added support for Shockwave to the Manila embed() macro. Get it here as Stuffit or ZIP file.