Calling it a day

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:35:57 GMT

Calling it a day

Sometimes it just doesn’t work out.

It’s not our fault. It’s not your fault.

For things to work we need to be able to communicate. Communicate really well. And sometimes, for whatever reason, people just don’t hit it off.

If that’s the case it’s best if we just call it a day as early as possible and walk away - no point in wasting anyone’s time.

If possible, we’ll return your deposit (unfortunately it’s not always do-able as we often have to place our own deposits to secure the right designer or SEO), and cancel the contract.

No blame, no regrets.

We’ll just chalk it up to experience.

New World Computing

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:36:50 GMT

Steven Frank has written an article about the newly announced Apple iPad that talks about Old World versus New World Computing.

Personally I think he nails it completely.

In the Old World, computers are general purpose, do-it-all machines. They can do hundreds of thousands of different things, sometimes all at the same time. We buy them for pennies, load them up to the gills with whatever we feel like, and then we pay for it with instability, performance degradation, viruses, and steep learning curves.

In the New World, computers are task-centric. We are reading email, browsing the web, playing a game, but not all at once. Applications are sandboxed, then moats dug around the sandboxes, and then barbed wire placed around the moats. As a direct result, New World computers do not need virus scanners, their batteries last longer, and they rarely crash, but their users have lost a degree of freedom … They are immediately understandable, fast, stable, and laser-focused on the 80% of the famous 80/20 rule.

When the iPhone Software Development Kit was announced I vowed that I would not get involved. The idea of having to submit my application for Apple’s approval, and the subsequent horror stories that have surrounded this process completely put me off. The iPhone and the iPad raise a whole number of tricky philosophical and ethical questions about ownership, freedom, rights and restrictions.

But a couple of weeks ago I had a mini-revelation. This is how Apple has always been, and it shows that this “new world computing” strategy is not a new thing.

The iPhone (and now iPad) App Store model works fantastically for consumers. They know that each app that they buy is safe, does what it is supposed to do and is unlikely to be malicious. They can trust the vendor. For the software developer, it is a bit of a nightmare - you submit your app and Apple rejects it; often without a decent explanation of why. It’s their game, their (often arbitrary) rules.

This is different territory to Microsoft and their call of ”Developers, Developers, Developers” - Microsoft goes out of its way to make life as easy as possible for Windows developers (even down to being able to run DOS applications from the 80s on 21st Century Windows systems). This is also different territory to Google with its Android operating system, which doesn’t have the same, tightly locked-down controls on what developers can do (although interestingly, Chrome OS, Google’s new operating system, is entirely controlled).

Apple, on the other hand, is known for making life difficult for its developers.

The transition from Apple II to Macintosh.
The transition from 68K to PPC Macs.
From “classic” MacOS to Mac OSX.
From PPC to Intel.
From 32bit “Carbon” to 64bit “Cocoa”.

Each time, Apple did a bit of hand-holding, but not a great deal. Software developers had to work overtime to update their code to work with each new generation; because Apple had decided that the transition was necessary to keep the end-user happy.

Steven Frank mentions that this “new world computing” started with the iPhone (although he also mentions that “Web 2.0” applications had a large part to play). But I think it runs much deeper than that.

Steve Jobs didn’t want the original Macintosh to be expandable; he wanted people to treat it as an appliance - plug it into the mains and start using it. When he returned to Apple, the first new machine, the iMac, had the same philosophy - plug it into the mains and your phone line and you are on the internet.

This whole idea of computing as a consumer appliance - no fiddling, no tinkering - just switch it on and start using it, has been at the heart of Steve Jobs’ Apple since day one. It’s just taken thirty years for him to get there.

Good design

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:57:33 GMT

Steve Jobs once made the point that “design isn’t how it looks, it is how it works”.

People often criticise Apple products for just being shiny but inferior; however, their real strength is in understanding that how it works is just as important as what it does.

The iPhone does much less than other “smartphones” but what it does has redefined how we interact with phones. The great Stephen Fry says the same about the iPad:

The moment you experience it in your hands you know this is class. This is a different order of experience.

However, my personal experience of this is my car. I drive an Alfa - a bottom of the range, not very flash one, but an Alfa none the less. It looks beautiful, both inside and out. It drives beautifully. The dials on the dashboard say “Benzina” instead of petrol, “Giri” instead of RPM. Everything about it shouts great design.

Apart from one thing - the manual does not fit in the glove box.

That is precisely the kind of thing Apple would never allow in one of their products.

3hv

Calling it a day

Calling it a day

New World Computing

Good design