So I was thinking about how computer/human interfaces reveal biases in their developers.
The early micro-computers I used booted up directly into BASIC. And that makes sense; they were built mostly by hackers, for hackers. Built at a time when people thought, "oh yeah, everyone will be writing their own programs to solve random problems around the house."
Various Xerox machines like the Alto and the Star introduced the "desktop metaphor" which was famously used later in the Apple Macintosh. Jef Raskin, considered the god-father of the Macintosh built a machine for writers, focused on the keyboard. If you get a chance to fiddle with a Canon Cat, it's worth doing. It is a radically different idea for how people should interact with computers.
If you can figure out what Microsoft Windows' primary user interface metaphor is, please let me know. Classic Windows is mostly a desktop; Metro seems to be a "scrollable cork-board of applications or documents" or something.
So this got me thinking, what does the UI of devices like iOS and Android phones reveal about their developers?
My take on iOS is it lets you do a small number of things easily and with admirable grace. Once you try to do something it doesn't want you to do, the steely smirk of Steve Jobs' out of the ether to smack you upside the head. "It's fucking beautiful the way it is!" a disembodied voice says, "Quit trying to do things it wasn't designed for! Maybe you should just get one of those Android phones. Or better yet, go get a Windows Phone." You walk away realizing how unworthy you are of the iOS platform.
To me, iOS says "we know more than you do." And that would be fine if I didn't have to pay $13/month to listen to music i already paid for or could get the address book application to sync properly.
On the Android side, you turn on the phone and... MY OPINION OF ANDROID IS NOT RESPONDING. WAIT? QUIT?
You eventually find a USB cable, download the Android debugger, kill the bloatware process HTC auto-launched at startup and proceed to be confused by configuration options which are amazingly similar to the previous version's config options, but have radically different effects. Android reveals the bias of a typical handset software vendor: "OMG. I can't believe you bought this!"
We're moving into world where the "Internet of Things" is supposed to be the next big thing. Based on what I've seen so far, I'm vaguely bearish on commercial IoT offerings. To start with, there's about zero interoperability. I should be able to whip over to Amazon and buy a 10-pack of ZigBee / BLE / whatever temperature sensors for $32.99. They should come up on a network and respond to administrative requests with a string describing their function; bonus points if they include a description of the protocol they respond to.
What do we get instead? fucking Nest. This is the future? Stop this train, I want to get off. I'll have a better time running a Commodore 64 emulator on my Raspberry Pi.
The early micro-computers I used booted up directly into BASIC. And that makes sense; they were built mostly by hackers, for hackers. Built at a time when people thought, "oh yeah, everyone will be writing their own programs to solve random problems around the house."
Various Xerox machines like the Alto and the Star introduced the "desktop metaphor" which was famously used later in the Apple Macintosh. Jef Raskin, considered the god-father of the Macintosh built a machine for writers, focused on the keyboard. If you get a chance to fiddle with a Canon Cat, it's worth doing. It is a radically different idea for how people should interact with computers.
If you can figure out what Microsoft Windows' primary user interface metaphor is, please let me know. Classic Windows is mostly a desktop; Metro seems to be a "scrollable cork-board of applications or documents" or something.
So this got me thinking, what does the UI of devices like iOS and Android phones reveal about their developers?
My take on iOS is it lets you do a small number of things easily and with admirable grace. Once you try to do something it doesn't want you to do, the steely smirk of Steve Jobs' out of the ether to smack you upside the head. "It's fucking beautiful the way it is!" a disembodied voice says, "Quit trying to do things it wasn't designed for! Maybe you should just get one of those Android phones. Or better yet, go get a Windows Phone." You walk away realizing how unworthy you are of the iOS platform.
To me, iOS says "we know more than you do." And that would be fine if I didn't have to pay $13/month to listen to music i already paid for or could get the address book application to sync properly.
On the Android side, you turn on the phone and... MY OPINION OF ANDROID IS NOT RESPONDING. WAIT? QUIT?
You eventually find a USB cable, download the Android debugger, kill the bloatware process HTC auto-launched at startup and proceed to be confused by configuration options which are amazingly similar to the previous version's config options, but have radically different effects. Android reveals the bias of a typical handset software vendor: "OMG. I can't believe you bought this!"
We're moving into world where the "Internet of Things" is supposed to be the next big thing. Based on what I've seen so far, I'm vaguely bearish on commercial IoT offerings. To start with, there's about zero interoperability. I should be able to whip over to Amazon and buy a 10-pack of ZigBee / BLE / whatever temperature sensors for $32.99. They should come up on a network and respond to administrative requests with a string describing their function; bonus points if they include a description of the protocol they respond to.
What do we get instead? fucking Nest. This is the future? Stop this train, I want to get off. I'll have a better time running a Commodore 64 emulator on my Raspberry Pi.
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