Tag usability

Regression 11

Months before Windows 95 came out in late August 1995, a number of screenshots from β versions of the much touted and eagerly awaited operating environment had circulated both on the, then nascent World Wide Web, and the computing press. Among the most profound changes from earlier incarnations of Windows was the introduction of the […]

Apple UX Regressions

These past few years have been a somewhat turbulent time for Apple. Its market dominance in the smartphone race diminished, its profits holding strong, but investor and analyst confidence evaporated, its once infallible strategy, product line, image and appeal gone and its appeal lacklustre compared to the past. The post-Steve Jobs Apple gradually shifted its […]

Some thoughts on Ubuntu Unity

A lot has been said and written about Ubuntu Unity, the new ‘shell’ that’s replaced the ‘classic’ default GNOME desktop in Ubuntu 11.04. Despised by many that interpreted Canonical’s break from the ‘open-source’ norm of restricting modifications to upstream platforms to a bare minimum, as a threat to the upstream projects’ existence (a valid point […]

About the same, or even faster

John Gruber writes about hardware (i.e. physical) keyboards on mobile phones. I mostly agree with him on this one: they are, for the most part, useless and the iPhone is --- at least --- not hurt (in my view much better off) without one. There are, of course, some distinct advantages to having any form of physical controls on a device, including using the device without looking at it, but there are several drawbacks too, while at the same time the numerous advantages to having an on-screen 'virtual' keyboard more than make up for the lack of a physical one, both for design and usability reasons. In the end it's probably a personal preference thing, but I for one have been waiting for an all-screen, no-keyboard device like the iPhone for years and I'm sure happy it's here the way it is. Oh and by the way, I probably type faster (and more accurately) on my iPhone than I would ever type on a BlackBerry device or Pré with their miniature keys that seem designed for children and the relatively tacky feel; it took less than a few days after getting my iPhone to getting used to the auto-correction system and a few more days before my typing performance stabilised to an acceptable level for dealing with emailing etc. Finally, the auto-correction on the iPhone seems to work admirably well with Greek too [for those eager to remind everyone that Apple has a parochial mindset; it does, but it doesn't apply here].

Æsthetics, Usability and Determining Who's Boss.

Æsthetics and usability go hand in hand. Because many people are visual beings, they function better when they work in a beautiful environment. And that extends to computing. So those two go together. In typography this is pretty obvious whenever you’ve got to use (even for a short while) a Windows machine: Cleartype, now the […]

They'll never learn.

The Nokia N97 is out. And what a disappointment this is. Still great hardware features. Still the same mediocre system software, the poor usability that comes 'for free' with Symbian, and average industrial design [from the moment a phone is that bulky, it's bad --- it doesn't matter how many Mpixels its camera has or what the resolution of its display is]. I find the idea of a resistive touchscreen dated and wrong, although I understand why Nokia might have chosen it over the capacitive kind that everyone else is currently using, given the subpar feel that its software has as a touch interface and the possibility for the need of a stylus. I'm really surprised however: given the success of the iPhone, the huge challenge that Android is going to pose to low and mid-level phone manufacturers (especially given how customisable it is) in the near future and the dwindling profits, mind and marketshare, why on earth isn't Nokia caring more about the user experience?

Moblin: Proof that Corporate Support Needed.

If anything the sudden appearance of Moblin 2.0 Beta and its excellent User Interface has proven, beyond any doubt, that corporate support is essential if linux — and the open source community — is going to survive beyond a very very small niche. Linux on the server has been doing well despite Microsoft’s pretty good […]

Why Desktop Linux Sucks

“…And what can we do about it”. Linux usability (and the sorry state of desktop linux) has become a staple of this blog, but bear with me for a bit. Here’s a video by Bryan Lunduke from the Linux Action Show with reasons why the linux desktop still sucks for many (most) users. This comes […]

Moblin 2 Intro Video

Moblin 2.0 is a netbook-optimized linux distribution/environment originally created by Intel and largely based on the work by OpenedHand, a startup bought by Intel in 2007. This is the introduction video to Moblin. And, as far as linux goes this is by far the most advanced, well-thought, usable environment I’ve ever seen. Sure, it may […]

Conceptual clutter of the Bad Kind.

If there’s anything like Good Clutter. Have you ever used Ubiquity for Firefox? It’s quite nice, yet somewhat inaccessible for most people. The idea is that with an easy key combination on your keyboard you can bring up a text field that can understand a large number of commands and bring you information related to […]