Dick Pountain/PC Pro/Idealog 216 09/07/2012
I'm writing this column at my desk in Italy, on a balmy evening, watching fireflies drift in and out among the vines. (I thought I'd see, as an experiment, whether I could type that sentence without smirking, but the reflection in my window pane says I've failed...) Seriously though, putting all climatological disparities aside, our existence here is a remarkable testament to advances in comms technology over the last few years. Communication with the rest of the world happens through a Telecom Italia Mobile mast on the mountain opposite, via which my laptop and my partner Marion's iPad are connected on pay-as-you-go mobile data plans. These are now fast enough to watch live streamed television, listen to music and radio, without recourse to the huge and expensive satellite dishes that were required just a couple of years ago. And my ALICE package gives me unlimited data for €19 per month.
Being here has given me the opportunity to get to grips with the iPad, and hence caused me to oscillate wildly between very impressed indeed and hair-tearing frustration. The latter state is almost always induced either by lack of documentation, or by Apple's smug assumption that everyone buys into its total ecosystem, which I most certainly do not. A most egregious example of the latter concerned Marion's contacts information, which it fell my duty to transfer from her netbook back in London into the iPad's Contacts. For purely historical reasons these have been kept for many years in Palm Desktop rather than Outlook (and she's quite happy with its facilities). When the iPad first arrived I realised there wasn't going to be any direct way to export addresses to it, because its Contacts Book appears to lack any menu for importing stuff. So I opened a Gmail account for her and successfully exported them all into that via a CSV file, believing job done. Fat chance. The Apple Contacts Book of course lacks any mechanism for importing from the enemy GMail either. After hours of footling around I gave up and suggested she log onto Gmail via Safari to see her contacts.
Months passed and a friend loaned us a book called "iPad 2: the missing manual" which solved many puzzles, like how to recover when you've accidentally locked the screen orientation into portrait. One chapter began with the soothing words "Putting a copy of your contacts file onto your iPad is easy" and suggested using either iCloud or iTunes. Like an idiot I decided iTunes would be easier since it was already installed there on the iPad's home screen. More head-scratching followed because iTunes would do nothing but offer to sell me David Guetta albums.
I'm embarassed to tell how many hours it took me to realise that iTunes has to be installed on another computer (assumed to be a Mac) rather than the iPad for this task. I flirted briefly with the idea of polluting my Viao with the Apple software, but fortunately took the precaution of Googling "uninstall iTunes from Windows 7" before committing: dozens of horror stories about how much junk it leaves behind cured me completely of that impulse. I Googled some more and then suddenly the scales were removed from my eyes by a sane and crystal-clear blog called "Apple iPad Tablet Help". The answer is use iCloud stupid!
It took about ten minutes once that penny dropped. Pull up GMail on my Viao; log out as me and log back in as Marion; export her GMail contacts to a vCard file on the Viao; go to www.icloud.com and log in with Marion's Apple ID; drag the downloaded .VCF file onto the Contacts icon in the iCloud window. During this whole procedure the iPad remained lying on a table in the other room and no cables were involved. I fetched the iPad and opened Contacts, where to my disappointment were just those three entries I'd added manually months before. But before I could even muster a curse, up popped another, then another and in they all streamed over the airwaves, all 1200+ of them, in less than a minute. The moral of the story for me is that The Cloud just works: feeble documentation, different OSes, squabbles between Apple and Google, smug assumptions that iPad owners have a Mac too, all just melted away in the universality of HTTP and the internet.
This was the same month we finally decided to adopt Dropbox in place of Dennis Publishing's own server to transport Real World copy, and so far it's proving more convenient and reliable for all concerned. The Cloud just works. (Of course being a cynic/paranoiac I download it all to archive on my local machine too). For extra cloudiness I've also recently built an archive of all my previous Idealog columns from 1994 to 2012 in Blogger, where you can read them on-screen in a nice convenient format. As I was uploading one from August 1996 its headline, Wake Me When It All Works, caught my eye. In it I complained: "Somewhere along the line everyone seems to have forgotten once again that simplifying means actually removing stuff, not just hiding it on the ninteenth tab of some dialog". I believe I can smell the coffee...
[Dick Pountain's back issues of this Idealog column are now readable on http://www.dickpountain-idealog.blogspot.it/]
Thursday 31 January 2013
LOOKIN' GOOD!
Dick Pountain/PC Pro/Idealog 215 07/06/2012
I just upgraded my mobile phone from a ZTE San Francisco to a ZTE San Francisco 2 and it's a significant improvement. It has a faster processor, a far better camera with flash, and it runs a later version of Android. But most important of all, it doesn't have those two chrome strips down either side. "Er, is he going soft in the head"? you may be thinking. Well no, I don't actually give a damn about those chrome strips, but most of the online reviews of this phone I've read mentioned them in their first paragraph. It appears (geddit), that people are becoming as obsessed with the appearance of their gadgets as they already are with their haircuts, clothes, cars and sofas. And it's not only physical gadgets like phones but also software interfaces. I'd love to write a smug, judgmental column that argues everyone else is obsessed with appearances whereas I just don't care about such trivia, only the deepest essences of things. I'd love to, but in all honesty I can't, because I'm no better than anyone else in this respect. I don't give a damn about those particular chrome strips, but I'm fanatical about software user interfaces and have dumped many perfectly functional utilities because I couldn't stand the cut (or colour scheme) of their jib.
This phenomenon is not of course confined to the IT business. Reflect for a moment about the explosion of interest in all areas of design - from consumer goods to architecture and engineering - over the last three decades or so. Apple design guru Jonathon Ives was just knighted, while architects nowadays have the celebrity status of movie stars. This is a real social phenomenon, and it's of far more than just sociological interest because its economic consequences are profound. How many new car models failed because a consensus emerged that they looked awful (and I don't JUST mean the Sinclair C5, that's a lazy choice: there's also the BL Mini Metro, especially in that unique poo-brown paintjob). The plain fact is that everyone's a critic and aesthete nowadays, with major consequences for industries (both consumer and technical) that can hardly be overestimated. If you produce something that potential users find ugly you're in big trouble, and in areas like computer or phone operating systems, where development budgets run into the billions, that can matter a great deal. Which explains the almost comically paranoid behaviour of certain big IT companies, because some of the design decisions involved are now too big for mere mortals to make without going a little bit mad.
Two of these terrible quandaries are examined by RWC columnists in this very issue. Jon Honeyball writes about Microsoft's dithering over the look-and-feel of Windows 8, which is approaching Hamlet-like proportions. Redmond chickened-out from incorporating the final look into the Release Candidate build and Jon suspects this is because they're panicking, still trying out different tie-and-handkerchief combinations on secret focus groups. Locked in a death struggle with Apple's iPad, the stakes are too high to get it wrong, but the decision is too big for anyone's sanity. We do know that they've dumped the "Aero-glass" theme for window borders they so proudly introduced with Windows Vista, describing it as now "dated and cheesy" and certainly not "en vogue". (Interpreted, that means we're terrified that YOU think it's cheesy, and we want to get our capitulation in before your attack). Actually I like the Aero look, as indeed I like cheese, but there's a certain grim irony in this situation because it was Microsoft who started the whole trend 20-years ago, fussing over the look-and-feel of early Windows versions, being first to hire big-bucks graphic designers and useability teams.
Meanwhile in his column Simon Jones describes a user revolt among programmers over the colour-scheme in Visual Studio 11 Beta. Its designers decided to remove most colour from its user interface, substituting small indecipherable monochrome icons and menu options in ALL CAPITALS. I'm hardly surprised developers are on the warpath. Programming is the worst area (except perhaps for writing) to radically fiddle with user interfaces: those hypnotically repetitive loops of edit, compile, run, edit, compile, run are only made tolerable because you've totally internalised the position of every single button and option, so your fingers run on autopilot without conscious intervention. Upset that rhythm and productivity may be ruined for months until you've internalised the new set. The designers may have been right and that too much colour was distracting - doesn't matter when people are adapted to that distraction.
For similar reasons I personally loathe Facebook's imposition of the new Timeline, which depresses me because my profile is now 34 feet long and extends below the floorboards. I've always hated Facebook's interface anyway, but had just about achieved immunity. And the iPad's lack of a hardware back-button still makes me swear ten times a day, another design decision taken for the sake of elegance over utility. (I'll probably get challenged to a duel for saying that). Judging by appearance is here to stay and manufacturers know it, leaving them with only two choices: either get really good at giving us what we didn't know we wanted, like Ives, or else let us customise to our eyes content.
I just upgraded my mobile phone from a ZTE San Francisco to a ZTE San Francisco 2 and it's a significant improvement. It has a faster processor, a far better camera with flash, and it runs a later version of Android. But most important of all, it doesn't have those two chrome strips down either side. "Er, is he going soft in the head"? you may be thinking. Well no, I don't actually give a damn about those chrome strips, but most of the online reviews of this phone I've read mentioned them in their first paragraph. It appears (geddit), that people are becoming as obsessed with the appearance of their gadgets as they already are with their haircuts, clothes, cars and sofas. And it's not only physical gadgets like phones but also software interfaces. I'd love to write a smug, judgmental column that argues everyone else is obsessed with appearances whereas I just don't care about such trivia, only the deepest essences of things. I'd love to, but in all honesty I can't, because I'm no better than anyone else in this respect. I don't give a damn about those particular chrome strips, but I'm fanatical about software user interfaces and have dumped many perfectly functional utilities because I couldn't stand the cut (or colour scheme) of their jib.
This phenomenon is not of course confined to the IT business. Reflect for a moment about the explosion of interest in all areas of design - from consumer goods to architecture and engineering - over the last three decades or so. Apple design guru Jonathon Ives was just knighted, while architects nowadays have the celebrity status of movie stars. This is a real social phenomenon, and it's of far more than just sociological interest because its economic consequences are profound. How many new car models failed because a consensus emerged that they looked awful (and I don't JUST mean the Sinclair C5, that's a lazy choice: there's also the BL Mini Metro, especially in that unique poo-brown paintjob). The plain fact is that everyone's a critic and aesthete nowadays, with major consequences for industries (both consumer and technical) that can hardly be overestimated. If you produce something that potential users find ugly you're in big trouble, and in areas like computer or phone operating systems, where development budgets run into the billions, that can matter a great deal. Which explains the almost comically paranoid behaviour of certain big IT companies, because some of the design decisions involved are now too big for mere mortals to make without going a little bit mad.
Two of these terrible quandaries are examined by RWC columnists in this very issue. Jon Honeyball writes about Microsoft's dithering over the look-and-feel of Windows 8, which is approaching Hamlet-like proportions. Redmond chickened-out from incorporating the final look into the Release Candidate build and Jon suspects this is because they're panicking, still trying out different tie-and-handkerchief combinations on secret focus groups. Locked in a death struggle with Apple's iPad, the stakes are too high to get it wrong, but the decision is too big for anyone's sanity. We do know that they've dumped the "Aero-glass" theme for window borders they so proudly introduced with Windows Vista, describing it as now "dated and cheesy" and certainly not "en vogue". (Interpreted, that means we're terrified that YOU think it's cheesy, and we want to get our capitulation in before your attack). Actually I like the Aero look, as indeed I like cheese, but there's a certain grim irony in this situation because it was Microsoft who started the whole trend 20-years ago, fussing over the look-and-feel of early Windows versions, being first to hire big-bucks graphic designers and useability teams.
Meanwhile in his column Simon Jones describes a user revolt among programmers over the colour-scheme in Visual Studio 11 Beta. Its designers decided to remove most colour from its user interface, substituting small indecipherable monochrome icons and menu options in ALL CAPITALS. I'm hardly surprised developers are on the warpath. Programming is the worst area (except perhaps for writing) to radically fiddle with user interfaces: those hypnotically repetitive loops of edit, compile, run, edit, compile, run are only made tolerable because you've totally internalised the position of every single button and option, so your fingers run on autopilot without conscious intervention. Upset that rhythm and productivity may be ruined for months until you've internalised the new set. The designers may have been right and that too much colour was distracting - doesn't matter when people are adapted to that distraction.
For similar reasons I personally loathe Facebook's imposition of the new Timeline, which depresses me because my profile is now 34 feet long and extends below the floorboards. I've always hated Facebook's interface anyway, but had just about achieved immunity. And the iPad's lack of a hardware back-button still makes me swear ten times a day, another design decision taken for the sake of elegance over utility. (I'll probably get challenged to a duel for saying that). Judging by appearance is here to stay and manufacturers know it, leaving them with only two choices: either get really good at giving us what we didn't know we wanted, like Ives, or else let us customise to our eyes content.
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