The Day Microsoft Lost
Today was the day that Microsoft's mobile efforts started to die. Perhaps it will be a slow death, but I expect not. I expect it to go the way of HD DVD: first a slow build-up of disdain for it from its inferiority and then comes the tipping point. And everything collapses.
Did you know that Windows Mobile used to be called WinCE? Yes, “wince”. People should've realized it then and there. But no one turns a blind-eye to the obvious like Microsoft fanboys (I'm not including those of you stuck with Windows or a Windows Mobile device).
It's all about the iPhone SDK and the next major version of iPhone's OSX. Apple seems to finally be in a position where licensing Microsoft technology (Exchange/ActiveSync) and not have it look like an all-out surrender. The iPhone is undeniable. In every way. It's a phenomenon, a very popular fact of life.
Apple has opted—like it did with the original Mac and every model since—to invest computer power into the user interface and not just to, say, run Excel faster. That's why they all called it a graphical toy, even though its interface in 1984 was superior to Windows (and still is). They'd bitch about the machine being so slow for having to keep the graphical user interface running and “what a waste”. Stupid people to whom it never occurred that the computer was being OPERATED BY HUMANS. So of course, in my opinion, the UI should get as much of the CPU as it needed first and foremost (assuming, of course, that the UI routines are optimized to be faster and more efficient). Still, the UI is the first priority of any technology that humans use. Period. This is unassailable fact.
Same with the iPhone. People call it a smartphone because it can run non-voice applications. Others insist it's' not a smartphone unless it talks to Microsoft Exchange servers. Some people call it a smartphone if it's got a keyboard and its use requires someone who's got a knack for succeeding with arcanely tasks.
The iPhone both fits and does not fit in the category of smartphones: There's more processing power and more memory than a typical smartphone. No, the iPhone was expected to be a phone that was a better phone than anything out there. And guess what? It is. Look at the voice interfaces. Notice how you don't have to remember how to turn it to a speakerphone, or that you have to embed a numeric keypad into a QWERY keyboard. Before the iPhone, did you know how to turn on speakerphone after you were in a call? Or to create a 3way call? Did you have to read a manual when you got your Crackberry? Or your Symbian phone?
The iPhone maintains the Apple's long history of flipping around the common wisdom of the ages. It's the most difficult programming in the world to make an application that's easy enough to never have to ‘learn’ because it's so evident what to do, or because your choices are always right there in front of you.
The iPhone is like the original Mac: an appliance.
Today, though, Apple just enabled a few thousand developers to push themselves past their talents—and mind you, most will—to produce a polish RIM and Palm could only dream of. I won't even put Microsoft in that same category. Today, Apple just lined up millions of potential iPhone buyers because now all those developers can probably provide any solution anyone might need.
Touch is the new platform, starting today.
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I agree that Apple's iPhone platform is undoubtedly superior to any MS mobile platform I've used to date. And it's obvious why - it was designed for what it does. MS mobile platforms aren't. But I don't expect Apple to crowd MS out of any market in which the behemoth competes. Not in any sense. And I don't want it to.
MS brings its monopolistic power and the money that implies to any market it even threatens to enter with such force that competitors and buyers alike are intimidated. Call out the Zune if you must, but as they say, the exception proves the rule.
And don't forget that MS has fanboys, too. My father goes so far as to suggest that the world would be better off if all other software publishers shut down and let MS run the show. Bizarre, but real.
And frankly, I'd prefer to have Apple be the hungry underdog. To compete, they come to the party with better design, better interfaces, and products that work and yet manage to stay under the radar of malware authors. Give them dominance in anything, and all that will stop. Market leaders are not innovators, they release Vistas that people pay money for and then pay someone to uninstall, and they invite attack by malware.
As much as I love my Macs, and as much as I covet an iPhone, I don't ever want them to supplant MS' share of those markets. Not ever. I'd rather them be sublime by comparison than have Apple slide into a position of comfortable mediocrity.
If UI is so terribly important to apple why do I have to go to a third party to buy a mouse that works correctly? The mighty mouse is pretty but it will not allow me to click two distinct buttons at one time. Not to mention the fact that I have two equally non intuitive ways to access context menus on my laptop. I either have to turn on the tap "feature" which leads to every stray graze of the trackpad by the side of my thumb moving my cursor out of the area I want it to be in. Or I have to use two hands to accomplish something that should take 1 finger.
So is UI important to Apple or is the illusion of a good UI important? You have to totally retrain your hand to use an Apple input device how is that good form or function?
Loren said:
Chorded mouse presses? You want to press, say, primary+secondary buttons at the same time? I've never even *heard* of that.
Here's something that people who had been used to multi-button mice in the past assume: that the UI requires a multi-button mouse.
Why would you assume that Mac OS X (or, for that matter, Mac OS 9 and before) require more than one button to operate?
The Mac OS—and for that matter, implementing Apple's Human Interface Guidelines—is built around the concept of a single mouse button. A well-designed Macintosh application should NEVER require right-clicking (or secondary-clicking) to enact any command. EVER.
The additional mouse buttons are there for user convenience (e.g., they begin to remember that there's a contextual menu on every Finder item (folder or file) that will let them move that item to the Trash. But obviously, that item in the contextual menu isn't the ONLY way to move an item to the trash. In fact, every single item in a contextual menu has more primary ways of doing the same thing.
Windows depends on right-clicking. Most X11 Window managers require it, too.
And on a Mac, however many buttons the mouse you're using has, will be made available within the UI for you to set an action to. it's just set to default to any button being enabled as the primary button (effectively making any mouse a 1-button mouse by default).
And why do I keep using "primary" and "secondary" instead of "left" and right", respectively? Because I don't assume that everyone's right-handed. And guess what? Neither does Mac OS X.
And face it: you have to retrain your hand for any new mouse. For a track pad. For a track ball. Buttons are in different places, different angles, different distances from one another. You *always* have to adjust muscle memory.
As for accidental taps? Go to System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse. Click the Track Pad tab and go to the bottom of that pane:
The text of it:
Trackpad Options:
[ ] Ignore accidental trackpad input
[ ] Ignore trackpad when mouse is present
As for inputting a secondary click, you can also put 2 fingers on the trackpad and press the button. One hand, one input, more or less.
And you didn't like the Mighty Mouse--a matter of personal preference--so you went out and bought yourself one that you liked more. And it just worked. What insane drudgery.
And finally, if you want to file a bug with Apple (and you should, not just for bugs, but also if you're unhappy with anything in the Mac OS inteface), use the The Apple Bug Reporter, or the url, if you like: https://bugreport.apple.com
It's too bad that you've never even HEARD of that, but If you ever play minesweeper in paralells... you NEED of that, but that game requires at least a basic knowledge of math, so maybe apple isn't expecting me to be that intelligent. Or many other things, in X.org you can bind multiple mouse button presses to macros of sorts, lending to a much more enjoyable and convenient user experience. Also, you never need a second mouse button in windows or X it just makes things work so much faster than moving your cursor to the top of the screen every time you want to do something that you don't know the keyboard shortcut for.
As for the secondary click, that still requires three fingers when any sane input model only requires 1.
I have never had to retrain to the extent that the mighty mouse forced me to retrain. It's also a ergonomic train wreck. It's nearly as bad as the G3 "hockey puck" mouse that came out with the first iMacs, which is pretty much the least ergonomic mouse of all time. It seems that Apple is hell-bent on causing repetitive stress injuries for the sake of design.
"Ignore Accidental Input" has been selected ever since I bought my computer, it just doesn't work. Nor does it work on computers in the store, I guess my accidental input isn't accidental enough for Apple, and as they don't allow me to set thresholds for what "accidental" means *X.org does* I can't make it work.
I have filed many bug reports with apple in the past, I have quit because glaring security issues that I have filed (which I can't expound on due to NDA) under Panther are STILL HERE. And they never did and never will get fixed in Panther or Tiger. Hey but my bug reports for OS 9 are all taken care of (since the codebase is completely different).
I accept that Apple will never give me a mouse with more than one button on the outside, but there is absolutely no way to make that into a "feature" instead of a shortcoming. There's a reason the Apple store sells third party mice and that is it. A situation requiring more work by the user to do the same action is not better design, ever.