Changeover

I finally got my new iPhone 4S activated. The iPhone 3G in this photo served me faithfully for 3 years, and it still works, although it slowed down quite a bit after I installed iOS4 on it. The 4S is significantly faster, of course.

Doing the Unlikely

Image source: Apple

Apple has managed to do something everyone else so far has failed at: make UNIX usable for non-geeks. In fact, Apple has turned UNIX into a mass-market consumer operating system. How? iOS, which powers the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, is UNIX at its core. The typical iOS device user doesn't need to know this, and frankly, they don't care so long as their devices work properly. iOS shares core code with MacOS X, so there's a non-trivial degree of reusability between codebases, and lessons learned on iOS are transferred to MacOS X and vice versa. This is only to be expected, since both iOS and MacOS X trace their ancestry to NeXTSTEP, the platform on which Tim Berners-Lee invented the web in 1990. So UNIX is alive and well...and thanks to Apple, popular. Not bad for an OS first developed in 1969. For historical context, scroll through the UNIX timeline.

Doing the Right Thing

On Dec. 19, 2010, I ordered three items from the Canadian online Apple Store for my brother-in-law's Christmas present. The package was delivered on Dec. 22 to his home in Metro Vancouver. Unfortunately, one of the three items I ordered, an Apple Remote, was not in the package. Today I called Apple to follow up. The automated interactive voice response system took my order details, which I spoke in complete sentences as requested, then transferred me to a customer service agent, Stacy, who apologized for the oversight and arranged to have a free replacement shipped at no charge to my brother-in-law's address. The entire interaction was pleasant and took just a few minutes, consistent with the positive user experience Apple strives for in all of its products and services. Attention to detail is what sets Apple apart from many other organizations. It's yet another reason I'm a long-time Apple customer.

A Future Where Usability is the Prime Virtue

(iPad image © Apple)

After months of speculation, rumour-mongering, and hype, the iPad was announced last week. A lot has been written elsewhere about it, much of it utterly wrongheaded, so I won't rehash any of that. However, some folks do seem to grok what the iPad is about — click on the links at the end of this post if you're curious to read what they say. In the meantime, imagine a near-future where computers are different — much more accessible and useful to non-geeks. First, a brief tour of where we came from, and how little progress we've made as computer
victims
users, really — until now.

Jan 2003, self-explanatory:

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don't drive usability issues

Jan 2004 - Allchin (who led the Vista team) wrote:

From: Jim Allchin
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2004 8:38 AM
To: Bill Gates; Steve Ballmer
Subject: losing our way...

I am not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers (both business and home) the most, but in my view we lost our way. I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems [our] customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that doesn't translate onto great products.

I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft...my point is about the philosophy that Apple uses. They think scenario. They think simple.

FAST FORWARD SIX YEARS

Feb 2, 2010 - developer David Alison looks back on his switch in 2008:

In relatively short order I went from having a MacBook to purchasing a Mac Pro, which replaced my primary Windows desktop. Whereas the MacBook was quick, the Mac Pro was-and still is-remarkably fast. With dual 2.8Ghz quad core Xeons and 12GB of RAM, I was suddenly able to run a huge number of applications seamlessly.

The bottom line is I'm really happy I decided to "try out" that MacBook two years ago. Computing-as a software developer the place I spent a huge number of my waking hours-became fun and exciting again.

Former MS Business Development Director Don Dodge tries out Apple stuff:

The most obvious distinction between Microsoft and Apple is design. Apple is quite simply the best hardware / software design company in the world...You see the design ethic in everything Apple does. The Mac, iPod, iTouch, iPhone and iPad are just beautiful, elegant, and imaginative designs that provide a delightful user experience.

Feb 4, 2010 - Former MS VP **** Brass recounts Microsoft's self-inflicted woes:

When we were building the tablet PC in 2001, the vice president in charge of Office at the time decided he didn't like the concept. The tablet required a stylus, and he much preferred keyboards to pens and thought our efforts doomed. To guarantee they were, he refused to modify the popular Office applications to work properly with the tablet. So if you wanted to enter a number into a spreadsheet or correct a word in an e-mail message, you had to write it in a special pop-up box, which then transferred the information to Office. Annoying, clumsy and slow.

Which, when you think about it, describes most Microsoft products.

Contrast this with what's coming soon for the iPad:

People should have confidence that their work is always preserved unless they explicitly cancel or delete it. If your application helps people create and edit documents, make sure they do not have to take an explicit save action.

Bring it on!

Additional reading

Joe Hewitt: iPad

Fraser Speirs: Future Shock

Lucien Dupont: My Dad and the iPad

Mike Monteiro: The Failure of Empathy

Vistagate

Well, it's now all over the Internet, here, here, and here. Long story short: recently revealed Microsoft internal emails show that Windows Vista was not only far from ready when it was released for sale to the public, Microsoft's own executives knew this, and Microsoft's partners (such as Intel, HP, and Dell) also did. Yet despite this, they all pushed Vista with a campaign about "The Wow! starts now." Filthy stinking liars, all of them. No wonder the Vista launch was met with widespread skepticism and sometimes outright disgust. Vista was called a chrome-plated turd, and worse. All those negative reviews? Utterly deserved. Computerworld's Gregg Keizer writes,

Last-minute changes... broke drivers, forcing key hardware vendors to "limp out with issues" when the operating system launched last year, according to a presentation... that was made public this week.

From the same publication, Mike Elgan opines:

Everybody's talking today about "Drivergate" — internal Microsoft e-mails that show senior Microsoft executives personally struggling to use hardware products sporting the "Windows Vista Capable" sticker. The e-mails also show that Microsoft lowered its standard for some hardware compatibility, apparently to help Intel impress Wall Street. This revelation is simply the latest in a long series that add up to one inescapable conclusion: Windows Vista sucks.

Gee, tell us something we don't already know.

PCMag's Lance Ulanoff wrote:

Overall, Microsoft's chief concern during this time appears to be everything but the consumer.

So, not only does Microsoft treat its customers as suspected criminals (with such nonsense as Windows Genuine Advantage and user-hostile product activation), they utterly disregard the interests of their customers in order to maximize their own revenue (e.g. through selling multiple versions). Whoop-dee-do.

Recently, to prop up lackluster retail Vista sales, Microsoft reduced the price. Brian Caulfield's take in Forbes Magazine? Microsoft's Cheaper Vista: Don't Bother.

Exactly.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I wouldn't bother running Windows Vista even if it was free (as in beer). If I really wanted free, I'd run some flavour of Linux. As it is, MacOS X serves my current needs well, and I'm not even running the latest version.

The Times, They Are A'Changin'

I used to read PC Magazine (PCMag) regularly, even after I started using a Mac (in 1996) as my primary computer. If I recall correctly, I started with PCMag Vol. 1 No. 3 (and I've kept my Vol. 1 No. 1 issue of PC World magazine). PCMag was one of my main sources of information about personal computing, along with Byte, Macworld, and MacUser. This was all well before the web was invented — no Slashdot, no Ars Technica, no Digg, no Gizmodo, no Engadget. PCMag occasionally ran articles about Macs, just so their readers would know about that other computer. The overall tone of the articles tended to be dismissive. My, my, how times have changed. Now, MacOS X 10.5 Leopard is a PCMag Editor's Choice. Edward Mendelson writes:

Leopard again raises the question of whether to switch from Windows to a Mac. I've found Vista to be a major disappointment that tends to look worse the more I use it. I still use Windows XP for getting serious work done in long, complicated documents. But OS X is easier to manage and maintain and I vastly prefer OS X to Windows for Web-browsing, mail, and especially for any task that involves graphics, music, or video. Leopard performs all such tasks even better than previous versions did—and Leopard is the only OS on the planet that works effortlessly and intuitively in today's world of networked computers and peripherals. Leopard is far from perfect, but it's better than any alternative, and it's getting harder and harder to find good reasons to use anything else.

So, just in case it isn't crystal clear — a Mac is, or should be, the No. 1 choice of anyone who's buying a new personal computer for multimedia use. And nowadays, that's almost everyone whose budget allows for more than a bare-bones $199 Linux desktop PC or an Asus Eee.

The Horror of Vista

Phil Greenspun relates a horrific tale of software gone awry, which underlines how perfectly awful the Vista out-of-box experience can be for some unfortunate souls. It's not unlike having the transmission fall out just after you drive your brand new car off the lot. Yes, apparently it can be that bad.

No wonder people are sticking with Windows XP, or switching to Macs. Those who switch to Macs, like entrepreneur Mark Cuban, often become fanboys. In some cases, whole families switch to Macs — permanently. A priceless quote:

Adapting to life on a Mac was effortless, and delivered a much easier, better and more intuitive computing experience for everything I needed and wanted to do than any of the Windows-based PCs that littered the previous two decades.

Nowadays, I often wonder why anyone would even consider buying a Windows PC.

Resurgent Apple

Writing in the New York Times, David Pogue notes that Apple's Macintosh computers are enjoying new popularity and he asks his readers why now? The comments, especially from those who recently switched to a Mac from a Windows PC, are revealing. It might be tempting to dismiss the discussion as fanboy/girl-ism, but there seems to be more than anecdotal evidence for Apple's changing fortunes. More and more people, it seems, plan to purchase Macs as their next computers. Apple's latest operating system, MacOS X 10.5 Leopard, has been getting considerably more positive reviews than Vista.

There are many good reasons to consider a Mac as your next computer. Here's an excellent one: there is much less malware that affects Macs, compared with Windows. Exhibit A: SilentBanker, a trojan horse that invisibly monitors your online banking transactions, and then proceeds to rifle through your accounts. You can get your PC compromised by visiting an infected website (and these include legitimate sites you might normally visit, not only obviously dodgy ones). Thus far, SilentBanker affects only Windows systems, including Vista. Uh-oh, indeed.

The Migration Continues

This time I'll write a bit about the geek part of my Blogger profile. Long story short: prior to my current gig, I used to work at a terrific little IT consultancy called Claero Systems. At the time I joined Claero, their offices were located on the second floor above a high-end ski shop, in a former architect's loft. In addition to the cool digs, we had comfy couches, track lighting, a fridge, a wine rack, and a billiard table. Great people to work with, a varied and interesting clientele (wine importers, interior designers, creative studios, a photographer, a boutique engineering firm, a furniture wholesaler, a restaurateur, a gourmet travel consultant, real estate developers, a mountaineer who had scaled Everest, a staffing firm, a motion picture editor, even a manufacturer of drink coasters, photo mounts, and wine labels). We provided IT management consulting and solutions, including custom web applications. All in all, a nice little portfolio.

At Claero, we used a range of technologies: Windows Small Business Server 2003, MacOS X Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, OpenBSD, Cisco PIX firewalls, and so on. Hardware was a mix of IBM, Apple, Dell, and HP — similar to what our clients used. Portables were a mix of IBM ThinkPad and Apple PowerBook and MacBook Pro models. One of our senior PHP developers left on good terms to join iStockPhoto just before they were bought by Getty Images. At Claero, we had a monthly staff event to help build the team — each time, we tried something different: indoor rock climbing, river rafting, curling, bowling, go-karting, and so on. As you may have guessed, this was one of the most enjoyable aspects of my time there. We also spent quite a bit of time and effort brainstorming on how to market the company better. All issues were fair game for open discussion: branding, trade show participation, proposal writing, using wikis for collaboration, client relationship management, etc.

While at Claero (a little over 3 years), I noticed clients expressing interest in MacOS X as an alternative to Windows, especially since they could see me administering Windows servers and networks using Remote Desktop Connection from an Apple portable. Now that I'm no longer there, it seems that more and more people I meet are considering the switch, as well.

Obviously, I'm hardly the only one who's noticed increasing numbers of Windows users are switching to MacOS X. The blog community seems to be piling on with commentary, analyses, and prognostications: how Vista sales are not meeting expectations, how increasing numbers of tech luminaries are migrating to MacOS X, and how people are getting fed up with malware on their Windows PCs. I do think the iPod halo effect is real: once people experience the iPod's elegance and ease of use, they're more inclined to investigate whether Apple computers evince the same sterling qualities. Hint: they do.

Scott Lowe writes:

Now, though, we are seeing the Windows die-hards switching platforms. This isn’t simply moving from one UNIX-like platform to a different UNIX-like platform. Mac OS X is nothing like Windows, and switching from one platform to another is a pretty significant effort. Clearly, there must be a reason why these long-time Windows users are switching. These aren’t your average Windows users—these are Windows power users, users who have championed the Windows platform for years. Now they’re switching to the Mac.

Hmm. I'm not sure if, like me, he's just going by anecdotal evidence, but I don't think so. For example, a blogger from inside IBM recently wrote:

Don't let anyone tell you that the OS 10 and XP are the same. I did more exploring with my Mac in the first weekend than I did with my Windows boxes over the past 8 years. Ya gotta have a Windows box; you want to have a Mac. As our team is tasked to explore the suitability of Web 2.0 technologies to our enterprise customers - what can we learn from the success of YouTube, MySpace, 2nd Life etc - I feel that using the Windows OS constrains one's thinking about Web 2.0 because you have to do it the Windows way, like it or not. With a Mac, I have a sense, real or imagined, that on my MacBook, I'm doing it my way or creating my own web experience with this tool. This is the way that it should be.

Like many, I was drawn back to the Mac by my family's thrills with their iPods (original, Nano, and Video). What if our customers could deliver on their sites a web-based experience like shopping on the iTunes store: fast, easy to navigate, inclusive, friendly, simple to buy, know who you are.

What put my Mac purchase in automatic was the recent IBM announcement to support Linux and Macs. This plus the incredible Mac community within IBM...

Hmm. Would that be similar to the Mac community inside Google?

In the meantime, the bile uttered against Windows seems to have no letup:

Windows is the platform on which 90 per cent of the computing industry builds, and this naturally means that it's the platform on which 90 per cent of spyware, adware, virus, worm, and Trojan developers build. That translates into 90 per cent of botnet zombies, 90 per cent of spam relays, 90 per cent of spyware hosts, and 90 per cent of worm propagators. In a nutshell, Windows is single-handedly responsible for turning the internet into the toxic shithole of malware that it is today.

That's not going to change any time soon, no matter how good Vista's security might be, but a version of Windows with truly adequate security and privacy features would certainly be a step in the right direction.

It would be a step in the right direction — except that accepting Vista's security also means accepting its draconian and user-hostile Digital Rights Management features (as per Bruce Schneier's analysis, see below).

There's even a compelling business case for migrating to open-source software, as Novell has done, and reaping millions of dollars in annual savings.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to many, Apple itself is increasingly adopting the open-source model in its commercial software offerings, even on the server end of things. And Apple's Safari web browser is even taking market share away from Firefox, if this data is to be believed. Safari now accounts for 6.2% of all web browsers, up from 5.7% in December 2006. Hmm.

It's all good.

Fighting for the Most Vulnerable

Today marks the beginning of a long weekend here in Alberta, Canada — Monday being Family Day. I set aside Saturday morning to photograph my friend, Stephanie Gray, who needed a new headshot for her official bio. Let me tell you just a little bit about Stephanie: She's Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Bio-ethical Reform, a pro-life organization that educates the public about what abortion is — the legalized murder of unborn children. Unfortunately, most people don't seem to understand this, or if they do, it's only at a vaguely notional level, which allows them to remain largely indifferent to the fact that in Canada their tax dollars are paying for unrestricted access to abortion in every trimester. As if this grossly immoral misuse of public money isn't tragedy enough, I reflect on the fact that two of the world's wealthiest men, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, give vast sums of money to various organizations that promote abortion. I'm not making any of this up. In 2003, American Life League tallied contributions to Planned Parenthood from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and came up with a total of $31,567,108 — which may not seem like a lot compared to the total philantrophy attributed to them. But let's look at this another way: according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the average cost of an abortion in the U.S. is $372; do some basic math, and the Gates contributions as of 2003 represent 84,858 abortions. Think about it: 84,858 people aren't with us today in part because the world's wealthiest couple thought it was a good idea to give money to organizations that murder the unborn. And it's not like this was even an original idea — see Bill Moyers' 2003 interview with Bill Gates:

When I was growing up, my parents were almost involved in various volunteer things. My dad was head of Planned Parenthood. And it was very controversial to be involved with that. And so it's fascinating. At the dinner table my parents are very good at sharing the things that they were doing. And almost treating us like adults, talking about that.

My mom was on the United Way group that decides how to allocate the money and looks at all the different charities and makes the very hard decisions about where that pool of funds is going to go. So I always knew there was something about really educating people and giving them choices in terms of family size.

Good grief, it's bad enough that Microsoft Windows is already installed on over 90% of the world's personal computers, but to think that every time I pay for a Microsoft product I help to fund the murder of unborn children makes me sick to my stomach. And I even went to the trouble of getting Microsoft-certified on Windows XP. Sigh.

There are alternatives to Microsoft products, you know. If you're so inclined, try Linux, or if you want something that's much less of a hassle, get a Mac. Please. Either way, you'll have far fewer problems with viruses and other malware. I played with Windows 1.0 in 1985, I've installed and configured it for other people starting with 2.0, and I've been using it regularly myself since Windows 3.1. My involvement with Windows ends with XP and 2003. No Vista for me.

Now, if you're from Canada and you've read this far, why not join the fight to end abortion?

The Tide May Be Shifting, Ever So Slightly

You know something's afoot when Microsoft's latest and greatest OS is getting lukewarm or even hostile reviews from a whole raft of technology writers. Microsoft apologists and astroturfers in the blogosphere can pretend it's business as usual, but Vista has been called a chrome-plated turd, a Windows expert (Scott Finnie) has very publicly decided to switch to MacOS X (when will Vista chief Jim Allchin follow?), and now comes word that Intel co-founder (employee badge #3) Les Vadasz bought himself a MacBook Pro. He joins Tim Berners-Lee, David Hansson, Paul Graham, James Gosling, Tim Bray, Amit Singh, and Bill Joy, among other notables — a very impressive group of tech luminaries.

Scott Finnie wrote:

After living with the Mac for three months and comparing it with my Vista experiences, the choice is crystal clear. I've struggled to sort out my gut feeling about Windows Vista (see "The Trouble with Vista"), but the value and advantage of the Mac and OS X are difficult to miss. While I continue to work with Windows XP and Vista on a number of other machines, I am now recommending the Macintosh for business and home users.

It's as if the scales fell from his eyes. Apparently, he's not the only one — Stephen Manes writes for Forbes:

Windows Vista: more than five years in the making, more than 50 million lines of code. The result? A vista slightly more inspiring than the one over the town dump. The new slogan is: "The 'Wow' Starts Now," and Microsoft touts new features, many filched shamelessly from Apple's Macintosh. But as with every previous version, there's no wow here, not even in ironic quotes. Vista is at best mildly annoying and at worst makes you want to rush to Redmond, Wash. and rip somebody's liver out.

Ouch.

Why would Vista elicit such viscerally negative reactions? Some of the comments seen in the blogosphere are revealing. From Mini-Microsoft:

I wish I had done more day-to-day home-use testing. I looked forward to using Outlook 2007, but in the end I've settled on Gmail for my domain. Same with Vista/IE7, there are a lot of obvious bugs and issues that if I had done more day-to-day testing I would have reported on.

And:

I know you'd like to hear positive news about Vista, but we ended up sending both back to Dell this morning. Out of the box, both machines reported driver conflicts. Updating didn't help. The video cards were unrecognized. Now, this may be Dell's fault rather than Microsoft's, but Vista gets the blame.

Or from This Lamp:

Tonight one of my students was struggling to get some assignments transferred from her new Acer laptop (bought just this week) to a flash drive that I handed to her. She muttered something about hating "this new Windows Vista," so I walked over to her desk to see if I could help. She had only booted the laptop a few minutes earlier, loaded her documents into Word, and was now trying to save them to my flash drive--which is supposed to be driverless on any system. What I saw when I looked at her screen was a total freeze up. The mouse pointer wouldn't move. I tried to alt-tab between applications. Nothing. I tried a control-alt-delete. Nothing.

As I held down the power button to shutoff her laptop, I would've been speechless had it not been for the one word that came to mind.

"Wow."

No matter what's causing such incompatibilities, it makes for an abysmal out-of-the-box user experience. 'The "Wow" Starts Now' sounds apropos — just not in a good way.

Core 2 Mama

Caroline had a pet peeve for some time: because CJ found our oldest iBook (500MHz G3) too slow, he often borrowed her 1GHz G4 iBook to play games that were too taxing for his iBook — it was fine for Zoombinis Island Adventure or Putt Putt Goes to the Zoo, but not for Tribal Trouble, Enigmo 2, or Ottomatic. Caroline finally decided to upgrade — to a 15-inch MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo, the 2.16GHz model with 1GB RAM and 120GB hard drive. So now she has the fastest notebook in the house, and I'm soldiering on with a 3+year old 800MHz iBook G4. CJ inherited her iBook, so I have the slowest notebook computer of almost anyone I know. I'll hold out until MacOS X Leopard ships before I upgrade. But I'm so used to my iBook by now, I think I'll miss it in the sort of way that one misses a comfortable pair of old shoes, or a favourite shirt.

Update: As part of Caroline's Christmas present, I bought a 1GB DDR2 SO-DIMM and put it in her new notebook, so now she has 2GB RAM. And she complains there are no games on it... argghh. :-)