Be Excellent To Each Other

Ah, of course.

To clarify, there's nothing stopping them from aping Apple in that regard, but I'll be shocked if Microsoft ever does.

When we started our Vista rollout, 90% of the queries that came back were "How do we make the start menu work like it does in XP/2000?".

Throwing it away and starting again just doesn't make any business sense.

It does to some extent if you're building on shitty foundations. In the 1990s, that's precisely what Apple was doing, unlike Microsoft. Mac OS 9 was a horrible joke, and the aborted attempts to update from 7.x onwards were laughable. (Copland, anyone?) Therefore, Apple took the brave decision to start from scratch, retaining some features and making new ones, but, primarily, using a much better foundation for the entire system.

One could argue that Microsoft is increasingly in a similar situation to Apple's back then, and could do with cutting away the legacy shit and building anew. Of course, it's the 'to some extent' that's the case here. Microsoft's share is too large to risk making big changes.

The ribbon in Office 2003 was a good step forward. They need to keep pushing stuff like that IMHO.

I was agreeing with your earlier comment though - where Windows is now, the amount of people going "Why did they change X, I liked it how it was" just makes large UI changes totally impractical. Apple had the type and size of user base to be able to do it, and it was very successful. I don't think MS can risk rocking the boat that badly.

Folks don't like change...

The amout of rollouts I have been involved with, people are used to the system they have.

We are changing a lot of 98/2000 users to XP and they are not happy.

I prefer the challenge of learnign something new, so love Office 2007, that is nicely different fron 2003.

I assume you mean 2007? Most people hate it here but a few are slowly warming to it. It's odd that they left Outlook alone to an extent though.

You are right they have I did not notice...

That's the thing. There's consistency, and then there's bloating original out-dated designs until they're a monstrous heap of shit. The latter is what Microsoft do and it's an easy trap to fall into; it's all so easy to just keep adding, but it leads to option screens full of things you never planned for, a whole load of clutter, and an awful experience. I find exactly the same problems when I build websites without a clear, comprehensive plan and design.

If you can make an interface intuitive, you don't have to piss off users of older software. It's not just a case of putting existing things in different places arbitrarily, it's putting things in more-obvious places from a user interaction viewpoint.

Okay, you're always going to have to get used to something new, but it doesn't have to be a completely foreign experience of hidden features.

Yeah, my bad.
They ruined Outlook, of course.

If outlook any different?

I have both 2003 and 2007 one on each laptop (long story). And they look the same, other than the ribbon on new mails..

Outlook 2007 doesn't have a ribbon does it? The main difference (to me) is that it uses Word to render emails rather than IE. This means that HTML emails look gash in Outlook 2007

It does then you click create new mail. It has the ribbon.

I don't think ours uses word to do the emails.

That'll be the Word bit. I can assure you it uses it to render them, too. It's made lots of people upset.

Fair enough...

I think most of our emails are rich text anyway..

Well, there is that. My favourite example of this lately is that preview of Office 2010 and Steven Frank's commentary.

Some highlights:

I especially like the bit where several people tell him he's being a dick, and he agrees that perhaps he shouldn't be talking about stuff based on a screenshot. He then goes on to talk about stuff based on a screenshot again.

Wow.

I like the look of 2010..

I'm optimistic as well. 2009 has been okay so far, though 2008 was a pile of shit for me.

Frankly, I don't think he had anything to apologise for or backtrack from. Yes, UIs in use are different to static screen shots, but a still can say a lot, and what that Office shot says is that the UI is seriously problematic. One could argue that software from the company Frank co-founded has UI glitches (most notably Coda), but they're nothing compared to some of the doozies Microsoft craps out, even in its innovations.

I got my 5800 today.. I am most impressed...

Microsoft's biggest weakness for years now, decades even, had been a predominance of middle managers who design everything by committe to please everyone. This mucks up UIs and feature sets. Read up on the discussion of the Vista shutdown button thing, where the lead dev said the meetings where they designed the shutdown menu had 14 managers and took nine months.

It's a truism in design that if you try to please everyone you wow no-one. Apple's greatest strength is being willing to say "we will make this the best thing it can be for these customers, even though that means we'll sell a lot less to those other guys". I believe this is why the iPhone's support for commercial environments is a bit of an afterthought.

Occasionally Microsoft have a team who somehow do an end-run around the beaurocracy and sneak something good out, or they buy something in and don't skank it up. FiddlerTool, Visio, Live Writer are examples of this.

It really does show. How or why they think a team of managers can trump the experience of a specialised UI and User Interaction designer I don't know. Camels 'n' that.

I almost puked when I saw the interface for their new SuperPreview tool. It's also a pretty shit piece of software, too.

Or: we're right about this, so deal with it. That somewhat arrogant stance is built on 25+ years of high-end UI ability, rather than a photocopier. What's most interesting, though, is that recent Apple has 'backed down' once or twice, albeit in small things—witness the new checkbox to get rid of the hideous Leopard translucent menu bar.


And yet it's now got an increasing number of highly useful business-oriented apps (including Bento and Things). It's not a major player yet, but it's making the right moves.

Here is another 5800 app that I have been playing around with.

TouchComic, a comic book reader. It's written in python so you will need to install the python runtimes first, download from https://garage.maemo.org/frs/download.p ... _1.9.4.sis and install to the phone memory.

Touch comic can be download from here http://touchcomic.googlecode.com/files/ ... icV1.4.sis (I think this also needs to be installed to the phone memory, something to do with python). It only supports cbz files which will need to be stored on the memory card in a folder titled "Comics". It really is a good little reader. Swipe or double tap at the side to turn pages. More information at the guy's website http://30dbs.blogspot.com/ where he also has a puzzle game called Sensitive which is alright.

Also I hope everyone has been keeping their 5800 firmware up to date. The main benefit is the ability to download video from iplayer but others say it's faster and more responsive.

In other news the Ovi Store is rumoured to be launching really soon. It's the Nokia app store but with wallpapers and ringtones as well (to boost the numbers). They are promising recommendations based on friends downloads, previous downloads and location based which is different I guess to other stores. I'm sure it will work but not sure the mass market is that interested.

The first thing I did was update the software, before I transfered all my numbers over. I am never getting another LG as getting the numbers off was a complete pain.

Don't suppose anybody knows how to hard reset a Sony Ericsson C510 phone, do they? Had a look on Google to no avail.

HTC Magic - if I got one of these in a year contract from Vodaphone or T-Mobile how/how much regarding using the thing with my existing O2 tariff? I'm assuming these carriers would lock the unit to their thingummy, but being Android, I imagine it wouldn't take much to free the unit up and that would be better than buying a vanilla unit from somewhere.

I'm reaching the end of my contract on Vodafone. I've been using a V1615 which is otherwise known as a HTTC Kaiser or something. It's a Windows Mobile 6 thing and it's got decent GPS on it (it runs Tomtom) which I've used to get me from Merseyside to London a few times and it's got loads of good apps and I use Opera Mobile on it so the internet isn't too choresome.

But you know... new contract, new phone. I'm considering an iPhone as it should work neatly with my MacBook but I'm hearing good things about the Nokia N97. I've not used that Symbian OS yet though. Anyone know if it's decent or if any other chunky badass phones/PPCs are coming out?

The Nokia Ovi store is now open and I must admit it is a bit of a disappointment.

For an extreme example, an alarm that cost £43.99

http://store.ovi.com/content/6A173A7C13 ... rce=search

It has got a website you can browse away from the phone and I'm sure the user reviews will be handy, but the prices aren't as cheap as the Iphone's so lack that impulse buy factor.

Don't get an iPhone.

The games prices look OK, although the selection is surprisingly limited. I'd be happy to get this (Puzzle Bobble) for iPhone.

Mrs Z's phone has died (well some very important buttons are borked, and yes, I've had the case off and had a poke around) so she need a new PAYG, on Orange with a Camera (2mega pixels or better), and no more than £60. Ideally a Sony Ericsson, but the cheap ones are naff.

I see Orange do a Nokia 2730's for £40 online (with a £10 top up), fits the bill, but just thought I'd mention it on here in case anyone had had one and hated / loved it.

So opinions and suggestions would be very welcome x