May Contain Nuts

(Seriously, who names these products? Microsoft even lampooned themselves on their ludicrously overwrought names with their “Microsoft designs the iPod packaging” video, and yet they keep doing it!)

So, Windows Phone 7 Series. Phones. Yeah. I’ma just call it WP7 for short.

I have to give MS some serious kudos on this, actually. Despite the completely atrocious design-by-committee branding in the name of the product, they’ve taken a pretty damn bold step with WP7. Zero backwards compatibility with Windows Mobile 6.5 and earlier, strong emphasis on the retail consumer (to the point of tying media sync to the Zune software platform… will be interesting to see how this device plays out in corporate IT, given the holy hell that was raised about iTunes), minimal multitasking, and a complete and utter departure from the UI of not only Windows Mobile, but pretty much every other smartphone out there.

Conceptually, there is a great deal about WP7 to like, and I think Microsoft can easily position themselves to become a serious contender again in the mobile market that’s basically left them behind over the last 2.5 years (3.5 by the time Wp7 comes out, actually) since the release of the iPhone. Things like the live-updating, rich-content home screen tiles, the broad and deep integration with social networks like Facebook, and the concept- or task-oriented nature of the device’s software, rather than a strictly application-based usage model are things that are very interesting to me, and it’s good to see Microsoft intentionally differentiate itself from the rest of the market in such substantive ways. I think Windows Phone will live or die on this differentiation, rather than its branding as a Windows device (though as always, such branding is probably more beneficial than not).

I’m more ambivalent about the actual execution of the concepts put forth in the WP7 user experience though. The entire platform is built on the Zune HD interface model, and there’s no possibility of carriers overriding this interface as there was in the past with Windows Mobile (something I’m sure HTC is less than 100% pleased about), so I really, really hope you like the way the Zune HD behaves. I, personally, don’t.

Maybe it’s because I get a little OCD with my digital interfaces (having an uneven number of apps on one screen of my iPod is enough to annoy me until I “fix it”, even at the expense of my application grouping methodology… and don’t even get me started on the elaborate and complex maze of folders I use on the Mac to store everything), but the Zune HD’s UI just strikes me as lazily executed because of all the overflowing text and wasted space in many of the screens. I know large, thin, sans-serif type and bold, flat colors are “in vogue” right now, and they do make the device look very stylish, but I don’t think “hip” and “useful” necessarily converge all that often (I mean, have you seen Lady Gaga’s wardrobe?), and I kind of worry that MS is painting themselves into a corner with this UI being so closely tied to the branding of the platform. Chucker argued back at me that Apple’s Aqua interface has made considerable evolutions since its introduction in 2001 2000 with super-glossy buttons and translucent pinstripes, and I agree that Apple has done a very good job with keeping their OS’s interface fairly fresh and in-line with current trends. However, I think the changes Apple has made to Aqua in the past decade are largely superficial: tweaking gradients and transparencies more than anything else. At its core, Aqua is still very much the same as it was 10 years ago in terms of its appearance and behavior. The Zune UI, I think, faces a larger uphill battle against trendiness because so much of its UI is fundamentally not just trendy-looking, but trendy-feeling (again, overflowing text, large monochromatic iconography, whizzy spinny animations). Revamping that UI to keep up with the times without seriously altering the behavioral characteristics of the UI on a fairly fundamental level will probably be much more difficult for Microsoft than it has been for Apple, though I do wish them the best of luck.

My other gripe is related to the first, and it’s got to do with the design of the “hub” applications. I’m not personally a huge fan of the broad two-dimensional navigation in apps like Windows Media Center, because half the time a number of my options are invisible and inaccessible. Similarly, with the Zune UI, it can be hard to tell what all can be done in an application hub without first exploring it fully, which can take some time. This secretive UI concept also requires the user to maintain a much larger conceptual map of the application, as well as the navigational requirements needed to reach various far-flung regions, which strikes me as far more complex than the model which Apple has adopted for the iPhone. It’s bound to be a great interface for chic geeks, because Microsoft is pretty good at building interfaces that geeks and tech enthusiasts feel very comfortable with. I just wonder if the breadth of the navigational capabilities (and requirements) for some of the task hubs in WP7 will be off-putting to people who are less comfortable with digital devices.

As a furtherance to this point, I think Microsoft has misunderstood the utility of animation in a user interface. The WP7 animations are very slick, very intricate, and very dimensional, but they do very little to aid the user in visually navigating through the device’s software. Tapping a tile on the home screen causes the tile to angle away from your finger (which is a nice touch, assuming it actually responds contextually to where you’re pushing on it), but then everything spins off-screen and new content whizzes in seemingly from nowhere. There’s no real “physical” connection between these two layers of the interface the way there is when navigating through the iPhone. Tapping an application icon causes the program to “float up” to the surface, with the home screen UI proceeding out of the field of view. Movement within the application itself is generally very physical, both vertically (with inertial scrolling) and horizontally (with sliding displays). Exiting an application causes it to recede into the background, and the home screen UI falls back into place. These animations are very basic compared to those in WP7, but they also give the device a more physical and connected feel, whereas the WP7 animations just seem to be there because “everybody likes animation in their UI these days”.

I realize I’m doing a lot of complaining about a device which I said at the beginning of this post was a very good idea. The reason is, I think that it is a very good idea, just that the execution of that idea doesn’t fit my personal tastes.

I would love to see some of the more dynamic capabilities of WP7 come to the iPhone, and I think Apple should focus more on providing platforms for developers to build into, rather than just an operating system to build on top of. For example, the Photos application on the iPhone is very basic, and if you want to get photos from Facebook, Flickr, or MobileMe, you have to go into different applications to access them. Even the Apple TV does this better, with a Photos “category” where you can move between services with comparative ease. Better than even that model, though, is WP7’s, where photos just show up from wherever they’re posted, all collected in one place.

Similarly, the People hub is another great idea, which ideally third parties can build into to expand its functionality without adding full-blown applications to the system. Consolidating Contacts, Twitter, Facebook, etc. into one place is a really cool concept. I don’t think it would work quite as well for geeky folks who have multiple Twitter accounts (unless the UI got really creative and potentially overly-complex), but for the average Joe who may have only just figured out what Twitter even is, it’s a very slick implementation.

I also like the ability to pin pretty much anything to the home screen, from hubs to applications to individual items in a hub (like a person or an album). It gives the home screen much more utility for people than a collection of icons with numeric badges on them.

I think a lot of the initial development for WP7 is going to be oriented towards expanding the functionality of these hubs through plugin-style programs, rather than strictly fully-fledged application-based development. Given that the platform will also run whatever new applications developers create, it will be interesting to see how these two branches of functionality compliment or conflict with each other going forward. I suspect WP7 apps will be held to an even higher standard than iPhone apps because of the increased capacity for integration with the various content hubs, as well as the obviously unique and distinctive Zune-like UI. I just hope Windows Mobile developers are up to the considerable challenge after the past decade-plus reign of Windows Mobile’s often atrociously-designed and now-archaic-looking UI.

I’d also be interested in seeing what exactly Microsoft decides to do with the Zune from here out. Given that the Zune and WP7 share a pretty obvious commonality in their UI department, I wonder if they’re both running the same basic OS, with considerable efforts being made to expand its capabilities for the phone. If that’s the case, I wonder if Microsoft will attempt to do with the Zune HD what Apple has done with the iPod Touch: create a gateway product with a lower barrier-to-entry that people can use and get used to without the risk or expense of a phone contract or data plan. If they do, it will definitely be worth keeping an eye on, because Microsoft always plays to win, and while their efforts thus far in the MP3 player market have been pretty dismal at gaining any traction, coupling the Zune HD with a completely overhauled Windows Mobile Phone 7 to create a new Microsoft-controlled mobile computing platform could start driving greater adoption of both devices.

One last thing that wasn’t discussed at the reveal, is whether updates for the OS will be pushed to all users, either free or for a minor fee. This is something that the iPhone platform does pretty consistently better than anyone else, so hopefully Microsoft is learning a lesson from Apple and pressuring carriers and handset makers to allow OS upgrades without making people buy a new phone or resort to tech-nerd solutions like custom boot ROMs.

It will definitely be interesting to see where this goes from here. Unfortunately, I think the biggest problem Microsoft has now is that they’ve tipped their hand a full 8-10 months before their first product will hit store shelves, which gives the competition (especially the whenever-we-feel-like-updating-it Android platform) a considerable head start on getting their copy machines running.

Update: Chucker tells me I’m wrong about the intro date for Aqua being 2001. While I was going off of OS X’s general availability, it was demoed much earlier.

So Microsoft announced yet another critical IE security vulnerability (shocker, I know…) that enables an attacker to access and view your computer’s entire filesystem. While the vulnerability is mitigated by IE’s Protected Mode in Vista and Win7, 66% of the Internet is still using Windows XP, and 20% of those people are still running IE6. That’s a huge attack surface.

While this once again provides an excellent argument against tying your HTML rendering engine so deeply into the operating system that such attacks are even possible in the first place, Microsoft’s proposed workaround illustrates an even WORSE idea (from the Ars piece):

… enable Internet Explorer Network Protocol Lockdown for Windows XP. It requires editing the Windows registry, but thankfully Microsoft has created a “Fix it for me” for this workaround, available at KB 980088. Just click the “Fix this problem” link and you’re good to go. The Fix It automates Network Protocol Lockdown and can be run on individual systems and deployed by enterprises through their automated systems.

Really, you’re going to let an application with open access to the Internet modify the registry because a very possibly untrusted web page told it to?! What the hell, MS?!

Also, anyone who says “well if the link triggers a security warning that’s okay then” is an idiot. The users who would most benefit from this automated resolution method are the ones least likely to either understand or care about the security implications of such an action, and because of Windows’ tedious tendency to ask the user to approve damn near everything they do, those users are going to be trained to click “OK” just to make the dialog go away. It boggles my mind that such low-level OS-impacting capabilities are exposed to such completely un-trustable resources like remote web content.

It seems like IE6 (and Windows XP in general) is becoming an ever-increasing risk to individual and corporate data security on an almost weekly basis now. I wonder how much longer it will take companies to realize that the cost of overhauling their IE6-only internal web applications is far cheaper than the cost of losing enormous piles of sensitive or even classified information to a hacker in China…

So, with my iMac in the shop as noted last time, I’ve been running the Windows 7 beta as my primary OS for about a week now, because I wanted to get a serious feel for how it performed, and I didn’t feel like jousting with Vista for a straight week. Having been at it for a week now, I thought I’d make a few more observations about the OS and its associated platform of Windows Live applications. For the sake of those with feed aggregators, the rest is after the jump…

(more…)

The content of this post doesn’t really have much to do with the title, but I do think that those who see the computer as an “appliance” are a tad off the mark in terms of where they’re setting their expectations.

Anyway, yesterday I took my iMac to the only Apple authorized repair company in a 200 mile radius (Spokane does have its disadvantages… I really miss the Kenwood Apple Store in Cincinnati!) to get its SuperDrive repaired/replaced, because it’s not reading media anymore. After spending an entire summer Mac-less (or effectively Mac-less, as going from a PowerMac G5 with Leopard to an eMac G4 with Tiger was such a usability downgrade that I essentially never used the loaner machine I’d been given by the shop I consigned the G5 through), I was very hesitant to do what I did, but it needed to be done, and waiting would have simply increased the separation time.

So, I am now once again relying on the Dell attached to our TV for my primary computing needs. Despite ironically being the Vista apologist in our household (Oscy hates it with an undying passion), I have sort of had my fill of the OS, and decided after messing with the beta over the weekend to install Window 7 on the TV Dell as the sole OS. While I did get a fairly decent impression of what the OS is like through fiddling with it in VirtualBox on the iMac, I was even more impressed with the OS’s behavior on bare metal hardware. The fact that it’s behaviorally similar to OS X in how it handles applications now probably helps my impression of the system, though it’s still different enough to be distinct from OS X in frustratingly subtle ways… it’s like running Firefox 3 on a Mac; it looks the same, and for the most part acts the same, but the niggling differences trip you up now and again.

Amusingly, despite a couple of graphical tears that only occurred while I was running the Windows Experience Index tests and the fact that in the default Explorer view, the user folder a) doesn’t appear until I’ve directly accessed a location like Downloads from elsewhere in the shell, and b) when it does appear, duplicate entries for each folder I enter show up in the sidebar, the OS seems remarkably stable. I’ve only had one real issue so far, and that’s Google Chrome not installing properly the first time because Windows Firewall blocked it from downloading itself, but even Logitech’s janky mouse configuration utility for Vista installed and ran after a reboot (and a couple of “this software isn’t designed for your OS” warnings from the installer itself).

(On a related note, I ask you, who designs a mouse with a middle button that by default toggle the scroll wheel’s smooth/clicky scroll behavior rather than doing something useful like, I dunno, middle-clicking? Or perhaps, since the answer to that question is obviously, “Logitech”, who at Logitech could possibly have thought that this would be a good and/or useful design feature?)

Anyway, I actually think I’d like to upgrade the TV box to Windows 7 when it comes out, and I seem to be well on my way to convincing my Vista-hating wife to do the same on her box. This amuses me to a certain degree, but also speaks to the quality and finish that Microsoft seems dedicated to delivering in this release of their OS. Hardware and software compatibility aside, Vista has been and continues to be a real performance dog on the Vista-compatible hardware that we have, especially for my wife, whose idea of a normal browser session consists of at least 100 tabs in a single window (so arguably, she’s putting the hardware to considerable use). I’d be interested to see what a week’s worth of Oscy-level usage would do to the Windows 7 installation, especially with all the GUI bells and whistles left on.

On a further note, I’m planning an apartment-wide re-architecturing of the networking setup we’ve got going, in an effort to actually make the folders we set up for sharing visible (and more importantly, accessible) by every machine in the house. Networking is supposed to be drop-dead simple for PC-to-PC and Mac-to-Mac operations, but unfortunately we live in a bi-curious household, OS-wise, and Leopard-to-Vista / Vista-to-Leopard sharing is just downright atrocious (don’t even get me started on printer sharing…).

Ultimately, the best solution I can come up with that will most likely guarantee universal access to shared files across all machines is to create accounts for each of us on every machine, and ensure that each share we create can be accessed by both accounts. If I had the money, I’d probably standardize around some sort of server with a 3-computer domain setup so I didn’t have to go through so much manual effort, but I don’t, so janky workgroup file sharing it is.

Also on the subject of networking, I’m hoping/expecting to upgrade the two Dell boxes to have wireless networking capabilities, since we’re planning on moving into a considerably larger apartment and I don’t want to have LAN cable strewn all over the floors to hook everything together. Unfortunately, that’s not exactly a cheap prospect, and I expect it to run at least $150 to $200 for the cards and router before all is said and done. Grr… stupid money.

This made me chuckle… it’s a bit dated, but then I haven’t had much time to do much reading lately.  Work deadlines suck (the life out of me).  Anyway, on with the funny.

They tell us it’s the iWay or the highway. We think that’s a sad message. Software out there is made to be compatible with your whole life.

- Brad Brooks, VP of Vista Marketing (on Apple’s “Get a Mac” ads)

The most amusing part of this is that the current screensaver du-jour on all of the retail Mac boxes I’ve seen (at least at the Mac shop in the local Best Buy, because Spokane isn’t important enough to have its own Apple store) – as well as the marketing lingo on the Get a Mac page on Apple’s website – touts the Mac as being the most compatible machine you can buy.  The fact that Microsoft, which can’t even build a completely-compatible version of Office for the Mac, is the company saying it is just icing on the cake, really.  With the exception of a .NET IDE, a version of Windows Media Player for the Mac capable of supporting WMP9 DRM (both Microsoft products, surprise surprise) and 3ds MAX, there isn’t a single application or file format that I need to use that the Mac can’t handle, and the only time I’ve run into a software incompatibility running the other direction is using Pages to build The Archiver, because obviously Pages doesn’t run in Windows (much to Narym’s regular chagrin).  Of course, Microsoft Publisher doesn’t run on the Mac either, so there’s a little bit of anti-cross-platform love from both sides in the document design/layout field (and don’t even begin to tell me I could do The Archiver in Word… I’ll kill you ).

Really, the only category that the Mac is currently lacking in is games, which is pretty much the last bastion of the “there’s no software for the Mac” mythmongers.  Fortunately, with the exception of Sam & Max (and the Mac versions of Manhole, Myst, Riven, and Exile, all of which are all basically unplayable on modern Macs, and I personally think it’s deplorable that UbiSoft is still selling the 10th Anniversary collection for the platform without doing any sort of work to make it compatible with Leopard or systems with Intel-based processors), every game I want to play is either available on a console or has a Mac version, so that doesn’t really bother me (plus, I’ve got a Dell attached to the TV for this purpose… and watching Hulu).  Heck, I can actually play realMYST on my Mac, which is something Vista has made virtually impossible without GameTap.