[Macworld]

Post your comments for The Macalope Daily: Full of Winotaur here

[DocNo]

"Steve Jobs came back to Apple, he said he was going to milk the Mac business until he figured out the next great thing. That rubbed a lot of the company’s traditional customers the wrong way, but he did it and it worked. Don’t let the past hold you down."

Yup. I was one of those, and really it was silly. There was already precident for mini's displacing mainframes, personal computers obliterating mini's - it should have been a forgone conclusion that something was going to come along and displace traditional personal computers.

I guess that's why Job's is considered a visionary and the rest of us say things like "hindsigt is 20/20".

What's even more frustrating with Microsoft is they have ALREADY had over a decade of FAILURE in trying to squish the desktop into tablets. Apple has ALREADY demonstrated that by being agressive you can be successful and straddle both during the transition, and possibly make even more from the new market than your old one.

I think Microsoft's biggest problem is they are at least four years behind and until recently, were completely unwilling to acknowledge it. I see Sinofsky going as Microsoft, at least internally, finally admitting Windows - traditional Windows - won't carry them forever. Surface RT should have had a new name - like Metro (man up and secure the rights, Microsoft- if Apple can negotiate with the likes of Cisco for iPhone and iOS, surely you can deal with some small European company). The fact that they INSISTED on sticking with Windows told you all you needed to know about their real commitment to the next generation of personal and mobile computing.

Will it be too little too late? Unlike Palm, MS has their legacy desktop and enterprise markets to carry them - but it won't last forever. Just ask RIM. Can they re-invent themselves before they run out of money? If we see Microsoft use stack ranking to weed out 2/3's of their middle managers and then cancel the whole stack ranking thing, perhaps. If it's more of the same then it will be a painful decline - just like RIM. The only variable will be the length of the decline. Their first quarterly loss - blaming it on an acquisition or not - is certainly a bellweather. It doesn't signal MS is folding up tomorrow, but I think it finally forced some hard questions and the end of denial that the market is changing. Hmm... I wonder if they didn't declair the loss this quarter to flush out Sinofsky's commitment and ability to adapt - similar to how, if they are to be believed, the rumors that the final straw was Forstal not being willing to sign the Maps apology letter.

Interesting times indeed!

[Bapu]

Declare.

[RipRagged]

Has anyone predicted yet that the Surface will sell no better than the Zune, and Windows 8 sales will compare unfavorably to Vista? If not I'll do it.

[dgustavss]

I may be the only one, but the hybrid system of Metro-UI and the traditional desktop really appeals to me. In a similar way of using launch pad in Mountian Lion to have my MBP act like iOS; there is the simplicity of an app based interface with the option to go back to the desktop for more advanced tasks, such as file organization or seeing multiple windows at once. Well that might not be the popular opinion now, I think the masses will end up enjoying a more app oriented setup on their machines- mobile or desktop.

The comments about MS being far behind are an irony here; yes they did spend the past 10 years lagging in implementation, but now iOS is in danger of running into their shoes. I'm posting this from an iPhone and love the stability Apple's OS has... but it's downright boring. Both Metro and Android have much more lively interfaces and home screens. From a design perspective Apple's home screen of rows and rows of square apps doesn't work anymore. I'm hoping they improve, and figure out how to blend iOS and OS X even more than they have like windows is doing. Apple is the better company over the long haul, but i think MS has won the latest rounds of comparisons in the latter of 2012. I guess only time will tell as people invest in one or the other.

[dgustavss]

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Has anyone predicted yet that the Surface will sell no better than the Zune, and Windows 8 sales will compare unfavorably to Vista? If not I'll do it.

I'd give it a little more chance than the Zune, just because they're hitting the market at the right time as opposed to the Zune's pure obsoleteness by the time it arrived. Apple already owned the mp3 market then, but not so with the tablet, which could maybe be attributed to the likes of Amazon and Google initially.

[Stewsburntmonkey]

dgustavss, on 16 November 2012 - 11:52 AM, said:

I may be the only one, but the hybrid system of Metro-UI and the traditional desktop really appeals to me. In a similar way of using launch pad in Mountian Lion to have my MBP act like iOS; there is the simplicity of an app based interface with the option to go back to the desktop for more advanced tasks, such as file organization or seeing multiple windows at once. Well that might not be the popular opinion now, I think the masses will end up enjoying a more app oriented setup on their machines- mobile or desktop.

The comments about MS being far behind are an irony here; yes they did spend the past 10 years lagging in implementation, but now iOS is in danger of running into their shoes. I'm posting this from an iPhone and love the stability Apple's OS has... but it's downright boring. Both Metro and Android have much more lively interfaces and home screens. From a design perspective Apple's home screen of rows and rows of square apps doesn't work anymore. I'm hoping they improve, and figure out how to blend iOS and OS X even more than they have like windows is doing. Apple is the better company over the long haul, but i think MS has won the latest rounds of comparisons in the latter of 2012. I guess only time will tell as people invest in one or the other.

Confusing usability and "interestingness" is common fallacy. Most professional products are highly uninteresting. They are made to be used efficiently, not titillate users. Why do rows of app icons not work anymore? Has something magically occurred that renders this age old presentation ineffective?

My view is that additional cognitive load of the Metro-style UI will end up falling flat. It is interesting to look at, but takes a lot of mental work to parse. For a device you will be using regularly you don't want to have to keep re-parsing the same screens over and over again. You want something that you can glance at, get the information you need and then go about other business.

Smartphones and tablet devices aren't necessarily professional devices and they benefit from a certain level of visual sugar, but ultimately they need to work more like professional devices to be viable in the longterm.

[TheHeeNow]

Yeah, yeah yeah.

Except Windows Vista will run iCloud.

Snow Leopard won't.

Somebody's obviously right, and somebody's not. The difference is to what degree you alienate good customers.

[dshan]

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Yeah, yeah yeah. Except Windows Vista will run iCloud. Snow Leopard won't. Somebody's obviously right, and somebody's not. The difference is to what degree you alienate good customers.

Seriously, the people still using Vista (and often XP too) are the types who simply take whatever version of Windows came on the last computer they bought and keep it until they buy their next one. It never crosses their minds that they can upgrade their current computer to a later OS. They are the types who wouldn't even have heard of iCloud let alone consider installing it on their Windows machine, which is probably happily still running Office 2002 and IE 7 just like the day they unpacked it.

Mac users on the other hand are well aware that once they fall more than one major version behind the current OS release they are no longer supported and cannot expect new OS features, and only rarely even security fixes. It's been like this for eleven years now, time to get over it.

If you're going to put a dent in the universe it helps to be on a supported release of the OS.

[Dennistrator]

I think think the MS tile interface will appeal more to left-brain people, who respond more to text, and the IOS interface resonates with right-brained folks (we creative types) who process graphics more readily. Metro (or whatever MS is calling it this week) will look old rather suddenly I believe, Once the novelty of being a new interface wears off, what is left is not just simple (like Apple's design phylosophy), but plain, to the edge of blandness. Don't be surprised if, in a year or two, the corners of those tiles start to become rounded, and graphics start to appear in them.
Both the IOS and Microsoft________(fill in the blank) interfaces do their jobs well. But I'm happy with those rows and rows of icons.

[jfletch]

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I think think the MS tile interface will appeal more to left-brain people, who respond more to text, and the IOS interface resonates with right-brained folks (we creative types) who process graphics more readily.

Edumacate yourself:
http://www.psycholog...bably-never-die

[TheHeeNow]

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Seriously, the people still using Vista (and often XP too) are the types who simply take whatever version of Windows came on the last computer they bought and keep it until they buy their next one. It never crosses their minds that they can upgrade their current computer to a later OS.

You honestly believe this is about some nerd in his basement? This is about businesses who don't believe every generation of Windows is worth upgrading to. And truth be told, even XP users have been left out of very little.

Through Snow Leopard, Intel Mac users could use almost every feature offered for those machines except Time Machine, which has many alternatives in a client-server system. Only the two lions changed that dramatically, and for no obvious reason. When I can no longer sync every Mac in my small business the way I could with MobileMe, when I can't make a sales presentation with AirPlay, even with Mountain Lion, and when every Mac is different, I have a serious problem. Just like the federal government, most businesses have a seven year amortization on computer hardware, as the IRS allows, and I will think long and hard when this seven year cycle is over.

My employees complain daily, an additional issue. So don't lecture me about basement nerds.

[Dennistrator]

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I think think the MS tile interface will appeal more to left-brain people, who respond more to text, and the IOS interface resonates with right-brained folks (we creative types) who process graphics more readily. Edumacate yourself: http://www.psycholog...bably-never-die

My use of the term "creative" was not a slam at those who do not draw, paint, sculpt or participate in the other visual arts. I am an illustrator at a technical publication firm, and a lot my work involves coordinating work between writers and illustrators. Believe me, there is a difference. I became painfully aware that artistic types literally do not see the world the same way as "other" people when dealing with IT over the issue of graphics cards for our machines-every illustrator saw the same deficiencies in the displays (things like centerpoints of circles not being visible) and non-illustrator could not perceive these things. By the same token, while the writers can progress through an engineering drawing in an efficient manner, an illustrator can more quickly grasp the elements in it because they process the information visually. Some non- artists disparage this sort of perceptual ability as something less than cerebral. They write artists off as savants, capable but not really intelligent. So I eschew terms "creatives" and "artists"

[Dennistrator]

(not sure what happened while writing this) So I eschew terms like "creatives" and "artists" in favor of left or right brain when mediating between the two temperamental types. Frankly, I think the author of the article you referencd is a left-brain .