On 2009-02-19, Jonathan Sherwood <[email protected]> wrote: > > I think it's worth noting that while Apple has not had many true > innovations, it's success is that it makes current technology "just work." > It's strength is the user experience, and that's what has to cross a certain > threshold before wide-scale adoption begins.
As a long-time Mac user (part-time since 1987, full-time for the past four years), I have always felt very strongly that Apple's great strength is in creating an emotional user experience. In practice, at least prior to Microsoft Vista and Office 2007, I really don't think that actually translated into measurable improvements in usability performance, Mac over Windows, for the vast majority of tasks. (Tog would argue otherwise, but from what I've seen of Tog's usability test regimes, they're fundamentally flawed: He tends to conflate motor skills with operations, and conflate operations with tasks, as required to justify his prejudices.) Put another way: Apple is good at making Mac users feel good about what they're doing, whereas the Windows experience was, at its best, a matter of how well the OS did or did not get out of your way. For hackers and twiddlers, Windows was always more attractive because it was cheaper to work with (more shareware and open-source tools) and more visually extensible (you have to basically break OS X to change much about how it looks, whereas that capability's been core in Windows since Win98). Plus, Microsoft was not mired in the fallout from Bruce Tognazzini's obsession with Fitt's Law optimization. (That's why Macs have the menu at the top of their ever-larger screens, to this day: Apple worshipped the Gospel According to Tog, and Tog always liked to pretend that how quickly you can move the mouse pointer to the edge of the screen has something to do with how easy it is to figure out whether you're in Word, Excel or Entourage at any given moment.) Apple can be mind-bogglingly conservative, too, and in deeply bizarre ways. E.g., aside from the top-of-screen menu, they stuck with one-button mice until 2006. When they finally replaced made the bold leap out of the mid-80s, they replaced the one-button mouse with a mouse that had no actual buttons and such a complex interaction modaility that most people just turn off the multi-"button" features. It's like they have a pathological need to not seem as though they're doing anything that anyone else is doing. Everthing has to look 'different', and they have to have some kind of high-concept rationalization for why their way is better. (It's mostly seeming, though, because there's very little that they do that's fundamentally different. I will grant that their OS X concept of how to manage applications is really keen, and that is probably down to either them or NeXT. Aspects of that are pure Unix, though.) The punchline for the Mac, for me, has always been: "To look good is much more important than to be good." Their entire business model is built on their ability to make people feel "different" while drinking koolaid out of a common font. Until that happens for print media, I don't think we're going to see mass > pirating and mass circumvention of editors by authors. I don't see the > Kindle as being that impetus, but I do think something will be fairly soon. > Kindle won't be that impetus because it's fundamentally tied in to the current publishing paradigm. It may end up subverting it a little, but only by replacing Houghton Mifflin with Amazon or Lightningsource. I.e., further rationalizing the market. The double-edged sword of disintermediation is that it makes the produciton chain more efficient by cutting people's jobs out of the loop. Alas, that's how our modern economy works and it's not likely that can be changed. (Though I'm happy to hear and fantasize about arguments that it could be....) -- > Jonathan Sherwood > Sr. Science & Technology Press Officer > University of Rochester > 585-273-4726 > > > On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 10:24 AM, Eric Scoles <[email protected]>wrote: > >> >> >> On 2009-02-19, Linda G <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> >>> .... There's industry speculation that Apple >>> may jump into the ebook business in the near future, which would add >>> considerable momentum. ... >> >> >> >> When Apple moves into the ebook business, it will be with an offering that >> leverages all their existing strengths without adding much of anything new. >> That's how they work.* I doubt it will make much of an initial splash, but >> will probably end up shaping the way ebooks are sold (not least because >> they'll patent the user interaction so it can't be used by anyone else, >> which could even lead to a 'negative shaping'). It will probably use iTunes >> as the delivery vector, and will work on Macs and Windows PCs, iPhones, and >> iPod Touch only, no separate e-reader hardware and no Linux support until >> someone creates it. (And then Apple will periodically break that support >> with service and forumat upgrades.) You'll have to buy into a contract with >> their mobile partners to make it work. Content will be in smaller chunks >> than from Amazon, and there will be (much) less of it to start with. Their >> initial market will not overlap very much with Kindle's, because Kindle is >> designed to ape the book experinece, and an iPhone just won't be able to do >> that and won't try: They won't make the same assumption Adobe did, which >> served them well, that people will "need" the page to be the same digitally >> as it is in hard copy. I like to think they'll have accepted the need to >> have a library model (i.e., buy it once and download it from them whenever >> you need it), but they won't do that until they're dragged into it kicking >> and screaming. (See Jason's comments about DRM.) >> >> (This is all already in the works. Note that nex-gen iPod Touch devices >> will be slightly larger, to get a bigger screen. I don't know how much >> bigger, but at that size a little can make a big difference.) >> >> Aside: I well remember the digital document wars of the 90s, as Adobe, >> WordPerfect/Novell and a third company -- wow, I really can't remember >> who that was, just that they existed (was it Lotus?) -- duked it out over >> who would define the de facto format for digital text. WordPerfect's >> offering was able to adjust the presentation based on the medium, and had >> some workmanlike hypertext support. For a screen, the document would look >> one way, in print, another, and it could have indexes and clickable ToCs in >> its earliest versions. That all ended up being a bad thing, even though they >> saw it as good (and I still do), because people couldn't easily map from >> screen to print and they didn't really use the complex feature set. >> >> Adobe's format, PDF, was less flexible, fundamentally print-focused: You >> basically got a printout, displayed page by page on screen. There was no >> sensitivity at all to other media -- the working assumption was that you >> were going to print the damn thing. It's gained some screen-focused features >> over time, but PDF is still fundamentally a print-oriented format, and >> doesn't cope very well with alternate presentations. I think we're finally >> going to get past that, now, as we have to display books on a lot of >> different screen sizes and resolution. PDF is just woefully unsuited to most >> small form-factor presentations, and it's a major hack to make it suited -- >> its workflow is print-focused, not screen-focused. I tried to read a PDF on >> my Archos 604 the other day, and it was murder. >> >> Anyway, Adobe won that fight. They had the most primitive of all the >> offerings, and they won. That was a big lesson for me. I later drew >> analogies to the way that HTML had triumphed handily over more sophisticated >> hypertext modalities. >> >> Aside 2: One thing that's needful from the ebook publishers is some new >> way of indicating position in the book. Pages are a print-centric concept. >> The new way of positioning yourself needs to be semantically-driven, not >> presentation-driven. Paragraph #s could work, but I think that will feel >> mechanical and legalistic to readers; I think that micro-chapters or >> sub-chapters (basically, scenes) will become fashionable, and the problem >> will be largely addressed by replacing two-page spreads with sub-chapters as >> the main unit of place-marking. >> >> >> -- >> *While at the same time creating the clever appearance of innovating by >> repackaging something that someone else designed -- viz OS X [Berkeley >> Unix], the zoomy applications dock [KDE], Safari/HTMLKit [Konqueror and >> KHTML from KDE], iTunes [DataBecker, as far as I can see, of all bizarre >> sources for inspiration], the iPod+iTunes "halo" [brought to them by a >> freelancer who they bought off to keep quiet about it], multi-touch [around >> conceptually since the 80s, at least], switchable desktops [available for >> years on *nix UIs like KDE and Gnome], and the list goes on. Apple are >> ruthlessly efficient as second-movers, but they haven't really innovated >> much since 1984, and when they have, as with the Hockey Puck Mouse and the >> Mighty Mouse, it's usually been disastrous. >> >> >> -- >> eric scoles ([email protected]) >> >> > > > > -- eric scoles ([email protected]) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
