Tag: technology

And here you thought I hated Macs.  But then, the British always do this sort of thing best:

PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customise it into oblivion. Sometimes you have to slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis (Doctor Who, incidentally, would definitely use a PC). PCs have charm; Macs ooze pretension. When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is, “I hate Macs”, and then I think, “Why has this rubbish aspirational ornament only got one mouse button?” Losing that second mouse button feels like losing a limb. If the ads were really honest, Webb would be standing there with one arm, struggling to open a packet of peanuts while Mitchell effortlessly tore his apart with both hands. But then, if the ads were really honest, Webb would be dressed in unbelievably po-faced avant-garde clothing with a gigantic glowing apple on his back. And instead of conducting a proper conversation, he would be repeatedly congratulating himself for looking so cool, and banging on about how he was going to use his new laptop to write a novel, without ever getting round to doing it, like a mediocre idiot.

Cue 10 years of nasal bleating from Mac-likers who profess to like Macs not because they are fashionable, but because “they are just better”. Mac owners often sneer that kind of defence back at you when you mock their silly, posturing contraptions, because in doing so, you have inadvertently put your finger on the dark fear haunting their feeble, quivering soul – that in some sense, they are a superficial semi-person assembled from packaging; an infinitely sad, second-rate replicant who doesn’t really know what they are doing here, but feels vaguely significant and creative each time they gaze at their sleek designer machine. And the more deftly constructed and wittily argued their defence, the more terrified and wounded they secretly are.

And here I was only addressing the techno-fascist design philosophy.  Far be it from me to delve into the psyches of Macintossers….  Anyhow, I’m a gamer.  So, of course I have no use for Apple products.  What gamer does?  If Steve Jobs ever works his magic and produces the Ultimate Portable Game Machine, then I’ll buy an Apple product for my own use, but probably not until then.  (Full disclosure: there is a MacBook in the house.  And an iPod.  I don’t use either and my experiences with the former have not altered my opinion of Apple in the slightest.)

But if losing a button feels like losing an arm, imagine how good it would feel to gain 16 more arms!  Okay, on the other hand, maybe that is kind of creepy.

One of the interesting things about the reaction to the press release posted on various tech sites yesterday was the way in which it revealed the massive gap between those who are focused on technological style and those who are focused on technological substance.  Now, I am in awe of Steve Jobs’s marketing abilities and very much admire his ability to sell slick, dumbed-down products to the lowest common denominator while simultaneously convincing the buyers that they are somehow savvy and superior.  I despise Windows far more than most, but I would rather use DOS than any Macintosh operating system ever released.  I haven’t been willing to use any of Mr. Jobs’s very pretty, very popular products since I sold my original Macintosh, bought a 386/25, stuck what was then a very high-end 1024×768, 256-color board in it and never looked back.  As a libertarian, I despise technological fascism as much, possibly more, than the political variant.  After all, as has been pointed out many times before, the Apple “1984” ad is probably one of the most ironic in history.

What few people know is that about twenty years ago, in between my sophmore and junior year of college, I designed a piece of hardware that was even more outrageous.  It was a PC sound board that put out two 16-bit, 44 KHz stereo channels and supported 16 simultaneous sounds… back when AdLib still ruled the PC sound waves about six months after the original mono 8-bit Soundblaster was released.  We actually got it working, but I couldn’t convince the company for which I was interning that there was a market for such outrageously high-end sound.  I should have dropped out of college and started selling my sound card, but back then I was still prone to doing things the way everyone was supposed to, like finishing college instead of dropping out to sell sound cards for games.

Anyhow, since introducing the Macintosh, the Apple method has always relied upon limiting your options and controlling your behavior while loudly declaring that they are doing precisely the opposite.  The reason Apples have been inferior game machines since 1983 despite the one-time popularity of the Apple II as a gaming computer – I still have my //e – is that the game industry is full of people who like to be at the forefront of technological development and aren’t willing to put up with someone telling them that you will be stuck with X video card and Y amount of memory whether you like it or not.

People often get so caught up in the hype of Apple that they fail to see the inferior utility behind the sleek, sophisticated, and superficial design.  For example, I think the iPhone would make for a lovely ebook reader, except that it turns out to be far more of a pain to sweep a finger to turn every electronic page than it is  to simply click a button on a Treo.   And, of course, the inability to insert an SD card is the reason I turned down a free iPhone when my service provider tried to give me one last year.  The truth is that Apple products have usually been tailored for technological retards.  That’s not a bad sales strategy since there will always be more techno-retards than performance junkies and strictly limiting your users’ options is a great way to reduce your technical support problems.  But I wholeheartedly disagree with the concept of intentionally limiting user flexibility; perhaps many people don’t mind not being able to simply transfer data from their computer to their phone without going through the submissive electronic ritual required by Apple, but it was a deal-breaker for me.

As for the mice, well, I quite look forward to seeing someone set up two neophytes with two examples of opposing design philosophies, one multi-touch and one multi-button.  It doesn’t matter if it’s Calc, Photoshop, or Call of Duty, but I would bet that whoever is using multi-button will absolutely smoke the person using multi-touch.  Ultimately, I wouldn’t be surprised if some combination of the two approaches won out; a flexible multi-touch approach that lets you dynamically determine the “size” of your buttons, although there’s still the tactile problem to address.  Now, speed isn’t everything for everyone, and certainly there will be those who prefer the look of multi-touch to the power and flexibility of multi-button.

But for those who think speed is everything – and you know who you are – the idea of using a buttonless touch mouse looks as ridiculous as an 18-button mouse apparently looks to those who don’t believe they need more than one or two buttons.

Some of you may recall that I’ve been working on something that is not a book for some time. And here is the result of that effort, which was announced this week. As with the books, it’s been somewhat of an Ilk-related project, as the firmware and software were written by none other than the infamous Finn, Markku, who as we know had no choice in the matter. DC and Baktrice, meanwhile, put together the web site and the forthcoming online store.

I’ll be interested in your comments. All I can say is that it really works, and very well at that.

If you’re a power user of either of these programs, I would very much like to know what you believe to be the 30 most important application commands, in order of how often you use them. Is it Dodge, Burn, Paste Special, Line, or something to do with Layers? If you are able to tell me the hotkey that triggers the function as well, that would be ideal. Thanks very much.