Monday, December 5, 2005
News
iTunes Video A Growing Concern
iTunes video sales are going through the roof and media companies want to join the party.
Fading 'Cool Factor' Not All Bad For iPod
Research by The Diffusion Group, a Dallas market-research concern, says pragmatic concerns are increasingly replacing social status as the main reason people are buying the MP3 players.
RealNetworks Opens Rhapsody Music Service To The Mac
Rhapsody.com will give any users that registers access to stream 25 on-demand songs every month at no cost. Rhapsody subscribers can stream an unlimited amount of music via the web site.
Secret Site Reveals Apple's Cheap Laptop
Apple is preparing to launch a range of budget laptops next month, accoding to the website that was sued by the computer company earlier this year for leaking its plans for another line of low-cost machines.
Apple Computer Mogul's Roots Tied To Green Bay
Though not a Green Bay native himself, the charismatic but cutthroat Steve Jobs is the biological son of a hometown-Green Bay schoolteacher and brother to one of Titletown's genuinely native celebrities, author Mona Simpson.
There's A Professor In Your iPod
Carleton University in Ottawa says it is the first university in the world to offer an entire course of video-recorded lectures through iTunes, for playback on iPods, cellphones, Sony's PlatStation Portable and the common personal computer.
Opinion
iPod Has Fallen Far From The Apple Tree
Mr Jobs' shtick is wearing thin, and there are some troubling developments in Apple-land.
Is Apple A Matter Of Choice?
Perhaps in the end, it's not so much lack of choice but simplicity of choice that drives Mac users.
Review
Sidetrack
Allow me to remind you again: normal people do not parse boolean logic.
We, software developers, are typically amateur UI designers, not because we want to do the job, but we are forced to do it as part of our everyday job. What happens is that we don't know what to do: should the software have behavior X or behavior Y?
And because we are amateurs, we ended deferring the decision to the user. "I know, let's not decide! Just add an extra radio buttion in that preference dialog, so that the user can choose whether they want behavior X or behavior Y? If they have to live with their decision, they'll choose wisely."
Imagine hearing this at your favorite restaurant when you visit them: "Hi, I'm the chef for your table. When you say you want kung pao chicken, do you want me to fry it with salt and/or sugar and/or pepper and/or some other third-party ingrident that you want to integrate into the dish?"
Remember this the next time your Windows friend boost to you that he can make his own choices in the Windows world. Remember to ask: are you making real choices, or is your computer maker too incomptent to properly design a computer for you?
Come on, Apple, if Nokia can built a cellphone that can withstand "being run over by... [a] F1 Porsche" (as tested by the New York Times) surely we can have an iPod that does not crash. :-)
