Posted on 04/11/2010 2:38:33 AM PDT by Swordmaker
What does Apple get that Sony, HP, Microsoft, Dell, Samsung, and LG don’t?…. Usability in software. All these other geeks out there making hardware love packing on “specs”, stuffing big numbers like RAM, gigahertz, and hard drive space into small or cool looking gadgets. It all looks good on paper, but after you use one of their gadgets for more than a few weeks, you just want to throw it out a window. Thousands of new gadgets released every year all using the same-old crappy unfriendly, unintuitive, unattractive software. It’s no wonder so many are flocking to Apple when we can just pickup one of their simplistic products, start taping and swiping our fingers, and lo and behold… it just does what we want it to do. Of course, it isn’t easy, or cheap, to make software this user friendly, which is why everyone is having such a hard time keeping up.
As a software developer, I hear the phrase “I just want it to…”. Which, as any experienced software developer knows, is the most expensive phrase we ever hear. People have software needs all the time, which may require vast complicated effort to achieve, but they want it to hide all that complication behind a simple and user-friendly interface. What most people don’t know is that making software do just about anything doesn’t cost nearly as much as making it easy and intuitive for them to use. This lack of cost awareness is what ruins so many “brilliant” product ideas.
Sony is, in my opinion, the worst offender. In the past decade, I have seen Sony release cutting-edge gadgets to the market before anyone else. The PSP was an amazing gadget when it came out, in theory. It played music, videos, viewed photos, surfed the web, and of course, played games. The problem was that, excluding the last feature, it didn’t do any of them well. In fact, all the claimed features were so hard to use that almost no one could figure it out. Then, even more idiotically, Sony received reports that users were not using the extra features and stopped improving them! Sony could have been the what the iPod Touch is today, but lost the chance with bad software.
But I don’t just write this to rant, I write this as a warning to other business owners and entrepreneurs out there. Developing software and technology is one thing, but making it user friendly is another. In fact, usability can consume up to 80% of a project’s time and resources. That is, if your actually going to make something people will want to use. You have to build it, review it, fix it, test it, fix it, beta release, fix it, get feedback, fix it, get more feedback, fix it… and maybe… just maybe… people will be able to actually use it.
This is why the only mobile platform even close to keeping up with Apple is Google’s Android. Google is the only one in the fight with the know-how and resources to keep up. Even RIM, makers if the Blackberry, can’t keep their mobile software up to par, they have to invest in starting from scratch or spending huge resources in fixing what they have.
If you or your company has a “great idea” for an application or gadget, just remember, once you price the development… multiply it a couple times for usability.
Not to worry. I’m going to giving linux another shot. Ubuntu I guess. Do you have a linux better than Ubuntu for learning the basics such as downloading and installing a new program....Never could figure that out in my Linux experiments.
But last time I tried Ubuntu looked good as soon as I got rid of that sludge brown default color
Oh man, you just cannot be that dumb... I mean, I know you're an Apple zealot, but that's just a bald-faced lie. There's been OSX viruses and trojans since 2006, at least.
Yeah, because THAT was what he said....
Nice try.
Simply a lie. I have several scientific and motion-control software packages that require direct hardware access. Something that you can still do in Windows, and something that you cannot do with virtualization. For one, an Imada force gauge. Serial port, works great under Windows and DOS, cannot work in a virtual PC - Windows or OSX based.
Maybe the iphone is way ahead of the pack but the latest grooviest OSX is a big yawn for this Windows7 user and early adopter (Betas)'
Swordmaker, you must admit, though, that dennisw is an honestly prejudiced MStroll: he flat out admits that he spent months with Win7 beta, etc -- and, then one whole hour with OSX before trashing it!
You convinced me to my a Mac. I’ve had it for more than a year. We also have a couple of iPods and iTouch music players that we’ve owned for years.
I have to say I am less than impressed.
The Mac is less than a year old and the battery is shot. From what I see, it is not user servicable, I’ll have to drive an hour to the service center when I get a chance.
You cannot drag and drop files to the iPods manually. My wife won’t let the kids use her Mac because she is afraid they will screw up her iTunes account. That means the kids run iTunes off the PCs in the house. Apple may write great software for Macs, but they write horrible software for PCs. Every PC I have that had iTunes installed started having problems, I suspect it is a “feature” that Steve put in the software to screw with PC users.
My daughters iTouch hung during a software upgrade. It won’t let her use the hardware telling her she needs to reset something. When she tries to reset it on the PC, it tells her there has been an error and asks her if she wants to reset the iTouch. Over and Over. I’ll take it to the service center too when I get a chance. In addition, she somehow lost all of her music.
In the future, I’ll have her buy all of her music from Amazon. I can drag and drop their music to any device I own, store it on a hard drive and never be limited on how many devices I use it on.
I still get woken up in the middle of the night for tech questions, but now I have to fix them on a Mac.
And to top it off, I had to buy my wife a Win 7 laptop because her professor can’t read her projects when she turns them in from the Mac. Nobody knows why, the Mac sends empty files through the university system. It’s supposed to work with their system but nobody in IT could come up with a solution.
I totally believe that Mac is kicking but. It has been kicking my but regularly and I’m getting a little sore.
Don't own an iPad, but can imagine the freedom to walk around while presenting would be quite enjoyable.
I suppose I could do so with the MacBook, but a 17" laptop (any brand) is not exactly "totable" when opened up for use...
“The US Army and NSA would disagree....”
Oh really, well unless you are a IA expert who regularly certifies govt systems for processing of classified information I really doubt you are qualified to speak to that.
“What does Apple get that other companies don’t? Why is Apple kicking butt?”
Aside from the design/marketing talents of its honchos, maybe it’s just their “time”. Kindle’s new television spots are the most effective response I’ve seen to the Apple mythos in a while (and this on the marketing side). Windows 7 has sold 90 million copies worldwide so Microsoft is doing okay, I guess, for a sad-sack company dying in Apple’s shadow. Sony VAIO’s F series laptops completely won me over after a friend bought one. They are as elegant as anything on the Mac side IMO.
Worked for NSA ... See NSA OSX security Guidelines available somewhere - I don’t remember where...
I tend to be anti-apple and PC-agnostic - not really a PC fan, not really a detractor. That said.
I have a Lenovo laptop (work) (XP) and a retired mac desktop (G4, G5 I don’t really know or care) that I use to run VNC at work.
Starting up the Lenovo Desktop and getting all my apps to a running state can take 5 to 10 mins on a good day.
Starting the Mac from a cold start takes maybe 30 secs max.
I wish Windoze could get their products to start in a reasonable time frame.
Of course I work around this by putting the laptop into sleep mode and to unsleep the thing like really just mere seconds.
But it really shouldn’t take forever for Windoze to boot up (or shut down for that matter which takes about as long).
If you spend the same amount for a windows based OS as you do for a mac then running a virtual machine is not a problem. Thing is you don’t need to. The software you need is already there for a windows machine. The main reason I run VM is to run open source software for linux or increase resource utilization.
“Most of you remind me of the people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
That you value and obsess over a computer company to the degree you do disqualifies you a priori from making such a ridiculous charge.
Computer consultant, heal thyself!
Sorry You Are Wrong. Adobe has yet to write and release a 64 bit version of Flash.
The iPad uses a custom processor designed and made by Apple.
In a discussion like this, a little overstatement can be fun. But here are the figures from Wikipedea:
Android is good, but I would not call 5% of the market "kicking everyone's butt". Android has a lot of potential, so let's see what the figures are a year from now.
Then why are so may UNIX geeks and programmers using Apple notebooks? These are power users who spend a lot of time at the command line typing in commands because that is their background as UNIX geeks and programmers. And so many of the programmers are using the traditional UNIX editors like vi and emacs. And these people get a lot of powerful things done. And they are not afraid of using the power that the command gives them.
Excuse me? Take those batteries that millions handle daily out of their hard shell (and heavy) handleable cases, remove the hardware and ports necessary to access them safely in the devices, and perhaps you would see a few more fires and injuries reported than are already reported with those safety precautions in place. High density energy storage devices like LiPo and lithium ion batteries have been known to spontaneously discharge and cause fires and injuries to users even sitting untouched inside sealed cellular phones and laptops. The batteries Apple uses in its iPad are without protective hard shells, and are not designed to be consumer removable or replaceable. You can call it Apple apologetics if you want, I call it engineering decisions.
As to 32 or 64 bit or not. Apple is preparing for the future. Adobe has not released Flash in a 64 bit version. It is the only proprietary standard graphic format in widespread use on the Internet and every user of Flash is totally dependent on Adobe upgrading its proprietary code. It has not and shows no sign of doing so. Apple is backing HTML5 and H264 open standards that can do the same things as Flash with out being dependent on proprietary code and is already completely 64bit compliant.
Cool. I was just ribbing you about slamming Apple...nothing else. Glad you are on here to keep everyone in check.
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