Now will they get the zen of Apple?

Sometimes it’s hard to convince PC users of the benefits of Apple computers and Mac OS X.

Since their computers are hardly personal, and just tools, and essentially lacking style and personality, they don’t understand, can’t grasp, cannot fit in their brains the concept of an interface that has been obsessively designed to fit, to function, to form an environment that accepts and welcomes people.

Maybe the iPhone will solve this problem. Check out what this Time reviewer says:

The user interface is crammed with smart little touches — every moment of user interaction has been quietly stage-managed and orchestrated, with such overwhelming attention to detail that when the history of digital interface design is written, whoever managed this project at Apple will be hailed as a Michelangelo, and the iPhone his or her Sistine Chapel (Steve Jobs can be Pope in this scenario). If you’re not a reviewer, chances are you won’t even bother to look at the manual. Translucent, jewel-like, artfully phrased dialogue boxes come and go on cue. Window borders bounce and flex just slightly to cue the user where and how you’re supposed to drop and drag and scroll them. When you switch the phone to “airplane mode” (no electronic transmissions, for use on planes) a tasteful little orange airplane slides into the menu bar, then zooms away when you switch out again. (This was so pleasurable that I repeatedly entered airplane mode while using the iPhone, even though I wasn’t actually on an airplane.) As soon as my phone realized it belonged to someone with a nonsense-name like Lev, it started correcting typos like “Leb” and “Lec” to match.

That’s the zen of Apple taken to a whole new level.

June 30, 2007 | Filed Under apple, art, design, simplicity | 3 Comments 

eWeek and iPhone: fear and loathing?

Is 3 negative articles in one day a coincidence?

Holy mother, what on earth is going on here?

Could it be an extremely Windows-centric empire of analysts and business media is absolutely terrified that their comfortable bread-and-butter Windows hegemony is dissolving in front of their eyes?

I guess Linux was bad enough - it wasn’t in the MSCE textbook but at least it was technical, and needed user handholding, and ensuring lots of expensive tech support and high-end analysis was required.

But Macintosh! Is iPhone at last the trojan horse that will take Apple into the enterprise, just like iPod has in the home? The very prospect has Windows weenies running scared:

After all, the horde carrying the forthcoming Apple phone won’t be barbarians; rather, the very folks doing the work, and worse, some may well be the boss.

IT departments like devices like Blackberry’s with centralized command and control. They hate things they don’t bring in, that they haven’t first subdued with strong corporate chains. And they fear Apples’ recent success.

Their fear is both justified and unjustified. On the one hand, corporations don’t change their systems and applications overnight. On the other hand, a real alternative is slowly taking shape.

However things go, this outpour of vitriol and epidemic of trembling knees is pathetic.

June 22, 2007 | Filed Under apple, business2.0, microsoft, mistakes | 1 Comment 

Ephemera


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