bouncingsoul

But why didn't you just submit the link instead of copying spiel from either a press release or this NY Times page: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/technology/personaltech/27...

I think you should delete this and just submit the link proper.

I was making the implication that maybe they aren't as concerned about having the latest greatest in other aspects of technology as well, which would make them a more difficult market to encourage to try your latest greatest.

And in the first place you insulted IE6-wary developers by implying their reasons boil down to laziness. I was offering up what I think are legitimate reasons for ignoring IE6: the huge amount of dev time you save, and the freedom you gain to make use of dev shortcuts.

I think my VHS analogy is apt: you could spend extra time and money publishing new releases to VHS as well as DVD. You would probably even make money from it. But if you research who still primarily uses VHS players I don't think you'll find movie buffs who buy a couple movies every month.

And ultimately I don't see the big deal: I'm not suggesting a developer block IE6 users out of spite and then sit on his ass: I'm saying a developer can choose to ignore IE6 and then have loads of time to devote to making an amazing product.

We're talking about people who either don't care about staying current or who intentionally refuse to upgrade (surely Windows prompts people to upgrade to IE7).

Is it worth spending many extra hours on your project – and shelving one feature or dev shortcut after another – in order to tap that market?

The answer can be no.

Do movies studios still put out VHS tapes?

Which is funny since Buxfer released their iPhone interface to Hacker News this same day.

Edit:

I'm sure something will change about this, but until then here's a bookmarklet that rewrites iPaper urls to point straight to the original files (take out the line breaks when you make the bookmark):

    javascript:function%20revertScribdLinks(a){for(var%20i=0;i<a.length;i++)
    {a[i].setAttribute(%22href%22,a[i].getAttribute(%22href%22).replace(
    /^.*\.scribd.com.*\?url=(.*)$/,%22$1%22))}}revertScribdLinks(
    document.getElementsByTagName(%22a%22));

You assume that trying to please a completely different type of customer doesn't alienate your current customers.

What if Apple added half the features of Final Cut Pro to the next iMovie, or if Microsoft made Windows Movie Maker nearly as complicated as Adobe Premiere? The advanced video editors would rejoice, but the people with simpler needs would be left out in the cold or have to wade through all the new modes and settings they didn't have to worry about before. The old users would be less satisfied. And the pledged new users would likely still be unsatisfied because they're expects and eventually push the limits of whatever software they choose to use.

And don't you think 37signals would have to raise their price if they started making their software more "advanced"?

It's like complaining that an apartment complex should radically improve their apartments with tiled kitchen areas, more bedrooms, and individual laundry rooms – because that's what you want. But that apartment complex may just be trying to serve people looking for moderately priced places to live.

For example, you leave your username on every comment you make here, but I will never have a clue who you are unless you say in a comment with your username attached.

And after you do that, you will never be anonymous again.

It may seem reasonable in this airport scenario, but the reason people are resistant is because they fear creep. That by giving up fingerprints in this situation, people will eventually be expected to give up private info in more situations.

It is paranoia, sure – if you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to worry about? But what happens when the definition of wrong gets changed?

Edit:

And it's not like you say at the end: you will still have to take off your shoes. The fingerprinting isn't for better security in terms of safety: it's to make sure international passengers aren't getting on domestic planes – which is only a problem because of the airport's bad, unconventional layout that doesn't separate domestic and international travelers.

A trade between privacy and convenience is one thing, but this isn't even a trade.

Their thinking is that they know themselves and what they want, so they seek to satisfy their needs. If they tried to satisfy other people's needs – needs they don't have or understand – how will they know how to succeed?

Companies do that, yes. Apple is doing it by adding enterprise features to the iPhone – I'm not sure Apple gets the enterprise culture, and Apple employees probably don't use Microsoft Entourage, but they're adding enterprise features to satisfy a customer that isn't them.

37signals has chosen not to do that. And I think that's a choice they can make. I also don't find anything inherently wrong with arrogance.

Norman's article seems contradictory. He says at the beginning that simplicity is bad, but says customers complain about complexity, then he highlights Southwest Airlines refusal to add requested features as a good thing – but 37signals is bad because they don't add requested features.

I love my Backpack. I've enjoyed using Writeboard in the past. Ironically, I feel like Norman's saying I'm dumb for being satisfied with these tools.

Norman's post reminds me of designers complaining about the success of MySpace. "It's so poorly designed, it's success must be a fluke! If people only saw a well designed option they would abandon MySpace." Here Norman is saying 37signals doesn't deserve success because they aren't doing things the way he's familiar with.

Here are some sections I think are interesting for people who don't have time to read all eleven parts:

> We were proposing to triple our expenses, while only doubling our sales. More concerning, we were proposing to double our staff size, without increasing our ability to produce films. Of the 165 hires being requested, only a handful were in the animation studio. Ninety percent were in finance, HR, marketing, licensing and design. So at 315 people we would be able to produce no more videos per year than we had produced five years earlier with a staff of 10.

> Did I want to release all of this product? Did every last bit of it have a compelling ministry objective? Did it all fit into my “masterplan” to benefit America's kids? Frankly, no. None of it was against our mission, and most of it promoted a biblical value or virtue in some way, shape or form, but the sheer volume was driven not by mission, but by a desperate need to keep Big Idea from collapsing. Many of us felt the tension between our ministry-driven mission and the vast amount of merchandise we were attempting to drive into the market. The pace of work, however, left precious little time for introspection.

> There were no comparables for VeggieTales. Our sales had skyrocketed 3300% in four years! Against that backdrop, how do you project the future? More skyrocketing? Was our growth almost done, or just getting started? Look at another example: Between Christmas 2003 and Christmas 2004, sales of Apple's iPod increased by a staggering 500%. A huge success, but also a huge challenge. How many iPods do you make for Christmas 2005? 500% more than 2004? 100% more? 10% less? Unprecedented success is extremely difficult to manage simply because it is unprecedented. Every year is a big ol' guess.

> I was a shy kid who would rather read Starlog Magazine or build a rudimentary optical printer out of cannibalized 8mm projectors than show up at the prom or run for student government. As VeggieTales took off, I became terrified that my business inexperience and lack of people skills would result in Big Idea's failure. So, in a panic, I brought in others to help, often spending far too little time getting to know them before or after the hire. I then backed down from my own convictions, assuming that an executive with an impressive resume surely knew better than a Bible college dropout.

* * *

So many decisions involving tens of millions of dollars were made based on nothing concrete. Not even gut feeling. Just blind hope.

And it's horrible because the stuff they guessed about is knowable to some extent. I seriously doubt Apple goes into Christmas having no clue what the iPod demand will be. It seems like simple market research would have clued them in.

Interesting too is the settling that happened in picking the first executive team. He couldn't convince the best people to move, so he settled for second tier. That seems like a horrible decision: spending just as much money with lower chances of success.

I'm sad to see the company go down, but some of the decisions made were just dumb: Obviously a cheap, 2D spinoff is not going to be as successful as its parent. Why would you agonize over firing 30 people when the entire company is going bankrupt in months?

There's a lot to think about in this story.

I've never encountered an mkv file, so that Perian doesn't add support for it doesn't bother me.

If Spotlight is slow for you and you need to play mkv files then use the tools you need. But I don't think it's necessary to recommend an M24 tank because it can handle off-road and take out enemy road blocks to someone who'd be perfectly satisfied with a normal sedan for their morning commute.

It does suck though to be using something so unfamiliar.

* The difference between inline and block display of elements – and how you can change them with css.

Just consider that every hack and customization you make will make it that much harder to use another Mac without all your Windows-y adjustments.

For example, on Mac you navigate around text with the Command and arrow keys. So:

                         Win        Mac
    Beginning of line    Home       ⌘←
          End of line    End        ⌘→
     Beginning of doc    Ctrl-Home  ⌘↑
           End of doc    Ctrl-End   ⌘↓

OS X comes with a lot of tools out of the box, and I think it'd be better to stick with that stuff until you outgrow it or are no longer satisfied with it.

For example, people will recommend the VLC player, but QuickTime with the Perian plugin is what I use: more stable than VLC and plays all the formats. And it's one less app.

I didn't use Quicksilver for much more than a launcher when I had it. The Spotlight menu in OS X 10.5 is pretty much as fast as Quicksilver for launching apps. So maybe wait to install Quicksilver.

Same with Adium: iChat is good enough for me.

And people recommend Growl, but I found it more annoying than helpful. Pretty much every third party app registers itself, which means seeing tons of alerts I don't care about. (Unless you go into the Growl preference pane and unregister everything, which made Growl too high maintenance for me.)

The only essential things I'd recommend (again, only get them if they make sense to you):

TinkerTool http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html  – Gives easy access to hidden system preferences.

Perian http://perian.org/ – A plugin for QuickTime that lets it play all the formats it doesn't play.

Paparazzi! http://www.derailer.org/paparazzi/ – Makes taking webpage screenshots easy.

Service Scrubber http://www.manytricks.com/servicescrubber/ – Lets you prune the Services menu. (Don't worry about installing this until you see a need for it.)

TextWrangler http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/ – Free text editor with terminal integration and excellent file search capabilities.

Transmission http://www.transmissionbt.com/ –  My favorite bittorrent client.

All that precious formatting gets lost and the meaning changed if it's copied into a plaintext email (you're back to a randomly ordered list) or printed (color text becomes light gray).

And how does one maintain that cloud? If you get better at something you have to increase its type size, alter its color, and probably change others since items in the cloud are supposed to be sized relative to everything else.

Rather than use a hard to maintain format that you have to explain (is everyone familiar with cloudmaps?), just use words and say I'm not so good at this yet.

Like henning says, the solution is just some simple organization:

  PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
  CSS 
  Javascript 
  Some experience with SQL
  
  SOFTWARE
  Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator
  Basecamp
  Final Cut Studio
  
  OPERATING SYSTEMS
  Mac OS X and Linux
  Some experience with Windows
  
  Etc.

I know Woz did great work in the past -- and reporters I guess love disagreement between founders -- but Woz's analysis is no better than a layman's when it comes to Apple's modern ventures.

I don't mean humor in general – which is great if you can include it – but the one-liners, puns, and feigning ignorance jokes.

I don't know. I guess I'm worried about that scenario that plays out all the time where someone puts effort into making a good argument hoping for deserved admiration, but then someone else can come along and crack a simplistic joke and in one second get promoted right past the first guy.

If that scenario plays out it not only discourages valuable discourse, but it encourages the opposite. Jokes are easier than thoughtful comments. So if they're rewarded just as well or better, than people will choose that route.

And a thread full of attempted jokes gets noisy fast.

1. The giant module titles are friendly for first timers, but regular users – for whom all these customizable modules were created – are not served at all by them, in fact, they detract from the experience by taking up a lot of space and demanding your focus because they're the LARGEST THINGS on the page.

Check out how Newsvine handles module titles: http://www.newsvine.com/

2. All together the page is a jumble. I understand that they're giving users the power to move things around and possibly make it look bad, but why have it jumbled by default? Also going from module to module there's little consistency: they have completely different layouts.

Check out how msnbc's modules have a consistent structure: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/

3. I can't help feeling like there isn't anything on the page: There is so much chrome. And the gray dividers between modules create a lot of noise. I have to really focus to find the few unordered lists which are the content.

4. Why can I collapse modules? What problem does that solve? If I don't want a module, I will uncheck it. If it's something I don't need often I will move it to the bottom.

I'm sure some will like it, and it's animated (neat!), but I'm not keen on providing two ways to do one thing.

5. Nitpick: I hate when the hover state of buttons is the just gradient reversed: it's lazy and it always throws me because I worry that I accidentally clicked.

(I know this isn't Design News, but a lot of people here are interface designers for at least their own apps, so hopefully someone finds my critique valuable.)

I understand how slow and clunky Adobe Reader is, but I'm on a Mac: Safari handles PDFs fast and renders text much nicer than iPaper.

No doubt Scribd will make iPaper even more awesome, but right now I'm gonna be annoyed if sites lose their PDF links and only offer iPaper viewing.

The point of that quote is to (show an attempt to) protect trademark. Like how Google asks people not to use Google as a verb, Lego is asking people not to use Lego as a noun. It's not establishing pluralization rules.

Anyway, I say legos and always have.

And I'm in Kansas City too... Weird.

That said, the ultimate lesson they implanted in these kids is flawed.

I'm sure they'd be thrilled if these kids ultimately grow up and demand society be like the utopia they constructed in their after-school program. But the whole thing stems on there being a finite amount of resources. In the classroom, sure, there is a bucket of bricks – and that's all there is. But in the real world wealth isn't a finite resource.†

The brick game is based on this flawed thinking: According to the game, different colored bricks are worth different amounts, and the luck of your initial draw determines how you rank. The kids are told they can trade (I guess to make it seem more like capitalism?), but that's stupid because there's nothing to gain by trading – who's gonna accept a 2pt brick for a 3pt one?

So the kids are supposed to take away that wealth gets randomly, unfairly distributed, and the only way to make things right is to force the undeserving to share their bricks.

But in real life you aren't stuck trying to trade your money for money: you can attempt to trade wealth – wealth you can create. So a kid could offer back scratches for 1pt bricks. Or agree to carry all of Liam's green bricks for a couple interest bricks. Suddenly you're not limited by your initial draw.

And I think that's a very important lesson that these kids didn't get.

The article says these kids are upper-middle class, so it may not matter as much, but imagine that these were poor kids. Here they've been taught that they can only reach a certain random level of success, and to get any higher will require resources be taken from some undeserving, rich bastard – which, hey, some politician will make happen once in a while – but otherwise your efforts to succeed are futile.

What a hopeless lesson.

† http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

The small footprint seems to be the most touted feature. I'm sure it's useful if you need it, but if not, I don't see the point.

I'd like some help interpreting this sentence.

Why does the lack of competition make it more likely you'll discover new things? (And what is things referring to?)

I assume it means you can attack a problem at a more leisurely pace, so you see solutions you would have missed if you were in a feature-copying war with competitors. But I doubt PG would advocate running your startup leisurely.

That said I do like some shows now (The Office, Stella, and Peep Show), but I absolutely will not watch them in that life-wasting show/ads/show/ads/show format.