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Why do we always wait for apple's stuff before making a i[blank]-killer??
app103:
Even all you haters...I know you've walked into an Apple store and had fun trying out the gadgets. Don't lie!!
-superboyac (June 06, 2010, 11:51 PM)
--- End quote ---
I have never been in an Apple store. I have never even seen one in the real world. I have seen photos of them and they don't look like some place my sensible frugal self belongs.
You KNOW most people care about the UI, so put some effort into it! Geez, I mean seriously. Even if I were SOny's CEO and I was a poweruser, it would stupid of me to keep seeing apple succeed because of UI, and Sony keep failing because of UI (or other similar issues). if there's a problem, fix it! If you can improve yourself, then do so!
-superboyac (June 06, 2010, 11:51 PM)
--- End quote ---
My daughter replaced her iPod with a Sony MP3 player and now she is a very happy girl.
She hated iTunes so much that she loaded all her favorite music onto her iPod and uninstalled iTunes (and all the other useless crap it came bundled with), and never changed the music on the iPod for about 3 years.
She isn't a computer geek. She gets easily frustrated when software goes and makes changes on her system without asking, that she doesn't know how to undo. That's what iTunes did to her PC. It forced her to install Quicktime which hijacked her preferences for handling certain media file types in her browser. It made it rather difficult for her to download music because Quicktime would end up playing it in her browser instead of letting her save the file.
I walked her through fixing the issue not once, not twice, but at least 3 times, because various updates from Apple would just end up messing up her settings again.
Now I didn't know she went and uninstalled all of that stuff after the last time I helped her, so when I set up her laptop for her again after she kept getting hit with malware and it trashed her system (Thank you, Sun!), I installed iTunes along with all her other software. She completely freaked out when she saw the iTunes icon on her taskbar and demanded I get that malware off her laptop.
When she went shopping for a replacement for her iPod, she had 2 requirements:
* long battery life
* no crazy software needed to put music onto it
The Sony she bought fit both of those and had a decent amount of storage space too.
Renegade:
app103, I only understood 2 words in your post...
...iTunes... malware...
-app103 (June 07, 2010, 01:14 AM)
--- End quote ---
And I agree 110%~! :D
superboyac:
My bad attitude towards Apple comes not from their products, and not from their "experience", but from their abusive business practices and malicious licensing agreements.
-Renegade (June 07, 2010, 12:43 AM)
--- End quote ---
Well, yeah, of course. In no way am I defending all things Apple. I'm quietly asking other companies to start taking UI seriously so that I can have my cake and eat it to!
Renegade:
My bad attitude towards Apple comes not from their products, and not from their "experience", but from their abusive business practices and malicious licensing agreements.
-Renegade (June 07, 2010, 12:43 AM)
--- End quote ---
Well, yeah, of course. In no way am I defending all things Apple. I'm quietly asking other companies to start taking UI seriously so that I can have my cake and eat it to!
-superboyac (June 07, 2010, 06:13 PM)
--- End quote ---
YUM YUM~! :P
When you start looking at things, the lack of attention to UI is simply astounding.
Take for example any ecommerce web site or site that you must provide personal details when you sign up. How many can actually process a phone number properly? Or a postal code? Like, if I enter "+61-123-456-789", and I get an error telling me that I can only use numbers, i.e. the expected input is "61123456789", just how pathetic is that?
The same goes for credit card numbers. If you input "4567 8901 2345 6789" and you get an error telling you spaces aren't allowed... Wow. To me that is just the height of incompetence. Why not just remove the spaces and make the user's life easy? Like, on the credit card, it has a space, right? So entering the space makes sense... or is at least plausible enough to warrant attention by the developer.
Lack of attention to UI is epidemic. On the web, that lack of attention (to my eye) is overwhelmingly in web developers not doing basic error checking in a sensible way.
I want Star Trek replicators (not Stargate replicators) and I want them now~! :D
Paul Keith:
Even all you haters...I know you've walked into an Apple store and had fun trying out the gadgets. Don't lie!!
-superboyac (June 06, 2010, 11:51 PM)
--- End quote ---
I have never been in an Apple store. I have never even seen one in the real world. I have seen photos of them and they don't look like some place my sensible frugal self belongs.
You KNOW most people care about the UI, so put some effort into it! Geez, I mean seriously. Even if I were SOny's CEO and I was a poweruser, it would stupid of me to keep seeing apple succeed because of UI, and Sony keep failing because of UI (or other similar issues). if there's a problem, fix it! If you can improve yourself, then do so!
-superboyac (June 06, 2010, 11:51 PM)
--- End quote ---
My daughter replaced her iPod with a Sony MP3 player and now she is a very happy girl.
She hated iTunes so much that she loaded all her favorite music onto her iPod and uninstalled iTunes (and all the other useless crap it came bundled with), and never changed the music on the iPod for about 3 years.
She isn't a computer geek. She gets easily frustrated when software goes and makes changes on her system without asking, that she doesn't know how to undo. That's what iTunes did to her PC. It forced her to install Quicktime which hijacked her preferences for handling certain media file types in her browser. It made it rather difficult for her to download music because Quicktime would end up playing it in her browser instead of letting her save the file.
I walked her through fixing the issue not once, not twice, but at least 3 times, because various updates from Apple would just end up messing up her settings again.
Now I didn't know she went and uninstalled all of that stuff after the last time I helped her, so when I set up her laptop for her again after she kept getting hit with malware and it trashed her system (Thank you, Sun!), I installed iTunes along with all her other software. She completely freaked out when she saw the iTunes icon on her taskbar and demanded I get that malware off her laptop.
When she went shopping for a replacement for her iPod, she had 2 requirements:
* long battery life
* no crazy software needed to put music onto it
The Sony she bought fit both of those and had a decent amount of storage space too.
-app103 (June 07, 2010, 01:14 AM)
--- End quote ---
Thanks for providing the opposite perspective.
I don't mean this as offense towards superboyac's post but sometimes I feel a criticism goes the opposite way in that I am left scratching where the "extreme" perspective comes from.
Maybe it's because of the lack of details but whenever I hear of the opposite application criticism, it makes me scratch my head where it is primarily coming from.
The Apple Store is alright and even good at being one of the components that makes some people want to be part of the Apple culture but from the screenshots I've seen (I haven't been inside one either) it makes me wonder if these people (not specifically targetting superboyac) have even gone inside an internet cafe before since the effect isn't really that far off.
It's a pedicure'd store but come on, some of the hyperbole makes it sound like it's Disneyland for casual consumers when it's not.
Similarly, I'm left wondering if superboyac is referring to a specific model of Sony product when he is talking of user interface design. I know it's important and Sony is not as well respected as Apple in that department but if you take away the shinier control extensions of Apple and the black and white, Sony is up there with developing one of the prettier interfaces out there especially when compared to other lesser known companies like Cowon.
I'm not claiming all Sony products are perfect but neither are Apple products. If they were truly that high ranking in the category of user interfaces, Apple would have beaten out Windows a long time ago or eat a bigger portion of the marketshare especially internationally.
I know we're not really trying to narrow down and do a side by side detailed comparison of each companies but we can't go overboard and say it is just user interface or it is just "bad" rather than "mediocre" quality especially if the end conclusion is that "Apple can do no wrong in the non-techie department when the reality is FAR FAR not even close."
The appeal of the I-Pad is primarily in the concept. The user interface helps but it is hardly made up for by what the I-Pad actually is to consumers. Something new. Something cool. Something revolutionary.
Similarly, the I-Pod is not heralded as a popular mp3 player because people primarily oogled at the interface. They oogled at the scroll wheel more. They oogled at the culture who is so in love with the I-Pod.
Even the Iphone if you took away the availability of the app store, it was oogled not because of it's interface which isn't really that perfect but because of it's touch screen capability mixed with a modern look that many phone companies at the time just weren't focusing on.
It's just head scratching to read a conclusion like this:
You KNOW most people care about the UI, so put some effort into it! Geez, I mean seriously. Even if I were SOny's CEO and I was a poweruser, it would stupid of me to keep seeing apple succeed because of UI, and Sony keep failing because of UI (or other similar issues). if there's a problem, fix it! If you can improve yourself, then do so!
--- End quote ---
only to be mixed with this:
Take for example any ecommerce web site or site that you must provide personal details when you sign up. How many can actually process a phone number properly? Or a postal code? Like, if I enter "+61-123-456-789", and I get an error telling me that I can only use numbers, i.e. the expected input is "61123456789", just how pathetic is that?
The same goes for credit card numbers. If you input "4567 8901 2345 6789" and you get an error telling you spaces aren't allowed... Wow. To me that is just the height of incompetence. Why not just remove the spaces and make the user's life easy? Like, on the credit card, it has a space, right? So entering the space makes sense... or is at least plausible enough to warrant attention by the developer.
--- End quote ---
I'm no website designer although I understand the severity of this issue and I can see why the analogy works BUT!...at the same time, if I'm an ignorant user, I'm given the wrong impression with this post.
I'm given the impression that Sony doesn't put effort on their user interface but when I open something like the PSP, I don't see a perfect user interface but I certainly see a pretty enough one in enough areas that such posts leave me with the impression that the posters, while possessing knowledge of user interfaces, are vastly informed by their biases too much to the point that they come off more like they don't understand the perspective of a consumer as far as gadget interfaces go or they have gone too far with their hyperbole.
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