Nothing's perfect, but it depends mightily on your line of work. I work in VFX where the age tends to be low and plugging into your music when you need to focus on your shot is extremely common. Otherwise it's more about being different from a warren of disconnected offices rather than always better or worse. I haven't worked from a sealed office in many many years and I don't miss it in the slightest. For the record, I'm not young.
It's evolution - either it survives or it doesn't, users will cave or they won't. MS will bring back the start menu or they won't - this can be applied to pretty much everything. So yeah, vote with your wallet, that's *all* MS cares about, like any other corporation. If there's some seriously flawed security issues in the implementation, make it public so users enjoying the service can be informed. But a "hell no we won't go... ONLINE!" flashmob? Please. Let the natural order decide and if it grinds your gears all that much best to buy an apple orchard and keep the local kids out of it - better use of your time.
I use steam all the time, a PS3 less so, I get some value from being connected, but it's nice to know if I wanted to I have offline mode with steam. MS will likely give me less choice so I probably won't invest.
Apart from genuinely broken progress paradigms, I think users have the expectation that progress gives them a meaningful representation of 'time remaining'. That is really hard to determine, due to all the variables mentioned in this thread. I am in my xen space if I am 1. Reasonably warned ahead of time that the process might take as much as xx minutes, and 2. The indicator is actually giving me feedback that shit is happening, as opposed to "I'm stuck". Given the range of hardware and possible combinations of installed software, I don't think there's a problem at all if I get those two pieces of information.
DT
This is basically that book, using lights instead of scent detection. I think the scent angle has more promise, doesn't need LOS, but then again you're at the mercy of air currents. Oh, and we're all doomed, m'kay?
It's a fun read, btw. While the characters are formulaic, Suarez is one of those rare authors that doesn't talk down to his audience when it comes to science.
You really think it means nothing that a CEO of a major corporation(and countless other CEOs and business leaders) do something like this? I know, not to you personally, obviously, but this is how trends and perceptions are started and propagated. The story is about how screwed RIM is, and I think this is a valid thing for them to be worried about. Sure, RIM might possibly survive as a hardcore business technology if they get their act together and focus on that rather than poorly attempting to be 'cool', but just because you're disdainful of 'shallow' features like social media(which for many businesses is increasingly critical) and whipping out your phone and showing a client an awesome new game/learning tool/organization tool and impressing the hell out of them, and also loosening up the atmosphere to boot, doesn't mean others do too. It's less about shame and more about staying current.
My speculation is, someone screwed up, big time. Arguing stealth as a reason for running into a friendly is like arguing a running back plowed into his teammate carrying the ball because he's supposed to be fast.
When I first saw ads for Paperwhite, I was sort of meh, I've been using my Transformer Prime/Razr to read books, my Kindle went to my wife. Why another gadget? This notice made me look again...and I'm betting I'll never find a reason to want to actually root it. Just the fact that root-ability is out there attracts a segment of the demographic. I'm thinking I want one of these now...
In the VFX community, you pretty much stray from 2.6 at your peril, and certainly 3.x is a no-fly option if you want to stay 'current' with the latest apps. It's incredibly frustrating, since the previous 'standard', if you could call it that, was TCL, and python is better on so many levels...but this has tainted it mightily.
You know, it's a little disappointing to see the snide comments suffixed with variations of 'my 8 year old could have done that'. It just shows an ignorance of the design process, which has nothing to do with the simplicity or complexity of the final result. I'm not a big fan of the final result - there's nothing wrong with expressing a love or hate for the direction - but please don't belittle the difficulty of the challenge of taking a very old, established identity and updating it after a quarter century of imprinting itself on the public consciousness. It's hard work. Not only do you have to distill numerous directions from the client and please yourself, but I can imagine navigating the labyrinth of MS approvals must have been a nightmare.
I think that compared to the complete misfire that is Win8, the new logo is a blinding success.
...because it's subjective. My story - I had a Xoom and bought a Kindle...and I started reading fiction again, which I had forsaken and just couldn't get into on the Xoom because of the form factor. Kindle was perfect, I loved e-ink and the closeness to print. Then I got a Transformer Prime...and I gave my Kindle to my wife! I use the Transformer for all reading - fiction, graphic, technical, pdfs... I simply liked the convenience of all-in-one. The form factor just got 'good enough' for me to put up with that little more weight to have all my stuff on one device. I would imagine the new Nexus 7 would fit that bill even moreso. No-one was more surprised than I - I really liked the Kindle, but the multi-use and lack of yet another device to lug around won me over. So, FWIW.
Btw I left Apple out of this since we don't touch that stuff in our house.
The important thing is that there was something for people to whine about, and exclaim how much better they could have done it. I keep forgetting half of Slashdot 'culture' is about trying to upstage every living thing on the planet, as opposed to, oh I don't know, maybe just revelling in a major achievement for the human race?
Honestly, *every* company out there has people in positions of power that halt things that 'suck'. Gates killed the MS ebook reader in the cradle. The issue is whether they're right or wrong(in the context of making a profitable product). The only reason Jobs/Apple is being perceived any differently is the godlike aura cast around him by media and the Faithful and their incredible success.
Slow news day? Based on recent drop tests, apple apparently doesn't 'get' selling a reliable product that doesn't break at the first torture test, whereas Google does. Who the hell cares about a bunch of clumsy YouTube un boxers looking like... clumsy YouTube un boxers? This sort of non-news ends up being a chuckle at next year's big Google event as 'oh yeah, we made the box easier to open, too...'
DT
It's always amused me that 'religious' gets immediately translated to 'family friendly'. Given the divisive bullshit being generally spouted, it couldn't be farther from the truth.
Actually, there is a pretty good reason to call it a 'mistake'. You get more press.
BLISS is ignorance.
