Well I got the fist exam of the year out of the way last Monday with a solid 80% so I am now, finally, a Microsoft Certified Professional.
Looks like the next one will be less studying but more exams due to changes at the training provider I use, of which I will post more on when the situation clears up.
In the meantime back to the hang over.
For those of you just joining us here is the summary so far – I have bought a Mac and spent the last post giving a brief history of why I think there is an Apple resurgence and what I believe the two defining Apple design concepts are: a simple to use interface and the need to make a well designed desirable object. Obviously one of these will transfer over easier then the other, so how do you go about making software desirable?
At the very base of it all what do all operating systems have in common be it on your phone, laptop, set top box, watch or microwave? They all provide the structure for you the user to interact with the device. How they go about this is a very different matter and indeed causes many an argument over which operating system is better on many Geek forums across the land. The argument has three sides and goes something like this:
Do they have a point? well they all do in some cases. Ignoring the Linux issue for now (and to be honest that is likely to continue) and concentrate on the Mac vs PC debate.
Taking a look the stats it is hard to argue about who is winning with Microsoft having between a 96% and 98% market share, with Apple coming in second and other OS’s making up the remaining decimal places. That right there is a tough figure to argue with, do you know any other industry where one corporation holds such sway over a market sector? Windows is the industry standard with nearly every computer sold coming with it in one form or another and when most people think of computers they don’t think of the typically boring beige box but the interface that comes with it. Microsoft really spearheaded the movement of computer strictly for business to the idea that it is something that can be found in most homes in the world.
However if you look at the evolution of Windows against that of Mac OS you seem some disturbing trends in which Microsoft lags behind the Mac OS and implements an idea that Apple had, and normally that is done badly. Examples? sure taking Windows Vista and Windows 7 and comparing it against OS X you have:
The Aero interface. included in Vista was the much touted Aero interface. This graphical overhaul included translucent windows and a “Rolodex” style rotational system for switching between applications with active previews of each app as it goes. Also included in Aero was the preview of programs on the start bar. These are al ideas borrowed from OS X, firstly the translucent display came with OS X and wowed users with it’s smooth implementation and lack of system over head to use.
(The Aero Interface)
(Expose)
The “Expose” system allows users with a single key or button press to arrange all of their active windows so they can all be viewed at once, these windows are all live and displaying current data with the user just having to click on the app they want as opposed to scrolling through. The dock in OS X (the bar at the bottom of the screen) doubles as both an application launcher and a preview of minimised apps. The MS implementation of this has been taken forward with Windows 7 in which they have done away with the application tittles in the start bar and have taken to an icon based system just the same as the OS X one.
Active Corner. In Windows 7 if you move your cursor to the lower right corner of the screen it will minimise the current application, this is very similar to an option in OSX called Active Corners. Active Corners allows you to assign an action to each corner of the screen should you so choose, for example I have the upper right hand corner set to activate the screensaver, but all four corners of the screen are customisable for what ever action you like.
The Search and Lunch bar. Vista brought in an integrated search that would allow you to type the name of a file and executable and run it with a few simple presses. Windows 7 builds on this by allowing you to use the name of programs. For instance in Vista if you wanted to launch Word you would have to type winword.exe and not just Word as you can now in Windows 7. This is a very basic implementation of the OS X feature named Spotlight However spotlight does much more then just index files, instead it integrates a calculator, a dictionary, it searches all your contacts, calendar entries, emails, “to do” items and Web favourites and allows you to bring any of them up with a “natural” word search that begins as soon as you start typing and with each additional key press is further refines the results. These results are categorised into top hit and then by the category each result would fall into and are selectable with a mouse click or enter. The reason the search is so quick is because all the items are indexed, which is nothing new but for an out of the box feature Spotlight is very well implemented and integrated will all OS X apps.
There are others but after the first few examples it starts to get tedious. So just what is it about the Mac os that is so good? well for a start it runs incredibly well, mainly because there are so few hard ware combinations out there that Apple can really focus on the important bits. It is very user friendly in that it isn’t obtuse in the way it asks you to interact (Shutting down the computer by clicking on start?) and not everything is nested in layers upon layers of menus.
As an example of it’s simplicity I will take one of Leopard’s (the latest version of OS X) apps :Time Machine. At its heart Time Machine is incredibly boring in the fact that it’s a backup system and I know how we all find that dull. So what makes Time Machine Special? the fact that I don’t have to think about it, or do anything with it at all in fact, ah I see you are slightly more interested now, allow me to expand on this. Before you first activate Time Machine (ok going to refer to it as TM now) and you connect an external hard drive Leopard ask would you like to use it as a TM drive? If you select yes it brings you to the time machine menu where you move a big switch from “off” to “on” and that’s it, the end of your interaction.
The Mac will now take a complete backup of everything on there (this one took a while) and after that it backs up like this:
Now while this is certainly impressive its by no means more impressive then some of the third party apps out there for windows so what is so impressive about it? Well remember I said that spotlight indexes everything? well it keeps that record for your backup files. So say you lost some files for work and you had searched for them using spotlight but with no avail, you activate TM and while keeping what you have searched for in mind shows you loads of windows going back for each time it took a backup of your file allowing you to preview the file select the one you want and restore it easily. 
Very impressive I hear you say but what about laptops, they have a tendency to move round don’t they? well yes they do and I was somewhat concerned by this until I found out that even if you disconnect the TM drive and go about your business when you reconnect the drive it compares the last backup with what is now there and backs up all the changes without any user input. Magic.
At the start of this, much longer then expected, post I asked how do you make software desirable? It turns out the the answer is very simple, make it powerful, make it user friendly and make it attractive. I think that Apple have got this down to a fine art now but they are not without there problems, but that is another post.
So after a number of years of Windows system administration I jumped from the good ship Redmond and bought myself an Apple Mac. Now if you like me have ever gone into any Starbucks in a major city or town you will have seen Them. You know Them the smug look, the very bohemian attitude with every. little. thing. Just. So. The centre piece of this smugness? normally the Apple Mac they are on. As with nearly all Apple products there seems to be a very studied approach, a very deliberate attempt to be cool, and you know what it seems to be working out for them.
Think back a few years to when the iPod first came out, the MP3 is just taking off and Apple, who were at that point were not long come from a spell of making utterly horrible products have just welcomed Steve Jobs, one of the founders of apple, back to the fold. He brought with him a new focus – Design. This design focus has two objectives: firstly to create a desirable product and secondly to make the user interface as easy to use as possible. These two principles are summed up in the Ipod, the simple clean lines, the revolutionary interface made it an instant hit with people as they hadn’t seen anything like it before. Even people who were not normally gadget orientated (and shame on them!) wanted to be part of this, they too wanted a piece of the ineffable cache of cool that the Ipod seemed to represent, and so a phenomenon was born.
But everything isn’t so simple as that was it? No, with the launch of the iPod came the launch of iTunes which, love it or hate it, is now the biggest music retailer in the States which is a fairly big claim for a company who had never made a music player or online service before. It was a very smart move by apple to integrate a music store with the software you use to manage your iPod. That being said however they did cop for some flak as they tied your music purchase in with DRM or Digital Rights Management, it is essentially a copy protection but something I will go into more in a future post as it is slightly off topic for this piece. However even with this flak it marked an upturn in the fortunes for Apple.
The Mac resurgence continued with the iMac. If you watch any American based TV you will have seen one, an all in one computer that looks like a screen with a lamp base (or it did at the time). Again a simple an elegant design that most importantly is not a beige box with another beige box attached to it for a screen. The iMac was white and curvy and again was projecting the a factor of cool as it looked and was different.
The final three stages of Apples resurgence came in the following items: The Intel Dual Core Processor; the Macbook and the iPhone.
When Apple announced they were dropping their previous chip lines and moving to Intel chips the geek world was all of a chatter, most of which your host ignored with an air of complete indifference – “so the Mac’s now use Intel chips, so what PCs have had them for years” and then went on with my day. I had really missed the point. With the adoption of the Intel chips makers of PC software suddenly had a really god idea how to make their programs run on Mac hardware, and makers of emulation software would be able to make Windows run on the Mac. As a change of direction it was huge and ushered in a wave of new development.
This new development included the Macbook, which to this day remains the best selling Mac Apple have ever produced. Take a look at the Macbook and again there is that “cool” factor we have been discussing. It has very simple lines which are not disrupted with ports for this that and other strewn willy nily around the case meaning it has a very distinctive look, and of course has the Fruit logo set inverted on the lid so that when you open the screen you announce to the world just what you are using. But if you actually sit an look at what is inside these machines you may be surprised as they generally feature more power then a desk top at the time and included wireless, Bluetooth fire wire, an integrated webcam and either DVD/CD Writer or DVD/DVD writer on on all the models. A very high spec for what is for most of the range a 13.3” (or 33.78cm for our metric friends) laptop. The spec and the software (another post) made for a very attractive package.
Lastly we come to the iphone, an object which at its heart is a phone, you make calls on it and everyone wants one. Including me. Again there is Apple’s design principals at work, a simple non fussy casing with an elegant user interface. Damnit them it is like crack…. The latest iteration of the iPhone is of course the iPhone 3g which won so many awards for :gadget of the year” last year I think Apple must have been sick of the awards and have given up counting. At this point I am going to stop talking about it however as currently I am an informed spectator where as soon I will be an owner so will talk about it more then.
One of the things I have avoided talking about so far is the price as this is normally the argument that people make against Apple products, however I will cover this but again it will be in a future post.
The next few posts are likely to be continuing this subject with a discussion about the Mac software and my experiences and frustrations so far as another post, so join me for our continuance in a couple of days. As right now I am off for a vodka and some food.
So New year, new start and all that? Well not in an attempt to sound cliched but managing it all the same so what do I want out of this year? Money, women, an Adonis like physique, oh you expect me to be serious and grown up about this? Really? fine if you want to play like that I will even split them into work and personal.
Work
I need to pass 4 Microsoft Professional exams this year they are
i also need to pass a personal communications course, as apparently I don’t play well with others. Now shockingly I know but I don’t believe this is the case, people get the messages I send out, it just happens that the majority of the messages are, “no you are doing it wrong” and “Why yes you are a cock, please go to the head of the class”. My boss tells me that this doesn’t go down well.
However in all seriousness he gave me some feedback which I did find interesting in that I used “closed” language a lot. For example I will write “you will” instead of “you should” and because of this I come across as dictatorial and aggressive when this is not necessarily the case.
Personal
Well my personal goals are slightly less well defined and mostly fitness related
Oh well the objectives are set – lets see if I make them.
