#marco.org

[g-grafix1]

How to bring good design to a platform – Marco.org

Helpful tips to always follow

[gojeffcho]

Apple has completely lost the functional high ground. “It just works” was never completely true, but I don’t think the list of qualifiers and asterisks has ever been longer. We now need to treat Apple’s OS and application releases with the same extreme skepticism and trepidation that conservative Windows IT departments employ.

See, it's weird because I echo the sentiment, but not necessarily for Mac.

There are broad trends I can look at with respect to Apple.  On the Mac side, I'm primarily concerned with the MacBook Pro line, since that's what I own and use.  Over the years, we've seen the MacBook Pro go from user-serviceable and replaceable configurations (e.g. replaceable battery) to contained systems with the release of unibody units to completely unalterable take-it-as-it-is machines with the RAM soldered to the motherboard amongst other changes.

Along the same timeframe, we saw Mac OS X develop.  The OS went from cheap (compared to Windows licenses or upgrades) iterations released annually to free - and was a huge marketing triumph for Apple in the early days.  In the past handful of years, though, it seems like people are always experiencing tons of issues after an OS upgrade.  Downloading the zero-day is almost like beta testing for a lot of users - software isn't fully updated or supported, there are numerous bugs, and the forums burst with bug reports.

I remember fondly the transitions from Tiger to Leopard to Snow Leopard.  Lion wasn't the smoothest upgrade.  And from there, it just went downhill.  I had a ton of headaches with the Mountain Lion upgrade.  I waited to upgrade to Mavericks for a while, and regretted it when I finally pulled the trigger.  Now I'm on Yosemite and I can't say it's an improvement.

It's not just a question of whether I like the software.  It's a question of whether the software is usable.  Mountain Lion, Mavericks, and Yosemite were all buggy to hell when they released to the public.  So I agree with the sentiment that annual OS releases are far from necessary.  Hell, I'd be more than happy still sitting on Snow Leopard, but I know I don't speak for everyone.  I'd rather wait two years to get a stable, fully-fledged update than deal with what we have to deal with annually.  I'm sure software developers aren't exactly big fans, either.

But on the Mac side, Apple hasn't lost the functional high ground with me.  I use Windows 7 at work, there's a Windows 8 machine in the house, I have my MacBook Pro, and I use Linux for my servers and side projects.  I still cannot give up my Mac, functionally speaking.

Ubuntu, the most user-friendly and well-known flavor of Linux these days, has come a long way from back in the day, but there's still no way in hell I could get my parents or my sister to run it.  By that, I mean they literally could not get a computer up and running on Ubuntu by themselves without hand-holding.

Windows 8 is a nightmare to me, and I hear the same story from everyone: they had to install a hack to bring back the Desktop in order to use it.  I think Windows 7 is actually pretty nice, easy to use, and stable, but there are machines now for which a Windows 7 downgrade is an impossibility.

But functionality-wise, Mac is it for me.  I cannot achieve the same functionality or productivity on a Windows machine as I can on my Mac, and my workflow and capabilities would be significantly crippled.

It's on mobile where I think Apple has long lost its high ground.

The iPhone is no longer very competitive.  It hasn't been, really, for a couple years.  I say a couple because to me, the HTC One was the signal to me that the Android system had a hardware competitor to the iPhone, not just a software one.  Because no matter how much better Android as an OS got, there was still no piece of hardware that I liked enough, identified with enough, or was personal enough for me to carry as my phone.

The latest releases of Android - even before Lollipop came around - were more than a fair match for iOS.  The software had become more and more formidable, and the design elements were really tightening up.  At the same time, the same "fragmentation" argument that had been levelled derisively against Android for years had arrived on iOS.  The iPhone 4, 5, and 6 and 6+ all had different screen sizes.

Sure, iOS still leads in the App Store.  That's one of the places where it really shines over Android still, but in terms of core functionality - what 95% of users use on a daily or weekly basis - both App Stores have solutions that are comparable in functionality.  And let's face it, Android by its nature has a ton of functionality that iOS can't ever have.

Then you look at stuff like the iOS 8 release.  What a clusterfuck that was, with a chorus of users complaining about how they couldn't upgrade because the OTA took up more space than their phone had available.  Not that it told you that, so they were met with unexplained errors when they attempted to upgrade.  It was painful to watch.

Users are by and large running out of compelling reasons to stick with iPhones when there are Android phones just as beautiful and well-engineered, smooth on the software-side, and often cheaper by half.  I was this close to upgrading from my iPhone 5 to an HTC One when the time came.  I have an iPhone 6 now, but it was a very near thing.

And it could very easily end up being that my next upgrade is to an Android phone if iOS continues on its current trajectory.  iOS was getting stale a few generations ago, and now I kind of have the opposite complaint - it's getting gimicky and it's lacking focus.  

Their blind adherence to the "single-button" (Home Button) interface has created a mishmosh UX - swipe down from the top of the screen for Notification Center, up from the bottom of the screen for Control Center (never mind that those two gestures often interfere with games and apps), down from the springboard but not from the top of the screen for Spotlight search, swipe down from a notification to call up a response function... what a mess.

iPad is still the king brand in the tablet space as far as I can see, and Mac is indispensable to me yet, but the list of non-negotiables keeping me using an iPhone have all but run out.  I can easily swing to either platform now if I wanted to, but iPhone is still more convenient for me as a Mac user, even though I use an Android tablet.

We'll see what happens with the next few iterations - and with Apple Watch.

[peelman]

The 5K Retina iMac is out, and it looks incredible so far on paper — so incredible that I’m seriously considering selling my new Mac Pro to get the Retina iMac instead. In fact, the case for the Mac Pro for anyone but advanced video editors, 3D modelers, and heavy OpenCL users is now weaker than ever.

I fell off the Mac Pro list a long time ago. My work machine is a 2013 27” iMac that beats my 2008 Mac Pro in an embarrassing fashion. More RAM (and cheaper RAM), faster single-threaded performance, and a PCI-E SSD that smokes the WD Black my Pro currently has.

i was convinced for a while that an iMac would replace my Mac Pro. Now i’m not as certain. A new contender has arisen…

The latest refresh to the Mac Mini includes PCI-E SSD, newer Haswell processors, and Thunderbolt 2. The 16GB memory cap sucks; but right now, for what my home machine does, I can’t really say I need more than that. I’m already going to have to rock a big external storage to satisfy those needs. For the cost of a decked-out Mini vs a 5K iMac, I can probably pick up a pair of 27” displays from Monoprice.

"But what about Retina?!" you might ask. Eh. Unlike Marco, I am not enamored by the idea of Retina on a desktop; it just doesn’t seem like the hardware is there yet to make it a worthwhile sacrifice of the performance lost by rendering all those extra pixels. Maybe i’m wrong, but its a pretty subjective thing to tell me I’m wrong about.

Update:

Nearest guess of the performance difference between the mid-range i5 (2.6Ghz) and the i7options available for the Mac mini: here (cpubenchmark.net)

Update 2:

a very dressed out mini…

[danzorx]

His right to free speech entitles him to express any opinion he pleases. But it does not shield him from the personal and professional repercussions of what he says.

Our right to free speech entitles us to be vocally outraged, to encourage others to boycott Firefox, or to call for his firing. What Mozilla pressures or forces him to do as a result is solely their decision and their problem, and has nothing to do with anyone’s free speech — it’s a business decision.

So let’s knock that argument right out. This is not a free speech issue, period, and it’s incorrect, misleading, and naive to attempt to make it one. Such distortions are the fastest way to pervert and derail an argument, as we often see from our politicians, and I expect better from intelligent people like Andrew Sullivan.

Like Marco says, freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences. Consequences are literally the whole point of speech, after all. Eich's go-around is reminiscent of the Pax furor of a few months ago, with Eich's supporters incorrectly conflating freedom of speech with freedom from only the undesired social consequences of speech.

Surely Eich wouldn't want freedom from outlawing gay marriage, which was the temporary consequence of his "speech" in support of prop8. Why should he be exempt from only the negative consequences (being deemed unfit to be Mozilla's CEO)?

It's frustrating to see the backlash against Eich characterized as a lynch mob/a witch hunt/bullying/burning him at the stake. For one, they're gross exaggerations that derail the conversation - no one is being murdered in public as spectacle - and they're mischaracterizations of the power dynamics of the situation. They indicate that the backlash Eich suffered was somehow illegitimate, but that's inconsistent with believing in free speech: the backlash is the free speech right of his opponents.

Lynch mobs, witch hunts, and stake-burners (?) don't have any right to kill people, and they have nothing to do with free speech. But, expressing our opinion that Eich is unfit to be CEO as a consequence of his speech is exercising our free speech, and shouldn't be stopped or opposed like we oppose literal lynch mobs, witch hunts, and bullying.

[gojeffcho]

Microsoft’s customers don’t like change. They’re accustomed to getting everything they want, exactly as they want it, with no surprises. They won’t tolerate anything else.

How can you make a mad generalization like that?  That's like saying, "Apple customers all listen to Coldplay and drink Starbucks daily."  And how do you define "Microsoft customers"?  You have to reconcile the fact that tons of users out there are forced to use Microsoft in corporate settings, and yes, they tend to be resistant to change.  And there are tons of Microsoft user demographics that are resistant to change.  But there are also users out there who want them to innovate and grow, who saw Windows 8 as a bold, strong move.

This is somewhat addressed in the next paragraph:

If Microsoft releases anything too different, enterprise customers will simply refuse to buy it, demanding that Microsoft keep selling the old version indefinitely.

I'm seeing this partially now at work with a Windows 7 rollout.  The difference is that while everyone is bitching and whining about change, they're realizing that it works, and it is in many ways better.  Yes, it's different.  Things will change.  Is change always good?  Not in and of itself.  I'm in no way saying that Windows 8 was a good move on Microsoft's part, and it didn't grow windows in and of itself - but it might set the stage for Windows 9 (or whatever they call it) to excel, if they really take their lessons learned.

It’s not that Microsoft is incapable of making radical changes. Not only was Windows 8 the most bold move they’ve made since Windows 95, but it wasn’t even bad. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad. Microsoft truly innovated with the UI to a greater extent than we’ve ever seen from them.

Metro was innovative to a far more impressive degree than anything I've seen in a long time.  The reason for that is they came late to the game, and they had to tiptoe around the existing interfaces.  They managed to do that and put out a new, modern, compelling interface.  I can't speak to the functionality, but I have at least one friend who is addicted to Windows phone and Surface - and man, it looks pretty good.  I would say that Apple took some design inspiration from Metro for iOS 7.  Not that Apple is the end-all be-all of design, but when comparing Microsoft to Apple, which company do you think has a higher focus on design?

Microsoft’s biggest strategic mistake over the last five years has been forgetting who their customers really are.

Sure - if their goal is to try to desperately keep as many customers as they possibly can.  That's not a tenable position in the long game.  I agree with Microsoft trying to strive boldly to move forward, even if it means taking some short- to medium-term losses.

In terms of what I think Apple does well, it's that they (historically) don't listen to the market or even to their customers.  They don't make the product the customer thinks they want, they make the product the customer should want.  I think Microsoft was headed in that direction, got caught up in a bit of gutless flinching from senior people, and ended up with one foot in the stream and one foot on the bank.

[gojeffcho]

Google’s leadership, threatened by the attention and advertising relevance of Facebook, is betting the company on Google+ at all costs.

Google+ adoption and usage is not meeting their expectations. Facebook continues to dominate. It’s not working. They’re desperate.

Google will continue to sell out and potentially ruin its other properties to juice Google+ usage.

I get that business can be, at the core of it, a numbers game.  But this exemplifies to me what happens when you obsess over that numbers game.  Google is running itself into the ground trying to push Google+.  Just look at the backlash that came from pushing users to link their YouTube accounts to their Google+ identity.  I see Hangouts as another product that could have been great, but is crippled by its intention to push Google+.

To me, this lacks vision and integrity.  It is myopic at best, well-intentioned but completely misled.  Instead of serving the users it currently has on Google+, it keeps pushing the product invasively on its core users - those who had come to love and trust Google as a company, and rely on other Google products like search, Gmail, Calendar, or Apps.

To run the numbers game against Facebook seems exceedingly foolhardy; to try to do it by being, at its most basic reduction, a Facebook clone or replacement, seems outright stupid.  Many people have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. - why do they need a second Facebook?  

Just who is Google+ aimed at?  None of my friends seem to be using it, save one or two at best.  I have a significantly larger audience on Google+ than I do on Facebook and Twitter individually, but I'm not compelled to use it.  It's just not a product that appeals to most people.

Then again, neither was Wave, but I loved it.  Google had the good sense to shutter Wave when they realized it wasn't going to be what they wanted it to be, though.  I'm not saying they have to close Google+; it obviously appeals to some.  But I wish they'd stop trying to underhandedly insinuate it upon loyal users.

[prempiyush]

Mac Pro Pricing Over Time

The new Mac Pro feels very expensive when configured with a few options, and it’s easy to feel that it’s much more expensive than previous Mac Pros.

And it is. But the big jump actually started with the 2009 model, when Intel started running out of ways to make the high-end Xeons better except by raising their core count, which drove the price up dramatically.

Here’s the actual history of Mac Pro prices from Everymac:

Entry LevelMidrange CPUHigh-end CPU GenerationCoresClockPriceCoresClockPriceCoresClockPrice 2006 22.0 $2199 42.66$2499 43.0 $3299 2008 42.8 $2299 82.8 $2799 83.2 $4399 2009 42.66$2499 82.26$3299 82.93 $5899 2010 42.8 $2499 63.33$3699 122.93$6199 “2012”43.2 $2499 63.33$2999 123.06$6199 2013 43.7 $2999 63.5 $3499 122.7 $6499

It’s hard to define “midrange” in some generations, so I made my best estimates. It’s also debatable whether the 2013 “high-end” should be the 8- or 12-core model since Turbo Boost makes it weird now, but I chose the 12-core to be more comparable with the previous generations. And this is based on CPU upgrades only, since it’s easiest to find data for those and they’re usually the most expensive upgrades in the lineup.

The trend is even more clear when graphed:

Mac Pro prices have always crept upward, but the biggest jumps aren’t recent.

It’s not even as much of a ripoff as you might assume. In the 2006 and 2008 generations, the range of performance within the lineup was smaller, especially between the midrange and high-end. Once Intel started ramping up core counts and Turbo Boost in the last few generations, the midrange was no longer 10–20% slower than the high-end — it became more like 50–75% slower at fully parallel tasks.

Here are those same Mac Pros with their Geekbench 3 scores graphed (32-bit multicore):

Scores for the 4- and 12-core 2013 models are estimated from the 6-core’s.

Prices have stayed mostly in proportion to parallel performance. The difference between the low and high end is much bigger than it used to be.

But don’t feel too bad about those high-end CPUs being so far out of reach. The core-count hikes that yielded such massive parallel improvements have come with stagnation or regression in single-threaded performance, which is still very important to many common tasks, so today’s highest-end options are either very similar to the lower-end choices or actually worse for many buyers. As their prices have crept upward, the high-end options have become more specialized at the expense of economy and some general-purpose performance.

And that’s now true of the entire Mac Pro line: it’s no longer the fastest Mac at single-threaded tasks (the highest-end iMac is), and the jobs that the Mac Pro does faster than other high-end Macs are becoming fewer and more specialized.

You can still find good value in the Mac Pro line (in the 2013 lineup, just like the “2012”, the 6-core is a great value), but it’s pushing further into specialty uses as the high-end iMac and 15” MacBook Pro options keep closing the gap for more people.

Credits:Mac Pro Pricing Over Time was originally published in Marco.org on December 23, 2013 at 07:54AM. This was shared via Feedly

[protstech]

How anonymous is anonymous?

This is twice now in less than a week that Daring Fireball has linked to “anonymous” tumblrs. (Exhibit A, Exhibit B) I don’t think they’re so anonymous at all. How else would Gruber find these tumblrs that have just started. Nobody is that good at keeping up with new content. Somebody, therefore, must be sending Gruber these sites.

Now, it’s true that Gruber has a lot of followers on Twitter and likely receives a lot of email, implying that links to the sites came from anyone. But if you have a high “talkback” volume, you have to come up with a weeding system. It’s simply not feasible to read all the fan mail, much less filter the important communications out; there’s simply too much noise to signal. So it stands to reason that whomever is sending Gruber these links is likely a close friend of Gruber’s, so either the close friend created the site or was notified about it and sent it on to Gruber like a two degrees of separation thing.

If I had to guess, I’d say that Marco Arment is behind the Crapshaming site. Those overlays look a lot like Bugshot and in particular Business Insider–a site that Arment has complained about more than once on his old podcast Build and Analyze has lifted entire blog posts from his blog and ran them as articles on their site without permission. The one thing that makes me doubt Arment is behind the blog is that Disqus comments are turned on; Marco has been in the anti-comment camp for quite some time and makes no bones about it.