Why, why, why. Why?

11 November 2005

Many apologies for the lack of posts recently; things are coming precariously close to overwhelming me at the moment, but I just about seem to be beating back the tide.

Of course, not having blogged in a few weeks means there’s a few things I need to get off my chest:

• OPML: So many people seem to be hyping opml up at the moment – why? It’s just a fairly boring file format for storing lists of stuff – so what?

• OPML Editor: possibly the worst piece of software I’ve used in 5 years. Maybe this kind of thing passes muster on the PC, but the mac version seems to hail from the early nineties in interface design and feature set.

• Web 2.0: What exactly is it again? Oh, wait; no one knows…

• “Social” software: Sorry folks, I couldn’t care less about sharing my bookmarks with the world; or putting pictures of my non-existant cats online. Whilst obviously some social software has many benefits, and has broken into the mainstream (like email and instant messaging), most of the new stuff out there really isn’t going to appeal to that many people.

• Apple bugs: This one goes out to Drukenbatman – Apple software has always been buggy. It always will be. It’s not going through some kind of tailspin-of-doom from a QA point of view; it’s always been like that.

The problem comes from hype, and shit-loads of it, left over from the Mac OS 9 – Mac OS 10 transition, when everyone and their dog was going on about how much more stable Mac OS X was going to be, and how we’d never have all the problems we had then etc, etc.

Well guess what?

We still have bugs – no more, no less – they’re different ones, and change from release to release, but they will always be there.

• Linux: Whilst I’m sure the underlying kernel and whatnot is loverly the user experience on Linux is just abysmal – seriously, you expect people to be able to do anything more then double click an icon and click next a few times to install software?

Oh and while I’m on the topic; give the user less options, not more – most people have never customised the preferences on any of their programs.

• People that don’t like iPods: They better then all the other players – that’s why they’re popular; not because they’re “cool” (although that helps).

More features != better.

Proof: David Davis, potential Tory party leader has an iRiver.

• Sony’s DRM: Well done Sony, I’m sure that the sales you’ve gained due to lack of piracy of your CDs more then covers the PR catastrophe you’ve created for yourself.

• People that don’t post to their blogs in weeks, and then post a big list of stuff in bullet points.

From: Articles

11 November 2005