From: Bill Kelly <billk@...>
Date: 2008-08-25T18:05:27+09:00
Subject: Re: A Mascot...


From: "David Masover" <ninja@slaphack.com>
> On Monday 25 August 2008 01:44:15 Mayuresh Kathe wrote:
> 
>> All Apple products are tastefully done, that's an accepted fact.
> 
> It's too late, and I'm too tired to give this the hearty laugh it deserves...

Bemused chuckle accompanied by a slightly incredulous and rueful
head shake here.


> A fact would be that _many_ Apple products have received good reviews for 
> design -- and even then, "many" is a subjective quantity. (How many? What 
> percentage? is "many"?)
> 
> Closer would be a fact stating that a certain percentage of consumers you 
> asked approve of Apple's design, in general -- or maybe they approve of the 
> iPhone, in particular.
> 
> 
> Whether they actually _are_ tasteful is opinion, not fact.
> 
> In fact, the first iMacs were widely regarded tasteless, at least among people 
> I know. Were they wrong? If so, why?

Indeed.  Anyone remember when Apple's QuickTime Player was 
inducted into the Interface Hall of Shame?

http://homepage.mac.com/bradster/iarchitect/qtime.htm

Seems like only yesterday.  (A quick spot check on the
current Windows version of the player reveals the persistence
of some of these misfeatures after nearly a decade...!
After opening the QuickTime Player application, one 
still can't drag movies from the desktop onto the weird
QuickTime "home page" window that presents itself by
default. I just launched a movie player application, and
can't drop movies onto it? ... And the volume slider is
not visually disabled, but becomes immobile whenever the
volume has been muted...with no visual cue whatsoever.
I just spent a good 10-15 mouse clicks puzzling over 
why the volume slider wouldn't move. Maybe because the
movie was paused? No... Hmm... Maybe this movie doesn't
have an audio track? No? ... etc.)

It's clear Apple was attempting to be _stylish_ with
their interface.

But in order for the result to be considered tasteful it
should probably meet some basic criteria like not sucking.


(Ugh... anyway... apologies for the off-topic post.)


Regards,

Bill