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The Promise of a Hardware Mute Switch

What?

This year's January 10th performance of Mahler's 9th Symphony, conducted by Alan Gilbert, was interrupted by a muted iPhone. Gilbert, in a rare decision, stopped the performance. Patron X was horrified to experience, as I have on several occasions, the fact that the mute switch does not completely silence the phone.

So Far

John Gruber, in On the Behavior of the iPhone Mute Switch, and Marco Arment, in Designing “Mute”, argue that Apple's choice of behavior for the mute switch is reasonable because it does the right thing for most people most of the time. Guy English, in Mute This, almost agrees. Andy Ihnatko, in an emptily-named article, disagrees, arguing for a more aggressive mute switch.

Ihnatko's argument that obviousness-in-usage is a more important design goal than an I'm-smarter-than-you approach should strike a chord with folks who have participated in the many failed search and personalization startups. Grandiose, but unexplainable, user actions are the sirens that continue to founder startups on the rocks of user impatience and apathy. The presence of the adjective "smart" in a product name is a warning sign for me.

But…

I find it somewhat surprising that, in what are usually both nuanced and comprehensive analyses, the supporters of the current design seem to have overlooked the ever-present physicality of the mute switch. Surely, it matters that Apple decided to make this switch physical? In all other aspects of the iPhone, hardware UI is deliberate, expensive, and rare. Doesn't that choice imply an immediacy of purpose that touch interfaces do not? That purpose is "Be quiet, now!"

---

• Said another way: What would the touch version of a mute switch do differently?

• Also: doesn't order of operations matter to "doing the right thing" in an I'm-smarter-than-you design?

On the Passing of Steve Jobs

When we look back on this moment many years from now, I suspect we will realize that, even with all the hyperbole, Steve influenced us as a people even more deeply than we currently realize. His passion for excellence, his courage, and his foolish hunger inspired millions. We think today of the insanely great products, the beautiful stories, or the outrageous business success, but what I will miss most about Steve Jobs is his commitment to enabling all of humanity, including me, to live better, more purposeful, and more beautiful lives. Thanks, Steve.

The iPad at Work

Marco Arment argues that the new features, the family of accessories, and the software surrounding the recent release of the iPad2 means that Apple now thinks the iPad is not going to be a platform for office productivity:

I don’t think this was their plan from the start — I think Apple didn’t know any better than we did, a year ago, whether the iPad was going to end up as a productivity device in practice. They probably thought, like we did, that it would replace laptops a lot more often.

But, as often happens in technology, the iPad hasn’t “killed” the laptop at all — it has simply added a new role for itself. And that role doesn’t include office productivity for most of us.

I see dozens of iPads in offices daily. They are being used not only as targets or test platforms, but for getting through the daily grind. Many are purchased by employees on their own dime because their companies are still struggling with iPad management. Apple, in describing the iPad, has 4 messages about why the iPad2 is better: "All-new design", "Dual-core A5 chip", "Two cameras", and "iPad Smart Cover". They describe two contexts in which the iPad might be used: "iPad in Business" and "iPad in Education". The headline for business is "A new way to work". The lede for the "Apps for Business" subpage is "Start transforming the way you work".

I believe the choice of what to develop and release on Apple's part was driven by pragmatism, not by some disdain for the long-term ability of the iPad to excel at office productivity.

It is much, much harder to develop the tablet version of whatever is eventually going to play the role of SAP in the enterprise than it is to build GarageBand. More importantly, it is much easier to demo GarageBand in a minute to the person sitting next to you on the subway, to put it in a 30 second TV spot, or to find a meaningful screenshot to advertise.

Moreover, it is going to take a while for business to reinvent itself in a world of pinching, swiping, and touching. It took ten years for the transition to minis, client-servers, webv1, and webv2. It'll probably take ten for apps, too, but tablets will eventually play a huge role in office productivity. They have to.

something refreshing about clojure

I know it doesn't really mean anything in terms of the underlying complexity of the language/implementation, but there's something really refreshing about this:

stechert@kirin in ~ [20242] $ port contents gcc42 | wc -l
    4257
stechert@kirin in ~ [20243] $ port contents erlang | wc -l
    8176
stechert@kirin in ~ [20244] $ port contents ghc | wc -l
    3998
stechert@kirin in ~ [20245] $ port contents python30 | wc -l
    3604
stechert@kirin-2 in ~ [20246] $ port contents clojure | wc -l
       4

A heartfelt thanks to whomever felt it was necessary to take the time not to pollute my disk.

gruber

Putting Gruber to work once. For your entertainment, putting Gruber to work all the time (a growl style).

Leak Much?

I really want to like NetworkLocation, but this restarting of software because it can't keep its threads under control reeks.

Technorati Tags: nincompoopery, OSX, leaky

How THE Dan Evans rolls

We use 37Signals' campfire and love it. Occasionally (!?), a LOLcat will show up in our discussions.

Thus, the illustrious Dan Evans presents our new icon (catfire):

Technorati Tags: 37signals, lolcat, campfire

GoogleUpdateChecker weird network request

Why is GoogleUpdateChecker trying to connect to host "t" port 80? Is that a bug?

Technorati Tags: Google