In impressive self-critisizm they also reported their failure to turn the stunt into profit – a mere € 600 came in through ads.

Due to the rigorous reactions of prospecting customers the team actually tried to get the table manufactured, but couldn’t find a hardware manufacturer to offer a fair deal.

They remain as a sympathetic, clever and ambitious group of designers and are left with a nice christmas party off the returns and many valuable lessons learned.

Of course, you say. And I agree. Yes, touch requires a different approach to interface design. It requires new doors to be opened for us people to interact with our data. And that’s just as awesome as the touchy-thingy itself.

But there’s a fine line. A line that should not be crossed. And that line is my non-touch-desktop-computer. GMail finally launched it’s Offline Google Mail Chrome Extension. And it’s great to be able to go through my E-Mail offline. To write up a draft I want to send later. To have offline access to important information. And I bet every tablet user loves the interface. Because it’s really touchy-friendly. The exact same thing goes for the new Chrome Home Screen. It’s been revamped, and I get how the new design and behavior is just awesome on any touch device.

But my desktop computer, and my laptop for that matter, do not respond much to the touchy-thingy. And so I am left with interfaces that actually slow down and complicate my workflow. Granted, the GMail web interface isn’t the most beautiful in the world (I most certainly hope the Google UI revolution spreads over to it soon), but it offers lots of powerful ways to interact with. It makes it easy to work fast. Which the offline GMail app does not. Quite the opposite, it sacrifices efficiency for touchy-thingy-compatibility-ness.

Now, just to make this clear: I’m not against touch-optimized UIs. Not at all. I think they are necessary and important and sooner than later any software will need to offer a solid and efficient touch-interface. But it cannot replace the classic mouse & keyboard oriented UI. That’s just stupid. A touch device doesn’t have no keyboard because it’s more efficient. It has no keyboard because it needs to be small and portable. It doesn’t have no mouse because that makes working so much more convenient, it has no mouse because dragging along a mouse at all times would just not be very practical. And also make you look like a serious geek.

And I’m not even saying that there cannot be a middle ground. While maybe some applications can make it and have the “one interface that does it all” (whis is much, much harder to do as one might think, because it forces lots of compromises on the UI and it’s functionality while also adding a lot of complexity to the app itself), I think in the meanwhile there should be some kind of a choice beyond “Will I further use this software or not?”. So if you optimize for touch, please, do not automatically disregard the rest of us. There might not be a mouseover state on tablets, but that doesn’t mean that a mouseover state hurts for us mousey-people. Popups may make a lot of sense on a touch device, but just scrolling around with my mousewheel or keyboard makes me giggle in joy and, more often than not, shed the one or other tear of efficiency-induced bliss.

So bring on your touch-UIs, I will embrace them wherever touching I am. But, for the sake of my workflow and speed, do not castrate my mouse & keyboard input devices.

Please?

The point of no return

I mean, come on, that thingy didn’t even have copy & paste. Plus, this maddox-blogpost read like a warm and comforting voice of reason above all the “I need an iPhone – it’s so new, and shiny, and it’s an iPhone, so I need one!”-craze that was going on. So there I was, in the midst of an intrapersonal struggle: The graphics designer in me went full-on iPhone-crazy. He liked the shinyness. The buttonlessness. The being-an-apple-device-ness.

But he was not alone to decide. Opposing his hypish enthusiasm was my inner geek, who loathed all things shiny. Who dismissed all things buttonless. Who questioned all things apple-ish. It was a long, exhausting fight. The Nokia N95 also looked great. And it had, definitely, tons of features rendering the first iPhone a laughable toy for people naive enough to be paying test subjects in the introduction of an untested technology. So, naturally, my geekish side had the upper hand, and I got myself a glorious Nokia N95 8GB.

Hello, my new friend

And, boy, did it serve me well. For the past three years I didn’t miss a feature. For three years my “clumsy” Nokia could do everything any other, revolutionary, new, shiny smart phone could do. The iPhone 3G added GPS – my Nokia already had that. iPhones went all crazy for their accelerometer, I never even used the one my Nokia – naturally – also had. People started to mock my Nokia beauty, but they couldn’t get to me. The last laugh was on me, for the N95 was a workhorse and it did whatever I would tell it to do. Plus, it was indestructible.

I dropped it from various heights, exposed it to rain and humidity and sunlight and winterish freeziness and what-have-you. The N95 was totally unimpressed with every danger I exposed it to, while smartphones left and right had all kinds of firmware problems, update trouble, connectivity issues, broken screens and general “of course it breaks easily, it’s supposed to be new and shiny, not robust”-nessish glitches. Plus, the Nokia actually had that much overrated thing formerly known as battery life, which for modern day smartphones translates to battery countdown, and is nothing but embarassing. Of course one could deactivate GPS, Bluetooth and WiFi, turn the brightness way down and thus extend the battery life to up to a whole day – while her fancy new device was stripped of all the features she had bought it for in the first place.

The way of life, plus your appearance in front of clients

But things have changed. Now, I am a self-employed graphics designer specializing in user experience design and, amidst other funky machines, mobile devices. While that certainly didn’t lessen my trust in, and happyiness with, the N95, it did become kind of an image-issue. At customer meetings it just felt weird to be talking about usage paradigms and usability patterns for those high-tech-devices, and in the next second throw clumsy N95 on the table. It kind of like felt as if I were a Maserati dealer driving a ’98 Volvo.

So something had to change. And after much consideration and opinion-switching and comparing and those thingies I decided to get the iPhone 4. And I would love to tell you that I have never looked back. But, as a matter of fact, I already miss the clumsiness of my beloved Nokia.

Do as we demand or, you know, screw you!

At least the N95 required nothing but a SIM card to be inserted and boom – one was able to use the phone he bought. Well, of course, you may think. Not so much with the iPhone. Please insert a SIM card. Now, please connect to iTunes. What the hell? Why do I have to connect my phone to iTunes? I kind of understand the link between iTunes and the music on the iPhone. It inter-promotes both technologies and makes things much easier to handle for apple. But why, in the frickin’ name of whatever-god-you-pray-to, can’t I even make a call without linking a device to a completely unrelated software on some other device that has got nothing to do with making phone calls whatsoever?

That’s stupid.

It’s brand attention, and we will make you have it

A couple days ago, when I would be walking around Vienna with my good old Nokia, I would be able to walk, watch traffic and write texts at the same time. It was easy, because I knew where those keys were and how often I had to press them to get whatever character I wanted. Damn, sometimes I could write a text without ever looking at the device. Which is a great advantage in a lot of situations, like walking around town, or subtle note taking in a meeting, or what-have-you-kind-of-situation where it would be helpful if one could pay attention to something else than only the device in their hand.

Which is quite simply straightforward impossible with the iPhone. Not only does one need to switch to different keyboard views, but there’s about absolutely no realistic chance to ever get the muscle memory required to type a message without watching your every single step.

That’s annoying.

Please do not leave home without some cable

Plus, a subtitle: Because cables are totally cool accessories to carry around.

Sometimes I visit my parents in the countryside over the weekend. I used to charge my phone prior to leaving. Then, when I got back three days later, I would charge it again, and life was good. Now, whenever I leave my apartment, I have to make sure that the iPhone is somewhat charged. I can, literally, watch the battery status go down percent by percent when I’m actually using the device for anything else but showing off how beautiful it is (which, and that’s not up for discussion, it absolutely is). Battery life is non existant, and I don’t care if your damn battery life expectation tables claim differently, Steve. Your tables lie.

That’s really annoying.

Your technology is useless to us, even in our own device

I am a picture-taker. I like to snap photos. And it’s great when the phone can do that, because one doesn’t need to carry around a camera. With my N95 I used to make a quick snapshot and then grab it from my Mac via Bluetooth. That process of transferring any file on the phone to wherever I wish on my laptop, or vice versa, took a total of about 0.3 seconds. It was seamless and worked every single time. No extra equipment was necessary and I could do that even in the deepest cave with no reception whatsoever. As long as both devices had battery life left I would be able to toss files around between them like school children are throwing stones at each other.

Now, the iPhone has bluetooth, too. Of course it does, it’s fancy and new and so very shiny. Just there’s a difference to every other bluetooth-device on earth: Apple doesn’t allow data to be sent to, or retrieved from, an iDevice via bluetooth – which renders the battery-sucking technology utterly and completely frickin’ useless, save for the connection of a wireless headset, which makes you look like an idiot (bluetooth-headset-idiot-lookingalike-ness totally iPhone-unrelated, just sayin’). The only way to get a file to the iPhone is through a network connection.

Isn’t that great? I have two devices, placed right frickin’ next to each other. There’s a file on device a, and I would very much enjoy to transfer said file to device b. Naturally, I prefer to use the most low-profile connection mode, which happens to be bluetooth in this case (I’m ignoring infrared out of sheer disgust). But we’re living in the 21st century. And 21st century people are all fancy and stuff. So how do we go about that file transfer thingy? We establish a network connection on device a. Then we establish a network connection on device b. Next thing we use some kind of software on device a to get the file out, and another piece of software on device b to get the file.

It’s like living next door to your girlfriend, but her father Steve demands you take the bus to town and then get back with the train every time you want to visit her – because, fuck you!

That’s just impolite.

The outlook – my dark, sheepish future

Of course, now there is no way back. I will not give up. I will not be defeated by some piece of technological apple thing. My will is strong, and so are my nerves. Bring it on iPhone!

Will ich den Rechner runterfahren oder mich abmelden schaltet sich das Programm modal in den Vordergrund mit dem sinnvollen Dialog: “Verbindung trennen?”. Ja bitte! Es trennt die Verbindung. Ich fahre wieder runter. Und schon isses wieder da: “Soll Mobile Partner beendet werden?” Ja bitte!

Damit nicht genug – man kann beide Optionen nicht übergehen. Auch wenn man das Programm direkt über das eigene Menü beendet kommt dieser schöne Dialog für all diejenigen, die ahnungslos die Menüoption “Programm schließen” anklicken und gespannt warten, welch Verhalten das Programm dem User da wohl feil bieten könnte.

Den Vogel abschießen allerdings tut die CPU-Belastung. Bei einem zufälligen Blick auf die Aktivitätsanzeige offenbart sich meinen vor Ungläubigkeit tränenden Augen, dass der Mobile Partner zwischen zehn und 20 Prozent meiner wunderfeinen Rechenleistung für sich beansprucht.

Direkt einwählen: So einfach gehts

Langer Rede kurzer Sinn: Auf der Suche nach einem alternative Einwahlprogramm stieß ich auf einen Hinweis, der so simpel ist, dass es meinem stolzen kleinen Großhirn fast ein bisserl weh tut, dass ich da nicht selber draufgekommen bin. Einfach die PIN-Abfrage der Sim-Karte deaktivieren (einfach ins Handy einlegen und dort über die Sicherheitsoptionen abschalten) und dann direkt über das in OS X installierte Modem verbinden.

Diese ganzen Einwahlprogramme tun nämlich nix Anderes als ein Modem im System zu installieren und dieses Modem dann zu be-wählen. Bei manchen Anbietern muss man die Netzwerkverbindung angeblich noch nachjustieren, weil deren Clients ein paar der notwendigen Einstellungen übernehmen, im Großen und Ganzen ist das aber keine Hexerei.

Noch dazu kann man dann über so wunderfeine Systemfunktionen wie “Verbindung automatisch herstellen” und all diese Dinge verfügen. Und CPU-Ressourcen verbraucht man so auch keine. Ach ja: Beim Herunterfahren wird die Verbindung völlig Dialog-frei und sauber getrennt. Ist das nicht wunderfein?

There’s about 15 or so video responses, and almost all of them are done by ~10ish year old boys who have a webcam set up in their room. Just let that settle for a minute. When I was ten, and that was only some crispy 15 years ago, we went outside to play. Ride our bikes, play soccer, go camping or swimming. On a rainy day we called some friends and played video games, watched tv or so.

But those little guys there sit at home, browse youtube and then communicate with a general public through self-created digital media. That’s a lot to deal with, don’t you think? They reply to a guy who’s recording his videos in Japan. Other people in turn watch their videos and write comments. Most of these boys have a lot of such response-videos in their channels.

Is this a good thing? A bad thing? Heck, I have no idea. I just know that it’s very, very different to how I grew up. And that this future generation will be frickin’ good with all the computer and digital self-created media thingy.

No judgements here, that kind of stuff just makes me think.

The store-guy told me that there’s a shortage in shipping of iMacs and he’d recommend to wait one or two more weeks, because chances are there’s a new series coming out soon. Well, 8 hours later I had a look at the Apple-website and there it is, the new iMac.

Now I’ve seen a lot of new product releases, and quite a few by apple, but I can’t quite remember one that remarkable. Let’s compare the new iMac to the older version:

Old

1. 2,6Ghz
2. 2GB RAM
3. 320GB HDD
4. 256GB Graphics Card
5. ~2.200,-

New

1. 3Ghz
2. 2GB RAM
3. 500GB HDD
4. 512GB Graphics Card
5. 1.919,-

Now this is something really amazing. I just placed my order, with an upgrade to 4gb ram and the wireless mouse/keyboard for a total of about 2.200,-. If I’d upgraded the old model to 4gb/500gb it’d have ended up at about 2.600,- or sth and still would only have half the graphics capabilities. Estimated shipping date is 8th or 9th of march, can’t wait to get my hands on that beauty!

While I have to admit that I heavily used the book all the time in all kinds of aspects (3D Software, Gaming, Adobe-Stuff up to CS3, some minor video editing) I’m still a little disappointed about the “little issues” coming up (like all of a sudden the special keys for adjusting volume/brightness ain’t working no more, the fan-thing, single pixels on the display dead, stuff like that).

However I thought about switching to a PC again, but there’s just no way I will work with anything windows-ish ever again and while I really like Linux it simply lacks the necessary (and fun) software. So I’ll definitely go with a new Mac, one of these:

• iMac

  The strongest, 24-inch version with 2gb ram, 500gb harddrive, … – you can read about the details in the apple-store anyways

• MacBook Pro

  The stronger 15-inch version that’d be, 2gb ram, 200gb harddrive (the 7.200rpm one, because what the heck does a fast cpu help with a dead slow hdd?), more details: Apple-Store.

The price is about the same, both ending up at roughly 2.500,- Euros, which is a hell lot of money (jeez, I don’t even want to think about how much in real money that is … 35.000,- good old ATS … freaking me out that is). And now I’m stuck with one problem: I can’t decide.

I really got used to a laptop and I’m dead sure I’d miss that, so the idea would be to keep the dying book and just use it for real mobile needs, low on resources and stuff so it can stay calm, and do the other stuff on the iMac.

But is there a way back to the desktop? Any ideas? Suggestions? Experiences?

HELP!

First of all Nokia didn’t think it’d be necessary to geotag photos automatically. First I was upset bout that, but thinking about it reveals the issue about the GPS-module eating valuable battery-lifetime if enabled by default. And I guess many people aren’t even interested in geotagging their photos at all. Lucky enough Nokia is clever and so there’s a tool out there called “Nokia Location Tagger“, doing exactly what you’d think: When running in the background it automatically geotags your photos, either with the position at the moment of taking it or with any valid position data the phone received within a user-definable timerange. Pretty neat, huh?

That alone doesn’t quite do the trick though, I’m geeky and a flickr-user so I want to be able to directly post my photos to flickr, geodata included. Funny enough there’s another Nokia application available (in fact it’s pre-installed, however there’s a newer version 3.0 out already): “Nokia Share Online“. With this tool it’s just a couple clicks to set up direct posting to your flickr-photostream and with the great connection capabilities of the N95 it’s an ease to get online, either with a data plan or with the next open WLAN around.

Just one more little thing to do. The photos will be uploaded to flickr, the GPS-location stored in the EXIF-data. But still if you view the picture it will say “place on map” instead of “view on map” – the location data hasn’t been imported to flickr. Why? Because you’ll have to activate this feature manually. The option can be found at Account > Privacy & Permissions > Defaults for new uploads, or here, and, tada, magic done! Now there’s only some minor updates to be done: Default tags for flickr-uploads via Share Online would be great, as well as a mixture of a text (e.g. “On the go”) and date for the photo titles.