Everything to Everyone

Needing to test a component in Internet Explorer 10, I spent some time with Windows 8 today, and boy, oh  boy.

I have very little to say about IE10; it seems a capable browser, though that's what we said about every iteration of that accursed line of software for well over a decade. There's some sort of high brow Dante's Inferno reference with IE1-9 lining up with the nine circles of hell. For a moment I thought perhaps we had made it through to the other side, then I noticed the compatibility mode icon in IE10 and decided that we probably just found the secret level...

Whatever the case, what really bears mentioning is Metro, because, well, it's much worse than I thought.

I've long been a fan of Metro (it's great to see a genuinly original take on a new interface; right Android? Right?), but aside from the occasional stark design element feeling not so much modern as unstyled, the clash between Metro and the so-called desktop mode is like continually submerging your body in a nice warm bubble bath, only to immediately get up and jump into a tub of ice water, only to then get up and get back in the warm bubble bath, ad nauseum. You may prefer warm or cold, that's really irrelevant, the point is that you don't get to pick which one to stay in, which makes for a schizophrenic user experience at best, and at worst one of complete disoriention. Metro feels like a foreign concept on the desktop, having clearly been designed for touch only to be brutally Frankenstein'd on top of Windows, a mash-up which makes if nothing else is echoed very clearly in the newly announced Surface: Everything to everybody

And because Metro simply feels wrong on a desktop computer, I intuitively switch to desktop mode, only to find nothing where I would expect it. No Start button, no control panel, no nothing. I can't do anything! It took me a while to figure out that I had to press the Windows key, except that sends me back to Metro...

Now if Metro and desktop-mode had some sort of kinship, but there is no spill over, no shared DNA at all in fact. And that's half of the reason the switch is so jarring, with one stark, typographical and modern (for now), the other glass, blur, curves and traditional UI. Both are actually quite nice in their own right, but it simply doesn't feel like an OS, because really it's two.

This paralysis of choice is deeply endemic of Microsoft's design culture (or lack thereof), and doubly ironic because Microsoft's mantra for Windows 8 has been 'no compromises', which is exactly what Windows 8 is full of! It's reflected again in how applications like Internet Explorer 10 (and other, though not all of course) has two different clients that are as far from one another as night and day. And paralyzed by the very notion of drawing a line in the sand on behalf of its users, Microsoft has left it up to the user to figure out which is the best choice at any given moment, because hey, what if it's everything to everyone, all the time!?

It would, ​unfortunately it looks very much as if it'll be half of the thing to half of the people, half of the time.

Triple-A

On the grand stage in L.A., at the event that I've heard called the "Super Bowl of Video Games," the world's biggest video game publishers made clear at whom they would direct hundreds of millions of dollars of investment: Bloodthirsty, sex-starved teen males who'll high-five at a headshot and a free T-shirt.

Source​

"Go create something"

Surveying the room before the start of a meeting, Jay [Chiat] took one look at my art director partner and me and said, “What are you guys doing here?â€?
“Beats me,� I said. “We’re just responding to the invitation.�
“You shouldn’t be sitting around a table talking about this bullshit,� said Jay. “Go create something.�

​Source

On SmartGlass

Microsoft announced SmartGlass at their E3 press conference yesterday — an overall tiring onslaught of sports and war and more sports — which is supposedly "a companion that pulls me deeper into the experience".

​I don't know in what kind of reality dividing your attention between a gripping drama and a needless flashy map is pulling you deeper into an experience, but that's where Microsoft is buying its cool-aid. There may very well be great uses for SmartGlass, but that isn't one.

“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
— Dr. Ian Malcolm

​And don't get me started on browsing the web on the TV, through your tablet...

Think McFly. Think.​

"I'm not really connected to that."

That simplicity in the hardware has not always been matched in the software, which since the rise of iOS - the operating system for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch - has been marked by something known as skeuomorphism, a tendency for new designs to retain ornamental features of the old design. Thus the calendar in Apple's Macs and on iOS has fake leather texture and even fake stitching.
​
​ When I mention the fake stitching, Ive offers a wince but it's a gesture of sympathy rather than a suggestion that he dislikes such things. At least, that's how I read it. He refuses to be drawn on the matter, offering a diplomatic reply: "My focus is very much working with the other teams on the product ideas and then developing the hardware and so that's our focus and that's our responsibility. In terms of those elements you're talking about, I'm not really connected to that."

I'd deny any responsibility even if I was.​

"I'm in the 'Avatar' Business"

James Cameron goes George Lucas:​

I’ve divided my time over the last 16 years over deep ocean exploration and filmmaking. I’ve made two movies in 16 years, and I’ve done eight expeditions. Last year I basically completely disbanded my production company’s development arm. So I’m not interested in developing anything. I’m in the “Avatar� business. Period. That’s it. I’m making “Avatar 2,� “Avatar 3,� maybe “Avatar 4,� and I’m not going to produce other people’s movies for them. I’m not interested in taking scripts. And that all sounds I suppose a little bit restricted, but the point is I think within the “Avatar� landscape I can say everything I need to say that I think needs to be said, in terms of the state of the world and what I think we need to be doing about it.

Say what you will about Avatar, I re-watched it recently​ and found it less boring than I remembered it, though it could still do with a kick in the story department, but for a movie which takes place almost entirely outside, in jungles, in mountains, in water, this bit is pretty incredible:

There were zero… I can’t say zero exteriors. We did one night in the parking lot next to the sound stage. But there were no locations.

Far Away

I'm tripping on Red Dead Redemption (and spaghetti westerns in general) these days, as well as its amazing soundtrack, and I came across this live rendition of Jose Gonzales's Far Away, recorded on a rooftop a few blocks from the Squarespace Office.

Great song, amazing game