But it turns out that even when I try to live an Apple life, that is a pretty lousy experience too. How could that be, you say? The apparent point of Apple’s existence is to create a beautiful and polished user experience. Well, it turns out that what Apple does is beautiful and polished *graphic design*. Actually interacting with the system is something else. —Ben Bederson —Switchback: Horrors of a Windows Power-user Trying to Switch to Apple OS X (HCI User Advocate)
>pick up axe
Taken.
>grind axe
You are now grinding your axe.
Seriously, I’m blogging this because I miss the love I used to feel for my Palm PDA and my Dell laptop. I still have a Palm and a Dell, but I don’t love them anymore. I just use them.
I will never love the Windows/PC symbiont. (Is that the right word?)
I wanted Bederson to love the Apple, because I want to believe that it’s possible to make complex technology that works beautifully and beautifully works.
Link via MGK.
Of course it is possible to make technology that works beautifully and beautifully works – look at a pocket knife, or a lighter, or a well made pen. Now look at the cost of that item relative to the average cost of that category of item – it is far more costly to have the beautiful object than the mundane one.
Point of fact – I have a $100 pen in my pocket as I type this, and another $100 in the case behind me on the desk. But a 10 cent Bic ballpoint works….
I have a Henckels kitchen knife – I think it is one of the best made tools I own! I feel similarly about several of my other tools – but not my computer, regardless of flavor! The computer people tried aesthetics as an OS – look at the NeXT cube (failure), or the OS2 world (failure), or the Treo (probable failure – it’s too much PDA and not enough phone). The only thing that comes close right now is the Ipod – and you have to like the interface enough to be willing to use it!
Aesthetics is foundationally subjective; it is too much to expect that one _universal_ tool like the computer will satisfy a majority of people’s sense of aesthetics. If we are willing to pay for it, we will but crafted, beautiful, well-made, and functional tools. But we will _PAY_ for them. That’s why the word “cheap” is synonymous with all of the following: “easily available” and “shoddily made” and “not held dear”.
Take this as you will (with smiley faces sprinkled throughout). This is one of my pet peeves; elegance is a desired quality in mathematical writing, and developing that skill (much less teaching it) is very hard! It must be equally difficult to be elegant in any form of work. This is why I still study Zen calligraphy, martial arts, and meditation; sometimes elegance comes from the non-thinking mind.