The User Advocate

Wil Shipley writes an excellent examination of the challenges Apple faces with a fully-locked-in platform such as the iPhone/iPod.  The key point is that this recent situation of increasing lock-in diverges significantly from where Apple generated its tremendous prior success — empowering its customers:

• The first Macintosh made it easy for users to create. 
• The first iPod made it easy for people to purchase and listen to music. 
• The first iPhone made it easy for users to get upset that they can’t add applications like every other phone in the known universe.

Which of these things is not like the other?

Technorati Tags: apple, iphone, ipod, user+advocacy

The BBC’s iPlayer controversy, neatly summarized in the BBCorrupted and iPlayer Protest Defective By Design columns.  With the BBC’s mission of serving the public, choosing a Windows-only solution clearly is not user-friendly.

Technorati Tags: BBC, Microsoft, iplayer, drm

A great series of articles about John Halamka and his testing of different operating systems.  Looking at different systems for different users seems awfully logical, but most organizations balk in the name of standardization.  Unfortunately, that slows people who could be helped by using another kind of system…

Technorati Tags: operating+systems, mac+osx, linux, windows

From Wired via Slashdot, the FCC’s Net Neutrality commentary period ends today.  Here’s my comment:

As a founder of several small companies, all dependent on the
Internet, I am concerned that allowing a duopoly (local phone carrier and local cable carrier) will restrict and fetter access to my target consumers.  We have seen the effects of allowing a small group to impose unilateral data access restrictions in the mobile telephone space, where innovative services are completely lacking, data plans are overpriced, and development is restricted to those who pay extortionate rates to be promoted on the mobile carriers’ networks.

These are some of the same companies who now protest innocently that they will not stifle future development but who have a record of doing precisely that in the past.  See http://business.newsforge.com/business/06/07/19/206209.shtml for additional details.

Ensure that all traffic of a given type is handled identically on any connection, regardless of the owner of the originating system.  Sole proprietors, Google, AT&T, or Verizon - their websites, phone service, and video should all behave exactly the same way, whether the traffic is handled by AT&T, Verizon, another ILEC or CLEC, or any independent ISP.

Head on over and post your own!

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I think this article about using Ubuntu as a desktop system is significant because it highlights the unseen cost of utilizing Windows. The person in the article is not a standard computer user — his use of rsync shows that — but his point about an integrated system to install and update software highlights the major failure of Windows.

My last Windows installation started Monday and has taken 5 days, and I keep discovering software I haven’t installed as I’m using the machine. The next steps are:

• Go to Google
• Locate download file
• Download
• Install
• Add license key
• Configure

…and don’t even think about updates.

Mac OS X at least deals with Apple updates - but what kind of a killer app would it be if Apple Software Update checked all the installed applications, shareware, and other goodies on your machine and coordinated installations for you as well?

A great column on the vulnerability of credit cards and a simple way to protect customers from fraud.

Three extremely well-written articles on user-focused design and why it matters recently on TechnologyReview:

1. Apple’s process
2. Helio device design part 1
3. Helio device design part 2

After having turnstiles with RF readers for quite a while, BART has started their EZRider program - essentially FasTrak for people on public transit.  I’ve been using it for a week, and it is substantially better than the ticket system.  Some other posts are focusing on BART’s decision to go it alone instead of working with the regional Translink system, and I think that is a valid point - but it is good that at least they are making some changes.  Kudos for a step in the right direction, BART.

Technorati Tags: BART, RFID, FasTrak, EZRider, Translink, user+advocacy, public+transit

said best by Opus, on December 31st…

Not Yet! WAIT!

I couldn’t say it better myself.

Another foray into interactivity on your television appears to have gone awry… TiVo’s attempt to branch into new functions has drawn some scorn from a well-publicized AP review.  The main challenge is really user interface:

The rest of TiVo’s online features struck me as spare, less
user-friendly imitations of tasks that seem better suited to a computer.

When you have a machine designed for a single purpose and stray from that task, your executives should be shouting “Danger! Danger!”  I understand the need for TiVo to add functions and revenue options, but why not aim more like Apple’s iTV possibilities and make your service something that leverages what you do best - television?  After all, you never want a user to say:

I soon found it pretty tedious to enter information like usernames and
passwords into an on-screen keyboard with the up-down, right-left
buttons on my TiVo remote.

That spells doom, no matter how you enter the text.

Technorati Tags: tivo, itv, apple, user+interface