Glossy Screens

A few years ago, I bought a PSP to entertain myself during long train rides. I quickly found out that on sunny days, the device was unusable for this purpose. The device’s screen reflected too much light, and the moving train made for quickly changing light, which in turn made it impossible to avoid the reflections for more than a few seconds at a time.

Fortunately, science prevails. Modern LCD screens typically have an anti-glare finish. Reflected light is scattered, which blurs reflections and makes it easy to ignore them.

Yesterday, Apple introduced a bunch of new portable computers, and none of them provide screens with an anti-glare finish. Apple doesn’t even pretend that their screens are made with usability in mind. Their own pictures and movies show an incredible amount of glare:

There is no question that Apple has the best hardware design in the computer industry - by a wide margin. But in this case, they seem to have gone with form over function.

When asked about the glossy screen, Apple’s Phil Schiller replied:

You offset the reflection by the brightness, and consumers love it. One of the great things about a notebook is you can turn it however you want!

Unfortunately, turning the notebook “however you want” does not solve the reflection problem when you’re sitting in a train or a plane.¹

And yes, people tend to like shiny things - at least until they try to use those shiny things while lounging in their garden on a sunny day.

The Solution

Apple’s own pictures seem to contradict his claim that the screens’ brightness offsets the reflection, but there is a chance he is right. And if he is not, I have a 20-years-old solution for this problem. Back then, screens were so poor that people regularly attached filters² to them to improve the picture:

Unfortunately, such a solution would probably make the beautiful MacBook Pros look a bit ugly. I solved my PSP problem with an anti-glare screen protector. Selling these in MacBook Pro sizes will soon be a viable business.

October 15th, 2008 / Tags: apple, hardware usability, anti-glare, glossy, screens, macbook, psp, screen protector / Trackback

Google Chrome: Apps in Tabs

It was only a matter of time¹, and it has finally happened: Google has announced its own web browser. It’s not yet available², but you can read Scott McCloud’s introduction (yes, that Scott McCloud) to get a pretty good idea of what Google intends to achieve.

Basically, Google’s browser³ is a browser aimed at running web applications. To that effect, it sports many fantastic features⁴ such as a fast JavaScript VM and an in-browser process manager.

It also has a tabs-based user interface.

I’ve written about this before: having several documents in the same window can be annoying, as it breaks Mac⁵ features like Exposé and tends to hide useful information instead of making it easily accessible. But when you think about it, it’s an even worse idea for a web browser specifically created for running applications. Google actually seems to think it’s a good idea, writing:

In the long term, we think of Chromium as a tabbed window manager or shell for the web rather than a browser application. (…) The tab is our equivalent of a desktop application’s title bar; the frame containing the tabs is a convenient mechanism for managing groups of those applications. In future, there may be other tab types that do not host the normal browser toolbar.

Mac OS X is an application-centric operating system. Windows are sorted by application; you don’t switch between windows, you typically switch between applications.

Documents are children of applications. You can access an application’s windows by context-clicking on an application in the dock, which will typically give you a list of that application’s open windows.

Tabs are children of windows. You get to a tab by looking at a window and clicking on its tabs.

With Google Chrome (and most other browsers), you start out with the application, go to its windows, go to its tabs, only to find… yet another application? Your web applications (which possibly have windows and tabs of their own) are buried within tabs within windows within applications.

It seems to me there should be a better solution for this. And there is.

I don’t use gmail in my browser. I use Mailplane. I don’t use Google Reader in my browser, I use Fluid. I don’t use the twitter homepage, I use Twitterific. I don’t expect my browser to implement its own version of processes, I expect my web apps to use my native operating system’s processes.

A better approach to web applications is to bring web applications out of the browser ghetto and make them first-class applications, rather than burying them inside browser chrome you’re never going to use anyway.⁶

Update: I have now played around with the beta. It has a “make this site into an application” function, but selecting it doesn’t do anything on my system, so I’m not sure what exactly it does.

Update 2: I got the “make this site into an application” function to work.

September 2nd, 2008 / Tags: google, browser, chrome, safari, firefox, apple, mozilla, tabs, mdi, web apps, mac os x / Trackback

Write an App Store Review Today

You’ve probably noticed that most user reviews on the iPhone’s App Store are beyond useless. Instead of talking about the app, many reviews complain about the application’s price or its icon or its screenshots. Presumably, these reviewers never even bothered to try the application before they wrote their review.

I propose we make Monday “App Store Review Day”. Every monday, pick one application you’ve actually used and write a sane review. It doesn’t have to be a positive review, but it has to be an informed review.¹

If enough people wrote at least one informative review each week, perhaps App Store reviews could yet become useful.

August 11th, 2008 / Tags: app store, apple, iphone, user reviews, craig hockenberry, furbo, Marco Arment / Trackback

NetShare and International iPhone Owners

About a week ago, Nullriver released an iPhone application called NetShare. The application briefly appeared in Apple’s iPhone App Store, then disappeared. It reappeared again shortly thereafter, only to disappear again. As of now, the application is not available, and Apple has given no explanation for why the application was removed.

NetShare is a tethering application. It can be used to wirelessly share the iPhone’s Internet connection with a Mac or PC. Since AT&T does not allow tethering for iPhones, a possible explanation for Apple’s removal of the application would be that they are enforcing AT&T’s contract.

Unfortunately, the application was removed from the App Store not only in the US, but world-wide. The App Store does allow for area-specific applications. Some applications available in the US App Store are not available in the European store. Apple could have removed NetShare only in the US store; instead, they removed the application everywhere.

My iPhone contract is with Swisscom. I do not have an unlimited data plan, so it makes no sense for Swisscom to forbid tethering.¹ Assuming that Apple did indeed pull the application to enforce AT&T’s contract, it is a bit disturbing to find out that they plan on enforcing AT&T’s contract even for people who have signed no contract with AT&T. Hopefully, Apple will clarify this soon.

Addendum : iPhone Alley writes that Apple is “reviewing user contracts with providers” to see whether NetShare is allowed. So hopefully, it’ll come back over here. Can Apple show an app solely based on what contract the user has, or will it simply not be shown in areas where there may potentially be people who have contracts which don’t allow NetShare?

August 6th, 2008 / Tags: netshare, nullriver, apple, iphone, swisscom, at&t / Trackback

Open Source Usability

Matthew Paul Thomas writes about the issues open source projects encounter when it comes to usability (via waffle), and points out solutions to these problems.

Seeing the poor usability of many open source applications is particularly painful because open source projects are in a unique position to create innovative user interfaces. The Mac and Windows boxes you buy today use the exact same user interface paradigms as a Lisa box bought in 1983.¹ Mac and Windows users are so used to these paradigms that it becomes almost impossible for Apple or Microsoft to fundamentally improve upon them.²

Open source projects don’t have this problem. They are free to experiment with their interfaces, and sometimes, they do. KDE 4, for example, introduces a totally new desktop.

Truly usable software requires an interface-centric design process. The UI is designed before code is written, and UI designers have the power to make unilateral decisions concerning the user interface. Most open source projects, however, are code-centric. The people who write the code define the user interface; they are the ones who have the power to force changes. Even if they get useful feedback about the user interface, they don’t have to act on it. By “scratching their own itch”, these programmers end up writing applications which can only be used by other programmers.³

Addendum: John Gruber writes:

If you have to ask for better design, you will lose. You need to be in a position to demand it.

August 2nd, 2008 / Tags: usability, waffle, office, ribbon, microsoft, apple, linux, open source / Trackback