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About this site

For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Friday, December 26, 2003

Netscape Internet services

I signed up for the beta of AOL's new Netscape Internet Services, an ultra-cheap nationwide ISP (I use cable at home, of course, but as a frequent traveler, I still need dialup). Normally $9.95 a month, Netscape is currently just $1 a month during the beta, but even the normal charge is less than half of what I'm currently paying MSN. The software includes a dialer and a weird Netscape toolbar that locks to the top of the screen, offering access to your home page (using whatever your default browser is), your email (Web-based), Google search, and various account settings. Hey, there are no ads, you get unlimited access, and it's cheap. If you still need dialup, this is definitely an option to consider.

[ Posted at 6:09 PM | Permalink ]

iTunes 5.0?

Apple-X.net: "The image appears to show iTunes prominently showing off a new section, a Mixing Table targeted at DJs and DJ wannabes. You can select two songs to play at the same time, and use the equaliser to, say, use the bass beat from one and the lyrics from the other (if you are skilled enough). In a technique borrowed from Soundtrack, iTunes seems to be able to adjust the pitch and playback speed. You can either type the speed or pitch in, use the sliders, or--and this is a bit of speculation here--use the tap button (which is blank) if you're bad with numbers." Apple will reportedly announce new iLife applications in two weeks at MacWorld San Francisco, so stay tuned.

[ Posted at 5:54 PM | Permalink ]

2004 is the year of Linux, part six

ZDNET, in what has to be a recycled article from last year: 2004: "The year of desktop Linux? The initial excitement about Linux as an alternative to Windows on the desktop has long since cooled, and the most encouraging industry projections don't show the open-source operating system taking off on desktops for several years. But a funny thing has happened over the past year: large organisations have actually started making commitments to Linux desktops, in a trend that is likely to continue in 2004 and pick up steam in the future."

[ Posted at 5:53 PM | Permalink ]

LindowsOS 4.5 vs. Sun Java Desktop System 2003

I purchased both LindowsOS 4.5 and Sun Java Desktop System 2003 recently and ... Hmm. While I've sort of gravitated towards Red Hat distributions over the years, I must say I'm impresed with the quality of both of these (relative) newcomers. LindowsOS 4.5 (review) is based on KDE and features a Windows-like desktop; I was surprised by how easily it installed. Sun's illogically named Java Desktop is really SuSE Linux with a bundled copy of Sun Star Office 7; it runs GNOME and was also painfully easy to install, despite the scary-looking Solaris-like packaging and whopping six CDs (only three were needed for the install). It's clear Linux has crossed some threshold, as both these systems worked fine out of the box (well, LindowsOS was downloaded) and presented no hiccups at all. Impressive.

[ Posted at 5:50 PM | Permalink ]

All I want for Christmas is...

Well, Christmas is for the kids, and on that note, it was a classic time. But I got a few geek oriented gifts you might be interested in:

Hauppage WinTV-PVR-250 personal video recorder. I'd heard the Hauppage was the one to get for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004, which I'm running now on my main desktop PC. I guess we'll find out if that is the case.

STAR WARS: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy. I've been into first-person shooters since the original "Castle Wolfenstein 3D" (and coincidentally just finished playing through Ultimate DOOM and DOOM II yet again), so this was sort of a natural. At least it will keep me busy until DOOM 3 and Half-Life 2 ship.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Platinum Series Special Extended Edition Collector's Gift Set). What can I say? As a Tolkein geek dating back to the 6th grade, when we read The Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings, Beowulf, and The Odyssey as part of an accelerated English class (I've read the trilogy at least a dozen times), Peter Jackson's live action movies were much anticipated and much appreciated. The DVD versions, of course, are better, because they include dozens of scenes that were cut or cut down for the theatrical releases. Anyway, The Two Towers is the weakest of the movies, but I have few complaints.

The Art of UNIX Programming. I'm not a big fan of Eric Raymond at all; in fact, I think he's a bit dangerous. But this book is simply a must-read regardless of your OS orientation. Highly recommended (I've already read 100 pages of it).

Quicksilver (Volume 1 of the Baroque Cycle). Neal Stephenson is, of course, a guru and a god, and one of the most influential people I've read (in fact, his excellent "In the Beginning Was the Command Line" [here] was an inspiration for this blog). In recent years, Stephenson has turned from writing about modern and futuristic technology to historical novels such as the excellent Necronomicon and Quicksilver, which I'm eagerly looking forward to.

Xbox. We got a second Xbox for the TV room I'm in the process of finishing in the cellar. Mark has sort of taken control of the other one and I want to get going with Xbox Live, which I joined a year ago but barely used. Drop me a note if you'd like to kick my ass virtually. :)

There was more--a Best Buy gift card, a case of my favorite white white (Oak Knoll Pino Gris; from Oregon), a new set of wine glasses, an excellent tawny port (Warre's Otima), and so on. We also got a second Sony DSC-P72 digital camera for Steph, and a Microsoft Wireless-G PCI card for a remote computer in the corner of the house (it had been connected via 802.11b previously). I hooked up my wife's van with a decent Alphine CD player that support MP3 and WMA CDs, and an automatic car starter (kind of key in this part of the country). My son got a couple of Xbox games and a Nintendo GameBoy Advance cartridge. All in all, it was a high-tech Christmas at the Thurrott household.

[ Posted at 5:31 PM | Permalink ]

Wednesday, December 24, 2003

Merry Christmas

Be safe. Be happy. And for crying out loud, stay away from your computer for a day and mingle with family and friends. :)

[ Posted at 11:10 PM | Permalink ]

Intel confirms development of 64-bit Pentium 4

Thanks Keith. Investor's Business Daily: "The world's largest chipmaker is quietly designing a 64-bit chip for PCs based on x86 architecture ... In September, AMD came out with an x86 64-bit chip called the Athlon 64. It's the first 64-bit x86 processor for PCs. And AMD's signed up some big-name customers. After decades of being ingrained in computing, tons of software works well with x86 ... Intel spokesman Robert Manetta says the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker has a working prototype of a 64-bit x86 design that it could bring to market 'when customers request it.'" Hey, Intel. We're requesting it. Here is a story I wrote about this processor, code-named Yamhill, a while back. I also discussed 64-bit computing more generally in this article.

[ Posted at 11:07 PM | Permalink ]

Great article about Apple and innovation

This is a must-read, and Fast Company's Carleen Hawn should win an award for this article: "Innovate or die, we were told. It's the core of excellence and the root of entrepreneurship. It's the attacker's advantage, the new imperative, the explosion, the dilemma and the solution ... And yet it's hard to look at Apple without wondering if innovation is really all it's cracked up to be ... Apple's creative energy hasn't amounted to very much in financial terms. For its fiscal year ending September 27, 2003, Apple reported just $6.2 billion in revenues, three-quarters of it from the sale of personal computers. The father of the PC--and, remember, the industry's number-one vendor in 1980--has since sunk to a lowly ninth, behind competitors Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM, just for starters. Sadly, Apple is also behind such no-namers as Acer (seventh) and Legend (eighth). So much for innovation and creativity ... Where Apple was once one of the most profitable companies in the category, its operating profit margins have declined precipitously from 20% in 1981 to a meager 0.4% today, just one-tenth the industry average of 2% ... Its chief competitor in software, Microsoft, earned $2.6 billion in its most recent fiscal quarter (ending September 30). That's nearly 15 times the $177 million in software sold by Apple in its most recent fiscal quarter and roughly equal to the profits that Apple has earned from all of its businesses over the past 14 years. In just three months."

The lesson here is in the sidenote, and it's something I touched on just the other day: "Technical innovation will earn you lots of adoring fans (think Apple). Business-model innovation will earn you lots of money (think Dell). If your cool new thing doesn't generate enough money to cover costs and make a profit, it isn't innovation. It's art." Bravo, Carleen Hawn, bravo.

[ Posted at 10:55 AM | Permalink ]

Tuesday, December 23, 2003

Excellent look at Microsoft security in 2003

Mirko Zorz has written a long but interesting look at how Microsoft security fared in 2003. Creatively dubbed An In-Depth Look Into Windows Security in 2003, this article looks back at some of the interesting security events of 2003 and gets reactions from three respected security experts. Heads-up: It's not as bad as it sounds.

[ Posted at 3:30 PM | Permalink ]

Peter Coffee looks beyond monoculture

eWeek's Peter Coffee is a guy I really respect. He had the following to say recently about moving away from monoculture (for example, he'll be using a Mac OS X system as a fallback if his Windows system goes south): "My more forward-looking diversity strategy, therefore, relies on Apple's Mac OS X ... I'm not going to urge people to leave Windows completely behind. There are those who argue that 98 percent of what people do on Windows they can do at least as well or better on OS X or Linux, but I could just as well point out that the universe is 98 percent hydrogen and helium—and I'm rather fond of the other 2 percent ... Having an OS X system close at hand, and on any given day as likely as not to be my primary workstation, gives me an alternate universe to which I can escape if the other one implodes. If something takes down Windows, there's OS X; if something threatens Mozilla, there's Opera; if my laptop's hard disk crashes, the really important stuff is on my mail server, where I mailed myself a backup copy, and also on an external FireWire hard drive where my backups are equally accessible to both Windows and Mac OS machines. My work product files are invariably produced and stored in formats that I can use with either system." It's always interesting when guys like Coffee start looking at alternatives--I started my own move away from the Windows monoculture almost as soon as I started using Windows, have been running Linux since 1994, and have been running Mac OS X daily for well over two years now--but it will be more interesting to see whether the broader public follows suit. As I've often said of Apple's failed "Switch" campaign, few people are going to completely give up Windows for Mac OS X, but there's a huge market out there of people looking for second (and even third) PCs.

[ Posted at 3:06 PM | Permalink ]

Potential class action lawsuit against Apple Computer

GG&D: "Girard Gibbs & De Bartolomeo LLP is investigating a potential class action against Apple Computer, Inc. on behalf of iPod owners whose batteries have died or lost their ability to hold their charge. If you've experienced these or simliar problems and you are interested in helping us in our investigation, please fill out the form."

[ Posted at 2:58 PM | Permalink ]

Latest iPod replacement: Aigo

BizIT: A Beijing-based company is selling a range of new, sleek, inexpensive MP3 players that it claims are the best-selling MP3 devices in China. Dubbed the Aigo, the devices sell for $170 and $300 and will soon be sold in the US and Europe, after a test-run in Singapore. They offer the ability to record directly from a phone and come with a removable SD card storage; the top-line MP3 player offers 256 MB of storage. The name Aigo is the romanised version of 'Patriot', which is the brand's name in China's domestic market.

[ Posted at 11:55 AM | Permalink ]

Mini iPods, major iLife update?

If this is true, Apple might pull off one of the most genius consumer electronics maneuvers since the original Walkman. Think Secret is reporting that Apple will introduce new "mini-iPods" at its MacWorld San Francisco trade show in January. The mini-Pods would ship in capacities of 2 GB and 4 GB (offering 400 and 800 songs, respectively) and start at the crucial $100 selling point. Current iPods will be revamped to support different colors (i.e. other than white). While it would have been huge for the company to have released these new devices, say, in early November, the introduction of a $100 iPod would squash one of the most obvious complaints about Apple's portable audio devices (they're too expensive) and open up the market to include a far wider range of customers.

Think Secret also notes that "Jobs will also devote considerable time to Apple's software offerings during his presentation, with a number of new releases in store for users. Sources said Jobs will unveil a 'total revamp' of iLife, the integrated iApp suite that Apple announced one year ago. Sources anticipate that the suite's core applications -- iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD and iTunes -- will be updated across the board; Other insiders confirmed that Apple will announce iDVD 4 as well as iMovie 3.5." Allegedly, there will be no new CPU announcements -- either desktop or laptop -- in the upcoming keynote.

[ Posted at 10:02 AM | Permalink ]

Monday, December 22, 2003

The development of Microsoft OneNote

New York Times: "The notion of flexible software to augment the human mind was advanced by the pioneering computer researcher Douglas C. Engelbart ... One such program is OneNote, a recently added component of Microsoft Office 2003. Created by a small group of Microsoft developers pursuing a tool that would be more flexible than current word processors, OneNote is Microsoft's first effort to support all of the random note-taking, organizing, sketching and document collecting that students, researchers, planners and office workers do during a normal day.oftware that aims to carry out Engelbart's original vision is beginning to appear." I use OneNote virtually every single day and highly recommend it. And if you think it's a glorified word processor or, God forbid, that your pathetic little text editor works just fine, thank you very much, you have no idea what you're talking about. Very interesting. My own OneNote preview is here.

[ Posted at 8:49 PM | Permalink ]

Why You Should Use the Mozilla Thunderbird E-mail Program

David Tenser: Mozilla Thunderbird makes e-mailing safer, faster and easier than ever before with the industry's best implementations of features such as intelligent spam filters, a built-in spell checker, extension support and much more.

[ Posted at 5:42 PM | Permalink ]

Pike's Mozilla Firebird Extensions

Here's a cool set of simple extensions for the Mozilla Firebird browser, including Bookmark Backup, Clone Window, Create Shortcut, Popup Allow, Popup Count, Search Button, Search Button Lite, Session Saver, Show Failed URL, and Work Offline.

[ Posted at 5:41 PM | Permalink ]

Opera 7.5: Worth looking at

I'm a dedicated Mozilla user (currently using Mozilla Firebird 0.7+ and Mozilla Thunderbird 0.4, though for practical reasons, I still need to use Microsoft Outlook as a PIM) but the latest Opera release--Opera 7.5 beta--is worth exploring. "Opera 7.5 beta for Windows introduces the looks and the performance of an exceptional Web browser. Opera's user interface has received a major overhaul with the new start-up dialog, and new default buttons, skin and panels in a blue and white color scheme that can be changed back to classic Opera look or another design. At start-up you can select a single or multiple document interface (SDI/MDI). Opera's new looks are complemented with exciting features such as the Personal Bar and Pagebar, hotclick, improved window handling, bookmarks search, redesigned preferences, new shortcuts, extensive drag and drop, and support for Unicode and LiveConnect. " Furthermore, Opera 7.5 includes an inegrated RSS reader (ala Newsgator for Outlook), which uses the Opera mail client's interface to display RSS feed items.. There are versions with Java and without Java (which I'd imagine is the preferred version).

[ Posted at 5:05 PM | Permalink ]

Mozilla Launchy 1.6.0 released

gemal.dk: "Launchy will enable you to open links and mailto's with external applications like Internet Explorer, Opera, Mozilla, Mozilla Firebird, Netscape, Outlook, BSPlayer, Windows Media Player and others. Launchy also features an uninstall option." Currently the following applications are supported and automaticlly detected: Mozilla, Mozilla Firebird, Netscape, K-Meleon, Internet Explorer, Opera, Mozilla Mail, Mozilla Thunderbird, Outlook Express, Outlook, Pegasus Mail, BSPlayer, Winamp, and Windows Media Player. You can download it here (You need JSLib installed first. Install JSLib here.) Neat!

[ Posted at 4:56 PM | Permalink ]

IDC: Global notebook sales exceed 10 million mark in 3Q 2003

From DigiTimes: "Quarterly notebook sales in the global market broke the 10 million mark for the first time in the third quarter of this year, reaching 10.36 million units, according to International Data Corporation (IDC). Fueled by aggressive pricing, nearly all of the world’s leading notebook vendors, except Apple Computer, recorded strong sequential growth in the third quarter, according to the research firm. The world’s top five vendors in the third quarter were Hewlett-Packard (HP), Dell, Toshiba, IBM and Acer."

[ Posted at 1:04 PM | Permalink ]

Here comes the free Net music

CNN: "The great digital music giveaway is about to begin. In the new year, some of the world's biggest brands will promote their products and services by doling out millions of free downloads through alliances with digital music services."

[ Posted at 10:26 AM | Permalink ]

The day the (iPod) music died

Washington Post: Apple iPods have proved popular with consumers, despite their short battery lives.

[ Posted at 10:24 AM | Permalink ]

How could they have passed over Steve Jobs??

Time Magazine: Person of the year.

[ Posted at 10:20 AM | Permalink ]

Why Dell is kicking ass and taking names

A few months back, I wrote an article about Dell ("Inside Dell") that explained why this often-misunderstood company is so successful. To the paranoid Apple community, Dell is The Devil (tm), a company that doesn't innovate but instead low-balls its pricing in a predatory, Microsoft-like manner. Nothing could be further from the truth: Dell spends over $450 million a year on research and development and owns a huge amount of patents. But what really separates Dell from Apple is Dell's pragmatic approach to business: It's more concerned with the bottom line, and what it's customers want, than on trendy, niche concerns like, say, whether the blue plastic bezels on the second-generation iMac all look exactly the same color. Apple is all about style, and certainly, they're very successful at that. But Dell delivers the goods. In a Knight Ridder examination of Dell, we learn more about this pragmatic approach, where "innovation comes in the form of a pop-up window that appears on a computer screen when your printer runs low on ink. Just click on a button and a new Dell ink cartridge lands on your front porch within 24 hours. It's not cutting-edge technology, but it is a smart, consumer-friendly feature sure to please customers who dread trekking down to Office Depot with a spent cartridge in hand." Dell CEO Michael Dell also has some pragmatic advice about innovation: "If you invent something that no one wants to buy, I don't care," he says "We didn't grow to be a $40 billion company in 19 years by trying to do everything ourselves. I don't want to reinvent things I can get from someone else."

[ Posted at 8:53 AM | Permalink ]

Fascinating interview with Atari CEO Bruno Bonnell

The New York Times Magazine does its usual bang-up (and lengthy) job in a wide-ranging interview with Atari CEO Bruno Bonnell, who rescued and resuscitated the company after its 1998 bankruptcy. A must-read for all video game fans.

[ Posted at 8:43 AM | Permalink ]

Sunday, December 21, 2003

2004 is the year of Linux, part five

The Straits Times: "Despite advantages, the OS has problems dislodging market leader Microsoft ... Linux is found only in 3 per cent of desktop PCs while Windows is firmly entrenched in more than 90 per cent."

[ Posted at 10:47 PM | Permalink ]

iTunes: Easier, still non-discoverable

A bunch of people wrote in to note that the step-by-step method I highlighted earlier today for copying purchased songs from one machine to another can be accomplished in a slightly easier, if equally undiscoverable, manner.

It turns out you can drag and drop songs directly from the iTunes window to a hard drive in OS X (I haven't tried this in Windows yet, but assume it would work), saving you from having to figure out where those songs exist on your system. That's fantastic news, and I'm glad to hear it. It's also utterly non-discoverable and inobvious. But again, once you know how something works, it's easy. And this is a good tip to know.

Anyway... Thanks to everyone that wrote in with this information.

[ Posted at 10:24 PM | Permalink ]

This is also what I'm talking about

In my discussions about inductive user interfaces, I've tried to highlight some of the innovative work Microsoft has done to make computing easier, an ongoing, long-term effort for which it gets little or no credit. Meanwhile, Apple, which has done literally nothing to advance computing beyond the tired 1980's-style desktop interface metaphor, is routinely credited with creating an operating system, OS X, that's "easier to use" than Windows. But there's so much more going on in any comparison of Windows and OS X, and I recently saw a blog posting that encapsulates another theme in this discussion, that OS X users (a relatively small, tightly-knit group that made a very conscious OS choice) are simply more technical than their Windows brethren (a user base that, literally, encompasses most of the computer-using public and is thus comprised largely of what I call "normal" people). It's a curious irony: Mac OS X advocates desperately want their OS to be doing better from a market share standpoint, but they almost always hold the audience they're trying to reach in utter contempt.

Here's a perfect example.

In PC World Magazine, Eric Dahl recently wrote about his love/hate relationship with iTunes. "My first indication that there'd be trouble came when I tried to get ITunes Music Store tracks from my work PC to my home machine," he wrote, accurately explaining what is, of course, one of the worst experiences in using this service. "I figured that since I used the same account, and the site has a record of my purchase, I could just download the tracks again at home. Nope. Though you can keep ITunes Music Store tracks on up to three computers, you can download them only once. And as our resident Mac Skeptic found out, you can't use an IPod to transfer songs, either." As Dahl notes, it's very difficult to move songs from one PC (or Mac) to another. In short, you have to be pretty technical, and know your way around both the file system and Apple's bizarre folder structure for storing these files.

Here's how one typical techy Mac-head (with the oh-so-perfectn moniker of "21st Century Digital Boy") responded to this outrage (remember: Dahl was stupid enough to point out something Apple does that isn't easy on the user): "Huh? Drag them from your local library to the iPod, take it home, then add them. I do it all the time. It isn't elegant, as such, but it works fine."

Yep, it works fine. But like all tasks, computer-based or otherwise, it only works fine if you know how to do it, and there is absolutely nothing about this procedure that is discoverable by "normal" people. And let's be clear here: When Dahl writes that you can't use the iPod to move songs back and forth between PCs, he's correct. As anyone would, Dahl assumes that if you own two PCs and an iPod, you will be able to "see" and manipulate purchased songs using the iTunes interface, and move songs from PC-to-iPod-to-second-PC. Gosh, that makes so much sense. You can't do it.

What "21st Century Digital Boy" is saying is equally correct, and you can do it. However, this is a power user task, and something that would benefit greatly from a "Purchased Music Backup Wizard," the type of tool Microsoft would create. In OS X, however, you're left on your own.

To drive this point home, let's look at all the information you'd need to understand to make this process work. I just purchased a song from iTunes Music Store (Steve Perry, "You Better Wait") and want to copy it to my iPod so I can put it on a second PC or Mac (I'll copy it to my iBook). Here's what I have to do:

1. "Drag them ["the songs"] from your local library to the iPod." Whoa, Nelly. First you have to find them. Let's back up a bit.

1a. Apple stores iTunes Music in /home/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/[artist folder]/[album folder] by default. Let's see ... Huh. No "Steve Perry" folder. Curious. Well perhaps there is a "Purchased Music" folder, that would make sense ... nope. Huh. Now what? Well, I'll spare you the tedious time I spent actually finding the damn song. For some reason it was in a subfolder called /Compilations called "Steve Perry_ Greatest Hits + Five Unreleased", which is the name of the album in which this song was found. Ah ... It's a greatest hits album. Why the heck would you want that under the artist name, right? Actually, I don't normally care where these songs are stored, to be fair. Unless of course I'm trying to undertake this exceedingly easy task. Ahem. OK, I found the song. It's called "13 You Better Wait.m4p".

2. "Drag them from your local library to the iPod." Using drag and drop, I copy the song file from the hard drive to the iPod icon on my desktop. And sure enough, if you double-click on the iPod icon, a window opens up and there it is. Did you know you could do this? I didn't. More importantly, did you know when you did this that the song can't be played back on your iPod? Silly? Yeah: On Windows-based portable audio devices, a hard drive is a hard drive: If you did this kind of shell-based file copy on the admittedly inferior Creative Nomad nx, you'd be able to play the song on the device. Oh, and you'd be able to copy the files from it normally to another PC, which you can't do in iTunes/iPod.

3. "take it home". Well, first you have to "unmount" the iPod, a curious little bit of old-school manual labor in this plug-and-play world we supposedly live in. No matter, I assume any iPod owner has figured out the aggravation in this step. So I bring it home (well, I bring it over to my iBook).

4. "then add them." By "add" he means "import" and by "them" he means the song(s). Again, you will need to understand that just plugging in your iPod and trying to synchronize on a second Mac (or PC) won't do the trick. What you really have to do is open up the iPod in hard drive mode, via the Finder or Windows Explorer, and then drag the file(s) into the iTunes window. (For people with both Macs and Windows machines, there are a few side issues here. You can't actually use an iPod to make the file transfer between Macs and PCs without a third party utility, because the supposedly identical iTunes for Windows won't read Mac-formatted iPods. However, I did purchase such a utility, the excellent MediaFour XPlay, which I believe cost about $30). For Mac to Mac, as with my iBook, it just works. So I launch iTunes and then open a Finder window for the iPod. And then I drag the file from the iPod into the iTunes window. Voila! The file is imported and will work, assuming this machine is set up on my .mac account as one of the three that can play my protected content.

5. You have to delete the file from the iPod. "21st Century Digital Boy" neatly skips over this all-important task, but let's face it: You don't want a song on there that you can't play back on the iPod. This raises a further, interesting issue: If I had synched my iPod on the iMac, I would have (temporarily) had two copies of that song on there. Anyone else see the stupidity in this?

"I do it all the time. It isn't elegant, as such, but it works fine." You have a lot of time on your hands, my friend.

Anyway.

I really like iTunes and the iPod, but this is a typical example of where Apple's UI fails its users. Granted, it was done on purpose: I'm pretty sure that the company was trying to appease the recording industry and not make this too easy. That's fine. But don't act like it is easy, just because you do it all the time. This is a typical example of a task that would benefit from inductive UI.

[ Posted at 12:33 PM | Permalink ]