• Have a voice-recognition system that does its best to direct you to the wrong department.
• Have each department ask you for your account information before they realise that they cannot help you with your problem.
• Have the proper department in a call centre that has as shitty a connection as possible, so that only about 23.72% of sounds produced by the support technician can be understood.
• Solve almost no problem so that the customer can go to your website
• The website should be confusing, unclear and downright self-contradictory about certain things.

I would like, then, to award Rogers a prize for performance in excess of the minimums outlined above, for a truly piss-poor customer experience system. Congratulations!

I posted a list of my most-commonly used applications for the Mac. Some are for pay, some are free, and for me they are all great¹.

Enjoy my list and let me know what really makes your day.

1. I have left out some of the development, design or music apps that I use. If you think I should include those as well, let me know [↩]

Apparently, installing software on the Mac is so easy that some people don’t get it. And the problem is, somehow, with the platform, not a case of PEBKAC.

Granted, we are glad to have all these switchers. Or Apple is, anyway. But in no way do I think there is any responsibility insofar as Apple or Mac developers are concerned to accomodate the new wave of users at the cost of corrupting the platform. Sure, marketshare is important, but cloning the ways in which Windows functions is not the way to establish that marketshare. Why have an annoying installer that puts files all over the place when you could just drag and drop the application wherever you want¹? Yeah, it takes some getting used to - do it once and you are used to it. I find it a bizarre ‘problem’ to have, considering that most switchers move away from Windows and all its problems. Wouldn’t an installer be just as much a reminder of the bad old days as, say, random BSODs?

I am surprised that people would even turn this into an issue. Simpler is not better, apparently, if the simpler approach is taking you out of your comfort zone for 2.01 seconds. It’s every reboot on Windows after I have installed some moderately complicated piece of software that reminds me just how much better Macs and Linuces are at these sorts of things. And while installing on Linux may be a bit impenetrable for some people (though we have come a long way in recent years) I simply cannot understand what’s the big problem.

1. Yes, I am aware there are installers for OS X as well, but they are few and far between [↩]

When you design an application to be cross-platform, or if you have decided to take an existing application to other platforms, your first step should be to translate that application to the new platform. In moving from a desktop application to a mobile one, the changes are quite radical and somewhat obvious. Moving from the desktop to the web, while tricky, is still understood as a big change so people tackle the problem accordingly, (generally) paying attention to details. Moving from one desktop platform to another is, unfortunately, a place where many mistakes are made, because sometimes software-makers forget that platforms are different.

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Mubix comments on the fact that a number of open-source project leaders have mentioned, on their respective blogs, acceptance of employment from Microsoft. For anybody that has even a passing knowledge of most open-source communities (which, in many cases, can be best read about in the comments of Microsoft-tagged Slashdot articles), the Redmond company is a sworn enemy, and so accepting a job from them is tantamount to treason.

Daniel Robbins, founder of the Gentoo Linux Project, has previously worked at Microsoft, but moved on as he was feeling that his skills were not used to their fullest. After that, more and more commentators began speculating that Microsoft might simply be interested in acquiring a lot of open-source leaders more as a way of undermining their projects — as well as, on a larger scale, future projects that might never be founded if the would-be leaders decide to join Microsoft instead. While the view may be quite left-field, Microsoft’s generally poor reputation certainly does not help. Microsoft may be interested in undermining various OSS projects, though they may as well be on the lookout for talented developers and software designers, and the open-source community is a good training ground. After all, more and more interviewers ask candidates whether they have been involved with open-source at any time.

I have been contacted, once, by a Microsoft recruiter. Both his e-mail and the in-person sales pitch played on the fact that my blog was quite critical of Microsoft. I agree that, as much as we may like to bash Microsoft (and, rest assured, I still have enough to rant about them), we need to be part of the change that we want to see. For some, that means pushing OSS further into different markets, to completely undermine and cause the eventual fall of proprietary, closed software systems — like Microsoft and Apple are. For others, the vision focuses on the users, on making their lives better, so working at Microsoft on a piece of software that many will use has a real impact.

I am not one to judge the path one takes. If you become part of the ‘problem’¹ I do hope you help improve their reputation by offering good software and driving for honest business practices. If you work on OSS, I hope you see your software more than just a ‘rebel yell’ against the corporations: remember that your software has users.

1. Microsoft [↩]

A few things I came across today, during the daily grind:

• Trying to sign up for meetup.com is not as easy as I would like, especially since they do not allow valid e-mail addresses.

  

• Trying to save the previous screenshot, using an invalid filename on Windows (due to the ‘?’ character) gives an error.

  

  Well, in my case it simply refused to save, with absolutely no indication as to why.

I hope none of these things are done on purpose (although the e-mail address bit happens in many places) but please, if the work you do is in anyway tangent to similar system, make sure the people in charge of testing the logic and the usability understand what the problems are. Someone said that “usability is predictability”, that if the user knows what’s going to happen after they click a button, your system is usable¹.

P.S. Yes, in Gmail you are free to use user+tag@gmail.com where user@gmail.com would be your normal e-mail address. The +tag is useful to filter easily on incoming mail, and potentially a giveaway in case some service decides to sell your e-mail address to spammers (although I suppose spammers are at least sophisticated enough to remove whatever is between + and @, but who knows?)

1. Caveat: this is about application design, where action should equal reaction and the interface should always provide some feedback. Games thrive on unpredictability, as do other systems [↩]

The buzz revolves around speculations and rumours that Apple may be releasing a new version of OS X to developers at this year’s WWDC. The discovery of a symlink in WebKit nightlies, as well as TUAW’s report today about 10.6, fuel the fire, and our combined desire and curiosity to see what Cupertino can come up with is strong. Except for Leopard, other versions of OS X came at about a year difference, so the timing would not be too surprising. What is surprising are some of the details of “Snow Leopard”¹:

• No new major features
• Intel-only
• Pure Cocoa

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1. Not yet an Apple official codename [↩]

I get asked by a lot of my switcher friends what alternatives to iTunes exist for the Mac. While I personally don’t mind iTunes at all, I understand that some people are thrown off by Apple’s handling of software on Windows in general. So, I have decided to take a look at some of the other music players available for the Mac so that I could come up with a decent answer the next time around. I am looking at basic music playback and Internet radio support, not iPod management or video capabilities necessarily.

The applications under the microscope are Whamb, VLC, ToolPlayer and Cog. The review is quite focused, so for a full feature list, look at the software’s site (linked in every case) or download any of these applications — after all, they are free — and give them a spin. Then come back and tell me about your experience.

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That must be the longest title I have ever written. It also pretty much sums up the affair. Passworded Folders is now listed as Secret Folders on the Samuco website and goes for $7.50 per license. The only change I am seeing is the location of the ’secret’ folder, now in “~/Documents/”, though absolutely no improvements whatsoever insofar as security have happened. It is almost a scam, though as far as application descriptions go I am sure the developer(s) can claim it was misinterpreted. So this, here, is your reinterpretation. Waste of money and a false sense of security.