In all other respects, it is pretty much a piece of crap: low cooking power, an annoying beep marking that it has finished its job, and I would bet it has a radiation leak. The colour I could do without, it is not white but one feels it should be (and so it is just dirty.) But when it comes to its design — the looks — there is another story to tell. Even if it is neither particularly attractive, revolutionary or avant-garde insofar as its lines and curves flow.

My microwave only has one button to open the door, and one dial to set the time, and because of this I love it. No “Start” button, no useless keypad or electronic display. A microwave does not need all of that bullshit. The features have been added by manufacturers to somehow make their wares seem better than the rest, while in effect it was just feature creep detracting from the real purpose that a microwave serves. To heat things up. And for that, ideally, you would only need one button; alas, having a button and a dial is something I can live with. In this case, the dial is both input and output, as it winds down to show the time left. It is an effective way of representing the only piece of information one really wants to know when they are using the microwave: How much till the chow is ready? And this dial does everything that a keypad could, only far more elegantly because of its simplicity.

It is easy for designers of interfaces or of software to get sidetracked. It happens, lots of times because of upper echelons, sometimes because we forget we are not the typical user. So we have feature bloat, design that needs a user manual to operate, software that has a lot of features and all broken, keypads on microwaves. In all these ways, we show how much we forget our purpose and our goals.

While Firefox may be an excellent browser for a large number of reasons, in time I have started using Safari more and more. The excellent support for standards, fast rendering capability and complete Mac OS X integration make it my first choice on Apple’s platform. However, I still like to have a bit more control over browsing than either vanilla Firefox or plain Safari offer, so here’s what’s extra on my machine¹. Mac OS X only.

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1. DISCLAIMER: Safari does not have an official plugin mechanism, the way Firefox does. While all the things I am recommending here have served me flawlessly over time, you should be aware that they may stop working after browser updates — albeit if only for a short period of time [↩]

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 [↩]

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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As more and more applications go cross-platform, users are sometimes presented with software that they can tell was simply “dressed-up” on/for their platform of choice, not actually thought out with it in mind all the way. Does your application follow the platform or does it follow itself?
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RSS readers and desktop blogging tools are the two kinds of applications I try out quite frequently, so I’m always happy when I see new products on the market from either category. It is not necessarily an issue of not being satisfied with what I am currently using¹ insomuch as curiosity and wanting to see how people tackle old ideas and try to rethink them and bring better solutions.
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1. NetNewsWire and MarsEdit [↩]

My recent affair with usability brought me to analyze a somewhat subtle aspect of software, especially the user interface design aspect.
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I have recently discovered a passion for design — especially the kind that can be done in software — and so I have been paying a bit more attention to various concepts and ideas pertaining to the field. Today I was called into a meeting to discuss the changes required to make a particular user dialog more… user-friendly. A great time to put theory to practice¹.
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1. I am a software developer by function and workplace designation [↩]

Recently, I have come across blog posts where authors and commenters alike were considering that the whole open-source fad is going to cost a lot of programmers a lot of money and quite possibly make it very hard to earn a living by writing code.
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