rowan.depomerai

I’ve just spent the day at Futuresonic, the Urban Festival of Art, Music & Ideas in Manchester. The talks I saw ranged from the unintelligible to the inspiring, but on the whole it was an enjoyable day. I was particularly impressed by Aaron Koblain’s talk on data visualisation. I shan’t relay what he said, but instead will simply suggest you check out some of his amazing work at his website.

What the day also got me thinking about however was the quality of presentations. Every presenter I saw today used some sort of computer presentation, all run on the venue’s Macs running Apple’s Keynote software. However it was clear to see which presenters had written their presentations in Keynote and which had put them together using Microsoft Powerpoint. Reason 1 was that Keynote’s ability to import Powerpoint files isn’t quite perfect, making for some slightly oddly aligned fonts. Reason 2 was that I recognise some of the templates provided by both pieces of software. But reason 3 was that the presentations run on Keynote were – without exception – quite simply better than the Powerpoint ones. I couldn’t help but wonder why – both pieces of software offer similar functionality, so why would users of one program produce better presentations than users of the other?

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In my last post, I discussed one of the interface changes in Windows 7, with reference (probably too much reference) to a blog post by Paul Thurrott, and I explained how that article wound me up a bit. Today I got incredibly annoyed with an article by the same author, and it got me wondering just how you find the voices you trust and like amoung the millions of bloggers out there…

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Microsoft recently released a public beta of Windows 7, which means you or I can go and download the next version of Windows right now and give it a try. This seems like a great opportunity to see what they’re up to, so I’ve had a quick play and I’ve read some reviews and articles around the web. Now we all know I’m a big Mac fan, so of course I have a habit of noticing the new features which bear a striking resemblence to existing MacOS features. And there are a lot. I thought about writing a post about that, but there were too many to mention, plus it would be pointless; good ideas are worth using, and Apple has certainly ‘borrowed’ features from Windows over the years too. Sometimes it just makes sense. So rather than moan about Microsoft stealing ideas, I thought I’d celebrate one idea in particular which they’ve stolen, because it leads to a big improvement in the usability of Windows. The feature I’m referring to is the task bar, which has undergone quite a radical overhaul in Windows 7. The thing is, some of the more vocal and established Windows fans seem to hate the new design – where I rejoice that it’s much more similar to Apple’s superior Dock interface, they complain that it’s too similar to Apple’s rubbish Dock interface. Hmmm… it seems this could be one for personal preference. Here’s why I like the Dock, and (mostly) Windows’ new taskbar.

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The best thing about the iPhone these days is its software model. I’ve talked in detail before (1, 2, 3, 4) about the device itself, and mentioned the AppStore, but Apple Insider presents (as part of their extensive and pretty good series of posts on the iPhone 3G) a fascinating comparison of iPhone software versus Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Symbian and even PSP and DS software platforms. Read the rest of this entry »

These days I use a frightening array of Apple products. Every weekday I use an iPhone, an iMac, a Mac Mini and usually a MacBook. Occasionally at work I have the misfortune to use a Windows PC, and once in a while I have to use a computer which doesn’t know who I am. Hoping to address this sort of problem, Apple announced Mobile Me at their WWDC conference earlier this week. Let’s get the trivial stuff out of the way first. Yes, it’s a pretty rubbish name, and some have described the logo as Apple’s worst ever. But what interests me is how it can help my life by reducing the complexity of accessing my information anywhere. Read the rest of this entry »