MetaCatholic

Tim is rendered virtually speechless by the concept of erasable paper as a new technology. Actually it reminds me of my etch-a-sketch.

Apparently some people think this is a current technology:

Woman 1: ”What is that little trash can on the screen?”

Woman 2: ”My son says that is call the ‘recycle bin’. He tells me when I don’t want a Word document anymore and I delete it, it really goes in there.”

Woman 1: ”Why in the recycle thingy? Can’t you just erase it?”

Woman 2: ”Oh no, Word wouldn’t work for very long if I did that, I would run out of blank pages.”

Woman 1: ”Why?”

Woman 2: ”Because it cleans the words off the pages, then sends the blank sheets back to Word so they can be used again. That’s why it’s called the recycle bin.”

written by doug

In the OS wars, the question of which is more “intuitive” gets asked a lot. Mac users claim that OS X is clearly more “intuitive” than Windows. My early experience would suggest that “intuitive” is a matter of what you’re used to. Windows seemed quite intuitive to me, and I’m sure that in a couple of weeks OS X will too.

Let me give a couple of examples. And the beauty of this is that eve if I’m wrong, and there is a better and easier way to do what I wanted, it proves my point about intuitiveness.

I wanted to add a graphic of my real signature to my email signature in Mail. I looked everywhere I could think of for an “insert picture” command, and failed miserably. OK, Mac is supposed to be famous for drag and drop, so I tried that and it worked. Different methods, and what you’re used to will be more intuitive. I don’t think either is quicker or easier than the other.

The signature graphic was a different size to what I wanted. How then did I resize it, short of zooming over to Windows and opening it in Photoshop. (NB When I say resize, I mean resize and resample the actual file, not make it look larger or smaller in the document.) The obvious answer, I thought, would be the famed iPhoto. Nope, there may be a way, but of so, I couldn’t find it. Almost by accident, while looking for something else, however, I discovered the option to resize and resample an image in Preview. (Incidentally, Preview is a real gem, and at the heart of some of the “must have” easy working features of the Mac.) Now call me old-fashioned, but I don’t think it’s remotely intuitive to be unable to resize files in a photo editor, but dead easy in an application intended for previewing them.

I have no idea how you could objectively measure “intuitiveness”. Everyone comes with their own habits, experience and preconceptions. The OS wars: when you take the passionate believers out, there’s still no neutral objectivity. Now where I have I heard that before?

written by doug