momotomo

This is me being subjective and not having much marketing education so someone may want to correct the idea:

From a literal perspective, not much, but in terms of perception and marketing I'd estimate a whole lot. Each product is still representing your brand and a potential option for buyers. You want to encourage someone to be excited about moving to your new product or platform without presenting the case that the old one is inferior or somehow deficient.

Consider if they iPhone was released with a strong focus on the improvements and bugfixes on the existing features without many new additions. Personally this is amazing, I'd be excited about that, but for many (average joe consumer) people I'd estimate it raises some key questions - why was there so much wrong? What will be wrong with the new one? Why do these products have so many issues?

Consider if iPhone was listing fixes and corrections and phone x was advertising all of their new features and updates with no mention of any rectification - personally, I'd be tempted just to pursue the one that was "best". Especially in a flooded market where it's hard to make a legitimate choice, it's much easier if one thing looks broken and one thing looks wonderful.

Most companies are really just going through the process of iterative refinement but I think you need the feature icing to sell them to people, or really: to take the focus off of the fact the product needed rework, and on to the fact there's super super shiny new things! You quickly forget to engage your critical thinking when being dazzled with this kind of thing.

To be hyperbolic with the example - consider cars. When a manufacturer releases a new model and advertises the safety and performance enhancements, it may be likely that they were addressing issues with the previous model, but presenting them as new functionality. This is much more appropriate for a brand than saying "we've addressed the issue with our brake and suspension package that was contributing to people losing control of the car" or "we've redesigned the porting of the heads on the engine so it's not running as inefficiency". If you have the choice between the perceived perfection of one brand versus the other admitting a few people wound up wrapped around trees and they needed to iterate their design (even if both companies are following exactly the same process), it becomes a pretty easy choice, right or wrong.

Good point. I went through a phase where I offloaded virtually everything that takes electrons bar my laptop and phone (which doubles as my modem), I've been at this baseline for a good year or so now. Between that and limiting myself to one bookmark of any given category or subject matter (eg, HN = news and tech, Juxapoz = art site, rather than multiples of each), I feel like I have a hundred million hours a day in which to do things.

I went from struggling to read a few pages of a book or write some code every evening to currently working on postgrad eduction, other certifications, volunteering, etc. It's not as literally simple a transition (lots of changes in motivation and practices in the mix), but every single device comes with a level of cost in terms of time and cognitive "energy". Stack them all up and it turns into a pretty big percentage of your capacity each day.

Crux of the discussion? It's become a market norm to have more, new, novelty. If the only selling point of an iPhone iteration was bugfixes, stability and refinement of the workflows it would just be interpreted as a list of things that were wrong with the previous product.

I think from one perspective advertising refinement is perceived as perpetual incompetence with respect to your capability to deliver a quality product. Horrible inversion of logic.

It's been an interesting switch, I've found that in terms of what "I do" on a laptop or device, that hasn't been impacted very much nor inherited a lot of new papercuts. I have however discovered a bunch of additional functionality that has been really productive.

A lot of this is spoken as a total newbie to both platforms and someone who didn't look into them seriously before changing (coming from a long term Windows 8 / Windows Phone / iPhone background).

Androids intents make it feel much closer to a real operating system in the way it allows applications to interact with each other (compare chrome browser integration on android vs iOS). Linux (Mint in this case) feels incredibly low friction when getting started thanks to apt-get, and a lot of the screw ups that I lived with in Windows seem to fail more spectacularly on Linux, with the caveat they can be fixed to the point of being quite polished by digging into configuration or updating libraries.

Under Windows and iOS it feels like you start at 80% working and finish at 80% working. With linux and derivatives it feels more like starting at 65% and being able to tune your way up to 90%. Prefer the latter at the moment.

Very much relate to this. Some days, especially in the corporate environment where I work, I genuinely wonder if we are missing the point completely with all the innovation and advancements in OS' and software instead of focussing on cleaning up what is already there. It always feels like there's more time spent developing all of this than there is dogfooding it.

One thing to add to the gripes re iOS - I've found that it works beautifully when it does, and horribly when it doesn't. His point on notification clearing reminded me of the Mail app when you have connection failures: I had 5 accounts tied into it, and when the networking failed it would throw 2 modal dialogues for each account. The amount of time I spent glued on the spot hammering away at notifications so I could move on felt staggering after a while.

I had a glut of other misc. quirks and persistent crashes that cut through the gloss on the device, this in combination with a string of Windows 7 bad behaviour (started python development, started hating python development) led me to switch onto linux (started loving python development) and a droid handset. Guaranteed they will have just as many warts and bad behaviours, but it feels more reasonable because I'm expecting them, and on linux, have an opportunity to fix them.

There's two aspects to being a "power user" (not entirely but I try) that I could never take for granted - this capacity to fix things that don't work, but also the opportunity to work with the more atomic tools. There's nothing more soothing than stringing commands together, writing a script, or organising things in a text file or database: mostly because if something breaks, I broke it, I can see the breakage, I can fix the breakage. Minor bliss!

Addendum / edit to this to provide context - I think coming from a control systems background has coloured a lot of my opinions in regards to innovation. I've seen fistfuls more value delivered (in this field, potentially applicable to others), by creating small, clean, highly polished, iterative and well integrated systems as opposed to large, sprawling and constantly evolving...messes. The sometimes popular fail first / fail fast / iterate like crazy mantra makes me itch. I've seen successful lean / agile approaches executed that focus on quick delivery without being so flippant about quality.

I've got the same habit with code, taking it offline with a pen in hand and stepping through it. Found it much more effective for working through logical issues in code because it strips all of the syntax checking, typing, temptation to execute out of the way and forces you to slowly evaluate the program flow.

With IDE's, Photoshop, Word, I think it's important to remember that they have activities and workload in themselves that isn't relevant to what you're trying to achieve. Separating this load out from the core task has some value.

Looking forward to it if I ever have the chance. There's an element of contentment to this approach that I really appreciate.

Some koans have the goal of exhausting this kind of reserve through trying to deeply explore and attempt to solve a paradox. I think the intent is to gain experience of this kind of depletion to better understand its impacts (at least from my experience of it).

Really appreciated this point too. None of his vendors seemed to have a genuine interest in anything outside of the quality of their craft and the honour of their relationships. It was incredibly refreshing, and seems to be part of quite an old set of values for the region that might not pop up as much these days. Or at least, be promoted as widely as more capitalist ethic.

Sorry, the example wasn't completely literal and a bit clumsy. Completely acknowledge the importance of those approaches and methadone programs in place that allow for a transitional pathway as well.

Your second paragraph is further into the balancing act I suppose, you could push people to full withdrawal symptoms but when we have the tech. on hand to manage the process, it raises a similar set of questions about which approach you'd perceive to produce the best result for someone.

It's why I'm glad I'm in a tech field, at least most of it is deterministic. The friends I have that work in social services have a nightmare of a job sometimes in terms of failed outcomes or unexpected results from treatments and approaches.

I've been looking to do something like this with the Networkx library in Python, though on an internal company MediaWiki with a much smaller article base. Going to try to visualise much the same thing, the major loops and cliques in the graph.

There are a lot of schools of thought that address the paradox of short term sufferings involvement in the overall scheme of kindness. Buddhism refers to it as "idiot kindness" or "idiot compassion" if you're kind in the short term without considering the long term value of it.

True kindness is a long winded, structured and considerate thing. Feeding a junky drugs because it makes them feel better is an example of it done wrong, I would still entirely consider it kind and compassionate to will someone through a process such as what you've illustrated here if you had a genuine understanding that it was going to provide them these kind of benefits.

Clever and kind are never that clear or opposed in the sense of dichotomy. At the extremes of it maybe 'clever' looks like not helping people at all because it frees up resources for the rest of the community, or 'kind' is euthanasia. The subjectivity of it all is the integral, and hardest, part of the process of assessing what's 'best' for an individual.

Erm, sorry chap that's a period life table, not an expectancy table. It's remaining years, not total. If you scroll down eventually years remaining < age. Unless you count reincarnation no 80 year old is dying before their first birthday.

Standard feasibility work for any large project? Alternately the potential that all of their explorations have application in a stack somewhere in the organisation? At any rate testing and validating / invalidating alternatives is time well spent if you have the engineering capacity.

I think if someone's running a majority of metro apps it might be a bit less jarring (because they are used to the "app as the whole screen" thing), but it can be confusing when switching, and the switch feels a bit like everything else has "closed" if you're used to the task bar. The windows key acts as a good anchor though, everything feels pretty close at hand.

I do like that quick little context box for the other installed apps. Advantage to how that app selection context box works is that it scales with the users expertise - if you do see it, it means you've installed software, which probably means you understand why the selection is necessary. Average mum and dad user probably won't come across it / get confused by it.

Not feeling the issues with Win8, I'm on a low end Dell 13" and apart from the missing start menu I've noticed no real difference in usability.

After pinning everything to the home screen and task bar it's generally one click to get to most things (or Windows key -> Click) which feels more intuitive than Win7. Even the corner targets and new Alt / Win + Tab behaviors are solid enough. Was dubious about the quick app switch when you click at the top left but it's been unobtrusive enough.

The Windows Key + Live search on typing, while basically the same as the Win7 start menu search tool, feels a lot quicker in 8, maybe due to the metro search result style. Few other small bits like the new task manager are generally more useful as well.

The default fullscreen apps for photo viewing and what not feel like little horrors though, feels like a highjack when you click a photo and suddenly get dumped to a fullscreen app. Hitting escape does nothing and it can get a bit jumbled working your way back to the desktop (is there a faster return than Windows Key + Clicking desktop again?).

Can't get to the video at the moment, but was the comment from Frontalot or Coulton? If it's the case it's likely it was very tongue in cheek, given (particularly in Frontalot's case) they're both probably quite familiar with the OS.

Second this, as per other comment I made as well. SCADA systems are generally unstable and very precious about how they are implemented, it can drive people to make a lot of concessions. Thankfully we run enough support staff to ensure physical site visits are possible, which eliminates the security and technical issues associated with trying to tie these things into a WAN.

*edit, inferring that instability can drive people to network these devices for support reasons.

It is. Just the loose ones make the papers. We run physical divisions on our control systems, even system to system. Lots of walking area to area to do work but none of it will see each other or any WAN configurations. Thank goodness.

Anybody that's worked with SCADA systems unfortunately wouldn't bat an eye at this. In my own experience they're horribly issue prone, we've churned through 4-5 different vendors in the last 3 years trying to get past basic stability issues.

At one point last year I went all-out open source and dumped my W7 machine w/ photoshop and illustrator to switch over to GIMP and inkscape. I stuck with this configuration for about 9 months or so.

After getting through the UI differences and learning curve, I was still disappointed. Most of these apps feel like they've only been handled by causal users.

The worst memory was in GIMP working with layer sizing and floating objects, so many things were fixed and required hunting through menus or googling shortcuts to get them to resize or to place an object out of edit mode. The equivalent in photoshop is the enter key, or automatic layer boundary resizing, etc. The application does a much better job of staying out of your way.

If you're noodling about with a few photos its no big deal but the first major file I had to tackle with a few dozen layers and objects burned me out completely. I literally stood up, went to the shops, purchased a copy of windows and got my old setup back.

The secondary issue in the background of all this was the time invested to work around rendering speed issues, video drivers, wacom compatibility etc; none of which earns me any coin but needed to be resolved before doing any work. Unfortunately this will always be measured against the ease of getting Windows setup on a machine (less than half a day to a production ready box versus a solid week of problem resolution under the Ubuntu/Suse/Gimp combo).

I aim for open source usage whenever I can, and the quality is there, my main gripe always seems to be workflow. If more professionals start using it and providing feedback, yes, it will mature. However I think at this point to claim they are a straight replacement (in the case of Gimp and inkscape) is a bit short sighted when you consider the workload some of these tools support.

Avoiding giving a reply or simply being disorganised when it comes to following up with responses isn't tech specific.

Penpals who take six months to reply, people who screen their calls, giving a polite reply of "yes" when really you're never going to show up - it happens.

With the examples the author gave in a professional context - if you require a reply on something, set the expectation rather than assume someone communicates the same way as you.

If you're cold soliciting people over email for love or profit it should be with the understanding that it doesn't necessary honour the other party to reply.

It has visible short to medium turn returns? I don't do SEO, but it seems like it's a case where you can do some analysis, engineering and tuning, then fairly immediately see some results.

Beats the pants of slower cycle stuff where you need to work for months on the assumption that all your planning and resourcing will actually produce something that is sustainable.

Artificial milestones to proceeding with a plan or taking an action, you're describing a literal milestone of fitting everything in your car due to a practical need.

I was down to the point of it all fitting in the boot of a sedan but had no rhyme or reason to it at all, I was just acting out against a bunch of other stuff because I figured once I was done, I'd be "ready"

_that_ is an artificial milestone.

I agree with you on this point. Apart from a handful of items I live fairly lightly anyhow, and less consumption is essential.

I'd just rather see it executed as a rational and dispassionate decision than something motivated by anxiety or internal / social pressure, in those scenarios I often don't feel people can sustain it / they won't substitute with something else.

No. You're talking about the neutral case. I own no specialist plumbing tools, but as I'm not a plumber, it doesn't bother me either way.

I'm talking about the two other cases - I must own X to be in state Y, or I must not have X to be in state Y.

People set themselves up all sorts of artificial success milestones with stuff like this that are just as ineffective on either end of the scale.

My own anecdote. I had a TV, I decided it was a distraction and owning it distressed me enough that I gave it away. I now own a TV again, it's dusty and gets used once a month. Nothing inherently different about the TV in this case, I just matured enough to be able to balance and manage my time better, so now there's no particular attachment (in the case of the TV) to having it there or not.

Agreed. Attachment to not owning things is exactly the same issue as attachment to owning things. All you're doing is completing some actions to avoid a certain feeling or outcome.

I went through a phase where I just donated anything I thought was a distraction to charity, solved a lot in the short term, was insignificant in the long term. Addressing the fact I was bored with my career and hadn't had a break in years solved a lot more.

The simplest hack I've ever used for this kind of thing is to keep a notepad on my desk and whack it instead of the enter key whenever I'm doing critical work.

In the time it takes to thump the notepad, it gives my brain a vital few seconds to triple check what I just typed before I blast monkies into space. Saved my behind more than a few times.

Exactly this. As hard as I try to be pro-privacy and anti facebook, it's on ever device I own and bookmarked into the very muscle memory of my hands. Where I used to log onto IRC to see what was happening after work, now it's FB instead.

To get mandated against a niche either as the defacto standard or as literally specified by a government / industry body is brilliant as well.