Inspired Design

alternateorg on April 21, 2004

Every once in a while, a ground-breaking step is taken in the world of software UI design. Kai’s power tools come to mind… Windows’ command-tab window switching… The Finder’s column view… and now I give you…

Lsongs: The music player for Lindows (now known as Linspire). What breathtaking simplicity! What a fantastic feature set! What a cheap knockoff of iTunes!

And that’s not all folks! For your Windows-knockoff operating system, you can also run.. dun dun dun.. Lphoto, a cheap iPhoto ripoff as well.

Those Lindows – excuse me, Linspire designers really know how to fuck up a simple UI, don’t they? Christ. “I know, let’s put the rotate photo icon in the same exact place, but we’ll uh… uh.. put the arrow.. on the other side of the photo icon! Yeah! And then we’ll uh.. uh… keep the zoom photo widget in exactly the same spot but uh.. remove.. uh.. any context as to what that widget is for! Yeah! This is going to rule!

Thanks to SU for the links.

Top 10 eFads

alternateorg on December 17, 2003

Top 10 Internet Fads, although he forgot prefixing everything with a lowercase ‘e’ or ‘e-‘. He also forgot the translucent-turqouise-everything fad, directly following the original iMac’s success. Which may or may not be considered an internet fad. I guess it’s more of an industrial design fad.

What's all this about crow, then?

alternateorg on December 15, 2003

Richard Forno’s response to last week’s latest Mac-bashing tripe. Who’s Richard Forno, you ask? Just a security technologist, author, and the former Chief Security Officer at Network Solutions.

Lance also fails to recognize that Windows and Mac OS are different not just by vendor and market share, but by the fundamental way that they’re designed, developed, tested, and supported. By integrating Internet Explorer, Media Player, and any number of other ‘extras’ (such as VB Script and ActiveX) into the operating system to lock out competitors, Microsoft knowingly inflicts many of its security vulnerabilities onto itself.  As a result, its desire to achieve marketplace dominance over all facets of a user’s system has created a situation that’s anything but trustworthy or conducive to stable, secure computing.  Mac users are free to use whatever browser, e-mail client, or media player they want, and the system accepts (and more importantly, remembers!) their choice.

…

If Lance is sleeping well believing that he’s on an equal level with the Mac regarding system security, he can crow about not being overly embarrassed while working on the only mainstream operating system that, among other high-profile incidents over the years, facilitated remote system exploitation through a word processor’s clip art function

One thing I noticed while reading the original “article” was this pervasive idea:

I was tired of the “We use Macs because they don’t get attacked by viruses and hackers” refrain from Mac nuts. I generally counter with what is apparently a secret carefully hidden from Mac zealots: “That’s because only a fraction of the world uses Macs. What’s the point of attacking a niche market? No one will notice!”

What’s the problem with this? He seems to think that because the entire mediocre business world relies on Windows and is ritualistically attacked by teenage hackers and worm-writers, that Windows is better to run. Like I care about the reason why no one writes virii for my OS. They don’t exist, it hardly matters that (he thinks) it’s because there are relatively few of us.

Doug switched

alternateorg on November 4, 2003

As we have common friends, I read Douglas Bowman’s weblog every few days. I have to say that I’m happy he’s switched back to Mac. As a designer/developer-ish kinda guy, I’m not surprised. MacOS X combines everything you need for most tasks involved in that kind of work in a very nice and fun-to-use package. So in an attempt to offer you some more fair and balanced look at how people move to the Mac and how they feel once they’re there (frustrations and all), check out that link. That’s the kind of post/comment combo I’m happier to see these days (check out my comment here for what I mean.)

Photoshop 8 Screenshots

alternateorg on July 8, 2003

Re: Photoshon 8 Screenshots

Dear Sir or Madam::

Please find attached a copy of the above-referenced article currently posted on the Alternate website. Adobe cannot and will not confirm or deny the accuracy of any rumor posted on your site. Nonetheless, the article contains confidential information, UI designs and other artwork owned by Adobe that were either directly misappropriated by you or were provided to you by a source in breach of a confidentiality agreement with Adobe. We have not granted you permission to publish these materials and in doing so you infringe upon our trade secret rights and copyrights.

Your publication of unsubstantiated rumors and Adobe intellectual property directly damages our business interests and puts us at a disadvantage vi+his our competitors.

Adobe requests that you immediately remove the above-referenced article from your website and not further disseminate or disclose such article or its contents to any other party. This includes dissemination or disclosure to other rumor sites. Adobe also requests that you not publish or otherwise disclose any other Adobe designs or artwork without its permission, and that you not publish other information about upcoming versions of Adobe products that you know or should know is confidential and proprietary to Adobe. Please confirm your compliance with the foregoing.

Thank you for your immediate attention to this matter. You may contact me with any questions or comments you have.

Jobless

alternateorg on May 12, 2003

So, like 5.8% of Denver, I am now unemployed. Anyone who needs a graphic designer, web programmer or network administrator please drop me a line. My resume is available for your perusal, right here.

"QuarkXpress 6 will be expensive and late"

alternateorg on April 8, 2003

Daring Fireball: Translation of Selected Portions of Last Week’s ‘QuarkXPress 6 Feature Overview’ Announcement from PR-Speak to English



The many improvements to the QuarkXPress Web features make it even easier for publishers to create Web designs and re-use print content on the Web. Print layouts can be converted to Web layouts in a matter of mouse clicks, or designers can create new Web designs using the familiar QuarkXPress tools and interface.

We are plowing full steam ahead under the delusion that our users want to use a print-oriented page-layout program for web design. By placing extra emphasis on these unwanted web features, we hope to distract your attention from a certain upstart page layout application, which is focused squarely and solely on page layout.


Hi.

alternateorg on February 23, 2003

Welcome back. Things have changed a bit, as you might have noticed. The survey and search are gone for now, but they’ll be back momentarily. There’s a new feature over there on the right, the ‘Latest Links’ section. It’s basically a regular expression that parses posts and provides you, the reader, with the 10 latest links posted. New codebase and a new design were a little overdue, as the ‘blue mac’ design was launched just about 2 years ago. Let us know what you think as long you like it.