I’m finally getting around to installing a few CS3 Web Premium components on my MacBook Air, and was again annoyed by Adobe’s installer requirements of quitting all open browsers. There’s no reason to require this, and all my Adobe apps worked just fine even though I restarted both Safari and Firefox immediately after the installation began. Adobe’s similarly terrible software and installation experiences across the rest of its products are well-documented on various other sites.
Adobe, you are a design company, and probably the Earth’s largest supplier of design software. You can do so much better than this.
So here’s a bug report I just submitted to Adobe. I encourage you to send a similar message if you’re fed up with Adobe’s terrible software experiences:
******BUG******
Concise problem statement: Your software installation experience is a crime against the technology industry.
Steps to reproduce bug:
1. Install Creative Suite
2. Get warned that Safari and Firefox need to be quit to install Creative Suite. I then quit said apps.
3. Restart both browsers right after installation begins, continue scratching head as to why in the hell I had to stop everything I was doing and quit my browsers in the first place.
Results: Everything works fine, can find no apparent reason for shutting down browsers and breaking my workflow just to install Adobe software.
Expected results: Better software and installation experience after spending hundreds of dollars on a package from a **design** company as massive as Adobe.
Mark Jaquith, one of the lead WordPress developers, had the same trouble many users did when trying to figure out how to edit comments in WordPress 2.5. Turns out that, like clicking a post’s name to edit, you click the commenter’s name:
This sort of mirrors how post edit links work. To edit a post (or a page), you just click the name of the post. That is quite intuitive. I learned that behavior in about a day, and now the old way of clicking the “Edit” link seems strange. I’ve not had the same experience with comments. I think the problem is that comments don’t have a title, like posts do.
I agree, this really isn’t intuitive. I get the line of thinking that led to this decision, but it still just doesn’t feel right. Perhaps a simple “(edit)” link next to each commenter’s name would do the trick.
I’ve owned an iPhone since they landed on June 29th, but I’ve never had a real set of desktop speakers attached to either of our Macs. This weekend I finally cracked and brought down the nice set of Sony computer speakers + subwoofer we’ve been using for sleeping music at night, and I hooked them up to the Mac Pro in the basement (I bought a pair of cheapies as replacements upstairs). Now these are really old speakers. They’re nice, but they’re at least five or six years old, so they pick up GSM mobile phone interference that sounds like an old dialup modem is tripping on acid.
It’s only been about two days that I’ve had these speakers hooked up, but over the weekend I’ve synced my iPhone four times. Every time I attach it to the dock, I get a brief shot of GSM interference that doesn’t last nearly as long as the periodic episodes when it’s just sitting idle and seems to regularly check in with the towers.
Is the iPhone designed to ping its carrier to let it know how often we sync? I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple collects anonymous syncing statistics for these devices through iTunes, so I’m not putting my tin foil hat on just yet. I’m more curious than anything as to whether I’m right, and why the carriers would want to know how often we sync in the first place.
Anyone know something about this? Please do share.
Video has played an increasingly important role in iTunes as a piece of software and the iTunes Store as a distribution outlet for digital media. Apple introduced video features, as well as movies, TV shows, and music videos to the iTunes Store in October 2005, and yet the iTunes software itself is still terrible at letting users organize their own video files. For example, there is no option for turning a number of movies into a TV show and specifying things like season and episode range; you need to seek out a utility or AppleScript like Doug’s Set Video Kind of Selected.
Another example of iTunes’ failings as a video organization app is the screenshot above (click it for a larger view). It’s the Get Info window for an episode of South Park, and yet the language used here is “album” and “track number” and “artist.”
As I now have roughly 32GB of music but nearly 140GB of TV shows and movies (about 60-70 percent purchased from the iTunes Store), I’m getting more and more anxious for a major iTunes overhaul that incorporates the needs of those who are using it for both music and video. With the success of TV shows and movies in the iTunes Store, I know I’m not alone.
Perhaps a future iTunes v8 update will address these glaring issues.
A subtle and obviously arguable change, but an appreciated one nonetheless. I decided to try out the iTunes Store’s new movie rentals by grabbing Spiderman for the flight back to Denver, CO tomorrow, and I noticed this new iTunes sidebar items this morning when my download was finished (never saw this one in the theaters, and my wife doesn’t even want to bother, so I figured finally finishing the Spiderman trilogy and sorting photos in Aperture would be good ways to spend the flight). I’ll transfer it to the iPhone this afternoon when work is done for the day and perhaps write up my experiences for Ars. I have a few specific things I’d like to test and see how Apple decided (or was allowed) to handle.
When Goldman repeated Bach’s statement about how the version 2 Zune was now a worthy alternative to the iPod, Jobs replied, “Was he inebriated? Do you even know anyone who owns a Zune?” Ouch. People excuse Apple’s jabs toward Microsoft because they’re underdogs in the OS market, but it just seems mean when they do the same in the iPod-dominated portable media player market. [From Steve Jobs Smack Talks Zune, Brings Drunkenness Into It [Apple]]
Boasting features, simplicity, and design over the competition is one thing. But mucking silly crap like this is just childish, even if Jobs simply said “inebriated” (and don’t get fooled by other media blowing this out of proportion: asking if someone was inebriated is a far, far cry from calling them a drunk). Bad form, and very un-Jobs like.
I’ve bounced between NetNewsWire, a desktop RSS app, and Google Reader a few times over the past couple years. But I always come back to NetNewsWire for many of the fundamental reasons Nick lists, especially number 6‚Äîsoftware integration. I frequently e-mail links to friends or other web services, send interesting headlines to Twitterrific, use AppleScripts to archive things in Yojimbo, and more. I certainly prefer some of Google Reader’s user interface elements (like much more efficient keyboard navigation and headline browsing), but the power of integrated desktop software just can’t be beat in my book.
MacScoop is reporting that the upcoming firmware update — an “incomplete and unpolished version” of which has already been leaked — will allow users to enjoy copy/paste functionality. This means that when you read something in an email or on a webpage, you can paste that into a contact or a memo. This has long since been available on Symbian and Windows Mobile devices.
Of course, CNET France also claimed that 1.1.3 should’ve landed early last December, complete with voice capture and disk mode, so don’t put too much stock in any of these claims.
That said, Mobile Magazine embedded an intriguing mockup video of how copy and paste could work on an iPhone:
I can’t decide whether this feels like the way Apple would do it though. Part of me thinks it’s too clunky, and too much awkward two-fingered tapping. On the other hand, like some of the other iPhone operations, I could see myself getting used to this. After all, many aspects of the iPhone’s UI were pretty wild and new when it came out, and I’m sure Apple isn’t finished shaking things up.
