Linked List: February 16, 2009

Monday, 16 February 2009

From the DF Archive: Deal With It 

A piece I wrote two years ago proposing a simple rule of thumb for measuring the perceived complexity of a user interface. There was also a brief follow-up piece a few days later. Might be worth a re-read, as I’m referencing it in the piece I’m working on now.

Tree 1.3 

Interesting Mac outliner from Japanese developers Top of Tree. Simple, clean UI with an option to toggle the display between a traditional list view and an innovative tree view, where child elements expand into new columns to the right. A little pricey at ¥3,980 JPY (roughly $45 USD today) but I’m really digging it. (Via Alex Payne.)

Raising Prices 

Craig Hockenberry on iPhone app pricing. I had missed James Thomson’s post about average daily PCalc sales doubling after the release of the free PCalc Lite.

(Update: Sorry for the s/DragThing/PCalc/ typo in the initial post, folks. I get all those various James Thomson apps confused sometimes.)

No New Android Phones at Mobile World Congress 

Eric Zeman:

We’re only halfway through the first day at Mobile World Congress and already things are looking bleak for Android. Many of the major manufacturers have already announced their new products at the show, and not one Android handset has been seen.

(Via MacDailyNews.)

NYT’s Prototype ‘Article Skimmer’ Interface 

The thinking behind the design, and some keyboard shortcuts for navigation, are discussed here. I really like this. (Via Andy Baio.)

Specify Your Canonical 

Google now supports a <link> tag syntax for specifying which URL, when several equivalent URLs point to the same resource, is the canonical one.

Update: Yahoo and Microsoft are also supporting this same syntax.

‘Usability Is the Only Reason Mac Survived’ 

Jakob Nielsen, on the 25th anniversary of the Macintosh:

During its first decade, the Mac offered clearly superior usability compared to competing personal computer platforms (DOS, Windows, OS/2). Not until Windows 95 did the PC start to approximate Mac-level usability. Despite this Mac advantage, PCs have sold vastly better in every single year since 1984, and the Mac has yet to exceed a single-digit market share.

The Mac’s miserable marketplace performance seems to pose a strong argument against usability. Why bother, if it doesn’t sell? The counter-argument is that usability is the only reason Mac survived.

Exactly.