Linked List: August 23, 2012

Thursday, 23 August 2012

Why Waiting in Line Is Torture 

Tom Petty nailed it.

Black Widow 

Astute observation from Dustin Curtis:

Outside of the direct value from its graph, Twitter is in an extremely unusual position for a social service. While it is ostensibly a sharing service, it is actually a broadcasting medium. People use Twitter more like they use TV; they follow accounts they are interested in, namely celebrities and companies, and then they consume the content as a form of entertainment. Normal people have very little incentive to use Twitter except to communicate unidirectionally with their interests. This is why it has been shown that the vast majority of Twitter users who sign up never tweet, even though a huge number of those people view their feed often.

Where by “TV”, he means traditional TV, where people watch what’s on right now, not the time-shifting or on-demand style of TV that many of us are now accustomed to. That’s why advertisers are so intrigued, perhaps — it brings back some control over not just what viewers see, but when they see it.

Samsung Store Opens in Sydney 

“Apple? Never heard of them.”

Why Tim Edwards Is Uninstalling Windows 8 

Speaking of Windows 8, this is a rather scathing review:

The email app is horrendous. It is the worst email client I have ever used. It’s a full-screen Metro abomination that hides or is missing basic and vital functionality (search, column sorting, filtering). It’s full-screen, but only shows a small sample of your messages — so the screen real-estate is massively wasted. If you have multiple email accounts, there’s no combined inbox view. It’s slow to check and sync your email — unless you force a manual refresh. And the first time you use it, you will struggle to find the ‘send email’ button. Pro-tip — it’s the (+) in the top right.

I’ve tried to remain skeptical of pessimistic Windows 8 reviews. Anything different is going to draw negative reviews. The iPhone was panned by many at first, and the iPad even more so. I’d be worried if reviews of Windows 8 were consistently in the “it’s pretty good” range. Microsoft needs it to be disruptive, and that’s going to turn some people off, even if it’s brilliant.

But Edwards’s review makes it sound incomplete. No search for email? That can’t be right, can it?

A few quick reactions:

  • The four-pane thing used to be the Windows logo; now it’s the logo for the whole company. Windows, Windows, Windows, Windows.
  • Very similar in color palette to Google, especially Chrome. Now, Microsoft has been using the (clockwise from top left) red-green-yellow-blue squares at least since Windows 3.1 back in 1992, so I’m not saying Microsoft is copying or following Google here. I’m just saying if you put this logo next to Chrome’s, it’s hard not to notice they’re pretty much the exact same colors.
  • The perfectly square corners (echoed throughout Metro) are very different from Apple’s roundrects everywhere ethos.
  • The logotype is set using Segoe, the same font the company uses for its advertising, packaging, and the Windows 8 system UI. Cf. my footnote last week speculating that Apple might use Myriad as the system font in Mac OS X (or even iOS?) — which speculation presupposes that Apple could work out a licensing deal with their good friends at Adobe, who I’m sure harbor no hard feelings over the whole “Thoughts on Flash” thing.