I recently came across a post by Alan Snorkin which claims there are three types of people in software: computer scientists, programmers and developers. It’s pretty short and worth a read.

On the face of it the post seemed insightful. I could see myself as fitting best into the programmer category. But I fail to see the point of  this kind of restrictive pigeonholing. It may appeal to recruiters and managers who percieve it makes their job easier – but beyond that it’s largely counterproductive.

The article exemplifies an observed insudtry-wide lack of enthusiasm for software architecture and engineering. It’s a wonder the author can stand upright, with his knees jerking like that. I responded, paraphrased here.

Remember that software engineering is the most immature of all engineering disciplines. We’ve been building bridges and buildings for centuries – chemical and electrical systems to a lesser extent. But modern software development has only existed for about 30 years.

Add to that the much higher growth rate in software relative to other engineered industries, and you start to understand the lack of widespread adoption of engineering in software. Software engineering is still evolving as new systems come along such as the Internet, distributed systems, cloud computing, social networking etc. Many programmers, developers, project managers, etc. will hesitate to adopt a certain architecture or expend resources to engineer a system when there is a very real possibility that all their work will be out of date in 2 years as something better has come along or the industry has moved on.

So why then is rigorous architecture so ingrained in other industries such as mechanical, electrical and civil engineering? It’s a necessity. Without engineering, projects fall apart. There are no real consequences if your toy Web 2.0 app falls apart – maybe some commercial losses. But what if your un-engineered application was a control system for a nuclear reactor? A building, a bridge, or a train signalling system? Ouch.

I’ve done a bit of research into Facebook’s architecture. There are some brilliant videos and their engineering notes blog which describe it in detail, especially their focus on scalability. Services such as Google and Facebook could not meet their load demands without a scalable architecture. This kind of architecture will not “evolve” out of a consensus – it has to be designed.

The attitude of “Architecture is not used, therefore it’s not needed” is counterproductive and will only serve to reinforce the already observed industry-wide skepticism about engineering in software.

What’s missing from the original post is the acknowledgement that people can fit into one of the three categories but still be bad at what they do. Not all programmers “write awesome code”. Not all computer scientists “have 31337 math skills”. Not all developers have awesome people skills.

I have experienced first hand the need for consistency in system design in programming, but the principle also applies to IT support. In projects without the discipline of clean, modularised architecture, programmers will often revert to worst practices. If they have the time, they might do some refactoring but in reality, in high pressure environments with looming deadlines and no architecture enforced by management, programmers will be expected to achieve their task as quickly as possible – and this is often at the expense of code quality and thorough testing.

“Part of Apple’s success came from popular antipathy to Microsoft because it was so successful … Jobs cleverly made Apple’s journey, like his own, into a countercultural success story, playing off the Goliath that was Microsoft. But this year Apple’s market value surpassed Microsoft’s, making it the most valuable technology firm in the world … It seems Jobs is finding himself hoist on his own petard. Too successful in a capitalist sense, at a time and to a new generation for whom success is suspect.”

Devine also explores Jobs’ take on freedom, as exemplified in his recent email exchange with Gawker’s Ryan Tate:

”If Dylan was 20 today how would he feel about your company? Would he think iPad had the faintest thing to do with revolution? Revolutions are about freedom,” Tate wrote.

Jobs replied: ”Yes, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom.”

Well, finally, something Eric Schmidt and Jobs can agree on. We all deserve to be free from porn. This brings me back to the title of this post, which I have stolen from Devine’s article and have to include again because it’s just so damn insightful.

Too much freedom can be a tyranny of its own.

This applies not only to the incredibly important world of smartphones. It can also be seen in less important matters such as western society’s tyrranical attitude to implementing counter terrorism.

We seem to be fine with outsourcing the “filtering out of bad stuff” to any dictatorship who is willing to take on the task. In effect, we are happy to trade in our freedom to experience the bad along with the good, in return for being freed of the inconvenience of deciding which is which.

We are now getting to the crux of the Android vs. Apple dilemma. As observed by Craig Simms from CNET (my emphasis):

“The separate approaches of Google and Apple are interesting. Apple’s ridiculous level of control, strange regulations and amazingly closed system have severely limited what its platform can do, but has resulted in a much more polished, complete and integrated operating system. Most apps will actually work when you download them. It’s both its biggest strength and weakness.

Google’s openness and flexibility is equally its biggest strength and weakness: it allows considerably more capability than the iPhone, but to the detriment of platform stability and a more polished experience. We’ve lost count of the amount of apps that simply don’t work and need to be force closed.”

It’s also worth pointing out that Android’s openness for allowing almost any app onto the Android Market raises the possibility of wallpaper apps that steal your personal data. This brings us right back to the terrorism allegory: trading in freedom for convenience.

What is convenience?

In the smartphone space, one of the most important conveniences to me is speed: freedom from wasted time. I’m not just talking about the processing power of a device, although that is a contributing factor. The question of device speed involves many more aspects of the whole smartphone package. They can all be encompassed in the broader question:

“How much of my time is wasted in achieving my objectives on this device?”

Assuming for the sake of argument that activities performed on my smartphone are not intrinsic time wasters, I’ve jotted down some areas for potential inefficiencies for both packages in approximate order of importance.

Android still has a long way to go before it has anywhere near the polish of iOS, despite all its faults.

The evidence seems to suggest that an iPhone 4 would be the most efficient solution at the moment. Can I really allow myself the luxury of indulging my own principles by rebelling against the Apple alliance? Not really.

Am I willing to accept Apple’s tyrannical dictatorship if it saves me some time and potential heartache?

The answer is Yes. Suck it up Orwell.

Download this package and run gditray.exe which will make all most of your Windows applications have sexy smooth fonts. The default setting is a bit “heavy” for my liking, so I scaled it back with the included gdixxTuner.exe.

For example, here is Word 2007 with ClearType

And the same screen with GDI++

Not much difference? Call me a pedant but it’s mostly about Arial. I really hate the way it looks on Windows at small sizes. I would love to see if anyone’s done any decent research into which is easier to read. Like when they said Serifs increase readability. Do they?

Why Choose Android?

Apple. I dunno they are so fucking evil lately. This is not the Google or Facebook “Oops! We’re idiots!” kind of evil. No, this is the Microsoft “Use us or die!” intentional monopoly kind of evil. Google probably also want a monopoly but they are a bit nicer about it. Apple appear way more evil because they are shoving their monopoly in everyone’s face, just like Microsoft did in the 90s. But I will defer the Who is Eviler? discussion for a future post.

Antenna. Real or not, the issues with the iPhone 4′s antenna are scary. I won’t choose a phone that might work some of the time. I am not enough of an Apple fanboy to accept poor reception or a $30 bumper because Apple’s shininess outweighs a serious design flaw. I am only interested in products that JustWork™. I’m sure the problems have been blown way out of proportion by the media. The software miscalculation excuse seems plausible; it would be a classic Apple thing to do: make their phones appear to get better reception to upstage competitors. If they have been doing this, they should pay. My theory on why Apple didn’t pick it up in testing? All the iPhone 4s sent out into the field were housed in stealthy plastic cases to disguise them as 3GS which also insulated the user’s hands from the antenna. Even if this issue is resolved completely, I cannot forgive Apple censoring discussion boards on the topic. See above image.

Development. The Android SDK is written in Java which is my strongest language. Basically I would have to do less work to break into App development on this platform, so would tend towards the path of least resistance. In comparison, the learning curve on Apple’s iOS would be steeply prohibitive for an endeavour that’s just an experiment, and not my day job.

Android is just way more open. Anyone can develop. I can download and install apps without going through the marketplace. This also removes the potential risk of developing for Apple’s platform only to have them reject your app on submission, or worse, at a random time in the future because they suddenly decide they don’t like it. In contrast, Google appears to value making developers’ lives easier, instead of forcing them into a corner. This is a smart move. It makes their SDK more accessible. This will let people with really good ideas but limited programming skills into the market, which is a good thing. I also totally respect the Google for opening up a public issue tracker for the OS. Where is Apple’s equivalent? Forums? Hardly organised enough to be useful.

Multitasking. iOS 4 lacks multitasking polish. Users are reporting frustration when swiping through a billion apps in the 1×4 real estate of the switcher (see image). What is the point of this bloody switcher anyway? It’s completely redundant. Apps which support multitasking should just be backgrounded instead of closed when Home is pressed. Then you have regular app screens, folders etc. to switch between apps. As users learn where their apps are, this will be instinctively quick compared to the random placement of apps in the switcher.

Services. I use more Google services than Apple services (Gmail, Reader, News, Talk, Docs, Code, Calendar). I would expect a Google OS to have better native support for its own services than an Apple OS. Currently, there is no native support for Google Docs, but that will come. However, Google have been polishing their mobile web offerings so may not spend as much time on their apps. We’ll see.

Phones. In phone land, six months is a long time. Now we are starting to see Android phones that Don’tTotallySuck™. See Samsung Galaxy S and a promising review by GSMArena. We’re also seeing innovations like Swype, which is basically “drawing between the letters” without lifting your finger (see image). In my opinion though, all mobile typing has gone speedily downhill since the efficiency of T9 predictive text. Qwerty has no place on devices this small.

The Verdict? iOS has pleased me as a user, but I’m over just being a user. I’m sick of submitting feedback which is dismissed by egotistical app developers because 100,000 idiots bought their app and gave it a positive review after first use. On Android I could just write my own damn apps.

Why Choose iPhone 4?

Accustomed. I am quite used to using an iPhone. When it’s not being slow as hell it is really fun and intuitive to use for most things. I would have to learn a new OS and it might not be as good as I’m used to. On the other hand, a new OS may not have many of the iOS annoyances, e.g. Safari purging background “tabs” from memory then reloading when refocused and losing my place in a LONG list of articles I was sifting through.

Hardware. The iPhone hardware looks sexyawesome (putting aside antenna issues). I guess the ideal device would be an iPhone 4 running Android but that’s a long way off. I still reserve judgment until I see this device.

Maturity. Android is quite immature in some respects (e.g. no proxy settings for WiFi connections). But these may not effect me so more research is needed before I can say “Android does 90% of what iOS can do” or whatever. It’s interesting to observe a power distribution in the graph of open Android issues, with respect to perceived importance by the community.

Note: “Number of Stars” above reflects how many users “care about” each issue. There over 5000 open issues but in a power distribution only the first few are interesting.

This graph illustrates two things:

• There are a few issues which many people care about
  
• There are many issues which only a few people care about
  

Sync. iTunes syncs everything beautifully, and I might miss this convenience and security. It warms my heart to know that if my phone dies because I dropped it while texting on the loo, I have a backup and won’t have to waste time setting the whole phone up again. It syncs, in order of importance:

• Settings (all customisations, esp. WiFi networks and mail accounts)
• Google Contacts (very handy but have noticed some duplication)
• All my apps and their settings
• My iTunes music library which is highly organised (not)
• Browser bookmarks
• Calendars (don’t really use)
• Photos (could live without sync)

Android syncs all the Google stuff out of the box (except Docs) but it’s up to third party vendors to provide their own apps for the rest. There are apps to sync iTunes with Android phones, which is nice. But what about the settings and other crap? A quick Google suggests “rooting” the phone and installing custom firmware is the current solution. Blegh.

What Android needs is universal (works on any Android device) automatic back up to “The Cloud” (FTP, dropbox, etc.). I would imagine this working something like: first take an initial snapshot of the phone state and store on cloud, then each time a user changes a setting, downloads a file, or takes a photo etc. add metadata for this “delta” to a local queue of “stuff that’s changed on my phone”. Then when the phone is idle, gradually push this queue up to the cloud backup service. But WAIT until I’m not browsing the web or streaming audio thankyouverymuch. And you can save large queue items like video for when I’m on WiFi. I can has. Someone write this and I’ll switch to Android today.

Music. It’s a really great iPod. I am not so sure about other Android phones. But the Samsung Galaxy S music player seems pretty good, and audio quality gets a big thumbs up. It also comes with ear sunctiony headphones out of the box, which is a step up from Apple’s default earphones which are only good for trussing your roast chicken.

Apps. I might miss some iPhone apps. Also, I feel like I’d be losing an investment on bought apps. But rather than trust my vague feeling I have collated a categorised breakdown of my frivolous app spending.

It’s also worth considering the free iPhone apps I use frequently and would miss dearly. More broadly, this could make Android the phone equivalent of Linux in that I have to do work to hunt down and install the things I want, rather than just have them. Thanks AppBrain for making this easy.

	iPhone	Android	Comments
	IMDB	Free Official	Looks good.
	Tram Tracker	Free 3rd Party	Impressive that a 3rd party would write this.
	Last.fm	Free Official	The iPhone app still streams radio despite them making it not free via the desktop client. I wonder if the Android app is the same.
	Scrobbled	Free 3rd Party	Jailbreak app, submits every track played in iPod to Last.fm. Android version dependent on support for specific music player app.
	Flickr	Nothing	The free official iPhone app is very basic so I bought Mobile Fotos which I only use when I’m really bored. I wouldn’t use their mobile web offering.
	iTunes Remote	$4.99 3rd Party	Don’t use enough to pay.
	IceTV	Web Official	Acceptable if it remembers my login
	Wikipanion	Web Official	Any Wikipedia app needs bookmarks and font size control and I’m sold.
	Facebook	Free Official	Looks like garbage compared to the iPhone version.

The verdict? If a suitably polished Android phone came along, I probably wouldn’t miss the iPhone. As I rant on in Part 2 Android’s openness would go a long way.

Continued in Part 2

Go to the site you RSS junkies. Look at the new theme – it’s Twenty Ten the default theme and I was relieved to find a minimalist theme which can showcase WP 3.0′s new features. Read my lame tagline at the top of the page and check out the new footer widgets. Nom.

Setting up simonw.org slowly. I will be migrating all posts which “make me seem like a smart and/or creative programmer and/or geek”. So will probably abandon ye olde Frost Nova once that is done. Will still keep it live for posterity (wow, I just googled that word and it turns out I didn’t pull it out of my arse).

No… I’m not that easily impressed.

Anyone with even a slight interest in the evolution of the power and utility of web apps has a duty to check out ANZ MoneyManager.

On the alert front, it provides a much better offering:

• Net worth change (% or $)
• Deposit exceeds $ threshold
• Withdrawal exceeds $ threshold
• Balance falls below $ threshold (Win!)

I used to be a major tight arse until I realised it was just making me a major bastard. Now, I still like to know exactly what’s happening with my money. Not out of tight-arsedness, but more out of my innate desire to optimise everything in my life… And to prove wrong the stereotype that Gen Y are hopeless at managing their finances. I’ve never understood this generalisation as I am personally petrified of debt.

So these next two features of MoneyManager are worth their own bolded paragraphs.

You can pull transaction history from most bank accounts – even if you’re not with ANZ.

You can categorise every single transaction automatically using filters.

• Filter on transaction text
• Filter on amount (with error margins)
• Add/edit categories
• Nested categories (max 5)
• Manually classify transactions
• Classify both income and expenses
• CHARTS! OMG the charts.
• Budget stuff (haven’t used yet)

The filtering defaults are crap, e.g. my rent was categorised as “Home Improvement” and CityLink was “Postage and Shipping” – WTF? Creating rules is slightly tedious but fun for the control freaks. The only thing it’s missing is a “filter transactions like this” option.

I will definitely be playing with this for the next few weeks.

Above is a graphic showing the menu bar that CS4 uses when maximised. Imagine this spanning the entire top edge of your screen (graphic is cut-down for brevity). Adobe’s design ignores built-in Windows standards, opting to use their own chrome to draw the windows, and thus reinventing the wheel. This alone would not imply failure, but Adobe’s replacement GUI has several consequences for usability, which can be better appreciated after a crash course in Fitt’s Law.

Fitt’s Law is a well-studied and accurate model which is considered fundamental to interface design, with applications extending well beyond GUIs (think TV remotes, light switches). In the context of a user moving a mouse cursor, it states that “the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the distance to, and size of the target”. This seems like common sense, right? Bigger buttons are easier to click. Yet I continue to be amazed at the number of websites and apps which use minuscule buttons and GUI elements. There are a some notable exceptions,  such as Microsoft Office 2007/2010 with its chunky ribbon buttons; and Vimeo, which also uses large GUI elements.

Fitt’s Law has a couple of important implications which have influenced GUI designs in popular operating systems.  It’s used so effectively that we take for granted the added usability afforded by its application. It’s not until a dismal interface like CS4 comes along that we appreciate how much we depend on Fitt’s Law.

Edges

The edges of your screen are considered to have infinite size in their orthogonal direction. That is, you can shove your mouse to an edge very quickly and it effectively eliminates the vertical targeting dimension. It’s critical that edges are accessible at the outermost pixel (this is a common reason for edge implementation failure). Some examples of well-known GUIs which successfully exploit screen edges are:

• Windows Taskbar on bottom edge
• Windows minimise and restore buttons on top edge (maximised windows)
• Mac OS menu bar on top edge
• Mac OS dock on bottom edge (or sides)
• Tabs in Google Chrome for Windows on top edge (maximised windows)

Corners

The corners of your screen are considered to have infinite size in BOTH directions. Corners are the holy grail of targeting. This has led to the following innovations:

• Windows Start Menu is in the bottom left
• Windows close button in top right (maximised widows)
• Windows application menu in top left
• Windows 7 desktop toggle in bottom right
• Mac OS Apple menu in the top left
• Mac OS spotlight icon in top right

Adobe Epic Fail

Let’s revisit that menu bar. I’ve added approximate targeting overlays to illustrate how CS4 fails the edge and cornering implementation. Adobe’s complete disregard for Fitt’s Law was an irreconcilable deal breaker for me. For example:

• You can’t access any menus or the minimize/restore  buttons using the top edge of the screen.
• You can’t access the close button using the top right corner pixel.
• You can’t double click the top edge of the title bar to restore the window (there is no title bar!).
• You can’t access the application menu using the top left pixel.

There are a few other failings not directly related to Fitt’s law, but still fairly epic (via Adobe forum).

• In Windows 7 it does not support “throw” gestures for window tiling due to custom chrome.
• In Windows 7 it does not support document window grouping and JumpLists due to non-standard implementation of document windows.
• It does not change appearance of title bar to indicate application is focused.
• Maximising a document window (inside the main app window) puts  itself on top of the application window, obscuring access to the application window’s tools and commands.

The ultimate irony is that this is meant to be a suite of applications FOR DESIGNERS. I just don’t get it. So I’m back on trusty old Dreamweaver 8 for now.

Oh and here’s some fascinating related reading which any web or app designer should print out or memorise:  Microsoft Windows User Experience Guideline Violations.

OK, so this is pretty old news but I hadn’t really noticed until recently as they don’t show a link for all documents. But why is this so awesome? PDF is a rich format that offers many features not really relevant to web search. Most often searchers are just looking for some information, like MSY’s latest price on that Hot New Intel CPU.

But this only affects search results. But you can install a Greasemonkey script which opens all links to PDF, PPT and DOC files using the Google Docs Viewer. We’ve had online apps for a while, but I consider Google’s  step of opening up the GDocs Viewer to be THE official singularity, or “beginning of the end” for the humble desktop application. After this, there is no turning back. And I for one, want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Or as a friend of mine once said “Firefox + Internet = Operating System”.

That said, one feature that needs improvement is searching within documents. This is only enabled for some documents, presumably the one Google has had time to index the metadata or OCR. And search hits are only highlighted with no feature of iterating through them.

http://userstyles.org/styles/20377