ɔimoɈɒ

Intuit recently issued an update for QuickBooks which, due to some fuckedupness deletes the entire desktop folder. That’s pretty serious shit right there.

RixStep, the whiner of the week, was caught by this bug but blames Apple. I’m not sure how “unsafe” code written by Intuit really qualifies as being Apple’s fault considering that the Intuit developers must, at some point, have tested their code on a Mac OS X system. Sure – there are bound to be bugs in Mac OS X – every system has them – but this is what testing is for. We can all justify the release of unsafe code but deleting the entire desktop folder? Not acceptable. I’ve seen this kind of problem before, in the olden days when Bungie was an independent company they released Myth 2 which had the possibility of wiping out large amounts of your Windows install. Eep. Bungie released a fix pronto and said sorry.

Rixstep, however, points the finger at Apple and not at Intuit. Oddly.

His reasons:

Steve Jobs came back to Cupertino triumphant. Not only did he get to finally run his own company but he came with the world’s most fantastic system in his suitcase. A system the Grade A Idiots already ensconced in Cupertino have done their best to destroy.

Did anyone else miss the NeXT takeover of Apple in 1997?

The greybeards at Apple responsible for the bugs that he complains about are actually NeXT greybeards. It’s nothing to do with KoolAid. It’s nothing to do with Apple’s head honchos and their file system APIs. It’s absolutely 100% to do with the “world’s most fantastic system”. Where do people get this kind of hyperbole? That a CEO waltzes in with an entire management team and a new operatiing system in return for $400 million. And it’s still the fault of the OLD guys at Apple when there’s a bug and a problem? Catch a grip. Apple is NeXT. The same fusty old NeXTies who built the world’s most fantastic system are the same fusty old buggers making Mac OS X. Blaming it on a nebulous “Apple” is just fairy tales designed to help you sleep at night. You seriously think there are areas of Mac OS X that Jobs doesn’t make his presence felt at? Do yu think for a second that once this bug affected Mac users that there wasn’t a high level meeting to find someone to go and explain how it was Intuit’s fault? At risk of certain death from their Steve Vader leader?

The solution is, of course, is that if you don’t like it go back to using OpenStep.

Unless of course it wasn’t actually the world’s most fantastic system….to be honest, the post reads like the inane ranting of a stalker.

The Rixstep blog spends most of it’s time complaining about Mac OS X. But mostly it’s a damn good read. It would be nice to see a post about why, if Mac OS X is so broken, Rixstep’s writers continue to use it.

Rxstep takes issue with lackingareas of Mac OS X. The lack of an Advanced button and the lack of supported GUI theming.

OS X has no advanced button. There’s no way for professionals – for developers and admins – to get beyond the confines of the tilded user home area and see what’s really going on in the file system or the network using tools available from Apple.

Professionals assigned OS X have no recourse except to take to the command line – and this with a company renowned (infamous) for how it’s eschewed the command line all these years.

The problem here is the definition of “Advanced”. Are we talking about the mythical pwer user? Mac Professionals? Mac OS X SysAdmins? Seasoned UNIX Hackers? Fusty old NeXTStep types? How do you even begin to cater for all of these groups?

You do what Apple did. You create an interface that is simple, subtle and shallow for the 80% of users and for the remaining 20% you expose the command line and create kick ass developer tools. My frustration with Windows is that the GUI tools are simply stupid with windows that cannot be resized in table view dialogs and theres no obvious way to expose that information in the command line (like I’m going to relearn DOS in 2007!) My frustration with Linux is that it’s engineered piecemeal and feels disconnected – one minute I’m safe in GUI-land and the next minute I’m in advanced GUI designed by the developer who didn’t think to ask anyone if it looked like ass.

It’s obvious OS X users want the opportunity to customise the look and feel of their systems; not being permitted to do so ‘legally’ means they will resort to ‘illegal’ approaches. And history shows they’ll use these illegal approaches if that’s all that’s available.

It’s obvious to me, as someone who meets a lot of Mac users and Mac OS X installs, that theming is a 20% solution. The tools are there for people who want them. And the providers of these tools provide the warranty (i.e. nothing).

It’s frustrating enough trying to explain to someone who’s 70% blind how to do this or click that when the dock can be moved to three sides of the screen. If they could move the top menu as well it would be an absolute nightmare.

It’s not that I disagree with the sentiment. I just think there’s bigger fish to fry than “Advanced” buttons and themes. They need to work on the bugs, they need to fix security holes. Maybe theming will become important in 2037?

Apple is trying to be all things to all people. Whereas Linux GUI interfaces attempt to cater to small subsections of the population with the unhelpful suggestion that you can change the Window Manager to suit. That’s not a solution for anyone other than the 0.2% of the population which can be bothered. Similarly the Windows interface is designed for Windows users and the absolute horlicks they made with the almost simultaneous release of Office 2007 and Vista and the completely different UI paradigms for both. Ribbons? What’s that you say?

Apple’s approach is not going to please everyone but that’s why they ship the extra tools. It’s why the BSD subsystem is no longer optional. Previous to Mac OS X 10.0 shipping there was debate about whether Apple would ship the system with Terminal.app or whetherit would be a developer-only option. Apple is walking the fine line betwene providing a UI that my mum can use and providing a UI for the Alpha Geeks.

Sig writes about Business Process Software. This discussion came out of an alleged “Firestorm” about how enterprise software is “unsexy”. It’s not just about how business process software isn’t glamourous because the subjects in enterprise software only excite a small subsection of people (I’m sure there’s a niche for Business Process geeks). It’s about how business process software is awkward to use.

Cases in point:

• User Interface – user interface doesn’t have to look bad though sometimes you’d think it was a pre-requisite. Placement of items, text settings too small in any browser, an insistence on using modal pop-ups and, in general, anything designed solely with Win/IE5 in mind. A lot of people think that improved UI is just like adding a bit of AJAX eye candy here and there. But just like in anything, and as I have re-iterated time and time again to UI-challenged Linux advocates “eye candy that has no actual function is just eye candy.” every time they say that either Mac OS X has too much eye candy or that Linux can have just as much eye candy. They don’t get it now, they won’t get it tomorrow.
• UI Testing – would it be too much to expect that they test the user interface on someone who didn’t build it? Things I like in Web interfaces for example – make sure the tab key is set right so you can tab sequentially to the fields you need to use. A certain application I have to work with daily fails in this simple requirement miserably requiring a mix of mousing and keyboard in order to complete all of the fields – including those which must be completed before the task can be completed. Are your widgets and UI conventions set up with a beginner in mind? Would someone new to the application know what they are doing?
• Response time – having two progress bars seems pointless considering there’s only built into the browser. But when one progress bar completes and then the other one starts, you’re left with a feeling of frustration and doubly so when the task fails with some obscure SQL Server error and a developer-written excuse which basically says “Blame Microsoft”. Classy stuff. If your software is going to crap out, try and make it crap out near the start so users don’t get forty minutes into a report preparation using your arcane reports interface and then it fails (and no, you can’t hit back). This is one of the areas of Mac OS X that frustrates so much. People see the spinning pizza of death and assume the machine is locked up because it’s processing. It’s as much a fault with behaviour as with the system that most people don’t realise they can click to another app and continue working. The issue might be that humans are single-tasking, computers multi-task.

According to the article, Enterprise software falls in one of two categories

1. The Easily Repeatable Process (ERP)
   

   Processes that handles resources, from human (hiring, firing, payroll and more) to parts and products through supply chains, distribution and production. The IT systems go under catchy names like ERP, SCM, PLM, SRM, CRM and the biggest players are as we know SAP and Oracle plus a long roster of smaller firms.

2. The Barely Repeatable Process (BRP)
   

   anything that involves people in non-rigid flows through education, health, support, government, consulting or the daily unplanned issues that happens in every organisation. The activities that employees spend most of their time on every day. Processes that often starts with an e-mail or a call. A process volume, measured by time and resource spent at organisations, probably larger than for the Easily Repeatable Processes.

My day job consists of the BRP stuff. It’s mostly user requests, a small amount of which could be relegated to a bland FAQ or knowledgebase – though in terms of absolute productivity I believe a dedicated person is better at handling this than trying to rely on a rudimentary expert system or worse, a wiki.

I am, however, a big fan of automation. Anything to remove the “tedious” from the day is a good thing. I don’t want to be called about an alert regarding log files on some obscure server, I want the alert to kick off a housekeeping process. I understand there’s an element of trust in there but that has to be balanced with resource planning, you have to balance the cost of log file space with the costs of not having the logs available when you really need them.

Microsoft blogger

I will say that if you are impressed by the “touch features” in the iPhone, you’ll be blown away by what’s coming in Windows 7.

What are the things that spring to mind here?

1. Vista is being derided as a turkey and here we have a Microsoft blogger selling us the next version? How about you finish Vista SP1 before you try and shark more money out of honest people, you utter bastards.
2. Features in Apple’s current handheld first-generation product will be blown away by features in Microsoft’s unfinished shipping at some point around 2010 desktop/laptop operating system. Does anyone smell bullshit?
3. Microsoft have been selling touch-screen Windows for years and years and they’ve all been turkeys. They couldn’t even produce a good Mobile OS.
4. The last thing we heard about Microsoft’s “Surface Computing” was when they introduced a $10 000 coffee table to compete with the iPhone. That sank like a lead balloon though I’m sure they’ll sell four or five to a few Microsoft millionaires. Nothing like eating your own dogfood.

\spazdor\ how do you get a Cisco Certified Network Administrator off your porch?
\cnug\ …?
\spazdor\ pay for your pizza

Thanks to Conor for pointing it out.

For a while there it seemed everyone was a CCNA – at least it seemed that way while I was at the Tech teaching people how to become a CCNA!