Mac Shmack. Dock Shmock. 11-24-09

As the rest of my blogs have likely made very clear, I am a fan of the products designed by Microsoft, especially the more recent, “shinier”, products. This continues with Windows 7’s new Taskbar.

First, let’s get something out of the way. It is as close to a rip-off of the Mac OS X dock as Microsoft could do without it being a one-to-one port of it. Part of me appreciate the gusto necessary to make that drastic of a design choice, going so far as using a feature of a competitor and acknowledging their good design decisions.

With that out of the way, I’d like to touch on the differences and what makes it such an expertly designed feature of Windows 7. The biggest difference is that it takes up less vertical space than the Dock’s default setting and the “background” is wallpaper unlike OS X’s “platform.” Also, by giving the user a set area to place icons gives a better idea of how much space he or she can use, as opposed to a smaller size that a user must discover its ability to stretch on his or her own.

From personal experience, a reason I have never been interested in switch to Mac from Windows has been the differences in UI design theory. However, with the Dock-like taskbar in 7, Microsoft may end up biting themselves in the butt. Windows 7 on a whole is a very Mac-like experience, where it is aesthetically appealing while also being fast and easy to use. With Apple being more and more aggressive with their pricing, Apple may be able to make in-roads to Windows users thanks to none other than Microsoft.

My DJ is Smarter Than Yours 11-24-09

Smart DJ is a feature in the 4.0 version of the Zune software for Windows. For iTunes or Last.FM users, it’s similar to the Genius playlists or the “Play Your Recommendations” playlists, respectively. It takes information of the user, in the case of Smart DJ by what the user asks for, and gathers songs together into a playlist of up to 100 songs.

The main differentiating point of Smart DJ versus Genius or Last.FM is how it takes advantage of the Zune Pass. You can tell a Smart DJ playlist to look for songs from your hard drive, the Zune Marketplace and your Hard Drive, or just the Zune Marketplace. The last two features are only possible for users of the Zune Pass. Combine it with the ability to tell the playlist to refresh and find new songs on a schedule of your choosing and you have a constantly changing list of songs based on an artist, album or song that you already enjoy and want to find more like it.

Were I working at Microsoft, there is definitely something I would change. There is no way to tell the Smart DJ to not grab certain artists/songs/albums. My guess is that the DJ feature is more limited than Microsoft lets on, where each artist only has a handful of other artists to take songs from. If that’s not the case, then I would love it even more if I could listen to my Lilly Allen playlist without it having to skip all of the Coldplay and The Fray selections that it throws at me.

Office 2010 11-24-09

Microsoft is on a beta kick these days. Last year, they made a beta version of the New Xbox Experience, the new update for the Xbox 360 that came out Fall 08, available to over 40,000 Xbox LIVE users. In January, they made a beta for Windows 7 available and followed it up with the Release Candidate in May. As of last week, the big MS has made a beta for their Office 2010 suite of software available. Here’s the kicker: all of these betas have been excellent, but I’ll talk about Office here because it’s the new hotness.

I’ll get the performance stuff out of the way first. It’s fast. The splash icon that pops up before the program does tells you what it’s doing now. You can even kill the program when it’s starting up from the splash icon in case you accidentally open the wrong program.

Visually, it’s a refinement of the 2007 suite of Office. The Ribbon menu system is still here, but it has been touched up a bit. It has even made its way into Outlook. So in short, if you hate the Ribbon, you’re still not going to like 2010, but I love the Ribbon.

For those that don’t know, the Ribbon was designed to fix a complaint that they had gotten from power users and noobs alike. Microsoft had received numerous requests for features for Office programs. The issue is that the vast majority of them were already there, but buried under menus. The Ribbon put all of the features of Office in tabbed horizontal “ribbons.” A testament to how good the Ribbon is that complaints for it stopped quite quickly after 2007 was released. It was that easy for people to get accustomed to.

So, to wind this back into 2010, all of the programs in 2010 use the Ribbon now, and they’ve made refinements to it. Instead of the Office logo gem in the top left corner of the screen, there’s a little button next to the Home tab that servers all of the same functions while being on the same horizontal plane. Also, they’ve been color-coded to remind the user as to which application they’re using.

E-Books and Their Readers – 11-18-09

I read an article on the New York Times’ website how smart phones such as the iPhone are becoming a popular e-book reader as opposed to dedicated devices such as the Kindle or the Nook. I understand the concept of it being a device that is always with you. However, I cannot think of situations where that convenience would actually be taken advantage of. An analysis of commuter statistics says that, as of July of 2008, around 75% of all commuters in the US drive alone. Without an extreme risk of personal harm, that means that potential readers would not be able to read on their way to work or school. If a person is reading at home, then a “device that’s always with you” begins to lose its value as it does not matter that you don’t want to take your e-reader with you everywhere because you won’t. I do understand the value in not buying another $250+ gadget, which is the only “pro” of a non-dedicated device. However, a dedicated e-reader usually is capable of holding a battery charge for weeks, as opposed to hours, and the size of the screen would allow the person to read more per “page.”

E-books as a general concept are interesting to me. It creates many opportunities for readers: potentially less time between final editing and release, a definite price value (which is an anomaly in digital distribution), and a sense of helping the environment with paperless books. Unfortunately, most older generations are so used to the idea of having a large book collection that it is unlikely for e-books to become popular until there is a generation that is conditioned to having most of their entertainment consist of bits versus atoms.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: The Story: The Blog: The Semicolon: The Dash 11-18-2009

Once again, I’m going to preface this by warning anyone who may be reading this that wants to play the story of CoD:MW2 that I will be talking about the story. I will try to not go more in-depth than is necessary for discussion, but be warned nonetheless.

Modern Warfare 2 has a story that is best described as interesting. It is by no means a great piece of fiction, interactive or otherwise, but players can see and appreciate its attempts to be more than the game equivalent of “popcorn flick.” It’s a globe-trotting experience with the amount of plausibility of an episode of 24, but like the Kiefer Sutherland show the overall story is enjoyable enough where it is difficult to care that the chance of everything happening in real life is slim.

Part of what makes the story so interesting to play is the way Call of Duty games always tell their stories: by putting the player into the shoes of multiple characters in different parts of the world. An element that Infinity Ward introduced to this style of story-telling with their last game, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, is the potential for your character to die. Unfortunately, this sort of storytelling makes it difficult, if not impossible, to gain any sort of attachment to the characters you embody.

An example of this is where you take control of Private Joseph Allen. You are hand-picked by a general to join a CIA task force to infiltrate the ranks of a Russian dictator. You are warned that in your mission, you may lose part of yourself. As Allen, your first experience in this situation is working with the dictator in the massacre of the population of an airport. If you watch any of the 24-hour news channels, you have probably seen a news story about this level. What those stories probably never mentioned is that, as the player, you can actually choose to either skip that entire scene as a playable mission or, if you choose to play it, you can choose to not participate in the slaughter. You are not allowed to attack any of the terrorists, so you are still forced to watch the civilians get killed. On the surface, this is a powerful story-telling tool. In practice, it feels sort of empty as it seems that Infinity Ward tried to push the envelope, so to speak, without pushing it very far. They could have had one of the terrorists force the player to shoot a civilian, or do something. Also, any distress the player may have felt over participating in this is made void by the dictator killing Allen at the end of the mission, which somehow triggers the Russia vs. US war that most of the game focuses on.

Modern Warfare 2 shows both the potential for what can be done with first-person interactive stories, but also the hindrances of trying to do so while also making a product that sells over 4 million copies on its first day of release in the US and UK.

Choices, choices… - 11-9-2009

I just want to preface this real quick and say that I’m going to describe story elements of this game in the following blog post so be warned.

Click to enlarge

I’ve been playing the new game Dragon Age: Origins over the weekend and I had to talk about it. Beyond being a fun game, it has changed the status-quo of moral choices in video games. For those who don’t know, moral choices in games usually boil down to a super-evil choice or a super-good choice, exemplified in the above Penny-Arcade comic. In Dragon Age, the choices are vaguer, grayer if you will. For example, there’s a choice where a child is possessed and there are two ways to save him: kill the child or sacrifice his mother to enter the child’s psyche and destroy the demon possessing him. There is no specific good or evil choice in that situation. Someone will die either way and you have to choose who it is. Later in the game, I had to choose who I would put forward to be the next ruler of the game’s country. My two choices were the previous queen, Anora, the daughter of one of your enemies and someone you have only briefly met at that point in the game, or one of your teammates, Allistair, who you have been fighting alongside since the beginning of the game, the bastard-child of the second-to-last king but a man who does not want to be King. You have to choose between someone with experience you can’t necessarily trust or someone you trust who has no experience nor desire to rule.


Choices would have no impact if they did not have a consequence. In the first example, I chose to sacrifice the mother and had to explain to the father what happened to his wife and listen to the child wonder what happened to his mother and despair over the knowledge that he will not know for a while. In the case of the ruler-situation, I had chosen to spare Anora’s father, Loghain, which caused Allistair to accept the throne so that he could order the execution of Loghain for crimes he committed earlier in the game. I resisted that decision and ended up supporting the Anora to prevent Loghain’s death. Allistair decided that he would leave then, and Anora stated her intent to have Allistair killed so he could not start a rebellion to claim the throne with his royal blood. I did not want him to die so I called in the favor that Anora owed me to save him. This game has had decisions to make that I have had to stop and seriously consider and then feel guilt over the hurt feelings of my computer.

With all of this consideration on guilt I was curious if there were any known physiological causes or activators for guilt. On the Wikipedia Article for guilt, I found that “Guilt is founded on our empathy system and mirror neurons.” To paraphrase the article, mirror neurons are parts of our brain put us in other’s shoes, especially when what the other person does is caused or started by a decision or action that we have made or done. It is a high mark for the quality of the voice acting and character animation in Dragon Age to make me consider the feelings of a decidedly fake being.

...And I'm a PC - 11/4/2009

With the launch of Microsoft’s Windows 7 Operating system, Apple has launched a new series of ads meant to discourage Windows users from upgrading to 7 and instead become Mac users. My gut reaction to these commercials is that they’re petty and have an air of panic about them on Apple’s part. Apple had a field day with Windows Vista, and their ads did a lot to keep public opinion on Vista decidedly negative. Focusing on being number one in customer satisfaction seems odd as well. According to research firm IDC, the market share for Mac computers is at 9.4% in the United States. In that situation, using a population-based fact like customer satisfaction is not the best idea. For example, on one the WrestlingFigs message board, a post that I read mentioned how an eBay seller was reputable because they had a 100% feedback rating. The problem is that the vendor had only done 7 deals. It is very easy to have high positive ratings when your sample base is smaller than competitors.

To be a better conversion ad, it may be a better idea to have PC go through and mention features that are new in Windows 7 that have direct corollaries that Mac OS had first. For instance, the new taskbar displays a list of an application icons that users can start them from, much like the Mac dock.

Mac OS X Dock

And the Windows 7 taskbar; Why is Apple not attacking this similarity?

Apple could even word it in such a way like, "You like the copy, why don't you move up to the real deal?"