There’s a huge misconception about minimalism, and it’s in regards of graphical minimalism and workflow minimalism. Whether you’re on a PC or a Mac, one of the most popular trends of the ’00s has been that of adopting a minimal and simple approach to computing. As the trend went by and people even wrote books and essays about it, the original purpose of the whole concept slowly faded away, leaving place to users who only care about making their computers minimal and simple to their eyes. Yet the original purpose is still there, and I want to focus on that.
Posts in stories
Doing Less with More - A Maximalist Workflow
Virgin America Rejects Flash. “HTML Is Good Enough”
“Start-up airline Virgin America has decided HTML is “good enough” for animating online content on its brand-new website, which went live Monday, dumping Flash.
Chief information officer (CTO) Ravi Simhambhatla told The Reg: “I don’t want to cater to one hardware or one software platform one way to another, and Flash eliminates iPhone users. This year is going to be the year of the mobile [for Virgin].”
See? It’s that easy.
html5media Enables The HTML5 Video Tag In All Major Browsers
Earlier today I posted a tweet regarding this new project I found on Google Code, html5media. With only two lines of code in the <head> of your webpage html5media allows you to use the <video> tag in almost every browser by simply calling two .js files.
From the wiki page:
“The html5media script scans your page for video tags, and checks whether your browser is capable of playing the files they contain using a HTML5 media player. If the browser can play the contents of the video tags, then the script does nothing.
If your browser does not support HTML5 video, then the offending video tags are dynamically replaced with a Flowplayer instance, providing the same functionality as the original video tag.”
This makes me think how ridiculous is the debate on keeping the current Flash alive. There’s something better out there, even for you porn aficionados.
Relative Performance of Rich Media Content Across Browsers and Operating Systems
“Flash does not necessarily perform worse on Mac as opposed to PC.
All rich media content, including that created with JavaScript / HTML 5 content show (sometimes widely) varying levels of performance across browsers and operating systems.”
Still, it performs crap.
Secrets of the Apple A4 Chip: The iPad as Wii
“In the end, I keep coming back to the idea that Apple has stayed quiet about the A4 because any real magic or “wow factor” that the iPad delivers will come from the software—the efficiency of the OS, the user interface design of the OS and apps, and the snappiness of the overall experience all come from the software team.
Perhaps an even better analogue for the iPad is Nintendo’s Wii, which is another product that relies for its success not on its processor, but on its novel interface and broadly accessible software.”
Couldn’t agree more. But there’s one thing in the iPad / Wii analogy that Stokes doesn’t consider - 3rd party developers relations. Just think of a “Nintendo App Store-only” Wii. Now you get the idea.
Shawn Blanc on the iPhone’s Missing Feed Reader
“I don’t want another iPhone feed reader, I want a better one. Because apps like Tweetie, Twitteriffic, Birdhouse, and Birdfeed are all outstanding Twitter clients — each one is clever, polished, and fun. And who says feed reading can’t be as enjoyable as tweeting?”
An Interview with Yours Truly Over at MacMyLife
Both in English and German.
On the iPad’s Self-Sufficiency
I read many posts about the iPad being a replacement for desktop computers, the device that’s aimed at changing your computing life. This is partially untrue.
There’s a big difference between replacing desktop computers and changing the computing scene forever. The iPad won’t replace desktop computers as it is now, and you know why? Because it just can’t. The iPad isn’t a self-sufficient device, it’s not independent of iTunes, it can’t manage itself on its own. As long as you can install every application and purchase every song from iTunes on your iPad (like you’d like to do so), you can’t - say - install software updates using just the device. And even in the best situation where you actually buy every single song to build your music library, I don’t think that situation is statistically accepted as “common”. Same applies for contacts, photos and, especially, movies. You need a computer to move that stuff into the iPad, period.
Now the question is, if the iPad can’t replace a desktop computer just because it needs one to fully work, how can Apple even think to revolutionize the computing world? Because it’s a start. I personally don’t think I’ll ever ditch my MacBook and replace it with an iPad, but I’m sure a lot of people will - and today is the start of this process. The iPad we currently know is the first iteration of a (hopefully) series of products that will slowly evolve over time, just as internet connections will grow in speed and reliability. The day you’ll be able to a) download an entire movie or software update from iTunes and b) have that download finished in an acceptable time, that’s when things will change. It’s not now, it won’t happen next year - nobody knows when that’s gonna happen.
You can’t think of the iPad as a full desktop replacement now, even for the less skilled user who just needs Safari and Mail to work, because that user needs the cable to make his device work.
The iPad is not a replacement for desktop computers, but it will be someday. And until that day, keep syncing.
Organizing Files: The Librarian Syndrome
But the more important conclusion is less obvious, which is that nearly everyone can benefit from the use of software that doesn’t require explicit file system management at all.
Instead of putting music files into a folder, all you had to do was put it into iTunes. Once you’ve added a song to iTunes you no longer need to worry about where it actually is in the file system
To argue that users should embrace manual file system management for every bit of data they wish to store is to argue against human nature.
This is not an argument that all software should abstract the file system by using the library paradigm, but just that more software should.
- John Gruber, The Untitled Document Syndrome -
It wasn’t long time ago, though I can’t remember very well. I’m talking about the day I realized I needed a better solution to store all my documents, as the Finder simply couldn’t do that anymore. Maybe it was some months ago, back in September / October, when I made up my mind and decided to give Yojimbo a second, in-depth spin. I fell in love with it, much like I did with Things from CulturedCode the second time I tested it. Guess there’s a second time for everything, right?
Problem is, I couldn’t use a hierarchical folder system anymore. With hundreds of documents to manage (be them .pdf files, spreadsheets, reports, casual but still important notes) and new pieces of text each day, the situation became unmanageable and yeah, Finder was slow and cluttered. So I started using Yojimbo which allowed me to enter any kind of information both manually and in other ways like the Quick Panel or the Drop Dock. Be sure to read my previous post about if you missed it. I still have Yojimbo in my dock, if you ask.
A few weeks ago I discovered and wrote about a new app, iDocument, which wants to be the ultimate solution for storing and retrieving documents on Mac OS X. iDocument lets you import documents, tag them, organize them in folders and smart collections.
If you work with your Mac, you need a powerful centralized solution to sort and archive files. In this post I and Cody will take a look at 4 different systems (Finder, Yojimbo, iDocument, Leap) and discuss how they actually work, in which cases. We’ll surely miss a lot of apps, but we wanted to focus on those we know and use on a regular base.
Enjoy.