Tech Paladin

Three days ago I decided to start carrying my usual assortment of belt gear on my left side instead of my right. It felt a little funny as soon as I put the belt on; my body had gotten so used to the two pouches’ presence on my right hip that I didn’t even notice them there, but they suddenly felt strange and heavy on my left. Throughout the day when I would want to go for something, or when someone would ask to borrow my flashlight or knife or screwdriver, I would find my hand going for where they used to be before “sure!” had even left my mouth. I’ve been wearing them on the right for about six years; it’s amazing how much unconscious muscle memory developed in that time built up that I’m going to have to actively overcome.

I feel I owe my readers (all three of you!) an explanation. The posting here really dropped off to nothing recently, but I want to change that. Here’s what happened before, and what I’m doing about it now:

For most of the life of this site, it was a regular old technology blog, with a particular focus on interface design and an obsession with all things Apple. Then about a year and a half ago, I got into guns. And that made me question my politics. And soon enough, Tech Paladin began to feel a lot more like Gun Paladin as the computer-related posts became scarcer among the emotional rants about how liberals were wrong about guns.

A few months later I moved those posts over to a secondary blog to keep my interests separate, but it became obvious which one I felt more momentary passion for; the gun & politics posts over there outnumbered the tech posts here by five to one or more. When I get involved in something new, it dominates my consciousness for a while, and guns were no exception.

But I wasn’t confident enough in my interest in guns to realize that most people really don’t find it that strange. Fearing that it would upset important people, I deleted that blog in a panic during that nerve-racking time between a promising job interview and the possibility of an offer (I got it and took it, and now I love it).

The gun mania has subsided greatly now that I own a couple and actually know how to shoot them well. And my foray into guns opened up whole new perspectives on things that I hadn’t ever really questioned my stances on before, like politics, economics, law, and philosophy.

And all the while, my passionate obsessions have been cooling to reasonable levels and I’ve been getting back into the tech stuff that so fascinated me. I’ve been finding myself wanting to write more and more about video games, net neutrality, intellectual property, and other meat-and-potatoes tech geek topics.

So I’ve decided to centralize here. On this site, you will soon be able to find tech rants, poetic waxings on my favorite video games, musings on constitutional law, treatises on interface design, explanations of shooting techniques, updates on my progress into UNIX-land, and a generally freedom-oriented Libertarian perspective on current events. I’m also going to start migrating over my older gun- and politics-related posts — or at least, the more coherent, less ranty ones. And maybe I’ll even post some Warhammer 40K stuff as well. If that sounds interesting, then welcome! If not, well, this is the internet, I’m sure you can find something to tickle your funny bone.

I died last night. Though traces of me still remain, and others will no doubt continue to address them as if I were still sentient, the shell that was once living is now very thoroughly dead. That’s right: I deactivated my Facebook account. The precise reason why requires a bit of history, so here goes:

In the beginning, Facebook differentiated itself from MySpace in a wide variety of ways; it restricted access to college students, it focused on communication with others rather than showing off yourself, it didn’t let you customize much about the structure of your profile, and it seemed mostly free of corporate meddling. It was these very things that accounted for its meteoric rise in popularity among people like me; college-bound, intellectual, internet-savvy, connected, and eager to meet people.

Something about Facebook felt classy and refined, while MySpace seemed brash and gaudy. Facebook was for the intellectuals; MySpace for football fans. If Facebook was college, then Myspace was high school, and symbolized everything those new college kids wanted to leave behind. That’s certainly a major part of why I joined; had the profile pages I looked at prior to joining been bedecked with tiled animated GIFs, green text on purple backgrounds, or began blaring gangsta rap, I would have stayed the hell away.

Facebook’s “vibe” was a classy one; you could declare your allegiance to Facebook with pride, all the while pooh-poohing the MySpace crowd you were glad you weren’t a part of.

Apple products are the same way, really. One of Apple’s most consistent success has been remaining cool and keeping its young hipster audience. Call them snobby and pretentious, but these people with their high discretionary incomes and wired, connected lifestyles are the folks marketers and advertisers go moist over. Facebook seemed like a goldmine because it was where these people had chosen to congregate online, and so in flowed the money in the ever-elusive quest to milk them for all they were worth.

And so naturally, soon that swanky hip vibe began to change. The problem with cultivating an arty intellectual wired subculture is of course that these people aren’t stupid; as soon as they sense they’re being taken for a ride and the me-toos appear, they hightail it outta there. In a series of stunning moves that seem designed to display that Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s pimply-faced CEO had no idea what made his site popular to begin with, Facebook morphed. First it was just little things, like the addition of photo albums. Suddenly, your profile became a whole lot more about you. The attention-seekers posted hundreds and thousands of pictures of themselves and their friends engaging in more or less mundane activities, which began the subtle shift away from a focus on external communication and towards self-oriented introversion.

Then came the mini-feed, which eliminated the necessity of going and seeking out information on your friends activities–an active, extroverted exercise. Instead, the information came flowing to you while you waited around–a passive, introverted one. Suddenly, you didn’t have to do any work to find out what was going on; you could just use your profile as a hub of information and wait while other people did things you could react to.

Little wonder people began to call it “Stalkbook.” This subtle focus shift attracted a new generation of users: the MySpace people. They liked showing off, displaying their exploits, habits, and gold teeth; in short, they liked ostentation as opposed to subtlety and class.¹

And then it just snowballed from there. Applications allowed you to post what countries you’d visited, what Hogwarts house you’d have been sorted into, how green your habits were, whether you were a pirate or a ninja, and even allowed you to care for virtual pets. All this further pushed Facebook’s focus onto you, and made your profile a sort of hub for online life. It was your own personal Yahoo or Google homepage.

Only, that’s not why I signed up. I don’t have a personal homepage with one of those services, and I don’t want one. I don’t particularly care about posting my pictures online for the world to see, nor am I especially interested in maintaining a carefully-crafted online avatar.

Basically, Facebook stopped being about networking, and started being about showing off. And that’s when I quit. So goodbye Facebook, and good luck. I wish you the best, Mark Zuckerberg, as you begin to realize that you’ve alienated your oldest and most passionate users, and hope you manage to get out while the getting’s good, because as soon as the hungry sharks you’ve partnered with realize that that juicy audience they were lured to has flown the coop, it’s you they’ll be eating alive.

1. I honestly don’t mean to sound too snobby or elitist here, but this difference is an important one because it’s true; most personal MySpace pages are garish messes of selfish me-me-me focused dribble. [↩]

My recent foray into wirelessville with the Apple Wireless Keyboard has made me appreciate the advantages its connection method offers, many of them unexpected.

Yesterday I was sick. I felt like lounging around watching movies, so I plopped down on the bad and swiveled my display around so I could see it from a reclining position. Presto! Instant TV! Apple includes some great software for just this eventuality–Front Row.

The problem is, I don’t have all my content in iTunes, which makes using Front Row difficult, and Apple goes out of its way to make getting unapproved movies and TV shows into it a real chore. So I picked up my keyboard–my wireless keyboard–and lay down and navigated my computer sans mouse until I found what I wanted and watched it. Sadly, my wired mouse was in an awkward enough position for me to abandon it since unplugging it to reroute the cord was just too much trouble at that moment.

While reclining and watching, I repositioned the keyboard several times. Eventually, I just set it down beside me so I could twist and turn unrestricted (being sick is no fun, by the way).

Now, this example may be a little weird, but it illustrates the freedom that wireless peripherals can give you. Had the keyboard been tethered, I probably would have tried to recline on my desk chair to little success, and not watched anything in the end. Because of the flexibility my keyboard offered me, I was better able to make my computer system conform to my (at-the-time somewhat unconventional) needs, rather than the other way around–the virtual holy grail of human-computer interaction.

It would have been even better had my mouse–the wondrous Razer Pro|Click mouse whose 7 buttons I use approximately 975,7821 times a day–were wireless. Alas, it is not, and I haven’t been able to find any decent 7-button wireless mice out there yet. The Logitech MX900 looks great, but it was discontinued in favor of a bizarre-looking thing with two scroll wheels. Yes, two scroll wheels. No, really.

In short, go wireless. You won’t regret it. In fact, you may start thinking up ways and justifications to cut the cords on your other devices too!

So I figured out how how to get the Apple Wireless Keyboard I wrote about earlier working in Windows. It turns out that there’s this checkbox that comes unchecked by default that you have to check off in order for it to pair correctly. The checkbox is labeled something like “allow Bluetooth devices to find this computer”. As soon as I checked that off, the pairing process completed successfully and I was able to use the keyboard fully.

Now, my burning question is this: What in God’s almighty antfarm possessed Microsoft to not only put in a checkbox upon which hinges the success of all Bluetooth-related functionality, but also which comes unchecked by default!?! I mean, I can see why you might want to have a “turn off Bluetooth” checkbox or button or whatnot, because keeping the Bluetooth antenna on costs battery power, and sometimes you need to conserve every last drop of it.

The infuriating checkbox present in Windows’ Bluetooth setup control panel affects no hardware, so it exists simply to stymie the efforts of Bluetooth device-owners! I mean, it’s as if there were a checkbox entitled “prevent keyboard from registering input” in the keyboard control panel that came checked! What possible reason would exist to justify such a self-mutilatory feature? None that I’m aware of, save to increase the salaries of doctors who specialize in the treatment of hair-tearing-related injuries.

So at least the keyboard functions. Now that that’s out of the way, I can talk about how well it works in Windows. Really, it’s not so bad. The keys depress and text even appears in response! Like in OS X, there’s zero input lag; not even when you first use it after a period of inactivity. Sadly, the F keys’ special features are unavailable, and there didn’t seem to be any Windows drivers for them. Since we all know Apple is capable of writing Windows software, would it kill them to write some of it for their newest keyboard? I think plenty of Windows users would enjoy this magnificent input device, and all they’re doing is closing themselves off from larger markets by doing so. I mean, the Airport Extreme Base Station includes Windows utilities for administering it, so what’s the justification for omitting the same for this product? Shame on them.

But there’s a final snag–one that I was so unprepared for that it made me chuckle in my shock and amusement. What’s coming next is the kind of background-information anecdote that’s sufficiently idiosyncratic as to make it perfectly obvious what it’s about to introduce, but here goes anyway:

I love the caps lock key. Yes, that’s right–the one key people go on mad crusades against and put up websites advocating a ban of their usage. No, I don’t find myself needing more capital letters than most, nor am I one of those freakazoids who rapidly toggles it on and off rather than using the shift key. No, since I was young, I’ve realized it was a fairly useless key–one that few would lament its hypothetical passing. I also realized something else: it had a light on it. And the light would turn on and off if you pressed it. And it would blink if you pressed the key both fast enough.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

You see, the caps lock is a stress reliever of sorts for me. I’ll just compulsively press it every once in a while a number of times equal to a power of two. Or six. Whichever I feel like. I’m not OCD, really!

Needless to say, Windows decided that my keyboard should cease to function when I press the caps lock key. I don’t really know what to say. All the other keys work, and perhaps this is some mysterious technology-based higher power trying to get me to mend my eccentric ways. Maybe it’s just rotten luck. All I can say is that the first time My Favorite Key is pressed, the keyboard loses all signal for 5 to 10 seconds. It’s endlessly frustrating since most of time time I’m unaware I’m even pressing the dreaded key until I realize no letters are forming on the screen!

I really hope I find out some way to bypass this almost laughable quirk, because that’s all it is–an unfortunate quirk adrift among the endless sea of Windows-related quirks with no practical solution that doesn’t involve installing third-party software that sticks itself in the System Tray as well as Windows Explorer’s context menu and announces its failures with garish dialog boxes that can’t leave the boundaries of their parent windows. Because that’s one thing I just can’t do.

In the meantime, I’ll put up with this oddity the way I put with all of Windows’ endless oddities–by telling myself the it’s worth it for the access to games. Oh, Windows, the glorified game console. At least I can use my new keyboard to play your games now. As long as I avoid the caps lock key, that is.

Apple’s new wireless keyboard has caused a lot of debate and chatter for being something as simple as a keyboard. Apple has never been a company to let a product stagnate, and the new Apple Wireless Keyboard is certainly boldly different from its predecessor. The old one was basically the standard wired keyboard sans USB ports and wire. It was just as big and allowed in just as much dust and grime as its tethered brother. The new one, on the other hand, is something else entirely:

First of all, it’s tiny! The entire keyboard is only about 25% deeper than that Apple remote sitting behind it. Type on it in other peoples’ presence and you’re bound to get “holy crap, is that a real keyboard?” at least a few times. This thing is a true marvel of design, and it’s got Apple’s aesthetic written all over it. Bright white keys jut out of an unblemished slab of aluminum and all possible extraneous lines are nowhere to be seen. Even the power light is somehow hidden when it’s off, disappearing into the aluminum frame. God only knows how they pulled that one off.

That aside, style is one of the least important aspects of an input device. This is a keyboard, after all, not a desktop sculpture! Though Apple might disagree, the keyboard is first and foremost a functional device, and without that functionality intact, it’s worthless.

Fortunately, the Apple Wireless Keyboard doesn’t disappoint; it’s just as wonderful to type on as it is to look at. Here’s why:

The keys

If you like laptop-style keys, you’ll most likely feel comfortable with the Apple Wireless Keyboard. In fact, you’ll probably love it if you’re a fan of the MacBook’s keys, since they’re pretty much lifted straight from the MacBook itself, right down to the flat square tops. The keys feel exceptionally firm and responsive, but not clickey or clackey–they’re almost silent, save the gentle tapping of your fingers as they contact the plastic. If you prefer desktop keyboards, especially the really firm old clicky ones, you’ll likely be disappointed, but then again, you’d probably be frustrated with pretty much all laptop keyboards.

The distance between the keys is identical to that of the MacBooks, and it feels perfect to me. There’s usually a period of adjustment to a new keyboard, but I was able to type quickly and accurately on the Apple Wireless Keyboard within minutes of using it. For about 20 minutes after that, I would occasionally type commas instead of periods, but that subsided soon. Overall, the keyboard is extremely pleasant to type on–it’s well-sized, quiet, and firm. Really, what’s not to like?

Some novel decisions

The Apple Wireless Keyboard is not your average desktop-keyboard-with-the-wire-cut. It has no numeric keypad. And no dedicated back-delete, page up, page down, home, or end keys. And laptop-size arrow keys. And function keys with hard-coded software and hardware features. And a command key that’s finally labeled but without the apple symbol.

Either way you look at it, some radical decisions were made with this keyboard. Everybody loves to bitch about its lack of a numeric keypad, and I’ll admit I was skeptical too. Spreadsheet jockeys will rightly complain, but I’d be willing to bet that 99% of them have full-sized wired keyboards, and this device is not aimed at them–not by a long shot. It’s supposed to be super-light and ultra-portable. Besides, typing numbers without a numeric keypad is hardly the living hell it’s made out to be by the keyboard’s detractors.

And the truth is, this keyboard is better off without it. With no number pad, a whole 6.5 inches is shaved off compared to my previous wired keyboard. The weight is also lowered pretty heavily–which, coupled with its downright diminutive size–makes the Apple Wireless Keyboard extremely portable.

Why is this important? When the keyboard is so small that moving it around is practically effortless, you’ll do so more often. Repositioning the keyboard is something that most people don’t do that often, and it’s a shame. By doing so, you give your wrists and hands more variety, which cuts down on RSI. It also encourages you to move the rest of your body around a lot, since your input device can come with you.

For example, I often lean way back and turn the font size up when I have to do some heavy reading, and now I can effortlessly take the keyboard on my lap to scroll up and down. This enables me to sit farther back, reducing eye strain. It also fits much better in my cramped workspace, whose keyboard shelf is slightly too narrow to comfortable accommodate a full-sized keyboard with a mouse next to it. The Apple Wireless Keyboard fits like a dream in such less-than-spacious environs.

Basically, the keyboard is the epitome of portable. Throw it in a backpack, stick it on your laptop bag, move it around your desk as you change posture, because this keyboard was made to move around, and its extreme mobility is one of the most compelling reasons to buy it.

Where are you, page down?

The lack of dedicated page navigation keys seems like it would be a huge issue. In fact, the biggest problem I’ve had with the keyboard so far was that upon first setting it up and starting to type, the fn key didn’t trigger any of the alternate features of various keys. For example, holding down the fn key while tapping the down arrow did not scroll the page down like it does on my MacBook Pro’s laptop keyboard. This was worrying, as page up and down, back-delete and such functions are ones I use quite frequently. Fortunately, I remembered that Apple issued some sort of “keyboard update” recently, so I fired up Software Update and sure enough, there it was. After the install and a tedious restart, the hidden functions sprang to life. Also, Home and End are fn-left and -right, respectively.

Had I not been aware of this update, I would never have searched for it and would have had crippled keys until Software Update opened on its own in a few days. Either Apple should include a driver CD or have Software Update open automatically when a new Wireless Keyboard is plugged in.

Either way, after this minor annoyance, my fn key began working and now I can indeed page up and page down using the arrow keys. Keyboard mavens may scoff at having to depress two keys rather than one one to access this functionality, but it’s really almost nothing, and furthermore, it’s consistent with what you have to do with Apple’s laptop keyboard, so I can synchronize my muscle memory to it.

Speaking of consistency across keyboards, Apple made some changes from the tried-and-true layout of their laptop keyboards–sometimes at the expense of this consistency. First of all, the Enter key that’s directly to the left of the arrow keys on Apple’s laptops has been replaced with an Option key on the Wireless Keyboard. This is a handy change, since an Enter keystroke can still be simulated through fn-return, but the Enter key could not previously be remapped to Option. I use the Option key far more often, especially for navigation while typing, so this change is especially welcome for me.

A more peculiar and arbitrary-seeming decision concerns the alternate functionality of the F keys. Previously, F3 through F5 controlled volume; they’re now F10 through F12. A set of media keys to control iTunes have been made out of F7 through F9, where they controlled external display preferences and keyboard backlighting on MacBook Pros. F3 now toggles Exposé’s all windows mode, and F4 invokes Dashboard.

None of these functions are unwanted or inappropriate–especially the iTunes media keys, which are a welcome addition–but Apple’s decision to make them controlled by hardware rather than solely assignable through software is unexplainable. Furthermore, it breaks muscle memory with the real laptop keyboards; while the iTunes media keys are great, they should be present in the other keyboards as well! Perhaps the repositioning on this keyboard is a harbinger of layout changes in upcoming Apple laptop keyboards; who knows? For now, the change is just arbitrary.

Wo-wo-windows¹

Snags were immediately encountered as soon as Windows entered the equation. I dual-boot my machine to play Windows games, and I figured I’d take the opportunity to test the keyboard’s performance on The Other Side. Sadly, the results were terribly disappointing.

Upon booting up Vista, I opened the Bluetooth control panel to set up a new device. At first the keyboard didn’t show up, and to my chagrin, I realized that it wasn’t turned on–an easy mistake, since the power light doesn’t stay on continuously. Remedying this, I re-scanned and this time the keyboard was found. But during the next step, the signal was lost! I turned it on again, frustrated that the light didn’t stay on all the time. This time I got to the pairing process, but the keyboard didn’t like any of the passkeys Windows offered up. I tried typing in one I defined myself, but had no luck.

At this point, I basically tried random things. I would type gobbledygook until the “I’m ready!’ text bolded itself, then type the passkey, but in that case Windows reported a generic passkey error. I honestly can’t remember what it was I did to get it paired and working, but the keyboard was working after about 15 minutes of futzing. Sadly, my success was short-lived, since the signal was extremely weak and keystrokes lagged. Depressing the caps lock key killed the connection altogether. Every. Single. Time. Sigh.

I’ve read that some have been able to get it working, but nothing I could do worked. This is terribly saddening, since it means I have to keep my old keyboard around for when I use Windows, which practically defeats the point of getting a new one. I guess I should have known better than to trust Windows to figure out an Apple product.

The verdict

As long as you like laptop keyboards, can live without a numberpad, and avoid Windows as if it were on fire and trying to hug you, the Apple Wireless Keyboard is a dream. That may be a lot of ifs, but if you fit, you’re going to love this keyboard. It’s beautiful, innovative, and it really raises the bar for wireless keyboards. Just stay in OS X!

1. I pity those who get this reference. No really, you don’t want to know. [↩]

It often seems hard for me to believe that the Windows Registry exists. It’s such a monolithically bad design and implementation that it simply boggles my mind. With such a creaking, doddering foundation, it’s no wonder that Windows is so unstable.

Bad decisions tend to cause snowball effects; that is, they eventually cause more and more problems and get worse and worse over time. Many of Windows’ most high-profile problems originate in some way from the bad decisions of the Registry. What are these bad decisions?

Here’s the biggest one: the Registry is series of huge, centralized databases. That means each component of it is one huge file, tucked away somewhere you’ll never find it. Databases have a lot going for them, but security and transparency aren’t two of them.

Databases tend to be prone to data corruption. Since they’re one big file, if part of that file gets corrupted, the whole thing is shot; this is why storing preferences in multiple files is a better idea. The logical solution to this data corruption problem would be to regularly back up the registry–say, every time it was changed. Wouldn’t that be nice? As a matter of fact, it does this, but it only keeps one, so you can’t roll back changes to anything beyond the previous backup.

The registry is also not very human-readable. You need a special program to even access it, and even then, its terminology is cryptic. HKCU? HKLM? Dword? Why all the hexadecimal values?

Finally, the registry’s design encourages developers to rely on it for everything. Let’s say, for example, that when an application installs itself it creates a registry key listing its location: “C\Program Files\ScumCo\ScumEdit\”. Well, I and many others hate the tendency of software to install itself in a folder named for its parent company, rather then its own name. So I opt to change its location. I grab the ScumEdit folder and move it back down a level into C\Program Files\, then delete the redundant ScumCo folder. But now we have problems! When I try to run ScumEdit, it mysteriously fails or throws up an ugly error message. Why? Because it consults the registry for its location, and the actual location differs from the listed one. Oopsie! Now I have to edit the Registry to make my change reflected in the database. Fun fun fun.

Moving things in Windows that you didn’t specifically put there yourself is dangerous for precisely this reason. With the advent of the Registry in Windows 95, playing around with your computer became a minefield. But Microsoft came up with a solution: abstract everything! Suddenly, users didn’t need to navigate the filesystem; Windows 95 also debuted that big, pretty Start button that listed everything they had when clicked on. And that just solved everything!

Problem is, when users have no contact whatsoever with the filesystem because it’s an incomprehensible mess, it becomes easier for unwanted software to hide there. Ever looked inside an install of Microsoft Office? Subfolders within subfolders, lots of files with meaningless extensions, plenty of files with unreadable 8-character names, and a whole bunch that do both. Here’s what it looks like, by the way:

By contrast, here’s what a portion of my Mac OS X Applications folder looks like:

The abstraction required by the Registry’s deathgrip on information meant that users didn’t have to look at their operating system’s underbelly. In the absence of critical attention, mold started to grow there. Developers cared less and less how elegant their software’s installation routine was; after all, nobody would ever look at what happened. Scripting became more popular now that that pesky issue of users looking at what was happening was gone. Software began to use unofficial means to accomplish things.

Unfortunately, Malware took advantage of these developments. Poorly-conceived scripting environments made it easy for malware to automatically replicate, and huge folders full of files with bizarre incomprehensible names offered great places to hide. The Registry itself was a perfect place since it was hidden and inscrutable. Users knew less and less about the structure of their computers, while the malware developers knew more and more. Compounded with the problems of bad privilege control, open network ports, and hard-to-understand networking features, replicating to nearby machines and hiding there became a cinch. So naturally, it started to happen more and more. Suddenly, there was a full-blown security epidemic, and Microsoft was caught in the middle.

There were two options:

They could completely do away with all their poorly-designed insecure swiss-cheese-like OS holes by doing in the registry and starting from scratch, closing outbound network ports, properly separating user settings and programs from system settings and programs, and simplifying networking. The problem with this approach was that not only did it require fundamentally remaking most of Windows’ core, but it would also break compatibility with 100% of all existing Windows software, including their own! To bypass this, a sandboxed compatibility layer like Apple’s Classic during the Mac OS 9 to OS X transition would have been necessary, throwing up all sorts of other problems such as emulation, inter-process communication, and developer transition kits.

This effort would have taken years and years. If this was what they had decided was the best course of action, it probably would have been easier to pull an Apple and start over from a promising foundation owned by someone else. But what was available? Anything UNIX-based would certainly be mature enough, but its openness was utterly contrary of Microsoft’s corporate identity and business models of monopoly dominance and vendor lock-in. BeOS was dead, Solaris was becoming open-source, and Mac OS X was already used by a competitor. There really wasn’t anything for them to take and re-brand.

That left the sticky option of somehow retrofitting Windows to be more secure without breaking compatibility with existing software. Thus, the Registry and most other existing attack vectors for malware had to stay. Instead, Microsoft worked on locking down these vectors; in Vista, Internet Explorer 7 has a “sandboxed” mode where it is isolated from other operating system components, and other applications are more isolated from each other as well. The kernel itself consistently randomizes the location of its data, the built-in firewall was strengthened, and weak anti-malware was built in.

In a decidedly ironic twist, Microsoft also began to sell antivirus software, turning itself into a vendor for solutions to problems its own ineptitude had created, rather than finding a way to fix those original problems.

Finally, Microsoft decided it hadn’t annoyed its users enough by adding a hellish feature called User Account Control which demands confirmation when something happens. Want to install a program? You get a UAC confirmation dialog. Decide you don’t like it and want to uninstall it? You get another one. Access the Device Manager? Adjust the font size? Change the date or time? Share files? Let a program through the firewall? Add a new device? All these actions pop up UAC prompts to waste your time and blow your blood vessels.

The really great thing about a UAC prompt is that they dim the background and lock out everything but the dialog box, meaning you are forced to acknowledge its presence and deal with it, even if you were in the middle of something else. Also, the dialog box appears in a random location each time to prevent you from being able to quickly click on “OK”. No, I’m not making any of this up.

Note that none of these tasks actually require elevated permissions; Windows just feels the need to make you confirm your action to make sure it was originated by you and not a piece of malware. But imagine this situation: there’s a piece of software you want to install that has a virus inside of it. Upon trying to install it, it pops up a delightful UAC prompt. You click OK like you always do, since you want the software. But oops! You just installed the virus too! UAC does nothing whatsoever to counter this type of hijacking.

Basically, with Vista, Microsoft did what they always do: pile on more features and workarounds instead of solving the core problems. And it shows; Vista takes up 12 gigabytes of space compared to Windows XP’s 1.6, and feels noticeably slower. Copying files is glacial, and playing an MP3 will slow down your internet access! On top of that, Vista is still insecure; even after all these bolted-on features, it remains quite vulnerable to infection by malware. The herculean effort took 6 years and cost billions, driving up the price of windows to such levels that the major computer vendors are complaining and Dell is now selling machines pre-loaded with Linux.

It’s all a monstrous domino effect: Microsoft creates a poorly-conceived, insecure feature that negatively affects usability; to cover it up, they abstract everything, making it easier for malware to hide and replicate; to deal with the resulting security disaster, Microsoft piles on fixes and features without addressing the core problem, making their operating system late, slow, bloated, and expensive; Manufacturers complain and look for other options, while consumers slowly migrate to Macs.

Isn’t the Registry great?

Looks like there’s another up-and-coming iPod competitor looking to challenge the king. Only, this one has a secret weapon; a killer feature that’s sure to generate an inordinate amount of buzz compared to its probably mediocre music playing capabilities. This MP3 player stands to get people talking as much as did the sony “white is coming” ad campaign. You see, this MP3 player is titled nothing other than “i.Beat blaxx“.

I guess they’re targeting the computer-savvy southern yokel–a great untapped demographic! I mean, who else participates in this market segment? They’ll snap up mindshare in an instant! Those genius marketers of theirs deserve multi-figure raises!

I wish them the best of luck in their not-at-all uphill battle.

A funny thing happened yesterday: I found myself wishing for an opportunity to use Pages, a part of Apple’s iWork suite I recently bought. Pages is not a game. It’s not a non-linear video editor, a graphics manipulation application, or a 3D modeler. It’s a simple word processor, designed to aid in the writing and editing of blocks of letters and words. Word processors are not fun, nor have they ever been in the global history of all computing. Word processors are simply a means to produce whatever lettered end you wish to arrive at. While the same can be said of any type of creative software, such as Photoshop or Final Cut or modo, these applications tend to have dedicated and loyal users who are fanatical about their software and will defend their choice if asked to compare it to comparable product. Microsoft Word has never had this loyal fanbase.

As Word is the program probably 100% of all computer users believe they need for the task of penning their thoughts, the overall enthusiasm of its most enthusiastic users is drowned out by the ones who couldn’t give a damn about what makes Word special because they don’t know what the alternatives are. Since the product was commoditized and everyone uses it, most people use it not out of choice but out of perceived necessity.

Despite that, the latest version is absolutely awesome. Earlier this year, I actually found myself infatuated with the windows version of Microsoft’s venerable and bloated office suite because it was so good! Office was and is the testing ground for an experimental interface convention, something called the Ribbon, which is essentially is nothing more than a context-sensitive bar of labeled icons, giving access to Word’s functions. The Ribbon completely replaces the menu bar, and is aimed at increasing the discoverability of Word’s monstrous feature set. To that aim, it succeeds fantastically, and it truly creates one single, easy-to-use access point for all the functions of an entire application! I must admit that I was quite in awe of what I perceived to be the user interface genius behind the idea. Why doesn’t Apple adopt this obviously superior convention? I wondered.

Well, with iWork ‘08, they did. Only, in true Apple fashion, they distilled it to its core genius and left out all the bloat and cruft. Pages’ context-sensitive bar is barely 15 pixels high, and contains all common text and graphics operations, depending on what’s selected, compared to Office’s Ribbon, which takes up 135 and tries to do everything. Rather than throwing everything there and doing in the menu bar, Apple opted to respect users’ existing knowledge and augment the menu bar and toolbar with the new context-sensitive format bar, and actually achieves the holy grail of putting common features a click away while preserving ease of access to advanced ones while not treading on existing users’ expertise. Jackpot!

Pages also includes a host of entirely new features, too. First of all, it’s got Word-compatible track changes–a must for heavy collaboration and exchange of ideas. As usual, Apple implemented the feature in a surprisingly pleasing, elegant, attractive manner, and finally exposes an obvious way to temporarily stop tracking changes without turning the whole darn system off:

  Finally!

Then there’s Instant Alpha, which is an easy way to extract part of an image from its background. But the important part isn’t that it’s easy, but that it’s super-easy. The procedure is practically instantaneous and results in beautiful, Photoshop-defying results in probably under 1/20th of the time it would take using any existing procedure. Here’s an example image I grabbed off Google real fast:

And here’s what I managed after scarcely 20 seconds of effort in Pages using Instant Alpha:

Sure, if I had taken 10 minutes to do it in Photoshop, I probably could have achieved a slightly cleaner result. Maybe a substantially cleaner one. But are those 9 minutes and 40 seconds worth it for an extra 5 to 10 percent of quality? For most people, the answer is no, and the fact that Pages allows a result that’s 90% as good in less than of 1% the time is commendable and astonishing. Just for fun, Pages also lifts the image manipulation panel straight from iPhoto, making it a powerful image editor as well.

That’s not all, though. They also threw in the ability to natively open, edit, and save the new Office 2007 files, a feat that Microsoft itself hasn’t yet accomplished in its own Office suite. That’s right, Microsoft hasn’t managed to build read/write capability for a file format it invented into a piece of software it wrote, and now Apple comes along and does it just to embarrass them. Snicker.

Pages is also full of nifty little timesavers, like the ability to look a word up in Google or Wikipedia with one click and insert hyperlinks from your existing bookmark library. They also threw in grammar checking for the hell of it, and it’s about as good as Word’s – which is to say pretty pathetic. It must be hard to program a good grammar checker, but at least the feature’s there to be improved in the future. Basically, Pages 08 is a major upgrade in practically every way.

All this raw functionality coupled with lightness and quickness and a killer interface makes Pages an absolute joy to use. And that’s why I wanted to use it. Not because I felt the need to write, or wanted to edit some document I had created, but I wanted to use it because Pages is so enjoyable that I felt the concrete desire to interact with it.

Kevin Hoffman, a prominent Windows programmer, once referred to his time using Apple software thusly: “I have never before encountered a situation where I missed the visceral experience of a tool more than its raw feature set.”

What I felt this morning was beyond that; not only was I missing the visceral experience of using Pages, but I was actively trying to generate reasons to use it when none actually existed.

I have Never before encountered a situation where I wished for some work to do simply so I could have the experience of using my favored tool to complete it.

Yes, that’s right; computer gaming is actually good for you. How can this be? It’s easy to dismiss games as just “how to blow up aliens,” but this is a mindset that is terribly uninformed about the medium, focusing instead on the subject matter. An apt comparison to books would be the charge that a reader of a particular text is learning only about that particular made-up world, which obviously doesn’t exist in “real life.” But this is just as wrongheaded; we all know that reading is good for you–it opens up your mind, it excites your imagination, it gives you an appreciation for the power of the written word, it teaches you to dream your own worlds.

These facts are self-evident to readers. However, those who have never picked up a book in their life might well disagree–or at least, fail to see the truth.

The same is accurate of gaming. Their loudest critics are those who have never played them in any significant capacity, especially newer ones. However, games do have skills to teach us–skills that are more relevant today than ever before. You see, games teach computer skills, and not just computer literacy–games teach computer mastery. The 35 and older crowd often wonders just what it is that makes us whippersnappers so good at computers. I think I have the answer: games. Here are some common types and what they teach.

Twitch games
This category encompasses first-person shooters, action/adventure games, and anything where skill at the game’s controls greatly determines the player’s success. Those who master said controls through the speed and coordination of their reflexes and knowledge of efficiency-boosting shortcuts will best players who have not. These skills directly translate to the desktop; players of twitch games internalize the desire for efficiency, and actively seek out ways to maximize their ability to accomplish repetitive actions. Twitch gamers are more likely than non-gamers and even other kinds of gamers to know keyboard shortcuts and fast ways of doing things.

Role-Playing games
This category encompasses games where the player takes on the role of one or more characters exploring a virtual world. Because of the limited nature of how much can reasonably be shown, these virtual worlds always have set limits and boundaries, which distinguishes them from the real world, which goes on for miles and miles. Therefore, those who play these types of games learn probing–the skill of testing the limits of a finite space with concrete but hidden boundaries. This skill is immensely useful on the desktop, which is also a world unto itself with limits and boundaries which must be discovered. RPG players learn to explore the nooks and crannies of their computer systems to find hidden secrets.

Real-Time Strategy games
In the average real-time strategy game, players must balance the tasks of building their base with building enough military units with building the right type of military units with gathering enough resources to sustain both an expanding base and a growing military with upgrading their military units with probing their enemy’s forces with correctly timing an assault with making use of their military units’ particular special capabilities…
RTS games teach multitasking, and not just any multitasking–they teach extreme multitasking! Your average RTS consists of dozens if not hundreds of time-sensitive tasks that must all be harmoniously balanced to achieve victory. Those who play RTS games will often be the most extreme multitaskers on the desktop, often keeping 10 or more of windows open at once and working on half a dozen tasks at a time, rapidly switching between them to work a little on each one. Because of the nature of computers’ ability to facilitate multitasking, this particular use of them meshes very well with the most efficient way to use modern computers.

Puzzle games
Puzzle games involve figuring out an intentionally obfuscated or muddled problem or situation through experimentation, intuition, or trial and error. Puzzle gamers learn patience with confusing problems and learn to approach them methodically and patiently. Puzzle games can be thought of as the ultimate “bad interfaces” because they often seem to have been thought up specifically to challenge the player’s ability to decipher them. Sadly, this often happens unintentionally in computer software as a result of poor design or planning. Those well schooled in puzzle gaming are far more likely to respond to these challenges with patience and determination rather than frustration and concession.