A blog about User Interface, User Experience, Design, Flash, Product management and all that goes in between.

Few days ago my good old 17″ Studio Display monitor died after almost 9 years of devoted service. It’s been about two years that my main computer is a MacBookPro, and the old G4 is nothing more than a file server & itunes jukebox.One thing that I wanted to change for a long time is the angle of the display when I am working with my portable Mac on a table. There are few professional solutions out there, mostly by Griffin, but I wanted something more practical, and yes, cheeper..Here I saw an opportunity – the cool stand from the CRT display, that was never equaled in any model by any brand (at least that I saw) can serve just this purpose, lifting the portable and making air flow easy for cooling the burning machine, tilt-able and even aesthetic.
If you want to try this at home, here’s a little tip: after disassembling the stand from the old monitor, you should change the spring direction, to support the portable weight which has the opposite direction from the CRT. to do that, remove the center screw, and the screw that holds the spring, remove the white anchor, and rotate the top of the stand, front to back.Put the white anchor back, and now the string will be facing the other side of the stand.
Now hook the spring on the plastic handle. that’s it – you’re done.

When I just got my first car, It felt like I was set free – I could go wherever I want, whenever I want.. few years later I got a similar feeling when as a graphic design student I bought my first Mac – suddenly I could do everything (well, almost) on my own, in my own time.As a teenager I didn’t know how polluting my first car really was, just as I did not notice (up until recently) that Apple are ranked somewhere in the bottom of the Greenpeace green mobile and PC manufacturers line up.Hey, Apple, you can not allow this to your self, this is something that counts for your target audience, being different has to be better.

According to Philipp Lohmann, Sun Microsystems joins porting effort for OpenOffice.org for Mac. I’ve been using NeoOffice for a while now, and even though it got better (it should with the amount of patches they release), it is still kinda slow. But the current OpenOffice Mac port uses X11, and performs even worse, it been years this way.
Better late than never.

Scott Stevenson of Thecacao has a great point differentiating cross platform applications and native mac applications, another basic difference in the user experience between ported apps and native Mac apps is that Mac native applications enjoy core services such as Dictionary-Thesaurus, Speller, etc.. I rely on those services, and the consistency in keyboard shortcuts they bring to my working environment.For example take a look at Photoshop CS3 beta for Mac – it has a built in speller, the interface is primitive and not really attractive compared to the advanced docked palettes (see cap), surely less intuitive than the OS native speller.

confusing interface – what was checked? is that correct?

primitive interface – so many buttons, the default button is not aplying the change!

the good familiar mac dictionary – even look nice..
Skype provides the native mac Speller and Dictionary services, Firefox (and Camino) has no speller nor dictionary
Applications well ported to Mac should respect user habits, unless they really upgrade or improve the native OS service – they should not confuse the user by not providing those services or providing poor alternatives, for me it is not that different than the ability to copy & paste from one app to another.

Joost (up until recently code named ‘The Venice Project’ ) has released it’s Mac beta (only Intel Macs at the moment) – this is good news for us Mac users.The general feeling is pretty much same as with Windows, performance is good, video quality has improved.The interface has slightly evolved since my last review, but small details are somehow still neglected, mainly fonts inconsistencies and text placement issues. But the issue I am more disturbed about is the remote control readiness – better say Not Ready.Apple Intel computers ships with Apple Remote and are the only platform that actually justifies the full-screened interface, allowing a real lean backwards experience, controlling your Mac with one hand from across the room.Joost does not support the Apple Remote, furthermore the interface is simply not ready for a remote control, as it is still relying on a point & click control (a mouse), and many details in the interface are too small for using from a distance.I believe Joost will eventually be remote controlled, but at the moment the users are getting used to a certain UI logic, and it will be harder to change the entire interaction habits in a future stage, leading me to think that since Joost is “a new way to watch TV”, maybe the beta program was released a bit too early?