[OT] How long before..

[Chipp Walters]

Thanks Thomas and everyone for your thoughts on this subject. Very
interesting to read!

I agree with much which has been said. I also agree with the old chestnut,
"if it ain't broke, don't fix it." For over 20 years, Save As was good
enough for all– and now it's not.

I don't agree about whole changes in paradigms without at least giving
workarounds. And FWIW, I hated ribbon and quit all MS Office in favor of
Google Docs as soon as I saw it. I still can't find my way around the damn
thing. In fact I also hate IE because-- well that's a whole other thread!

Still. Apple bites. For instance, today I tried updating Balsamiq (GREAT
wireframe program) and as I was trying to run it I received a dialog from
Apple stating it was not allowed. So, I've been using this program for
years, and I update it and now it's not allowed? No message about how to
allow it, or a button "Go Ahead anyway." Just the fact it's not allowed.
After searching HELP, I found out I need to option-click on the program
(intuitive? good UIX?) and ONLY THEN could it run. Not sure how much
*better* that is...

And exactly how intuitive is it to option-Save to Save As? (Thanks Jacque!)
Wow-- I can see that whole Save As thing full of opportunity for mistakes.
What if I want to Save As, but then press command instead of option when
selecting the menu? OOPS, just saved over what it was I was trying to
Save-- or did I? Aren't we automatically saving anyway? I don't know. And
what if I just open an iCloud doc on my iPad, will it auto-save, thus
killing any non-compatible doc formatting?-- which is the exact problem
when UIX folks think they want the computer to read you mind and act for
you.

And iCloud. Just read this by the famous Apple columnist and all around
good guy Andy Ihnatko: http://bit.ly/PkVqDx
I suspect the same folks who use DropBox will find iCloud totally
unacceptable. Heck, it doesn't backup docs, it doesn't share docs. You
can't even download your docs from iCloud! wtf?

*Finally, IMO, the ultimate in Apple arrogance and their belief they 'know'
what is right for all of us.*

A month ago, a government agency asked me to design an app, for both
Android and iOS, for a national symposium on suicide prevention. Their
board of directors had gotten together and decided they wanted to create
portable smartphone apps for all the proceedings, including white papers,
presentations, bios, helpful links and explanations of the organizations
which are involved. They asked me to create it, which I agreed to.

I finished in one week, just enough time to allow Apple to approve it and
get it into the App Store. It was created with different links to content
as well as descriptions of various talks, people attending, groups and
other interesting information. It was also built to be a resource long
after the symposium is over. As you can imagine where this is going...
Apple didn't approve it citing the fact it didn't meet their guidelines on
content and it could all be done in HTML5. I was stunned. Apple allows fart
apps, a digital clock with just a number on it (literally, "put the time
into fld 1" every second), a tool to calculate pi to the Nth, a tool to
ONLY PING an IPaddress, but not this app-- something which potentially
could save people's lives.

In an ultimate act of arrogance, Apple believes their idea of what an app
should be trumps the wishes of a group of highly intelligent people who
actually budgeted money to have this app built for a very serious symposium
on a subject important as suicide prevention. Sheesh.

And yes, the Android App did ship just fine. So, sometimes believing in
Apple's ability to provide best group-think for the rest of us is just pure
SHIT. Of course, that's only my slightly pissed opinion.. :-D