Tag: Work

I posted the following in response to this thread, it’s primarily “desktop design” focussed but I wanted to post it here. This decision may or may not have something to do with the fact I’m still “stuck” and too busy to come up with anything original. Sorry.

Minimalism doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing to everyone. My interpretation of minimalism requires that functionality is not lost and that my desktop works the way I work. To others that may mean a few icons or none, a dock or accessbar, and so on.

Is Firefox popular because – “out of the box”- it’s minimal already, not bloated with lots of features you might not need? How many features of Word do you use everyday, and how many are there you don’t even know about? As Moore’s law pushes us onwards, (some) software companies take advantage of improved performance by offering us more.

Then you look at Web 2.0 apps (37signals stuff for example). Simple, small, function-lite apps that do one thing well. This approach is becoming increasingly popular.

Minimalism shouldn’t compromise functionality, it should enhance it. Instead of 23 icons on my desktop, causing me to pause when looking for one, I have 4, much easier to find. The choice of which 4 icons is part of “design of minimalism” as well, if I choose the wrong 4 icons then my functionality is impacted.

Another way to look at it is this: how often do you “workaround” an issue with your computer. A minor annoyance that you “put up with”. You may spend 2 secs having to open a folder to access a program, rather than getting straight to the program… add that up and you spend a lot of time going around something. Minimalism would suggest you just move the program out of the folder. Not necessarily LESS icons, but certainly faster.

Each to their own of course, what is minimal to me, may be overkill for you.

Additional reading:

• Occam’s Razor
• “Less is More” is Bullshit
• Wikipedia: Minimalism
• Minimalism in Art
• More waffle from me on “Less is more”

Bookmarks dotted about all over the place. A del.ico.us account that rarely gets used. Various clever Firefox extensions. My miniblog. My custom start page. My blogroll(s). Bloglines. The sites I “use”, the sites I visit, the useful sites, the information sites, so many sites, so much information and so many ways of filtering and accessing them these days, I’m getting a bit overwhelmed. Aren’t you?

So I put aside a couple of hours* and fired up my web browser with the aim of getting better organised, wasn’t sure HOW exactly, but figured the organic “leap in and start” approach would serve me best. I think it did.

So let me talk you through the process, or better still, roll up your sleeves and try it yourself. As with most things the way you work and use the various technologies will differ from me, but hopefully this will be useful to someone. Always remember that YMMV.

* took a lot longer than this but you can do it in stages if you want.
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Our current (now “old) iPod is a 3G model. It holds 10GB of music, and is quite large and chunky. It’s not TOO big by any account and it does what it does well enough. The iPod Photo is nice as it has a colour screen but I don’t see me ever wanting to carry around 1000 photos on a gadget… that’s like the worst “wallet” photos ever.

The scene, two travellers sitting at a bar in a hotel, chatting about life and family:
“So, you got pictures of your kids?”
“Yeah, let me just dig out my wallet, here ya go…”
“They’re cute, hang on and I’ll show you a few photos of mine”
Takes out iPod Photo. Bores the other guy to death after the first 274 photos. Is a bit miffed because there were another 561 for him to see.

I digress.

The iPod mini is about a third of the size of our old iPod (the 3G one, do try and keep up) and comes in a lot of nice colours. My sister has one and it’s very nice indeed. However the justification for buying one just wasn’t really strong enough. It was a little smaller but held a lot less music – the discussion about the ideal size for an MP3 player is still open, suffice to say that I only once managed to fill the 10GB iPod and didn’t listen to even a third of the music.

Then along came the Nano. Aside from the weird name it was teeny tiny, you can see it here next to our “old” iPod, had a colour screen so it can handles photos (if that floats your boat) and display CD covers. Sure it was only 4GB but it was soooo much smaller than our “old” iPod that I felt there was some justification into begging and pleading discussing the possibility of purchasing one.

Yes I was aware that my birthday was coming up but I figured we’d have to shuffle some cash first to make a nice “iPod Nano” sized gap in our budget – we’ve got a busy couple of weeks coming up with wedding and birthday presents to buy, not to mention that looming holiday season in December (yes we DO think about that now, rather than have to survive on rice and water in January!).

Anyway, enough of that, what’s it like!? I hear you cry. Well there is little else to say other than it looks very small and fragile. OK, I’m lying, there’s a lot to say, but not much of it is new.

First a couple of photos, one to show you the size difference compared to our “old” iPod and the other to show you the difference between the screens (this photo doesn’t do the Nano screen any justice, it’s very crisp and sharp).

If you ever used ANY iPod the Nano will feel very familiar. As I’ve not used any of the newer varieties, there are a couple of things for me to get used to, not least the lack of buttons as every thing is controlled from whizzing your thumb round the scroll pad – which feels ohhh so very subtley different from the rest of the fascia – and the newer features of the iPod software.

One addition, which I THINK is new, takes its cue from the iPod Shuffle. At the bottom of the main menu is the option to “Shuffle Songs”. Select this the iPod will play through all the tracks in random order. Smart. That means I can have albums as playlists, and listen to them in album order, or just hit “Shuffle Songs” and have my own radio station.

Sound wise it’s as competent as ever, no surprise there, but I would suggest getting better headphones – I have a pair of Sony MDR-ED21s which suit my ears just fine.

Most of all the iPod Nano BEGS to picked up. I still can’t really get over how diminutive it is, and how fragile it seems*. I think, now, Apple has one of the better MP3 players on the market. Previously I’d have agreed that they were trading on the name, the hype, the marketing but now, with improved battery life, ENOUGH space for most people, and a true “put it in your pocket” portability the rest of the market will need to catch up.

One thing to note: no more firewire support. USB only (2.0 preferred). And the only reason I bought a firewire card for my PC was…. for the “old” iPod! Guess I’ll need to get me a USB 2.0 card now.

More info:
* Thankfully Ars Technica have “stress tested” an iPod Nano
iLounge review (was iPodLounge)
AppleXnet – iPod Nano Dissected
Top 10 Reasons why I need an iPod Nano