Andre Molnar

OSX and Year wrap up.

Derek asks: Have you ever used OSX?

I have. I like it a lot. The folks over at apple are really good at inovative user interface design. I'm going to start sounding like a broken record because I keep talking about iPod - but its just the ultimate example of super simple effective user interface design.

I don't know a single person who hasn't picked up an iPod and figured out how to use it in less than 2 minutes. And invariably after the 2 minute learning period everyone exclaims "this is so cool".

The learning curve for OSX is a little bit longer than 2 minutes - but the reaction is also the same for a lot of people - "so cool".

Why? Its easy, intuative, and does what you expect it to do.

My only two wish list items for Macs would be 'right click' context sensitive menus - and keyboard shortcuts for text editing (Shift-Home, CTRL-Home, CRTL-Arrow, Shift-Arrow and the like) . But, right click is certainly one of UI design features I will thank Redmond for for many years to come.

Andyway. it occurs to me that it is the last day of the year (well at least us North Americans have agreed on this day to be the day that will be the last of the current year). I resolved a long time ago not to make resolutions for new years - so I will stick to that tradition. I also decided many years ago not to make a big deal over New Year's Eve celebrations. My plans have always been decided by the first person to make me an offer for something to do that I thought might be fun.

Past years have included:
Going to a non winterized cottage - only to have the termperature drop to minus 25 overnight... Which made trips to the outhouse that much more fun.

Getting together with friends from university for a swanky dress up house party.

Winning tickets to a club's new years celebration.

Just going to a club for a new year's celebration (incidently its what I did last year - and was thus far my favorite new years).

And - several years of staying in - not because there were no offers to do something - just no offers to do something that I thought might be fun.

This year, my first best offer was to stay in. And that's what I will be doing. A nice dinner, a drink or two and the company of my beautiful girlfriend.

Andyway - on a personal level, this has been a good year - I have been blessed with much happiness and good fortune. Many others in this world have not been so lucky. In fact, my year could have been 100x worse and still been better than over 90% of the world's population. Its all relative I suppose.

Here's to hoping that everyone has as good a year or better next year as I had this year.

Happy New Year Everyone.

andre

Posted by andre at December 31, 2004 01:53 PM