Vincent Gable’s Blog

June 21, 2008

Nobody Likes a Pimp

Filed under: Quotes
― Vincent Gable on June 21, 2008

On a personal note, recently my shrink said to me, “Hey, Wil, why don’t you drop the pimp act? Nobody actually looks at show-offs and thinks, ‘Oooh, I like him.’ In fact, everyone resents them.”

This made a lot of sense, so I’m officially renouncing my phony pimpitude.

Wil Shipley

June 20, 2008

Modern Browsers

Filed under: MacOSX,Programming,Quotes | , , , ,
― Vincent Gable on June 20, 2008

… What struck me watching these (WebKit) demos is that you could build a really slick web app UI using stuff like the canvas tag, SVG, and advanced CSS. Yes, none of this stuff works in IE, and IE still has massive market share — but not among the sort of people who adopt hip new web apps. The combined market share for, say, Firefox 3 and Safari 3 is larger than the overall market share for Mac OS X. Plenty of developers write desktop software that only works on the Mac — why aren’t more people writing apps web apps that only work in truly modern web browsers? The first one to do it is going to be a sensation.

John Grubber

I didn’t have a sense for how far behind IE lags, historically and today, until I saw this compatibility table (via Toby Jungen),

Calculation of support of currently displayed feature lists

Internet Explorer Firefox Safari Chrome Opera
Far Past 6.0: 4% 2.0: 34% 3.1: 43% 0.2: 54% 9.0: 35%
Past 7.0: 12% 2.0: 34% 3.1: 43% 0.2: 54% 9.0: 35%
Present 8.0: 29% 3.0: 48% 3.2: 67% 1.0: 54% 9.6: 58%
Near Future (2009) 8.0: 29% 3.5: 78% 4.0: 88% 2.0: 84% 10.0: 63%
Future (2010 or later) 9.0: 29% 4.0: 86% 4.*: 88% 2.0: 84% 10.*: 72%

June 16, 2008

Backup

Filed under: Quotes,Security,Tips
― Vincent Gable on June 16, 2008

The single most important thing any company or individual can do to improve security is have a good backup strategy. It’s been true for decades, and it’s still true today.

Bruce Schneier

Here’s a good article on backing up data.

June 3, 2008

AppleScript is the Uncanny Valley

Filed under: Design,MacOSX,Programming,Quotes,Usability | , , ,
― Vincent Gable on June 3, 2008

A interesting theory:

I think this “like English but not quite” aspect of AppleScript is the Uncanny Valley of programming languages. Because AppleScript looks like English it is easy to fall into the trap of believing it has the flexibility of English. When that mental model fails its more unsettling than when you screw up the syntax in a regular programming language because your mental model isn’t making unwarranted assumptions.

Mark Reid

May 31, 2008

Links: Less Code Is Better

Filed under: Design,Programming,Quotes
― Vincent Gable on May 31, 2008

I happen to hold a hard-won minority opinion about code bases. In particular I believe, quite staunchly I might add, that the worst thing that can happen to a code base is size.

–Steve Yegge

The fundamental nature of coding is that our task, as programmers, is to recognize that every decision we make is a trade-off. To be a master programmer is to understand the nature of these trade-offs, and be conscious of them in everything we write.

Now, remember, these dimensions are all in opposition to one another. You can spend a three days writing a routine which is really beautiful AND fast, so you’ve gotten two of your dimensions up, but you’ve spent THREE DAYS, so the “time spent coding” dimension is WAY down.

So, when is this worth it? How do we make these decisions?

The answer turns out to be very sane, very simple, and also the one nobody, ever, listens to:

“START WITH BREVITY. Increase the other dimensions AS REQUIRED BY TESTING.”

— Wil Shipley

Shared Code

Filed under: Programming,Quotes
― Vincent Gable on May 31, 2008

I’m very picky this time about what I consider “shared” — I have to actually USE code in two different projects to consider it shared, not just think “Hmm, someday somebody may want to re-use this.” Because, in truth, most of the crap people put into shared code directories is either too specific to really be shared, OR (more commonly) it’s written in a general way but the particular app it was written for only tested some of the pathways, so it is essentially a bunch of buggy code that’s not actually being used and is waiting to trip you up.

Wil Shipley

May 28, 2008

The Minimum Screen Size You Must Support for Mac OS X Is 800×600

Filed under: Accessibility,Bug Bite,Design,MacOSX,Programming,Quotes,Usability |
― Vincent Gable on May 28, 2008

Mac OS X can run on systems with a screen size as small as 800 x 600 … Unless you know that your users will be using a specific display size, it is best to optimize your applications for display at 1024 x 768 pixels. … Design your user interface for a resolution of at least 800 x 600.

According to Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines (retrieved 2010-04-21).

May 27, 2008

Bad Design = Bargain?

Filed under: Design,Quotes
― Vincent Gable on May 27, 2008

..the eBay design model. My theory is that eBay was a success due to its crappy design because it gave it that flea market feel and when you went there you felt like you getting a deal. Go to Tiffany & Co. and you don’t get the feeling that you are getting a bargain because you shouldn’t.

Paul Scrivens

May 26, 2008

People Prefer Sure (but small) Gains; Avoidable (but possibly large) Losses

Filed under: Quotes,Research,Usability | , ,
― Vincent Gable on May 26, 2008

Bruce Schneier has a new essay, How to Sell Security. As usual, it’s well worth reading.

The most interesting tidbit, to me, is that people have a bias to choose a small certain gain over an uncertain but possibly larger gain. But with loss, it’s the opposite. People avoid certain losses; preferring to “play double or nothing” — risking a larger loss for the chance of not sustaining a loss.

Here’s an experiment that illustrates Prospect Theory. Take a roomful of subjects and divide them into two groups. Ask one group to choose between these two alternatives: a sure gain of $500 and 50 percent chance of gaining $1,000. Ask the other group to choose between these two alternatives: a sure loss of $500 and a 50 percent chance of losing $1,000.

These two trade-offs are very similar, and traditional economics predicts that the whether you’re contemplating a gain or a loss doesn’t make a difference: People make trade-offs based on a straightforward calculation of the relative outcome. Some people prefer sure things and others prefer to take chances. Whether the outcome is a gain or a loss doesn’t affect the mathematics and therefore shouldn’t affect the results. This is traditional economics, and it’s called Utility Theory.

But Kahneman’s and Tversky’s experiments contradicted Utility Theory. When faced with a gain, about 85 percent of people chose the sure smaller gain over the risky larger gain. But when faced with a loss, about 70 percent chose the risky larger loss over the sure smaller loss.

This experiment, repeated again and again by many researchers, across ages, genders, cultures and even species, rocked economics, yielded the same result. Directly contradicting the traditional idea of “economic man,” Prospect Theory recognizes that people have subjective values for gains and losses. We have evolved a cognitive bias: a pair of heuristics. One, a sure gain is better than a chance at a greater gain, or “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” And two, a sure loss is worse than a chance at a greater loss, or “Run away and live to fight another day.” Of course, these are not rigid rules. Only a fool would take a sure $100 over a 50 percent chance at $1,000,000. But all things being equal, we tend to be risk-adverse when it comes to gains and risk-seeking when it comes to losses.

This cognitive bias is so powerful that it can lead to logically inconsistent results. Google the “Asian Disease Experiment” for an almost surreal example. Describing the same policy choice in different ways–either as “200 lives saved out of 600” or “400 lives lost out of 600”– yields wildly different risk reactions.

Evolutionarily, the bias makes sense. It’s a better survival strategy to accept small gains rather than risk them for larger ones, and to risk larger losses rather than accept smaller losses. Lions, for example, chase young or wounded wildebeests because the investment needed to kill them is lower. Mature and healthy prey would probably be more nutritious, but there’s a risk of missing lunch entirely if it gets away. And a small meal will tide the lion over until another day. Getting through today is more important than the possibility of having food tomorrow. Similarly, it is better to risk a larger loss than to accept a smaller loss. Because animals tend to live on the razor’s edge between starvation and reproduction, any loss of food — whether small or large — can be equally bad. Because both can result in death, and the best option is to risk everything for the chance at no loss at all.

May 22, 2008

Design is Not Just Skin Deep

Filed under: Design,Quotes
― Vincent Gable on May 22, 2008

Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

   –Steve Jobs, CEO, chairman and co-founder of Apple Inc. in a 2003 New York Times magazine interview.

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