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And mold for allergy sufferers..

about 14 hours ago on Amazon planning giant greenhouse offices for its new Seattle campus

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I’m running the TL, and it’s hardly a “bad” phone. I got it for the ‘compact’ size mentioned. Performance is the best I can imagine. The skin is entirely light and not intrusive. As for the screen not being “the best” – it’s fine. Not everything has to be the best. It’s better than all the other phones I’ve ever had.

13 days ago on My review for the Xperia ZL 1 reply 2 recommends

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In case anyone really needed to understand how this plays out. It’s insane. I love the “Publisher” on the bottom, but it’s too small for important apps. There should be a “Verified Publisher” star or those need to be listed first – and tell the user when there aren’t any verified publishers for a very, very common app.

14 days ago on Microsoft issuing takedown notices for third-party Windows Phone Facebook apps 1 reply 1 recommend

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Brilliant. This in 3:4 portrait mode is getting somewhere (likely the same place Samsung is trying to go).

option to modify height of apps

Yes, I think it would be complicated. While I often lay my windows out in quarters, that’s not functional for lots of apps, it’s confusing to figure out in the UI & MS said that they think users don’t user more than 3-4 apps at a time anyways.

14 days ago on An Alternate Windows 8 User Experience (Revisited)

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MS needs to bring the start screen and the desktop closer together

Now you’ve got me thinking. The whole ‘freely placed windows’ thing is really incongruent with the ‘Modern UI’ approach. I honestly never use the app-bar in Mac or Windows – I just click on the window I want, positioned in such a way as to always be visible. This should be the goal – to always have direct action upon the object of interest. The full-screen app destroys this, and requires icon-based window-switching, and/or visual-mode-switching.

Fact is, work is combining 2 or 3 things together – and the window-snapping is the only hope for this. Android & iOS don’t have this yet, and it’s Microsoft’s best hope. Let’s hope they start using it more.

Perhaps “launching an app” is really about filling an empty space instead of bulldozing over the present app. Something like hitting a “+” button to get a new 1/3 window-space, initially filled with the present start-screen (keeping the other 2/3rds of the screen what you already have running). Further, the whole 3 columns could be collapsed as a workspace & another workspace opened up. I suppose this isn’t too unlike Chrome’s tabbing system in Android, just that you could scroll & “semantic zoom” around each column-app.

26 days ago on An Alternate Windows 8 User Experience (Revisited) 2 replies

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Wow, this is a great post; Yes, Microsoft failed to deliver something lovable (as a whole). Perhaps we’re just becoming clear on this, now that we’re using other UIs that are more consistent (Mac, iOS, Android), and Windows is running on 3 inconsistent software libraries!

What I see coming from the comments is this: a case of “Workstation” vs. “Everyday” use. Most of us have used Windows for work (mandatory), and used Windows for everyday use out of either necessity (only option until iOS/Android/Linux) or ambivalence (good enough+cheap enough).

“Microsoft has been both too bold and too cautious.”

As noted, perhaps the cautious part is MS having to deal with their own choices (the joy of long-term software dev). But is it too much to ask for a Control Panel that isn’t 20 years old?

27 days ago on An Alternate Windows 8 User Experience (Revisited)