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Monday, October 21, 2013

Faith in Microsoft Restored - My Impression of Windows 8.1 (#11)

(If you missed my earlier thoughts about Windows 8, you can find them here.  There is a noticeably different tone on that post vs. this one.)

It has been exactly a month since I joined Windows 8 World.  I know this because my Office free trial ended, destroying my productivity for the day.  I've been getting good with integrating little new features while still generally ignoring Microsoft's Metro vision for how I should use my PC.  I got around to unclogging my start menu, though I Windows+D straight to desktop as a reflex anyway.  I dropped my files into Skydrive and have found most of the capabilities of Office 2013 that I already knew about on 2010. I even started using the touch gestures; sometimes it's easier to use Skype or my .pdf reader as an app if I can just swipe in an out.  I don't think the cursor's days are numbered, and my Metro start menu is still ignored, but I learned to at least clean house within my Microsoft-imposed hell.

And then Windows 8.1 happened, and my faith in Microsoft to listen to its consumers was restored.  It's not like anything was that different.  The famous start button returns, the snapping tool gets more flexible, the start menu has new live tiles and sizing options, and the Windows store isn't a mess.  On the first day, I went about business as usual, rather underwhelmed.

But then I accidentally snapped a news app in, and realized I could resize it and move it around. Now I can actually meld Metro-world and desktop world, customizing my current screen and multi-tasking unlike how I ever could pre-Windows 8.  And then I decided, "If I'm going to actually use some programs as an app to take advantage of this cool view, I might as well organize my start menu."  My search for good icons brought me to the Windows Stores, which now prominently shows ratings and recommendations, while still feeling like there is more space than before.  I downloaded apps in a frenzy, treating my PC like a phone and fiddling with the layout (I'm pretty OCD when it comes to organizing technology) until I could conceivably spend most of my time in Metro mode.  Let's be honest; most 21-year-olds could survive on just social media, Chrome, Office, Amazon, Steam and Netflix for about 90% of their computer usage.  I noticed hundreds of apps that were probably in existence before 8.1, but ones I always ignored due to that small initial hurdle of confusion.  There's a beautiful little tool called Piano Time.  I was pressing pretty 6-note chords more easily than any fake piano I've tried.  And all the apps were waiting with a "NEW" tag in my All Apps area, now reachable with a swipe downwards on the touchpad.  I felt that "power-at-your-fingertips" feeling, where everything seemed intuitive and did what I wanted it to do, unlike how I felt the entire first 29 days.

All it took to make me realize Windows 8 wasn't awful was a a slight push to get me sledding down Metro Mountain.  My main thought now is: couldn't anyone have told Microsft to make its tools more flexible?  Wouldn't serious consumer testing have shown these minuscule changes would be worth making?  And if Windows 8 was so clearly inadequate and unable to change consumers, why did it take a year to polish?  I wouldn't mull over these questions, as you'll just get frustrated.
This guy is probably feeling good
for the first time in a while.

I could tell on first boot-up yesterday, when a tutorial spoke to me like an adult, but also didn't assume I've been sitting in a Redmond office with Steve Ballmer for a year, that Microsoft was listening.  But I'd like to see the company continue to update its UI at least every few months.  Google and Apple make near-constant fixes, and users expect no less.  With 8.1, Microsoft now has the software of 2013 to match its hardware of 2013, now it just needs the customer service and responsiveness of 2013.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Netflix, eBooks, iTunes - The Gang's All Here (#10)

How the digitalization of content resized all of our media, and what will happen next.

Twenty years ago, TV shows were 22 or 44 minutes only.  Best-selling books were 150-300 pages, newspapers were the size you could comfortably read with two hands, music albums 30-60 minutes, and movies 90-150 minutes.  Why?  Money and form constraints, mainly.  Content of all forms followed size patterns so that it felt substantial and worth paying for, but could fit on a VHS, or a CD, or be bound. 

Then the commercial internet was available, and everything changed.  Well, not immediately.  Albums and movies and books were still usually the same length.  It was still easier for consumers to start TV shows at the top of the hour, and invest in a book around 200 pages (i.e., not American Tragedy). It was what we were used to.

 
But then we got creative.  As the web matured and became more complete, we found no reason to restrict ourselves based on form. With virtual folders and 500 gigs of hard drive space, who cares whether an album is ten minutes or ninety?  Visual stories could be told all at once in a movie, but also five minutes at a time on Youtube, or just 5 seconds at a time.  I post to my blog ~500 words at time: no binding or publishing costs required.  Netflix throws its content at you seasons at a time, and what we can't find there we download by the season.  Digitalization means 'one size fits all' has become 'all sizes fit me'.

This is not news, per se, if you lived through the late 20th and 21st centuries.  But what I find most interesting is how entire industries have grown or gone away as a result of this paradigm shift.  Our binge-watching culture has given birth to a recapping industry; journalists share insight about a TV episode, and people who are at the same point find each other and discuss in the comments.  TV themes are shorter or hookier; no one needs to know the story of the Brady Bunch every time when they are watching 9 episodes in bed.  One of my favorite albums, Pat Metheny's The Way Up, is one 68-minute composition-no flipping of the record or tape or CD or even tracks were required.  News doesn't resemble itself at any time in history.  There are 13 million archived New York times articles but 17 billion Tumblr blogs.  I consider Twitter Vines (6 seconds or shorter videos) an art form, and film majors are actually getting discovered through Vine microfilm competitions.


The possibilities are great; here's a good example of new technology changing art.  I'm working on a project for class where I am helping E-publish a women's book.  Her non-fiction work about communist Russia spanned many regions, fields, and decades, and she described it as difficult to find the right order to present the information.  So I thought, why do we need a linear story?  Why not make a web of connected stories as they are in real history?  We could have a story about Lenin lead to stories about the 1920's, or to other revolutionary leaders, or to his faction, the Bolsheviks, depending on what reader wants to see next.  We could even visualize the story in a way books couldn't, with hundreds of embedded photos or videos.  And it could all be on a Kindle or iOS app.  I'll fill you in more as the project progresses, but you get the idea.


I fully expect TV shows to abandon the idea of standard episode lengths in the next five years.  The Kindle market has already done this for books.  As CDs die out, expect more and more artists to ignore the restraints every generation of musicians before them has felt as they try to record and promote themselves. Say goodbye to big-budget recording and music stores, say hello to Garage Band and SoundCloud.  Soon, no major human event, even in the developing world, will go unrecorded.  Expect a world where there is no "normal" media, few artistic standards, and no limits.  Are you excited?