In the Beginning there was the Word, and the Word was: Crash!

Arghhh!!! What is wrong with Microsoft? How has one of the biggest software companies in the world got it so wrong?

As you may know I recently escaped to a Mac to avoid the problematic and unappealing MS Vista, unfortunately I still do a lot of document editing and so one of the first installs on my shiny new MacBook was Office 2008 for Mac. On XP I had already noticed that Outlook 2007 had some nasty interface bugs, but these pale into insignificance compared the the hideous crashfest that is Word 2008 on the Mac.

I'm working on a significant document at the moment (its a bid for EU funding so its relatively big - 70 pages or so - and complex - tables, figures, references, etc.) and I needed to do some editing in Compatability Mode (thats what Word 2008 does when you load up a .doc rather than a .docx). I quickly noticed that Word was a bit unstable, crashing in flames and losing all changes about once every 20 minutes. I adjusted my workflow (repeat after me: save your work frequently) and soldiered on; however the crashes increased in frequency and by the time I got to one crash per minute I gave up, and used my precious minute of teetering instability to save out sections of the document in smaller chunks.

This seemed to do the trick and I managed to complete the sections, however on returning to the big document to incorporate my changes Word upped its game to an effective lifetime of ten seconds, rendering it useless. Honestly, Team Fortress 2 would have been a more effective way to write a collaborative document.

I sought Solace in some MS Office forums (Hello everyone, my name's Dave and I'm a Word user) and noticed that there was an update to Office for Mac that was supposed to address some of these problems - however the MS Autoupdater wasnt picking up on it for some reason.

I diligently downloaded the 114MB update by hand - 114MB! Christ on a Bike, what's in that thing! - however when I tried to install it the updater said:




It turns out that this is a known problem with the update, and that the problem is that the MS Autoinstaller is buggy. So I downloaded and installed the new version of that - but still no joy. I had a buggy version of Word, and a patch that refused to install. In the end I had to follow the advice on the forums and uninstall Office, reinstall Office, reboot, and install the update.

Only problem was that this didn't actually make any difference to Word's seizures every time it sees some text. Nowhere in those 114MB had an MS developer managed to fix the problem I was having.

In the end I had to take the extraordinary measure of using NeoOffice (a Mac open source office package based on OpenOffice) to read and edit the proprietary document format that the official software could not read without falling on its face.

Now that is an extraordinary state of affairs :-( And what's worse, losing several crucial hours with a deadline looming has made me so angry at the stinking thing that I've wasted another 30 minutes writing this blog post.

Bill - your company needs you back at the helm, and if you cant fix it, then at least you could have the decency to go down with the ship!

The Switch is Flipped

In my last post I described why I have decided to switch to a Mac. Well a shiny new MacBook Pro rolled up earlier this week, I've had a few days to acclimatise, and its probably a good time to report on what life is like this side of the switch.

Before the machine arrived I noticed an interesting change in my attitude to Windows, I don't know if it was the feeling of freedom, or some sort of psychological post-decision justification, but I finally lost all patience with the old girl. Eccentricities that I had put up with for years...

("your update is complete, your machine will restart in 5 minutes without your permission and lose your current working space and very likely the work that you had spent two hours creating before you foolishly turned your back to get a coffee")

...suddenly became unbearable insults, and bugs that I had learned to live with...

 ("your IMAP folder is at 90%, so I have decided to create a modal dialogue box that snatches focus away from you - oh, and because this is Outlook 2008 the OK button will no longer make this dialog disappear, however please click it in futile horror to create even more indestructible dialog boxes - if the despair doesn't finish you off, please laugh at the irony of it all")

...became hot pins under my fingernails. I think it's fair to say that when the time came I was all too happy to leave Windows before I jumped through it.

Nice Surprises:

The MacBook itself was a really nice surprise. I bought a 17" machine, and was a bit worried that it might be to large, but actually its only slightly heavier (an extra 0.2kg), slightly wider (about 1"), slightly deeper (about 0.5") and actually a bit thinner (0.5" thinner). It's also a beautiful machine, with an overall simplicity which is really appealing, and little touches (like the magnetic power cord and pulsing sleep light) that make it feel cared for and considered.


The software learning curve has been far easier than I expected, things are different - but natural and consistent. The things that are most different are also the things that are much better. I have a WiFi printer, and I've set it up on a number of windows machines. This involves Googling through HPs cryptic website, downloading and installing a HP suite of unwanted applications (several hundred MBs) to get the one driver you do want, and finally struggling to get the setup wizard to see the printer on the network. I started this process on the Mac and then caught myself, instead I opened the Printer config bit of System Preferences and there was my Printer already listed (the Mac had already found it on the network - I didn't even have to initiate the search), I selected it and clicked "Add Printer" and I was done. The whole process took maybe 20 seconds.

I've also really taken to some of the Mac's visual tricks - such as Expose, and the virtual desktop system (called Spaces). I've tried virtual desktops on Linux and Windows boxes before, but it's integrated so well, and the animated transitions are so good, that it just feels a natural part of the system.

I have had a couple of crashes; an open source FTP client called Cyberduck has died on me a few times (otherwise its really good), and the Microsoft Office installer keeled over the first time i ran it. The problem is very different then on Windows. On Windows when a process falls over it goes in an explosion of chaos, freezing great tracts of screen estate and pulling down related processes and often the GUI shell itself, all of which is topped off by a loud boing and another of those damn dialog boxes. On the Mac the application kinda twitches, and then it disappears. In fact the clean up is so elegant that I didn't notice the few times that Cyberduck crashed. One moment it was there, the next it was gone.

Oddities:

There are some negatives, but they don't seem so bad. The built in Web Browser, Safari, isn't so great. It renders pages OK, but it looks cramped, and feels quite basic in some intangible way. I've installed Flock (a version of Firefox) instead - and that's great to use.

The keyboard is US, which means that the " and @ keys are in the wrong place (for my jaded fingers anyway) and I seem to have lost the hash key (see - I cant even type it!). Also the Enter and Cursor keys are weirdly small, the functionality of ALT and CTRL are different (and mixed up with the Mac COMMAND key), and given that the Mac uses context (right) clicks all over the place - why oh why oh why doesn't the trackpad have a second mouse button! I know I can two-finger click instead but its just annoying that its left out - presumably to make a pointless point about simplicity :-/

Story so far?

Overall I'm very happy with the Mac. This is the first computer since my first computer (and thats a lot of beige boxes) that I've actually got excited about. Its fun to learn to use it - it rewards you at every turn - its achingly beautiful - and the community actually likes itself and the products that its based around.

And the killer feature - the thing that its worth switching for all on its own - is that the Mac wakes from Sleep (well, pseudo sleep) in seconds. I got into my office yesterday, and decided to read my email on my Mac laptop rather than my PC desktop, because the Mac powers up more quickly from sleep than it takes Windows to log in.

Three seconds from off to on, and then when it arrives, by god its all so pretty :-)

Switching to Mac

Right - that's it. I've had enough. It's time to say goodbye.

I'm fed up of hourglasses, crappy modal dialog boxes, ugly UI and an OS that reboots itself without bothering to ask first. After 15 years of suffering its time to move on. I've decided to buy a Mac.




Don't get me wrong, while there's a lot wrong with Windows, there's also quite a lot of things that are right. Its much more stable and secure than it's generally given credit for, and it's popularity gives it a steam roller advantage when it comes to choice of applications and the level of third party support. However, its time for me to upgrade my laptop, and I have a simple choice to make - do I change to Vista, or do I change to Mac OS.

By a slim margin the Mac wins. There are a number of reasons:

• The Macbook Pro is the best designed heavyweight notebook. The 17" model is as light as my current 15" Samsung X60, and is even a bit thinner.
• I'm no longer worried about leaving applications behind. I can get Office for the Mac, and virtually everything else I use is an internet application (Google Maps, Wikipedia, Digg, Blogger, etc.). Microsoft beware - internet apps may not compete with your applications directly (well, not much), but they remove a huge incentive to stay with windows. You can now move and still stick with what you know.
• I'm ready for a different set of quibbles. I'm not expecting the Mac to be perfect, but at least it will be irritating in a different kind of way. I'm red raw with Windows, and want to scratch somewhere else :-/
• The unknown Vista. Windows Vista looks pretty, but probably sucks. I know that's not a scientific appraisal, but if I'm going to spend the effort learning the ins and out of a new OS, I might as well change to Mac OS now.
• The Boot camp safety net. As a fallback I think that the Macbook Pro running Vista might actually be the best Windows notebook, so in the worse case scenario I can just switch to that.
  
• A wave of techie defections. This is really obvious to me because I work in a Computer Science research lab and do a circuit of computer-oriented conferences, but may be a bit invisible to those working in less geek-centic circles. The fact is that the Mac is gaining a big geek market share. The popular share is thought to be around 7%, but I would say that it is at least triple that with technical folk, maybe higher. There is a mass defection - which seems a weird trend, as technical folk typically shun out-of-the-box solutions, and software that is perceived as being noddy, but it seems like Mac OS has avoided this by being solid and flexible. One of my worries over the years was that the Mac was a simple computer for simple users - but the evidence is overwhelmingly contrary. If it's good enough for them, its good enough for me.

The Macbooks have just received a bump, and although the high end Sony Vaios are better on paper, I suspect that it might be another case of monkeys driving Ferraris.

The time is right and my first Mac is on order. I promise not to buy any black polo necks, or to get obsessive about white peripherals.

Let's see how I get on...

Nativism vs. Literacy

I have read a number of pieces recently attacking the notion of the Digital Native - Prensky's notion that there is a new generation of students who are in some way soaked in technology to the extent that it has changed their behaviour.

Stephen Marshall suggests that the concept of the Digital Native is reaching its autumnal years, and that there has been too much hype around this notion, and not enough evidence.

A recent study commissioned by JISC does a great job of analysing the characteristics that Prensky suggested (such as the ability to multi-task, and a preference for fun-style learning). The study concludes that while some aspects of the Digital Native idea do seem to hold true others are less clear. In summary:

True:

• Competent with Technology


• High Expectations of ICT


• Prefer Interactive Systems


• Prefer visual info over text


• Have a tendency to cut'n'paste


• They believe intellectual property laws to be unfair (but do understand them)

Open:

• Prefer Digital communication to Physical communication


• Are natural multi-taskers


• Want entertainment and fun in their learning


• They expect to find everything on the Web, and for free

False:

• Have no patience for delay (want instant everything)


• Prefer peers to authority figures


• Learn by trial and error


• Are expert searchers

The report also makes the point that some attributes seem to be universally true across all age groups and reflect general changes in society:

• Want/expect to be connected all the time


• Prefer small chunks rather than long texts

(this is greatly simplifying the report - its well worth reading the summary)

This fits in with a recent presentation that I saw by Emma Place at the recent LLAS e-learning conference. Emma noted that while there seemed to be an increased familiarity with technology, their was not a corresponding increase in the wisdom of how to apply it. For example, that students did not understand issues of evidential quality or provenance, and that this resulted in a cut'n'paste culture - information foraging that encourages shallow learning and borders on plagiarism.

In my own post advocating a new approach to e-learning tools I picked out the notion of Web Literacy from the general idea of Digital Natives. I suggested that Web Literacy was more than the ability to use the Web (that's more like Plain Old Computer Literacy), but was instead a desire to create an on-line identity, a willingness to forgo some aspects of privacy, and to embrace online relationships as the equal of real ones.

I like the notion of Web Literacy, as it explains a new attitude within the new generation, without making assumptions that the literacy is universal, or completely positive. The phrase Digital Natives seems too broad a brush, discussing literacies means we can talk separately about other factors, such as Computer Literacy and Information Literacy (which Emma might suggest is in danger of decline!), and also talk of the problems of illiteracy.

A colleague of mine, Mike Wald, has made the point that Literacy is a loaded term - that it has positive connotations, and sounds like something that we should aspire to - and perhaps he's right. Maybe Web Literacy is better used to describe some future form of this current behaviour where issues such as loss of privacy and respect for copyright have been untangled and hammered into some more respectable form - but then again, who gets to say what is respectable. Maybe these ideas should change?

Whatever terms we use I am confident that when designing the next generation of e-learning tools we should be aware that we are no longer creating applications in a virgin space, but are instead trying to build tools that fit into a person's existing digital landscape. We have to work with existing identities, interoperate with familiar toolsets, and provide an experience which matches a student's adventures on the wider Web.

And that sounds pretty positive to me.

It should make us WinCE

I can't bear it any longer. I can feel the rage building as I push forward through the crowd, people jostle and I duck a stray elbow. I catch a glimpse of him through the pressing bodies. I can't believe no-one else has noticed.

Most people seem enraptured, but some seem distracted. One man steps aside clutching a copy of Macworld, confusion in his eyes. Another holds up a Nokia, caressing the buttons in amazement. Perhaps the spell is breaking.

I step out of the crowd into the path of the procession and point an accusing finger at the audacious pink monstrosity atop the imperial coach. Microsoft PocketPC stares back in disdain as I finally voice what we must surely all be thinking.

"He's got no clothes on!"

A murmur passes through the people; eyes blink, the mists begin to clear. They have put up with the lie for so long. A woman falls to her knees, and a PDA Phone drops from her fingers. It lies on the cobbles revealing a badly rendered web page, the shame of the woman's browsing experience plain for all to see. An older man stabs defiantly at his new HTC Touch, only to cry out in despair as the attractive HTC software fades away to be replace by ugly grey scroll bars and an illsuited Start Menu.

There are many people here, yet the crowd is not as big as it might be. Many people have failed to turn up because their diaries haven't synched properly. Others tried to arrange to meet friends, but were let down by badly designed Contacts and GPS integration. Even cut and paste is not standard across applications.

The truth becomes clear - this operating system, this archaic throwback, this black sheep - it is a total shambles.

The crowd grows ugly. A rumour is started (although it's tied to one network and is appallingly expensive over a 18-month tie-in period), there is a new boy in town, someone with a iSuit tailored for his form-factor. The copy of Macworld is raised in defiance.

Excited whispers pass from ear to ear. There is more news. Google is coming.

PocketPC falls from the coach, naked and ashamed. How could we have lived in darkness so long, how could we not have realised. We bought Ferraris driven by monkeys, and wondered why they crashed so often.

The crowd is now a mob, PocketPC is as good as dead even before he hits the ground. Yet I feel uneasy as the mob closes in. We can't blame the capitalists, we can't blame the ordinary phone users, and we can't blame Symbian (after all Psion and Palm have been trying to tell us for years).

This was our fault. We bought the thing.

Shame on us.

Does Portillo dream of electric pigs?

Mmmm... so the other night I caught a BBC Horizon programme hosted by Michel Portillo called 'How to Kill a Human Being'. The point of the programme was to look into the various methods of execution used around the world - but particularly in the United States - to see which was the most humane, and potentially to propose a better method.

I have to say that since seeing the mighty Portillo fall to the puny Twig in the 1997 election (known in our lefty student house as 'bloody good telly'), I have found a grudging respect for the former defence secretary. Like many pariah politicians, his fall from grace seemed to release him from invisible chains, and he has been reborn as a rather thoughtful political commentator with just the right dash of gravitas.

However there were some uncomfortable glimpses of the old Portillo as he traipsed around a variety of unfortunate labs, hanging crash dummies and electrocuting pig corpses while musing on our responsibilities to the condemned.

You may have guessed that I'm against the death penalty, not from any particular moral high ground, but simply because I do not accept that the state has the right to take the lives of its own citizens - this seems somehow to be against the spirit of the agreement that exists between free people and the governments that consensually rule them.

Thankfully the EU agrees with me, and unlike my otherwise freedom-loving American friends I sleep soundly knowing that my country does not have the right to murder me under a cloak of due process.

All of this means that the notion of humane execution seems rather odd to me. Perhaps in the future the Horizon team could address other pressing questions from the oxymoronic fringe.

• How do you have the least disruptive riot?
• How does one politely kidnap?
• What's the most generous way to burgle?

Happily the programme ended in a puff of self-indignation when Portillo presented his own version of the perfect execution method (hypoxia) to some Professor or Evil in the United States (sorry - I didn't make a note of the chap's name, just in case writing it down would summon him like some horrific angle of death).

Professor Evil looked amazed at Portillo's suggestion of humane execution, because he wanted the condemned to suffer; he was after an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a barbarous murder for a capital offence in any one of 38 states.

It was a satisfying reality check to end a programme that was just a little bit too gleeful about killing - even if the killing was all done in the best possible taste.

There is no Guitar

Great article over at Gamers with Jobs about a near religious experience with Guitar Hero 3. I've not played Guitar Hero, but I can certainly relate to that moment in-the-zone when your senses extend beyond your body, and for a brief few moments you are one with the world.

The guys at Slashdot don't seem convinced by the whole religious experience angle, but I'm not so sure. There's something rather pure and beautiful about those times when the world fades away; something that even a cheap plastic guitar can't spoil.

At this festive time, when the media is full of Coca-Cola Santa Clauses, predictable Xmas Number Ones, and Witless Elf Movies, its actually quite nice to see something more deep and meaningful - even if it is in the aisles of Best Buy.

So here's to all those moments of Guitar Hero calm in a bad and crazy world...