Windows! It's over 9000!

With Windows Seven demoed yesterday, I feel the need to say something profound. Something that really caters to windows users like Joe Six Pack. You see, Joe Six Pack has a little bit of a hard time with computers in general. He's finally gotten used to Windows XP, and is reacclimating to Vista. Then, boom! It's a brand new paradigm. And a brand new metaphor. Microsoft is trying to adapt Windows' document-centric window management to be more like Mac OS X's application-centric window management. And it isn't doing well. The result? Windows is becoming more of a power user OS and less of an OS for Joe Six Pack or Joe the Plumber. The concept of Document Libraries is incredibly weird, because people will treat them like folders. "There are too many documents in this folder. I'll just organize them. No, I can't." Naturally, Microsoft will add wizards and popup balloons that explain everything that around fifteen people will look at. The rest of the users will muddle along, saying that it is too complicated and as a result switching to Linux and Mac OS X. Linux already works with more hardware out of the box than windows, but I never thought I would see the day that it would do it more simply than Windows as well.

Full Disclosure: This post was written off of an Ubuntu LiveCD while playing with Compiz's wobbly windows.

Supply and Use

The problem with OpenID is that everyone (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, et cetera) provides OpenIDs while very few sites actually accept OpenIDs. Distinct branding of your website's login is lost when OpenID is used, and that is the problem; such companies want to encourage users to stay with their product.

Powering all of these androids...

It's like the plot of a science fiction movie. Androids invade earth, need power, and either plug themselves into the nearest outlet, set up solar panels, or start using humans as batteries.

In all seriousness, one feature that the iPhone has over Android is the fact that it syncs through iTunes. Android provides sync services, but those sync services do not lead into one central "Android Control Center". In addition, I would bet against HTC/T-Mobile including a USB-to-special-phone-connector cable in the Android box. So most likely there will be a hodgepodge of sync services for android phones, which will differ based on what applications are installed. Sync your music with Amarok, your photos with who knows what, your movies with something else… It's all very confusing.

Then again, Google may have decided to skip the rigamarole of desktop syncing and may go straight to syncing pictures with picassa, your email with GMail, and later possibly a deal with Amazon for music over the air. YouTube is the obvious choice for videos, and everything else is small enough to be synced over the air. While users may not be able to set up their android phones in a desktop program, I am sure they will be happy to wait in a carrier's store for the carrier to do it for them.

Probably the only thing that the Android phone lacks in this regard is syncing TV shows and Movies, which, based on the open model of the Android phone, could be done, though studios and distributors may receive pressure from carriers to not back this service, as it uses a lot of bandwidth. Of course, there is always wireless syncing of movies from MythTV and TiVo over WiFi.

Although wireless sync is a lot slower than wired sync, it will probably be fine for most people. For a few months after she got her iPhone, my mother didn't really want to plug it into a computer, and instead used the adapter. Wireless sync simply adds complexity, due to the fact that no software can make it more clear that your phone is being synced wirelessly than the simple statement that a cable can make.