Chris Blanc: Play and Projects: Blog

Offering free Wi-Fi can get a cafe more customers, and they’re browsers, not table-hogs, according to a study of Paris coffee shops.

The study tracked Wi-Fi usage at five Paris branches of coffee chain Columbus Cafe over three months.

According to the chain’s Wi-Fi provider Free-HotSpot.com, the sites attracted three to five times more users per day than paid-for rivals, but those users stayed online for less time on average than paying users. ^{^}

Simple business logic: people don’t want to have many accounts to manage, as with each account they have, they increase their risk of getting victimized or simply paying for something that they cannot get organized to use.

So pay Wi-Fi, unless there’s an AOL for it — or one company that works across the globe in most coffee houses — is going to fail.

Free Wi-Fi attracts a diversity of users. Some are jerks who want to leech; others are normal people who are popping in to check email. Still others are the target audience: people who want a neighborhood haunt.

A haunt is a place you go when you have no other ostensible activity. It’s a place you feel comfortable, and you feel comfortable spending money. It’s also a place you go to when home is too lonely, or too busy.

If you want return customers… make yourself a haunt. That means spaces that allow different activities, both noisy and quiet. Unobtrusive music and staff. Maybe some books, comfortable seating. Be friendly to those who are coming for meetings, especially those who are relatively broke.

The ebook reader wars are heating up, just as the netbook wars are peaking.

Amazon has just announced the Kindle 2, an update to one of the better ebook readers I’ve seen:

Its nearest competition, as far as anyone can tell, is the Plastic Logic reader:

The Kindle 2 has a lot going for it: easily held, has a keyboard (version 1 did not), and has Amazon.com behind it to sell the hundreds of thousands of books needed in its format. The Plastic Logic reader, however, has two huge advantages: it’s got a completely onscreen interface, no keyboard, and is huge — full page size.

My prediction is that these devices are going to converge with netbooks rapidly, as people realize that for checking email and browsing the web, it might be nicer to have 12 hours of battery life than color screens.

Per an earlier post calling for this change, among other things, I’m delighted that Microsoft is making this change:

Have you ever wondered why Microsoft renamed the Add/Remove Programs (XP and earlier) control panel applet to Programs and Features (Vista onwards)? It’s possible that Microsoft is considering its own version of something comparable to Linux package management systems. For those that don’t use Linux, think of it like a Windows Update for all your software. Such a system could completely revolutionize how users interact with software on Windows, not to mention the security advantages of only letting users install software deemed safe (which in turn could cause privacy concerns, of course). ^{^}

They’re going to put in a single area from which all updates and software is acquired and managed and, if they’re really smart, they’ll provide a way for this to automatically update the software and sell software from third parties like the iPhone does. This is a positive development for the transparent operating system, which would put the focus on people getting things done instead of using the computer for the sake of fiddling with a gadget, which is the 1980s paradigm we’re replacing.

I got a chance to see the new Windows 7 beta in action. I am both impressed and non-impressed. I think they’ve improved on Vista, which I didn’t find to be a problem if you ran it on the right hardware, but I don’t think it will solve the problem.

People buy a computer for many reasons, but for most of us, being fascinated by the computer is not one of them. We want to use it to do things, in the same way we buy microwave ovens without really wanting to know how they work. We don’t need to, in the same way we drive on roads we have no idea how to build — this is specialization of labor.

What they want is what Windows XP started to give them: transparency. They want to turn it on for the first time and have it basically just work. They want it to keep working for the next four years while they use it as their primary machine, and probably for another four after that as a media server. They want to be able to easily swap out components, add consumables like RAM and disk storage, and upgrade the monitor easily if they need to.

They do not want to wade through spyware, or to learn a whole new visual language just to navigate the operating system. They do not want strange words to learn and confuse, or any terminology specific to the brand they bought. They also do not want to be abandoned by that brand: there should be one phone hotline, and one local store, where they can get trusted service and advice at non-ripoff prices.

Microsoft and Apple have been operating for too long on a “features” diet. Any time a problem or opportunity comes up, they throw features at it, adding bulk and interface complexity to the operating system. What they need to do is step back and see how many of these issues can be eliminated with good, transparent design, and how they can do it in as small and unobtrusive an OS as possible.

This description applies to both technical and interface concerns. People got really excited for “MinWin,” a tiny version of Windows that used little disk and RAM at the expense of backward compatibility and most of its features. They love the idea of a stripped down, nearly invisible interface, instead of a Pink Floyd light show. They want the thing to start quickly, not screw up, and be user serviceable without a CS degree plus Microsoft certification.

I don’t think this is unreasonable and suggest that the first of the two to actually deliver this will dominate the market for the next decade.

Ballmer announced that Microsoft is releasing a beta version of Windows 7, which will be available for download beginning Friday. The news suggests the world’s largest software maker may be giving up efforts to rehabilitate its often-maligned Vista operating system, which was released worldwide in January 2007.

“We are on track to deliver the best version of Windows ever,” Ballmer told an audience of several thousand tech professionals and journalists inside a cavernous ballroom at the Venetian hotel. ^{^}

The problem is not Vista, it’s that the Windows ecosystem is broken. This ecosystem, comprised of everything from Microsoft corporate culture to a media-fed computer illiterate audience to the Windows 95-XP business model, doesn’t work any more. It worked at another point in history, when just having a stable OS that had free and commercial software available in a stable, ongoing fashion (backward compatibility) was of the ultimate priority. That’s not true any more.

Vista is a fine operating system. It’s from the same codebase that produced the superlative Windows Server 2003 and 2008 frames. But, it’s not designed — with its heavy graphics load, code that tries to do everything for everybody, and RAM-hungry default configuration — for the average user. It pretends to be, because they put a pretty face on it. But a pretty face doesn’t obscure deep internal problems. The foremost of these is how the computer arrives to the end user.

Say I go down to Best Buy and pick up a Dell or HP. Like it or not, that’s how most people buy computers. It will come with Vista installed on a machine that doesn’t have enough memory. Worse, that machine will have junkware on it: every driver comes with a “manager” that doesn’t do anything of note except warn you to buy more ink, there’s lots of trial ware and spyware-like applications preinstalled, and then there’s helpful idiotware that pretends to keep track of your passwords, make your system more secure, and check for viruses, but mostly what it ends up doing is slowing the machine down to half of its normal speed. Further, the default configuration of the operating system includes vulnerable applications, too many applications, and lots of services running that the end user doesn’t need.

This means that the user gets a slow machine, has to fight off the junkware which often conflicts with the software they want to install, then has to deal with security problems, and only finally can get around to configuring the machine as they’d like it to be. Believe it or not, most people do this, even if it’s only changing around visual effects. Then they’re at the whims of the idiot gods of junkware, who ensure that a virus scanner stops legitimate program installations but doesn’t notice hostile embedded browser objects, that windows pop up all the time with sales pitches, that the system runs slowly and that competitor’s products don’t work.

Then, imagine you want to fix something. Open the Windows directory — there’s one hundred folders and two thousand files in the root alone. Nothing is organized. Pictures, sounds, programs, log files, and other program components are scattered chaotically through the installation. There’s no sense that there’s one place you can go to fix anything. It could be anywhere.

If they’re really unlucky, they call the geek help services (which we don’t name here) who will charge them $200 to install Microsoft Word and remove a virus, then will claim the motherboard is broken and hit them with another $500 for a new one.

That’s what we mean by the Windows ecosystem being broken. The consumer is viewed as a sacrificial pig and all companies involved are taking a bite; this worked when having a stable computer was rare, but now stability is the norm, and people see it for how parasitic it is. Microsoft needs to realize that its operating system is as it is presented to the average person — a baffling, chaotic ball of contradictions managed by predatory and incompetent servicepeople. This is why they like Apple: one manufacturer makes the computer, the software, and sells the repair service. Simple and no guesswork.

Vista is a scapegoat. When people are hopping mad at Vista, what they’re saying is that they don’t want another broken ecosystem computer, and that the HP they just bought with 2 of the 4 GB it needs to run correctly is a disappointment because it’s not better than Windows XP — it’s just prettier, which makes us think it’s a Macintosh clone designed to fool us like used car salesmen repaint junkers.

It’s not hard for Microsoft to fix this, but it requires they stop finding scapegoats and start thinking about the user experience as the average person encounters it.

I had a chance yesterday to fix a friend’s computer. It was an HP, complete with the software they enclose to make it easier to use. What a nightmare.

First, their system restore was destructive and gave the user almost no clue what was going on. Next, their system insisted on installing tons of software, including some monitoring stuff that did nothing positive. Finally, when you did get it up and running, there were files all over the place and many processes running, giving any rogue apps plenty of places to hide. When a user sees 112 entries in their task manager, looking up each one is out of the question, so they’ll blow it off.

Even more, I was reminded of one thing I did like about the Macintosh. On the old Macintosh operating systems, there was a single system folder, with every type of system piece sorted neatly into a subfolder. It was easy to find what you needed.

On Windows, and even on Linux, pathnames are a mess. Stuff is strewn everywhere for historical reasons, which makes it impossible for a user to say “this is the one folder I need to grab.” The same anarchistic spirit that makes Windows popular with developers means that every driver manufacturer is free to install a useless little “monitoring” application that tells you when your printer is out of ink, essentially free advertising, but does nothing else. Every application can drop whatever it wants in My Documents and put other essential files in any number of places.

Windows needs to be reorganized. The modern computer user populace is divided into semi-experts and those who want it to Just Work^TM and really don’t care. The former are going to use Linux and/or Windows and customize it heavily, but the latter want a simple OS that’s easy to maintain and has a clear division of functions. They want to be able to backup their hard drive by dragging one folder to Nero and clicking burn, and I think that’s a fair request.

Microsoft is burdened with so much bureaucracy that people view even small changes as near impossible, and each level is terrified that it will be the one axed if something goes wrong. Result: not only is risk not taken, but people are loathe to fix the ten thousand little problems Windows has and make it a better experience.

Right now, Windows XP has the market by the balls because, for the cycle of technology from which we have just come, it offered the easiest Just Works^TM experience. That’s not going to be so in the future. HP has it easy because people buy their computers from Best Buy or Office Depot, but they are actually non-competitive. This process of giving the user a mess to work with and hoping they don’t notice will only go so far, but as competition emerges, it’s going to become more and more clear that manufacturers like HP and Dell are dragging Windows down by offering machines that run at half-speed because they’re bloated with useless software, configured badly, and wide open for any parasite or moronic application to dump all over them.

To contrast this experience, I configured a white box machine from scratch with Windows XP, and while the process demanded finding drivers for parts that should have been generic, when the system was up and running it was a refreshing alternative. There were few processes. No windows popped up trying to sell me things or warn me of problems that they couldn’t fix. The system was responsive, fast and easily navigated.

True, the Windows directory was still a mess, and files were scattered in random order between three major directories. The Windows directory itself is a disorganized mess, as if every division of a major company just dumped its stuff in and expects others to clean up after it. But compared to the HP experience, it was a joy.