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Something I don’t understand about Microsoft is its obsession about new kernels. While I can see how a foundation of a building is important, changing it all the time damages the OS more so than fixing it. Imagine a hotel that does not understand why guests aren’t coming, and their solution is to rebuild the foundation of the building? That wouldn’t fix anything. The problem is in the sales, in the mismatched furnishings, and the vibe.

Mixing WinRT apps and WP8 apps on one platform will only result in one thing: A user experience disaster, found especially on Android tablets, which attempted similar integration. Most Android developers don’t bother with tablet views, and odd form factors like Galaxy Note can ‘claim’ to have many apps but all with suboptimal experience.

iOS knows a little better, but that isn’t an optimal experience either - not all iPhone apps get ported to iPad UX specs, and users can only use the apps in stretched form. Same thing will happen to WP9/Win9 if integration were to happen. Sure, now with more shared code, the programmers can code a little less - until they have to deal with the UI.

What’s likely to happen to the resulting Windows Store is:

1. Stretched up, carelessly designed suboptimal experience for either the W9 or WP9 app, which results in further inconsistency. (XAML development in Windows 8 has been way sub-par to WP8, as of now.)
2. Geeks can fulfill their wet dream of RDP on a phone - I have no idea what they can use to control Word on a 4 inch capacitive screen - while general public wouldn’t care less.
3. Lots of incompatibilities yet again due to yet another kernel change.
4. Games will benefit the most, as they do not require as much UX optimization. Fixing kernels to fix sales of an OS is a very engineering point of view, in my opinion.

The stronger reasons of why, say, Tomb Raider or Amazon Cloud Music or Microsoft Word, cannot be simultaneously released on Xbox, Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 are:

1. UI and interaction methods of the apps need to be optimized and tested for each type of screen - large or medium or small, touch or keyboard/mouse or Kinect or game controller.
2. Commercial priorities - some platforms just do not have as much users to put so much effort and resources to develop for, no matter how easy to port the code.
3. For small developers, each type of screen requires purchases of more devices.  To release only for Windows Phone, the dev only needs 1 phone, due to its restriction of form factors.  Shall form factors be more varied like Android, smaller devs are barred from releasing optimized apps for all the form factors.

So what do people actually want?

What I see most people actually want from the merging of Windows Phone and Windows team efforts is:

1. Seriously, the WP UX team is way better.  Just compare the Music app on the Phone versus the clustermess and clutter of the one on Win8.  Or the implementation of live tiles.
2. There are concepts in Win8 that are very useful and should be ported to WP8, i.e. Share charm, file picker contracts, and the whole app contract concept in general.
3. Easier porting of games between platforms.  The Win8 games library is lackluster right now.  The fact that Win8 doesn’t have XNA while Xbox and WP8 depends on it is very strange - and the solution now is to merge kernels, what?
4. Run the relatively larger and better designed WP8 app library on Windows 8 - but you can’t, since all the apps aren’t optimized for landscape view of larger screens.  All the apps need to be redesigned to be port over.

In short, for Microsoft to win, at this moment, is to push sales and marketing, and in long run, is to streamline the user experience.  Every time MS changes the kernel, it breaks more than fixes the issue, and it’s costly for both the corporation and the developers to fix the mess afterwards.

Let’s see if they would wise up.  And I’m pretty sure they are.  What I’m reacting to is probably just some fanboys’ dream.

Articles like this makes me cringe. A writer obviously jaded by TED’s exorbitant entry cost went on a rampage against TED, unknowingly becoming part of the anti-intellectual movement simply because of a perceived class divide. It sucks for TED Talks, which are basically free for all on the Internet, but still causes divide because of its exclusivity to entry (US$7500), because tons of opportunists want to rock the gate to get in and spew their individualism on stage.

Resources are getting scarce these days much?

With higher education getting more expensive and less valuable, and with consumerism and populist culture catering to spendthrift adolescents (thus growing increasing anti-adulthood and less responsible), is this the rise of an era of anti-intellectualism in the US?

History repeats (unfortunately) and it’s not uncommon we’ve seen China or Europe falls into eras of anti-intellectualism.

The most ironic part, however, is that we are actually all literate and educated enough this time. While I don’t think it’s necessary to go for expensive higher education for the quest of knowledge, it’s unfortunate that higher education is becoming an exclusivity to the upper class again due to its costs and lack of practical uses.

And in this age when the wealth gap widens, the hatred towards the upper class had worsen. I’m not so worried about the upper class, but combined with the lessened appeal of adulthood and the lowered interest in art, literature, science and technology versus money and opportunism, I am definitely worried that education and the quest for knowledge will go down with it in our future generations.

With all that said, how does it relate to us designers? I think designers can become part of anti-intellectualism or not, but a lot of us may not be aware of it since we aren’t being observant in humanity scale but only in project scale. Consider these whenever we design or develop a branding, an app or a web:

• Is our design catering to a certain culture that does not encourage responsibility into adulthood?
• Is our design going to be used to pamper one to stay in adolescence?
• Does our design help people grow and become a better human being?
• Would our work be responsible for further divides between humanity?

BBC World Breakfiller Ident: I had been interested and inspired in simple and orthogonal graphic design way before Microsoft introduces its Metro style UI.  Here is the proof.  I was obsessed watching this back in 1999.

(Source: youtube.com)

When will geeks ever get convinced, if an OS doesn’t need them to use meticulously curated Rainmeters, resize rigorously their browser windows and Winamps, and proudly clean their desktop so clean its only ability to show a giant static wallpaper of their favorite (insert hobby here), it’s not the end of the world?

Admit it, that’s OCD.

In most cases I’ve seen for normal users, window management is more or less a nuisance. They almost always either: have messy windows, or, have always maximized applications.

I’ve hardly ever seen people using Word, Spotify, iTunes, WMP, Photoshop, Adobe Reader or any browsers not maximized. I’m a power user, and I do that - with the exception that Photoshop spans the second screen to hold the toolbars. And if they aren’t maximizing, they probably just forgot to, like those who would watch Youtube in that tiny area when they have a 1920x1024 screen.

In fact, the only apps that really don’t need fullscreen are very few: Calculator, Notepad, chat apps, and misc system tool nick-nacks. But that’s what the desktop mode is for - advanced tasks.

The new Start screen is essentially the Start menu and the widget-filled Rainmeter desktop combined, plus automatically organized and much wider support. I don’t see the problem with that. Besides, I’m glad to finally see a widget standard from Microsoft that isn’t the drab Vista Gadgets gallery.

The lock screen guarantees to showcase your favorite (insert hobby here) photo every time you come back to your computer. And it’s also spectacularly clean all the time without the need for meticulous cleaning.

So why should most people suffer because of nerds’ preferences? Why?

It’s time to change, folks.

The protesters were right. The technology effectively concentrates wealth on few individuals disproportionally, and creates a very long tail of starving musicians.

The concentrated wealth, instead of being invested back into musicians, is instead used to pay all the extraneous jobs, e.g. promoters, CEOs, accountants, lawyers for fighting IPs, etc.

However, ironically, their jobs were already very mechanical and without free will. No wonder robots do better job than them.

Sutra - Sidi Larbi & Antony Gormley with Monks from the Shaolin Temple: If overlaying of photographs is flattening the 4th dimension into 2 dimensions, this choreography is an attempt to flatten the 5th dimension into 4.

The synchronicity of the monks is, of course, flawless.

Year-Long Photograph of Toronto Skyline by Michael Chrisman: When You are the master of time and universe, everything You see looks dreamy to us, though probably ordinary to you.

(Source: bmdesign)

Open Shutter Project by Michael Wesely: 34 months of midtown Manhattan during the reconstruction of MoMA is monolith still like the concrete and river raging like the road.

Little did we know, a building is born like a ghost, gone like a ghost, too.

Homage to Bernd Becher by Idris Khan: A simple act of overlaying photographs makes even the most permanent seem ephemeral.