Deskless Hotel Rooms? San Francisco's Hotel Nikko Remains Committed to this Unpopular Design Strategy

Having lived in Memphis, Tennessee for some time, one of the business lessons that you hear a lot about is the story of Kemmons Wilson. If you haven't heard the story or aren't familiar with Wilson, he founded Holiday Inn. Here's a little bit of background for you, from the Kemmons Wilson Company site:

The idea of Holiday Inns was born from a frustrated father on a family vacation. In 1951, Dorothy finally persuaded Kemmons to take a break so they packed up the children, all five of them, and head to Washington, D.C. to visit the national landmarks.

By the time they reached their destination, Kemmons had formulated an idea, borne from the discomforts he had encountered as he and his family trekked across the land. Outraged at being charged extra for each child at every roadside lodging where the family stayed, not to mention the cramped, uncomfortable accommodations, Kemmons decided to reinvent the lodging industry. His idea was to build 400 motels across the country, each within a day’s drive of the next. Kemmons measured every nook and cranny of every room where the family stayed.

By the time he returned to Memphis he had the ideal dimensions for efficiency and comfort in a motel room. His formula was so accurate that it remains the standard for many hotel rooms built today.

With the traveling family in mind, he developed other features that would become industry standards:

•     Standardized room size (12ft x 26ft with bathroom)
•     Swimming Pool
•     Free in-room Television
•     Telephones
•     Ice Machines
•     Restaurant
•     No charge for children under age 12 who stayed with their parents

While it's not listed here, I have to imagine that if Kemmons Wilson were traveling today, one more thing that he would expect in a hotel room would be a desk.

The Hotel Nikko San Francisco Goes Deskless
Last year the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco underwent a significant remodel. It was so substantial, that they actually closed the hotel down for three or four months. As someone who regularly stayed at the Hotel Nikko during events in the city, I was somewhat excited to experience the hotel, post-remodel. I finally got my opportunity to stay there during the Semicon West conference in July of last year. Sadly, I wasn't particularly thrilled with the results of the remodel and I first wrote about it in this post, Design, Remodel, Alienate? The Hotel Nikko in San Francisco. Here's part of what I wrote:

For some reason that is still entirely unclear to me, the people designing the Nikko remodel eliminated the desk from the room. I noticed it immediately, as the first thing that I began to do when I arrived was to begin setting up my workspace -- or at least, that's what I intended to do. At that point, I went back down to the front desk to request a different room, one with a desk. The staff at the front desk were very courteous, but informed me that none of the rooms -- except for the smallest ones -- had desks now. Apparently, it was not an unusual complaint; they told me that they'd heard the issue from others, and that they would share it with management. So off I went back to my deskless hotel room, questioning the design decision, what my colleagues would thing of the deskless room, and whether the Hotel Nikko would continue to be my preferred hotel in San Francisco.

As you can see from this quote, I was baffled by the the removal of the desk. As a design decision, it didn't make any sense to me. It was only as I was preparing to write this post, when I began to question my own experience -- that I've never stayed at a hotel that didn't have a desk -- that I searched (and found) other evidence of this deskless design approach. 

When I searched "hotel rooms without desks." I come across a broader chunk of information about the practice. As it turns out, the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco isn't the first hotel to explore this direction, but they may be clinging to a failed design direction.

The first result, Hotel Industry Trends Include Rooms Without Desks, details several interesting aspects of this trend.

1. Strategy: according to the article, "The shift away from dedicated work spaces is part of a bid to win over millennials, which consultants believe prefer to work in more casual, flexible spaces." In some respects, this really seems like a stupid rationalization to me. If you want to work in your bed, the existence of a desk doesn't prevent that. What's more, if you look at the new credenza at the Hotel Nikko, it's not like they traded desk space for some alternatively useful space.

2. The trend may be bigger than you might think: According to the article published in March, 2016, Marriott had announced in December 2015 that it would start a chainwide redesign that would remove the desks. Klimpton Hotels, the group that owns a number of boutique hotels throughout San Francisco had redesigned their rooms with only sofas and coffee tables, And Hilton's Tru brand had laptop trays instead of desks.

3. The Real Driver may be cost: To quote the post, "Eliminating things such as desks and closets can save tens of thousands of dollars in each room’s construction costs." They also note this example, "Hilton’s Tru will cost just $84,000 per room to build, compared to its Hampton Inn brand, which comes in at $110,000 per room." It makes you wonder how much they'd save if they scrapped the whole indoor plumbing thing.

If you're like me, you read this and you start making a mental note of hotels you'll never stay at. As it turns out, there are a lot of other people like me -- and more to this story. Because by the time that this story was written, the whole deskless design approach already had already generated a pretty significant backlash.

The Backlash Against Deskless Hotel Rooms
In this post (from December 2015), Hotels Tried To Eliminate the Traditional In-Room Desk But Created a Backlash, you can learn more about the backlash to Marriott from their deskless initiative. The piece details some rather extensive backlash on the Flyertak site, including this list of Marriott properties without desks (hotels to avoid).

There's also a section in this piece about Holiday Inn Express, their experiments with deskless rooms, and their decision to drop that experiment. What's interesting is comparing the design experiments done by Marriott versus those done by Holiday Inn Express.

Here's what Marriott did...

As part of its transformation, the company conducted a variety of research efforts across generations, Carroll says, noting that its specific target customer is primarily the business traveler. The research included a full mockup room where consumers could walk through the model room to see the look, feel and functionality of it.

Marriott gleaned information suggesting that customer behavior in the room is much more “untethered,” thanks to things like Wi-Fi and mobile devices.

And here's what Holiday Inn did...

Holiday Inn Express’ research consisted of two model rooms — one with a desk, and one without. As guests walked through the rooms the experiment revealed that there was a lot of dissatisfaction with the room that didn’t have the desk.

What I think is noteworthy in that term "untethered" is an applied value, something being ascribed from the outside to the test subjects. What's more, it's implied that that "untethered" aspect is in some way positive. However, suppose we change the subject of this from hotel room to food and use the same terms. Untethered food might be exciting and an interesting bite, but the opposite of that might be "comfort food", something that seems "anchored" and "homey". Now which sounds like the place that you'd want to make your home-away-from-home?

But Wait, There's More
If all of this history surrounding the controversy over deskless hotel rooms is wearing you down, consider this one last bit from September, 2016 in the Chicago Tribune, The desk is back: Marriott is redesigning hotel rooms. That's right, by September 2016, Marriott had reversed course from it's deskless direction.

I suspect that the online "list" of Marriott hotels that don't desks probably drove the change more than the actual guests complaining about the lack of desks.

The Hotel Nikko San Francisco Remains Committed to Deskless Rooms
Which brings me to the call-to-action portion of this post. After complaining to the front desk staff at the Hotel Nikko about the lack of desks during my first stay last July, then publishing blog posts and tweets addressing the issue, I never received any response -- or recognition of my concerns. I stayed there again in January for another conference, and again raised concerns. Finally, after reaching out on TripAdvisor, I was able to connect with a representative of the Hotel Nikko and share my concerns regarding the lack of desks.

Apparently, after they had some internal discussions, I was informed that they were not planning to add desks to the rooms.

With that, I might have been left to search for an appropriate go-to hotel in San Francisco on my own had I not just learned that other hotel chains in San Francisco may not have desks in their rooms -- particularly if you buy into this deluded logic that it's a better way to reach "millenials". So rather than simply looking on my own, I'm reaching out to the various companies that coordinate hotels for the events that we attend and asking them to provide this information. While I may have no clout -- I'm just a customer after all -- perhaps these companies that manage hotel rooms will have a bit more leverage.

So, if you're involved in events, I urge you to ask the company to work with the hotels that they're contracting with, determine whether there is a desk in the room, and to provide that information to you before you book.

Additionally, I'm hoping to build my own list of deskless hotels in San Francisco. If I do, I'll be happy to share that with you. This deskless issue has really annoyed me. I don't see letting go any time soon.

In closing, while Kemmons Wilson may not have identified the desk as a hotel room requirement when he was founding Holiday Inn, it's nice to know that the team at today's Holiday Inn Express recognize it's importance -- even if it did require them to do some A/B testing to get there.

Salesforce.com's Dreamforce '17 Wrap-up

This is just a quick post to share some of my observations and experiences from this year's Dreamforce with you.

Salesforce Tower at night

Weather
In all, the weather worked out well for this year's Dreamforce. The last time when Dreamforce took place at this time of year, it rained all week, so rain only on Wednesday night was an improvement from that -- though one not made by anyone.

New Announcements
Whether it was the timing of the event, or just that Salesforce has changed the way that they deal with Dreamforce, there wasn't a host of new features announced during the event. From a features standpoint, I think everything that they talked about is already available in the current Winter'18 release. They did talk about a new partnership/closer integration with Google, but they did something similar 10 years ago, so I'm a bit skeptical about what the real impact of this agreement will be.

Crowds
The biggest challenge with Dreamforce -- and has been the last several years -- is the overwhelmingly large crowds. Lines, lines, everywhere lines. On Monday, I attempted to go to a roadmap session, only to find a line of 15 people waiting outside a full ballroom at the Marriott. As is usual for Dreamforce, for whatever reason, the lines and crowds for the breakout sessions are much longer on the first day of the conference, then they lighten up after that. Not that it wasn't still crowded later in the week. On Wednesday, I tried going to a Google advertising session in the Palace hotel, and the line to get in ran more than the length of the hall on the main floor. I left for a bit, convinced that the session would be too full, then came back after the session began to discover that I was able to get in. It was crowded, but still a fair amount of seats in the room.

Einstein AI
This is the second year that Salesforce has been promoting their Einstein AI functionality. Einstein is more visible in Winter'18, but if you're using Salesforce Classic like we are, that functionality isn't available. This year, they've rebranded the Wave Analytics package as Einstien Analytics. They were also showing off some ability to configure Einstein's analysis parameters and build some advanced Einstein capability. For this reason, I sat through several data science and Einstein sessions, only to get to the part in one where they told you, "you need to contact your Account Exec" to enable this feature. In other words, "there is a cost to enable this, contact your AE to find out how much". Considering that Einstein is a carrot to enable the Lightning interface, I found it kind of funny to dangle the carrot, then take it away.

Put another way -- like Salesforce.com Portal -> Community or Wave Analytics -> Einstein Analytics, I'd have to say, "those are some nice features, but I don't think that management would agree to a doubling of our Salesforce costs just for that."

Creative Visualization, Design Thinking, and Drawing to Win
Perhaps the best sessions that I've sat through in a long time and probably the biggest surprises for me were sessions that I went to on Creative Visualization and visual story-telling,  Design Thinking and Drawing. Essentially, these sessions revolved around using visual imagery to present ideas and conceptual frameworks. They were an altogether unexpected bright light for me in an otherwise uninspiring Dreamforce week. With exercises like "draw the toast", these sessions were really engaging. What I found even more surprising was that many of these people came from a team at Salesforce that does exactly what they were presenting -- meets with customers and uses these visualization and drawing techniques to explain, define, and then craft solution plans for customers.

What's more, during the keynote interview with the CEO of IBM, Ginni Rometty, she mentioned that IBM has added a significant number of design teams (I don't remember the exact number). But, as you can see from this design thinking page on their site, design thinking is thematically important to IBM too. In that way, it feels like this is probably representative of a broader trend in business -- or at least in the software industry.

Dreamfest
Of course, what would Dreamforce be without the band / concert experience. As I mentioned in my post about last year's event at the Cow Palace, I couldn't imagine a band that would make me want to go to another Dreamfest event. This year, the band was Lenny Kravitz and Alicia Keys, and the event was held at AT&T park again. Last time they had the event there, the band was Greenday, it poured rain, and most people hung out in the stands trying to avoid the rain. This year, since the event was within walking distance again, I walked to the event just to check it out. Overall, the park experience was similar to the previous time at the venue -- ball-park food, VIPs directed to luxury box level, crazy crowds.

As I've noted previously, possibly the funniest thing about all of this is how surprisingly rudely selfish the Dreamfest concert crowd is. For example, there were huge lines backed up into the alcoves trying to follow designated paths down to the field. At the back end of this, the line became a mass, choking the walkway around the food stands. And yet, there was no give in the mob of people there, no flex to allow people to pass through the walkway. I've been to many other general admission events where the audience was far more polite to one another. It's something in the demographic of this audience. And, at the same time, you have to know that most of these people have been to concerts and events before, but they act like a ravenous mob being thrown a small, insufficient allocation of food -- a couple of steps away from a riot or a stampede.

Needless to say, between the food not being great, the crowd, and the music not really appealing to me, I left after three songs from the Lenny Kravitz set. Perhaps the best part of the night was walking back to the hotel, knowing that I didn't need to stand and wait with that crowd for a shuttle bus to arrive some time later than most would expect.

Keynotes
On the first day, I was on my way from one breakout session to another when I noticed a large line of people on Mission. They were queued from the corner on 3rd back nearly to the Metreon. Isoon realized that this was the line for the opening keynote that was still over an hour away. For the Michelle Obama keynote, I was in Moscone West and the event staff was already redirecting people from the two overflow keynote viewing areas there to the Marriott. It was probably ten minutes after that when I heard them saying the Marriott was full. Needless to say, I found the best way to watch most of the keynote presentations was from my laptop in my hotel room. While I occasionally had drop outs (thanks Hilton wifi), not having to deal with the crowds was a huge advantage. At the same time, it was a little disappointing to know that, when they had a give-away based on a "golden ticket" at the end of the Sales Cloud keynote, I was fairly confident that my hotel desk chair didn't have anything taped underneath it.

For all of the crowds, it's also worth noting that there was a stepped up security presence at this year's conference. You could see security staff at any event you went to, any gathering of people. In all, while it was an ugly reminder of recent events in the world, it was some comfort seeing all of the efforts that were done to ensure everyone's security. In all, it was present, but unobtrusive.

The Expo
In some ways, you had to feel bad for the companies exhibiting at the Dreamforce Expo. This year, the Expo was in the reopened South hall. However, the current layout (and, from my understanding of Semicon West in July, this will also be true through that time) has the only entrance to the show floor down near the 3rd Street side of the hall -- essentially, the 100 - 400 aisles in an event. It made going into the South hall kind of like venturing into a cave, with the far, 4th Street side feeling rather disconnected from the entrance. To make things more accessible, Salesforce opened one of the emergency exits near the 4th Street end out to the Howard Street "Dream Valley" and decorated it with a bit of artwork suggesting you were exploring a cave.

Additionally, most of the sponsors were relegated to using a standard inline 10x10 system, so you had rows and rows of partners, all struggling to differentiate themselves or display some sort of unique identity. Mostly, as somebody walking through, it was like walking through endless white wall partitions. As a result, I found myself spending little time there.

Conclusion
In summary, it was another event and another year. Most of the time, I found little joy in being there. Would I recommend it? Hard to say. There are certainly some interesting take-aways, but at the same time, I'm not sure how well it stacks up against the raw costs in terms of ROI (when you consider the astronomical cost of hotels -- ~$395/night -- and the full $1500 conference cost). When you add in the oversubscribed crowds, you'll probably find that you're asking yourself why you subjected yourself to this -- an even more common thought than, is this worth it.

Another Apple Design Faux Pas - Magic Mouse 2

I came across this tidbit about Apple design yesterday in a story with leaked details about the iPhone8. While providing comments about the potential new iPhone design, the article mentioned other recent poor Apple designs and referenced the Magic Mouse 2. Specifically, it noted that when Apple redesigned the Magic Mouse 2 to include a rechargeable battery, they put the charging port on the bottom of the mouse. In other words, when the mouse needs to be recharged, you can't use it while it's charging.

This is the part of the story that really caught my attention. Sure, Magic Mouse 2 is old news, but the fact that this product was actually released by Apple seems telling. This is another example of where form outweighed function, where the needs of actual users came second.

If you've ever had the battery die when you were using a wireless mouse, I'm sure you're familiar with the panic of running around, trying to find a battery to replace it and restart whatever you were in the middle of when the mouse died. Now imagine having to stop what you're doing, put your mouse aside, and wait for the mouse to charge.

Sure, with a quick charge, there might not be much of a wait. But the obvious solution -- following a 30+ year long legacy of mouse designs -- would be to put the connector on the top of the mouse so that you could keep working while charging. That would have been a design that considered functionality. The bottom of the mouse? That's more "let's just sweep the ugly parts underneath the rug" design.

Now admittedly, to date, I've bought one magic mouse (v.1) and returned it shortly after I bought it. It wasn't even for my day-to-day system. In short, this aspect of the Magic Mouse 2 design probably would never have come to my attention had I not seen mention of it in the article. Still, I find it yet another indication that Apple's design group has lost touch with the usage requirements of their customer base. Go fashion, f--- function.

Design, Remodel, Alienate? The Hotel Nikko in San Francisco

I'm back from a stay at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco for Semicon West. The hotel completed a remodel earlier this year. Remodeling is an interesting canvas for design, not exactly a blank canvas, but pretty close. I found the results surprisingly disappointing. Normally, I probably wouldn't write a blog post about something like this, but, from a design point of view, some very strange decisions were made. I'll elaborate shortly, but first, some background.

The Hotel Nikko - My Go To Hotel in San Francisco
While I'm not sure exactly how long the Hotel Nikko has been in San Francisco, I do know it's been there a long time. Located in the Union Square area, it's conveniently located to many of the tourist attractions and, more importantly for my team during conferences, just a few blocks from the Moscone center. Hotel Nikko is a Japanese hotel chain, so many aspects of the hotel have always appealed to Japanese colleagues staying in San Francisco.

I began staying at the Hotel Nikko several years ago. With multiple conferences in San Francisco each year, I've had the opportunity to stay at numerous hotels in San Francisco, ranging from the premium, globally branded hotels to the tiny "boutique" hotels than you can find at the bottom of the tradeshow housing price spectrum. One of the things that struck me the most the first couple of times that I stayed at the Hotel Nikko was the unusual layout in many of the rooms. Rather than the row of rectangles set side by side that you typically get with most hotels, the Nikko featured unusual layouts, like rooms with inexplicably long entrance halls. What I soon discovered was that this unique layout contributed to minimizing the sounds you hear coming from your neighbor's room. I contrast this with some of the premium hotels that I've stayed at where I could hear nearly every word of the conversation in the room next door. This aspect alone made the Hotel Nikko my preferred hotel choice in San Francisco.

At this point it's probably worth noting that many of my colleagues tend to prefer the globally branded hotels with broad-reaching loyalty programs like Hilton, Hyatt, or Marriott. The Hotel Nikko has a loyalty program, One Harmony, but there is only one other hotel in Hawaii in that program, so unless you're traveling to Asia frequently, the One Harmony loyalty program is quite limited. Despite it's limitations, I was able to achieve their top tier status -- Exclusive -- simply through stays at the Hotel Nikko. That probably gives you some idea of how much I've stayed at the Nikko. We liked the Nikko so much that, when we had our wedding in San Francisco, the Hotel Nikko was the first place that I contacted to make arrangements for my friends and family to stay. You can safely say that I've been a loyal customer.

The Remodel Designs Me Out
The Nikko closed down in December for about three months to remodel most of the rooms. I'd actually been able to see a draft example of the remodel during my stay at Dreamforce'16, but Semicon West was the first time that I was able to experience the actual remodel. Within two minutes of my arrival in the room, I quickly realized one major failure with the updated room design -- there was no desk.

For some reason that is still entirely unclear to me, the people designing the Nikko remodel eliminated the desk from the room. I noticed it immediately, as the first thing that I began to do when I arrived was to begin setting up my workspace -- or at least, that's what I intended to do. At that point, I went back down to the front desk to request a different room, one with a desk. The staff at the front desk were very courteous, but informed me that none of the rooms -- except for the smallest ones -- had desks now. Apparently, it was not an unusual complaint; they told me that they'd heard the issue from others, and that they would share it with management. So off I went back to my deskless hotel room, questioning the design decision, what my colleagues would thing of the deskless room, and whether the Hotel Nikko would continue to be my preferred hotel in San Francisco.

Of course, the removal of desk wasn't the only thing that had changed, but it certainly focused my attention on the details of the remodel that had issues.

• The dresser / credenza that replaced the desk and dresser. As I posted on Twitter, this design reminds me of Graceland circa the 1970s. Or perhaps a Holiday Inn near Graceland during that time. This piece provides drawer space, but it also houses the coffee maker that used to be above the minibar. While I know hiding the coffee maker cleans up some of room lines, I think it was reasonably out of the way in the old style.
• The vanity station in the bathroom next to the sink. This is a new addition, the closest thing to a desk in the room. I actually used this area as a desk, but the downside was my laptop was living in the splash-zone of the sink. And my desk chair had no back. And made noise whenever I slid it in or out. But other than that, it sort of worked as a desk.
• The "updated" bathroom. For my wife and I, the old version of the Nikko bathroom served as a benchmark for things that we wanted in a bathroom. We were even using some of the size specifications as a guide for what we wanted when we renovate. There are a number of small changes that make the new Nikko bathroom less desirable. First, while we didn't have a tape measure, the tub seems smaller. Additionally, they used to have a spray hose for rinsing your hair at the tub, but that has been removed. In the shower, they changed from a two-nozel showerhead plus showerhead on a hose to an overhead "rainshower" head and a hose that features one of those bar nozels that only has a soft spray, no changeable settings. After using that for a week, I found it to be functionally poor. 
• Workmanship. Perhaps the single clearest example of issues with the renovation was the toilet seat in my bathroom. I've stayed at many hotels and used many bathrooms in my life, but this is the first one that I've ever seen that was assembled so poorly. To me, the toilet seat was the antithesis of the sensibilities I expect from a Japanese hotel. 

Here are a few photos to show you what I mean.

Hotel Nikko Credenza - gold, mirrored top, reminds me of Graceland

The new, rather useless showerhead on a hose.

The toilet seat at the Hotel Nikko aligned rather poorly.

A Japanese plumbing fixture, but not Japanese quality workmanship

Who's your Target Demographic?
Another interesting aspect of the post-remodel Hotel Nikko is the way that they are marketing the hotel or who they define as their target demographic. There are several aspects to this:

Dog Friendly.
Prior to the renovation, they'd actually added an outdoor area for dogs, but with the renovation, they've elevated their self promotion as dog-friendly. In some ways, this seems to me like a strange strategy for a hotel to pursue. Don't get me wrong, it seems increasingly common to see people with their dogs out at shopping malls and restaurants, particularly places with outdoor seating. Clearly, there is a significant segment of the population that are dog-lovers. At the same time, there is also a percentage of the population like myself and my wife, with allergies. Dogs are a potential allergen. For me, when I see this dog-friendly promotion, I'm always wondering if dogs stayed in my room previously and if that's going to be an allergy-issue. And don't get me started on the anxiety over fleas (enhanced by a run-down hotel experience in the skin-drying Las Vegas air). So I have to wonder whether the heavy dog-friendly promotion generates as much anxiety for others as it does for me.

To highlight the dog-friendly theme, they've added a stuffed dog to the assortment of decorative pillows in the room. The stuffed dog can also be purchased for $25. If you happen to be traveling with a child, you may find the stuffed dog to be a frustrating addition to the room. At the same time, it's probably worth noting one guest we overheard in the lounge (with multiple children) comment that the Hotel Nikko wasn't particularly kid-friendly. While we didn't evaluate the particulars of this, it seems like a funny contrast compared dog-friendly and the stuffed dog.

The Video Loop
A dog similar to the stuffed dog plays a starring role in a special Hotel Nikko video loop that they put on the TV when they do the turn-down service. Normally, I don't watch these kinds of things, but when you're staying for a week, you start to see these kinds of details. Here's a short synopsis of the video loop.
Scruffy guy and lady arrive separately at the Hotel Nikko. They are different in separate rooms and the don't seem to know one another. Scruffy guy spends the day sightseeing in San Francisco. The lady, meanwhile prepares for and gives a presentation to a large meeting room of people. In the early evening, the lady goes to the hotel gym to do yoga. The scruffy guy, meanwhile goes swimming in the pool. Following his swim, the scruffy guy is sitting on the outdoor deck and the live version of the stuffed dog runs up to him. He starts petting the dog, and the lady appears, clearly enticed by his dog petting. Next, they're off to dinner together at Anzu Restaurant in the hotel. Then watching a singer at Feinstein's in the hotel. Then, closing scene, they're looking over the San Francisco skyline (from the Marin side). Clearly, they've hooked up.

And suddenly, it all comes together. Of course, neither scruffy guy nor the lady seem to need a desk to work on, but it's an interesting demographic / lifestyle loop.

The Bottom Line
While I'm sure that there will still be some interest from our Japanese colleagues to stay at the Hotel Nikko, having spent a week there without a desk, I found that it's kind of deal breaker for me. It's kind of disappointing really -- we were actually quite fond of place before.

Apple's iPhone 6s Plus is Not the best phone I've ever owned

One of the phrases that always makes me laugh -- particularly after a new iPhone launch -- is when they get somebody and quote them as saying, "this is the best phone ever." With iPhone generations past, that was sometimes true for me, I was sometimes that guy. You think about some of those phones and how amazing that they were at the time, and they really were some of the best phones ever.

Unfortunately, I can't say the same about the iPhone 6s Plus. It is not the best. It is not the worst. For me, the overall phone enclosure is an inferior design wrapper around a pretty basic set of predictable feature enhancements. The iPhone 5 style of enclosure was better. Sure aspects like the bigger display wouldn't fit into the iPhone 5/5s enclosure, but for everything that this device gained in terms of enhancements, it has given up a lot.

Hardware Design Elements that Suck on the iPhone 6s Plus
First of all, let me start by saying that the iPhone 6s Plus is way too damned big. Yes, the large size is nice for watching Netflix videos and the "Zoom" feature actually transforms the proportions in the on-screen display to be something much more like the far more readable pre-iOS 7 operating system. Zoom is almost enough to overcome some of the crappy aspects of the iOS7/8 UI. But I'm not going to focus on the "too damned big" aspect. Let's assume for a minute that that is a choice. In this case, what I'm going to reference is how that oversized design impacts other usage aspects.

Which brings me to the worst aspect of the iPhone 6s and the Plus, the decision to move the power button to the right side of the device. This is, for me, one of the biggest functional blunders that Apple has made in the history of the hardware. While the button the top has it's limitations and issues, moving it to the side opposite the volume up button means that when you squeeze the power button, your natural leverage point is opposite that point. It's why you see things with two little grippy handles on opposite sides of a grab point. Squeezing both probably happens more often on the 6s Plus because it's so large, too damned big. But seriously, who puts two buttons on the opposite poles of a gripping point unless they are meant to be squeezed together?

Next, and I think I've written about this before, the protruding lens on the back also screams mistake. The protruding lens is kind of like saying you must use a case. Otherwise, when you lay the phone down on it's back, one of the resting points is always going to be the lens. It may be made of super scratch resistant material, but it doesn't remove the dumb from this design issue.

This phone. This feels like one of those times when somebody brings you a design and says, "Isn't it great?" and then all of the designer's friends all say, "I love it" and everyone tries to tell you that it's great. But it's not. For me, the worst part is, if there's a trend line, I don't like the way that Apple is going. They seem to have lost their way. 

Apple's UI Design Sucks: More Examples of How Apple has Lost it's Way

I happened to catch a clip of an old interview with Steve Jobs on NPR's Fresh Air yesterday. It was early 1990s Steve Jobs, but one of the things that he said about the Macintosh was this notion of bringing "a liberal arts mindset to the computer". If there is anything that embodies a classic Apple value, it is -- or was -- this notion of good design.

Good design isn't simply interesting colors and appearances that make you go wow, it's functional, meaningful, and with purpose. And this aspect is where Apple has totally gone off the rails. A perfect reminder of it, one that I find myself interacting with nearly every day, is the iTunes interface on the phone. I've collected some screenshots for you.

This shot is taken of a view inside a playlist. Each time I launch iTunes on the phone, Apple defaults to taking me to "My Library". It doesn't matter whether I use playlists or whether I was last using playlists. While this is an improvement from the previous generation that always took me to Apple Radio, it's annoyingly dumb.

But there are multiple aspects that suck. Here you'll see the tiny control for playing the playlist. Alternatively, you can click on the specific tune to get it to play.

Another aspect that sucks is Transparency. I've already written about how frustratingly in the way transparency is on the desktop. Here, it's grabbing color from the album image to shade the background, making the UI more difficult to navigate. Even more useless is if you build a playlist using multiple artists. It uses the background from the first album in the playlist.

The team at Apple is probably patting themselves on the back for how they extract color from the album image to define the color palette, selecting the background and then the contrasting colors. But being clever doesn't make it good design. Here's an example of a playlist that is quite difficult to read.

Controls that don't work well suck, regardless of how cool they look
The primary function of iTunes is to make it easy to organize and play the electronic music files that you have stored on your device. If it's difficult to operate the controls, then the UI sucks. If your using iTunes and you're listening to a track, the track progress indicator is a thin little line around the play button on the track and a thin line running through the middle of the controller at the bottom. If you want to fast forward or rewind, you need to interact with line -- or attempt to find another screen to control the software.

You might expect the three dots on the right side of the screen to open a set of options including the option for a larger set of controls, but it doesn't. Instead, it opens the option to add or remove from the playlist.

The main function of this software is to play music and yet it makes the controls for doing this nearly impossible to access.

This is why any love that I may have had for Apple products is being trampled and crushed. New Apple is high fructose corn syrup sweetened and tastes nothing like the product we've grown to love over the years.

Apple's iPhone 6s Reservation Web Site FAIL

One of the reasons why I'm hesitant to upgrade my iPhone is that I often find so much of Apple's modern software design to be... lacking really understates it. Sometimes it seems like the design choices made are so bad that they actually damaging to the user experience (e.g. transparency). I've written about some of these terrible design elements in the past. With that being said, I had recently been convinced that I should go ahead and upgrade my phone. And that's what lead me to the "excitement" of the line and really highlighted the failure of the iPhone 6s reservation feature on Apple's site.

Here's the story. You can purchase an iPhone online using the web site reservation system. First, you need to select all of the aspects of the iPhone that you want: choose either 6s or 6s plus, choose your color, choose your storage, then choose your carrier. Then you're presented with a list of additional options like Apple Care and a case and a dock. These don't actually add to the displayed total and, selecting something like Apple Care actually pops open a wind with a 2-click agreement process, but it's all presented as though it's essential to choose it at that time.

Anyway, then you get to choose how you want to buy your phone: continue through the online store or reserve an iPhone for pick-up in a store. Cool, I want to reserve one for purchase at the store. This takes you to a page where you need to select your state, then select your store. If it just so happens that there's no inventory available for reservation at that store, the site kicks you out of the process and dumps you into this stupid loop. You must now choose another store in your state, reselect the model that you would like, then reselect your carrier choice. One you've done this, your presented with an array of available models by capacity and color.

But here's the part that fails. Instead of presenting only options with inventory, you're presented with the complete list. The system isn't intelligent enough to know if you're wasting your time. And so, if inventory is running out fast, if you don't land a good shot on your first shot, you're hosed. All they had to do was limit the options presented to sites with available inventory and... well, you get the idea.

But it's worse than that.

Every morning, the inventory refreshes at 8:00 am. I started this process several days ago and discovered aspects of the inventory / reservation site challenge. So I decided to attempt a start as soon as the inventory refreshed. The first day's attempt looked a lot like the previous evening's attempt. No inventory at any of the stores in the south bay. Yesterday, I actually got to a phone and selected it, only to be informed that I needed to log into Apple with my AppleID in order to complete the registration process. By the time me and OnePassword got through with unlocking my AppleID, the phone that I reserved was gone and the nearest phone was in Palo Alto at Stanford. Unfortunately, by the time that I selected an appointment time, that option was gone too.

As a consumer, I hate it when a store doesn't have the product that I'm looking for. I've left baskets of items that I collected at Safeway and walked out of the store when I discovered that they were out of a product that I was looking for. Part of that is, why should I put up with your crappy check-out line process if you don't have the product that I want.

In this case, Apple's online reservation system is so frustratingly bad that I'm considering skipping the iPhone 6s and not upgrading. When your purchase experience is so bad that it may outweigh the "awesome" new features of your product, that my friends is a FAIL.

Apple iOS 8.4: Better, But Still No Love for Apple

Another day, another Apple update that doesn't fix some of the core interface design problems on the platform. It's the sad reality for those of us that use Apple products -- each day is a reminder of Apple's commitment to this crappy interface design. Transparency is not gone. It still fills my screen with useless data -- data that I consider far more offensive and invasive than some of the skeuomorphic elements. With the recent update to iTunes on my phone, I see that they've finally recovered from the stupidity that is, "let's open in Apple Radio as the default." It didn't matter how many times I switched to playlists. It didn't matter how many times I was reminded that I didn't like Apple Radio and that I didn't want to use it -- Apple always wanted me to land there. It was another example of the underlying message of the OS these days, FU Apple user.

With the new iTunes, I see that they've brought transparency to the background of playlist screens. Why? Because, color!

Meanwhile, as I feel increasingly alienated and disconnected from my Apple devices, I find that less and less interest in updating the apps or backing up the device. Oh, my phone fell on the ground. Bummer. The battery doesn't seem to want to hold a charge, should I update? Why bother.

Linked In's Crappy Streamlined Interface

Is it just me, or do you also think that Linked In's interface kind of sucks. I know that it's been a year or more since they made this revision, streamlining most of the content into more of a Facebook-like interface. And there's the thing that used to appear either in the mainstream or on the right sidebar -- some interesting things about people you may know or something. Now they've buried it in sort of a click-down list near the top right. Starting at number five, somebody you know has a work anniversary. Curious about more, you're gonna have to click. With the faded teaser of more to come, it almost looks like an element you could easily mouse-over/scroll through. I've not clicked chunk of info since the redesign. Never.

No, these days, the "feed" seems like an endless series of ads and sponsored posts. Where I once found myself checking the site at least once a day, now I'd be surprised if I go there twice in a month. After all, how many times to you need to see other work people posting word or math puzzles.

Congratulations LinkedIn, you've just about streamlined me out of your user base.

Is Apple Becoming Dell? Transparency and the Exile of the Pro User

Yesterday, I finally disabled the transparency effect in Yosemite. After looking at something I was working on and trying to understand where the blue color cast was coming from, I finally realized it was coming from a blue area in the window below it. I've written in the past about how terrible the transparency effect is, but until it begins to negatively affect your work, it's easy to forget how insidiously frustrating it really is. It's really a complete departure from the days when we spent time and money to ensure that our displays were calibrated and our color previews were precise.

But this is the Apple we have now -- the Apple that's more focused on consumers and fashion than on the professional users who were lifeblood of their customer base back when there weren't smart phones and the rest of the world revolved around Redmond. We were loyal because the platform was ours. It was uniquely suited for the demands of type, design, video and images. As the web world grew, OSX was well matched with its Unix core.

But there is another thread inside of Apple, tugging on its designs and strategies; the drive to simplify. At times, simplify equates to streamlining complex processes, like using the GUI to move a file from one directory to another. Other times, simplified can best be described by the pre-OSX feature they tried to implement at one time, "The Launcher", a one click button to launch an application because -- I don't know, maybe double-clicking on the application was too complicated for some people. It was a stupid idea back then, but somewhere in the halls of Apple, there are still fans. iOS basically runs a Launcher interface, and Launchpad is now baked into OSX. And for pro users like you and me, it gets the same amount of use that the original Launcher did -- none. 

When they radically simplified FinalCut Pro, Apple faced a tremendous outcry from the professional video editing community. Some of that outcry resonated -- they added extensions to return a few features -- but if you look across the broader Apple software landscape, you'll see an overall weeding out of technical and control, instead being replaced by the idiot light or nothing at all. Remember the activity monitor in Safari? Gone.

So what does the Apple roadmap have in store for us? Who knows. I cannot help but expect the day when we're forced to have a giant clock running in the background because somebody has decided that OSX should mirror the functionality of the Apple Watch. Could they just give us an OSX pro version that doesn't include all of this crap?

FitBit FAIL: Why I will not buy another FitBit device

A couple of weeks ago on a Sunday, FitBit got me again. Friends were talking about steps, we were talking about playing along on the competitive step tracking, and I was poised for a week of tradeshow activities -- usually good for 20-25K step days. And so, on the way to the airport, we popped into Costco to pick up some new FitBit units.

We needed new hardware because we had both gone through the inevitable losing the FitBit experience... twice. Enter the latest in chapter in our Fitbit saga, the Fitbit Flex. Initially, when we were looking at the Costco packaging, it looked like a great deal -- we could get three Fitbits for $100. Then, somebody in the store explained to us that it was only one Fitbit with three wristbands (the packaging is not particularly clear about this). So, somewhat discouraged by getting less of a deal than we expected, we decided to move forward. In the parking lot, we soon discovered that the multiple color options was not, in fact, much for multiple color options -- instead, just two color options and a second size (the bands come in small or large). And as we continued to the airport, be began to muse as to the purpose of including so many wrist bands -- do they wear out that quickly? Are replacements expensive? So many product mysteries.

My trip was a short one -- just down to Anaheim for the night, set-up the next morning, then back. By the time I had left security at John Wayne airport, I realized that my new Fitbit Flex was gone. Your first instinct is to go back to security and look for it, but when you know that you didn't take it off in the first place, you can bet that it fell off sooner than than. When we first bought the units, we wrestled with trying to get the little plastic snap through the rubber wristband -- why not use a traditional watchband clasp? My complaints at that time were only a fraction of what they were once I realized that the crappy snap-in design didn't stay on my wrist.

Part of the reason why we purchased the Fitbit from Costco was their excellent return policy -- the idea that if we didn't like the wristband unit, we could return it easily. Sadly, when you have lost your Fitbit, you can't really return it for it's sucky design.

Perhaps the most ironic Fitbit thing -- I remember sitting through a session at Dreamforce where they were talking about what a great customer experience Fitbit provides using the marketing features in Salesforce.com. When a person activates a unit, Fitbit sends them an email. You might think that Fitbit would send you an email when they suddenly see your activity stop. Then again, that's probably an indication that you lost yet another Fitbit. Feedback? no. Need help? no. Discounts on replacements? no. Loyalty? none.

I'm done.

Samsung Design, Culture and the Myth of Steve Jobs

I came across this article yesterday -- a great read exploring differences between design and creative culture here in the west, contrasted against culture and business in Asia. Why Samsung Design Stinks: Blame Steve Jobs Syndrome is a nice exploration of how companies like Samsung have attempted to contract design services here, then faced issues implementing these designs into products.

XBox One and Assassin's Creed Unity Bundle: A Review

The holidays are upon us and with it, toys, gadgets and new technology that speaks to the kid in all of us. From a pricing standpoint, the time around Black Friday is one of the best times to buy a gaming console. Often you'll find prices that are unmatched during the rest of the year. Last year, with the launch of the Xbox One and the PS4 consoles, it was another round of the console wars. And while the media plays it as a simple "which platform to choose" queestion, like switching cell phones or operating systems, the decision isn't as simple as this one or that one, with the entrenched user base and established locks playing a factor in the overall decision. In short, if you were already playing on one platform, upgrading was one consideration; but, switching across platforms, that requires a different level of consideration.

For people who have gamed on the Xbox console, Microsoft didn't make it easy with the Xbox One. When announced, the Xbox one had lower graphic performance specs that the PS4, forced you to use a Kinect, and forced an online presence and licensing terms that would limit the viability of the used game market. When the introduction of the XBone was met with a collective, "really?", Microsoft began a PR war, backpedaling from some of these features, bumping the processor speed, and enabling a "software disable" for the Kinect. Still, it wasn't enough and the sales of XBone lagged behind the "you can't find one" PS4 during the 2013 holiday season.

In 2014, you also saw game makers rolling out their new games on the Xbox 360, possibly offering an XBone version, but not forcing a migration. The Xbox 360 hadn't been EOLed, it was just quietly continuing to be good enough for most users. For many Xbox platform users, XBone was a "perhaps sometime in the future" upgrade, worth considering once Microsoft stopped acting so much like the Microsoft that rules the world and more like the Microsoft that made "the gamer's" platform.

For the holiday season in 2014, Microsoft began offering a Kinect-less Xbone, priced lower than the PS4. Theoretically, with a year of manufacturing them, they've worked out some of the hardware issues, but you never know -- Xbox has a long history of things like RROD. But hey, now with the XBone, they've completely eliminated one of their historical hardware problems, there is no more red ring.

And with the holidays comes game bundles. There are a couple of options for 2014, but Costco was offering a semi-black-Friday deal on the Assassin's Creed bundle, with the new Assassin's Creed Unity and Assassin's Creed IV/Black Flag. Black Flag came out last year and was available on the Xbox 360, but Unity is only available on the one (or PS4). After a bit of debate and some comparison of the upcoming pricing options, we decided to buy the bundle at Costco, reassured by Costco's awesome return practices that if anything went wrong, we could bring it back.

Of course, wrong doesn't begin to address the software train wreck that currently resides inside that plastic.

First, the XBox One
With some excitement and pics texted to gaming friends, we completed the ceremonial unboxing. Then, it was time to plug it up. After some basic configuration, the first thing that the "I Must Have Broadband" XBone wanted to do was a system update -- a nearly 1GB download. Having completed it's system update, it then walked you through a series of privacy agreements and basic interface settings before dropping you into the chaotic mess that is the basic OS, sort of a Windows 8 inspired assortment of tiles.

When you're dealing with a touchscreen like a tablet or a phone, you can it's easy to jump from one area of the screen to another. Not so with a mouse. It's even worse with the joystick on a game controller. I'm not a fan.

Perhaps the worst feature of the interface is this "Snap" feature. If you pop the power button on the controller, up pops this snap sidebar. This sidebar will stay with you regardless of the what's going on on the other screen. At one point in the midst of game play and trying to adjust settings, the snap bar popped open and it took fifteen minutes of back and forth between the main interface and the game just to get the snap sidebar to close -- because multi-tasking is so important when you're playing a game on a console.

Another thing that set off the horrific Snap experience was the search to try and change the brightness output on the XBone. The search for settings adjustment in the XBone was another 30 minute affair, punctuated by landing in a "calibrate your display for Xbox", that basically informed you to change the settings on your TV. The XBone isn't too dark, it's your TV that doesn't work correctly.

Multi-tasking and Retained States
The XBone has some features that seem like they'd be handy if you're a gamer and you have a one-to-one relationship with your console. When you restart the XBone, if you are logged in as the same person playing the same game as your last session, it remembers where you stopped and it restores your session -- no more re-watching the launch screen, you're back in the action at the same place that you left. Unfortunately, if that place was an interface bug (a common event in AC Unity), simply closing out of the game will not remedy it.

Again, if the purpose of this device is to be your entertainment center controller, then you may find this level of retained states and multi-tasking support helpful, but if you think your game console something that you want to play games on, then you may find this to be yet another feature that you curse about on the system.

Assassin's Creed Unity - The Crashiest AC EVAH!
After updating the XBone and sifting through the OS to find where to enter the game download code, next it was time to download the new AC Unity. I queued it up and began the download. In reading the paper disclaimer, it notes that AC Unity can take up to 50GB of space on your XBox hard disk. This was going to be a massive download, so I decided to make dinner while it downloaded. As I started to make dinner, I thought that it might be handy to put something on the TV while making food. On the Xbox 360, we have the Amazon Prime app installed, and we'll sometimes use it. As I went to fire up Amazon on the XBone (one of the tiles), it told me that I needed to download the updated app -- which it happily queued behind my AC Unity download. No multi-threaded downloads on this system.

What did surprise me though was, partway through making dinner, the console informed me that AC Unity was ready to play. Surprising, but it seemed like it would let me start with 'enough' downloaded -- sort of like a cached streaming video. What it seemed to do though, was let me play through an extended opening sequence before gearing itself up for a much longer complete download with no additional opportunities to play before the download was complete.

So let's talk about the game play
My first experiences with the game were... dark. Really dark. This is what sent me on the hunt to adjust the settings on the XBone, within the AC game, somewhere. There is a line between dramatic and playable, Assassin's Creed Unity seems to cross that threshold repeatedly. Several "night time" sequences were so dark, they were virtually unplayable. As with many aspects, it's difficult to measure whether this is the XBone or the AC Unity game.

By the time I did get to a daylight portion of the game, I was excited by the high resolution graphics. However, as I started playing through one of the 'chase' segments, I initially found the graphics to be a bit frustrating as it made it more difficult to identify and separate the important details from the unessential random graphic details.

There are other things that become more immediately apparent that you have probably read in other reviews. Probably my favorite in the Assassin's Creed series is AC 2. There are aspects that make the game like a tour of historic Italy. There's an immersive level of Italian language, including a fun level of Italian swear words. AC 2 is why "merda" and "requiescat in pace" entered my lexicon. But with Unity, while we have the French Revolution and all of it's immersive graphics, we get a comprehensive British accent overdub of everything. Despite Ubisoft's links to Montreal and, one would expect, the ability to turn out a product with some level of French feel, instead we are left with an environment that seems far less immersive that the version of the game that's five generations older. Devolution.

The other thing that has been an ongoing devolution in the series has been this increasing emphasis on cool action "parkour"moves. Sure it makes for cool video sequences to see your character make running, sliding hops over tables and under gates, but it seems as though many of these are added while sacrificing overall playability. And, while it's mildly amusing the first time your Arno character does a little cartwheel-like spin at the top of the building, it becomes rather tiring rather quickly. Similarly, the parkour emphasis means that sometimes your free run along the outcroppings of buildings will be supplemented by grabbing the building wall and doing a blind spin -- visually interesting the first time you do it, but equally as likely to interrupt your run and send you off in a direction that you didn't intend to go.

Simpler is Not Always Better
Free running has been evolving over the course of the series. At one time, you needed to use a combination of buttons to free run, but with Unity, you free run by pulling the trigger and use the A or B button as a modifier for "up" or "down". On the one hand, down makes a handy way to down-climb from a building, regardless of what the side looks. It also reduces the number of times that you find yourself accidentally leaping off a building and desyncing. At the same time, it's taken some of the challenge away. You hardly need to control your direction as the software will land you on the right place most of the time.

This same "make it simpler" has changed several other aspects of the climbing interface. While AC2 featured climbing puzzles that could frequently frustrating in their "you must be facing in exactly this direction and execute the correct key combination to make a side-leap off a wall in order to reach the ledge" kind of challenges, AC Unity has virtually removed things like jumping backwards from a hanging position on one wall to grasp at a ledge or handhold behind you. Now the interface features "Wall Eject" as an option, but more often than not, it doesn't even work. Even "Drop" sometimes doesn't work. This leads to numerous game hangs if you find yourself in a buggy location. I've gotten hung on a wall inside a building, two feet above the floor, in a corner next to a plant -- and the interface wouldn't accept any inputs. I would rather accidentally leap to my death than have the safety on the interface say, "nope".

Which brings me to another problem with the interface on this. Often, the engine finds itself switching back and forth between views as you jump between buildings. It's related to the not being able to do the back leap and the engine's seeming desire to give you a straight-ahead view. With several rapid changes in perspective, it becomes easy to lose any sense of real location. Sometimes during a fast down-climb, you'll find yourself facing the wrong direction and, correspondingly, interrupting your descent.

At the same time, one of the cool features is the number of "inside building" spaces that you have. Now, buildings are no longer solid objects, instead having floors and complete inside environments. For the most part, the inside buildings are a nice addition, but it's often frustrating trying to go through a window, even when the tip suggests "use left trigger to enter a window". In all, I would say that windows are still buggy.

Speaking of Bugs
You've probably heard and read a lot about the bugs. The AC series has always been kind of buggy, but Unity takes it to new levels. Playing on a recent Sunday, I think that the game went through eight or nine crashes that forced it to reboot. Essentially, it was play for 45 minutes or so, then crash. Repeat. Finally, midway through a memory mission, when I got hung up on the wall, I quit for the day. Gave up.

It's so buggy that, around Thanksgiving weekend Ubisoft pushed out a large update with something like 3000 bug fixes -- and it's still super buggy. They also sent an email providing the Dead Kings DLC to everyone for free. Another frustrating bug is this "Initiates" feature. Within the game, they've created this Initiates ranking that should link a registered user to their gaming history and provide them with access to things like additional clothing sets. It's the thing that remembers whether you finished the other Assassin's Creed games and things like that. The problem is that, for me and a number of users like me, whenever you try to connect to the Initiates function, it spits out an error and won't connect. That also means that a whole collection of yellow chests (and other in-game items) are essentially unavailable to you. Not a great experience for long term, theoretically loyal customers.

Multiplayer is Amusing
One nice thing about Unity is the multiplayer missions. Select a multiplayer mission and the software searches the cloud for others that are interested in collaboratively playing through a mission. Upon completion, everyone gets some skill upgrade points (only the first run through) and an armor item. While it may sound strange seeing another 1-3 people driving similarly enabled assassins through a collaborative mission, it's actually pretty cool. The missions with three or four tend to play better because they are less dependent on the coordination and collaboration between individuals. And yet, it's kind of interesting to see similar styles of game play and even, essentially uncoordinated collaboration towards a common goal. This is another nice addition.

XBox One and Assassin's Creed Unity: A Bundle Made in Error
Ultimately, there's a level of irony to the XBone / AC Unity bundle. The odds are pretty high that, if that wasn't a bundled option, we probably wouldn't have taken the XBox One console home this holiday season. Currently, there are still enough new titles -- like Dragon Age or Borderlands -- that are also available on XBox 360, that the change isn't quite mandatory. And while the graphics are nice, it's not so compelling an update that migration is a must.

At the same time, between the XBone interface and the bugs in the Assassin's Creed game, I must say that I don't love this console. Considering that, between sequences or fast travel transitions in Unity, it generates a load screen that takes a minute or more (which I believe may be related to the streaming loading of data) to resolve, it becomes a tiresome journey working your way through the game. As noted, the game has also generated more lock-ups and crashes than any console game that I've played, ever. As someone who's just stepped into this platform, it can be so bad that it might make you want to go back to the Xbox 360. We've been told by friends of ours that their experience with Halo not as bad -- like no crashes bad -- so it may be the software and not the platform. But still. I would have thought that somebody and Microsoft or Ubisoft would have said, it's not ready, you can't serve this to customers.

As for Ubisoft, I wish that they didn't seem compelled to crank out a new title each year and would instead focus on improving the depth and flow of the story and the gameplay. While we've been amused at how smoothly the graphics flow from cut scene to action with little degradation, couldn't we take advantage of that to reduce the number of cut scenes? Ultimately, I feel like Ubisoft has targeted a lowest common denominator demographic with the game play and the voicing where they could have done better bringing in closer to the AC 2 environment. I get the sense that they were drawn that way -- sort of the "let's get away from sailing" thing -- but still tried to keep it "safe".

Apple: More Frustrating OS Behaviors

Dear Apple: We've been together a long time. I've used Apple devices since before there was an Internet. One of the things that I've always counted on is that you employ people who understand the bigger requirements; that when you make decisions or choose directions, you keep professional users like me in mind even as you make it easier for novice users to work with the tools.

To that end, me and most of my Mac using friends have tolerated some of these experiments in making things easier. I remember the original introduction of the "Launcher", introduced -- I suppose -- because double-clicking on an application icon was too difficult for some people to understand. I also remember my friend's comment about getting rid of it, "the first thing you needed to do was to launch the Launcher."

But now, the current design direction seems to have shifted from utility to fashion -- and the almighty idea of harmonizing the appearance of the phone and the Mac. It's taking the Mac in such stupid ways. Internally inconsistent ways.

So the other day we were sitting around, streaming a video to our Apple TV using mirroring and VLC. But recently -- for whatever reason -- the mirrored video stream has become super-choppy. Tons of dropped frames and video lag. I found several suggestions online, including turning off Bluetooth, and switching the view to "extended desktop". When I did that though, VLC started to act strangely. I could launch a video and you could hear the sound, but there was no video visible. After clicking around and restarting VLC, the video would appear when I launched VLC.

I didn't think much about that problem until the other day when I was doing something that I often do, production-wise. I was entering data into a field into Salesforce in one window, while trying to have Excel in the background as reference behind it. To make it easier, I moved the Excel sheet over to my second monitor (and the extended desktop), then clicked back to my Salesforce window. The problem? Excel would "disappear" from the other window. Vanish. Gone. No more extended desktop.

After doing a bit of research, I discovered a checkbox in the Mission Control section of the system preferences. The setting "Displays have separate Spaces" is apparently checked by default. It appears that this behavior was made default even back in Mavericks. Deselecting it requires a log-out, so you can't do this in the middle of a project without a significant interruption. But once I made the change, I had true extended desktop functionality again.

So first, I'm at a loss to explain why you would make this kind of change in the first place. But beyond that, here's my bigger question -- what's the point of having transparency baked in as an effect throughout the system when you don't allow things to be transparent across application spaces? Is it because it's cool? It sure as hell doesn't provide me any utility.

Phones, Tablets, and Tokyo Rush Hour

During rush hour in Tokyo packed in a train car, you'll also find yourself surrounded by electronic devices. While there are some people who still read the newspaper or books, most (by my observation) were engaged with electronic devices. More specifically, phones.

You'll see a lot of different types of phones on the trains in Tokyo these days. While you still see some people with the older Japanese version of flip phones, the majority of phones that I saw were touchscreen smart phones. Lots of different brands -- Samsung, Sony, Apple. And it goes without saying, lots of different colors, cases, and attachments. I even saw one young woman one morning using a phone with a cracked screen. Wherever you go, phone frustrations are universal.

One thing that surprised me though -- with all of the electronic devices that you see on the train, I saw very few iPads. Or any other brands of tablet for that matter. I think I could probably count on one hand the number of times that I saw somebody use an iPad on the train over the course of the week. It's just too big. Even the iPad Mini.

I think that the majority of phones that I saw looked about like the iPhone 6 size -- either new iPhone 6 phones, or Samsung/Sony/misc other Android equivalents. I saw some of the larger 6 plus / Note models, but that didn't appear to be the preferred size in Japan either.

Here in the states, the iPhone 6 is outselling the 6 plus 3:1. While they are clearly selling some of the larger sized phones, it still seems to me like Apple was chasing an over-hyped competitor niche more than designing the perfect product -- like so many of the "Designed by Android" features in iOS and Yosemite.

Apple: Yosemite's Transparency Effect Sucks

If I sound like a broken record, it's because I'm confronted with aspects of the stupidity that is the new Apple UI on a daily basis. Rather than getting used to it, each of these moments serve as a reminder that the design team has gone off the rails. I discussed a few of the elements in the Yosemite UI that drove me crazy in my post, Yosemite the Horror, and I'm still fighting the stupid redesign of Safari on a daily basis.

But here's another example of why this transparency look sucks. I happened to capture this screen while downloading a file.

I've blurred the file name, but you don't need to that to see that the screen is essentially unreadable. Thin dark gray type on a light gray (due to transparency) background equals a puddle of gray, inky colors. Functional? Hardly.

You might argue that this is designer narcissism, but I happened to see a colleague with an Android phone with similar image elements. Perhaps a better rename of this interface should be, when plagiarism attacks. It's kind of like the UI team at Apple saw somebody wearing 6" platform shoes with goldfish in them and said to themselves, "those are so cool, everyone should wear them."

If I could wish for one product to hit the market, it would be a tool that would enable me to reskin the entire interface back to the time before all of this design style took over. Skeumorphism be damned, I'd much rather put up with an electronic calendar with a fake binding that an unreadable screen using modern "flat" colors.

Perhaps the worst aspect of all of this crappy UI design is that, it makes you seriously question the underlying code and framework of the OS. Put differently, if this kind of crap gets through the design filters, what kind of crappy code is escaping through the technical teams?

Apple Yosemite Release: The Horror

So yesterday I went ahead and installed Yosemite on one of my systems. Normally, I'm skeptical of installing a newly released Apple OS as history tells us that critical functions tend to break (like printing a few releases back). In this case, however, I was drawn in by some of the continuity features. Even then, I did some research online and came across few people expressing concerns about the potential for buggy behavior.

Overall, the install went smoothly -- I didn't encounter any hick-ups -- and so far, I haven't come across anything that you would consider a bug. And yet, I have no glowingly positive things to say about Apple's Yosemite release. Instead, and let this be a warning to you before you update, my list of really stupid, sucky stuff that Apple is doing continues to expand.

Here are just a few of the things that are wrong with Yosemite:
It's a reskinned OS that looks a lot like iOS7/8. While somebody somewhere may like this design, it makes me wretch every time I look at the screen. It looks like somebody stole the color palette from a pastel parrot. Apple and much of the publishing world refer to this as a more modern, flatter look. But for me, if it doesn't do anything else, the desktop version really magnifies and drives home how terrible this approach is.

When they rolled it out on iOS, the bullshit that they were spewing was that "it's designed to show off the awesomeness of our Retina displays." But it doesn't. That's why they came back around with bigger fonts and stronger colors post iOS7 release. With the desktop version, what you get is a wash of white, washed out colors. There is no contrast, no definition. When I fired up my laptop this morning, my Apple email client made the screen look like one big white screen.

Contrast this interface design with virtually any video game you've seen. The majority incorporate 3D graphic elements designed to add to an encapsulated, immersive experience. The problem with the current interface -- regardless of how they push it -- is that it's not easy to distinguish different elements in the interface. Your eyes don't know where to go. You can't just tell the difference between one element and another. The bullshit that they want to tell you is that, "you get used to it", but we've have over a year of iOS7 to disprove that notion. With Yosemite, they've doubled down on this line and it's horrible for the desktop experience.

When Steve Jobs passed and they put Jony Ive in charge of software design, one of the things that they talked about was more of a unified hardware/software design. To me, this feels like designer sans editor. If I didn't know better, I'd think that the purpose of the interface design is to show off how elegant that the hardware design is -- rather than a platform that makes interacting with software easier.

But, beyond the overall interface rant, let's dive into a few specifics.
A simplified Safari interface. I guess the browser interface has just become too crowded or too complicated for some people. With Yosemite, they've removed all of the old bookmarks, search windows and other stuff associated with it. It's so empty that, when you first look at it, you'll swear that important stuff is missing, like you've been popped into one of those windows where you no longer have navigation control.

But for me, the worst thing about it is the way that they've changed private browsing. On most of my systems, once I launch Safari, I turn on private browsing. I use this to prevent cookies. I also use the "reset Safari" regularly to purge the browser of any auto-executed chunks of code that I might have picked up. Now, you can selectively launch either a normal Safari window or a private window, but it's harder to launch a private window. Even if you are in private browsing, if you open a new window, it's not private. While there is a preference pane that tells Safari to launch with a private window, it appears that that only works on launch. After that, you're back to tracked. Brilliant.

Put into more basic terms, you need to actively monitor your state or you may find yourself surprised by an unintended state change.

Another one that, admittedly, is a carry-over from Mavericks version is this idea of getting rid of scroll bars on windows. It's as if, after 20 years of computing and using this tool that helped us get through extended pages of content, some genius designer said, "I hate them. They are ugly. They ugly up my beautiful window design. Let's make them go away. Damn the utility." Fortunately, this is one of those features that you can change behavior on in the interface controls, but why we had to go there is really beyond me. What is it with scroll bars that seems so maddening that the designers just keep wanting to change it?

Transparency is kind of overrated. A perfect example of this is in Safari, again. Opening multiple tabs in Safari now means that you have several transparent tabs at the top of the window, but with the active one just a bit more white than the rest. While some might argue that it makes the tabs more background, what it also does it make it more difficult to tell which one is active. At a glance, it's not exactly straightforward which window you are in -- and that means you're concentrating on the interface instead of using it as a tool.

Perhaps equally annoying, somebody decided that Safari should simplify the URL shown in the navigation/search window. Instead of showing the full URL of the page you are on, the browser window only shows the top level domain -- in case you forgot what it was. It's like "web browser brought to you by the branding board of the Internet". Let's not forget that monitoring your prage URL is not only a good security practice, it's one of those things that's kind of essential for a lot of web development work. Fortunately, there's a check box to disable this bit of brilliance. Come to think of it, I think the guys over at Mozilla first started doing this and I had to disable it in Firefox as well. So -- original idea, no... doing the same stupid thing when somebody else already did it... again, Apple, I expect better.

If you can't say something nice...
In one of the creative writing classes that I took, the teacher insisted that we open our comments about a specific piece by saying something positive about the work. Since I've already opened and commented, I'll close with a positive. I like aspects of the way that they've updated they've updated the dock in Yosemite. Now, it's easier to actually tell if an application is open. Before, they used a white dot underneath the app to indicate open, now they use a black dot. Finally, something I can see.

Has Apple Jumped the Shark?

I used to love my iPhone. From the design and the interface right down through how well it flowed when you used one feature or another, only to see how it linked logically to the next step in a process. But, not so much anymore.

These days, the design, the software, and interface flow seem more like they were designed by a committee of parrots. It's like a Hollywood focus group was brought in and they said, "needs more explosions, more action". Many aspects were bad with iOS 7 and they've only gotten worse with iOS 8.

The other day I opened up my calendar in order to plan for something a couple of months in the future -- not what I would consider an uncommon task. Instead of seeing a list of months and days, I get a list of all of the things that I have scheduled. I look around a bit, a couple of clicks -- I've got a list of the calendars that I can show, but still no basic month by month calendar interface. I gave up.

Same sort of experience with the camera. I took a photo with the camera then clicked on the photo roll to view it in detail. Instead of the picture, I get dropped into a menu tree showing all of the photos that I have in my phone, cataloged by year. Each of the images are a thumbnail, probably no larger that 7 pixels by 7 pixels. WTF?! I mean really, what am I supposed to do with this interface on my phone? Celebrate the beautiful colors and the elegant red lines connecting the years? After a series of random clicks, I found something that approximated a view I could use.

But I'm Not The Only One...
In the days since the iPhone 6 launch, I've had a number of chances to talk to people about the iPhone 6 and the plus. Every conversation has centered around the same topic -- the size -- with the general consensus being big and too big. When we went into the store, I hear the same thing. I saw something from the sales numbers that point to the same story. You have 'that's big' and 'seriously?'.

Over the past few months, we've seen story after story about how consumers want phones with bigger screens. I wonder what they'll say when the iPhone 6 plus sales turn out to be significantly less than the 6? Will it be the same as what happened with the 5c -- the idea that everyone wants a cheaper, color phone, only to see sales of the 5s run significantly higher? It all reminds me of how they used to say that Apple needed to make a Netbook because everyone else was making them and consumers were eating them up.

What's changed since way back then? Well, perhaps Steve Jobs passing is a factor, but I'd like to think that there's more to it than that. I think that part of it comes from the perceived competition from Android and from Samsung. Take the Apple Watch as an example. Before Apple had anything on the drawing board -- beyond rumors -- Samsung and some other competitors were releasing products. And while the Apple Watch may be a far more elegant version of a Watch than anything that any of the competitors have introduced, it still seems like -- at best -- an accessory. And that, historically, has felt like something Apple let their ecosystem do. It's not that they don't have the capital to fund the development, but it doesn't seem like it's laser focused on a very defined future in the Apple universe. 

If that seems more philosophy that marketing, that's probably true. But perhaps that's what's missing from some of the product direction right now -- the mission, the philosophy, the ideology. Perhaps that is what I miss. Instead, it seems like we have now have a goal of being the market leader. Have we jumped the shark?

The Breakdown In Foursquare's New Engagement Model

Next up for the Foursquare app, moving gamification to tips in categories. Soon you'll be able to be recognized as an expert in a category based on the number of tips that you submit. The Pando post has the feature similar to Klout or LinkedIn. To me, it sounds a lot like a knock-off of Yelp's "Elite" reviewers.

As I see it, here's the real problem with this whole thing. Gamification on entering tips presumes a requisite user experience -- if I don't ever open the app, I'm probably not going to enter tips. And since there is no check-ins any more, I haven't had any reason to open the app.

The reducto absurdum of all location experience...

Apple v Samsung - The Verdict: Copycats and Knock-offs

So the verdict in San Jose is in and Samsung was found to be willfully infringing on Apple's patents. For detailed coverage, All Things D has a great Apple v Samsung summary page of the trial and links to several jury-member interviews. For an in-depth explanation and analysis of the patents and the legal proceedings, I think that Foss Patents is unparalleled.

Reactions to the Verdict
As you might expect with any contested issue, you can get find different voices. Marketplace found people in Korea who simply expected a home field advantage verdict -- Apple wins because they are local and they employ lots of people here. All Things D had a quote from a guy from Microsoft talking about how it was a win for Windows Phone. Kara Swisher captured a rather amusing interpretation of Google's response.

Samsung tries to spin this as, "a win for Apple, but as a loss for the American consumer" and a case about giving "one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners," this reality is far from that. One look at the details of the case and the patents involved will lead most people to the same conclusion. But like much of modern politics and media engagement, Samsung seems to believe that if it can win the PR battle, that the facts will rewrite themselves.

If you read through the jury interviews, you'll find that the jury really wanted to find examples of prior art. Apparently, it made the first day of deliberation a rather heated one. But, in the end, they found that there was overwhelming evidence.

Perhaps the most interesting analysis of the verdict that I came across was from Farhad Manjoo on PandoDaily. Copying Works: How Samsung’s Decision to Mimic Apple Paid Off in Spades is a thoughtful analysis of how Samsung's decision to copy Apple was a successful business strategy.

His post is a great read -- he tells the story well -- but it's also rather amusing to read the comments. It's eerily reminiscent of the old Mac v PC back and forth. Perhaps the real lesson here is that, for all of those Apple evangelists, there are an equal number of anti-Apple wackos, the Tea Party nuts of the technology world. For them, the idea that Apple wins and that people copied Apple designs is kind of like the whole black president thing -- a travesty. Or a conspiracy.

Show me the prototype. Are you going to tell me that your 'computer' doesn't resemble the one from 2001: A Space Odyssey?

The other thing which I think that Farhad really captures with his post is that, while the penalty for violating Apple's patents may seem steep in a consumer sense of scale, when you compare that to the business that Samsung has been able to build, the actual amount is peanuts. It's certainly not a disincentive. Samsung will be fine. They will move forward with new phones that don't violate the letter of Apple's patents, but they will remain competitors. First they mimic, then they evolve.

Tales from the Copycat Hall of Fame
In the technology industry, there have always been copycats. Remember when Huawei was trying to compete in the telecom space and their new switch product bore a remarkable resemblance to a Cisco switch -- right down to duplicate bugs and the Cisco name in the Huawei product manual? Sure a settlement was reached. It goes without saying that within their territory, governments can dictate the terms that businesses operate under -- sometimes those terms can be nationalistic -- but that's not really the point here.

The real point is that, nearly a decade later, both companies continue to sell products. Many customers, partners and/or whatever-else continue to do business with them. They did not get a Scarlet "C" to wear on their business cards. There may have been a period of 'lost face', but that faded. Whatever traditional business rules that they may have violated, their violations weren't so heinous that other businesses refuse to do business with them.

Of course, if you're a start-up, remember... don't try this at home. The penalties for robbing a bank like Bonnie and Clyde are far more serious than the penalties for stealing millions and causing a complete financial system collapse. Do that, and you're probably 'too big to fail".