Sam Oliver

Thoughts on new MacBook Pro

sam — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:08:14 +0000

I was very happy with my existing MacBook Pro but we (Pigment) decided to give ourselves a budget of £750 each to buy something that would help us be more productive.

I’d already been considering an Apple Cinema Display for the office, but when I thought about what would make me most productive, in the end it had to be the laptop. I have an entry level Samsung 24″ monitor in the office, and as I’m mainly coding a super high quality display wouldn’t really make me any more productive.

I was really happy with my existing Macbook Pro and wouldn’t have changed it under normal circumstances. I’ve just been cleaning it, re-installing leopard and boxing it up - feels kind of sad in a way.

Having said that though I’m more impressed than I thought I would be with the new MBP..

The build quality is amazing. On the downside it does look a bit more like a PC with the black keys and black screen surround, but the unibody case is so solid and everything is so refined and polished. You can tell that a lot of thought has gone in to it - it really is nothing like your average PC.
It doesn’t get as hot - I can work with it on my lap for hours with no need for a pile of books!
It’s noticeably quieter.
The screen is SO bright compared to my previous MacBook Pro. Still not sure about the glossy, but as long as you have reasonable control over the ambient lighting, the brightness more than makes up for it.
It’s a bit thinner and lighter.
LED backlit display means it shouldn’t suffer from getting duller over time.
The speakers are nicer - much more depth to the sound.
My iphone headphones and mic work in the normal socket - nice touch!
The trackpad is larger really really smooth.
4GB RAM plus other slight improvements all add up and it does feel more snappy. I went with the entry level 15″ at £1299 - so I’ll sell my old MBP to make up the difference.

The previous model is still a design icon and may stay more iconic to me - but there are lots of little improvements and refinements with this new model that should make it even nicer and even more reliable.

So in summary, I’m very impressed with this solid machine and expect it to last for years. But will miss my old trusty friend and first mac…

“Better” 3-D Secure

sam — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 23:05:36 +0000

When you pay for something online, you probably see this little window asking for characters from your password. The shops don’t have any control over the design of this part of the page.

I get annoyed with these every time I use them, so for fun I had a go at re-designing it.

I’ve made the input boxes bigger
I’ve made it clearer which number to enter in each box by using labels directly above the boxes
I’ve removed the information that is seemingly useless to me
- Date - I know what the date is!
- Personal Message ‘Welcome to RBS secure’ - ~~pointless waste of space~~ Update: Apparently this is a personal security message you can set yourself so you know the page isn’t spoofed - I’ve never been asked to set this personal message and it isn’t obvious where to do it, so in the end it’s still pointless.
- Card Number - I know that I’ve just entered it
- Username - I still don’t know what this is for, I can’t enter it anywhere or change it. It’s irrelevant right now anyway
- I’ve made the payment amount and payment recipient more obvious
- I’ve made the text on the ’submit’ button relate to what you are doing (Pay £10.54)
- The ’submit’ button is much larger and more clearly separated from the cancel button
Making your checkout as easy to use as possible is really important. It’s amazing how many customers just give up if they don’t understand something or get even the slightest bit stuck.

The traditional workplace is broken

sam — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:38:36 +0000

“Simply put, employees are treated like children. They are not allowed to think for themselves, and there are too many layers of approval, just too much insulation that prevents anyone from doing anything. The traditional workplace is broken, and until someone realizes that, there’s always going to be conflict.”

The cutting edge of (web) design

sam — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 04:10:43 +0000

You might be surprised to hear that the cutting edge of web design probably isn’t the latest interactive flash sites with integrated video, cute scrollers and clever buttons. It probably isn’t amazing AJAX interfaces with draggable boxes, modal preference panes and fancy pants animated text transitions.

The cutting edge of web design is:

Knowing what to leave out, focusing on doing less and doing it well
Understanding what your users really want over what you think they want
Making decisions using real data over hearsay

Google had the right idea back in 2000. While their competitors had their heads in the clouds, cramming their home pages with as many features and links as possible, Google was working away feverishly behind the scenes, building a search engine that actually worked.

Yahoo! & Google in the year 2000.

In the wider software world, Microsoft has aimed to be all things to all people, which often leads to average results. In contrast, Apple focus on a smaller set of features that are more complete. And the result? Apple’s U.S. sales have increased 38.1% year-on-year, far outpacing the total industry growth of 4.2%. And what about all the features missing from the iPhone? That didn’t stop them selling 1 million in the first weekend.

Even the Microsoft giant themselves are realising they have missed a trick and are setting their sights on providing an Apple-like experience.

Building and writing less is often harder to swallow or more diffucult to apply-to-self than all those fancy pants features. If you’ve got your ear to the ground, then you’ll know that these ideas are well known. If this is all new to you and you are serious about providing an amazing user experience, you could shelve what you think you know for a bit, and check out these great books:

37signals

sam — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 08:50:43 +0000

37signals‘ insight and wisdom never ceases to amaze me:

Wishlix fully enabled for UK and Canada

sam — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 08:33:10 +0000

The fully functional version of Wishlix is now available for users in the UK and Canada. So get adding stuff to your wish lists!

(France, Germany and Japan coming soon.)

Special Dreamhost Promo Discount Invitation Codes

sam — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 17:13:08 +0000

These aren’t the normal promo codes. Using these special promo codes you can get:

Get 2TB disk space and 20TB bandwidth! (4 times normal)
If you choose the five-year plan, you get $150 off!
If you choose our ten-year plan, you get $200 off!

These codes aren’t available normally - and I only have 5 allocated to me so it’s first come first served!

081291766015
313690635188
933387731082
546162618349
~~733834186594~~

Just use the codes in the “Promo Code” box when you sign up at:

https://signup.dreamhost.com/

Another Wishlix update - searching for products

sam — Tue, 27 May 2008 09:13:00 +0000

We’ve been busy on Wishlix this weekend!

Users in the USA can now search for items and add them to their wish list, along with images. We’re hoping make this available to Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the UK within the next few weeks.

If you want to check it out, you can change your locale to USA on your Account page.

Wishlix updates

sam — Sun, 25 May 2008 19:56:40 +0000

A few updates to wishlix this weekend:

XML wish list feeds added. There is a feed for each list and a feed for each user which contains items from all lists. Links are on the appropriate pages.
Wish list names now don’t have to be globally unique. Any list URLs that have been set up before this update will still work.
A couple of little design tweaks.

Enjoy!

Whoops: David Heinemeier Hansson

sam — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 17:21:59 +0000

I noticed that I’ve been saying whoops a lot when developing with rails. I don’t know if I picked that up from watching David’s screen casts or whether I did it already. In any case I’ve decided it would make an appropriate system alert sound. So after a bit of messing about I managed to extract it from the rails 15 minute blog screencast.

Whoops in .aif format (Mac)
Whoops in .wav format

To install use it on a Mac, copy it to ~/Library/Sounds and select it in System Preferences -> Sound

Whoops also features at the end of this video: