Posts Tagged Design

My god, Albert Einstein WAS a genius

albert-einstein-1.jpgI've always doubted Albert Einstein's brilliance… I mean, e=mc²… wtf? I don't even know what that means.

But I saw a quote from him today that totally rang my bells…

"Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler."

That absolutely explains why Apple stuff works well. Jobsy doesn't put in any more functionality than a device needs, and he doesn't put any less in either.

It also perfectly explains why those dolts who crap on about Macs being for John West computer rejects don't get it. It's not that the Mac operating system is oversimplified — it's that it is precisely simplified enough to not have many of the gordian knots that Windows gets itself into, like the Vista control panel. OMG, what a mess.

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Happiness is a Dyson vacuum cleaner

dyson Happiness is a Dyson vacuum cleaner

Well, I finally took the plunge and invested in the ultimate geek vacuum cleaner, a Dyson.

I would have loved to have got The Ball but our house is a narrow terrace with not much unused floor space, so it didn't make sense to get an upright vacuum.

dysonwrap Happiness is a Dyson vacuum cleanerInstead, I got a DC08 Turbine Wrap which compacts down to a small size for storage (just what we needed, since there's only about two cubic feet of unused storage space in this house, and only because I threw out our old vacuum cleaner.)

At $850, the Dyson is not cheap. For someone who has made an artform of the organised mess, it took a lot of frustration with our old crappy Kambrook vacuum cleaner to make me want to spend this much.

But now that I've experienced it I can tell you it's well worth the money. It's like an Apple Mac vs a PC… everything just works, and it works well. It's like one of those vacuum cleaners on TV ads. It was able to lift all the dust and fluff off our Ikea so-synthetic-that-it-attracts-moondust rug in one pass.

dysonlooks Happiness is a Dyson vacuum cleanerThe bagless system is pretty ingenious. It spins air round in the plastic cannister (so all the dust / beetles / bits of dried up onion etc) all whiz round and round in front of your eyes. Somehow (the Dyson website explains better than I can on a Sunday morning) the airflow doesn't get impeded even if it fills up with dust. Then you just tip it out when it's full and start again… no more phone calls to vacuum cleaner bag specialists in North Wamingiemungie to track down the BC15C3A-AU-32693 bag.

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Too many cooks spoil the office?

Via Fury and frost and Hawk Wings

Holy crap… what was Microsoft thinking when it designed the interface for the upcoming Office 12? If they're trying to make the user interface easier, they've got it badly, badly wrong.

Neb at Fury and Frost has published his analysis of the eight – count them, eight – different interface styles used in this one dialogue box.

office12 Too many cooks spoil the office?

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