I love you more

Troy Scott on Facebook Home:

Before even getting into my experiences with Facebook Home, I must first admit, I’m a reluctant Facebook user. Facebook’s popularity began to grow right around my senior year of college, but I never really felt a strong desire to join. If I wanted to keep in touch with friends in different…

If you are like him, a reluctant Facebook user, then their new offering isn’t going to change that. What will be interesting to see is those who buy the HTC First, where Facebook Home is default launcher. I think there is a market for Facebook Home, but I don’t know who that market is.

Troy Scott on Apple’s incremental changes to iOS:

Apple is having a similar problem with iOS. Many tech pundits, and even the pot calling the kettle black CEO of BlackBerry, believe iOS is in need of a refresh. After nearly six years, the basic look and feel of iOS has barely changed. Given the iPhone’s market share, however, Apple risks alienating more casual users with any substantive changes made to the OS. As a result, Apple has been very conservative with its updates to iOS, preferring small incremental changes.

Apple doesn’t do new user interface (UI) for newness sake. They purposefully are conservative about changing their design language for user interfaces. They tend to introduce small changes over time in effort to help people adopt solutions to solve complex problems. If anything would alienate the casual consumer, it’s a radical new user interface.

There is some belief that Jonathan Ive, Apple’s Human Interface Chief, would end Apple’s more cheesy interfaces, e.g. Podcast.app, and enforce a flatter design. Some would even go so far to think that the next iteration of iOS will be a overhaul design. I couldn’t disagree more.

A reason why Apple is conservative in radically changing or overhauling their user interface is that it means educating significant amount of people to the new UI. Apple understands technology is meant to get out of the way of people’s life. By introducing new user interfaces, it means demanding attention and time way from consumer’s immediate experience. Confusion, anger, or defeat may happened for every new thing introduce. Thereby, iterating over existing contexts in UI is far more useful to the consumer than to introduce a radical new UI.

This is not to say that Apple should not build new user interfaces. Nay. It means that their focus is on solving complex problems. New UI is to fixing problems. It is solving for vague abstract workflows. It is to service to the user, not the designer.

Separately, Android has far more the market share than Apple. Whereas Apple has the roughly 75% of the profits and only 22%-25% of the market share, Android has 75% of the market share and Samsung has 25% of the profits. With so many choices for Android devices, the device makers’ skins on top of Android stock UI, alienates the user. So much that, the Verge did a whole post on how to get your new HTC One device to look like stock Android UI without rooting it.

I will concede one point. Google’s Android is getting better at design faster than Apple getting better at web services. If any risk in alienating Apple’s consumers, it’s in services. Guy English and John Gruber expand on Gruber’s 10 from 2010 WWDC talk. Give it a whirl. There are significant challenges Apple faces, but not a conservative UI.

Yellow Ranger:

Shit got real.

By tackling such issues in creative, practical, and persistent ways, the GOP would also be making a statement of political philosophy. Rather than being exclusively focused on budget numbers or individual economic rights, Republicans would be demonstrating a limited but active role for government: helping individuals attain the skills and values—the social capital—that allow them to succeed in a free economy. The Republican goal is equal opportunity, not equal results. But equality of opportunity is not a natural state; it is a social achievement, for which government shares some responsibility. The proper reaction to egalitarianism is not indifference. It is the promotion of a fluid society in which aspiration is honored and rewarded.

The authors are on point. As a student of history, I see conservatism has richer past than a caricature of Ronald Reagan. From the anti-trust days of T. Roosevelt to the establishment of the EPA of Richard Nixon, Republicans must listen to their own history and ignore the Fox News, Rush Limbaughs, and Glenn Becks. Republicans will find their voice in the correcting their extremes and embracing the past.

There must be a fundamental understanding that most Americans believe in a smarter government, not get rid of government. Most want personal freedom and social mobility with a safety net to fail and get up again. Many wish to see the most vulnerable, weakest, or poorest be care for and be back on their feet with dignity and humanity. Most importantly, everyone wants a competitive party to temper the excessiveness of America corporate and government power. Conservatism is the celebration of the individual as a collective force against big business, big government, and big labor.

Immigrants keep America competitive. GOP should welcome Hispanics looking to set up shop and make a family here. Republicans could lead the charge in lifting the caps for high skill immigrants. We already educate the brightest foreign born students. Why not give them automatic green card for wanting to stay and make money here, in America?

On family, the GOP must acknowledge young people like having sex and are overwhelm by their own passions. This means saying yes to birth control and condoms. No one enjoys unintended teen pregnancies. Both pro life and pro choice agree on that. No teen is going skirt through their years without making mistakes. In the spirit of personal responsibility with hard nose realism, give young people more than just a lecture in absenteeism.

On science and technology, it’s not okay not to understand how the Internet works. It’s not okay to be in utter denial of climate change. Its even stupider have to argue about evolution anymore. Stop pretending science is out to get religious beliefs destroyed. No one cares. People care about droughts, wild fires, and super hot summers. People care about water table pollution from fracking. People care about energy coming from here cheaper and more stable than Middle East oil.

GOP have a real opportunity to self correct. 2012 kick their asses. 2016 hopefully will reset their idiotaracy.