Art Blanc
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Posts tagged simplicity
Oh, Computers

Lukas Mathis have an interesting analysis:

This is a sentiment you often hear from people: casual users only need “entry-level” performance. Even casual users themselves perpetuate it: “Oh, I’m not doing much on my computer, so I always just go with the cheapest option.” And then they buy a horrid, underpowered netbook, find out that it has a tiny screen, is incredibly slow, the keyboard sucks, and they either never actually use it, or eventually come to the conclusion that they just hate computers.

In reality, it’s exactly backwards: proficient users can deal with a crappy computer, but casual users need as good a computer as possible.

Computer housekeeping is still a complicated matter for any regular people to deal with, heck, even for a proficient user. Even with iOS which is a blank slate of an OS, Apple clearly pushing hard to get rid of the file system, and yet still not achieve the level of simplicity and ease of use they desire.

There’s still a lot of complexity we have to deal with using a computer, any computers, why? Because it’s multipurpose device. Consider a smartphone, it’s a phone, a camera, a calendaring device, an internet browser, an email device, a gaming device, and anything that an app can offer, on top of that it got plenty of sensors, gyro, proximity, light, GPS, and you name it, in short it’s a darn complex computer.

The challenge is how to make it more simple? You can’t just mindlessly reduce or hide the complexity and call it a day, because simplicity is not the absence of clutter, simplicity is not so simple to achieve.

Art Blancsimplicity, insight
Insanely Simple

Something tells me you won’t be surprised when I tell you it’s about Steve Jobs and Apple. But this book is different. Really.

That’s because (a) I had a unique vantage point to some pivotal events in Apple history, and (b) this book focuses on one thing alone — the core value that has driven Apple since the beginning.

Insanely Simple is about Apple’s obsession with Simplicity.

Looking forward to this one. Ken Segall, in short, he’s the guy that handle Apple’s “Think Different” advertising campaign and also the “i” naming convention, starting with iMac and… you know the rest of them.

Art Blancapple, book, simplicity