The Flicker Blog and Podcast

Grrrr. The thing is, I really want to love Beatport.
It’s an inexpensive and convenient source for buying all manner of underground electronic music – the kind of thing that was the preserve of the specialist vinyl shops that are now in terminal decline.

Not only are the prices reasonable, and the collection relatively extensive (and growing) but they do what we all want – offer content without DRM and in a variety of useful formats – MP3, MP4 and WAV.

So far, so good. So why oh why do they insist on doing so many dumb and infuriating things? The whole site is built in Flash, rendering it slow, clunky and inaccessible – the main point of which seems to give it a rather ugly UI (OK, I admit that this is a subjective point of view, but being a designer, I think I’m allowed to comment). Not only is this implementation possibly leaving them open to legal action under EU Accessibility Laws, but it serves no one in any way whatsoever that couldn’t be better and more efficiently implemented in plain old XHTML. On a Mac, it frequently doesn’t work. Typing in a search query yesterday, each successive keystroke overtyped the previous one. The buttons in the interface don’t respond, or when they do, the delay is so great that you’ve already moved on and have no sense of what you’ve clicked.

Being as there’s only one URL, the back button doesn’t work, the refresh button (which I instinctively tried on several occasions when the interface appeared to have frozen) takes you back to the front page. And of course (a major oversight) you can’t link to any content on the site because you have to use the clunky and un-reassuring search interface to get to anything.

I have content for sale on Beatport. It would be great to be able to refer any viewers of my site directly to a page where they could actually purchase our material. Surely, every one wins there?

I’m sure that they will put it down to human error, but when I made an order yesterday, I actually bought two of the same thing from a series of 3 choices (getting part 1 twice and 3 instead of 1,2 and 3). Now, I’m sure I made the right selection, but given the lag between pressing the ‘buy’ button and getting any visual feedback or it actually registering in your basket, the possibilities for error are endless.

To make matters worse, the trigger for me buying material was to try out the newly advertised WAV downloads. So, I made my choice, proceeded to checkout (this was my 3rd attempt by the way – had to switch from Mac to PC to proceed) then chose WAV as my format. I accepted the dialogue box that verified if I wanted WAV, paid and went to my downloads page. The only problem, my downloads were there as MP3s.

So… Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Again.

I really hope that some (or all) of these matters get resolved soon. When I discovered this site, my first response was ‘there goes all my money.’ But, it’s so painful, frustrating and un-reassuring buying anything from this site, that for the time being, my money seems relatively safe.

(clearly I think there will be more)

Cycling into work yesterday, I was considering experiences gained from the last two weekends – it’s been the first time I’ve really seriously used OSX for music production.
It’s definitely more stable, and a pleasure to run several audio apps simultaneously, all sharing the same audio hardware.

However, I really, really loathe the new ‘improved’ finder in 10.2.8. My working method involves lots and lots of navigating very deep folder structures both to save and locate many files, instrument settings, samples etc. I’ve witnessed much questioning of the relevance of the desktop metaphor in relation to today’s computing experience – and for the first time, I’ve started to question the notion of files and folders myself.

I’m not blaming Apple for this necessarily – Logic (largely out of functional necessity) points to specific locations for certain file types, just as I (for equally good reason) prefer to keep them elsewhere. The result – everytime I wish to save or open a new file, I’m being forced to navigate a slow, clunky interface that requires me to scroll horizontally and vertically in order to navigate from one ‘end’ of my system to another. I’m not being pedantic here in refusing to follow the file structure necessitated by Logic. In order to backup projects, which frequently run to hundreds of Mb, it makes sense to group all the files used by a project together. The default behavior of keeping all files in the application folder would make backups an error prone, and time consuming task.

Not that it was perfect, but in OS9 I could navigate a file system far more quickly by double clicking through folders. Obviously, with this model, you’re required to know where you’re going, but I’m not convinced that that this is so big an issue (guess I’m biased towards the ‘organised’ user). Currently, in order to give the user more information, they are being forced to do more work. The depth of content within the window grows with every click. As an increasing number of files and folders are shown, the user inevitably has to scroll to get to their destination.

As we move towards working methods that involve the use of many files (some of which are shared by other projects) the issue of quick, easy file navigation becomes increasingly complicated.
I tend to organise folders by what object type they contain, or the project they relate to. In so doing, it’s inevitable that with the current tools, I am frequently required to ‘run’ up and down very lengthy corridors.

Maybe the new, faster G5 and the improved finder of Panther will make me feel differently. Guess I can hope!

Woke up ridiculously early this morning with several things on my mind. My first thoughts were of this blog (kid with a new toy I guess).

Seconds later, I recalled Dan Hill’s ‘Insanely great, or just good enough?’ piece on Apple and their design strategy. In outline, he suggests that because Apple products are designed with little user tampering possible – that an adaptive design process is at the back of the engineers minds, and that Apple expects users to trust them to do what’s right.

In particular, he discusses the recent iPod Battery furore, and how what was seen as a design classic, has become sullied as a result of disgruntled users wanting to know why it has to be so hard to replace a battery. What was on my mind was whether this was an oversight on Apple’s part or a conscious decision (I suspect the latter). The view that Apple seek perfection in their designs suddenly becomes questionable – this particular issue suggests quite the opposite.

There’s no question that at the time of release, Apple products may seem akin to perfection to the buying public. I’m sure Apple never views them as such however – at the time of any launch, subsequent models are already lined up. Built in obsolescence is what keeps any company so profitable. Despite the seemingly noble (user centred) intentions, Apple exists to make money, and they can’t do that by shipping perfect product that no one need upgrade.

If Apple were to make the iPod truly adaptable, they may well improve the product, but would limit future sales too. As a user wishing to upgrade my iPod, the most desirable part to update (to add usefulness rather than sustaining life) would of course, be a larger hard drive. More than any other tweak, this could affect sales of subsequent models. I’m sure that none of these things are oversights – but business decisions. I think Apple hints at a perfection, but intentionally keeps it out of reach. How else do they sustain and fuel user desire?

Comparing the adaptive design of a virtual object to a physical one raises some interesting questions. At what point do incremental changes you’ve made to a virtual product effectively constitute a wholly new offering? In the virtual world, there’s no significant cost to replacing everything as part of an ongoing design ‘refit’. It could also be argued that a new model of iPod exists as a result of an adaptive design process, rather than in spite of it. Would the inclusion of ‘a removable panel, flush to the back of the casing but with a fingernail-sized catch for release’ demonstrate this? In fact, the virtual consumer is also expected to ditch a perfectly serviceable piece of software for a newer model – Photoshop 6 – 7 for instance. Granted, in this case the old verion doesn’t ‘fade away’ and force the issue. My point is that an adaptive design process isn’t excluded by (or necessarily related to) a marketing one. Incremental change happens to most products – the variable is the pricing model.

I do find these ideas very interesting, and I’m often seduced by the consideration given to the Apple Products (hockey-puck mice and CD eject buttons that only appear on the keyboard excluded) that could constitute a quest for perfection. I also happen to think that Apple is just as cynical and business minded as Microsoft. Sure, they use “design” to differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace – but whenever they make a sale, they’ve already one eye on the next one. The notion of an adaptive design process is, to me, akin to Darwinism. Any product will, over time, adapt and (theoretically) be improved upon. In a capitalist society, this remains true, but you’ll pay for those poseable thumbs.