I personally use OS X because it’s a happy middleground between Windows and Linux; I’ve got a good CLI and free developy bits if I want them, but I also have essential bits of software (Office, Photoshop, Civ 3) and a system that doesn’t need too much fiddling with. I agree that some bits of the UI are utterly broken though, and I don’t even begin to understand the logic behind iPhoto’s UI. My preferred commentator on OS X (un)usability is John Siracusa at Ars Technica.

Science knows I abhor the idea of the big boys just stepping in an outproducing idea men out of existence, but I’m really beginning to wonder if the current patent situation isn’t doing more harm than good – whether we should we go to a policy of nonrenewal, so it’s just a head start and a chance to make a name. Bastard lawyers getting patents for decades on the idea of User Interaction To Prevent Boredom, Using Two Motors Instead of One or Round fucking Buttons makes my blood boil, and those are far from exceptional cases these days.

I noticed Apple considered the number of patents the device contained as a selling point. It’s a hint of that creepy marketing attitude, like references to ‘shipping product’ and ‘SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS’, that make you slightly uneasy to have been sharing these people’s excitement a moment before. Like when someone mentions God a little too spontaneously, just when you thought they seemed sane.

About eighteen months ago, just before we were going to buy one of these keyboards, a mysterious unnamed company bought Fingerworks and their entire patent library, slapped NDAs on everyone down to the factory caretakers, and shutdown production. The prices of the remaining keyboards rocketed, and we eventually managed to get on Ebay for about £400.

So on the one hand, I think the iPhone looks fantastic. On the other hand, Apple are complete buggers for killing the only product that has allowed Pen and others to use a keyboard again, just for the sake of a little gadget that does neat stuff, and presumably gains them a hat made of money.

If they don’t release some kind of iKeyboard soon (or integrate it into a laptop), I’ll be annoyed.

I also help a guy do what he wants in iTunes, which to be fair is actually quite a good program – otherwise I wouldn’t have him using it, right? Things like the undocumented and invisible playlist sort field and its handling of duplicate tracks, though, seem actively obstructive. I also happen to have had a converation with a coworker yesterday who couldn’t figure out how to get his iPod to sync more than once with iTunes; I’ve never been impressed by the iPod, so making it the linchpin of their marketing and industrial design doesn’t work on me.

I suspect Apple gets by on two things: first, as everyone’s noticed for years, their purely visual elegance pulls in the doubloons from idiots. More subtly, I didn’t use Macs during the pre-X days as they were completely irrelevant…but I suspect modern Apple stuff may be riding the reputation from a genuinely superior predecessor: See this essay by a former Mac industrial designer. http://www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html