Eric Shalley

Let me start with this: Being a tech nerd at heart, I was well aware of this “gotta have it” product Apple was developing, but I wasn’t interested. I thought for sure that I would have no use for a giant iPod touch, no matter what whiz-bang features it had on it.

I kept this opinion for about 30 seconds into the intro video for the product. I have long admired Jonathan Ive’s design work at Apple and his interpertations of Dieter Rams design work at Brauun. (I’m pretty convinced that I’d be interested in buying any product from their design portfolio.) They just look so darn good.

Will I get one? Definately not at first. The $500+ tag is a bit pricey for something that my MackBook Pro can do minus the touch screen. But I expect that come my birthday or Christmas I’ll be giving these a second look. I think the 3G+WiFi would be the only way to go. Internet wherever, whenever is pretty tempting. I’m very curious to see how the world embraces this new product.

After 9 months of dragging my feet, I finally upgraded my home computer operating system to Windows Vista Home Premium. I admit I was very skeptical and listened to all of the bad press that surrounds Microsoft’s newest operating system. I feared that even after running multiple successful system checks that most of my programs wouldn’t function and I would have to go through the hassle of updating drivers for all of my added components. I even have a computer that far exceeds the recommended requirements for the total Aero (Authentic, Energetic, Reflective, and Open) experience. Still I waited 9 months. Why?

For me, negative word of mouth, laziness, and Apple’s clever and very effective Mac v.s. PC ads all contributed to my delay. I feel somewhat foolish for not digging in deeper to find my own answers, but my copy of XP was running fine and I thought I had little reason to upgrade.

I can tell you that I wish I would have upgraded months sooner. Installation was simple, though it took a few hours to fully upgrade. I am very pleased with all of the new features and am a big fan of the new interface look and feel. The frosted glass, tab preview, and 3D window flip are handy and eye pleasing. Admittedly the 3D flip seems like Microsoft’s take on Apple’s Expose, but it is a welcomed feature to me since I constantly flip from Photoshop, to a code editor, to a web browser, and back again.

Being a designer who works on a Mac all day at work and uses a PC at home gives me a somewhat unique view of each platform. (And funny looks from all of my hardcore Mac creative friends.) Pre-Vista I obviously would have given the user experience edge to Mac’s OSX, but I feel that Vista has taken many of the nice features found in OSX and expanded on them to create a rich user experience. I use a Mac 40 hours a week, have 3 iPods, and am an inspiring iPhone user, but I still love Vista. If you are on the fence as I was, go for it, I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

I was also intrigued by Microsoft’s Mojave Experiment. If you haven’t heard about it, it is a blind test with users thinking they are using a new operating system (Mojave), but they are actually using Vista. The numbers are astounding, with 94% of the participants ranking Mojave higher than Vista. Mojave also earned an 8.5 average test rating, where Vista earned just 4.4. This just goes to show how powerful negative word of mouth and advertising can be.

I was excited to see Microsoft at least take a stand with their new No Walls campaign. It is bound to get interesting as Microsoft appears to finally be fighting back.