I had the same issue, and I'm working on an ebook reader that does exactly what you're asking for. It's not available yet, but there are screenshots here:
The page with my name in the HyperCard 10th Anniversary Stack is a stack I made that was added to that project. It does a bunch of weird things to simulate the Mac Finder, none of which seem to work in the simulator (which makes sense, it's possible that it even uses Apple Script, I don't remember the details).
I guess the point is that she, herself, was not notable at that point, since her work was not widely and publicly known. Otherwise we'd already know her pre-transition name.
If I tell you that I'm rolling a die, and ask you whether I rolled a six or not a six, offering you 100$ if you guess right, you very obviously should say "not a six", even if we only play the game once.
I would argue that if you start out knowing that you will switch, you essentially do lie, because you initially pretend to pick a box (or door) that you know you will not end up opening.
It is true that this approach adds additional layers of thinking, but the problem is that without those layers, the solution to the problem is simply not intuitive for the vast majority of people. Adding these additional layers helps at least some people gain a more intuitive understanding of why switching helps.
> Why do we need to criticize one tool because it is not equal or better to another?
Probably because we want it to become better :-)
> But calling the iPad a failure because it doesn't fit to your work
I'm sorry that's the impression you took away from the article, because that wasn't what I was trying to communicate. Perhaps I shouldn't have said "failure", but I did try to explain what I meant by the word, by going back to what the iPad was originally meant to be: the car to the PC's truck, a better device than a PC for the vast majority of users.
I think it's unfortunate that it failed to achieve this.
It's great that there are authors who still use typewriters, but that's exactly my point: that's what the iPad is. It's a niche tool for people who have very specific needs. That's fine, but I don't think it's the iPad's full potential.
I also don't think it's a problem, I just think it's a missed opportunity. I think the iPad could have had the potential to be a better computing device for many, if not most, people, had Apple made better decisions.
>What is this silly ‘real work’ gate-keeping? I guess the author means their work.
I used the term "real work" because that's the term people use when they write "you can actually use the iPad for real work" articles. I think it's clear from context that "real work" means the kind of work Steve Jobs introduced the iPad for, i.e. the work people traditionally do on PCs: writing letters, creating presentations, doing spreadsheets, and so on.
I do acknowledge that people do real work on iPads; I pointed out some examples in the first paragraph. The problem is that these are clearly niche tasks, as is reflected in the iPad's sales numbers.
The iPad works well for some people, who do very specific tasks. That's genuinely great for them, but it's clearly not what Apple had in mind for the iPad. And in my opinion, it's not what the iPad's true potential could have been.
Then why don't these people use iPads? (Maybe because iPads are actually more complicated for most common work-related tasks.)
Your claim that only a minority of people use more than two applications needs a source, because I don't know a single person who gets by with just two applications for work. Pretty much everybody uses at least an email client/office messaging app, a browser, and Word, and those are just the generic tools; there are very few people who don't also use work-related, specialized tools.
I'm kind of in the same boat, and I'm slowly, gradually, replacing my Macs with both Windows and Linux devices. As somebody with zero investment in earlier Windows versions, I quite loved Windows 8, and found Windows 10 to be a step back from that, but still a good alternative to the Mac. There are also various different Linux systems that make great desktop operating systems.
Reading the linked article, I have some observations, particularly about the requirements Wesley lists:
> One tool for each job.
This strikes me as a somewhat peculiar requirement. The Mac certainly doesn't work that way, particularly since OS X, and as long as the different tools available aren't hurting you, their availability won't be much of a problem.
> A sensible/minimal selection of pre-installed applications.
To me, a more useful requirement would be "no bloatware". Linux distros in particular often come with a ton of pre-installed applications, but they are generally good applications, and having them does not cause any harm.
If you buy a Windows computer, on the other hand, you'll likely find its installed Windows version to be borderline unusable due to all of the preinstalled manure.
> Simple, easy to use/understand interface
As somebody who has used Macs since the early 90s, I'd argue that ever since Mac OS X, the Mac hasn't really offered that. It's still ahead of most Windows versions (excluding perhaps Windows 8, but clearly including Windows 10, which sadly has reintroduced much of the clutter from earlier Windows versions), but many Linux distros are now much cleaner and simpler than OS X (both Elementary and Pixel come to mind as examples of this).
So to some degrees, Wesley is requiring these operating systems to offer things that the Mac hasn't truly offered since the late 90s. This is not entirely unfair; as a Mac user, he's used to the Mac's oddities and flaws, and so it is perhaps useful to require the system he's switching to to be better than Mac OS in some respects.
Still, I think it's fair to point out that the Mac itself probably couldn't easily fulfill all of these requirements.
1. Touchscreen computers are in the minority now, but I don't think they'll remain in the minority. Kids are growing up on iPhones, Android phones, and iPads. A computer without a touchscreen will seem increasingly anachronistic to them, so designing against that trend is a backwards-looking strategy.
2. I don't see how the changes Microsoft has made in Windows 10 so far were necessary to make it a better desktop OS. Removing charms, for example, did nothing for desktop PCs. Microsoft could have made the charms features (e.g. search) accessible via the taskbar without removing charms for those who do have touchscreen computers, and can access it easily.
I specifically point out in the article that it is not just loss aversion, but that there are valid reasons to dislike Windows 8.
I also don't criticize old interfaces because they are old. I specifically point out that the desktop metaphor was created for use cases that are very different from how we use computers nowadays. Desktops are not problematic because they're old, but because what we use desktop PCs for has changed a lot.
The difference is probably that Microsoft's Windows 10 demonstrations show a manually customized system, while my screenshot shows what it looks like by default, on a newly installed system? Other than that, I'm not sure how I could not be running the current Windows 10 preview, because, as far as I know, it's the only build that supports continuum.
I like Windows 8 on the desktop. I agree that it has issues, but I also point that out in the article.
As for "undermining people's opinions": while I have no doubt that there are plenty of people who genuinely gave Windows 8 a chance, and found it severely wanting, I think it's fair to say that there are at least as many who never did, and just joined in on the bashing. Personally, I've seen a number of people who made jokes about Windows 8, but changed their opinions once they actually saw it on my Surface. It's a bit like Windows Vista, which people suddenly quite liked, once it was renamed to Windows 7 :-)
The actual point of the loss aversion thing, though, was to point out how Microsoft failed when it introduced Windows 8. I write this blog for designers, and learning from other people's mistakes is one reason why I write it. Loss aversion is an important concept in design; a conclusion to draw from this is that design changes should occur gradually, and not be forced upon people with a single, sweeping change.
Yeah, I didn't put down the whole story in the article. I actually did talk to support at some point (there's no email address, so I had to call them). The first-level support rep wasn't able to help me, and I spent so much time talking to that person that I simply didn't have the time to start fresh with somebody else. Maybe I'll try again when I have a day off.
https://leafl.it/