dporan

Here it is:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33794018

(Thanks to HN user DoingIsLearning for suggesting a separate submission.)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33760814

http://blogs.harvard.edu/danieloran/2022/11/28/qa-about-the-...

http://www.pcworld.com/article/188223/the_long_fail_a_brief_...

Maybe the lack of success has been due to poor implementation, but I wonder whether styluses are just inherently problematic:

1. Truly reliable handwriting recognition always seems to be just over the horizon, and I wonder whether it always will be. Honestly, I often can't read my own handwriting. Sure, you can store handwriting as "ink," aka a bitmap, but that's like choosing a fax as your file format.

2. Switching from stylus to finger to (possibly) keyboard is awkward. You need someplace to put the stylus, and it makes one-handed operation pretty difficult.

That said, I actually think I'd enjoy having a stylus for input sometimes. I hope that someone eventually figures out how to put all the pieces together. (Too bad that Microsoft Courier didn't make it.)

  Steve Jobs played a minor role in Apple’s early success with the Apple II

If it had not been for Jobs, [Wozniak] might still be handing out schematics of his boards for free at the back of Homebrew meetings. It was Jobs who had turned his ingenious designs into a budding business, just as he had with the Blue Box . . . . To make the Apple II successful required more than just Wozniak's awesome circuit design. It would need to be packaged into a fully integrated consumer product, and that was Jobs's role.

For all of his foibles, Jobs was the quintessential founder, relentlessly pushing the business forward -- recruiting great team members, signing up investors, and polishing the product for a mass audience.

Considering that Yegge seemed to make a compelling case, that peremptory response doesn't reflect well on the Google executive team.

1. Unlike Apple, which apparently eschews formal user research, Google relied on "ethnographic research" to shape Android 4.0.

2. In between Apple's hyper-realistic UI and Microsoft's Spartan aesthetic, Google is trying to find a middle ground in Android 4.0 that facilitates new approaches and new experiences.

From the screenshots alone, it's hard to tell what it actually will be like to use Android 4.0. But it's great to see that Google is thinking so deeply about user experience.

[A]ll serendipity for Sculley who was just along for the ride. He just happened to luck out. And, there was no pilgrimage… no planned meeting with Dr. Land. I was working for Steve as Design Director for the Macintosh project and we were in Boston and I asked Steve if he’d like to meet Dr. Land, whom I had worked with before Apple. I called Dr. Land and he agreed to meet Steve. We arrived to find a BBC documentary film crew there. Dr. Land excused them and we began a 3 hour visit which included a glimpse into color experiments that were in his lab, to his personal office and an amazing review of some of his personal collection of photographs. The memorable part of this was that Steve was meeting someone who legitimately could be, almost uniquely, a mentor for him. And, clearly, they shared an awareness of the importance of good design as it contributed not only to their products, but to their corporate culture as well.

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2666-the-story-of-polaroid-in...

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/1998/10-22lowney...

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."