Sidekick Issue Ushers in New Tech Terms
The server failure that has left thousands of Sidekicks dead in the water is still in our minds. It is such a massive failure of T-Mobile and Microsoft/ Danger that it is easy to understand why everyone is obsessed with the whole situation. The obsession with trying to understand how it happened is only going to continue, and I foresee new terms in the tech world emerging as a result.
Mark my words, it won’t be long before we start hearing statements like these in tech settings:
“My system pulled a sidekick — all my data’s gone!”
“We just got sidekicked off the server!”
“Make sure your backup data is good — you don’t want to be sidekicked in the face.”
“Yesterday my system worked fine — today it’s just a sidekick!”
Don’t be fast to judge, I feel so bad for those poor Sidekick owners who are now without all of their personal data. It is an unthinkable situation and it demonstrates the importance of keeping data backed up. Those of us who have lost a system, only to discover our backup (that had been duly maintained) was no good, know exactly how demoralizing the Sidekick issue can be. Sometimes things make so little sense you just have to joke about them to keep sane.
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sadly, in this knowhow starved time, whats needed is a one button solution that copies the data onto multiple inexpensive media that can be moved to a different read/write hardware if the original fails.
What makes this time special? Other than the built-in difficulty of backing data off the Danger servers onto your own computer.
What the PC industry needs is not knowhow, but the ability to make difficulty decisions about interface, so that they are easy to use. Too many times, the developers cop out by making lots of options, and then Joel Spolsky complains about bizarre shut down menus in Vista and Nate Anderson complains about bizarre controls on the Zune HD.
Now, Apple is pretty good about making good interfaces, even if they have to use weird software design choices such as hard-linked directories. They just need to work on not having horrible data loss bugs.
Apple’s user interface design process is publicly documented, and some Apple alumni replicate it with some success, such as the Pre. The PC industry needs to learn something from Apple’s design processes, and not just ape their hardware.
the “kick me” sign on the picture should be on his side ;)
He turned at the last moment. :)
Now I know why TMO went with Catherine Zeta Jones instead of Chuck Norris. ;)