The usability of Microsoft Windows 8 on a tablet is so bad that one expert says he’s sticking with Windows 7 until Windows 9 arrives. After using the Surface RT, I understand, but the real issue is lumping together an OS for tablets and PCs. Read more »
A new biography of Steve Jobs quotes Bill Gates as saying that the Apple co-founder “never really understood much about technology.” While the Microsoft billionaire likely saw that as a put-down, technology is arguably the least important thing about Apple’s most successful products. Read more »
iPad users aren’t stingy with their devices, according to a new usability report by the Nielsen Norman Group focusing on Apple’s tablet. iPad owners tend to share with their household, and they also have very particular tastes about what they do and don’t like in apps. Read more »
The real world experiences of children using the iPad has not stopped the Nielsen Norman Group from releasing a preliminary 93-page report detailing the usability problems of the iPad, citing problems in learning gestures, hidden controls, small buttons, and many other usability errors. Read more »
Such eye-tracking research is not cheap, however. For teams who don’t have the research budget to do full usability studies, Trailhead provides a way of creating limited heat maps inexpensively. Trailhead can’t track users’ eye movements, so it tracks mouse movements and mouse clicks instead. Read more »
There have been plenty of complaints about privacy and other concerns with Google Buzz, but the biggest problem with it is that it’s just so darn hard to use, and so convoluted in its design. Even quitting Buzz is way harder than it needs to be. Read more »
Perhaps the strongest criticism of the iPhone has been that it doesn’t support multitasking, aside from a few of Apple’s own system level applications that are included on the device and can’t be deleted. Yet the iPhone sells like hotcakes, and Apple has a technical solution […] Read more »
