I'll always wonder what the balance was between him being dishonest for the purpose of getting elected, and his views actually having shifted once he got into office and learned about how it all actually works (like how entrenched the surveillance program is, the limits of the president's power, etc.)
Apple had certainly gone too far in some cases (the Podcasts app is my personal favorite with a reel-to-reel acting as UI), but many apps were finally striking a good balance. The Google Search iOS app, for example, uses dimension and light beautifully to represent what's part of the chrome, what's active, what's tappable, etc. Facebook is also finding a decent rhythm.
I was hoping this would be an announcement about self-hosting, but alas... That's still the barrier-to-entry for the company I work for; can't use any "cloud" products. JIRA is just so painfully bloated.
Knowing what I do about Fog Creek (which includes no specific information on this particular question) I would very much doubt they would ever do that. The support costs for self hosting are just too high to justify the expense. Often these costs come in more than a support tech's time, as certain problems require code base changes to fix.
Do you have some sort of governmental regulation that keeps you from using hosted products?
Even secrecy-minded orgs like the CIA are moving apps to these platforms. Typically a regulation won't say "no cloud", but e.g. FISMA would require an online infrastructure to pass certain third-party assessments.
Does your org use Salesforce? (not being obtuse, just trying to figure out if your organization really doesn't use any cloud products, or if there are certain exceptions).
It's fairly common in large organizations, even progressive internet-focused ones, to have a rule of "no sensitive/confidential data on third-party systems that haven't been through a security audit."
Unfortunately, some less-progressive companies leave off the last bit and just ban everything.
An over-reliance on a hover state leaves tablet users in the dust, though. I see no reason for completely flat buttons, as it's eminently possible to design ones with subtle depth that play well within the bounds of "distinctly digital". The principle that your users need to touch everything in order to learn their boundaries is a dangerous gamble, and may very well be leaving conversions on the table due to risk-aversion.
The new Blackberry OS is like this with gestures. Sure, you can spend 20 minutes moving your finger(s) in every way imaginable to learn how to use it because there's no chrome (or hardware buttons), but it certainly doesn't instill confidence on the first use. Instead, it presents itself as a challenge: "learn how to use me, I dare you."
> An over-reliance on a hover state leaves tablet users in the dust, though.
Not only that, it requires a mouse user also to hover over all possible elements to just know what's clickable. Kind of like some of the first graphical adventure games.
Or imagine a website where a link only turns blue and underlined as you mouseover it.
"Input" versus "Indicator" is a big problem in FlatUI that needs to be solved, there is no shared visual language yet to signify which is which, and it needs to be possible by just looking (and preferably other modalities as well)
If I didn't have to answer email or deal with any middle management, this could work. But the paradox is that the only scenario in which legitimate optimal efficiency can be attained is in a small-group, highly-communicative environment (like a startup); in that kind of environment, you're putting in 80-hour weeks so you can get profitable as quickly as possible, so there's no way anyone is saying "I've put in my 25 hours, see you guys next week!"
But those startups are people basically willingly surrendering themselves to the ideology. The article isn't about the empassioned individuals who want to make it big, it is about Average Joe who works at any middle class company 40 hours a week without any desire to do it and no passion to continue.
If you have the drive to try to do something big, putting all your time into it is kind of mandatory. But if you just work for the money to survive on, you shouldn't need to put in such a significant portion of ones time.
The average joe might have passion for work, but also a family and other responsibilities that preclude extended periods of long workdays. They might not want to get divorced.
How many months ago was it that Fox was calling Teachers overpaid, lazy, and incompetent? Definitely within the past year, right? Yet now it makes perfect sense to arm those same incompetent slackers who co-parent their children for the school year? This level of hypocrisy and short-sightedness hurts my brain.
In gaming terms, this amounts to an egregious level of power-creep; the crutch of overwhelmed and inexperienced game balancers.
Fox runs whichever story fits their current agenda. Need to cut funds? Call teachers lazy and incompetent. Need to keep guns unregulated? Give teachers guns.
I didn't read it as such, but can understand how it could have come off that way. The author seemed to be speaking with enough generality that each example was just a pit stop along the much broader thread of the post.
