What is Digg?133 Comments
- trer, on 10/11/2007, -1/+36Explains why people buy Tylenol brand cold medicine when the Rite Aid brand is $2 cheaper and legally obligated to have the same exact chemical composition as the Tylenol product. All you're paying for is the name and more colorful packaging.
- Nutmegan, on 10/11/2007, -9/+41Seriously? Do people really think Photoshop and Gimp are equivalent in terms of capability? I thought of Gimp as a few notches below Photoshop Elements.
- shadus, on 10/11/2007, -18/+45Features being equal there is a better interface, a good example is Photoshop and Gimp. They're roughly equal in what they can do but I don't know anyone who has sat down with both programs who preferred the Gimp's interface over Photoshop's interface (even those with no prior use of either program.) Of course there's a lot of interface issues to be forgiven for not having a $600+ price tag attached...
That being said, I spent 5 years using Photoshop before learning anything about the Gimp, and I loathe the standard Gimp interface, however Gimpshop solves that problem for me... it doesn't make it into Photoshop but it makes it close enough that my mind translates very easily.
Sigh, now if I could just play the games I like under Linux I wouldn't even need a dual boot. - break99, on 10/11/2007, -1/+27TRUE: that's why Norton/Symantec still sell products. As any sysadmin or tech specialist would agree (I think).
- signal15, on 10/11/2007, -2/+21A good example of this is Cisco. People have been using Cisco for years, they are familiar with it, and they drink the kool-aid. When, in reality, Cisco is rarely the technology leader in any segment of the market now. They used to be, but I cannot think of a single product line Cisco has that is better than every other product in that segment.
Cisco has grown complacent and relied upon the familiarity of their products in order to sell more, when they originally started out making some pretty groundbreaking technology back in the 90's.
Another example is Rolex. Though it's more of a brand recognition issue with them, they realized people bought Rolex for the name only. Consequently, most of their watches made since 1996 or so are of much lesser quality than the ones before. For less money, you can buy a much better made watch without the Rolex name on it.
Why do you think GM keeps around 10 different brands when they are all the same cars? Buick, Pontiac, Chevrolet, Oldsmobile... The list goes on. Once companies figure out people associate their name with something familiar, they stop innovating. And eventually, someone else starts to take over.
One of the great things about the internet is that you can spend 5 minutes on Google and read about how Company X now sucks and why you should really look at Company Y. The popularity of review sites such as epinions.com is soaring, and it's because people are finally realizing that *everything* sucks, and it's just a matter of who sucks the least. - scabbers, on 10/11/2007, -6/+24Photoshop's interface built on all the previous graphics programs before it -- Deluxe Paint, for example.The Gimp tried to be all "omz linux" and do it "better". It also has a ***** terrible, terrible name.
- TheBobbyx, on 10/11/2007, -1/+19I'm familular with Digg. Does that make it crap?
I'm scared. - ArnoldTPants, on 10/11/2007, -12/+28Hello Apple Fanboys
- naio, on 10/11/2007, -1/+15acetami...what???
- bIuebonics, on 10/11/2007, -0/+11that's because acetaminophen is about 3 syllables too long for the 3 syllable max crowd (which is your average consumer).
- consonance, on 10/11/2007, -5/+16Hello ALL fanboys.
- satansbanjo, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10Norton and Symantec sell products because they pre-load them onto peoples' computers. The average person isn't going to scope around for a solution when there's one in front of them that seems to work just as well
- bIuebonics, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10your post made me shudder... oh how i loathe symantec.
- Innova69, on 10/11/2007, -9/+19Agree & agree. I too have had less than stellar experience with Mac. And, I can feel your pain with Vista. I have much in common with your post.
- o0joshua0o, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8I think this is evidence of the same phenomenon: A lot of people stick with the religion they were raised in instead of looking into other possibilities.
- MacParrot, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8Frankly it just comes down to what you're more familiar with. The article was spot on for that. As a Mac user for some 20 years and an OS X user since 10.2, I find the Mac interface flows easier and is more helpful than the XP PC I use at work. I actually spend more time with a WinPC than I do Macs.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not claiming that OS X is better or Windows sucks or any other bit foolishness. I find myself more productive on a Mac, but that doesn't mean that the same would hold for everyone else. The right tools for the right job. If you're more familiar with Windows and that makes your life easier for the tasks you want to accomplish, then cool beans. As long as you respect my right to choose my tools, I'll respect your right to do the same.
I fully expect fanboys of all stripes (like hey arnold above me), to now fill this post with all bits of nonsense about how Macs/Windows/Linux is better because that's what THEY like. - macgiants, on 10/11/2007, -1/+9Qwerty
- djbon2112, on 10/11/2007, -3/+11You completely sum up my opinions with both statements. I think Mac is clumsy and really dumbed down, and Vista is counter-intuative.
Seriously, the idea that Vista is designed for "new users" and is "simple" is bollocks; we're all used to the way XP does it, so now EVERONE who used XP has to learn a new way of doing it, which means wasted time and energy. Same with the UI [i.e. the lack of a "file menu" by default, "favourite links" *****, etc.] - tomoleary, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7Unfortunately, the same thing happens with our US Elections. People vote for those they have heard of = those with the most money/air time/advertising
Sad really that our brains are so fragile. - papastout, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7Oh how true that is! Starting a job at as sysadmin I inherited a symantec AV server with a bunch of managed clients, switched to Kapersky and promptly got a talking to by my superiors. After convincing them of the folly in the rtvscan and doscan processes within symantec they relented to the fact that they wanted it because they like the 'shieid' icon.
Heh! It's true, familiarity over superiority. - jdc760, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8@signal15: For a moment I read that as "Crisco" and then when you started talking about drinking things I became concerned for your arteries. Then I realized it was Kool-Aid and Cisco. Although I do wonder what would happen if I were to try baking with Cisco instead of Crisco.
- hockey, on 10/11/2007, -2/+9Everyone says that GIMP's interface sucks (and some people use it as an excuse to pirate photoshop). That being said I've always wondered this: Is it possible that the designer's who use the GIMP provide feedback to the developers on WHY the interface sucks? Has this been done, is it being done and just ignored or are people just going around saying "it sucks" without saying why?
I'm a developer (not with the GIMP mind you but just a developer) with the company I work for. Simply saying "this sucks" to me does nothing because you haven't told me how to make it better for you. You've just said "it sucks".
Just a thought. - sexycommando, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8There's also a strong placebo effect. People who buy brand name drugs tend to believe they are more effective, and that often leads to noticeably better efficacy of the drug. My mom, for example, only gets better when she takes brand name migraine medication. Generic medication with the exact same active compounds does nothing for her.
- OneAndOnlySnob, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7Hello 2+2=4 fanboys
- clinko, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6Whatever... All I know is that the Motorola RAZR is the best phone ever made!!!!
There's nothing that compares to its awesome 4 second delay when you press a number, Kick-ass volume that won't go louder than street noise, and INCREDIBLE resistance to breaking! I can even drop it from the couch to the floor with only minor breaking-in-half's! - TimDigg, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6eh...I could see the Gimp name working if Gimp were more popular
I could very easily see Gimp turning into an adjective
"Naw man, that photo is totally gimped" - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6and to think idiots paid $500 for that POS when it first came out.
brand name loyalty is the most retarded ***** ever, manufactures like apple dont even make their own products,
ipods + iphone made by Hon Hai Precision Industry (FoxConn)
macbook pros are made by Asus
then people rip on asus for making ***** laptops and then state you can get a mac for the same price lol
i buy whatever has good specs on paper period, brand name doesnt mean ***** unless i see a trend of crap coming from their factories (IE toshiba, sony)
oh BTW, why compain about the phone when you can throw it away and get an HTC - d03boy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5Why digg him down? Do you not realize that he's talking about the qwerty keyboard vs. dvorak? The only reason we use qwerty these days is because dvorak was too fast for typewriters and caused them to jam.
- CheckPlease, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6Isn't this also how Nic Cage keeps finding work?
- ss429, on 10/11/2007, -5/+10So very true. I had to use a Macbook over the weekend to do certain parts of my homework and I just found it to be an absolute pain to use. The entire research department in my school uses only Macs and they probably never tested this one particular tool (Bunch) on anything else. The function key located on the bottom left instead of Ctrl, having to use the apple key to copy, paste (Im used to little finger on Ctrl + index finger to his the X,C,V), apple+tab only switching between programs instead of every instance of every program running (had to ask someone else to learn about the apple+~), and I was totally shocked not to find the print screen key when I was doing the documentation! Also whats up with backspace working like delete? Well it does say delete but especially in vi the damn thing never backspaces, it only deletes!! Lets not even talk about installing new programs.
The rest of the system was fairly intuitive, I am used to reading top to bottom, left to right. I sorted the icons by time created but the newest file always showed up on the top right and the list grew towards the left, annoying but couldn't afford to spend more time to figure that one out. Last thing, is there any hack available to put the menus in the respective window instead of just one up top? Because there was many times when i closed the program but it was still in the menu up top and when I hit apple+w to close some other program that was in the foreground, whatever was in the menu up top got closed, wtf?!
At the end of the day, I was happy to go back to my 4yr old laptop running XP. Sure its all beat up now and looks ugly compared to a shiny white Mac, but it feels like home! - bigtizzle, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6I find the double cheeseburger to be absolutely delicious. I don't eat at McDonald's more than once every few months, but when I do I'm always satisfied. It is what it is: a greasy little treat that costs a buck.
- wwwdot1jesdotus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5@ agentofid -
Whoa. Calm down dude. He made a very objective and accurate comparison between gimp and PS. He never said Gimp was better. He only said that for alot of people, the $600 was too much to pay for the better Photoshop. Just because gimp doesn't cut it for you doesn't mean it doesn't replace PS for thousands of people. - mythandros, on 10/11/2007, -3/+8@ scabbers
What's not to love about GIMP? I mean, it's called "GIMP". How cool is that. Think about this: you're in a meeting with some bigwigs, your coworker stands up and says "I drafted this marketing proposal through creative application of Photoshop Professional, version X.X". Hoity-toity, right? So you stand up and say, "I make a pretty picture with GIMP! Yay!" Gimp gimp gimp gimp. How can you not love that word? - corvairkid, on 10/11/2007, -3/+8@ minorthreat & mythandros
Remember back to 1994 and that popular little Tarantino flick called Pulp Fiction. There was a scene in that movie where Ving Rhames gets ass raped by a gay pawn shop owner and his pet leather clad masochist named "The Gimp."
So it doesn't matter if it STANDS for GNU Image Manipulation Program, people still associate the word "gimp" with the character from the movie. Hence the "terrible, terrible" name. - mythandros, on 10/11/2007, -7/+11...and Linux fanboys, and MICROSOFT fanboys, and...
Do I really need to continue. How about we ditch the arrogance and just use the right ***** tool for the job? Or do people like you really have such a deep-seated need to compare ***** that you can't help but deride someone else to assuage your own self-loathing? Have I hit too close for comfort there, *****?
RIght tool for the right job. Is that too much to ask? - goat2, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5Bose
- porterfield, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6I guess this explains why I still use Windows.
- moses48, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4"Consumers mistake Familiarity with Superiority"
This is just plain opportunity cost.
If a learning curve is too much, then obviously it might not be worth the learning time.
Even if it is superior once learned, that doesn't make it superior overall. - fajita, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3I've been reading some books my Paul Krugman, an economist. He referred to something similar in the last couple of chapters in the one that I am finishing. It is called the QWERTY factor.
Basically, the QWERTY keyboard layout that we all know and love (or hate) that are based on a typewriter from a long time ago. And because of the popularity of that typewriter, they opted not to change the design to one that would be more efficient in terms of key strokes or what not because of the fact that the workforce of typists out there were already trained on the QWERTY layout.
So the proficiency (read familiarity) of the typists of the QWERTY layout, made the business folks choose to keep with a design that was inferior than other layouts that are actually more efficient. Therefore, inferring that the QWERTY layout was superior to other layouts.
He refers to this as the 'QWERTY Factor' basically, stating that industry (or consumers) will go with something that is familiar (and possibly deficient) over something that is new (and possibly superior). - BabyWookie, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Linux - works great too and doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
- jackthehomeless, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3What ever happened to people viewing two (or three, or four) products and making an informed, thought out decision? When the ubuntu craze started i sat down and weighed it out. I read reviews on Windows, Mac, and Linux. After not being able to find one logical bit of information that wasn't hype by fan boys, i ended up buying a mac and dual booting windows and linux on my existing system. I played with all three.
I ended up siding with Linux. I am not a linux fanboy by any stretch, i just found Linux to be better suited to my needs.
I then sold my mac and wiped my pirated version of windows :) - esotericguy, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3agreed, but until it comes with a at least a 10gb HD and gets slimmer.
the ipod will continue to riegn supreme. - jull1234, on 10/11/2007, -3/+6Windows.. is there, it works great, and I already know how to do all the things I want to do.
- JimmyJJWalker, on 10/11/2007, -11/+14Great comments regarding Vista, I agree XP is actually the better OS.
- wbgo, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4The parent comment and some of the responses are perfect examples of familiarity vs superiority. "Intuitive" is used as a synomyn for "familiar". There's very little that's actually "intuitive" in computers: it's all based on one or another pretty abstract idiom. OS X can be described as more intuitive than Windows because more software sticks to the standard idiom (while, up to and including XP, at least) even the Windows system itself, let alone 3rd party software, lacked a universal idiom. Linux is, in this respect, a nightmare, unless you can restrict yourself to the core apps of a given desktop environment and stay well clear of the command line, where there seems to be about 30 different ways of specifying arguments.
When I got my first Mac and switched from Linux, I knew full-well that it would be a pain at first because it would be unfamiliar, and I accepted that as no fault with the system itself. I knew I'd be spending a lot of time with Google and told myself I wouldn't make a judgement for a few months till I'd got used to the OS.
As someone who went 98 -> 2000 -> XP -> Linux -> OS X (and I feel I'm good at recognising when something is hard or "unintuitive" because I've never done it that way before), I think that OS X is a much better designed system than Windows and most parts of Linux. It's certainly better thought-through at the user interface level.
I'm certain that from a starting point of ignorance of all OS's, OS X has the gentlest learning curve and, purely on the OS level, is probably the most powerful (folder actions, Automator, Applescript GUI scripting, and all that UNIX power). I think OS X does a fantastic job of appearing simple, yet hiding a huge amount of power just below the surface. As contrast, Gnome does a fantastic job of BEING simple (and having very little hidden power) while KDE is in-your-face power and Windows (never used Vista) sits somewhere in between. - OBKenobi, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3Hello fangirls.
- GMorgan, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3I disagree on Vista despite my comment at the bottom. Using the file browser today I was initially royally pissed off with the lack of the 'up' button that returns to the containing directory but in most cases the new system is much better where you have the drop arrows on each directory. It's just a pity they didn't expand it further and add drop arrows to the drop downs as well, then navigation between folders becomes much easier.
Then again I'm generally UI agnostic. I think the reason Linux is so different to everything else is we demand that the system suit us rather than expecting ourselves to move to the system. We don't get used to our UI's they get used to us. The reason the CLI is predominant is it is often the most efficient system and we demand usage and expansion of that system for our OS otherwise we'll go elsewhere and take our development efforts with us. - GMorgan, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Is this sort of thing really a surprise to anyone. Today I had to fix a Vista installs networking because of a tcp window scaling problem. The solution involved pulling down an administrator command prompt and entering
"netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled"
There was no easy GUI solution to this. It was either the CLI solution or regedit. If this was Linux we'd here 'OMFG you have to use the CLI. Linux isn't ready for the desktop!'.
Windows is easy to use because it's familiar. There's no such technical thing as 'ease of use' as such, at least not on the scale some suggest. Consistency is the only real and definite ease of use requirement. Almost everything else is a matter of experience. - HisShadow, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3> at least on Windows if I import photos as one user, any other user can access those photos
> regardless of who is logged in if I put it on a folder oustide "My Documents".
This, however is not a strong point, and is the single reason that Windows is a morass of spyware, malware and jerkware. There is no sandboxing of users. Since it's underpinning is Unix, Users do not by default have access to one another's files and on a multiuser system they should not. It is an inconvenience, but that convenience on Windows is why Windows security is the worst in the world. -
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