I suspect the response to this will be a resounding silence, or “we don’t care”, or, if most of the Mac fans who showed up yesterday are still around, “you’re a shit designer and an moron who should die in a fire, so who cares?”, BUT! As a pun, I messed about with the blog’s style sheet yesterday, replacing the yellow with a subtle grey background.

The original red/yellow scheme was, as precisely one guy noted on a surprisingly lengthy discussion about yesterday’s article, inspired by classic communist propaganda graphic design. Those guys weren’t fluffy bunnies, but they knew great colour and design. But I also know at least one person found the contrast a struggle, despite me dialling down the yellow a few times.

So, did you like the yellow? Do you prefer the grey? DOES ANYONE CARE? Answers on a postcard (comment) to the usual address. Randomly chosen winner gets sent a kicked swan. ← This is a joke, people all over the internet who are now accusing me of being Evil Animal Cruelty Person.

So the Mac App Store just showed up as part of Mac OS X 10.6.6 (check Software Update if you don’t already have it installed). As expected, it pretty much confirms my thoughts that someone decided to shoot most of Apple’s designers some time around when brushed metal appeared, along with giving everyone at Cupertino a taste-ectomy. The app UI is just hideous, kicking conventions in the bollocks, laughing in the face of clarity, and mercilessly setting fire to UX and pushing it off a cliff.

Here’s what it looks like (with an front-page app slot shown at full size):

There are two major problems with the Mac App Store as it stands:

The toolbar. The Mac App Store lacks a standard toolbar for dragging the window about. Instead, it shoves the window controls, navigation and search field into a non-standard chunky toolbar. This is bad on several levels:

• There’s no standard ‘blank’ drag strip, enabling you to drag the window about. Instead, you must aim for and click specific blank areas between the various navigation items. This reduces usability and also obliterates accessibility for users who have less dexterity.
• The window controls are positioned in a different place to usual. This screws up muscle memory for Mac users used to ‘snapping’ to specific points to interact with controls. (Consistency is a cornerstone of good application design. It enables users to intuitively know how to interact with things. Apple is one of the worst offenders for breaching Mac OS X interface guidelines, despite chiding third-party developers for doing so).
• The window controls and primary back/forward navigation buttons are close together in terms of horizontal spacing, which may lead to accidental window zooming when attempting to navigate ‘back’. (Compare this to Safari, where the navigation controls are at the far left of the window.)

Still, Adobe might be happy, since Apple’s effectively validated the dire ‘Application Frame’ in the Creative Suite applications by doing the same thing itself (i.e. icons in the toolbar).

Clarity. I zoomed the Angry Birds box for a reason. Look at the price tag. It’s pretty indistinct and not easy to read. When slightly darker on a mouseover… well, it’s still pretty indistinct and not easy to read. Perhaps this is intentional, with Apple trying similar mind games to those used on restaurant menus. To me, it just looks like poor design. Someone liked the shade of grey and small text and went with it, rather than thinking if it offered enough contrast and clarity (a problem relatively common throughout the application). It reminds me of an era of web design, where designers became infatuated with small grey text on slightly darker grey backgrounds. And like many web pages of old, you of course cannot zoom the text in the Mac App Store.

I should point out that in terms of general use, the Mac App Store is fine. Applications download and install with a single click, and the process seems flawless. The clarity issue also improves somewhat on individual application pages (although the layout here is, to be kind, a total mess, like someone’s just slapped a wireframe together and a lazy boss has gone “yeah, whatever”). Furthermore, Apple’s also done some extremely aggressive pricing on its own products, which is great to see and should encourage more people to buy rather than copy software.

However, Apple used to stand for more than ‘good enough’ when it came to design in computing. While this is something that certainly still exists in Apple’s perfectionist approach to hardware design, something’s gone very wrong with its software interface design. Apple is fast becoming one of the worst developers in this area on its own platform.

WMPoweruser.com reports that a NES emulator has been blocked from Windows Phone 7‘s store. Matt Bettcher ported an open-source emulator to the platform, but Microsoft advised him it won’t be allowed on Marketplace.

Bettcher has started a campaign on YouTube, but good luck in changing Microsoft’s mind. Not only is Nintendo notoriously litigious, but Bettcher admits the current code is “unoptimised” (running as low as 10 frames per second), and so it’s hardly a shock Microsoft’s taken the decision it has.

The WMPoweruser.com article points to Apple allowing a number of emulators on its App Store, which include Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, along with Sega’s own Mega Drive single-app ‘ports’, but these are fully licensed and released with the blessing of the IP owners. By contrast, Nintendo’s already feeling the strain in the handheld market, with the DS losing marketshare to iOS devices. Nintendo’s hardly likely to allow the dark horse in the smartphone race (backed by Microsoft’s gaming network) to release NES IP when it can do so itself (again and again) for its own mobile gaming systems.

Hat tip: iPhone Games Bulletin

December was a tough month, and it probably didn’t escape people’s notice that RTS was rather GRRRRR for much of it. Now, however, I’m immersed in house-cleaning-fury (fury of a good kind) and looking forward to a pleasant couple of days off, followed by two days of crazywork, followed by some more days off. Therefore, RTS is shutting down for the year and will return in January.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who’s read this blog over the past year, anyone who’s linked to it, and those who’ve left comments, regardless of whether they rabidly agreed with what I said, or considered me some kind of idiot-face who should be bricked up immediately (or somewhere in-between—AS IF THERE’S ROOM FOR COMPROMISE).

So, happy whatever-you’re-doing-over-the-next-week-or-two, and I hope you’ll continue to visit, read and debate in 2011.

So, Vince Cable says what everyone’s thinking—that Rupert Murdoch needs taking down a peg and his takeover of BSkyB needs to be stopped. And then he’s stripped of the role, humbled, and watches as the BSkyB takeover became the responsibility of Jeremy Hunt. Well, gosh, I WONDER WHAT HIS DECISION WILL BE? (Hint: Armando Iannucci links to a Hunt article that may as well be titled “Why I wuv Rupert and want to have his babies”.)

Cable was, of course, stripped of the role for making Rupert Murdoch cry and for being impartial, and not at all for going against Tory wishes to see the BBC killed by its commercial rival. After all, it’s not remotely hypocritical to demote Cable when David Cameron referred to the prospect of BBC cuts as ‘delicious’. Clearly, that little nugget wasn’t at all impartial and wrong.

And it’s not like The Labour Party comes out of this smelling of roses either. It had the perfect opportunity to play bipartisan politics and also to appeal to Lib-Dem MPs and voters alike. It doesn’t need Murdoch until 2015, and could have reduced his power over media and the voters. Instead, Ed Miliband leapt on the chance to smack Cable and score a couple of short-lived politics points, saying “Vince Cable should have gone”. Rather than weakening the government, this likely strengthened it, but it has weakened one of the few people in Cabinet seemingly trying to at least some things that aren’t entirely reprehensible.

So screw you, David Cameron and your Tory buddies for so openly going against the wishes of the people and tearing down one of your government’s best MPs time and time again.

Screw you, Nick Clegg for not having the balls to back one of your own, instead choosing to provide a ‘united front’ that will see your party wiped from Parliament in 2015 (well, apart from you, because you’ll likely be wearing blue by then).

And screw you, Ed Miliband for proving you’re just like every other tosspot Labour leader, playing reactionary politics when you had yet another opportunity to do something different.