Come on Feel the Noize

I am glad to see Scoble and Saunders and others  discussing the roles of music in Windows Vista.  Scoble rightly notes:

For Vienna BE TRANSPARENT during the choice of the sound and LET US CHOOSE OUR OWN FREAKING SOUND!

First, I will note that if you listen to the new Vista sounds, Frippertronics or no, they are basically techy sounds that almost completely mimic the previous sounds.  This is good from a continuity perspective but it is lousy for making us feel anything other than we are using XP with some really nifty skins.

It is the bells, of the bells and whistles.

What Scoble laments is deeper.   He laments the utter lack of control users have in a Windows environment over their environment.  The sounds are only one part of it.

For example, deep within your computer are things called Interrupts, or IRQ ports.  With XP, on a laptop, you cannot change your IRQ settings - they are dictated by the manufacturer.  Why?  Because you can't handle the awesome responsibility of your own IRQ settings.

My last laptop, a tricked out Dell D800 was useless for music because every communications device used IRQ 11.  This meant that Firewire, USB, modem, and LAN all used the same IRQ setting - akin to all talking on the same phone line.  So when I wanted to make music using my Firewire 410 and my USB 2.0 External Hard Drive, they would fight for control and the sound would cut out.

Complaints about MSFT software often center around control.  Prior to Windows 2003 Server (and even with it), server administrators have very limited abilities to create things called build scripts which are very common in Linux.  A build script is a text file of commands that, when run, make the server to sometimes very complicated things.  Writing a good build script once means you can replicate your action on other servers or repair your server if things go wrong.   Windows' focus on the Graphical User Interface, led to the abandonment of build scripts and forced people to point and click all day to set up even simple server features.

Lest I allow this to become an MSFT rant, the point I really want to make here is that control over one's environment is a basic human need.  In the tech world we often call this "personalization".

The term personalization often debases the real underlying need to have control over our own space.  When society doesn't allow "personalization" we consider that totalitarianism.  Rarely do we say that the treatment of the Kurds by Saddam was indicative of a lack of "personalization."

But in tech we often think of personalization like being allowed to decorate your dorm room.  You can make it pink or you can put in some carpet.  You can put up a rock icon poster.  But the real crux is ... do people really want to live in a dorm room very long?

When we limit individual control over social and software environments, we limit the ability of community to form, of appreciative constituencies to develop and users to just plain relax.  This was the big promise of Web 2.0, control.  We could gather our important information, organize it in ways that worked for us, have tools to access and leverage our communities, rapidly access esoteric information and quickly receive important alerts. 

So Scoble is right, let people choose their own sounds, their own looks, their own wayfinding tools, their own build scripts.  Not just for windows, but for any software we build.  Communities will reward you for being outward reaching.  Communities will reward you for the respect.

In closing, I swear the goodbye sound in XP has the lyrics "See you in hell." 

Technorati tags: Microsoft, windows, Vista, XP, community_indicators, Saddam, personalization, Robert Fripp

Comments

[Jay Fienberg]

The issue with control is, IMO, a pervasive one.

Many computer users don't perceive that they even have a choice between Windows and another OS. So, if you're feeling somehow forced to use Windows, all of the ways it can't be personalzied / customized can feel that much more opressive.

On the other hand, people who use Mac tend to be making a choice to do so. And, so, why complain that you get a set of sounds ny default without being promoted to personalize them?

OS X has all kinds of defaults that actually sort-of congratulate you for choosing a Mac. You don't want to change the defaults--you appreciate that you don't have to think about them at all.

Of course, at other levels, OS X is at least as oppressive as Windows, e.g., all of the closed / proprietary file formats, like with iTunes playlists.

In any case, I don't think people need to be told they have a choice for everything, or asked from the start if they want to change defaults. Many people would rather have good defaults than have to think about it. But, two things:

1) we need to know that, when we want to change anything, we can

2) different people need different defaults, and different levels of prompting for customization

All of this is part of what makes OS distributions like Ubuntu so interesting--and, for some, so appealing.

[Greg Mizell]

Jay hit the nail on the head. I think there are two types of computer users: those that want control over their environment and those that don't. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the latter group wants control taken away from them. They don't want choices, they just want it to work. So to satisfy both groups, the OS must provide flexibility but it also must come with a sane default configuration.

Personally, I'm not in that number. I like having control. For many years I used a window manager on my Linux boxen called enlightenment, or sometimes just "e" for short. This WM takes the idea of control to the extreme. Literally everything in the WM is configurable. Not just how it looks but how it behaves too. One of my peeves about windows is the location of the X button right next to the maximize button. Every so often I go to maximize a window and end up killing it instead. So I found a theme for e that not only contained the requisite eye candy but located the kill button in the upper left corner instead of the upper right. (It also has features that you can't even find in Windows, such as a windowshade function, an iconbox and great looking pagers.)

I don't use enlightenment any more ever since I started running Fedora. I drank the Kool Aid and started using Metacity since everything integrates pretty nicely with it. It's a lot more Windowsy than Linuxy and I miss the control I once had. But eventually even a control freak like me got tired of having to edit menus every time I installed a new application.

I guess my point Jim is that we are the few and will be forever frustrated by the many. The best we can hope for is a reasonable amount of control and a set of defaults that is at least usable enough to let us change those things that require changing out of the box (e.g., the disgusting Fischer-Price default XP theme).

ps, I happen to like the new Vista sounds.

[Jim Benson]

I guess I'd say "exactly."

It is apparent that many people would rather sacrifice freedom to simplicity. This is because we all have our areas of expertise and sometimes OS configurations might not be among them.

For me it's microsurgery. When I'm on the table I'd rather have a surgeon making those decisions and not me.

However, I'd rather have a surgeon make those decision than have the Microsoft Neurosurgeon Vista just use its default settings on me. If I had no access to anything else, than the defaults of MSNV would be great. But otherwise, I'd like someone in my community to set the parameters that are right for the situation.

It's not necessarily the sounds, it's the assumption that the need for control by the user is purely cosmetic. This will become more and more clear as Windows Genuine Advantage starts randomly shutting off people's boxes.

That's when I'm thinking the rise of Unbuntu will come.

[Peter Kirn]

Right, except you DO have quite a lot of control over sound themes, in both XP and Vista. In Vista, you have the addition of profiles that are app-specific. We could be talking about that implementation and how Microsoft could be developing it better -- or the implementation in Linux and Mac OS, both of which also have a ways to go. The simple fact is, none of these OSes behaves truly intelligently when it comes to connecting and configuring audio devices; all have room for improvement. Sound alerts are important, as they're part of the annoyance factor of using a computer. The other tasks for audio -- like producing music, for instance -- are also important.

So I'm confused, because this whole blogosphere tempest appears to center entirely on aesthetics alone.

Isn't that what Windows users make fun of Mac users for?

[Jim Benson]

Odd, I made it clear I wasn't just talking about aesthetics. I believe you may have not read the whole post or the comments above.

The points we were making were on control of the environment in general and the inclusion of elements of control beyond merely the aesthetic.