Mac OS X Lion

Apple's new operating system, OS X 10.7 Lion came out yesterday. Today I got a new Macbook Air that comes with Lion, and my first impression is that it seems like a computer from the future or something. It's so slim and light, so solidly constructed--the body carved out of a single piece of aluminum. The "just works" concept really did "just work." The computer comes with a fully charged battery, and about 15 seconds after opening it for the first time, it was ready. I got on the net and could access the files on my other local computers and also print, without having to do any setup. Not caring about pritner drivers, sound drivers, video drivers, and no need for anti-virus software.

The new OS has a lot of changes. I haven't followed it that closely until now, and I'm kind of surprised how wide and deep these changes are, on both a technical level and usability level. Regarding UI, practically every UI element in the OS is slightly different now. It's all slightly more understated with less color, less contrast, and less contour on just about everything. The idea being to let content stand out more and UI elements be as low key as possible. I think it worked out. Here's one page of a arstechnica's absurdly long review that covers that:

You can also read about the new document model and process model from that same review. The short version is that you never click "save" on anything in iOS (which is great, I never ever said "if only I had to click save more often on my iPad"), and now Lion is moving toward that model as well. Fairly sophisticated auto-save combined with automatic document versioning means the computer keeps track of that for you. The author of that review mentions something that is a very real problem to me: you want to restart or logoff and there are a billion things open, all of them asking if you want to save changes or not. Half the time I don't know if the changes it's asking about are the ones I really did, or if I accidentally deleted some selected text and that's what I'd be saving, or what. Lion's new direction means logging off doesn't bombard you with any such questions, it's very fast, and can all be restored to just how you left it. At least with programs that support these features (Dear Adobe: get on it). The process model is also playing tricks, basically managing memory of programs better than I could manually, and giving the impression that programs sometimes open instantly.

The thing that interests me the most in Lion, at least so far, is the UI (or UX) involving Spaces and Expose, both features that existed in the previous OS, Leopard. These (along with Quicklook) are some of the best things about the OS from a usability standpoint, in my opinion. Expose lets you see all your windows at once, so you can find the one you need. It's like a way better version of alt-tabbing. I use it dozens of times per day. Spaces lets you have other virtual desktops that you can switch between. I use it over 100 times per day. In Lion, these features are integrated into a new thing called Mission Control.

Three finger swipe up (or 4 finger if you prefer that setting) gets you to Mission Control. It's basically a super Expose. Not only does it zoom out to show you all your windows, but it also organizes them by app, and shows the icon and name of the app those windows belong to. It zooms out enough that you can see "beyond" the desktop, and above it is a horizontal bar that shows all your desktops, the ones from the Spaces feature. You can swipe 3 fingers left or right while on a desktop to go to the next or previous desktop space. If you're in Mission Control (so you swiped up to get there) you can 3 finger swipe left or right from there to see the Mission Control (Expose) view of each desktop.

There's a lot of new support for making apps full screen now, and if you make an app full screen then it automatically gets its own space. The way the app animates to do this and the way the desktop underneath slides away as it does create a clear visual message to the user about what exactly is happening, so good job on that. It's helpful that this happens in the first place because if you didn't get a new Space when making something full screen, you'd just be covering everything else up. Oh, and if you press the escape key, a full screen app returns to the space it was previously in and automatically deletes the space it created as it went full screen. Very nice.

Snow Leopard added a feature to Expose that let you use it JUST for the windows of a particular app if you want. So that let's you see all your Safari windows (across all desktop Spaces) or whatever, without seeing any of your other stuff. That gives you a clearer view of the windows for a particular app, if you're looking for something. Oh and you can press spacebar to Quicklook from here to zoom in on a window, just like you can press space bar on basically any document to see what's in it without opening it with a real program. Anyway, I bring this up because now swiping down with three fingers from the desktop gives you THAT kind of Expose, the one that shows all the windows of whichever app had focus when you did the motion.

To summarize, if you're on a desktop, you can swipe left/right to get to other desktops. Swipe up to get to mission control (super Expose!). Swipe down to get back to a desktop. Swipe down from a desktop to get application-specific Expose. The whole thing is really slick, fast, and makes me feel like I can do as much work as if I had a couple extra monitors. A couple extra real monitors would be even better, but having the ability to organize and manage several monitor's worth of stuff on just one physical monitor is quite a thing, especially in a < 3 pound, extremely light and portable computer. It's really interesting to see how they approached the design challenge of letting the user manage all these windows and desktops, how the corner cases are handled, how the animations and UI are carefully chosen to tell the user the "right" things about what's going on. Even though it's not a video game, the same kind of design issues still apply, so I think designers would do well to closely and carefully study such polished UIs as this.

The Theory and Practice of Happiness

The subject I've researched the most and written about the least is the happiness. Instead of putting off the version of this that reads like a research paper with sources cited and so on, I will just tell you a rambling story. And for full disclosure, my own level of happiness from 1 to 10 is about a 7. I am currently below the US's average answer of 7.4. (Note that Switzerland, Iceland, and Denmark are all above 8.0 averages).

A Crash Course in Happiness

For 100 years, the field of psychology was concerned with fixing problems in people, and the study of "happiness" was considered not a topic worthy of study. You couldn't even say the word happiness in an academic paper, you instead needed a jargony term: "positive affect." In more recent times, we now know that happiness is NOT the absence of misery. The absence of misery is being kind of neutral at best. People who have misery can simultaneously be very happy, even (more on that in a bit). The point is, even though last century's psychology was highly successful at curing various mental ailments, we now know that actual happiness requires more than that.

Happiness is in many ways a trap. It's evolutionary biology's way of making sure we keep going, and keep seeking. That is why happiness is so elusive; by its very design in our brains, it's something out there beyond our reach, something to strive for. Those of our ancient ancestors that were completely satisfied with what they had were less likely to go over that next hill in search of the greener grass and more resources, and thus less likely to win the competition of survival of the fittest.

Money is a big trap for many. One of the most consistent findings in this field is that money has zero correlation to happiness, except for the poorest people in the world. If getting more money will help you meet your basic biological needs for food, water, and shelter, then yes it will make you more happy. Beyond that, it won't, but it damned sure seems like it would, doesn't it? There's a corollary here that is especially relevant to American culture. Americans tend to work more hours than workers in other countries. Let's say you make enough money that you live comfortably. You get an opportunity for a promotion at work which means more responsibility, more hours, and more money. We are conditioned to believe this is a no-brainer of a choice: of course you take the promotion because more money is more happiness. But it isn't. If the job would be more personally fulfilling to you APART from the money, it could increase your happiness. But if it's not, then you're trading away more of your personal time in exchange for money that won't make you happier. You'd actually be happier if you worked LESS, rather than more, if it's a job that you aren't passionate about. 

More money lets you buy more material goods. A new TV would be nice. And a new clothes. And a new car, and so on. When you get that awesome new TV, the awesomeness of it wears off after a short time. You are going to be very bad at predicting that ahead of time (we all are). You're bad at predicting how much happier the TV will make you and for how long, at how a political election will affect your happiness, at how the death of a family member will affect you, your favorite sports team losing, winning the lottery, and just about anything else. In all these cases, the feeling you predict may very well become real, but it lasts a much shorter time than you would expect. The TV becomes just another thing very quickly. You bounce back from the death of a loved one, even if takes a month or a year, but when it happens the sadness seems like it will be permanent. One study compares the happiness levels of people who won the lottery with people who became paraplegics (can't use their legs) because of an accident. Although right after these events, the happiness levels are what you would expect, after one or two years they level out to be exactly the same across both groups. Yes, really.

The term "hedonic treadmill" is

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Redesigned Yomi Rulebook

Here's the new revamped rulebook for Yomi. As always, you can find the latest version at www.sirlin.net/yomi/rules

This version is longer than the old one, and goes into more detail on things, and gives more examples. Also it advises new players to skip Jokers, knockdowns, and "mixup normals" for their first game. I think saving that stuff for later makes the game a lot easier to pick up.

If you're getting new people into the game, try showing them this new version as a bit more friendly way to ease them into the rules.

Wednesday Night Fights and Yomi

Every Wednesday in Los Angeles, California, there's a large gathering of fighting game players who compete in various games. This gathering was started by Alex Valle. You guys might not realize the significance of this event, so I'll try to put it in perspective.

Alex Valle has won too many tournaments to count, but in my opinion, the tournament win that started his long reign of Street Fighter Legend was his victory at B3 in 1996 in the game Street Fighter Alpha 2. This tournament was put on by Tom Cannon (founder of shoryuken.com) and Tony Cannon (creator of ggpo networking). It was a landmark event in the entire history of US fighting games, as it was the first time players from all over the country (and from Canada) really came together to face each other. Valle dramatically revealed his then-secret technique, now known as the Valle-CC, when he defeated another Street Fighter Legend: John Choi.

The reason I'm telling you any of that is to put it in perspective that Wednesday Night Fight events draw about 130 people each week, I hear, which is larger than the attendance of the entire B3 tournament. Every week! This event has more impact than just in Los Angeles, too. It's streamed so anyone in the world can watch, and most of the best Marvel vs. Capcom 3 players in the world just happen to live there and go to it. So I think this event is actually pretty key in advancing the level of play in MvC3 everywhere.

For these reasons, I'm proud to support the event as a sponsor, and I think tonight Mr. Valle and crew will be giving away a few copies of Yomi.

You can watch the stream tonight at 8:30pm, Pacific Time here: http://www.twitchtv.com/leveluplive
You can also follow the contest on Twitter:
@levelupseries
@alexvallesf4
Hashtag #WNF 

Cheaper International Shipping

Here's some great news, I can now do shipping of small items outside the US much more efficiently. "Small items" include Yomi 2-packs and also Flash Duel. Here are the huge shipping cost reductions for those items for non-US players:

Canada: $20 -> $7
UK: $35 -> $9
Australia / New Zealand: $40 -> $10

Pretty big improvement! And I get to pass it all on to you guys, effective immediately.