It is that time of year when I rant about an awful, awful, awful feature of the Microsoft Windows operating system. This year the subject of my diatribe is file types. You see, Windows thinks that every file has a type and the type connects the file to a program that can handle it. Like many "features" in Windows, file types are intended to make your life easier while in practice doing the opposite. Note that some time ago, I wrote about file systems and Content Management as opposed to a file type manager. I still think there are some good ideas in there that need to be explored.
If you do not know what a file type is, here is a primer. Every file has a name. The file type is a usually 3 letter extension to the name. So for example, the program for Windows Explorer, is called "explorer.exe", the dot is a separator and exe is the file type. The type exe means a program that Windows can run. To look at all the file types on an XP system, bring up the control panel, select Folder Options and then click the File Types tab. On Vista and 7, the path through the control panel is slightly different. The dialog shows a huge list of registered file types and the programs that will handle them. Note that the first few entries in the list are not representative, go down to the middle or bottom of the list so see what it is really all about.
Windows goes to great length to hide file types from you. By default they are not shown anywhere and you can go for a long time without even knowing that files have types. One way to run into file types is to double click on a file with a type that Windows does not know about. Windows shows a dialog asking you what program you want to use with it. You can either look up the file type on the web or select a program from a list. The most annoying aspect is that when you select a program from a list, there is a little check box that says "Always use the selected program to open this type of file." If you test a program that does not work without unchecking the box the mistake is remembered and thereafter every time you open a file of that type, the wrong program is chosen. If you uncheck the box, a mistake is not remembered, however neither is a success. Either way, you can lose. Moreover, to recover from a mistake, you have to find the entry for the file extension in the File Types window discussed above and delete it, which is not a trivial task, given the number of file types.
Another little problem with file types is that they can be wrong, confused or direct Windows to do the wrong thing. I wrote about a problem with .avi files from a Canon camera breaking Windows Explorer. There are security issues where Windows is penetrated because it trusts the file type information and then does the wrong thing with a broken file.
However, the real problem with file types appears when you install a new program. Programs are greedy. They want to control as much of your experience as possible so they will try to register as many different file types as they can. If you have one program that deals with a type of file and you install another program that deals with similar files, the new program should pop up a dialog asking you which types of files it should handle. Then you have to make all sorts of complicated decisions about which file types the new program should handle.
Programs for handling media are the worst in this respect because there are lots of different media types and it is common to have several media players installed to handle different special cases. For example, on my home computer I have Windows Media Player and a DVD player because they came with the system. Then there is iTunes for my iPod, the QuickTime video player that comes with iTunes, a RealPlayer for the BBC iPlayer and finally a program for ripping and burning CDs and DVDs. There may well be other media players amongst the shovelware preinstalled on the box. There are also programs for editing specific media types like at least two picture editors and a video editor or several.
A typical scenario is that you are installing a new media player program because you want to use it to view a particular type of media. Unfortunately, the program installer knows about all the media types that it can handle and asks you to chose what media types types it should handle. Thus you have to disengage your thoughts from the one media type that is the object of your attention and instead start to think about all those other media types that you are not interested in. Unfortunately, there is the worry that if you give in to the new media player and let it handle certain types of media, other things will stop working. Maybe you will not be able to watch videos, or maybe videos will stop syncing with your portable media player because you changed the program associations with a particular file type. Given the complexity of these systems, who knows what may go wrong.
I said that the media player installer should ask you which file types you want associated with the program. A few years ago, Real managed to destroy much of their franchise by not playing nice and fair with file types. The RealPlayer installer switched all file types that it could handle to use the RealPlayer without bothering to ask or notify. Worse, if you went in and installed another program that changed the file type associations or even tried used the File Types dialog screen to change file type associations, it would just change them back to the RealPlayer, again without a notification. When this came to light, many people, myself included, uninstalled RealPlayer and swore never to install any software from Real again. Recently I caved on this resolution so that I could listen to old BBC radio shows like "The Goon Show" with the BBC iPlayer which it turns out to be just a rebadged Real player.
Since the RealPlayer imbroglio, installer programs have been a lot more careful about asking users about file types, but that just throws the problem back to the user. As the whole point of file types is to hide system complexity from the user, this it is no solution at all. A better path is to do without file types. Why are they necessary? Do they really serve a purpose? Other operating systems get along fine without file types, so why does Windows need them. Lets just throw them out and make life easier.
Showing posts with label Windows. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Windows. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Software Update Business Models
These days software updates are a fact of life. If we do not keep our software up to date we risk all sorts of horrendous infections and debilitating attacks. Unfortunately, the providers of our software know this and are starting to use software update to make money or at least remind us that they exist. I have done several software updates recently and noticed this in action.
Adobe just wants to remind me of their presence, so they insist on putting a shortcut to the Adobe Reader on my desktop every time they update. This is relatively benign as it is a matter of a few seconds at most to confirm that it is a shortcut and delete it. Apple is more pushy. I expect to get a new version of iTunes any day now, and I will need to carefully uncheck boxes to ensure that I do not get several applications more than I want. Most insidious is Java, now owned by Oracle. On one system they offered me the Yahoo tool bar, on another system which already had the Yahoo tool bar, they offered me some other software, so they obviously look to see what is installed to guide the offer. Judging by the fact that these offers were for third party software, I am sure that they get some sort of compensation for it.
Soon we will see advertisements and offers in the installer, and new ways to confuse us. The tactic that always gets me is to require some input that I forget to fill in, then when I go back to fill in this information, all the boxes I so carefully unchecked have been mysteriously filled in again. In a hurry, I just click "Install" not noticing that I am now getting all the extras that I had carefully tried to avoid. It is coming to a computer near you soon.
Adobe just wants to remind me of their presence, so they insist on putting a shortcut to the Adobe Reader on my desktop every time they update. This is relatively benign as it is a matter of a few seconds at most to confirm that it is a shortcut and delete it. Apple is more pushy. I expect to get a new version of iTunes any day now, and I will need to carefully uncheck boxes to ensure that I do not get several applications more than I want. Most insidious is Java, now owned by Oracle. On one system they offered me the Yahoo tool bar, on another system which already had the Yahoo tool bar, they offered me some other software, so they obviously look to see what is installed to guide the offer. Judging by the fact that these offers were for third party software, I am sure that they get some sort of compensation for it.
Soon we will see advertisements and offers in the installer, and new ways to confuse us. The tactic that always gets me is to require some input that I forget to fill in, then when I go back to fill in this information, all the boxes I so carefully unchecked have been mysteriously filled in again. In a hurry, I just click "Install" not noticing that I am now getting all the extras that I had carefully tried to avoid. It is coming to a computer near you soon.
Monday, July 05, 2010
The HP Tablet and the Elephant
Recently HP bought Palm and in the acquisition press release announced that they are developing "... webOS based hardware products, from a robust smartphone roadmap to future slate PCs and netbooks". In all the discussion of this event, nobody seems to be discussing the elephant in the room, or more correctly, the elephant who is no longer in the room.
Ten years ago, HP would not have dared announce that it was going produce its own operating system (OS) in competition with the dominant Microsoft Windows OS. Then, most hardware developers had been cowed by Microsoft's aggressive and successful response to any attempt to develop a rival operating system. To give a couple of examples, in the early 90's the Go Corporation had developed its Penpoint OS for handheld computing. Then in 1992, Microsoft announced its own Windows for Pen Computing. Go Corporation faltered, was taken over by AT&T and then the project was shuttered. Another example is the fate of Be Inc. who had developed BeOS, initially to power their own hardware. In 2002, Be Inc. sued Microsoft claiming that Hitachi had been dissuaded from selling PCs loaded with BeOS, and that Compaq had been pressured to not market an Internet appliance in partnership with Be. The case was eventually settled out of court with no admission of liability on Microsoft's part. However by this time Be Inc had admitted defeat and sold its intellectual property to Palm Inc.
In the late 90's Microsoft was so dominant that no Silicon valley Venture Capital firm would fund a start up that would have the remotest chance of challenging Microsoft in any way. Since then Microsoft seems to have been transformed from a lithe competitor into a stumbling giant. The Vista version of the Windows OS is widely regarded as a failure, and was quickly replaced by Windows 7. While the Windows Mobile OS for smartphones has been around for a long time and gone through several versions, it has been losing market share for some time. Recently Microsoft introduced a new smartphone, the Kin with much ballyhoo, only to give up on it six week later. There are plenty other examples of Microsoft's left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing, like the PlayForSure debacle.
We have come to the point where Microsoft is so crippled by its own self inflicted wounds that one of its most important OEM customers is going to use its own operating system on future slate PCs and netbooks. The elephant is no longer in the room.
Ten years ago, HP would not have dared announce that it was going produce its own operating system (OS) in competition with the dominant Microsoft Windows OS. Then, most hardware developers had been cowed by Microsoft's aggressive and successful response to any attempt to develop a rival operating system. To give a couple of examples, in the early 90's the Go Corporation had developed its Penpoint OS for handheld computing. Then in 1992, Microsoft announced its own Windows for Pen Computing. Go Corporation faltered, was taken over by AT&T and then the project was shuttered. Another example is the fate of Be Inc. who had developed BeOS, initially to power their own hardware. In 2002, Be Inc. sued Microsoft claiming that Hitachi had been dissuaded from selling PCs loaded with BeOS, and that Compaq had been pressured to not market an Internet appliance in partnership with Be. The case was eventually settled out of court with no admission of liability on Microsoft's part. However by this time Be Inc had admitted defeat and sold its intellectual property to Palm Inc.
In the late 90's Microsoft was so dominant that no Silicon valley Venture Capital firm would fund a start up that would have the remotest chance of challenging Microsoft in any way. Since then Microsoft seems to have been transformed from a lithe competitor into a stumbling giant. The Vista version of the Windows OS is widely regarded as a failure, and was quickly replaced by Windows 7. While the Windows Mobile OS for smartphones has been around for a long time and gone through several versions, it has been losing market share for some time. Recently Microsoft introduced a new smartphone, the Kin with much ballyhoo, only to give up on it six week later. There are plenty other examples of Microsoft's left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing, like the PlayForSure debacle.
We have come to the point where Microsoft is so crippled by its own self inflicted wounds that one of its most important OEM customers is going to use its own operating system on future slate PCs and netbooks. The elephant is no longer in the room.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Die AutoRun Die
Another year has almost passed and I have not yet ranted about an awful, unnecessary and totally annoying feature of Microsoft Windows, so today I am going to tell you why AutoRun should die.
AutoRun is the "feature" where you plug something into your computer and then stuff happens completely out of your control. The thing you plug in might be key drive, camera, iPod or whatever. Last Christmas I won a 4GB SanDisk Cruzer USB key drive as a door prize. When I plugged this horrible little thing into my computer it installed the U3 driver with useless and dangerous functions that I DO NOT WANT! To make matters worse, there is no obvious way to remove the driver or its annoying functionality. To top off the bad behavior, even although I immediately erased the entire contents of the drive, when it was plugged into another computer, it infected that computer with its unwanted drivers as well. I have thrown the key drive away to prevent further damage.
The combination of USB key drives and AutoRun is a serious computer virus infection vector to the extent that key drives are being banned in critical places. However the problem is not just with key drives. I have not disabled AutoRun because I use it two to three times a week to sync my iPod with the latest podcasts. Recently my daughter plugged her iPod into my computer just to recharge the battery. First this caused iTunes to crash, then when I brought it back, it wanted to sync my stuff onto her iPod. My daughter does not want anything of mine on her iPod and I had to jump through hoops to prevent the sync.
The problem is that iTunes and everyone else has totally bought in to the automagic nonsense of AutoRun behavior. A much simpler, safer and easier to use behavior is to have the user plug in a device and then bring up a program to use the device. Unfortunately the designers(?) of Windows decided to emasculate their users and instead give the device the power to decide what it wants to do. The subliminal message from Microsoft is that you are too stupid to operate you own computer so we are going do it for you, or let anyone else who might have more of a clue do it for you. The consequence of this design is that our computers do not belong to us, but to hackers who exploit these "features" as attack vectors to take control of them.
If you sit back and think about it, Autorun is obviously ill conceived. The design center is that a single user is logged into their computer and actively using it. What does AutoRun do when nobody has logged into the computer, what does it do when two users are logged in? In the example that I gave above, my daughter plugged her iPod into my computer when two people were logged in and the screen saver had locked both accounts. Of course iTunes crashed, it did not know what to do.
The iPod and iTunes is particularly annoying because it is unusable without AutoRun. On the iTunes support web site, the top support issue is "iPod doesn't appear in iTunes" and the second issue is "iPhone does not appear in iTunes". However there is no button in iTunes to go and look for an iPod or iPhone, instead they rely on AutoRun with no easy fall back should that fail.
AutoRun is the "feature" where you plug something into your computer and then stuff happens completely out of your control. The thing you plug in might be key drive, camera, iPod or whatever. Last Christmas I won a 4GB SanDisk Cruzer USB key drive as a door prize. When I plugged this horrible little thing into my computer it installed the U3 driver with useless and dangerous functions that I DO NOT WANT! To make matters worse, there is no obvious way to remove the driver or its annoying functionality. To top off the bad behavior, even although I immediately erased the entire contents of the drive, when it was plugged into another computer, it infected that computer with its unwanted drivers as well. I have thrown the key drive away to prevent further damage.
The combination of USB key drives and AutoRun is a serious computer virus infection vector to the extent that key drives are being banned in critical places. However the problem is not just with key drives. I have not disabled AutoRun because I use it two to three times a week to sync my iPod with the latest podcasts. Recently my daughter plugged her iPod into my computer just to recharge the battery. First this caused iTunes to crash, then when I brought it back, it wanted to sync my stuff onto her iPod. My daughter does not want anything of mine on her iPod and I had to jump through hoops to prevent the sync.
The problem is that iTunes and everyone else has totally bought in to the automagic nonsense of AutoRun behavior. A much simpler, safer and easier to use behavior is to have the user plug in a device and then bring up a program to use the device. Unfortunately the designers(?) of Windows decided to emasculate their users and instead give the device the power to decide what it wants to do. The subliminal message from Microsoft is that you are too stupid to operate you own computer so we are going do it for you, or let anyone else who might have more of a clue do it for you. The consequence of this design is that our computers do not belong to us, but to hackers who exploit these "features" as attack vectors to take control of them.
If you sit back and think about it, Autorun is obviously ill conceived. The design center is that a single user is logged into their computer and actively using it. What does AutoRun do when nobody has logged into the computer, what does it do when two users are logged in? In the example that I gave above, my daughter plugged her iPod into my computer when two people were logged in and the screen saver had locked both accounts. Of course iTunes crashed, it did not know what to do.
The iPod and iTunes is particularly annoying because it is unusable without AutoRun. On the iTunes support web site, the top support issue is "iPod doesn't appear in iTunes" and the second issue is "iPhone does not appear in iTunes". However there is no button in iTunes to go and look for an iPod or iPhone, instead they rely on AutoRun with no easy fall back should that fail.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Windows Woes
For years it seemed like a good idea, Microsoft produced the software and many vendors sold compatible hardware. Competition kept the hardware innovation flowing and prices low. Then Microsoft turned into a big bloated monopoly that could not create a decent product if it tried. Moreover, Microsoft is not really in control, it itself is hostage to other interests. The result is a horrible user experience. Here are a couple of my recent experiences.
A few months ago I bought a new video card so that it would use the digital input to the monitor. Installing the card was a breeze and the digital input makes the monitor noticeably sharper. The only problem was that the sound had stopped working. After a couple of hours scratching my head and vigorous Googling, the problem turns out to have been caused by Hollywood.
The connection between a computer and its display uses HDMI, a digital interconnect standard that can transmit both video and audio. This allows a PC to connect to a digital television as well as a simple display. It also allows the video and audio content to be encrypted so that you cannot steal it from your own computer. This was mandated by Hollywood and Microsoft meekly acquiesced to it so that they could provide media center software that would display Hollywood movies in high definition.
So after the video card installation, Windows software assumed that I was going to use the digital audio output on the video card and ignored all other audio output devices. This even although my display does not have any speakers. I had to go into the BIOS and change some low level settings for sound so that Windows would allow me to select the sound settings that I had been using before installing the video card. Any time you have to go into the BIOS to change settings, the user experience loses.
More recently my brother and family came to visit during a tour of California. He wanted to unload all the pictures on his cameras flash card and write them to a CD as the flash card was full. I suggested the easy way out, visit Fry's Electronics and buy another flash card, but that deemed more trouble. In practice it would have been much easier.
We downloaded the flash card to my PC. The first difficulty is that you are presented with a list of 6 competing programs that want to download your pictures. Which one should I use? I know that in practice they are all going to put the pictures in some ridiculous place where you can never find them again (that is the subject of another tirade). I chose the first in the list which happened to be compatible with the brand of digital camera.
The next problem came when we went into Windows Explorer so that we could drag the pictures to the CD ROM folder. Every time we went into the folder where the pictures were, Explorer exited saying that it had an unexpected fault. I knew exactly what the problem was because I had seen it before. There were some movie files taken with the digital camera, and Windows has problem with these movie (.avi) files. For some reason, Explorer tries to open every file in a folder when it enters the folder, even although I set it to just list the files and not display thumbnails.
The fix was to open a DOS window, navigate to the folder with the files and rename them so that Windows would not think they were media files. I added the extension .tmp to each .avi file by laborious typing. Then it was possible to do the intuitive drag and and drop with Explorer to make a CD ROM. Any time you have to resort to using a DOS window to do a straightforward function in Windows, usability has gone out the window.
I could go on (as I have in the past), there have been more problems, however with each problem the Apple alternative looks better. Apple is by no means perfect, however the Apple OS is built on a better foundation and the innovations that it makes when it comes out with a new version are both useful and innovative.
A few months ago I bought a new video card so that it would use the digital input to the monitor. Installing the card was a breeze and the digital input makes the monitor noticeably sharper. The only problem was that the sound had stopped working. After a couple of hours scratching my head and vigorous Googling, the problem turns out to have been caused by Hollywood.
The connection between a computer and its display uses HDMI, a digital interconnect standard that can transmit both video and audio. This allows a PC to connect to a digital television as well as a simple display. It also allows the video and audio content to be encrypted so that you cannot steal it from your own computer. This was mandated by Hollywood and Microsoft meekly acquiesced to it so that they could provide media center software that would display Hollywood movies in high definition.
So after the video card installation, Windows software assumed that I was going to use the digital audio output on the video card and ignored all other audio output devices. This even although my display does not have any speakers. I had to go into the BIOS and change some low level settings for sound so that Windows would allow me to select the sound settings that I had been using before installing the video card. Any time you have to go into the BIOS to change settings, the user experience loses.
More recently my brother and family came to visit during a tour of California. He wanted to unload all the pictures on his cameras flash card and write them to a CD as the flash card was full. I suggested the easy way out, visit Fry's Electronics and buy another flash card, but that deemed more trouble. In practice it would have been much easier.
We downloaded the flash card to my PC. The first difficulty is that you are presented with a list of 6 competing programs that want to download your pictures. Which one should I use? I know that in practice they are all going to put the pictures in some ridiculous place where you can never find them again (that is the subject of another tirade). I chose the first in the list which happened to be compatible with the brand of digital camera.
The next problem came when we went into Windows Explorer so that we could drag the pictures to the CD ROM folder. Every time we went into the folder where the pictures were, Explorer exited saying that it had an unexpected fault. I knew exactly what the problem was because I had seen it before. There were some movie files taken with the digital camera, and Windows has problem with these movie (.avi) files. For some reason, Explorer tries to open every file in a folder when it enters the folder, even although I set it to just list the files and not display thumbnails.
The fix was to open a DOS window, navigate to the folder with the files and rename them so that Windows would not think they were media files. I added the extension .tmp to each .avi file by laborious typing. Then it was possible to do the intuitive drag and and drop with Explorer to make a CD ROM. Any time you have to resort to using a DOS window to do a straightforward function in Windows, usability has gone out the window.
I could go on (as I have in the past), there have been more problems, however with each problem the Apple alternative looks better. Apple is by no means perfect, however the Apple OS is built on a better foundation and the innovations that it makes when it comes out with a new version are both useful and innovative.
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