The one thing I admire the most on the brand new Macbook Air is its trackpad. As you may know the Macbook Air comes with an extreme trackpad where you can perform a variety of finger gestures like those in iPhone. Obviously, such features not only bring trackpads to the next level but they raise the bar for competitors as well. Finger gestures are like shortcuts for a keyboard; they provide an advanced but yet efficient way for using an existing device.

However, from my point of view, the Macbook Air has a major design and aesthetic issue. I don’t like the click button… or should I say that I don’t need the click button? In fact, I don’t get it… If a trackpad is smart enough to perform all those magic gestures, what do I need a click button for? I just tap the trackpad and that’s it. I can do this even on the relatively lame trackpad my macbook has.

Steve Jobs has always supported that the second button is not necessary on both trackpads and mouses (that’s why Macbook and Macbook Pro comes with a single click button). Well, I think that the time has come and we can even abandon the remaining single click button. After all it’s more than useless on a Macbook Air and it takes space; we need more space for our magic finger gestures

In fact, some ATMs provide your money first and then your credit card which I find very wrong! Why? Let’s assume the following scenario: it’s night, I need urgently one hundred pounds — I drive to the nearest ATM, insert my credit card, then my pin number and eventually get my money. Since my mission (to get some money) is accomplished, I return back to my car fully satisfied that my wallet is full again. Meanwhile, ATM ejects my credit card making the day for the next customer. The chances are I will not notice that my credit card is missing until the next time I will need it. Too late, don’t you think?

Things are getting even worse when someone takes into consideration that until few weeks ago, ATMs were ejecting your credit card first. It goes without saying that the action of receiving the money has been associated as the last action of the transaction by many people, making the process even more error-prone.

I don’t know what led to these changes but my guess is a bad updating process. I expect that the corresponding support centers will accept a large number of incoming calls regarding missing cards. Hopefully, after a lot of complaints the original operational mechanism will be restored.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the confirmation email that I received shortly upon the order.

I’m Little MOO – the bit of software that will be managing your order with us. It will shortly be sent to Big MOO, our print machine who will print it for you in the next few days. I’ll let you know when it’s done and on its way to you.

[...]

Remember, I’m just a bit of software. So, if you have any questions regarding your order please first read our Frequently Asked Questions at: http://www.moo.com/help/ and if you’re still not sure, contact customer services (who are real people) at: http://www.moo.com/service/

Thanks,
Little MOO, Print Robot

Lovely, don’t you think? Well, I am looking forward for the next email of Little Moo, hoping that Big Moo is not a lazy guy

Personally, I can’t see any use in the concept of Web Operating Systems at the moment. As many of you, I prefer to open TextEdit on my laptop instead of browsing into a WebOS and use its text editor. Particularly, I don’t like the multiple-windows-inside-a-single-one idea. However, lately I catch my self using “View as HTML” and “Open as a Google document” options for GMail attachments! Why? It’s much easier and faster to view documents or even edit them online via Google Documents!

A large number of interesting online applications exist at the moment and more are to follow, that’s for sure. Online applications and services are accessible by everywhere and they are upgraded continuously according to their users’ needs and preferences. For instance, the recent updates of Flickr were developed after thousands of relative requests. Apart from these benefits, online applications are accompanied with two great advantages. First of all, they have been built to serve a particular need and to support a particular task. Secondly, they offer APIs or at least they are able to co-operate perfectly well with other online applications if necessary. Take Remember the milk for example; it can be embedded in Google Calendar and as one might expect its features are accessible through Google Calendar.

It’s clear that online applications and services can cover more than the basic needs and some of them are able to compete even with traditional desktop applications. GMail is a great example. So, as an answer to my question I could say that we need a kind of wrapper for online applications at the moment. We don’t need an operating system in our browser! Or at least, we don’t need a WebOS that looks identical to our desktop.

Start pages like iGoogle and NetVibes can be considered as wrappers to online applications. Despite the fact that they serve mainly as personalized start pages, they allow us to interact with other online applications through widgets. For example, I use iGoogle and I am able to send and view emails (GMail) and manage my tasks (Remember The Milk) and my documents (Google Documents) through a single page. Furthermore, I can view the recent activity on my photostream (Flickr) and blog (WordPress). Oh, and I can even stay tuned to my RSS feeds (Google Reader). The offered widgets are very handy and usefull but I would like to be able to do more; like opening and modifying an image from my Flickr widget in an online image editor or dragging a document over the GMail widget and sent it as an attachment to a friend of mine.

I am aware that such kind of stuff is a bit hard at the moment but I am looking forward for them. The good news are that even more and more online applications  co-operate with each other and release their APIs, which means that third part developers are able to enhance them!

Wait! There is something else… did you have a look at the official website? Oh… my… God! You should imagine Janice (Chandler’s annoying girlfriend) from Friends saying that! It’s full of high contracted colors badly combined over text and backgrounds. It makes me blink many times before I finally manage to focus on something! Have a look at the bottom of the main page: blue text on yellow background! Come on guys… I know you can do better!

Anyway, I am looking forward for a similar contest about the London 2012 website design… actually, I might participate this time!