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sitting in the middle of an us-versus-them debate

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One of the things that I like about being a blogger and reading blogs is that you get to watch a debate unfold in interested and unexpected ways. I've been following the online debate over the Windows Vista shut-down button.

If you haven't seen it yet, the whole thing started with Joel Spolsky complaining about the button. He suggests that the multiple features that are there can be replaced with a single b'bye button. He's got a long and involved discussion of why he thinks that it should be that way. Next into the fray was Moishe Lettvin, an ex-Vista dev who was part of the team who worked on that, and he explained its development from his perspective. The latest entry is Arno Gourdol, an ex-OS X developer, who blogged about the design of the OS X shutdown feature.

I disagree with both Arno and Joel on this point: there needs to be more than just a b'bye for everything. I mostly like how OS X currently has it. The option to log off is important to me, since my home Macs are shared. And I like having a shut-down option, too, since my Mac Mini is under my desk and I don't want to crawl around to turn it off. I'm not sure if I like having the option for fast-user switching be in a different location than the other login type options, but I'm not unhappy with where it is. I do like having my username in the upper corner, since it reminds me which account I'm logged in on.

Sitting, as I do, at the crossroads of Microsoft and Apple, this whole kerfluffle is interesting to watch. It's an excellent insight in how different companies, with different processes, different goals, and different people, approach the exact same problem. Apple values simplicity above all else, and Arno wanted it to be even simpler than the three options that are given to users. In Vista, it looks like they're trying for the best of both worlds: two buttons which will satisfy 99% of users, and then a series of additional options for that extra 1% who want things just so.

It's also interesting to read about Moishe's experiences on the Vista team. My experiences here in MacBU are entirely different. I don't think that there's anything in MacBU which has 43 people touching it. There's only ~180 of us, so I can't imagine what would get fully just under 1/3 of us doing something to it. And while I do go to a lot of meetings (moreso now that I've got an open position, but that will be better once we get someone hired in), I certainly don't have weekly meetings on any single feature. App, yes, but not feature -- and a quick catch-up on what's happening in each app is quite useful for me. There's not lots of different layers between me and someone else working on the same feature or application. When we're deciding what needs to happen in our apps, we don't have to wait months to figure out what's going on. We do have some coordination to do with other teams, such as the WinOffice and the Windows OS team, but it's nothing like what Moishe describes.

Where do we in MacBU fall? Do we aim for absolute simplicity, or all of the options you could ever want? We're somewhere in the middle. We can't go for absolute simplicity, since compatibility with WinOffice is important to us. But we do value simplicity, and try to simplify our features and interface to be in line with Apple design principles. We have to make trade-offs to serve our users, and we haven't yet found a way to be everything to everyone. But we're hard at work on the next version, and the one after that, so maybe we'll get closer next time 'round.

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