For some reason the article chose to use Estonian as an example of Finno-Ugric languages, which have all been traditionally considered difficult for English speakers.
Having no native teachers available increased the difficulty, and the WWII usage was against non-native English speakers. That said, the Native American languages that I know of are grammatically quite different from English.
"to correctly pronounce any Finnish word you just string together the sounds of the letters of the word."
This is a lie-to-children that I too was taught in school, but it's not even remotely true. Consider:
herne(k)keitto
leu(v)an
rei(j)än
isän (=m)maa
sydäm(m)en
You'd sound like a robot if you just pronounced them "as written". Computer phonetic analysis of the language reveals even more patterns where the written language indisputably deviates from the spoken one, but these at least should be easy to verify without specialist knowledge or equipment.
The only non-fanboy argument in the article is Japanese carriers' hunger for control. This is absolutely true, and might be the reason Android gets some traction in Japan. But consider the implications of this for the user -- why is it that you think that Android is a "good" OS, something that you'd want on your own phone? "It's open and I can do whatever I want with it"? Well, not after the Japanese carriers have their way with it.
I don't see how adding a predefined style called "level 2 heading" to paragraph would be more distracting than adding a "/this is a level 2 heading" TeX command.
That said, I think having a catalogue of suitable elements for each context and a (modifiable) document structure tree is better than either of the above alternatives.
Yes, but he's talking about people who have no idea how to use Word properly. How would similarly "skilled" people fare with TeX? I mean, what, you don't need to be "careful" writing all that "/this is a level 2 heading" stuff into your ASCII document?
Using WYSIWYG with predefined styles is more writing focused than messing around with TeX, I would think. I think the author seriously misrepresents the way Word is poised to be used today (could be that he's accurate about what Word was like back then, though).
I had always thought European cars had the door on the passenger side, while Japanese and American cars had it on the driver's side. I admit to not having driven all that many cars, especially American ones, but I don't think I've ever encountered a counterexample. I'm sure one is forthcoming, though :)
>This information can be found online or in the manual
So can the information on how you should partition your hard drive for Linux installation. Yet (historically) most people think Linux installation is a usability disaster.
Or for another way of looking at it, do you really think that an interface which requires you to go online (or read a manual) to figure out how basic stuff like undo or delete work represents "good usability"?
Also, as the author points out, what is "refresh" supposed to do in the context of a single message? Just because a symbol is familiar, it doesn't mean its meaning is automatically clear if it's taken out of context. For example, at my workplace recently got a new microwave that has a play/pause button. In this case, it's relatively easy to figure it out but it still gave me a pause.
I'll just butt in to say Kobe is great. Lots of character and interesting places to hang out in. Has it's own charm, different from Osaka or Nagoya (which I really like too).
TFA's main point is that it takes companies like Nokia a very long time to ship a new product. Fair enough, but the time frame and the value judgements therein are just ridiculous FUD, even if you consider that this type of prediction is always goign to have errors. A few points, off the top of my head:
1) Nokia had a touch screen phone (in addition to the tablets) years before iPhone, and released another in 2008 (5800 XpressMusic) and a third this year (N97, which the article mentions but which somehow seems not to count). TFA says first Nokia touch screen phones "with crude, unusable software" are due in 2011.
2) TFA claims that first devices comparable to the first iPhone would ship in 2014, and makes a snide remark about how competetive such a device would be then. This is, of course, a completely ignorant premise: Nokia's top models are, and always have been, technically ahead of the iPhone. If Nokia gets iPhone's usability in 2014, why would that come at the cost of losing their edge in tech?
This change does not seem to affect secondary gmail accounts: does anyone know of a way to get them to work too? Or is there a technical reason why Google cannot do it?
In case someone does not understand the problem: I have a few gmail addresses that I use in contexts where I don't want to disclose my real name. For convenience, all mail sent to these addresses gets forwarded to my primary account, which does use my real name. But because of the sender field, I can't use my primary account to reply to these mails, which makes the situation quite messy.
Forwarding email from a random address to a gmail address has been possible as long as gmail has existed. It's not a feature that depends upon Google support.
Oh well, I think I have to disagree with the article there. The Japanese may have different tastes than the western audience, but there definitely is a huge amount of effort spent on just how the phones look. There are cool design choices (like the swivel screen mentioned in the article), boring ones (dozens of different color casings), and a huge amount of after-market customization paraphenelia (stickers, "jewellery", straps, etc.) available. Some cell phone stores and craft stores have prominent displays showing off ridiculously overdone pimped phones covered in gleaming stickers.
What I meant to say earlier was that this look could appeal to some people in the west too. Some people just want something that looks different than the iphone or razr. I know my wife loved the cute pink clamshell phone she had in Japan (that I spent days trying to jailbreak afterwards).