What’s worse than staring into bright LED headlights while driving at night? Staring into lasers and having your retinas fried by them! But I’m just messing with you. According to BMW, their laser lights pose no risks to humans, animals or wildlife, so your retinas will be safe. It is not recommended to stare into them, though, as they are 70% brighter than LED lights.

It’s gonna be a few more years until laser lights will be mature enough to equip vehicles, but you’ll probably be able to see them in action earlier than that, on BMW’s i8 concept car.

Below is BMW’s press release on the subject.

And it’s bad. Kind of.

Even though a few weeks ago I was praising Microsoft for reworking Windows’ copy/paste UI and adding new functionality to it, they went overboard with reworks and added a “streamlined” command bar (ribbon style) that looks like this.

Yes, it’s that large, and yes, those percentages show how often people use the commands.

Of course, I’m not a user interface expert by any means, but some of that stuff seems awfully big for the usage it gets. I’m looking at you, “new folder” button. Was it really necessary to put a huge button for a function hardly anyone uses?

What saves the new menu bar, though, is the fact that Microsoft was smart enough to add an option allowing users to minimize its footprint.

Doesn’t look that horrible minimized, right? In fact, it looks a lot like the old bar Windows XP had, which wasn’t too bad. Even so, the command bar doesn’t have a reason to be there in the first place. Not because I would never use it myself, but because according to Microsoft’s own research this is how people invoke commands in Windows Explorer.

The telemetry data here shows that 54.5% of commands are invoked using a right-click context menu, and another 32.2% are invoked using keyboard shortcuts (“Hotkey” above) while only 10.9% come from the Command bar, the most visible UI element in Explorer in Windows 7 and Vista. With greater than 85% of command usage being invoked using a method other than the primary UI, there was clearly an opportunity to improve the Explorer user experience to make it more effective—more visible and uniformly accessible.  While context menus are convenient, the features in them can be overlooked if you don’t condition yourself to “search” via a context menu for the feature (a well-known challenge with the mechanism).

Combined, the menu bar and the command bar represent less than 15% of the total command usage, and yet they’re receiving the greatest deal of attention. Does that make sense from a usability standpoint? It doesn’t.

Hotkeys and context menus are infinitely more efficient than a large command bar sitting at the top of your screen. Hotkeys require no additional mouse movement, allowing users to complete tasks in the quickest possible way, and the context menu requires only minimal mouse movement. And if the clunky UI gets less than half the use of hotkeys, that doesn’t mean it’s because nobody sees it. It means hotkeys are a superior command entry point and the command bar is bloat.

Maybe it’s just me, but I hate how they messed up the clean UI of 7 and planted all sorts of small buttons all over. Even if I was a beginner, I would be probably be intimidated by that overwhelming monstrosity. Plus, I have nothing but hate for the ribbon bar. If I wanted to look at Office, I’d run Office.

via blogs.msdn

Having YouTube’s one hundred billion monthly pageviews isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Facebook’s estimated 1 trillion pageviews.

Despite Google’s attempt to introduce a new service on the social media market and grab their own piece of the social pie, Facebook continues to grow. Google’s latest rough estimates say the social site is now getting around one trillion hits per month, with YouTube and Yahoo following shyly in the distance.

Obviously, Google’s Plus can’t hope to compete with Facebook’s pageviews at this point since it’s still a relatively small, invite-only beta service, but that’s not the issue here. The problem is Google Plus has lost its shininess and people are already losing interest in it (myself included). Figures released by this guy say traffic to Google Plus has dropped 37% in the past 18 days. Now, I don’t know how accurate that traffic analysis is, but even if the drop is only 15% instead of 37, that’s still a drop, and quite a significant one at that.

Personally, I’d love to use Google Plus instead of Facebook, because I trust Google more than I trust Facebook, but at this point Plus doesn’t bring enough new stuff to the table to warrant a switch. The simple circle design is cool, but not cool enough to be essential. So unless the final version of Google Plus will have features that will make me and others wonder how we lived without them for so long, its downward trend will probably continue – while Facebook will get even more users and pageviews.

It would be a shame if Plus tanked, though, because it has so much potential.

He just released a letter saying:

August 24, 2011–To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

 

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come. My Job’s done.

 

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

 

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

 

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

 

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

 

sent from my iPad

I’m not the biggest fan of Jobs or Apple, however, I can’t help but feel this is the end of an era. Thanks for all the iStuff, Steve. It’s been fun.

Now, if you’re an Apple stockholder, stand by for AAPL stock crash in 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .

via blogs.wsj

According to figures released by the International Data Corp earlier this week, China has dethroned the US as the world’s largest market for PC computers. I guess it was expected after they passed the US in 2009 as the world’s largest auto market. People need mobility and information.

Anyway, IDC’s numbers say that second quarter PC shipments in China increased by 14%, to 18.5 million units, while shipments in the US dropped 4.8%, to 17.7 million units. And even though the number of shipments is considerably larger on the Chinese market (with almost one million extra units) value-wise the Chinese and US markets are relatively close.

The value of China’s computer shipments in the second quarter was $11.9 billion, while the value of the US shipments was $11.7 billion.

As far as global markets go, China now accounts for 22 percent of the global PC market by shipments – 1 percent more than the US.

“This was going to happen sooner or later, just like with the car market, and the time has come,” said Toshihiro Nagahama, chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute Inc. in Tokyo. “China has a huge population and their income is rising.” – bloomberg

However, despite China’s significant increase in market share in the second quarter, The International Data Corp believes the US will remain the biggest PC market throughout 2011 as a whole. And I think the biggest role in that will be played by AMD, with the release of their new Bulldozer CPU in September. A lot of US gamers have postponed the purchase of new systems in anticipation of the CPU, fact which could explain the slowdown of the US market.

PS: Hurry up and release those Bulldozers already, AMD! I had to buy an Intel thanks to your silly delays.

source bloomberg

If this trend continues, it’s unavoidable.