Journal

iPhone as a music player? Not without changes.

2009-02-22T06:03:18Z

First off, let me say, I love my iPhone. I love it more then you really should of an inanimate gadget. However as a music player, it sucks. When the iPhone was released, I was hoping it would replace my iPod and now Zune as my full time music player, but to my disappointment that was not the case. You can’t control that damn thing without looking at the screen. The lack of textural feedback really makes this a sometime (and I mean sometime) music player.

With the iPod and Zune you can “feel” you way around the controls. You can accomplish all the basic, next, back, play, pause and volume controls, while laying in bed half asleep, while running with it attached to your arm band, or while inside your pocket walking to the grocery store. You can safely skip to the next song without worry about getting hit by an on-coming car.

I remember while lying in my bed, with shuffle-mode enabled and wanting to skip to the next song. Not as easy as it sounds. I double tap the home button to bring up the controls, lift my arm, bring the phone to a viewable angle and distance, open my eyes, get woken up by the bright screen, look for the next button, and press ">>" to skip to the next song. Rinse and repeat and you’ll eventually you realize you’ll never fall asleep and that this is stupid. With my Zune, it's a twitch of the finger and on you go.

Solution? Gestures of course! It's only natural.

The iPhone has an entire screen ready to take feedback. Why not make use of it. Gestures are already part of the UI mental model for navigating contacts, photos, etc. Why not music? It seems like a perfect natural progression.

Don't get me started about cover flow while laying on your side (a fairly common music listening position). Steve, can you hear me? Until then, long live Zune.

A little product down the hall

2009-02-07T00:45:56Z

A good friend of mine down the hall works on a little product some of you may have heard of called Silverlight. It’s a nifty little browser runtime that lets you do a bunch of cool things on the web. Lately it’s been generating quite a bit of positive buzz and that buzz is starting to creep into my office from all the way down the hall. It’s definitely got my attention. My curiosity’s peaked, and I think it’s time to see for myself what all the fuss is about.

I’ve dabbled a bit with the original Silverlight release, but Silverlight 2 is a whole new beast. Being a huge fan of the Adobe design tools and the Flash platform, this is going to be interesting to say the least. Over the next few months I’ll be posting my experiences and documenting my progress as I work through ramp-up resources and try to build a so-called “real” project.On wards! From the beginning maestro. Here’s a list of what I’m using to ramp up and get started.

Getting the bits. Most are free and pretty self-explanatory. I like free.

Microsoft Web Platform Installer: This gets you the free developer tool Visual Web Developer and the Silverlight Tools and SDK. This is really all you need to start writing code. The platform installer also gives you the option to install other stuff like .NET Framework, ASP.NET MVC, SQL Server and IIS stuff. Super easy and highly recommended as the best way to get what you need.
Microsoft Expression Blend 2 SP1: You’ll need this if you care anything about design. There’s a free 30-day trial available that I’ll be using. The price is a bit steep at $499.99, but then again so is Flash.

Books I’m going to read

And some great web resources I’m started out with

Kirupa.com: A fan since its inception. Awesome stuff.
Silverlight.net/Learn

Off I go. Wish me luck.

The inaugural first post. Hello World!

2008-11-10T06:00:06Z

Who am I?

My name is Michael Dorian Bach. I live in Seattle, WA with my wife Aubrey and our 3 computers. By day, I’m a Technical Product Manager at Microsoft working in the Developers group. In a nutshell, my job is to make sure we do right by developers and ensure that the Microsoft web stack is an open and kick-ass web platform for building web applications. I believe that interoperability, web standards and simplicity are the key principles of any great web stack, and Microsoft pays me to drive this vision throughout our web eco-system. (You can thank me later.) Feel free to ping me at mibach (at) microsoft.com with comments and suggestion on how we are doing and what we could be doing to help make web development better.

"I’m an Internet product designer and developer exploring the space where design and technology intersect."

By night, I’m an Internet product designer and developer exploring the space where design and technology intersect. This site is a collection of my thoughts and opinions about my passion for all things web, particularly UX. I'm a HUGE believer in its ability to "change the game" and act as the most powerful differentiator between products. Needless to say, this will be a common theme throughout the site. Though I will occasionally write about work, please note that what you read is my opinion and not that of my employer. If something inspires you, great. If something rubs you the wrong way, it all falls on me.

I will occasionally write about work
What you read is my opinion and not that of my employer
If something rubs you the wrong way, it all falls on me

You can call me Michael, or Mike, or Dorian- as long as you are passionate about web and have something to teach me or something interesting to say, I’ll respond to just about any name you can throw at me. Enjoy.