Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

It’s Not What Your Software Does, It’s What People Do With Your Software

bluemangolearning.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–14 of 14 posts

Re: It’s Not What Your Software Does, It’s What People Do With Your Software

#11

Post by Flemlord »

parfe wrote: post #4
modernerd wrote: post #2

"The creators of Garageband for iPad didn’t care about what their software could do. They cared about what people could do with their software." Aren't they the same thing? Feature lists describe what your software can do, which shapes what people can do with your software. That GarageBand for iPad is accessible to all might be more to do with the platform than the featureset.

How to remove Red-eye in photoshop: http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/photoshop/ht/apsredeye.htm How to remove Red-eye in Picasa http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/picasa/ht/redeye.htm Both pieces of software can remove redeye. For Picasa the instructions boil down to "Click the Fix Red-eye button" whereas Photoshop involves layers, Gaussian blur, saturation, eye droppers. Which would you say is more accessible for some…

Those Photoshop instructions are for older versions of Photoshop. In later versions, there is a "remove redeye" tool that seems to be much easier to use than Picasa's:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/photoshop/cs/using/WSfd1234e1c4b...

Re: It’s Not What Your Software Does, It’s What People Do With Your Software

#12

Post by modernerd »

parfe wrote: post #4
modernerd wrote: post #2

"The creators of Garageband for iPad didn’t care about what their software could do. They cared about what people could do with their software." Aren't they the same thing? Feature lists describe what your software can do, which shapes what people can do with your software. That GarageBand for iPad is accessible to all might be more to do with the platform than the featureset.

How to remove Red-eye in photoshop: http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/photoshop/ht/apsredeye.htm How to remove Red-eye in Picasa http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/picasa/ht/redeye.htm Both pieces of software can remove redeye. For Picasa the instructions boil down to "Click the Fix Red-eye button" whereas Photoshop involves layers, Gaussian blur, saturation, eye droppers. Which would you say is more accessible for some…

I don't see that this marks a difference between 'what software does' and 'what people do'. Picasa and Photoshop both remove redeye ergo people remove redeye in both apps.

The original post seemed to be saying 'it's not the features, it's how usable they are', to which I agree wholeheartedly. I just felt that the clever title was a confusing way of saying 'usability trumps features'.

Furthermore, I'd suggest that the iPad is what makes GarageBand so usable and compelling an experience for audio newbies; it's not purely down to the software (although it's certainly excellent). My friend's kids love djay for iPad, for example, but they think my physical decks are 'lame'.

Post reply on HN