Usability and the Common Man
Originally posted 2004-05-05 12:29:51
After some contemplation and waffling, I finally ventured out of x86-land and got a Mac–one of the new iBook G4 1.25 GHz machines. I think I was swayed less by the \”Switch\” campaign and more by James Gosling’s endorsement. Besides, I got a great deal (thanks, Bobby!). I’ve got Eclipse up and running on it, I’ve compiled and run some SWT and JFace apps, and it’s all pretty cool. I’m now reading a book on Cocoa and Objective-C, wondering what I’ll do with that.
When I booted the iBook for the first time, however, I couldn’t get on my wireless network at home. I have a Linksys 802.11b wireless router, and the iBook could see the SSID for my network fine–it just couldn’t get a valid IP address using DHCP. Puzzling, especially for a network ignoramus like me. So, I went to Linksys’s site, found a firmware update, downloaded it, and updated the firmware on the router. Tada! My Mac then connected to the network. I grumbled a little at the inconvenience, especially after finding that the new firmware changed router URLs and configuration page layouts and broke my IP address publishing scripts, but I fixed those and was back in business.
As any Windows or Linux (especially Debian) user knows, updating is easy. Whether through Windows Update, apt-get, or some other means, network update capabilities now come bundled with operating systems. So, I poked around on the Mac, and found a Software Update applet. I brought it up, saw I lacked a few updates–including one for Airport. Uh oh–I should have seen a red flag. But no, I plunged merrily ahead, downloaded the updates . . . and was back off the network. Once again, the Mac would tell me it was connected to the network, accurately reporting the network’s SSID, but the IP address it received was wrong, the subnet mask was wrong, and the iBook couldn’t see anything on the network or get out to the Internet. Grr.
I poked around here and there, and finally tried turning off SSID broadcasting on the router. Right now, security gurus are cringing, \”You had that ON?!?!? What kind of Bozo ARE you?!?!?\” Yes, I know it was risky to leave SSID broadcasting on, but I wanted my father to be able to connect to the Internet anytime he brought his laptop over, without having to do any hard stuff. I live in a suburban area, and the range of the router doesn’t extend far, so unless some crazed hacker came wardriving across my front porch, I felt pretty safe. It’s been a safe risk.
Anyway, that did the trick, and my Mac was back on line. I got to thinking, though: Why is this stuff so hard? And what does the common man do about it? I’m reminded of Eric Raymond’s recent rant about CUPS. I’m also reminded of the time my brother-in-law got a virus on his computer. His plan to resolve the situation was to throw the computer away and buy a new one, and it took repeated assurances from me to dissuade him from carrying out that plan.
I’d rant more, but I have to go find some cool new software for my Mac. Any suggestions?