[267] in bcs-newton
Off the net
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (ray@mayo.EDU)
Tue Nov 2 12:10:44 1993
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 93 10:35:47 -0600
From: ray@mayo.EDU
To: bcs-newton@MIT.EDU
Reply-To: ray@mayo.EDU
A review of the book Jim was pushing (10% commission Jim? ;-)
Ray
From: Jakob Nielsen <nielsen@bellcore.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.newton.announce
Subject: Book review: "Defying Gravity: The Making of Newton" (long)
Followup-To: comp.sys.newton.misc
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 93 18:20:09 GMT
Organization: Bellcore - Bell Communications Research
Distribution: world
Book Review:
Defying Gravity: The Making of Newton, by Doug Menuez (photography) and
Markos Kounalakis (text).
Beyond Words Publishing, Inc., Hillsboro, OR, 1993. ISBN 0-941831-94-9,
$29.95.
Reviewed by Jakob Nielsen, Bellcore
This book has been described as The Soul of a New Machine meets A Day in
the Life. Unfortunately, it is neither, and it suffers in comparison with
these two insightful works. Defying Gravity is a photojournalistic report
of the events leading to the often-delayed introduction of the Newton in
August 1993. Interestingly, the book arrived about one month after I
finally received my Newton and about two months after the last event
depicted in the book. Such rapid production of a book is in itself a
reflection of modern information technology, though of course it could have
been out even faster on the Internet. Basically, the photographer Doug
Menuez followed the Newton development, marketing, and management teams
through a period of about two years, and his photographs are presented
intertwined with a text outlining the six-year history of the project.
Unfortunately, the text and photos are poorly integrated, with the pictures
and descriptions of the same events often occurring many pages apart
without a cross-reference.
The Soul of a New Machine told the story of the lives and adventures of the
engineers actually designing and building the Eclipse MV/8000, with the
main schism being technical differences between the hardware people and the
software people. In contrast, Defying Gravity could be called "A Tale of
Two Valleys," with its main source of tension being the comparison between
the glitter of the marketing jet set led by John Sculley and the
dungeon-like confinement of the hackers led by Steve Capps. Many of the
photographs are dominated by harsh black tones as if to emphasize the
isolation of the project participants from the organic world. Defying
Gravity is not really about the development project or computer technology,
or even about the new machine. It is about people suffering through
adversity to deliver a McGuffin.(*) The suffering is made very explicit and
the rewards, motivation, and technological advances are downplayed. I have
never seen a book with so many pictures of exhausted people sleeping on
floors, slouching in chairs, almost passing out in Parisian taxis, and
pulling all-night debugging sessions only sleeping while waiting for the
compiler (one of the few cases where slow response times may have saved the
users' sanity). The book is certainly not a celebration of achievement and
the advancement of humanity through international collaboration even though
it could have been, given the characteristics of the project (the
handwriting recognition was implemented by a Russian team which is only
mentioned in passing and not shown on any photos, and the CPU was British).
Most of the photographs contribute very little to the story of the Newton
and its development except for the ever-present theme of exhaustion and
over-work. They do have considerable merit as works of art, and I would
have been exhilarated to see them in an exhibition at the International
Center for Photography or some other venue where I would not have expected
to learn about the workings of a major computer project. For example, page
00:98 shows a hand holding a preliminary version of Newton in front of the
new "Arch of Triumph" in La Defense outside Paris. The caption for this
picture only reads "Newton in Paris. September 1992." Except for people who
happen to know that Apple's European headquarters are in La Defense,
readers are left wondering what the Newton was doing in front of that
particular building. The image does look great, though, contrasting the
Scandinavian formalism of the angular monument with the curved organic
design of the Newton (the Newton in this picture looks particular good as
it was a design with a curved cover - I hope the designers donate some of
these early models to the Museum of Modern Art's design collection). The
contrast is even greater for viewers who know the seductive feel of the
Newton's surface material.
Both text and pictures are very thin on coverage of the actual design of
the Newton. There are no comparative pictures of the various physical
designs that were tried, and there are no pictures at all that show screen
designs. Except for a few photographs of Larry Tesler and two paragraphs
referring briefly to user testing, the user interface team has been left
out of the book. In general, there is very little information about the
content of the development work, as the book prefers to highlight the work
for its own sake and the trade show promotions. In summary, this book
cannot be recommended as a way to gain insights into the history and design
of a major new user interface or computer technology. It can be recommended
for a striking set of images that are aesthetically interesting, for its
depiction of the exhaustion that accompanies intense projects, and for some
watered-down reports of management intrigue. Even though the book was
disappointing, I am still glad on balance that I bought Defying Gravity and
it will fit nicely next to Odyssey on my bookshelf.
(*) "McGuffin" is the expression used by Alfred Hitchcock to denote
whatever object serves as the ostensible motivation for the plot while
being irrelevant to the actual events in the film. A typical McGuffin would
be a microfilm that is chased by several teams of agents but is never
actually developed.
--
Jakob Nielsen, nielsen@bellcore.com, fax (201) 829-2645
Bellcore, MRE 2P-370, 445 South St., Morristown, NJ 07960-6438, USA
Electronic businesscard: Send any email to nielsen-info@bellcore.com
