I've just watched Virtual Earth video at Channel 9 and really liked the way Microsoft advances the user experience side of their products. Usually I'm not satisfied at all by UI of almost all of Microsoft applications - from Visual Studio to Office to MapPoint, but now I must say shame on Google - almost ALL of the features the video showed are absolutely obvious. "Hybrid" view, double click for zoom-in, panning - they're so natural that I cannot understand why doesn't Google have it already. I'm pretty sure they they will catch up with Microsoft on feature set, especially remembering that Google Maps is publicly available while Virtual Earth not, but I should confess that I didn't expect that Microsoft will add all those little things because I didn't notice that they really pay attention to the user experience microdynamics when I used their products.
Posted by Oleg Stepanov at May 29, 2005 06:33 PM | TrackBack