Symbolic Gestures and Filthy Rich Clients

What are we to make of the fact that Sun has changed its stockticker from SUNW, which originally stood for Stanford University Network Workstation, to JAVA, which stands for, um, Java?

Apple not long ago changed the company name from Apple Computer to Apple, Inc., fueling speculation among the more excitable of the punditing class that the company was getting out of computers. It meant nothing of the sort, of course; what it signified was that Apple is now about more than just computers.

Sun isn't changing its company name, just its stock ticker, but the reasons given by Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz for the change are interesting: "SUNW represents the past, and... we've decided to look ahead [because the] number of people who know Java swamps the number of people who know Sun." (And by the way, Jonathan, I wish you'd quit putting things in your blog that crash Safari. I'm sure it's Apple's fault, but it's really annoying.)

Filthy Rich Clients arrived in the mail the other day. Chet Haase and Romain Guy show you how to create graphically rich Java apps that ooze cool.

Cool is good. Beautiful is good. Oozing I have less of a jones for. But the Foreword by James Gosling draws a lesson from successful applications that I think is widespread and wrong.

A huge increase in the emphasis on aesthetics is what Gosling sees: Wow! (he says) Aesthetics are in.

People say that kind of thing about Apple's hardware and applications, call them beautiful or eye candy, and it always bothers me. Because what I see in Apple's best creations and in the best application interfaces from any developer, is not aesthetics but good design. It's not the same thing.

Design is deep. Pretty is superficial. And filthy rich -- well, it's an attention-getting phrase. Nothing wrong with that, as far as it goes. As for its symbolism, well, as I say, it's an attention-getting phrase.

Posted by Mike Swaine at 11:32 AM  Permalink