I for one am actually excited for this. (Price tag is admittedly still high.)
When I look at a piece of technology I want to know what problem is it solving. And for me it will solve the biggest one: I want to work on the couch while next to my partner. My current solution involves bringing an extra monitor down and putting it on the coffee table.
Beyond that, the massive increase in screen real estate will be great for working on highly visual projects like Final Cut or Ableton.
Another +1 for Divvy. I have a hard time living without it.
When plugged into my large monitor, I have hotkeys set up to put a window on the left 1/3, the middle 1/3, and the right 1/3. It is so unbelievably useful.
Also when doing multiple monitors, if you do a Divvy hotkey it will move the current window to the monitor your mouse is in. This makes moving windows so fast.
Firstly, congratulations! Changing from a well-known situation to a completely new one. It must be a little bit scary because everything will be unfamiliar. And that's OK. You're going on an adventure!
In fact, you're probably far from being alone. There will be many people around you in the same boat. Because of that: everyone is likely to be in the same situation where none of the old processes may now work the same way. (Even if the long-timers don't admit it!)
And chances are (since you're posting on HN) that a lot of your colleagues are remote. So this might be harder too since you may miss physical cues and casual things that make it easy to build friendships and become a known quantity: you can't find your tribe by sight nor will they be able to find you.
1) Meet everyone regardless of title. Learn who they are, not just what they do. Take field notes!
2) Meet everyone related the people you talk to. Repeat until numPeopleMet >= 100.
3) Join all the tribes/channels, even if you don't think you have a strong affiliation with the group. Observe how language flows, not just where the code goes. Make visual maps of how products and teams interrelate.
4) Be joyful of the skills that you bring, and find fellow fans.
I hate the trend in cars that there are no or few physical buttons. Tactile feedback is still important. It is so unsafe to take one's eyes off of the road. At least give me some function buttons and a joystick--my current car has that and I use it all the time.
The redesign really feels like it really will translate well to mobile, as in the Facebook Phone. Instead of a grid of apps, you have a strip of categories of information (feeds, events, notes, chat) followed by your favorite apps. Then instead of a separate speed dial screen you have those user icons below that.
But at least with music interfaces the levels are quite different. As a long-time user of music UI, pianos tend to have glossy white and black keys, knobs may have shading, there may be fake screws in the faceplates. Those elements are meant to look like and mimic their physical counterparts.
I disagree on hiding the inactive segments though. I like the blank segments being still present, but because that is my opinion and not because usability was the goal. :) I could have removed the inactive AM or PM too.
TL;DR Always work hard, keep your eyes open, and be helpful.
On the point of luck, yes there is a whole lot of lucky circumstance which you have no control over that puts in you in a lucky position. But I believe you pass a point in your life where it goes from being purely lucky to being just plain prepared. If Scalzi didn't work at his craft or his networking, the opportunities that availed themselves to him probably would not have happened.
I think a lot about where I am and where I'm going. There's lots of things I do now that don't have immediate payoff. Rather, I think of everything as just training for something else down the road. So I try to get good (or at least passably decent) at a breadth of things and specialize in a few. Hopefully then when luck swings my way I'm prepared to go after that small window of opportunity with full force.
I'm also a big fan of paying it forward, like Scalzi. Not everything is money---often it's just time. Giving someone honest feedback, lending them a hand, or supporting their efforts is all good karma. When you help others in a way you help yourself: growing your community of interest, raising the overall standard of living, moving groups of people forward.
When I look at a piece of technology I want to know what problem is it solving. And for me it will solve the biggest one: I want to work on the couch while next to my partner. My current solution involves bringing an extra monitor down and putting it on the coffee table.
Beyond that, the massive increase in screen real estate will be great for working on highly visual projects like Final Cut or Ableton.