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The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline

nicholaswindsorhoward.com

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Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline

#241

Post by dpark »

jrockway wrote: post #207
56k wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quicker to glance at icons and spot the app right away than not read each and every item in a list.

Anyway, I think the idea is to get some visual cue that you're about to tap the right icon. You know where you put your apps on your home screen, so the colors or wahtever lead you there faster. And the icon provides a large touch target. Going back to the original article, it doesn't really matter what the icon looks like, as long as it's unique. You're not looking at each icon and asking yourself "is this a camera?…

> You know where you put your apps on your home screen

Really? Because when I used an iPhone, I most definitely didn't know where most of my apps' icons were. I knew most of them on the first screen and the rest of the screens were a mix of random stuff.

Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline

#242

Post by function_seven »

ralfd wrote: post #82
larsiusprime wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of, "In defense of the floppy disk": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kylikelQBqg Surprising and excellent talk.

I was surprised about the two big carpets on stage. I wonder why they did that (or conversely no one else does that).

My best guess is an acoustical reason. The floor might reflect the speaker's voice in ways that muddle it for the audience, so those carpets are placed in front of them to kill that reflection?

Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline

#243

Post by aetherson »

yoz-y wrote: post #191
Angostura wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The use of metaphors worked when people didn't know what a computer was, and the only way to make its UI make sense was to mimic real-world objects. I disagree strongly. If you were new to a machine, is there anything in the new Photos icon that tells you that it anything to do with images, photos or image manipulation? No. The new icon for Pages is fine by the way,

But if you have never seen a camera then you would not know what the old icon means either. Yes there is a picture of a palm tree there but that could be anything (given that all icons are basically pictures of something). Looking at my desk and my habits there are actually very few objects that I use for work most of it happens on screen. All in all, I think good icon design will become harder.

Can you find me some actual person who honestly does not know what a camera looks like? Not "someone who has never personally used a camera," not "I'm sure that somewhere out there there's someone who doesn't know what a camera looks like," not "in twenty years, maybe lots of people won't know what a camera looks like."

Someone that, right now, actually honestly has no idea what a camera looks like.

Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline

#244

Post by dceddia »

yoz-y wrote: post #196
ACow_Adonis wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they know less than the people who were using computers back then. The difference is of course that today computers are used by more of the general public for communication, office, and media consumption, rather than (only) bunch of tech savvy specialists. Most of my generation and the generation that followed barely have a concept of a computer beyond "press the thing to make things happen". They know no mor…

> As for running circles around people while using a GUI, while I accept there are specialised fields and exceptions that disprove the rule, outside of marketing presentations I just don't see it happen. As much as any generalisation can be valid, the GUI does not run circles around anyone that can actually program and is generally the mark of the computer novice/consumer... I wonder. Every time I see a colleague usi…

I think it depends on the operations being performed. Adding a subset of the changed files? Holding ctrl/cmd and clicking the files is probably faster than typing all those names out on the command line.

Need to pull some new code though, or commit changes? I think "git pull" or "git ci -m 'Message'" is faster than opening up a complicated GUI window with lots of decisions to make.

Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline

#245

Post by WayneBro »

Sean1708 wrote: post #103
krylon wrote: post #16

One thing I really dislike about 10.10 is that "maximizing" a window will - with a few exceptions - switch it to fullscreen. To maximize a window I need to press Alt while clicking the maximize-button. And there is not even an option to switch this behavior. On a small laptop screen this behaviour might be preferable, but on a FullHD display, I find it rather annoying.

Ah see I like that behaviour. I've never once wanted to fill the screen with an app without putting it in fullscreen, I just don't see what the point of doing that would be.

> I just don't see what the point of doing that would be.

So you can still see the Dock and the Menu bar without having to do anything?

I always maximize and never use full screen because I don't want to hide the most useful parts of my OS...but I can imagine that visual artists might use it a lot.

Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline

#247

Post by usrusr »

56k wrote: post #28

This article doesn't make any sense. The use of metaphors worked when people didn't know what a computer was, and the only way to make its UI make sense was to mimic real-world objects. Now, this is no longer necessary. It's been 40 years. While I agree that new macOS icons aren't great (see the Game Center icon), the old ones were silly. I'm 35 and I have probably seen an actual contact book only once when I was lit…

Verbal languages are full of grotesquely outdated vocabulary and that is perfectly fine. The word starts life as some resolveable derivation until it eventually gets detached from that, becoming pure convention. How many people do you know who are called engineers because they routinely operate actual trebuchets?

I really don't see why visual languages should not evolve along similar patterns. Visual communication would hardly get easier if we switched the existing symbols over to black, rectangular screens for all the tasks that have recently been consolidated in the smartphone as a single, multifunctional tool.

Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline

#248

Post by yoz-y »

aetherson wrote: post #243
yoz-y wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you have never seen a camera then you would not know what the old icon means either. Yes there is a picture of a palm tree there but that could be anything (given that all icons are basically pictures of something). Looking at my desk and my habits there are actually very few objects that I use for work most of it happens on screen. All in all, I think good icon design will become harder.

Can you find me some actual person who honestly does not know what a camera looks like? Not "someone who has never personally used a camera," not "I'm sure that somewhere out there there's someone who doesn't know what a camera looks like," not "in twenty years, maybe lots of people won't know what a camera looks like." Someone that, right now, actually honestly has no idea what a camera looks like.

Well. I can imagine that there must be some kids (let's say some 4-5 year olds) who already use tablets but they have never had a picture taken with anything else but a phone. I grant you that camera is not the best example since the phones have hardly caught up to good cameras and we will see them at least in some form for a long time.

Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline

#249

Post by jccalhoun »

sbuk wrote: post #63

This essay is nothing more than the authors opinion (which there is nothing wrong with) presented as fact (completely take umbrage with this). Looking at the authors website, the current design of Apple's UI elements are not to their taste. An example would be this; http://www.nicholaswindsorhoward.com/blog-directory/2016/1/2... The odd idea is interesting, but it's massively regressive.

With a few exceptions he has a serious case of "I like it the way it used to be!"

Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline

#250

Post by kps »

puranjay wrote: post #202
watmough wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like an Air would be fine, but she might want to also consider a Chromebook.

Thanks, hadn't thought of that. She actually has a Nexus and isn't really tied into the Apple ecosystem so this might actually be a good idea

If she has favourite or familiar Android apps, the list of Chromebooks that can run them may be valuable: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-suppo...

(disclaimer: I used to work on chromebook software)

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