I have a hard time taking design advice from a web site whose design consists of a narrow band of text and 2/3-3/4 empty space.
The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline
251–260 of 440 posts
Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline
#252Earlier 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.
> But if you have never seen a camera Who are these supposed people who are buying Macs but have never seen a camera? This set of people must be miniscule if not empty. Cameras are still in use, even if most people have replaced them with smartphones. Walk around any city and you'll see gobs of people taking selfies on their phones, but you'll also see a decent number of people carrying dedicated cameras.
Eventually there will be and the icon will have to change then, but I do grant you that now is not the time.
Now the question is: should the icons represent something "iconic" or something that most people use?
Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline
#253This 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…
> I hate how Safari hides the full address in the address bar, for instance. You have no idea how much this change makes the URL field palatable for regular Joe. Previously: hhtpttpp://faceblablah.com/techmumbo/jumbo?not=h4ck3r. Now: facebooook.com.ru => "wow this really is not Facebook!". I basically witnessed such behaviour change first hand. > Or, how they removed scrollbars and force people to actually scroll eve…
> Previously: hhtpttpp://faceblablah.com/techmumbo/jumbo?not=h4ck3r. Now: facebooook.com.ru => "wow this really is not Facebook!". I basically witnessed such behaviour change first hand.
Anyone who does that is uneducated and ignorant; the proper response to that is to educate, not to remove the ability of those who are educated to do other things.
Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline
#254It’s not that important a point, but legal pads are a very US phenomena. I’m German and I have never ever seen a yellow pad like that in person. The current notes icon (with white paper) is much more in line with the note pads you would encounter in Germany. Paper people write on to take notes is typically just white. Maybe bound with a spiral on the left or top (and perforated paper to tear off), maybe glued togethe…
France here, and the new one feels so much better. I definitely viewed the old one as a U.S. centric thing (similar to units).
> France here, and the new one feels so much better. I definitely viewed the old one as a U.S. centric thing (similar to units).
That's a bit funny, since it's France's revolutionary units which have been imposed on almost the entire world.
Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm 35 and I have probably seen an actual contact book once when I was little. It doesn't make sense to have a skeuomorphic contact book as an icon for Contacts. There was a rhetoric not too long ago where OSx fanboys would make fun of Windows' interfaces for still using the disk icon as the "save" button. Now that guy is complaining that the photos app icon doesn't look like a Point And Shoot camera, when fewer an…
skeumorphism has notting to do with clear use of iconography. Even for a young kid a meaningless icon is still meaningless... I don't follow all the points in the article but I can't count the times that I overlooked photo's for example.
Personally I liked the old way when there was a crappy low resolution icon, with text underneath telling you what it was. In most interfaces since the text disappeared it takes me a while to work out what at least some of the icons are.
Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I hate how Safari hides the full address in the address bar, for instance. You have no idea how much this change makes the URL field palatable for regular Joe. Previously: hhtpttpp://faceblablah.com/techmumbo/jumbo?not=h4ck3r. Now: facebooook.com.ru => "wow this really is not Facebook!". I basically witnessed such behaviour change first hand. > Or, how they removed scrollbars and force people to actually scroll eve…
> Previously: hhtpttpp://faceblablah.com/techmumbo/jumbo?not=h4ck3r. Now: facebooook.com.ru => "wow this really is not Facebook!". I basically witnessed such behaviour change first hand. Anyone who does that is uneducated and ignorant; the proper response to that is to educate, not to remove the ability of those who are educated to do other things.
Everyone should be using the command line if that argument were true. Its much more efficient for most purposes once you know it well.
Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline
#257This is really just a pro-skeumorphism rant. I'm personally not a fan of skeumorphism, especially when taken to extremes like the silly leather calendar in previous OS X versions.
The real problem I have with Apple is the abysmal developer service their app stores offer and the technical stagnation of some of their products. They've got plenty of money and should be really really pushing the envelope. Where's my octacore laptop? Where's my really good issue tracker in the app store with 60 minute turnaround?
Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline
#258Earlier 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…
Your colleague doesn't use completion?
To me, using CLI is like having a conversation, with much richer vocabulary, than GUI. That's just pointing at things.
Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline
#259This 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 wo…
The process that you are describing in language is incredibly far from being ideal, it's just a reality because language is truly distributed. It would be far better if we did not overload words, leading to a period of ambiguous transition before the word finally changes definition entirely.
Design language is still distributed, but not nearly to the same degree. If Apple decides that an old skeuomorphic logo is ambiguous, or not understood by younger user, or some other compliant like that they can change it and the new one will enter the design vocabulary very quickly.
Often these are helpful. A little logo with just a person is _much_ clearer to me than a contact book. Over time it would be best to shed all the strange associations with real world objects in favor of a design language that actually describes what the software does, instead of making a poor analogy to a real world object.
Re: The Apple Goes Mushy Part I: OS X's Interface Decline
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really liked the old nuanced "full size" behaviour. Unlike Windows "Maximize" it would only increase the window size just enough so that all its contents where visible. This was neat, and elegant, and really showed considered design as well as the OS taking an interest in what was "in" it's windows not just the displayable area of the screen. I thought the Ctrl-F fullscreen behaviour in Lion was perfectly fine. It…
I agree the old window zoom, as it was called, was the best. I know Windows user hate it, and so many of the recent changes seem to have been to placate Windows user complaints. I liked my Mac the way it was. We don't need to appeal to Windows users.
People who really like Windows (including me) generally seem to dislike the full-screen button in OS X though, so how is that placating anyone?
Everywhere I look I find people saying that window management in Windows is miles ahead of OS X. Even from people who wouldn't want to use Windows. If Apple wanted to placate those people, they would make the green button maximize by default, get rid of that ghastly global menu bar, fix the bad keyboard acceleration, make the Dock even more like the taskbar and add window snapping among a few other things.
I'm hoping some day someone at Apple will see the light. It only took them twenty years to realize that letting users resize a window by any corner or edge is a good idea and that one-button mice were really not a good idea so maybe by 2036 it will all change.