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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

#271

Post by redial »

gurkendoktor wrote: post #84
CPLX wrote: post #18

I'm not sure how to tell this guy, but I'm over 40 years old and I have been using Apple computers literally since elementary school. At a certain point the reference to intuitive design can be to ones own past, if that past has become sufficiently ingrained and intuitive to users. I thought the lament about the photo app dropping the icon that looks like a camera was particularly odd. He seems uninterested in even a…

> the photo app dropping the icon that looks like a camera But the old iPhoto icon was not only showing a camera, it was showing a camera and a photo . The camera is part of the icon because iPhoto/Photos can also be used to import photos from cameras that look exactly like the one in the icon. The old icon really couldn't be more fitting for what the app does. And even if users don't know what a camera is, they can…

> And even if users don't know what a camera is, they can still recognise the other 50% of the icon.

Can they? who prints photos anymore?

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

#273

Post by rsync »

It's worth pointing out that circa July 2016, it is still manageable and reasonable to continue using Snow Leopard.

I use it daily on my primary system. Other than the cool "draw my signature on a PDF" feature in Preview that showed up circa Mavericks, there is nothing - not one thing - that I miss by running that older OS.

VMWare fusion works great. Current chrome+ublockorigin. Great multi screen support. I don't run any services and keep a strict firewall (and also the ublock Origin) so the lack of recent security updates (combined with the gradual loss of interest in SL from exploit writers) isn't a problem.

YMMV.

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

#274

Post by collyw »

010a wrote: post #170
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…

Every single example he gave looked, in my opinion, better the new way. This entire article is just a vast list of opinions about their interface design disguised behind some inappropriate grand declaration of truth.

Looked better, but less obvious what it does.

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

#275

Post by yoz-y »

tomtheelder wrote: post #263
yoz-y wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Every time I see a colleague using command line to do git operations I get itchy and think to myself "oh, come on! I could've done this in gui in seconds". What operation could you possibly perform significantly faster in a gui than on the command line? I can think of tons that would be far, far slower in a gui. > to me using a GUI is more of a mark of valuing one's time than that of a novice I would argue the exac…

> What operation could you possibly perform significantly faster in a gui than on the command line? I can think of tons that would be far, far slower in a gui.

Sticking to the Git example: - visualising history (in gui it is just there) - opening old versions of files - visualising a complete log of a file and then jumping to individual diffs/commits

The fact that in a decent GUI everything that could possibly be a link is, is very useful. I do not ned to go around copy pasting SHA1 sums. I drop down to command line when I need an occasional filter-branch or do some arcane incantations. But maybe Git is a bad example because it has a notoriously bad CLI.

Some other example, debugging. For me it seems that you can actually see whether a programmer uses a visual debugger or a cli. If they have to drop down to GDB then their code will most probably be sprinkled with useless debug macros.

Setting break points, jumping from function to function is easier with visual debugger and a good IDE. (note that the IDE can be emacs or vim running in a terminal session for what I care)

> With nearly every program that I use I start by depending heavily on the GUI and then transition to using almost exclusively keyboard shortcuts as I become a power user, as GUIs are fundamentally inefficient.

Keyboard shortcuts are awesome of course, but I think they are so efficient because there is a GUI around. In a GUI you can always see more state at the same time. This is because graphics can sometimes pack more than text in the same space (e.g.: a visualised Git tree or a graph spitted out from callgrind)

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

#276

Post by jl6 »

phoboslab wrote: post #33
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…

> 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…

Check out the icon used for Speed Camera on UK road signs. It still has bellows! Doesn't seem to cause a problem.

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

#278

Post by mdonahoe »

intoverflow2 wrote: post #175
CPLX wrote: post #18

I'm not sure how to tell this guy, but I'm over 40 years old and I have been using Apple computers literally since elementary school. At a certain point the reference to intuitive design can be to ones own past, if that past has become sufficiently ingrained and intuitive to users. I thought the lament about the photo app dropping the icon that looks like a camera was particularly odd. He seems uninterested in even a…

> He seems uninterested in even acknowledging the point that most cameras don't look like that anymore, and there are many (most?) full fledged adults who have never used a camera with a large attached lens. People say things like this in defence of the recent Apple UI changes but completely ignore the [iOS6 camera icon]( https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7d/IOS_6_Home_Sc... ) vs [iOS7+]( http://static1.i4u…

I consider this an an casualty of the switch to flat design: how do you draw a "flat" lens?

Without 3D or lighting effects, a lens is just a few concentric circles. So a flat picture of a camera housing is less ambiguous, even though it is not what a phone camera looks like.

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

#279

Post by moridinamael »

jpalomaki wrote: post #237

The camera icon is not just a picture of the physical world object. It is pretty universal symbol for taking pictures. When the same symbol is used in so many places, even people who have never used the physical object resembling the icon, will recognize its meaning. In my view the reason behind many of these user interface changes is not really improved usability. The simple reason is that no matter how good interfa…

Yup. This reminds me of the novel The Diamond Age in which the poor tend not to be able to read, but instead navigate the technological world exclusively using pictograms which descended from modern "icon" design.

In such a world, if you didn't choose to use an icon of a camera to denote "photo", what the hell else could you possibly use that would make any natural sense?

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

#280

Post by Retric »

yoz-y wrote: post #248
aetherson wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Camera's are on TV shows, books, and advertising so some 4-5 year old might not know it, but I suspect most would make the connection.

EX: http://www.buttonsoundbook.com/site/595626/product/ISBN%200-... (Recommended for ages 3 years and older.)

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