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

nicholaswindsorhoward.com

431–440 of 440 posts

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

#431

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,

> is there anything in the new Photos icon that tells you that it anything to do with images, photos or image manipulation Yes, it says "Photos" below it

Ah, a true advocate for the CLI, I see. GUIs - who needs them?

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

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The icon is recognizable because younger people learn the weird boxy icon means save. Even with an explanation of the icon's origins, for the younger generation, the icon is recognizable but not meaningful . Can we devise a more meaningful icon? Can we break with convention and just choose a different icon that's recognizable but more aesthetically pleasing or consistent with our style guides, even if it's still mean…

I bet when you see a red octagon, you just think of it as a thing on the side of the road that means "stop", don't you? But despite your not knowing its origin, not knowing why it means stop, it still works well right?

To be honest, I don't know what point you're trying to make. It is as if you think I was claiming arbitrary symbols cannot work well as icons. But I actually said the opposite of that: the floppy disk is basically an arbitrary symbol at this point. It works because we train people what it means.

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

#433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The icon is recognizable because younger people learn the weird boxy icon means save. Even with an explanation of the icon's origins, for the younger generation, the icon is recognizable but not meaningful . Can we devise a more meaningful icon? Can we break with convention and just choose a different icon that's recognizable but more aesthetically pleasing or consistent with our style guides, even if it's still mean…

What, you really think kids have no idea what floppy disks are? Of course they do! They're young, not stupid. It's not as hard as you're making it sound. Language is full of dead metaphor. Words and symbols have meaning because they have been given meaning; most of the associations might as well be arbitrary. Doesn't matter; humans are very good at recognizing these associations and deriving the intent.

Floppy disks have entirely disappeared from our daily lives except as an icon (and then largely only on Windows). A computer-savvy 18 year old that grew up on Macs could have entirely grown up without ever using a floppy disk and rarely if ever seeing the icon. I know adolescents that have never seen a floppy disk. Being unfamiliar with an obsolete media format doesn't make them stupid.

As for the rest of your comment, I'm not sure what you think I was trying to make sound difficult. I was arguing that it's entirely possible to replace the floppy disk with an arbitrary symbol, and it's just inertia (user training and a strange sacredness afforded this one random icon) that really keeps it around. I think assosciating a distinct symbol with an action is pretty damned easy, actually. (Designing a good symbol can be hard, though.)

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

#434
post #344
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone should be using the command line if that argument were true. Well, yes — they should. Would you rather communicate with speech or by pointing and grunting? We do need better languages for conversing with our computers, but we can't get rid of the need for language.

They should... and they do, in the form of Siri! I hope someday it outgrows its current limitation to relatively simple tasks.

Is Siri big in the US? Here in Europe I see a lot of people with iPhones but I have never seen anyone use Siri. I have seen my friend attempt whatsapp messages via the vice recognition thing while he is driving, but it looks way more hassle than what it is worth.

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

#435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, you really think kids have no idea what floppy disks are? Of course they do! They're young, not stupid. It's not as hard as you're making it sound. Language is full of dead metaphor. Words and symbols have meaning because they have been given meaning; most of the associations might as well be arbitrary. Doesn't matter; humans are very good at recognizing these associations and deriving the intent.

Floppy disks have entirely disappeared from our daily lives except as an icon (and then largely only on Windows). A computer-savvy 18 year old that grew up on Macs could have entirely grown up without ever using a floppy disk and rarely if ever seeing the icon. I know adolescents that have never seen a floppy disk. Being unfamiliar with an obsolete media format doesn't make them stupid. As for the rest of your commen…

One need not have ever personally used a floppy disk in order to recognize the symbol and pick up its meaning through cultural context; this is exactly how we learn to associate meanings with most of the symbols we use. We gain familiarity with all kinds of obsolete technologies throughout the course of an ordinary education, and easily recognize images of such devices whether or not we've ever seen one in real life - but beyond that, we learn to recognize all kinds of completely abstract symbols and use them as comfortably as words or numbers. There's nothing harmful about the fact that the "save" icon happens to look like an obsolete bit of storage media; the "save" symbol could have any shape, as long as it doesn't already represent something else.

Of course it's possible to pick a different symbol to represent the action of saving data to permanent storage: but why bother? We have a symbol, and it's as good as any other arbitrary symbol might be. Changing it would create confusion for no benefit, since it's ultimately the association of the symbol with the action that matters, and not the history of that symbol's origin.

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

#436
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox's problem is that it does the whole UI by itself. This basically makes it look out of place anywhere they haven't explicitly put effort into giving it a similar experience. It looks out of place on El Capitan and on macOS Sierra it's downright disturbing. I don't want tab titles in Times New Roman (at least it reminds me of that).

> Times New Roman (at least it reminds me of that). Really? The tab titles on my firefox are very clearly a sans-serif font, and don't look at all out of place.

Could be that that got fixed. I don't use Firefox on a daily basis so I tend to be a few builds behind on the beta channel.

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

#437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool, so we don't need icons at all!

Indeed, icons are unnecessary. They're there to fill space with colors, which people like. Full = good. Color = happy. good + happy = sales.

Is happiness unnecessary? Doesn't it matter what people like? I don't mean the masses, I mean people who evolved to navigate meatspace. Shouldn't designs make people happy?

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

#438
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.

Get Spectacles, which is free, then enjoy making a window maximised (without making it fullscreen) by pressing option command f. Also, moving windows between monitors, making them side-by-side etc are insanely easy.

Thank you very much!

To my surprise - or not, now that I think of it - I actually had Spectacles installed already, but I had not come around to getting acquainted with it.

Major facepalm for me... ;-) Now, off to put on the spectacles... ;-)

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

#439
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.

YMMV. I'm far faster at picking text labels from a list than picking the icons. I see the text label as an icon. The text "icon" is simple and unchanging. I can pick it out much faster than funny pictograms that change with each OS version.

> The text "icon" is simple and unchanging. I can pick it out much faster than funny pictograms that change with each OS version.

Tell that to my muscle memory that types ⌘A > iP for iPhoto and ⌘A > iCal for iCalendar.

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

#440
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see anything particularly sexist nor insulting about a company having a target demographic. Most companies that sell products do. That said, I was thinking along similar lines a few weeks ago. I was at a home improvement store browsing the power tools for a jig saw when I came across a hot pink drill kit. "Hot pink?" I thought to myself. "Did they see that the number of women interested in home improvement is…

I think people should make diverse aesthetically pleasing things (even if only some people find some of those things to be aesthetically pleasing). The world needs diverse things and something for all tastes. What I dislike very much, however, is strict bucketing or stereotypically selling those things. Pink drills? Why not, though maybe blue, green, orange, magenta and so on drills would also be cool to have. And pl…

Sorry for taking so long to respond to this. I've been carefully mulling it over the last few days.

> I think people should make diverse aesthetically pleasing things (even if only some people find some of those things to be aesthetically pleasing).

I agree completely.

> The world needs diverse things and something for all tastes.

I agree here as well.

> What I dislike very much, however, is strict bucketing or stereotypically selling those things.

I understand why someone might find that distasteful. The problem is that marketing budgets are only so big, and companies need to identify some well-defined subset(s) of the population in order to effectively advertise and (hopefully, to them) sell their products. Perhaps it's unfortunate, but the straightforward way to advertise to some group of people is to identify things that some large percentage of them have in common, and appeal to those things. If the selected strategy doesn't work, it's time to abandon it and come up with a new one. If Kyome's advertisements have been along the same lines for some time, then it's likely that it's been effective. If the adverts aren't working, Kyome will eventually ditch them in favor of something else. For what it's worth, there is (usually) no ill intent behind it -- it all just comes down to trying to effectively advertise without spending a fortune creating tailored advertisements for everybody. If you let it get to you, then you're going to be constantly offended by all the advertisements that (unfortunately) fills the modern world.

> Pink drills? Why not, though maybe blue, green, orange, magenta and so on drills would also be cool to have. And please don’t write “drills for the female renovator” above them.

Again in agreement.

> Also, if there is only one shitty pink drill and the rest of the stuff is not available in pink, wouldn’t you say that sends a message, too? It says something about how normal it is for women to do e.g. home renovations. It says something about their status and role and as such is pretty shitty. See the wider context.

I didn't notice any other pink tools, but if they were there, it's likely I overlooked them. I'm not the most observant person in the world, especially when I'm locked on target. The only reason I even noticed the pink drill was because it was out of place, not with the other drills, but on the counter with the "display models" of a bunch of handsaws rather than on a shelf.

The thing is, up until recently, it hasn't been normal for women to do home renovations in the US. There has been growing interest in DIY home improvement and construction projects among women in just the last few years. Of course, there have long been some women interested in it (my mom, for example), but they didn't constitute a large enough segment of the market to convince companies to produce demographic-targeted tools. That's apparently beginning to change.

> (Also, your assumption that you are somehow uniquely positioned for glasses for people looking at screens all day is itself somehow weirdly sexist. So many people look at screens all day for all kinds of reasons, irrespective of their gender.)

I've read and re-read what I wrote here, and I couldn't at first figure out where you got the idea that I think I'm somehow "uniquely positioned" for such glasses. I gather that you're German, though I'm not sure German is your native tongue (your written English is very good). If it is, it may be a "language barrier" type thing, and I think the misunderstanding likely comes from this phrase: "someone is finally making glasses for me". I can see how that might be taken to mean that I thought the manufacturer literally had me specifically in mind when creating their product or their advertisement. However, this is a common figure of speech (a hyponymic form of synecdoche) in US English that I suppose could be read "for me and people like me in some relevant way", with the subtext that it feels as though they might as well have had me in mind while creating it. One alternative, "for us", is too nonspecific and ambiguous -- who's "us" in this case? me and you? unspecified people I happened to be with when the event was occurring? everyone in the whole world? glasses-wearing people who look at computer screens all day?. Compared to "for us", "for me" also puts more emphasis on the fact that I myself am a member of the group (to the point that it might even be the only reason why I care). Another alternative, "for people who wear glasses and spend all day looking at computer screens", while it has the virtue of specificity and unambiguity, is just way too verbose. One middle-of-the-road alternative would be to say "for me and people like me", which itself is perhaps ambiguous enough to lead to similar confusion because it doesn't specify in what way(s) the referents are similar to myself. I hope that helps clear that up. Please let me know if I've made any wrong assumptions here or if I'm not making sense.

Finally, I really don't know how you're able to read sexism into that little anecdote. I didn't mention gender or sex in it anywhere. I didn't even use any words that connote or otherwise imply gender. Regardless, you don't know me and you don't know anything about my gender, but your assumptions here have left me too confused to be offended.

If you have suggestions on how I could make my use of language better or more clear in the future, please let me know. I'm always striving to improve my communication skills.

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