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The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

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Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#61

Post by na85 »

cameron_b wrote: post #60
wruza wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is new proposal for a hammer, may I ask?

Instead of whamming in a pointy cylinder, that stress and vibration might work it out back against the force of our whamming, we TWIST in a similar bit of hardware, only we wrap an inclined plane around the cylinder so that it cuts as we twist, making a walled channel that resists working out backwards under vibration.

Witty, but nails and screws serve different use-cases. Nails have better shear properties, for example.

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#62

Post by adamrezich »

eschaton wrote: post #51
bfirsh wrote: post #12

This inspired some of our design principles in the CLI Guidelines: https://clig.dev/ The CLI is the opposite of the Mac in a lot of ways -- reality instead of metaphors, remember and type instead of see and point, make it a conversation, and so on.

I haven’t read your piece yet, but I searched the page and didn’t find any mention of DEC VMS’s DCL, or Symbolics Genera’s Dynamic Listener. If you’re talking about how to design a command line for usability, you really need to become familiar with them, as usability and extensibility were explicit design points and they both work very differently than (and much better than) even modern UNIX. They should have come up…

I haven't read the piece either and I also don't know what any of those acronyms are all about but how is "I didn't read this but I CTRL+F'd for terms I believe to be important and they weren't there so what are you even doing" a useful comment to make?

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#63

Post by musicale »

varenc wrote: post #18
xnyan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Because people don’t understand what computing is about, they think they have it in the iPhone, and that illusion is as bad as the illusion that ‘Guitar Hero’ is the same as a real guitar.” For me, this was the signal that this as a "if only people used computers like I personally think they should" pieces. I know lots of people who play guitar hero, lots of people who play real guitars, and some who play both (me f…

I believe Alan Kay is saying that while people know Guitar Hero isn't real guitar, they don't know that using an iPhone isn't "what computing is about". Here's the full quote from him: If people could understand what computing was about, the iPhone would not be a bad thing. But because people don’t understand what computing is about, they think they have it in the iPhone, and that illusion is as bad as the illusion t…

This led me to Kay's full quote on ad blocking:

"A combination of this 'carry anywhere' device and a global information utility such as the ARPA network or two-way cable TV, will bring the libraries and schools (not to mention stores and billboards) of the world to the home. One can imagine one of the first programs an owner will write is a filter to eliminate advertising!"

[Kay72] "A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages"

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#64

Post by stouset »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #27
bawolff wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the cli is any less of a metaphor than the desktop is. Its just a different metaphor. Its not like shell pipelines are really pipes between two processes or a filesystem is the same as a physical system of files.

A pipe(2) in Unix is actually a piece of memory arranged so that it can be used as a FIFO, written and read to. There really is a physical object corresponding to the pipe, and the "|" refers directly if tersely to that object. A filesystem is fundamentally a way toorganize blocks of data on a storage medium. It consists of an actual physical medium with various attributes, which is used by a rule-driven system ("the…

Your first paragraph is literally an argument that pipes are, in fact, a metaphor.

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#65

Post by wruza »

reificator wrote: post #7
aetherspawn wrote: post #4

I think that using a bookcase that can be spatially ordered (in 2 dimensions) would be a really interesting concept for an operating system. Applications and files alike, filed on the same bookshelf. A very easy metaphor that makes it easy to explain how computers work, but also locate files that you use often (perhaps by size, shape, colour and location) without using the part of your brain that processes language.…

I will say that the Amazon Fire tablets (used to?) do this, and my non-technical family/friends would often come to me for help because they didn't know how to do or find what they needed. As a side note, this caused me to throw Ubuntu on a desktop/laptop for a few of the people who needed the most support, and within a month they didn't need any help and were trying to get me to install it on their friend's machines…

I think it boils down to what experience a person had before and what they need to do. Anyone who played 3d games has better chances to have spatial and visual investigatory abilities (and benefit from it), and anyone who worked in business knows that your files have to be sorted and hierarchy’ed. When needs do not meet experience, they want a single always-on-screen button to start the part of a system they’re familiar with.

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#66

Post by joezydeco »

itisit wrote: post #53
joezydeco wrote: post #33

I was always intrigued by the Starfire project mentioned here. The concept video from Sun is definitely peak 90s, but some of the things inside have finally come true 20 years later. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9OKcKisUrY

And Starfire was an updated take on Apple's Knowledge Navigator (1987): https://youtu.be/umJsITGzXd0 All of these visions feel like they stem from TMoAD. Does anyone make inspirational concept films for industry/academia/etc like these anymore?

No, and I like this blogger's reason why:

https://web.archive.org/web/20120206012754/http://counternot...

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#67

Post by arexxbifs »

Funny how all those visions (like the Starfire movie in the link, but certainly similar and even older ones, such as Xerox' promo for the Star or Apple's promo for Lisa) are almost always about some unspecified middle manager working either alone from home or in a large, private office.

Imagine an open floor plan with a hundred programmers or administrators shouting code and commands at their giant, flashing 52" screens all day, having to raise their arm in some ergonomically counter-indicative way each time they need to swipe a pop-up ad away from their vision.

I know what a general purpose computer is. I know how to control it. Without a reasonable interface to do so, being completely at the mercy of some "UI visionary" (probably the kind who decided we shouldn't be able to change the default fonts in programs made for text messaging), it'll be even more useless to me than most modern UI:s already make it.

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#68

Post by trentdk »

adamrezich wrote: post #62
eschaton wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t read your piece yet, but I searched the page and didn’t find any mention of DEC VMS’s DCL, or Symbolics Genera’s Dynamic Listener. If you’re talking about how to design a command line for usability, you really need to become familiar with them, as usability and extensibility were explicit design points and they both work very differently than (and much better than) even modern UNIX. They should have come up…

I haven't read the piece either and I also don't know what any of those acronyms are all about but how is "I didn't read this but I CTRL+F'd for terms I believe to be important and they weren't there so what are you even doing" a useful comment to make?

Seemed like a fine comment. I now know there are people who think those mentioned technologies are important enough to require mention in this sort of write-up. I’m now curious, and will look them up.

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#69

Post by jonahx »

xnyan wrote: post #14
bfirsh wrote: post #12

This inspired some of our design principles in the CLI Guidelines: https://clig.dev/ The CLI is the opposite of the Mac in a lot of ways -- reality instead of metaphors, remember and type instead of see and point, make it a conversation, and so on.

>Because people don’t understand what computing is about, they think they have it in the iPhone, and that illusion is as bad as the illusion that ‘Guitar Hero’ is the same as a real guitar.” For me, this was the signal that this as a "if only people used computers like I personally think they should" pieces. I know lots of people who play guitar hero, lots of people who play real guitars, and some who play both (me f…

> Can't imagine using computers without one. I have no empirical proof of this, but I would be willing to wager the deed to my house that the vast majority of users, having been explained what a cli is, the benefits of it, and how to use it, would chose to never use a CLI again.

As stated, I agree.

But "ugliness" and unfamiliarity are big confounds here.

The fairer experiment would be something like: For tasks where a CLI app is a better fit than a GUI, would a person trained in the CLI and forced to use it for, say, a day (however long it took to become comfortable and see productivity benefits) then decide to keep using it, or go back to a GUI?

Imagine an office worker and some cumbersome workflow with excel, microsoft word, and GUI folders.

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#70

Post by wruza »

blinkeer wrote: post #59
wruza wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is new proposal for a hammer, may I ask?

Pneumatic press, nail gun, screwdriver, impact wrench, seems like these could work, while maybe not a direct dirivative. Some things persist, and are stable as others have noted. A cool thing about innovation is that the ideas are often things people didn't know they wanted until they see it.

These are not improvements of a hammer design, but completely different things. Screws do not play well with deformation, but let’s ignore that: you’ll probably have both a hammer and one of these things in your toolbox, and you’ll miss a hammer if it’s not there. It is a general-purpose hit-force tool for hitting anything, not only nails. A better design for a hammer itself could include a claw or new hitting surface geometry, handle amortizer and so on, which are successfully done in variety, despite gp thinks that it’s “stuck”. First, it’s not, we just waited for better materials, advanced tasks, etc. Second, it is not much to do with hitting something with inertia-accumulated force.

Anyway my point is that if you change all hammers in the world overnight (like software does) you better have done a good job of century-testing your changes in all situations. If your reasoning is just “it gets old”, well, this site’s rules do not allow me to express what I think of that.

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