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The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

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Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#101

Post by samatman »

brownjohnf wrote: post #77
burnte wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. The design of a hammer hasn't changed much in centuries because it's already designed well for its purpose. Same thing with sharks, I don't hear biologists say "there hasn't been much innovation in sharks for millions of years."

The design of a hammer has actually changed substantially over time. More recently, there's been a trend towards specialization in the framing hammer alone. 100 years ago most hammers looked like the classic hammers I remember from childhood: relatively small, sharply curved claws, a smooth face. As production framing exploded in the US after WWII, framers were pushing for more efficiency. The framing hammer got heav…

And furthermore, most nails aren't driven with a hammer at all, since the invention of the nail gun.

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#102

Post by capnahab »

brownjohnf wrote: post #77
burnte wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. The design of a hammer hasn't changed much in centuries because it's already designed well for its purpose. Same thing with sharks, I don't hear biologists say "there hasn't been much innovation in sharks for millions of years."

The design of a hammer has actually changed substantially over time. More recently, there's been a trend towards specialization in the framing hammer alone. 100 years ago most hammers looked like the classic hammers I remember from childhood: relatively small, sharply curved claws, a smooth face. As production framing exploded in the US after WWII, framers were pushing for more efficiency. The framing hammer got heav…

Noted. What has been stable for a long time and remains frustratingly static and unrefined is the field of surgcial instruments. There are a few exceptions but most haven't changed in the 20years I have been a surgeon. The regulatory costs of developing new instruments and intertia of manufacturers doesnt help. Once a manufacturer gains a market share they try and keep by not innovating which keeps their deveopment costs down and the consumer volume is comparatively low. I don't get the feeling there is any sense of patient altruism. I have been using the same 4mm dia endoscope 25cm long since 2007 when the first iphone came out. It is very simple, made of glass fibres with a sony 3chip camera that is 10y old. We get some v slow progression on video output and have just got 4k. Compared to consumer tech the advances are ridiculously slow. We need a camera (the iphone camera is small enough) on a steerable stick. How hard an engineering task can that be?.

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#103

Post by thomastjeffery »

svat wrote: post #76

My favourite part of this article (disclosure: I've made almost this exact comment before elsewhere): > The see-and-point principle states that users interact with the computer by pointing at the objects they can see on the screen. It's as if we have thrown away a million years of evolution, lost our facility with expressive language, and been reduced to pointing at objects in the immediate environment. Mouse buttons…

> > Using a command-line interface is like having to learn the complete Korean language just to order food in the Seoul branch of McDonalds. Using a menu-based interface is like being able to point to the food you want and grunt and nod your head: it conveys the same information with no learning curve.

That analogy makes one significant assumption: that you are trying to order food from McDonalds, which is a thing you are used to doing at place you are already familiar with. Of course it's more difficult to learn Korean when you just want to order some American food, but what happens when you try to order Korean food? What if you are trying to do something more complicated than order food? There are cases where learning Korean would be clearly beneficial.

The limitations of GUIs stand out most in technical tools. When the thing a user is trying to do is already complicated, it doesn't really help to give them a simplified menu system: that just provides a frustrating amount of options.

There has been a significant prejudice in UI/UX design to optimize for approachability, even when expressiveness is a better target.

Ordering food is a great use case for "point and nod" UX. The pointing and nodding only needs to occur a small number of times. There is much more need for approachability than expressiveness. To contrast, editing text is a terrible use case. A point and nod system would involve a fatiguing amount of pointing and nodding. There are reasons that tools like Vim and Emacs are widely popular, even with their steep learning curves.

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#104

Post by tacitusarc »

Osiris wrote: post #81
brownjohnf wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The design of a hammer has actually changed substantially over time. More recently, there's been a trend towards specialization in the framing hammer alone. 100 years ago most hammers looked like the classic hammers I remember from childhood: relatively small, sharply curved claws, a smooth face. As production framing exploded in the US after WWII, framers were pushing for more efficiency. The framing hammer got heav…

The think this supports the OPs argument that we're refining, not inventing. Everything you've said here is about refining, it's not a completely new way to attach materials together.

It may be splitting hairs, but I think certain changes to hammers must qualify as invention, certainly, including the crosshatch innovation, the material science involved for both fiberglass and titanium handles, and the improved weight distribution. It's not clear to me what would be considered a complete reimagining of the hammer, as a hammer is such a broad category of tool. Is a mallet a hammer? When I smack something with the backside of an impact driver, is it a hammer? I sure use wrenches as hammers occasionally.

So, what's the line between inventing and refining?

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#105

Post by vincentmarle »

amyjess wrote: post #38

> At recent user interface conferences, several speakers have lamented that the human interface is stuck. We seem to have settled on the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) model, and there is very little real innovation in interface design anymore. Alternately, you can say that UX design stabilized on a known good pattern. This reminds me of how some people will refer to stable software projects that only receive…

“There is no such thing as a dysfunctional system, because every system is perfectly aligned to achieve the results it gets” - Ronald Heifetz

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#106

Post by skinkestek »

capnahab wrote: post #102
brownjohnf wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The design of a hammer has actually changed substantially over time. More recently, there's been a trend towards specialization in the framing hammer alone. 100 years ago most hammers looked like the classic hammers I remember from childhood: relatively small, sharply curved claws, a smooth face. As production framing exploded in the US after WWII, framers were pushing for more efficiency. The framing hammer got heav…

Noted. What has been stable for a long time and remains frustratingly static and unrefined is the field of surgcial instruments. There are a few exceptions but most haven't changed in the 20years I have been a surgeon. The regulatory costs of developing new instruments and intertia of manufacturers doesnt help. Once a manufacturer gains a market share they try and keep by not innovating which keeps their deveopment c…

A couple of weeks ago I noticed we had several active farmers here, today a surgeon with twenty years of experience :-)

I'm happy to see so many different people here in addition to programmers, techies, VC etc.

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#107

Post by richardbrevig »

tacitusarc wrote: post #104
Osiris wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The think this supports the OPs argument that we're refining, not inventing. Everything you've said here is about refining, it's not a completely new way to attach materials together.

It may be splitting hairs, but I think certain changes to hammers must qualify as invention, certainly, including the crosshatch innovation, the material science involved for both fiberglass and titanium handles, and the improved weight distribution. It's not clear to me what would be considered a complete reimagining of the hammer, as a hammer is such a broad category of tool. Is a mallet a hammer? When I smack some…

The marketing terms here are continuous innovation (that doesn't change user behavior) vs discontinuous innovation (that changes user behavior).

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#108

Post by wruza »

AngryData wrote: post #86
suyash wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, let's play do this imaginative exercise - Hammer looks simple but actually if you're few inches off while slamming it down, you can seriously injure yourself if you're holding the nails with your other hand. I'm sure we have all experienced that. How about a sensor that always drives the motion in the right location, it can be done by having sensors that feel your muscle twitches and angle then recalibrate using…

Many framing hammers have a nail set on top which is a t-shaped depression with a magnet in it to hold a nail. Set the nail on top, swing and set the nail int he wood up to half depth, then hit it two more times to finish nailing.

Idk what professional woodworkers do today, but I just hit very easy for first few times (bait? non-native speaker) and then the nail holds with its “spearhead”, so you can remove your hand away from the danger zone. Or use pliers. I agree with the commenter above, hitting fingers is frankly a noob’s issue that is completely avoidable without rocket tech.

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#109

Post by kungtotte »

brownjohnf wrote: post #83
Osiris wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The think this supports the OPs argument that we're refining, not inventing. Everything you've said here is about refining, it's not a completely new way to attach materials together.

Yeah, probably should have clarified that I intended no comment on the OPs comment about innovation in computer UI. Just wanted to point out that there's actually a surprising amount of evolution in design of the hammer. Something that seems to be so simple, and has existed for thousands of years, can still be made better. I'm not a professional carpenter, but I've used a hammer a lot to do things like framing, and c…

Going back to the OP though that talked about settling on the WIMP model, you're not really contradicting their point.

If you take a hammer from 1920 and lay it next to the most jazzed up hammer from 2020, they would be recognised as the same tool/having the same general purpose. A carpenter from 1920 wouldn't need to change the way he used a hammer if he picked up the 2020 model, even if the 2020 model might enable new ways of actually using it (or improve old ways of using it).

So while there is evolution and development going on, we're not replacing the hammer metaphor as it were.

The WIMP model has also seen evolution and refinement, but it's still recognisable as the same model. I think the analogy holds.

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#110

Post by wruza »

catchmeifyoucan wrote: post #96
wruza wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But can’t you just question the need for a hammer in the first place. You don’t need one if you don’t have nails. You don’t need nails if you find a better way to fasten things. That’s the job to be done. Soo instead of a better hammer, let’s get rid of the nails. And with it goes the entire industry.

But why? Hammer/nail is essential, cheap and natural for crafting, and honestly I do programming in a somewhat handcrafted way, i.e. I don’t need sophisticated stock market frameworks for e.g. sending a request for quotelevel2. And many people seem to do that, that’s why deprecating ‘request’ instantly gave birth/popularity to ‘got’. There is no reason to complicate simple, battle-tested things until there really, really is a big reason. There is no such thing as “new”, until your task is “new” in any way. Using new things for the same old purpose is called fast fashion.
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