Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Woman Who Gave the Macintosh a Smile (2018)

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 38 posts

Re: The Woman Who Gave the Macintosh a Smile (2018)

#21

Post by amatecha »

matsemann wrote: post #19
dorkwood wrote: post #6

I love this video of Kare giving an introduction to the Mac interface on "Computer Chronicles" back in 1984 [1]. At first it seems quaint to see how slowly and carefully she explains what we now consider to be basic UI features. But then you realize that for many people in the world, a desktop computer is just as strange and confusing to them now as it was to most people back then. I think some of us (me included) wo…

Wow, she even explains you have to let go of the mouse button for it to be a click. Interesting watch.

Suddenly remembering my first encounter with this important distinction via the "mouseUp" event in HyperCard. I remember discovering that it's usually better to act on a mouseUp. On mouseDown feels too fast, and if you act on mouseDown you prevent the user from being able to move the cursor away to "cancel" the click. There are probably other reasons I can't recall at the moment, too :)

Re: The Woman Who Gave the Macintosh a Smile (2018)

#22

Post by kzrdude »

BrissyCoder wrote: post #20
kzrdude wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Word is available on office's cloud platform, too.

Yeah I realise that... I just assumed it doesn't have a save button. Am I wrong? Let me go check I guess... EDIT: Yep - no save button.

You're right. If I go about to find the "Save As.." action it's illustrated with a floppy disk with a pencil on top in the sharepoint/office cloud version of Word I have access to.

Re: The Woman Who Gave the Macintosh a Smile (2018)

#23

Post by BrissyCoder »

kzrdude wrote: post #22
BrissyCoder wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I realise that... I just assumed it doesn't have a save button. Am I wrong? Let me go check I guess... EDIT: Yep - no save button.

You're right. If I go about to find the "Save As.." action it's illustrated with a floppy disk with a pencil on top in the sharepoint/office cloud version of Word I have access to.

Funny we both seem to have a lot of licenses for software we never use. I just went and checked the desktop version of Word (which I haven't used in years)...

https://imgur.com/8POWvrq

Has a save button but superimposed with a refresh glyph along with accompanying mult-user text.

Re: The Woman Who Gave the Macintosh a Smile (2018)

#25

Post by aasasd »

Kare's art is full of character. The Solitaire cards are different from everything else in Windows. I recognize the Chicago font immediately upon seeing like three words for a split second (it's still used a lot in headings on videos and presentations, and sometimes even physical lettering). This is despite never having used the classic Mac or iPod.

Every time I need a good icon for my personal interfaces, I mourn that the art of 16x16 icons seems to be lost. In image search, ‘icon’ now means something like 256x256.

Re: The Woman Who Gave the Macintosh a Smile (2018)

#26

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

amyjess wrote: post #10
celim307 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably just nostalgia but man those icons remind me of how fun the internet and computing seemed in the mid late 90’s. Nowadays everything Seems sterile

Honestly a lot of people talk about how much they hate skeumorphism, but in the early '10s when most of the existing vendors abandoned it, it broke my heart and basically destroyed any love I still had for GUIs. First Microsoft abandoning skeumorphism with Windows Phone 7 (and later Windows 8), then Apple going to war against skeumorphism in iOS 7. That one-two punch just broke me, and it especially hurt when Apple d…

I loved the tactility of early versions of iOS.

That 1.0 screen was such a work of art, made of so many harmonious metaphors - the glassiness of the icons matching the glass of the screen, but with the depth contrasting with the flatness of the screen while also harmonising with the depth and curviness of the phone body.

Even the little blue glass dot in Maps had so much character compared to the generic indicator we have today.

iOS7+ is certainly usable, but it definitely lost some of its soul when the skeuomorphism disappeared. The design went from icons-as-objects to icons-as-menu-items. It's a small visual change, but a completely different set of UX metaphors.

Re: The Woman Who Gave the Macintosh a Smile (2018)

#27

Post by _joel »

matsemann wrote: post #19
dorkwood wrote: post #6

I love this video of Kare giving an introduction to the Mac interface on "Computer Chronicles" back in 1984 [1]. At first it seems quaint to see how slowly and carefully she explains what we now consider to be basic UI features. But then you realize that for many people in the world, a desktop computer is just as strange and confusing to them now as it was to most people back then. I think some of us (me included) wo…

Wow, she even explains you have to let go of the mouse button for it to be a click. Interesting watch.

Years ago, a friend had to visit an old lady who had just got her first computer as she said it wasn't working properly. They discovered that she was using the mouse as a pedal (like you get with sowing machines).

Re: The Woman Who Gave the Macintosh a Smile (2018)

#28

Post by paulcole »

BrissyCoder wrote: post #16

> Every fifteen minutes or so, as I wrote this story, I moved my cursor northward to click on the disk in the Microsoft Word toolbar that indicates “Save.” I guarantee the author did not use MS Word but rather some cloud platform to author this.

Why do you guarantee this?

Re: The Woman Who Gave the Macintosh a Smile (2018)

#29

Post by rmetzler »

> Through their work, and now hers, one can see a legacy of personal touch that one hopes will continue into our digital future on a deeper level than fingerprint readers. She gave the Mac a smile—where’s the smile now?

I‘m not really sure how literally this question is meant. The finder icon on macOS still has a smile.

Re: The Woman Who Gave the Macintosh a Smile (2018)

#30

Post by xattt »

HotDogLinux wrote: post #17
amyjess wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly a lot of people talk about how much they hate skeumorphism, but in the early '10s when most of the existing vendors abandoned it, it broke my heart and basically destroyed any love I still had for GUIs. First Microsoft abandoning skeumorphism with Windows Phone 7 (and later Windows 8), then Apple going to war against skeumorphism in iOS 7. That one-two punch just broke me, and it especially hurt when Apple d…

I also share your enthusiasm for the old GUI's, I used to love everything Apple did, but at this point I don't see myself ever buying anything from Apple ever again. For me it wasn't just the old iOS, it was also Objective-C that I loved, it's still my favorite programming language to use. When they went to Swift, that was the nail in the coffin. But I actually prefer iOS 5 over iOS 6. I bought a couple of old iPhone…

Where have you found refuge from abstract UIs in a mobile device?
Post reply on HN