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The Woman Who Gave the Macintosh a Smile (2018)

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31–38 of 38 posts

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

#31
post #10
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…

Purely speculative, but I’m sure Jobs held back the flat UI changes. In his absence, Jonny Ive got carte blanche to go wild with his featureless, sexless UIs. Apple leadership obviously cut him off a few years ago after realizing the lack of sustainability of his design.

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

#32
post #11

I always wondered who came up with that slowly pulsing light on sleeping first generation ibooks. It seemed like someone had put a lot of thought into that: It was very calming.

Very calming as it mimics slow, relaxed breathing. Patented by Apple in 2002. https://patents.google.com/patent/US6658577

Thanks.

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

#34
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.

The paper manual of the original Macintosh in 1984 explained carefully and in details how to use the mouse (starting at page 13).

https://archive.org/details/1984macintoshmanual/page/n14/mod...

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

#35
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Sadly nowhere. I've gone back to having multiple devices, a Nexus 4 for apps/browsing, an iPod nano 2nd gen for music, and at times an iPhone 4 for phone calls, sms and email. I can't use a device with extra tall aspect ratio like 18:9 or a notch or rounded corners on the actual display.

I had thoughts of making an old iOS style UI for Android, but came to the conclusion that Android is too f*ucked and poorly designed, it just will never work right.

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

#36

> 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?

Because I believe it is most likely true.

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

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The paper manual of the original Macintosh in 1984 explained carefully and in details how to use the mouse (starting at page 13). https://archive.org/details/1984macintoshmanual/page/n14/mod...

This is fantastic, thanks for sharing!

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

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The paper manual of the original Macintosh in 1984 explained carefully and in details how to use the mouse (starting at page 13). https://archive.org/details/1984macintoshmanual/page/n14/mod...

> “It will soon be second nature”

That’s for sure!

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