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OS X Lion: Macs' beginner-friendly days are over

extremetech.com

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Re: OS X Lion: Macs' beginner-friendly days are over

#31

Post by astral303 »

schrototo wrote: post #20

> and it’s taken them this long to learn how to quit an app, as opposed to simply closing its windows. Well that's the whole point: they shouldn't need to know the difference. The system should take care of that and beginning with Lion it will. > As another example, let’s say someone who’s never used Expose or Spaces accidentally activates Lion’s new full-screen feature in Safari. Apps that go full-screen create a ne…

Computers are cruel beings. You do one little thing wrong and all your work is gone. After being punished so much, it's no wonder older people are less playful (or many people who we call 'non-tech-savvy' or 'computer illiterate'): they don't want to get burned again.

Imagine you're working on a painting, and you have a cup of hot coffee sitting right next to it. You know that it's dangerous to keep that cup of coffee there and that a wrong flick of the wrist can ruin your work. So you get up and move that cup of coffee far away.

Compare this to computers: there are all sorts of cups of coffee right within your "clumsiness distance," except these cups are hard to see at first. So if you accidentally ruin your work with a spill, the geeks will come yelling: "you should not have hit that cup off coffee!" "You should've known it was there!"

Doesn't that sound ridiculous? Well, this describes years and years and years of web mail systems where you could accidentally close your window mid-e-mail and lose your work. GMail was the first e-mail provider to offer autosave as late as 2005, and, while I have no hard data to confirm, it was at least several years until Yahoo or Hotmail had that (and my paid e-mail provider Fastmail didn't have it until '09 or something like that).

Re: OS X Lion: Macs' beginner-friendly days are over

#32

Post by bjtitus »

kyleslattery wrote: post #24
bjtitus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you talking about not having to quit apps? Lion still has the concept of quitting apps versus closing windows. Are you just talking about iOS or am I missing something? I actually think the handling of background apps running state handling would be one of the best things to port from iOS to Mac. There are obvious large hurdles, though. --EDIT-- I guess you're talking about resume but the issue is having apps…

Lion actually adds some APIs so developers can make their apps work like iOS apps. If the developer allows, the OS can kill their app at any time when it's in the background. More info here: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.a...

Thanks for the info! Definitely did not know this was a new feature. It just seemed to me like applications doing this were checking for window closed events, finishing up any work, and then closing as soon as possible. I hope more Mac OS developers take advantage of this but I fear it will be seldom used.

Re: OS X Lion: Macs' beginner-friendly days are over

#33

Post by cpeterso »

alanfalcon wrote: post #8
cpeterso wrote: post #7

I've tried, but I just can't get used to Lion's "natural" scrolling. I think a better transition would be to leave mouse scrolling alone, but reverse the scrolling direction for MacBook trackpads and the "Magic Trackpad" device.

I'm just curious, are you using Apple's Magic Mouse, or a mouse with a traditional scroll wheel?

Traditional scroll wheel. I love the Magic Mouse, but its flaky right click is a deal breaker..

Re: OS X Lion: Macs' beginner-friendly days are over

#34

Post by Tichy »

schrototo wrote: post #20

> and it’s taken them this long to learn how to quit an app, as opposed to simply closing its windows. Well that's the whole point: they shouldn't need to know the difference. The system should take care of that and beginning with Lion it will. > As another example, let’s say someone who’s never used Expose or Spaces accidentally activates Lion’s new full-screen feature in Safari. Apps that go full-screen create a ne…

"So you tell them "swipe left or right with three fingers" and then they'll know"

I hope this is not the only way to get out of full screen mode? I think it would have been the last thing I tried. And there are a lot of things you can try - "three finger swipe" is completely arbitrary, after all.

I've been using a Mac for two years now, but I never learned any gestures and I would be screwed if they became mandatory. I guess I am still stuck in the "basic Windows switcher mode".

Re: OS X Lion: Macs' beginner-friendly days are over

#35

Post by cpeterso »

cpeterso wrote: post #7

I've tried, but I just can't get used to Lion's "natural" scrolling. I think a better transition would be to leave mouse scrolling alone, but reverse the scrolling direction for MacBook trackpads and the "Magic Trackpad" device.

btw, you can test drive Lion's new scrolling behavior on Leopard and Snow Leopard with the free app "Scroll Reverser":

http://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/

Re: OS X Lion: Macs' beginner-friendly days are over

#36

Post by astral303 »

kenjackson wrote: post #26
astral303 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, that's a difference that can be picked up experimentally and can start making sense: "two fingers keep me in the browser, three fingers throw me out of the browser and go somewhere else." You don't get punished by using the wrong gesture (unless it's a web page in Safari that doesn't support back and forward movement): if you use three fingers in one direction, three fingers in the other direction will get y…

How can you say there's no reason to discover to discover the difference between apps/system yet argue that they'll notice they jumped from one app to another? And as web apps approach the look and feel of native apps this will become harder to understand. As you point out, the distinction isn't necessary for many novices. Yet Apple is making the distinction a fundamental aspect of their gesture model.

I don't think that you can equate knowing that you have 'Office XP' vs 'Office 2003' (which is a difference that I maintain is inconsequential in daily use) to the difference of seeing your screen move off sideways onto another kind of application. Even if there is no application in another screen, that's still a difference that you at least will experience and wonder about.

Sure, web apps are getting closer to native apps and that's a great point (why is switching between web apps that much different than switching between spaces). However, most web pages still tend to look much like a web page and I maintain that people will discover the concept of different applications by associating them with what comes up once they click the dock icons (iCal, Mail, Settings).

Another point is that if this distinction is useless to novices (e.g. they don't use the gestures or they don't "get it"), then the more experienced users can pick up on this, and take advantage of this knowledge. Just because it's a fundamental aspect of the gestures does not hurt the novice aspect.

Re: OS X Lion: Macs' beginner-friendly days are over

#37

Post by astral303 »

bjtitus wrote: post #32
kyleslattery wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lion actually adds some APIs so developers can make their apps work like iOS apps. If the developer allows, the OS can kill their app at any time when it's in the background. More info here: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.a...

Thanks for the info! Definitely did not know this was a new feature. It just seemed to me like applications doing this were checking for window closed events, finishing up any work, and then closing as soon as possible. I hope more Mac OS developers take advantage of this but I fear it will be seldom used.

Nothing like a little encouragement for adopting this feature as a condition of being accepted in the Mac App Store to drive system feature adoption.

Re: OS X Lion: Macs' beginner-friendly days are over

#38

Post by orofino »

kenjackson wrote: post #16
cmelbye wrote: post #3

I'm not sure how he came to the conclusion that Lion isn't beginner-friendly anymore. The only reason it took him 20 minutes to get acclimated is because he's most likely been using advanced features of OS X (that were slightly changed in Lion) for years and it took him a little while to rewrite his muscle memory. I installed Lion on both of my parent's computers a few weeks ago. The only things they noticed that was…

First, I haven't used Lion yet. But from listening to Engadget it sounds as if they have made some rather confusing changes. For example, they point out that application-wide gestures are two finger and system-wide gestures are three finger. This strongly assumes that people know the difference. Based on convos I've had people don't. "Which version of Office are you using?" "XP". "Office XP?" "Umm, Windows XP?". "OK,…

This assumes the users have somehow discovered the gestures. Based on you're own example, I'd say that they won't. You can use the OS just fine without ever bumping into a gesture.

Re: OS X Lion: Macs' beginner-friendly days are over

#39

Post by ugh »

Tichy wrote: post #34
schrototo wrote: post #20

> and it’s taken them this long to learn how to quit an app, as opposed to simply closing its windows. Well that's the whole point: they shouldn't need to know the difference. The system should take care of that and beginning with Lion it will. > As another example, let’s say someone who’s never used Expose or Spaces accidentally activates Lion’s new full-screen feature in Safari. Apps that go full-screen create a ne…

"So you tell them "swipe left or right with three fingers" and then they'll know" I hope this is not the only way to get out of full screen mode? I think it would have been the last thing I tried. And there are a lot of things you can try - "three finger swipe" is completely arbitrary, after all. I've been using a Mac for two years now, but I never learned any gestures and I would be screwed if they became mandatory.…

You can press ESC (which, I think, is universally the standard command for exiting full screen mode), you can mouse up to the menu bar and click the full screen button or you can use the shortcut that gets you into full screen mode to exit it again.

I wouldn’t bother with gestures. I would tell my parents to press ESC. They know that button and they should already be aware that it is often used to exit full screen modes.

Re: OS X Lion: Macs' beginner-friendly days are over

#40

Post by ugh »

Lion doesn’t have any forced complexity. I just installed Lion on my parents iMac and they didn’t even notice (except for the new Mail app which they have no problem with).

You don’t ever need to use Mission Control, you don’t ever need to use full screen mode, you don’t ever need to use Launchpad.

(I reversed the scrolling direction and set it up to always display scrollbars. That’s it.)

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