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Metro

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Re: Metro

#51

Post by angusgr »

zizee wrote: post #42
glhaynes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point - though I believe they were called windows on previous GUI systems. EDIT: Though now that I think about it and, IIRC, Xerox's stuff didn't have overlapping windows either. Apple's Lisa and Mac did. I think Englebart's demo had windows but I'm not sure if they overlapped.

I recall a story (maybe an urban myth) about Steve Jobs visiting Xerox's labs and seeing their UI in action and thinking "we've got to have that". He went back to tell Woz all about it, telling him that Xerox's UI supported overlapping windows and that Apple needed to do the same. Woz was amazed that it was possible to have overlapping windows on such a resource constrained machine. But if Xerox engineers could do it…

It's a good story.

According to the Apple stories I've read, Wozniak had little to no involvement with the creation of Macintosh. He was in a plane crash in 1981. When he came back to the company in 1983 he was mostly involved with the (increasingly sidelined) Apple II team.

But overlapping windows first came to Apple with the Lisa, anyhow. Some of Bill Atkinson's photos here show them from December 1979 or early 1980. Story says Bill wasn't sure whether they predated Apple's Xerox visit, or not. http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Busy_Being_Born.t...

Anyhow, it's a good story. If it has some basis in truth it might be with s/Woz/Atkinson/ (he was their UI/graphics guru programmer) and s/Macintosh/Lisa/. :)

Re: Metro

#52

Post by lallysingh »

toddmorey wrote: post #20

I think metro is very minimal and very clean. But it's also... cold. A bit too austere. The goal for an interface isn't to impress--it's to connect. Somehow, I've never felt a sense of connection with the Metro interfaces. It feels like design borrowed from the annual report of a faceless international corporation. All design; no personality. I like simple and clean. And I like minimalism. But I also think you have t…

Indeed, it's essentially a live dashboard with a built-in program launcher. It shouldn't be the thing you connect to.

It's just a browsable report of the status of things you care about, with the UI more trying to get out of the way, and provide options, than be a "thing" in your world by itself.

On that note, It probably should (and perhaps will) become more subtle over time. I'd prefer it taking the same approach as classic mac os: stay in black & white so that the user's real data is in color. They won't do that, of course, but a subdued palette could really help. Of course, then the individual widgets need to really bring home their content's presentation.

Re: Metro

#53

Post by cooldeal »

bane wrote: post #17

Finally a Gruber post I haven't felt forced to flag. A pretty good analysis, excellent (as usual writing), interesting testable predictions plus just enough Apple flag-waving so you don't forget which religion he follows. edit reading through the comments shows a commensurate level of better discussion than the usual Gruber response as well.

Err, he's wrong on ARM PCs not running desktop Windows, I don't see why this wrong post needs to be on top of HN. It's like there's like zombies that seem to have a need to auto upvote any post by Gruber. Maybe they're similarly misinformed.

Re: Metro

#54

Post by crenshaw »

ethank wrote: post #36
crenshaw wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the act of flipping between them is not meant to be a common event. But I do agree they do need to clean up the edges, although I don't think its "critical" for v1 of Metro.

I disagree actually. I think cohesiveness should be a pre-requisite for the release of this.

I don't think cohesiveness across these systems needs to be a prereq. In classic mode things should work great. In Metro mode things should work great. Bumpiness in transition, IMO, is acceptable for v1.

To put it another way, I'd much rather have bumpiness shipped on day X rather than a delay to clear up all the transition bumpiness and ship 6 months after X. Although I'd like to see updates that fix the transitions come out a 8-12 months after release.

Re: Metro

#55

Post by [deleted] »

krevis wrote: post #50
zizee wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall a story (maybe an urban myth) about Steve Jobs visiting Xerox's labs and seeing their UI in action and thinking "we've got to have that". He went back to tell Woz all about it, telling him that Xerox's UI supported overlapping windows and that Apple needed to do the same. Woz was amazed that it was possible to have overlapping windows on such a resource constrained machine. But if Xerox engineers could do it…

Not Woz, Bill Atkinson. http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story... "Smalltalk didn't even have self-repairing windows - you had to click in them to get them to repaint, and programs couldn't draw into partially obscured windows. Bill Atkinson did not know this, so he invented regions as the basis of QuickDraw and the Window Manager so that he could quickly draw in covered windows and repaint portions…

[deleted]

Re: Metro

#56

Post by crenshaw »

eykanal wrote: post #44

If I'm reading this right, Gruber's effectively saying, "Metro, and Metro alone (i.e., no desktop), is a good competitor to the iPad." That's wonderful; a real iPad competitor. But what about all the rest of the computers? You know, those big things on your desktop? We all know just how smart most users are when it comes to figuring out how to use stuff on a computer. Its taken years to get to the point where your ty…

That's right, photoshop isn't going to be going Metro anytime soon, and neither is Matlab, or Autocad, or Excel, or video editing software, or any "Pro" program (for lack of a better word).

I'd actually be surprised if there isn't a fully staffed team working on a Metro version of the Office suite.

Re: Metro

#57

Post by zizee »

krevis wrote: post #50
zizee wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall a story (maybe an urban myth) about Steve Jobs visiting Xerox's labs and seeing their UI in action and thinking "we've got to have that". He went back to tell Woz all about it, telling him that Xerox's UI supported overlapping windows and that Apple needed to do the same. Woz was amazed that it was possible to have overlapping windows on such a resource constrained machine. But if Xerox engineers could do it…

Not Woz, Bill Atkinson. http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story... "Smalltalk didn't even have self-repairing windows - you had to click in them to get them to repaint, and programs couldn't draw into partially obscured windows. Bill Atkinson did not know this, so he invented regions as the basis of QuickDraw and the Window Manager so that he could quickly draw in covered windows and repaint portions…

Ah, excellent stuff. Thanks for the correction and digging that up.

Re: Metro

#58

Post by statictype »

aik wrote: post #47

>I’m hung up on the question of how any OS that lets you do everything Windows does could compete with the iPad, because the iPad’s appeal and success is largely forged by the advantages that come from not allowing you to do so many of the things Mac OS X can do. So you're saying the iPad is successful because it can't do stuff OS X can do? Sorry I don't understand -- that sounds a bit silly to me. I thought it was t…

I thought it was the portability and size and ease of access to apps (the ecosystem around the device) that makes the iPad successful.

All of these things are possible because of the restrictions in iOS.

For example, the lack of a filesystem forces apps to have a more simplified data access mechanism[1].

The good battery life and response time comes from the fact that the OS puts severe limits on what each app can do.

[1] - There's an escape hatch of course, with something like Dropbox

Re: Metro

#59

Post by ashr »

jonpaul wrote: post #35

I feel like one of the few who sees the emperor with no clothes. Let me first start by stating that I do believe that touchscreen devices will continue to revolutionize industries, as they already have. But, why in God's name are Microsoft and Apple trying to shoehorn the touch-screen onto the desktop? Mac OS X Lion is probably the last OS X version that we'll see. With each version it's gotten closer and closer to b…

Have you ever experienced coworkers discussing something in front of the computer and touching the monitor screen time and again to point out things? It is not the most popular use case, but it does show that touching a screen to interact with a desktop is a natural inclination. Even with a desktop.

Re: Metro

#60

Post by eru »

jrockway wrote: post #23
brianwillis wrote: post #5

Thinking about it, isn’t window an odd word choice for what we call movable, stackable, resizeable content regions in a user interface? Other than being rectangular they’re not like real-world windows at all. I can remember my high school computer studies teacher explaining they're called windows because they're split into panes. Microsoft Windows versions 1 and 2 didn't actually have stackable overlapping windows (y…

This makes a lot of sense. Emacs calls the OS-level-thing-to-draw-on a "frame", and then you have non-overlapping "windows" inside the frame.

Yes, but that's because Emacs' windows were invented for the console. So they had to use a different word for what they call "frames" later on.
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