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Mercury OS

mercuryos.com

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Re: Mercury OS

#61

Post by janalsncm »

ilyt wrote: post #26
catchmeifyoucan wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, consider you have 3 apps: gmail, slack and google docs In gmail, you have a shipping confirmation, a calendar invite, and a team newsletter. In slack you have a question from a customer, a review request from the team, and a poll for the next offsite. And in Docs, you have a new project summary, a budget proposal, and a post-mortem doc. You see, how you actually have 9 different things to do (intentions), but t…

.... so from MBA that also doesn't know browser tabs exist. Also OS doesn't fix any of that, especially for the webapps as they tend to not integrate well with anything else

That’s not fair. Context switching often involves a lot more than opening up another tab. And even if it’s not a problem for you, maybe it’s a problem for other people? Or you in the future?

Maybe what I just outlined doesn’t require a new OS but acknowledging the problem seems in line with accepting the most charitable interpretation.

Re: Mercury OS

#62

Post by vondur »

m463 wrote: post #51
hexomancer wrote: post #18

This looks like the exact opposite of what I would do if I were to redesign operating systems. The job of operating system is just to run application and get out of the way, and most importantly be deterministic and reliable. I don't need my OS to "predict what I might need", I know what I need myself.

I would go in a different direction too. Personally, I would like some sort of "personal workspaces". Sort of virtual desktops that were project-oriented. I would like switch to a project, find all my notes, emails, lists, files and more (terminal windows? web browsing/tabs? apps?) in that environment. and when I run out of time, shut it down. Next time I switch to it, all my context is right there, ready to jump in.…

KDE Plasma has something like this called "Activities" Check it out.

Re: Mercury OS

#63

Post by Narishma »

m463 wrote: post #51
hexomancer wrote: post #18

This looks like the exact opposite of what I would do if I were to redesign operating systems. The job of operating system is just to run application and get out of the way, and most importantly be deterministic and reliable. I don't need my OS to "predict what I might need", I know what I need myself.

I would go in a different direction too. Personally, I would like some sort of "personal workspaces". Sort of virtual desktops that were project-oriented. I would like switch to a project, find all my notes, emails, lists, files and more (terminal windows? web browsing/tabs? apps?) in that environment. and when I run out of time, shut it down. Next time I switch to it, all my context is right there, ready to jump in.…

KDE tried something like that in KDE 4 but it wasn't well received so they toned it down in KDE 5.

Re: Mercury OS

#64

Post by egypturnash »

Rimintil wrote: post #22

> The process of moving from App to App generates friction that takes you out of flow and distracts you from your intentions. Please tell me why my workflow, which works for me, sucks more. What is this magical 'friction'? Reads like it was written by an MBA.

According to the "read more" link in the "humane" section(1), this friction seems to happen because the guy who came up with this proposal is painfully ADHD.

1: https://uxdesign.cc/introducing-mercury-os-f4de45a04289

Re: Mercury OS

#65

Post by tshaddox »

hexomancer wrote: post #18

This looks like the exact opposite of what I would do if I were to redesign operating systems. The job of operating system is just to run application and get out of the way, and most importantly be deterministic and reliable. I don't need my OS to "predict what I might need", I know what I need myself.

I agree, but to be fair, the vast majority of this stuff is very high level window manager and UI framework features.

Re: Mercury OS

#66

Post by whartung »

metadat wrote: post #52
m463 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would go in a different direction too. Personally, I would like some sort of "personal workspaces". Sort of virtual desktops that were project-oriented. I would like switch to a project, find all my notes, emails, lists, files and more (terminal windows? web browsing/tabs? apps?) in that environment. and when I run out of time, shut it down. Next time I switch to it, all my context is right there, ready to jump in.…

+1 to this, it's crazy to lose all (or most) contexts across a reboot or when switching between machines. Each app has some sync capabilities (e.g. PowerPoint, web browsers, Google docs, chrome tabs, Firefox tabs), but there is still no universal solution. Fuck.

MacOS is actually pretty good about this. It restores applications on restart, and it’s provided applications pick up where they left off.

I don’t use the workspace feature on the Mac, I assume they’re recovered as well.

Obviously applications need to be restart aware as well. I really like how the provided Mac apps (Pages, Numbers, etc. ) work with the first class document model in the system. I have dozens of Untitled documents across apps, some are years old. Never “saved” them. They just exist. Across reboots, app upgrades, and OS upgrades.

I wish more apps embraced my lazy house keeping.

I don’t know how the documents sync across devices, if at all.

I wanted to mimic the OS document model in Java with my own app, but that’s easier said than done.

Re: Mercury OS

#67

Post by ryukafalz »

I love that this concept tries to separate content from apps. Ever since I saw some of the ways early GUIs differed from today's, I've had a feeling that we've lost something with the way apps in today's desktops are completely isolated from each other. The Alto let you compose data live from multiple windows kind of like a shell pipeline does for command-line apps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrlSqtpOkw

The Locus and Flows in this concept seem like they could enable a similar workflow, as data isn't confined to "apps" the way it usually would be.

Re: Mercury OS

#68

Post by amluto »

They doubled down on iMessage’s usability problems. With iMessage, you can tell which of your contacts you are supposedly communicating with, but you can’t tell which actual identity (iCloud account email address or phone number) is involved.

It looks like, in MercuryOS, you can’t even tell what means of communication you’re using.

Re: Mercury OS

#69

Post by elzbardico »

Rimintil wrote: post #22

> The process of moving from App to App generates friction that takes you out of flow and distracts you from your intentions. Please tell me why my workflow, which works for me, sucks more. What is this magical 'friction'? Reads like it was written by an MBA.

Not an MBA, but an UX folk, an equally dangerous but different species
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