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The Decline of Usability (2020)

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Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#21

Post by estebarb »

matthew_stone wrote: post #19
estebarb wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently I bought a MBP and I'm surprised by how hard to use it is. Printing by both sides? Not supported, you must do it by hand. And some apps print the pages in reverse order, so you end up having to sort the pages. Use numberpad . as . instead of ,? You have to download an app to use a sane default. Alt+. in terminal? No luck if you aren't using an English keyboard. Run a downloaded app? Run it, accept failure, s…

It has been possible to print double-sided since at least Lion/2008…

Only if you have a printer that supports it. Otherwise you have to do it by hand https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/how-to-print-dou...

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#22

Post by Condition1952 »

gjvc wrote: post #12
BruceEel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. For me personally macOS (or OS X back then) usability peaked at around ~Snow Leopard and it's been _mostly_ though not entirely downhill from there on. Hard to pick a 'worst offender', the System Settings panel in Ventura may be a good example, it is a literal struggle every single time I need to change something, typically as a result of some setting mysteriously changing itself back to what I do not want.

This thread correctly identifies "discoverability", perhaps aka "progressive disclosure", or "some form of incrementalism" as the measure by which good user interfaces are evaluated. Operating systems such as Windows, OSX, and Linux -- inevitability -- contain much complexity, and multiple modules, not all of which are necessarily in use by the users at any given time. Therefore, the problem of GUI design becomes one…

>Operating systems such as Windows, OSX, and Linux -- inevitability -- contain much complexity.

Operating systems should be modular, allowing the user to reduce as much bloating complexity as possible and needed.

I do not need unstoppable “gamed” and “studentd” services on my computer. The sealed system implemented by Apple has actually meant the overthrow of the root user by the corporation. Now I can’t reduce complexity, bloatware.

The only solution seems to be praying that BSD or Linux become useable one day

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#23

Post by Condition1952 »

quantum_bit wrote: post #13

He's right about Gnome for sure. I used to use Ubuntu 14.04-16.04 from 2014 to 2019 along with macOS all these years. Although macOS has a lot of problems, I returned to Ubuntu (22.04) since July in a new workplace, and it is horrible. This weird empty horizontal top panel and menus behind the hamburger button are just madness.

Sorry for being obnoxious but I think it’s worse than madness, it’s cruelty.

The GUI makes you look for basic stuff every time, such as gas Lightning

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#24

Post by attractivechaos »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #4

I for one miss the 3-D buttons of the Windows 95 era. It was obvious what could be clicked and what could not.

This! I hate iOS’ flat design and the trend after that. When that UI first came out, texts and buttons looked so similar that I often had to poke to distinguish them. Now iOS is not as bad but I still prefer its original 3D design. I guess Jobs would never approve the current iOS UI.

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#25

Post by tazjin »

> Despite being endlessly fawned over by an army of professionals

Yes, but these "professionals" consider everything in the vacuum of whatever software they're working on. Streamlined, cross-program UX is not just not considered, but actively discouraged. Everything needs to be its own island.

This is why as things progress I move more and more things into Emacs, with only the browser and a few websites remaining outside of it at this point. In Emacs you can't isolate your application to the point where I somehow have to learn your paradigm.

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#27

Post by nntwozz »

Condition1952 wrote: post #20
BruceEel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. For me personally macOS (or OS X back then) usability peaked at around ~Snow Leopard and it's been _mostly_ though not entirely downhill from there on. Hard to pick a 'worst offender', the System Settings panel in Ventura may be a good example, it is a literal struggle every single time I need to change something, typically as a result of some setting mysteriously changing itself back to what I do not want.

I am not afraid of the decadence they’ve made of the settings panel because I use Alfred. I haven’t yet installed Ventura. I had to downgrade from Monterey because the cmd-L keyboard shortcut had stopped working on Contacs.app

You can remap cmd-L in settings globally or for each app, did you try that?

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#28

Post by api »

bee_rider wrote: post #26

Why have desktop UI’s gotten so bad lately? My theory is that before we had UX experts, they had to hire, like, actual graphics designers.

I think a lot of it is the other way around: graphics design driven by branding rather than UX.

I also think the death of native development has a lot to do with it. The web is now the UI layer of desktop, but that means there is no consistent design language across the system.

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#29

Post by holoduke »

Y-bar wrote: post #2

The author mentions they reserve judgement about Mac OS because of lack of experience. But I would say the same decline is happening here. Especially Apple themselves seem infatuated with hiding things behind slow hover effects and way-too-subtle shades of grey. This is hurting discoverable portions of the interface, probably in the name of looking sleek, and once you have learned that something exists somewhere behi…

Or what about the scrollbar hiding automatically so its really hard to manualy grab the scrollbar handle and scroll with your mouse. Specially in long lists super annoying.

Re: The Decline of Usability (2020)

#30

Post by gjvc »

Condition1952 wrote: post #22
gjvc wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This thread correctly identifies "discoverability", perhaps aka "progressive disclosure", or "some form of incrementalism" as the measure by which good user interfaces are evaluated. Operating systems such as Windows, OSX, and Linux -- inevitability -- contain much complexity, and multiple modules, not all of which are necessarily in use by the users at any given time. Therefore, the problem of GUI design becomes one…

>Operating systems such as Windows, OSX, and Linux -- inevitability -- contain much complexity. Operating systems should be modular, allowing the user to reduce as much bloating complexity as possible and needed. I do not need unstoppable “gamed” and “studentd” services on my computer. The sealed system implemented by Apple has actually meant the overthrow of the root user by the corporation. Now I can’t reduce compl…

> Operating systems should be modular, allowing the user to reduce as much bloating complexity as possible and needed.

Yup, updated my comment to clarify that point -- thank you. "the overthrow of the root user by the corporation" -- damn. Good turn of phrase :-(

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