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The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

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Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#11

Post by Terr_ »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #2

"If we want to order food in a country where we don't know the language at all, we're forced to go into the kitchen and use a see-and-point interface. With a little understanding of the language, we can point at menus to select our dinner from the dining room. But language allows us to discuss exactly what we would like to eat with the waiter or chef." Ironically, Japanese menus almost universally have pictures of th…

> pictures of the food

It may partly a legal thing: Japanese law is big on not-misleading consumers. Depictions are considered close to formal promises of what you'll actually receive, or at least actual ingredients that went into it.

This is opposed to, say... an artistic free-expression of a shared aspirational dream of what the product's platonic ideal, and/or a bunch of things which are meant to evoke the feelings they hope you have in your subjective heart after your joyous nonrefundable purchase.

I'm not sure how well it could be adopted and adapted for American law, but I wish someone'd try.

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#13

Post by pstuart »

hyperhello wrote: post #3

I got to use a real Magic Cap, one of the examples of alternative metaphors, in the article, a black and white view of a room with a desk full of old office oddities. It was the worst user interface that may have ever been designed, like an Alice In Wonderland nightmare. Click an envelope on a desk or a clock, and it starts some other metaphor like an image of a spreadsheet in a dialog, or something, which might appe…

Skeuomorphism was an interesting idea but should have been basically just that -- a design inspiration, not a full fledged embrace of extending old school ways of things.

The folder metaphor for the Mac desktop was reasonable, but it effectively stopped there (as it should), rather than try to embed filing cabinets and document archives into pretty pictures to click and point as if it were a game to be played once rather than a daily driver.

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#14

Post by sublinear »

jacobgkau wrote: post #10
sublinear wrote: post #4

> Most computer programmers gave up complete control some time ago when they stopped writing in machine language and let assemblers, compilers, and interpreters worry about all the little details. Ah, there it is. The slippery slope that has stubbornly refused to be slippery for many decades now. Perhaps the author is completely misunderstanding these "metaphors".

What do you mean? With so many average users hopping onboard the LLM train to do what they could basically already do but with less effort (and less control), it seems like the slope's been slippery as predicted. (And even setting AI aside, I think many people would agree that e.g. Windows 11 gives them less "control" than versions of Windows from decades ago, with the advantage of being harder to break in some ways.…

Abstractions don't give up control. They remove options.

In the best cases, those options were redundant or irrelevant to your goals anyway (compilers most of the time).

In most cases, they add mild inefficiencies (OSes, libraries, frameworks, build tools, etc. and sometimes the compiler).

In the cases of LLMs, WYSIWYG, low-code, etc. you're straight up throwing the baby out with the bathwater and setting the house on fire while you're at it too. Such is impatience and greed.

This distinction between control over the outcome and the available options is no longer as subtle as it once was in the bad old days when everyone was more naive. It is genuinely interesting. I'm not wanting to be negative for the sake of it. I actually think we've had glimpses of more reasonable compromises in the highly constrained by committee environments of app/web dev.

There is a degree to which you can retain control with those higher-level abstractions, but it tends to be just as much or more work to maintain the illusion for their less experienced end users. You end up with more scaffolding than building. This is ultimately why we hire devs anyway and abandon those tools.

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#15

Post by mc3301 »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #2

"If we want to order food in a country where we don't know the language at all, we're forced to go into the kitchen and use a see-and-point interface. With a little understanding of the language, we can point at menus to select our dinner from the dining room. But language allows us to discuss exactly what we would like to eat with the waiter or chef." Ironically, Japanese menus almost universally have pictures of th…

Japanese menus do overwhelmingly include photos, and most of the bigger restaurants have moved to tablets with, of course, images.

The plastic 3d models are mostly in tourist areas.

There are so many restaurants in Japan (especially sushi, soba, tonkatsu, ramen, and izakaya) that have no images whatsoever. Often a handwritten menu or even wall-mounted menus are all that are available.

It's a confirmation bias thing: people come to Japan and go to restaurants with photos on the menu and food models, they think it represents all of Japan. They don't read Japanese, so they may not even know that they walking past a great restaurant without any food displayed outside nor images on menus inside.

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#16

Post by canuckintime »

Mac: "The Power to Be Your Best" (ed. Apple's slogan at the time)

Anti-Mac: “You won't always have to work that hard”

AI (Apple Intelligence) is the Anti-Mac:

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2024/11/12/misguided-apple-intellige...

“It’s really quite a different message than a bicycle for the mind.”

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#17

Post by asutekku »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #2

"If we want to order food in a country where we don't know the language at all, we're forced to go into the kitchen and use a see-and-point interface. With a little understanding of the language, we can point at menus to select our dinner from the dining room. But language allows us to discuss exactly what we would like to eat with the waiter or chef." Ironically, Japanese menus almost universally have pictures of th…

Note that this is mostly true in cheaper/chain restaurants. Overwhelming majority of izakayas have the menu's to be handwritten / written on the wall without any pictures.

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#18

Post by paradox460 »

pstuart wrote: post #13
hyperhello wrote: post #3

I got to use a real Magic Cap, one of the examples of alternative metaphors, in the article, a black and white view of a room with a desk full of old office oddities. It was the worst user interface that may have ever been designed, like an Alice In Wonderland nightmare. Click an envelope on a desk or a clock, and it starts some other metaphor like an image of a spreadsheet in a dialog, or something, which might appe…

Skeuomorphism was an interesting idea but should have been basically just that -- a design inspiration, not a full fledged embrace of extending old school ways of things. The folder metaphor for the Mac desktop was reasonable, but it effectively stopped there (as it should), rather than try to embed filing cabinets and document archives into pretty pictures to click and point as if it were a game to be played once ra…

People don't seem to remember, but the finder used to be spatial. You'd open a folder, and a new window would pop up atop your old one.

We can still do this, but thankfully the ui paradigm seems to have advanced to the point that it assumes users don't need to see a stack of every directory they opened. And if they do, Miller columns are superior anyway

Re: The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

#19

Post by ryanmcbride »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #2

"If we want to order food in a country where we don't know the language at all, we're forced to go into the kitchen and use a see-and-point interface. With a little understanding of the language, we can point at menus to select our dinner from the dining room. But language allows us to discuss exactly what we would like to eat with the waiter or chef." Ironically, Japanese menus almost universally have pictures of th…

problem with doing the models in western restaurants is they'd have to get them redone every 6 months when they get a new chef because I swear I haven't seen a menu stay consistent for longer than that in ages.
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