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The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)

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Re: The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)

#51

Post by azernik »

userbinator wrote: post #12
smacktoward wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows are gone Ehhh, yes and no; as mobile OSes have gotten more multitasking-friendly they've moved towards the "card" metaphor, in which each app runs in a card and there's some method for shuffling between them. And a card is really just a window that's maximized 100% of the time. (Which is how most general users use windows on the desktop, so they're not losing much.)

Hopefully the reason for a lack of windows on mobile devices is because their screens are too small to manipulate them effectively with a finger. Which is how most general users use windows on the desktop, so they're not losing much. I've noticed this too, and it's puzzling - I've seen people maximise browsers on large monitors and end up with a narrow column of text surrounded by tons of blank space, or the more dif…

I think it's a consequence of one of the points TFA brought up - WIMP systems were originally designed to approach modelessness, but users want modal interfaces. They want to go into the context of an application and then switch into a "mode" where they only need to know about the keyboard shortcuts, UI idioms, etc. of that one application.

Sometimes you can't accomplish a task like this, but on the frequent occasions when that happens I'm reminded of exactly how annoying it is to, for example, look at a screen that's split between browser and terminal and switch back and forth between the very different interaction paradigms the two require.

Re: The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)

#52

Post by ksk »

pqdbr wrote: post #45
m_mueller wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think stuff like that is ok iff it works consistently (>99%) and if it does something consistant as well. For example, on Windows I do like how I can usually predict what a right-click does. If Force Touch is used consistantly for context based interactions, then I think there would be some advantage on larger touch screens, since it could be executed wherever your fingers are, instead of scrolling back to the top…

You touched another interesting point. I remember reading somewhere that Steve insisted the mac shouldn't have a 2 button mouse for such a long time just because it would force developers make a simpler UI, where no 'hidden menus' could be created. The lazy option of just throwing everything under a 'right click' simply couldn't exist. If you think about it, Force Touch could create that 'right click' in iOS, which I…

> The lazy option of just throwing everything under a 'right click' simply couldn't exist.

Right, instead they chose to create something even worse - Option-Click.

Re: The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)

#53

Post by metasean »

jimmaswell wrote: post #48
metasean wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changing for change sake is bad, but questioning long-held assumptions can lead to highly desirable changes. I largely agree that what we have works, but I also like to see how it may change. One example that's been big in my life is the transition from a mouse to a trackpad. The mouse worked in many cases, but it was a nuisance for laptops. In my case, they also caused excruciating repetitive stress related-tendinit…

I always found trackpads to hurt my hand somewhat after a while in contrast with mice. Maybe you just had bad mice?

I tried multiple mice, trained myself to use my non-dominant hand for mousing, tried trackballs, and even tried a separate trackpad in the place that a normal mouse or trackball would be place - all to no avail.

In addition to avoiding detached pointer devices, I try really hard to use keyboard commands when possible. As a related side-note: I'd love an application that would automatically show me any relevant keyboard shortcuts when I use my trackpad. For example, if I were to click-and-drag over this sentence, then a reminder that I could use shift-option-arrows to quickly select words would pop up.

Edit to add: human bodies have a wide range of differences, which accounts for why one category of device causes each of us problems while another doesn't, and yet the category that causes problems between us is inverse.

Re: The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)

#54

Post by wingerlang »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #46
jimmaswell wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "stagnating", there's simply not much need to "innovate" it anymore. It works well for both new and advanced users. Changing the standard UI would just be a pointless frustration - see Windows 8.

OSX has never gotten the basic keyboard interactions right that Windows has had from the beginning: The ability to trivially navigate menus from the keyboard. I want Alt-F to open the file menu, and then "S" to save a file. Yes, I know that the Mac has Cmd-S to save, but there can be 50+ menu options spread across various menus, and the 10-15 that I use the most are far easier to remember (for me) as Alt-[menu letter…

What about 'CMD'+'?'

Re: The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)

#55

Post by jfim »

jacobolus wrote: post #44
m_mueller wrote: post #35

One thing that almost always gets overlooked when critizing / trying to innovate on Xerox Parc-like interfaces, is discoverability. Look at departures from this interface (or predecessors of it) and you'll almost always find a system where it's hard for users to discover what they can do and how their actions will affect the state. Most prominently: * iOS style gestures * Office Ribbons (where has my feature XY been…

I’d love to have a shell-like environment where every command’s output was a stream of structured records with support for rich data types (ideally including stuff like images), not just lines of plain text. The hard part here is not just figuring out all the core UI and protocols (though that would also take some work), but actually implementing all the hundreds or thousands of essential basic programs. Unfortunatel…

Isn't that what Powershell does? It passes structured records between processes when using pipes[0] and they can be formatted and written to disk[1], as they're not just a stream of characters.

[0] http://www.tomsitpro.com/articles/powershell-piping-filterin...

[1] http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2014/06/3...

Re: The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)

#56

Post by skymt »

m_mueller wrote: post #35

One thing that almost always gets overlooked when critizing / trying to innovate on Xerox Parc-like interfaces, is discoverability. Look at departures from this interface (or predecessors of it) and you'll almost always find a system where it's hard for users to discover what they can do and how their actions will affect the state. Most prominently: * iOS style gestures * Office Ribbons (where has my feature XY been…

The Office Ribbon is notable for being designed entirely for discoverability. What it lacks is familiarity.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jensenh/archive/2005/09/14/467126.as...

> Office "12" consolidates all of the entry points into one place: the Ribbon. So if you're trying to find a feature and don't know where it is, the scope of your search is drastically reduced. Click on the leftmost tab, and click across the tabs until you reach the end. That it. It's either there or it's not--there are no other "rocks" to look under, no other places we've hidden functionality. We've found in early tests that people find it easier to discover how to do new things in the Ribbon, and they're more apt to explore the UI looking for better ways to get things done.

Re: The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)

#57

Post by snowwrestler »

vbezhenar wrote: post #5

> We seem to have settled on the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) model, and there is very little real innovation in interface design anymore. It's an interesting exercise to compare this to the mobile platforms, e.g. iOS. Windows are gone. Icons are here. Menus are changed. Pointer is changed too (your finger is pointer, not an abstract arrow). Though on OS X desktop I don't see any innovations at all! May be I…

The big innovations in OS X are:

- Tabs allow you condense like windows into one. Collections of windows now have context with one another.

- Window management keys/gestures like Expose or Mission Control allow for many more active windows without getting lost.

- High speed local search (called Spotlight on the Mac) reduces the need for nested folders or really much organization at all. Also enables typing to launch apps.

- Free high-power apps like iTunes and Photos means that people never even need to see the file system at all for that type of content. Instead they spend all their time in the dedicated free app.

Re: The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)

#58

Post by tatterdemalion »

m_mueller wrote: post #40
hayksaakian wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least good CLI programs have a help command that spells out exactly what they do. Or even a man page.

Yes that's mostly enough for simple cases, but have you ever tried to discern a gcc command with 12 compilation flags enabled? It takes you half an hour to find everything you need in the man pages. 30 years after the wide scale spread of pointer devices this is IMO just ridiculous.

I wouldn't try to justify the awfully huge number of commands that many unix util implementations have - which seems like an anti-unix design movement to me - but you can at least cut down the 30 minutes of man page spelunking with man | grep -A 3 "\". Adjust -A argument as needed.

(for example, if you don't know what -A does on grep, run `man grep | grep -A 3 "\-A"`).

Re: The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)

#59

Post by jacobolus »

jfim wrote: post #55
jacobolus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d love to have a shell-like environment where every command’s output was a stream of structured records with support for rich data types (ideally including stuff like images), not just lines of plain text. The hard part here is not just figuring out all the core UI and protocols (though that would also take some work), but actually implementing all the hundreds or thousands of essential basic programs. Unfortunatel…

Isn't that what Powershell does? It passes structured records between processes when using pipes[0] and they can be formatted and written to disk[1], as they're not just a stream of characters. [0] http://www.tomsitpro.com/articles/powershell-piping-filterin... [1] http://blogs.technet.com/b/heyscriptingguy/archive/2014/06/3...

I’m not a Windows user, so I couldn’t tell you precisely. Those two articles don’t talk much about what kind of structure/format the records getting piped around have. Are they arbitrary hierarchies with rich (ideally extensible) data-types?

Re: The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)

#60

Post by drewgross »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #46
jimmaswell wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "stagnating", there's simply not much need to "innovate" it anymore. It works well for both new and advanced users. Changing the standard UI would just be a pointless frustration - see Windows 8.

OSX has never gotten the basic keyboard interactions right that Windows has had from the beginning: The ability to trivially navigate menus from the keyboard. I want Alt-F to open the file menu, and then "S" to save a file. Yes, I know that the Mac has Cmd-S to save, but there can be 50+ menu options spread across various menus, and the 10-15 that I use the most are far easier to remember (for me) as Alt-[menu letter…

I totally agree with you, Windows does it better, but cmd+shift+/ is a pretty good replacement. It opens the help menu, and then you can just type the name of the command you are looking for. It doesn't handle the case where you don't know a program well, but it's quite good at the case where you know a feature should exist, but you don't know the shortcut for it.
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