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The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)

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Re: The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)

#71

Post by rsync »

joshuapants wrote: post #11
nextos wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't tiling window managers, and the revival of vim-like keybindings (vimperator, zathura...) somehow a bit of response to this demand? I'm very satisfied with keyboard-driven, text-mode little Unix applications that compose well. For example, as old as mutt is, you can still plug it in to e.g. notmuch to achieve very modern Gmail-like indexing.

> tiling window managers A tiny fraction of the already small number of linux users > revival of vim-like keybindings Probably less small, but still miniscule. I do think it's safe to say the idea that "digital natives" would demand more powerful interfaces didn't come true.

"A tiny fraction of the already small number of linux users"

OSX has several tiling applications that work quite well - I have been using OSX as a tiling WM since 2009 and it works great. Prior to that I used ion3 in FreeBSD.

It is a minority, but it's not at all limited to Linux users. Further, didn't I read that the new Windows had tiling built in in some capacity ?

Re: The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)

#72

Post by phaemon »

jjoonathan wrote: post #3

Perhaps it's an interesting examination of co-evolution between the computer, the GUI, and the and user, but the central thesis is silly. If the inversion process you use to arrive at "anti-" statements is poorly defined, you are free to make them mean anything you wish. In this case, they were made trivially equivalent to the aforementioned evolution. There's nothing wrong with this except that the author then expec…

> the central thesis is silly

I thought it was an exploration, not a thesis. What do you think the thesis actually was?

Re: The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)

#73

Post by PuppyWhirl »

Swizec wrote: post #29
userbinator wrote: post #4

We predict that people who have grown up with computers will be much more capable as computer users than the current generation of users. Thus, they will be able to use (and will in fact, demand) expressive interfaces with advanced means of expressing their wants. How unfortunate that this did not turn out to be the case, and I think it's likely that is because most people liked the "simple and easy" Mac-like UIs wit…

> The point about "user control" is odd though, since that's basically the exact opposite of the Apple philosophy today, and even the older Macs seemed more opaque and with less user control than the PCs of the time. As an advanced user, I don't want more control. I want defaults that are good enough that I never want to change them. Every hour I spend tinkering with my computer, is an hour I didn't spend achieving u…

Why not both? I want good defaults, and also the ability to change the things that I might want tweaked for whatever reason down the line. A powerful preferences interface is the software equivalent of opening up the hood of a car -- just because I want it to run well doesn't mean I'm not gonna poke around.

Re: The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)

#74

Post by vacri »

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.

> have you ever tried to discern a gcc command with 12 compilation flags enabled?

This isn't a 'discoverability' problem - the problem is the complex task. Most of what you're doing on the commandline isn't "gcc with 12 compilation flags". "How do I print this document?" is an example of poor discoverability on the CLI; command flags are not.

Re: The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)

#75

Post by PhasmaFelis »

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…

Thank you. You've communicated why many users find CLIs intimidating better than I've been able to. Faced with a new GUI program, even on an unfamiliar operating system, an average user can usually click around and experiment enough to figure out the basics in a few minutes. This is impossible with an unfamiliar CLI, or with programs like Vim, and what help functions exist (if you can find them) are usually strongly geared towards refreshing an experienced user's memory rather than educating a newbie (man pages in particular are often less than helpful to anyone who doesn't already know how to use the program in question).

Re: The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)

#76

Post by vacri »

Swizec wrote: post #29
userbinator wrote: post #4

We predict that people who have grown up with computers will be much more capable as computer users than the current generation of users. Thus, they will be able to use (and will in fact, demand) expressive interfaces with advanced means of expressing their wants. How unfortunate that this did not turn out to be the case, and I think it's likely that is because most people liked the "simple and easy" Mac-like UIs wit…

> The point about "user control" is odd though, since that's basically the exact opposite of the Apple philosophy today, and even the older Macs seemed more opaque and with less user control than the PCs of the time. As an advanced user, I don't want more control. I want defaults that are good enough that I never want to change them. Every hour I spend tinkering with my computer, is an hour I didn't spend achieving u…

> As an advanced user ... I want defaults that are good enough that I never want to change them.

Reminds me of the old linux joke: newbies use the default kernel because it 'just works'; power users compile their own kernels to get every last scrap of power possible; and advanced users use the default kernel because it 'just works'...

Re: The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)

#77

Post by falconic »

skymt wrote: post #56
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 u…

I mean, it's a nice theory but it isn't actually true. There's tons of functionality which exists in many ribbon-ified programs but not actually accessible from the ribbon.

If you right click on the ribbon in many applications and select 'customize' you'll find all sorts of useful functionality. The customize window (at least in Excel 2010, which I happen to be looking at at the moment) has organization to help you find the stuff you can customize the ribbon with, and it even has a 'commands not in the ribbon' section!

Maybe the ribbon contained all functionality when it was first introduced (though I doubt it very much) but that certainly hasn't been true for years.

Re: The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)

#78

Post by Mikhail_Edoshin »

skymt wrote: post #56
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 u…

My favorite path is that (MS Word):

1. Click the tiny icon in the bottom right corner of the styles widget. It will open essentially the same widget, but as a vertical list and with a few additional controls; this is what we're after.

2. At the bottom there are three nearly identical buttons without labels. Click the 2nd one from the left (the tooltip says "Style Inspector"). This will open another floating window. We don't need it per se, but, again, it has extra controls that we need.

3. At the bottom of the window there is another set of unlabeled buttons. We need the first one (tooltip "Reveal formatting"). (Note that the icon is also very similar to the three icons in the previous panel.) Click it and you'll get the "Reveal formatting" panel. This is our target

4. Now close the other two panels. You're ready.

I write code to create reports in MS Word XML and I need this panel to see if I'm getting the code right (i.e that all non-obvious flags like "keep with next" are in place). I know no other path to this widget. And since I don't write such code often, I keep forgetting how I get to this panel. E.g. yesterday I tried to find it, but failed. It's good I saw you reply and made another effort to retrace the steps :)

I totally think a classic Mac-like menu consisting solely of text would provide better discoverability here.

Re: The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)

#79

Post by spost »

MichaelCrawford wrote: post #69
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…

LOLcats. The very first thing I do when I set up a new OSX install is to completely disable spotlight.

Why?

Re: The Anti-Mac Interface (1996)

#80

Post by zanny »

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 have a triple monitor setup, so almost everything is maximized and I do mobile like card flipping between them with alt-tab. I have a stack of browsers on one, a stack of IDEs on another, etc.

If things get out of hand I throw a bunch of windows in a separate activity.

Sometimes I turn on the KDE card flip effect to feel silly.

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