31–40 of 44 posts
I really hate criticism that doesn't suggest improvements. You can point out deficiencies all day, but until you have proposed or implied an improvement, you have not even proved that what you are criticizing is suboptimal, much less provided any helpful pointer towards improvement. Unfortunately, the "old-fashioned, physical object" this design is based on is the human brain, or more precisely, the useful cultural a…
I keep wondering when we'll move away from the "pages" paradigm in e-books. We should be returning to the scroll paradigm (which is already a familiar motif in software), not forcing content to fit a physical format which the e-reader is precisely an attempt to get away from. Worst case is when trying to highlight, as a single mark (with note attached), a section of text which spans more than 2 pages (esp. when a "pa…
Often, I'm just as frustrated about the opposite problem... technology that is less functional than what it is replacing because it doesn't replicate important features in a natural way. For example, I feel like I can organize my physical music collection on shelves in my house more quickly, naturally, and helpfully than I can my digital music collection in any media player/music manager I've tried. Shouldn't our tec…
So how do you search or sort by track name in your physical music collection?
This article demonstrates how it's almost the opposite for non-game interfaces. Instead, it's the plucky upstarts that can take the risk on novel interfaces since they don't have large numbers of users to annoy (and I bet if Google tried to get radical with Calendar now, there'd be a real storm of hate over it).
I don't get it. He spends most of the article telling us that skeuomorphs are bad giving the example of calendar app that looks like a desk calendar and then finishes by praising an app with a screen that skeuomorphically flips up just like a wall-calendar.
The difference (at least as I understood it) is that that app isn't a wall calendar and chose that approach because they believed it was the best design, not because they wanted to mimic a wall calendar. Most designers of calendar and calculator software set out to design something as close to a paper calendar or desktop calculator as possible without necessarily asking if it was the best possible design. Or in summa…
Now I certainly don't think retro design is "crippling" the basic OS experience. I personally find the whole desktop metaphor to be silly and outdated and not so useful for a generation that has grown up with computers and don't need a clock to look like a wall clock in order to understand that it's telling us the time. OSX widgets may be immature and tasteless, but they're not a hindrance.
If retro design is crippling anything, IMO, it digital audio workstations (DAW). Whenever I launch Cubase I have to deal with virtual mixer boards and virtual synthesizers that mimic the interfaces of 40 year old hardware to the point that you have to turn virtual knobs with my mouse. It's ridiculous and more often than not it's frustrating. Now I understand how this choice of design eases the learning curve, but I'd much rather jump over a few hurdles than run straightaway into a wall.
This is why programs like vim and emacs are still relevant decades after their invention. They don't insult the users intelligence, they don't pretend to be something they're not, and they take full advantage of the platform they're designed for.
If somebody could create a DAW that adhere's to this kind of philosophy, I don't care if it uses ncurses as an interface, I'd adopt it in a heartbeat.
Comparing the headline to the contents, I feel there's room for a follow-up article: "hyperbole is killing criticism". I mean, it's OK to hate skeuomorphs, a valid critical position, but nobody is going to die. And the whole thing feels like Louis CK's riff about airplanes. You are riffling through entire bookstores and museums on an affordable 150dpi Star Trek pad in the bathroom while complaining that innovation ha…
That needs to be answered first before assuming crippling of innovation.