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Mac OS X Desktop and GUI Design
Khelder sent us a nifty little bit about the MacOS X Desktop. It talks quite a bit about
UI Design (mirror) from a Mac-Centric but also a general perspective. It's quite interesting stuff for anyone into MacOS-X, but also it has lots of practical stuff for anyone who's ever tried to create a usable theme for one of today's modern window managers.
My question is this: can this be done in X? Would enlightenment be able to do this through a theme? I would think, to get menu and specific programs to display transparently, you would need to use something like a GTK theme, yes? So maybe the Gnome themes this could be done?
I don't know very much about X and Gnome, but I would be interested if this can be done in X. If anyone has and ideas, please let me know.
For instance, you could put any gnome-panel on any of the sides of the screen and have any buttons or taskbars or menus or documents or anything on them you darn well please. You could make them any size, and have them autohide at any speed.
With both QT and GTK, I know that you can "rip" toolbars out of their default position and move them into a vertical position on the right or left, just as the author suggested. As far as the round menus go, I just don't know what he was talking about. But, with differnt themes of the respective toolkit, one cold put thick borders on buttons.
In short, I agree with you as far as UI designers knowing UI and learning about it. That's obvious, it could always help. But I feel that the inherent flexibility that GNOME and KDE provide go a long way to making the UI usable, no matter what you preferences or prejudices or habits or preconcievied notions of what a UI should be.
While GNOME and KDE can be improved (what can't be improved?), they also deserve a high-five for their work so far.
Got HTML? Want LaTeX? Try html2latex
Hey, can I buy one of them leftover keyboards from you? I want an external kbd for my powerbook, but blowing $70 on that damn iKey is looney. Any USB kbd will supposedly work now with a Mac, but "any" kbd doesn't come with the power button on the keyboard.
___________________
rooooar
But the power button on PowerBooks is inside the computer, meaning there is no way to use the "hook up a monitor, mouse, and keyboard and keep the screen closed" feature of the powerbook unless you have a kbd with a power button on it... ah well. I don't have an extra monitor laying around anyway.
___________________
rooooar
It's worth noting that Tog, who wrote the article that's linked to, was one of the (if not the only) designers of the original Mac OS GUI. If anyone has a foundation for constructive criticism of a GUI, this man does. If I were Jobs, or anyone else at Apple for that matter, I'd pay attention to what Tog has to say.
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WWhhaatt ddooeess dduupplleexx mmeeaann??
This sig intentionally left justified.
Both NeWS(Network extensible Window System) and OpenLook predate Tog's tenure at Sun by several years.
/. crowd, the car used was a Consulier GT, a composite ultralight, but kinda ugly car that absolutely demolished it's competition on the racetrack in the late 80's and early 90's. They tried really hard to make it look good for the film, but it was too big a challenge...)
You may not like them, but NeWS was James Gosling's creation and was arguably ahead of its time - Java bears more than a passing resemblance to NeWS in a number of respects. (Remember that NeWS was more than a windowing system - it provided network extensibility and transparency to applications as well, and was arguably the first serious attempt at writing a viable OO network-aware GUI.)
Personally, I think both OpenLook and NeWS were great to work with: I still haven't found scrollbars anywhere else that work that well, and the pushpin/tearoff menu metaphor that's so common now is from OL/NeWS. NeWS in particular had some very cool capabilities: several years ago it did a lot of what we're just now getting around to reinventing in KDE and GNOME. Unfortunately for NeWS in particular, it overestimated the cycles available under Moore's law, and so it was based on Display PostScript (quite cool, really) at a time when it would be several years befoer the horsepower was present to run DPS quickly. As a result (much like GNOME today?), it got a reputation for being dog-slow, and there was little interest in writing apps for it as a result.
Remember that Xerox was the other half of the OpenLook team. OL/NeWS looks a bit dated by today's standards, but it was arguably the most advanced GUI in the insustry when it was released, and broke new ground in important ways, some of which were even picked up by the Mac! It was a quantum leap improvement in Unix GUIs and was light years ahead of SunWin and the original SGI and IBM GUIs, which in their early days were hardly worthy of the name. (something as simple as TWM is a HUGE improvement on SGI's orginal windowing system...)
FYI, Tog's major project at Sun was to play movie producer and make a video short titled "Starfire", which demonstrated a vision of future UI technology in a badly acted setting of corporate politics and intrigue surrounding the near cancellation of a low-pollution car.
(For the car guys in the
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
the clipboard was originally intended to create a short-term copy of selected data. since that's what it does with the text of selected filenames, i'm afraid calling it 'totally inconsistent' is putting things a bit strongly. cut-and-paste for filenames is totally consistent with cutting and pasting text in any other context. the fact that you're pleased to define the metaphor a different way doesn't mean that the existing product has none.
on top of that, your own metaphor isn't as consistent as you might think. what would happen, for instance, if you cut one file, then cut another before pasting the first one into a new folder? under the standard clipboard metaphor, that would be a silent and irrevocable deletion of the file, which violates the principle of clarity.. a biggie in the mac os. for that matter, what should happen if you cut one file, select another, and paste? by default, the thing selected is replaced by the thing in the clipboard, so does that mean we should delete the selected file and replace it with the one just cut?
assuming we did manage to work around the difficulties, there's still another problem to consider: overloading the interface. if cut-and-paste does one thing when you've selected the text of a filename, and something else when you've selected the icon, the interface contains a modality that's likely to breed mistakes. the two types of selection are visually similar, and i don't think anyone believes that the average user would always get the distinction right on the fly. interface designers don't have as much license to blame their problems on stupid users who couldn't find a clue with both hands and a flashlight as other programmers, because the whole point of the game is to find something that makes sense to those very users.
BTW - your assertion that cut-and-paste normally copies everything, not some specific object property, is incorrect. the clipboard can actually carry several parallel versions of the copied information, and is designed to paste the version most compatible with the context of the target environment. if you cut a piece of text that's in 12-point Times New Roman, right justified, etc, all that style information is a property of what was copied. you can still paste that selection into a window that doesn't support all your style properties, though. the clipboard just strips off any information that isn't appropriate to the new context.
by that light, the fact that only the filename appears in the new context when you cut-and-paste from the Finder is *entirely* consistent with the overall metaphor.
3rd generation my butt. NeWS, Display PostScript, etc. have been primarily vector-based for a long time. And transparencies and mouse-overs aren't new technology either.
I prefer vector-based interfaces in general, but don't believe the hype when they claim it's great new next-generation stuff. It's really just what the motorcycle crowd call the BNG models (where the only real change is Bold New Graphics). It still works the same, just prettier.
He did explain the menu thing, kinda. If the menu's at the top of the screen, you can move the mouse there really fast without worrying about overshooting it. Tog describes it as being "infinitely deep".
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Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
About Face and
The Inmates are Running the Asylum
Both of these texts are written by a man named Alan Cooper, and go into details of how a good UI should work and why. This background is needed not only to truly understand the issues of UI design but also allows a good standpoint for defending and argueing the views of the author. Overall his article is very well written, and holds a much more open view than your typical Mac OS design piece. (Which usually sum up that: All GUIs are poor imitations of Mac) While I do not completely agree with the author there is little need to critcize it. I think some extra view points would be more benefical so here are some other view points.
One consideration I see overlooked time and time again in all GUI designs is object placement. The human eye normally moves from the upper left hand corner to the lower left hand corner. diagnally. This leaves the lower left and upper right hand corner mostly ignored. This makes them ideal for placement of say menu's because you tend to need to use a menu less frequently than applications and is defensable as why they were chosen in many enviroments as menu locations.
There are reasons to advocate the design of most interfaces but what would be more beneficial to all of us is a well researched and well implented UI. Much of this research has been done, and is discussed in Cooper's books. And envirments such as X give us the freedom to evaluate new ideas and concepts.
This is why enviroments like Entlightenment and Sawmill are so powerful. They provide the ablity to take a good easily and continously improve on the windowing provided by a GUI. And with KDE and Gnome moving along nicely the entire feel should soon allow for this concept to be putforth across entire enviroments.
So again if you are truly interested in all the aspects of UI design please read Cooper's books, they are some of the best references on the topic.
Oh, and don't let the fact that he works for M$ sway you, I'm fairly convinced no one listens to him there.
A GUI should not be Sexy, Exciting, Amusing, Animated, and especially not Cool.
It should be boring.
I do not want to be entertained by my UI, i want toget work done in a quite neutral environment.
Richard Feynman said rightly:
For a sucessful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Point and Grunt
Pie menus are not what they're cracked up to be. Imagine trying to epresent more than 6 or so menu items at once. There's also no ordering where the most common items are listed first, no way to order a MRU list -- which may have maybe a dozen items. Imagine the zig-zagging one must do to implement a hierarchical menu.
Pie menus may be useful for some operations, but aren't universally useful. And when you start having to mix navigation metaphors, that inconsistency is worse than having no pie menus at all.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I can see your point in being critical of Tog, and while I tend to agree more with him than disagree with him, here's something I just thought of to spur debate:
You say programming languages are also a form of HCI. I agree with this, and I also agree that Tog isn't properly treating the subject by saying that, in effect, "BASIC rules all".
Perhaps there's a cognitive dissonance going on here. A programming language is an HCI that imposes a "schema" on the user, meaning that a user has to accomodate this new interface into his mental processes. The focus is on taking a mental model and sticking with it, in order to concentrate on the application of that language. Examples of this trend are evident in Functional vs. Object oriented vs. Imperative vs. Declarative vs. Logic programming.
Contrast this to a non-instructional HCI like a GUI, which most HCI literature aims at making "intuitive", or in other words, an interface that is easy to "assimilate" into one's mental processes. The focus here is for the user interface designer to do the "accomodating", not the user him or herself.
From this latter perspective, I think it's quite easy to see why Tog can claim that "BASIC rules all". It is the most English-like language available, and hence the most intuitive.
However, programming language theory has advanced to a point that we know that what is intuitive isn't always the best language: there are trade-offs with performance, expressibility and power when designing languages. So, in effect, Tog is wrong from the PL point of view.
Thoughts?
-Stu
I think imitating Windows/MacOS and applying current HCI principles in systems like KDE and Gnome will be nice in that it makes Linux accessible and comparable to those other desktop platforms.
But I hope that in the medium term, Linux will serve as a platform for more interesting and more important UI breakthroughs, including UIs geared towards expert users. Linux is probably in the best position for that because it seems a lot more flexible and extensible than those other systems. And, more importantly, Linux has expert users that can often themselves modify and improve the UI and share those modifications.
Hrm, okay, he's terribly misinformed, ignorant, illogical, etc.
That's all well and good, but could you explain what specifically you thought was so completely wrong?
What was wrong with the topic/problem? A lot of people have had criticisms of the Aqua GUI - even (perhaps especially) veteran Mac users.
What was wrong with the conclusion? It didn't sound to me like he laid a death sentence on Apple, he simply said it could become their 'New Coke'. Seems possible to me, whether or not it is likely.
So, what's the problem?
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
They're not so bad, since they're color coded. Too bad if you're color blind though. You want real mystery, check out the "halos" in the morphic interface of squeak smalltalk
Gotta admit though, it's absolutely the most flexible GUI around, even if it is dog slow. THAT is an interface that's way behind the Moore curve. But boy is is something. Lets you drag, resize, and rotate every window and every widget in them.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
That's pretty amusing, considering the unix world can have the colons but not the slashes. You have to have something as your path separator if you want a unified path and filename (it doesn't have to be like that, but then you make shells damn near impossible).
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
> As far as the round menus go, I just don't know what he was talking about. But, with differnt themes of the respective toolkit, one cold put thick borders on buttons.
I'm not sure, but what I think he's talking about here is an application of Fitt's Law that he mentioned in his "A test to give you fitts" article.
Rather than have your menu arranged vertically (or horizontally) as is the case with 99% of menus today, you have the items arranged in a circle, around the cursor.
This works best with popup menus, where you click the button, and come up with something like the following (where the asterisk is the cursor point):
|
Menu|Menu
-_Item1|Item2_-
--___|___--
Menu--_/\_--Menu
Item_|*|_Item
6_--\____/--_3
_--| --_
-Menu|Menu -
Item5|Item4
|
The idea here is that (1)the distance the mouse has to move to the menu item is drastically reduced, and (2) each option is associated with both a distance and a direction, amking them easier to remember, even if the user isn't looking at the screen.
It's a neat idea, and one that I don't think either GNOME or KDE are capable of, without a lot of kludging.
The only desktop environment I know of that does this is UDE but that suffers from other problems, notably that it's nowhere near being complete, not to mention the fact that development on it seems to be all but nonexistent these days.
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think you just crossed it.
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- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
> Be has its own reasons for switching to Intel, and shifted the blame elsewhere for their own convenience
I won't defend Gasse's incessant whining about it, but Apple wanted Be to pay up to develop for their hardware, if such specs could even be bought for any price. Intel paid Be millions to develop for their hardware. Which would you choose?
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
According to the keynote, the old view styles will be present. You're not limited to a NeXT-style Miller column, and you can have multiple windows open at any given time.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
That difference is in holding the mouse is probably the biggest problem people have with it. We've all become used to resting the heel of our hand and the back end of the mouse.
As for the Keyboard - It's shit. It doesn't have all the keys on it and should never ship on high end models.
I agree with that. I think they screwed up there.
Alternative viewpoint: Apple has done quite a bit to support the mouse/trackball/keyboard aftermarket here. Hundreds of thousands of people replacing input devices means millions of dollars to companies like Kensington and MacAlly. R&D money for new and better products flows from there.
I have a Kensington Orbit trackball (2 buttons.) I love it.
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NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Re: #1, blame Be. LinuxPPC, Yellow Dog Linux, etc. didn't have much trouble. If Apple is so afraid of the competition, they'd have never released Darwin. They probably wouldn't have moved to ROM in RAM either.
Be has its own reasons for switching to Intel, and shifted the blame elsewhere for their own convenience. If they were expecting free R&D from Apple they should have expected otherwise. Not to mention their investment by Intel - Be's recent (ie. within this month) announcements seem to indicate that they are at the mercy of their shareholders.
Seriously though, why would Apple care? BeOS running on Apple hardware doesn't lose them any money. You're assuming a murder when there wasn't even a motive.
Re: #2, current share prices, increasing marketshare, and sales numbers indicate otherwise.
Re: #3, it's subjective. Nobody in the public has even used it, anyhow.
Re: #4, hard to say. Refer to #3.
...if you want to point out mistakes, try not carefully introducing cloning in '88 or '89 (you can blame Jean-Louis Gasee of Be for that one). How about Copland? How about over-pricing?
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
It is? The "core OS" (Darwin) may be open source (or will be open source if they release a Darwin that's the same as the core of MacOS X), but, as far as I know, none of the GUI stuff is going to be open source, either in whole or in part.
Actually, there are a large number of Mac users (myself included) who have some reservations with the new UI. It's hard to tell until we actually get to sit down with it, though.
I'm cautiously optimistic, but there are a number of people who have had major issues with what Apple has shown so far. Tog, who worked at Apple for 14 years, is one of them. I personally think Apple threw the screenshots out for public consumption as a sort of trial balloon - they've done this before. Given that there are 5-6 months until release, they've got time to make the kind of minor changes people are advocating.
Anyhow, please don't stereotype Mac users. We don't all agree with everything Apple does, and aren't nearly as blind/conformist as you think we are (witness the deafening roar of bitching Mac users erupted in when QuickTime 4 was released).
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
I'm not sure I like the new UI terribly much myself, but there is a hell of a lot of impressive technology behind it. I'd have to actually use it to know for sure, but it looks like too much gaudy eye candy for my taste. I'm hoping there's a Platinum Appearance that one can switch to if one desires.
There's an article on ars technica that another poster provided a link to, which goes into all of the swank new technology behind the eye candy. It says that PDF is a superset of PostScript, which isn't exactly true. PDF is a subset of PostScript with some new onscreen features added like forms and hyperlinks. Eventually PostScript and PDF are going to be pretty close to merged - Adobe's PostScript Extreme engine is a PDF RIP (PDF to print, with no PostScript in between) and a PostScript to PDF converter.
There are a couple things about Display PDF that aren't mentioned in the article that are extremely cool. GDI and QuickDraw are the current systems for onscreen display on Windows and the Mac OS, respectively. On Windows or the Mac, if you copy anything other than text from one app to another, you are copying not the original file, but GDI or QuickDraw commands. And most non-desktop publishing apps use GDI or QuickDraw to print, which causes a couple of problems. GDI and QuickDraw are both RGB, which throws color off completely if you copy a CMYK TIFF from Photoshop into Quark or copy an EPS with spot colors from FreeHand into PageMaker. And GDI (and to a lesser extent, QuickDraw) is not at all friendly to PostScript printers.
PDF (as of version 1.2) understands CMYK and it understands spot color channels. PDF is friendly to non-PostScript and PostScript printers alike. Which means that non-desktop publishing apps will suddenly print much nicer to PostScript printers, and it means that copying and pasting from one desktop publishing app to another just may stop being the Extremely Bad Thing that it is now.
Oh, and because Mac OS X is based on NeXTStep is based on BSD, for the first time I'll be able to do my desktop publishing on a real OS. No more stopping to allocate more RAM to FreeHand or less to Quark; no more crash and reboot.
In the same way that I tolerate the bright gaudy blue of the G3 on my desk at work, I'll probably learn to tolerate the jelly bean buttons and the jewel-bright scrollbars of Mac OS X.
I can't believe this guy didn't know to hold option to close windows behind you. That for me is one of the most important time saving features, but it gives the user the flexibility to leave open the windows he wants open also.
In addition, in the MacOS the command he didn't know is just that, the command key. Hold it and you can move or windowshade(minimize) background windows without switching to them.
Apple tells users shortcuts very clearly in it's help system, just go in there and search, you'd be surprised how many things you can do just by holding a button.
But anyway, he definitely raises some valid criticisms of OS X, and I definitely don't want to have a "Finder/Browser" type file navigation system. I also think Apple will be total idiots if they don't include a way to use something that is almost exactly like the current platinum look, or at least have a theme system that would let a third party do that. There are some bitter arguments going on in the MacOS community right now(www.maccentral.com/forum/) about the OS X interface, and no matter what Apple does it is going to piss off a whole ton of people.
Oh, BTW:
system folder: 5,138 files
total on main HD partition: 29,957 files
Wow.
Well, if you want quality, the new MS Intellimouse Explorers are $70 retail. We've been getting the Intellimouse w/ Intellieye too, those are somewhat cheaper. A good keyboard can easily run ~$70 or so, I have yet to see a USB Mac keyboard that I'm impressed with, our Adesso ergonomic keyboards failed en masse and we shipped them back. The iKey boards work, but their not ergonomic at all, and they're all ugly as sin. Right now I'm leaning toward getting a Kinesis keyboard to preserve my wrists, since there don't seem to be many viable economical models.
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When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
A less than 50MhZ Sun IPX with 32MB of RAM ran NeWS just fine. A 70MhZ Sun SPARCstation 5 ran Display PostScript well. Vector graphics and transparencies just don't consume a lot of CPU power unless implemented badly.
Every programmer knows that computer languages are one form of human-computer interface.
No, that's not true except in a trivial sense. A programming language is not an interface, it it rather a framework and a set of tools for structuring the problem and the solution. That's a very big difference and probably the one that confused Tog.
Programming languages are not (and should not be) designed to provide a better interface to the machine. They are designed to make problem solving easy, or at least easier. Good languages, essentially, provide a useful framework for thinking about the problem domain and supply you with proper tools to express the solution you have found. None of this has anything to do with human-computer interface.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
255 character filenames in MacOS? Sorry, I don't think you've ever used any MacOS if you think that. MacOS 8.6 has a 31 character limit for filenames, as did all MacOSes back through, at least, 8.0, and I'm sure all the way back to 6. And if you're refering to the NeXT file browser, no, the Mac has never had anything like that.
I don't think you're thinking of the MacOS.
___________________
rooooar
Reread the statement. It doesn't say that Apple emulated it right off (you're right - Windows was unleashed later). I think what he means is the 'Platinum' appearance that came along with MacOS 8, which is definately more 'gray' than the old System 7 version. The menubar turned gray as well.
I don't necessarily think that the Mac version is really 'ponderously-heavy 3d chrome', though. There is a lot less gray, fewer bevels, etc. You have to admit that they both moved in that same general direction.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Probably the best place to talk to knowledgeable users is here:
http://www.omnigroup.c om/community/mailinglists/macosx-talk/
...it has a pretty distinct OpenStep/NeXTStep focus, but there are some classic MacOS users there as well. Overall there are a lot of good ideas being floated around there, as well as a few bad ones, but the people are generally intelligent enough to avoid 'MacOS X rulez/sucks' messages.
Much better than Apple Insider, which appears to be more or less frequented by bored 14 year olds (the site itself is pretty decent though).
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Do _you_ know Fitts's law?
GUI design has been well researched by Apple and others, and the developers of the new desktops should actually read this stuff. It seems that most of the features included in both desktop environments seem to be added because they are "cool" or they are what a particular developer thinks is best. If everyone makes sure that they are playing by these rules, we can ensure that both environments are superior in speed and ease-of-use to both windows and mac.
5. Should not hold the trash can. (The trash can should be on the desktop, where it belongs.)
and
It has a far higher access time than the foolish location Windows uses...
and you have to wonder why, because he doesn't tell you what's going on. I always appreciate Tog's work but he shouldn't assume we know why he thinks things, especially in a field as relatively obscure as GUI design. (Most of the geeks I know, including myself, tend to adapt no matter how irritating the system, and while we do bitch about it, we also have little trouble adapting. Also, some of Tog's comments indicate that he is thinking more in terms of professional use, not everyday use by the masses. Still, he's definitely better at this than I am.)
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Unfortunatly, I don't have any prereleases of OS/X client... and I know the latest developer release doesn't have the Aqua GUI... but if anyone has their hands on GUI, or heard and rumours...
Does anyone know how much memory the GUI eats?
To the looks of it... perhaps running Quake 3 as your Finder may take less memory.
Any answers?
-Saxton
_________
My name is Aaron Landry, and I approve this message.
Apple wanted Be to pay to develop on the hardware? I'm kind of curious where you heard that.
I could see why Apple may have wanted some cash to help Be out. Engineer time isn't free, after all, and there's no telling how much Be needed/wanted.
In the end though, I think it came down to marketshare. I can't blame Be for that, although it may not have been the smartest move (Macs are very common in Be's target market - err, old target market). In the end, they were seduced by the large raw marketshare of the Intel market.
I think it may have hurt them though - their move to IA's may have been due to the inability to keep up with driver development on the PC platform.
What I *am* pissed about is Be's wishy-washy attitude about it. When they first added X86 support, they were saying that they were dual platform, that it was one of their core stengths, etc. Since then they have kept the PPC version very stagnant, and haven't evangelized it at all. I just wish they'd get around to officially dropping support and the charade that goes along with it.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Perhaps he didn't want to provide a link to every single window manager in existance, and simply linked to the most visible?
Note the 's' at the end of 'modern window managers'. I think he knows that there are more than one.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
The Mac OS has always been limited to 31 character filenames. This is, I believe, derived from a limitation in HFS, the Mac OS file system. HFS+, which debuted with Mac OS 8.1 offers support for 255 character file names. However, the OS has not been updated to support 255 characters, due to legacy OS and application issues.
The collapsible directories *have* been there -- I suspect he's talking more about this method being the default, rather than the freeform/gridded icon layout that is currently the default with the Mac OS.
Where Tog I believe missed the mark (or perhaps he did mention this, I don't recall) and the Salon article certainly did, is that the old-style Finder is still present in Mac OS. The NeXT-style browser is simply the default, and offers a new option. From what I can tell, the NeXT-style is oriented at newer users.
pooptruck
FWIW, Apple licensed usage of what they saw at PARC for 100,000 shares of Apple stock. Not quite the 10,000,000 that Mr. Jobs just got optioned, but still, an apparently fair amount of money.
pooptruck
I have, I think, created the most accurate random dice throw simulator ever known to the computer world. It is held inside a tiny black box, with a serial connection and an Ethernet port.
Questions please?
Q: How does it work?
A: It is sent signals from the programmer that set the method used to determine the result, and to get a new throw.
Q: What do I have to do to use it in program X?
A: Sending it a zero over the serial port will get a new random throw. Sending it any other number from 1 to 11 will set the method it uses.
Q: What methods does it use?
A: The number sets it, and it increases in randomness with the number; i.e. 1 just does a fairly simple random generator, while 10 takes a minute to mathematically simulate the dice on an atomic scale as it flies through the air!
Q: Why does it need Ethernet then?
A: That's for when you send it the signal 11, the most random mode. It posts a comment to Slashdot, enters a wait state for two hours, then comes back, takes the moderation score and adds 1.
What I ended up doing with MP3s is making a folder with the artist's name, then you can use the entire 31 chars for the songname... but yeah, 31 chars sucks. I really hope they increase it to 255 (or more, or whatever) with X. I haven't seen anything mentioning long filenames. If they don't have long filename support in OSX, I will lose any and all respect for Apple. Also, Macs can't have the colon (:) in a filename. So URLs as filenames look like:
http-//www.dartmouth.edu
which is dumb.
___________________
rooooar
Xerox was paid by Apple in the form of stock options for what Apple gained by visiting their office.
Here's an account by Jef Raskin, one of the original Mac developers (much of the Mac's concepts came from his research from much earlier).
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
You do realize that Tog was an Apple employee for 14 years, right?
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
The "Dock," which is being touted as so revolutionary -- that doesn't strike you as a ripoff of the Windows "taskbar?" I realize other operating systems have similar systems, but the taskbar sure is handy. I don't particularly like "The Dock," and the "genie" effect looks like a staggering waste of cycles. Hopefully it can be disabled.
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rooooar
For a good overview of what's available, try this page.
(although it seems to be down at the moment...?)
----
I used to respect Tognazzini a great deal. However, close reading of his writing, over an extended period of time, has led me to believe that he has questionable judgment about many issues. Just examine his article, How Programmers Stole the Web, where he claims that:
These are only a sample of the glaring Deep Wrongness in the article I link to above.
In addition, Tog is a relentless Apple partisan, despite his objections to the new Aqua interface. This clouds his perception of all Apple-related issues. For example, among other things, he says in the Aqua/OS X interface article that "Apple could argue, and few would deny it, that Apple was first and Microsoft is the one who made things difficult by failing to accurately copy the Mac interface." Ignoring, of course, the fact that Microsoft would have been perfectly happy to copy the Apple interface exactly, except that Apple is one of the most litigious companies in the IT industry (have you seen Microsoft threaten to sue KDE over their Windows98 theme?).
IMHO, Tognazzini has suffered from a lesser form of the same brain rot that has affected Jon Katz since becoming published on the web: free to spout off without an editor, never forced to confront dissenting opinions before publication, he has become something of an autodidact. This may seem a bit harsh, but I urge the programmers in the audience to read the "How Programmers Stole the Web" article. It reveals a great deal about the didacticism of Tognazzini's thought habits, and will probably cast a very different light on his supposedly authoritative interface design ideas.
I once respected Tog. Occasionally, he comes up with some good insights. However, don't let his impressive resume blind you to his often misled assertions.
~k.lee(remove nospam for email)
Can anybody tell me, will MacOS X use a two-button mouse? I have a MS IntelliPoint Explorer Mouse (which I think is great, btw) so I get some right-click functionality through MS's mouse software, but I want them to SHIP the computer with a NORMAL-SIZED/SHAPED TWO-BUTTON SCROLLING MOUSE. The iMac hockeypuck HURTS my hand. If MacOS X is based on a UNIX variant, and if UNIX is so heavily reliant on multiple mouse buttons, I would hope they would get the hint and include multibutton mouse support. One thing I like about Windows is the right-click copy/paste menu that can be used in almost every application. That alone would be worth rewriting the OS!
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rooooar
He talks about the QT4 player, Mac OS X, and GUIs in general. Listen in.
Sure, I understand your gripe with no colons, but maybe the content information shouldn't go in the title. I really like the BeOS's filesystem and how it allows for multiple arbitrary file attributes, so you can have a bookmark with the date as the filename, and the URL in an attribute. Maybe another one for the last time visited, etc.
Putting a URL in the title is sort of akin to putting txt or doc in the title (oh, the 8.3), but you're not to blame for that..
cheers,
-o
Are you sure it's just a theme? I tend to think so given the speed Apple 'dropped' the new appearance in at the last moment, but they have not commented on this publically as far a I know, and Apple's previous position on themes in the past has been somewhat negative (ie. we were supposed to have theme support in 8.5, but they pulled back).
Usability is the big concern, I think. The look of the classic Mac UI isn't what set it apart from the crowd, it's the usability factors.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Apple's gumdrop button look like a bad case of "Mystery Meat Navigation". Check out this website... it's pretty funny (check out the mouseover-based streetsign), and interesting:
l
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/badnavigation.htm
My first impression upon activating the theme was the expected "that looks cool," and I also noticed that it was a bit brighter looking than the current "platinum" look of OS 9. Not that it was a bad thing, it wasn't blindingly bright, just a little unfamiliar at first. That soon changed however, as I began to actually use it. The theme isn't the most accurate representation of Aqua, for example it doesn't have the slowly throbbing default buttons, but it did have the same "traffic light" buttons on the windows. Some have expressed concern that the buttons are too close together and that someone could miss and accidently close a window, but that did not happen to me once. I got used to the new setup very quickly (to contrast, I never seem to get used to it when I have to use Windows). In fact, I took a liking to the buttons and that pinstripe background. They aren't noticable while doing work, but when you want them you know exactly where to look.
The other main thing that the theme altered was the icons. Even without Quartz and 128x128 (scalable) icons, the new icons look great! That's not one of the things anyone has really been arguing over though...
Unfortunately, the theme cannot simulate translucency, shadows or the "sheet" dialogs - although from the pictures the sheets look really good. The tranclucency might need some playing with, but again I could not try it in person. So on to the browser...
I found the browser useful for quickly navigating a heirarchy of folders - just move the arrow keys towards where you want to go. On the other hand, it wasn't so great for copying/moving files to other places - in most cases a new browser window must be opened. Of course the limitations of this browser might not be the same as Apple's, and the browser view is just an addition to the traditional icon, list, and button views. I'll probably end up using a combination them all, much like I do now.
Keeping all this in mind, it's imporant to remember that Aqua is still in development. Mac OS X is scheduled to be released this summer (not next year as Tog said, that's when it will be preinstalled on all shipping Macs), so there's still time to make any criticisms you might have heard - that is probably one of the reasons for showing Aqua so far in advance.
-Rafi Remove the Spanish to email me.
well, I don't usually type a colon into a title, but when I drag a URL to the desktop (as a shortcut) it gets the http-//... sometimes I think it actually just chops off the http:// altogether, which is really a nice feature.
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rooooar
It's not hard, if the OS is designed with a single button in mind. You just weren't used to it.
I agree 100% with the round mouse thing. I think Apple was aiming toward little kids (which seem to be able to use it, due to its size), but they should never have shipped it with their higher end systems. Same with the keyboard.
For the record, I prefer 2 button mice, which work just fine on the Mac (you can simulate a second button on later revs of the OS by holding down control and clicking on the a file - contextual menus). On the other hand, I have been forced to support Windows users confused by the second button, so they may have a point.
In the end, it doesn't cost much to buy a better mouse. Apple should make it a build to order option, and support both equally.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
I think about it this way--I want PMT, SMP, Protected Memory, and all the other buzzwords. I'd pay $99-$149 just to get it with the existing GUI (which I really like, BTW).
But Apple needs to generate some serious volume from the iMac consumer base to make enough money, so they iMacified it.
I'm not a big fan of Aqua the way it looks now, but if it enables Apple to ship my buzzword-enabled OS, then so be it!
So she puts on five pounds of makeup so that my brother will agree to take her out on the double date, and I get to go out with the cool sexy one who understands PMT, SMP, PM, S&M, etc.
Never refuse a breath mint.
Whatever he has to say about BASIC is completely irrelevant, because that is simply not his field of expertise. He is first and foremost a human factors engineer. He has done HCI research at Apple for many years, he founded the Human Interface Group, he played a major part in the Lisa project, which later served as the scientific foundation for the MacOS.
What have YOU done that qualifies you to make disparaging remarks about the man who helped define the Graphical User Interface as we know it?
It appears that is what TOG is discussing here as well. He seems to be pointing out that Aqua places too much emphasis on the usefulness of graphical representations (which look gorgeous but do not relay much information).
That is why I have always found primitive interfaces such as TWM so useful - more often than not, informative text takes the palce of a pretty (but useless) graphic.
By the way, anyone who has the chance to see Edward Tufte speak should do so. For $500 you get all his books and a great lecture that was really worth $500, as hard as that might be to swallow. I can actually say that I learned a great deal about interface design.
MacOS X Server (in an earlier incarnation) was the first Unix I used on my desktop. It got me really aware that there were Unixes with good GUIs. Unfortunately, Linux lags WAY behind in the seamless integration that even buggy betas of Rhapsody had.
I came to Linux from MacOS X and I suspect a lot of other people will too.
Be patient little penguins. MacOS X is no threat to Linux.
_Deirdre
I remember reading on Steve Wozniak's page that Zerox got paid plenty by Apple to be able to use its GUI technology.
('Course Microsoft never paid anybody.)
--
He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
If you have ever used a SGI Indy running Irix paired with that amazingly *ahem* interesting 4DWM desktop windowing environment the dynamic resizing of icons should be familiar to you.
I used to have access to one back in the mid 90's... whoa... that sounds cool.
I know when I took people by the lab to see it they would immediately go "COOL!!!" when they saw the scrolly thingie make the folder icons look bigger then smaller then bigger then... you get the i dea.
It's no wonder SGI's never caught on... it must have been the amazing easy to install no issues approach to software they have always used. I know I am not alone in feeling this way.
http://www.mp3.com/fudge/
http://fudge.org
: is used as a seperator for path names.
On the plus side, this allows you to use just about any other character. Backslashes, forward slashes, dashes, asterisks, spaces, percent signs, etc.
Before URLs became commonplace, colons weren't terribly common when you think about it.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
I too have some reservations about the Aqua. Yes, the screen shots look neat, but that isn't the same as actual interaction. Most of the time when trying to explain why I still like the Mac to someone who doesn't use one, the conversation tends to gravitate to minute details (the handling of hierarchical menus for example, or the location of the menu bar)
The problem is the advantages of the old UI aren't single momentous features. (Unfortunatly, the disadvantages are.) Most people can't explain them ("Hey that menu went away when I wasn't expecting it to."); It is just an uneasy feeling that things aren't right. But some thought went into those special cases, and its those pieces that I'm not usre that Apple put into OS X.
Its easy to make something pretty. Its easy to make something that is logical to explain. Its hard to make something that feels natural.
Daniel.
I must say, i learned a lot from the report the Arsificial Intelligentia over at arstechnica.com put up.
Check it here.
Its got a great deal of info on how MacOS X and Quartz are a 3rd generation GUI, relying on vectors, and a great deal of pdf technology to speed things up. This decreases the amount of power needed to run a transformation like the genie effect by great amounts.
Good stuff.
I tend to think that if Apple doesn't do it themselves, there will be a Kaleidoscope clone (or native Kaleidoscope itself) for OSX. Greg Landweber has an enormous amount of energy...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Apple's biggest mistakes were:
:^)
1. dumping BeOS
2. Bringing back Steve Jobs as Lord and Savior (erm, CEO
3. Putting that butt-ugly interface on top of OpenStep
4. Apparently not going to beta-testing, or even testing at all, on anyone other than developers that stood around slack-jawed saying, "coooool."
Sorry, but that's how I feel about the subject. My extreme hope is that GNUstep doesn't go to themeing toolkits just because OpenStep is themed now...it might be nice, but, c'mon, the NeXT toolkit is nice, usable, and fairly intuitive. The only improvement I could see is making menus either Mac-style or Windows-style, with the additional option of "traditional" NeXT-style menus.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Actually, it's more like this:
1. Pay Xerox in the form of Apple stock.
2. Take a few notes on what Xerox has done. No code.
3. Mix in a large number of ideas by Jef Raskin and others.
4. Develop the Lisa/Mac.
5. Bill Gates takes a look, and...
6. The rest is history.
Hope that clears things up a little more.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Actually, you raise an interesting query with no appropriate answer. The Apple-Tab in 8.5 and above (I'm running 9.0, so it's the same here) switches Applications because that's the _only_ thing the MacOS has rights over. It's like the MDI (Multiple Document Interface) in Windows - for example, try Microsoft Word, or Visual Basic, or anything like that. Alt-Tab and you pop out of Microsoft Word, which is why I often open many Words and quickly run out of memory.
.sig: File not found.
Windows also allows the option of an SDI interface, a Single Document Interface. This seems to have become the de facto standard, but imho, it's far more complicated and becomes nastily disorganized very quickly. There is no homougeny between programs, etc. It becomes a smorgasbord (sp).
So, imho, I'd like to stick with the command-tab that's in MacOS. It works. What you're asking for isn't a feature, it's a fundamental OS change. If Aqua is based on X, it'll probably happen. I hope not. I like the feel of MacOS, and yes, I started using computers back in DOS 2.1, so I've been around both worlds plenty of times. I'm a Windows programmer at work, but when I come home my G4 feels a lot cleaner and sharper than anything I've encountered under Wintel.
And that's not a flame, that's my opinion.
Jezzball
ls:
ls:
(A)bort, (R)etry, (I)gnore?