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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.
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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This sig intentionally left justified.
How do I put the menu for the current application at the top of the screen? How do I add some global options to the menus? Also known as 'Pie menus' think of a circle appearing at where the mouse was clicked, subdivided like a pie chart, such that you, say, go left for formatting details, right for copy. Thats eye-candy, nothing more. You can't change the feel or logical arrangement of a GNOME or KDE application with the theme alone. Pardon?? (All I've ended up using is Sawmill, wterm and Xemacs.) There is NO global scriptability for GNOME applications, and similarly for KDE in 1.x. KDE 2.x may be different, I hope so.
There is little flexibility at the application level (like you get with various Windows applications -- GNOME and KDE applications aren't mature/bloated enough for that, and wouldn't get sufficient development anyhow) If your preferences or prejudices relate to simplicity of design, overall thought of design, plans for future, etc. then I'm afraid that that just isn't the case. what needs to be stressed, and isn't is Flexibility, Reuseability, possiblities for Customisation/Integration at the component level -- currently KDE 1.x and GNOME 1.x have no real concept of a component level. True, but it is all too often that the people in charge see the cosmetic factors in their competition, and go all out to emulate those and only those without the thought that has gone in to the rest of the design of what they aspire to copy. The moral of this story is: Think, Think and Think again before you code something that you want to put out (TAI -- Linus didn't think about global users when starting Linux, and didn't distribute it until it was going somewhere, and he's stuck to his aims ever since.)
John
John_Chalisque
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
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.
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.
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
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.
Actually, he's partially right. Within the last few years - around the release of MacOS 8.1 I believe - Apple began transitioning people over to the HFS Extended (HFS+) file system. HFS+ does indeed support long (at least 255 character) file names.
However, the functionality is not apparent in the current MacOS. I guess Apple figured poorly coded apps might break, and there isn't really a good way to display filenames in the Finder with that long of names (it looks a bit unwieldly).
My understanding is that long filenames work just fine in OSX.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
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
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)
He talks about the QT4 player, Mac OS X, and GUIs in general. Listen in.
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.
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
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 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.
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