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Jef Raskin On The Mac
der Kopf writes "Jeff Raskin, one of the creators of the Macintosh and inventor of the click-and-drag interface, states in an interview for the British newspaper The Guardian that "the Mac is now a mess. A third party manual (Pogue's The Missing Manual) is nearly 1,000 pages, and far from complete. Apple now does development by accretion, and there is only a little difference between using a Mac and a Windows machine."" While I think Raskin has some good points, I think there's a far cry between the Mac & XP.
Raskin has been suggesting for years now that the MacOS has failed the interface test. My impression is that he would prefer an entirely different machine that may perhaps be radically different than what we have now. If this is so, Raskin should go out and create his OS of choice. At that point, I will evaluate it but for now, I will stick with OS X. Sorry Jeff, but you appear to be concerned with designing interfaces for folks that do not know how to use computers. I know how to use computers and have found very efficient workflows that allow tremendous amounts of work to be accomplished (except when posting to Slashdot of course) using current computer interface designs. The current way of doing business with GUI's is somewhat efficient for noobies, quite efficient for intermediate users, and the GUI combined with the CLI is very efficient for advanced users. By the way, the combined GUI and CLI is done quite nicely in OS X.
Also, Raskin's complaints about Windows and OS X being similar could come down to other explanations: 1) convergent evolution or 2) Microsoft blatantly ripped off Apple in look and feel and continues to do so. I am inclined to believe both options as there are simply efficient ways of interfacing with computers in a GUI paradigm. That said, how many times have we seen MacOS features show up in Windows some time later? I am by no means suggesting they are equivalent however. OS X is so much better than Windows in terms of function and interface, but Windows has made huge strides in the last few years, although I do find myself applying the "standard" Windows scheme on my XP machines.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Yeah, sure there are differences between OSX and WinXP, when you really pick it apart. But basically they have the same components, perform the same functions, and even look somewhat similar. The biggest difference I see is the underlying engine OSX uses *nix, where as XP uses an NT core, but this is mostly invisible to the users.
I find that most often I end up learning from necessity, rather than for enjoyment.
The quest for CPU power has been largely defeated by bloated software in applications and operating systems. Some programs I wrote in Basic on an Apple II ran faster than when written in a modern language on a G4 Dual-processor Mac with hardware 1,000 times faster.
That is quite odd of him to say. I just checked on seti@home, climate prediction and predictor@home via boinc, I don't see any Apple IIs on top of any lists. Well maybe the distributed computings teams should hire Jef Raskin and his Amazing Basic programming abilities - right?
I think sometimes, you wake up for an interview and haven't had coffee yet and say things that are not quite what you intended - it happens to me all the time ya know...
i'm using 5 mouse buttons on my mac - does that mean that mac is better?
Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
That is a nice blade sharpener.
:-)
I think that he's right that MacOS X is too complex to be a simple appliance. But I think that general purpose computers are by definition complex, because they can be used for *anything*, and his vision holds more true for specialized devices. For example, the iPod is elegant and transparent to use.
That being said, I'm sure that usability could always be improved. But I don't agree that there's not much difference between XP and MacOS X -- while they're similar at a very high level (mouse/windows/icons over multi-tasking OS, etc.), MacOS X is better in almost every detail. But it's best not to get into a religious war here. I can only guess that Jeff has such a radical vision for how computers could be that from his perspective XP and MacOS X aren't too different.
Hmm, kinda like Nader!
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Jef Raskin has been at this for years. Every 18 months or so we see an interview with him in which he poo-poos the current Mac talking about how it diverged from its original tenets of usability. Well no shit, Apple has learned a lot since 1980. They're realizing that now is a time to experiment and change the interface even if it means chaos for a while.
If he's so damn pissed that he got fired and the Mac UI is in the toilet, maybe he should go and work on some Open Sores desktop project and get it right for Apple. Perhaps he'd like to modify the Apple Human Interface Guidelines (yeah, guidelines, not commandments) and then share his changes with the Mac community to point out what it is that Apple needs to change so desperately.
Otherwise, Raskin is just being a whiny bitch.
BLING BLING. Meet the architecture that's changing everything.
I bought a PowerBook about a year ago (my first Mac) and have found that this really isn't much of an issue. Every once in awhile I have to hit the Control key to bring up a pop-up menu but not much. It took about 40 seconds to get over it the first time, since then I haven't been pining for a 2nd button.
You can always use it with a two-button mouse if you want.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
MacOS does cater for this oput of the box.
It's the Apple Macintosh that doesn't. There is a difference between the operating system and the hardware - the combination provides an easy to use solution but does not restrict the user.
If you find a two or more button mouse that you like you are more than welcome to plug it into your Mac - and the buttons, scroll wheels and the like will work. Out of the box. Without extra software. In most applications.
All this because hte OS has been designed to cater for both modes of operation.
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
Um before anyone follows Jef's vision of the future of human-computing interfaces, you might want to consider that he was opposed to the use of a mouse on the Macintosh.
If he hadn't been replaced by Jobs as the team lead, the Macintosh would have no mouse, using keyboard function keys instead.
Unlike Bush and the US media who lied the US into a phony war thats killed more civilians than all terrorist attacks in the last 50 years!
Jef Raskin has good reason to have been bitter about the way the Macintosh has turned out. His description of the Mac's history ( http://mxmora.best.vwh.net/JefRaskin.html) provides a good introduction.
However, UI's have had to change as computing technologies have become more complicated. When the Mac was introduced, the Internet was still in its developmental stage; computer graphics were limited; and hardware devices were essentially permanently connected to the computer (no plug-and-play type technologies). The world changed, and the interface had to change with it.
It would be great to follow Raskin's advice and reevaluate the Mac GUI - however, it's apparent that Apple is constantly trying to do this. The X GUI has had changes (remember the purple window-shade type button in the X beta's?), and will no doubt continue to change. Right now we're looking at a (I'd say) fairly succesfuly merger of Mac OS 9 and NeXT UIs. But things can always get better.
I respect Raskin tremendously, but I would take his opinions with a grain of salt. His comments should be appreciated and considered, but I certainly don't believe that Apple has abandoned its quest for usability.
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
Ok, I can see why for novice users (especially those who can't count to ten) having only two mouse buttons might be of benefit, but what about the overwhelming majority of users who have no trouble at all using ten buttons?
The answer is simple. One button is usually enough. Mac OS and all the available programs can live perfectly with "just" one mouse button. So why bother?
i expected an appropriately configed G3 to do the same with OS X
Did you read the install notes on the box, or the website or during the installation process??? No.. Right that's your problem. All the info and minimum requirements are posted there.
I'm also burnt out on the brushed metal look, the costly updates and dodgy performance unless your willing to fork out big $$$
Explain to me how $999 iBook is expensive? or $799 eMac? If you don't like the look of the hardware. Well, tough. I guess you can buy anything in the gray ai32 world.
I can buy an old PC and know it will be slow - but it will work - and with everything plugged in
I won't even begin to digest this erronous statement. I will say one thing tho - minimum requirements. I have been burned by this before on the ai32 platform. Or have you ever tried using a scanner that had a proprietary pci card? I didn't think so.
Jef saysSome programs I wrote in Basic on an Apple II ran faster than when written in a modern language on a G4 Dual-processor Mac with hardware 1,000 times faster.
which is BS unless he specifies what his program did. I mean a simple "Press any key to continue" is going to be so much more effeicient tha na dialog box with "Do you want to save your settings? --- Yes No OK Cancel SaveToDisk Abort "
Instead of attacking the person, try to attack his points. Wow, look at that, you can't.
You lose sugarpuff:
A third party manual (Pogue's The Missing Manual) is nearly 1,000 pages, and far from complete.
As another poster so helpfully expanded on for me, Mac OS X has an entire Unix subsystem and feature set that are designed for power users and developers. Your average user knows nothing of these, nor do they need to. That doesn't stop people from documenting all those extra "cool" features in OS X.
Apple now does development by accretion, and there is only a little difference between using a Mac and a Windows machine.
An unsubstantiated statement. I suppose he felt that his statement about the manual should have given him the right to make this statement, except for that statement being based on flawed logic.
My original vision is outdated and irrelevant.
He recognizes that the original Mac interface is unsuitable. But then he goes on to say:
The principles of putting people first, and designing from the interface to the software and hardware, are as vital today as they were then.
Ok. But what does that mean? He gives no examples of proper interfaces, nor does he explain why OS X fails to achieve the "People first" status.
And the iMac G5? Was the original iMac a step on the correct path?
The unfoldable portable-shaped box on a stalk?
Ouch. You'd almost think he doesn't like the thing. But then he says:
It is a practical and space-saving design.
So which is it?
The truth of the matter is that he didn't actually make a single significant point in the entire article. He made several claims to the effect of Mac OS X being "a poor user interface", but never once gave an opinion as to why or how to fix it. Granted, that may be the fault of the editor, but then we need a better article. There were NO points made in this one.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Thank you for the correction. On the topic of menu systems I just have to rant a bit on Microsoft's new whiz-bang idea for menus...only displaying the most recently used menu items. This drives me insane and I pray it doesn't find its way into Office for Mac. It also breaks just about every UI rule of thumb you can find. Now menu items appear in variable positions in the screen. Additionally you don't see options that you haven't used recently which makes it harder for you to learn what options are available. You may not use Format Page very often, but seeing it there a hundred times on the way to Format Paragraph lets you know its available. While LRU elimination may work for some caching systems it should not be applied to program menus! In short ARGGGG.
Jef didn't like the old MacOS either, so your argument is beside the point
Fair enough. The article didn't state that clearly, so I didn't realize that he simply hates all interfaces.
One thing I do find amusing, however, is that he's apparently a big proponent of Zooming User Interfaces like Pad++. Yet the ultimate irony is that the Display PDF layer of Mac OS X makes it the perfect OS to add Zooming interfaces to! Apple has clearly demonstrated this with the Éxpose feature. Somehow, though, that doesn't seem to sink in with this guy.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Apple now does development by accretion, and there is only a little difference between using a Mac and a Windows machine.
Because every time you want to add a feature, you should redesign the OS from the ground up.
There's some good background on Raskin at Folklore.org, including my favorite, I Invented Burrell
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Jef Raskin, who is often mis-labelled as "The Father of the Macintosh" (despite the fact that he left the Mac team three years before the Mac's unveiling) has been a notorious critic of Apple. He bashes the leadership, the GUI, and the hardware. The more he does this, the harder it gets to construe it as anything other than sour grapes. Especially since his only real attempt at designing "his" computer interface was the complete flop of the Canon Cat
Note to Jef: if your design is so awesome, make it happen! If it's that much better, I'm sure you'll get more than enough sales to rake in the bucks! I know that I, for one, would love to see what it is you consider to be the ideal interface!
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
Design a Canon Cat. Jef's time to make an impact with his interface ideas came and went. His idea for the original Mac was implemented whole sale with the Canon Cat. It had everything Jef wanted including his stupid "LEAP" keys and an invisible interface.
The result an utter failure, Canon dropped the product in 6 months. Jef claimed that he did not get the support he wanted and had to make compromises on his vision. Bullshit, this man had his time to impress us with his interface expertise and product design skills. It was an utter failure.
Remember, Jef was a professor by training... his ideas are at best academic. If Jef had his way, the Mac would have been a glorified typewriter. It took the the genius of Bill Atkinson, Bruce Horn, Steve Jobs among many others to give us the Macintosh. These guys are the true fathers of the Mac.
Jef has a case of sour grapes, being kicked out of the Mac team by Steve Jobs, and then having his beloved Cat being canned by Canon at Steve's insistence. Jobs, insisted the Canon drop the Cat, if they were to invest in NeXT. Canon invested close to $100M in NeXT!
What we are left with is an academic who time has passed by.
When you buy an apple you are expecting an appliance like computer, it comes in a pretty box, with all matching peripherals(dell does this too but in an ugly fashion). Apple gives you what you need to use your computer as they intended. Now you want something special or want that to be different than the pretty package they provide you. Sure we will let you here you go, we will even sell it to you. The problem is that you people think everyone wants and needs a 2 button mouse because PC's have two buttons, its what I'm used too, I'm afraid of change, I don't understand things that are different. Get over it. An apple is what it is, you want the extras buy them, but to piss and moan because your 2 button mouse doesnt have an apple logo on it is stupid.
"Jeff Raskin, ... and /inventor of the click-and-drag interface/"
If anyone can be credited with that invention, it would have to be Vannevar Bush with his prescient thoughts on the memex (ie pc). And if not him, then the guys at Xerox-Parc most definitely preceed this Raskin guy.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
More to the point, it seems that Raskin has had some chip on his shoulder since Jobs kicked him off the Mac team years ago. Raskin also uses this as another opportunity to hock his book. This is not even the first time this year. Witness an earlier occasion with Berkeley Groks in March of this year.
I think Jef is out in left field on this, but it is interesting that we have settled for an interface that is ideally suited for someone with three hands. Remember how your typing instructor taught you: Keep both hands above the home row. Now, for efficiencies sake, you will also want to keep your dominant hand on the mouse.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
... it was quite pleasant to day after day, year after year get on the computer and not care much about getting owned, or the latest windows bug du juor. Some folks never drank that MS kool aid to begin with, because they could see it was just lame. MS power users became that way from necessity a lot more than from desire, because their stuff was broken and prone to getting viruses and trojans all the time, let alone constant crashing. For every 100 times my friends had to deal with registry corruption, etc, I had 100 times of booting, getting to computing, and nothing much happening besides what I wanted to happen. It wasn't perfect, that's a gimmee, but you got to admit reality, it was way easier to use for joe average and a lot more secure. Why that would want to make someone cut of their hands is beyond me, unless you actually LIKED having broken and overly complex for no appaarent reason stuff just to give you some busywork to do with your spare time. Some folks like that for a hobby, obviously, others don't.
It's only relatively recently in the past few years, that a home consumer could get an offering from any OS vendor that was at least half assed stable and half assed secure and functional from raw noobs to advanced professional level users. Before that time, Macs had at least the security part correct, along with the GUI, and were 1/2 way to functionality across the board. that's a 2.5 rating out of 3. MS barely gets a 1.5 until recently, same with linux.. Now I would say that the top 3 OSes are tied at 2.5 still, but Mac got there a lot sooner. And if GUI isn't important, then why has it become an industry standard, across all vendors of the major OSes? Could it be because it's a good idea, that people appreciate the ease of use of GUI? I think so, so do all the folks who have developed and distributed such OSes. I'd say that's some fairly good proof.
There's a REASON that there is something beyond a CLI offered by EVERYONE now. And Apple knew this quite a long time ago and specialised in it, it wasn't an afterthought or a "me too" offering.
With that said, I switched fulltime to Linux once it hit a 2.5 rating on my personal home joe user scale, because it's freer, runs on cheaper hardware I can afford, and at least achieved parity with what I had before. I wouldn't have if it hadn't been developed to that point.
Never mind that there is much to love about OSX's framework architecture and underlying modularity. Raskin, as anyone else, has strong opinions about user interfaces. I have my own. I don't love everything about the OSX interfaces, but I've owned Macs since the 80s and could say the same about any version of the Mac OS.
The real test of an interface is its adoption in the public. This being said, OSX is a hit.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
My Nokia Communicator phones (9000, 9290) have GUIs, but they do not have mice or other pointing devices. They use "ATM buttons" on the sides to make menu choices, and have other dedicated keys. But just look at them and you can see that they're graphical.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
In the good old days, we booted from system disks and we couldn't even copy them... and we LIKED it."
The world changes and raskin won't... Jobs gets it.
Out perform the competition and delight the user.
Raskin hasn't made a contribution in over 20 years.
Rage on old fart... It was better before... sure.
A friggin' free cellphone has better software than those "good ol days".
McD
More importantly, how many times have we seen Windows features show up in MacOS?
:|
:P
1. Meta-Tab : a Windows first. Swiped by Apple for OS 8.5.
2. Windows that minimize to a dock/taskbar, rather than windowshade in place : a Windows first, and the Windows-like behaviour I hate the most about OS X. 9 Windowshades, goddammit. It's a third party hack on Windows and OS X.*
3. Preview-in-filebrowser : A feature that had been standard with Explorer and missing on the Mac until OS X.
There's others, but it's been awhile since I've been a regular Windows user, so I'd be hard pressed to recall others.
Raskin had almost nothing to do with the Mac as it's known now, or as it's been known for years- his own computer design concepts called for a command line interface, not a GUI. He gets a lot of credit for the Mac but the fact is that he left Apple long before it was ever released. MacOS System 1 was shaped much more by Andy Hertzfeld, Steve Jobs and Burell Smith than it was by Raskin.
As for Windows useability.... ugh. Apple's ripped some features, but they're mostly good ones. Minus that whole "losing the windowshading" thing, which I'm still pissed about. If you want Windowshading without third party hacks, your only option these days is an X11 window manager.
Of course, that could lead me to ranting about the state of X11 "desktops" and how much of a letdown it is to see the big DMs turning into shit Win32 clones with bad implementations of all of the worst features of OS X jammed on top- and I've already strayed too far into troll territory, so I'll just stfu.
* You would think that with the zero-pixel borders around sides and bottom of non-Brushed Metal windows in OS X that they would have included windowshading or at least allowed applications to implement it on a per-app basis... but since ALL windows minimize to the dock, it's easy to make one hell of a mess out of it really, really fast in the process of working with Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Photoshop and Fireworks... not the cleanest solution in the world, thank you.
Raskin has complained about Apple ever since they poo poo'd his DynaBook ideas back in the early 80's. If the Mac really had as many people creating it that seem to get credit for designing it then it truly would look like a government project. Let's give some real credit to Bill Atkinson, Andy Hertzfeld just to name two.
Nah, vi is modal, Raskin hates that (THE is pseudo-modal). In addition, THE commands are English words, not (generally) esoteric control-sequences.
I believe Raskin's approach also differs in that once the command pseudo-mode is entered, a list of available operations is presented, a feature I can't say vi would be worse off to implement. (I might be wrong about this, I don't have Classic installed right now to run THE and apparently he isn't offering it for download anymore...?)
I admit that I wish someone like Raskin could get funding from some entity like Apple (or Google?) to develop a truly revolutionary, next-generation operating system. But I've used THE, and it really doesn't seem like that is it. I couldn't get any real work done with it; I found its behavior very esoteric and unpredictable at times (the dual cursors were tricky, as was the behavior of selections).
It also doesn't seem to me that THE would be very amenable to extension to more common modern computer tasks than text-editing and running snippets of Python. Imagine trying to cut a home video or organize 30 gigs of music or build sophisticated bitmap and vector art with shift-space and a small library of universal commands.
Monotonous and limited interfaces like THE, it seems, are good for monotnous, mostly single-purpose devices (the Canon Cat, the iPod, to some extent the original Mac). But it seems impossible, to me, to build a system that has the power to do everything that a modern computer does without getting a little unwelcome complexity and inconsistency. Of course, I disagree with Raskin that OSX is just as bad as Windows in this respect--why he would say something like that really is beyond me.
When my wife doesn't yell in this long, loud, and rather strangulated way (one cannot adequately do it justice), then I know that the human interface works.
She is not a programmer. She is a user. Worse a user who sez "why can't it just do this". She is brilliant in that her view has nothing to do with programming and everything to do with human interface.
She is quite happy with her Mac. Oh, sure, there are things she would prefer to be different (and she NEVER touches the command line interface). But, for the most part, she is happy.
She uses Peecees at works and find them utterly baffling (not that she doesn't use them, but finds them to be an affront to the user).
Raskin may find XP to be the same as OS 10. Fine, he is entitled to his opinion. But real users know the difference.
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
MacOS was ugly and poorly organized before OS X, what with extensions and many tack-on technologies on an OS built for yesterday. In 1984, it really could not do much (as I recall my original 128K Mac... though my use was soon marred by a bad motherboard as soon as the warranty expired), and it sure did it simply. Flexibility is what makes a computer useful to the clever person, but it always comes with a concomitant need for the users to understand how to express their desires to the machine. Making the computer just "do what I mean" is nice, and can take your surprisingly far, but it overlooks that "the right thing" is often ambiguous to those designers who are not constraining the users from "thinking different'. I use XP and OS X in even doses these days, and find that both platforms have come a long way in the past several years. But most of the things I wish were done better on the Mac are longstanding deficiencies.... not new ones. To put the short list together, I'd cite these usability blunders: 1. The flower or cloverleaf key. It has an Apple on it too. Why don't they LOSE the cloverleaf, so people can clearly and succinctly name it in verbal dialog without having to EXPLAIN which key they mean? It might also help to toss even the Apple and just call this what it is: the command key (of course, that word would have to be painted on it). 2. Similarly... the control key. The iconic label for indicating its use in shortcuts is some weird diagonalized hatch which does not appear on the key itself and is used nowhere else in the world. What rocket scientist thought up THAT one, and decided that this was the right choice for 'the rest of us'? That icon should be what is printed on the damn key, too: 'ctrl'. Failing that, at least go to ^ !! And, sadly, one must wonder who at Apple thinks the users can't understand a second mousebutton after all these years. It must be by extrapolation that they withold scroll wheels. Before you ask, YES I have a mouse I use that has these, but why is the basics of simple computing kept from the basic experience Apple presents to the user? tone
tone
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Hawk
Instead of attacking the person, try to attack his points.
When he has one, I'll give it a shot.
OS X is vastly more simple for a beginner to use than the old "System 7" Macintosh. He's coming at OS X the same way a Windows geek does, as somebody who is used to the way a different operating system does things, and therefore a slanted opinion about the way things "should" be done.
The dock, the new multi-tiered finder, and the "no button" mouse are all ultra-friendly on-ramps for a new user to get up and running on all the basic apps. Once the stuff "grandma" needs to learn to do e-mail and surf are mastered, digging deeper into the OS is remarkably simple. After a year or so with her first iMac, my previously-computer-illiterate aunt is comfortably trouble-shooting her own network issues.
The old Mac OS was simple and elegant for the apps and environments which existed in 1989, but ten years later it was getting awfully long in the tooth, and some of the paradigms which seemed like simplicity itself did not adapt well to the way people are using computers today.
Pat yourself on the back for making something which was way ahead of the pack at the time, Raskin, but stop being a crybaby now that your work has been eclipsed and made redundant.
You don't hear this kind of whining about the web from people who used to write CD-ROM encyclopedias, but this article is pretty much the same sort of thing.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah.
Scott