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What Mac OS X Could Learn From Windows
An anonymous reader writes "It is almost unheard of to see something written about what OS X could learn from Windows but this details some good examples. And yes, it includes the right-click mouse." I find about half the suggestions compelling enough to be worth griping over, and the other half off-base, but YMMV.
The whole point of the one button mouse is to make it easy to use for beginners, and to prevent developers being lazy when designing programs.
Those are two important points, but don't underestimate the RSI aspect. When RSI is a risk, the way to reduce it is to drive the action back to bigger muscles.
The two button mouse requires you to use the muscles in an individual finger, and worse, individual tendons which exacerbate carpal tunnel syndrome. (multi-button trackballs do better). With the 1-button Apple mouse you can use your whole hand to click. With the current 0-button Apple mouse, you can use your whole arm.
This is good ergonomics but it requires a more careful user interface design to utilize.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Like everyone else, I'm going to look at the suggestions:
1) Compatible control keys.
Oh, please, no.
If it matters, then there should be an argument about which way is better, other than "more people are used to the Microsoft way". And if it doesn't matter, then it shouldn't be a big deal.
It isn't the labelling, but the position? Let's not muck around too much with the position, eh? It was an unmitigated disaster when some bozo decided that the control key ought to be on the same row as the space instead of to the left of the "A" key; let's not continue the trend of rendering the standard keyboard unusable.
If you want a different layout, remap the keys yourself, or buy a different keyboard. Line up to buy one of the Optimus keyboards if they come out next year, and map all of the keys to exactly where you want them.
If I were paranoid, I'd say that this suggestion was designed to drive the sorts of people who haven't been appropriately indoctrinated into the Microsoft Windows Way[tm] away from computers entirely. If I had to use the Dell keyboard that came with the machine at work, I'd probably be contemplating a job that didn't involve computers, and wouldn't for the foreseeable future.
2) Save button on toolbars.
As has been pointed out, this is an application thing, not an OS thing.
Personally, I'm not a big fan of toolbars. Trying to puzzle out the little icons isn't a profitable use of my time (and! yet! here! I! am! on! slashdot! yeah, yeah, I get the irony.), so I'd just as soon have the option to get rid of the toolbars and reclaim that screen real-estate for getting actual work done.
Finally, the appropriate solution would be to give the user the choice of setting up the toolbar (like Mail.app) with every possible leaf in the menu-tree. Why bicker about "save", when all the leaves in the menu should be allowable targets for the user to put into the toolbar?
3) A multi button mouse
Hardware request. Bogus objection.
What I want is a freaking three-button mouse with a scroll-wheel, where the scroll-wheel isn't trying to double-up as the third button. Yes, I know, I can "just click on the scroll-wheel", but I don't want to. I also don't want tiny little buttons that I can use with my thumb or pinky or whatever. I'm not looking for a funky keyboard on my mouse, after all (which is where this eternally-growing-button-list trend goes).
But if the OS works with a single-button mouse, fine. Why should that be a problem? You want people who do best with a single-button mouse to have a terrible time with their computer? Such sadism makes for a very poor UI, and is no doubt part of the reason I bailed out of the Microsoft-centric world-view many years ago.
4) Only show relevant file types in open and save dialogs.
Many applications ghost out "inappropriate" files already. But making the actual hiding of information a system default is just bad form -- I get extremely annoyed when my computer hides information from me.
Which leads into this nonsense of "hiding file extensions". THEY ARE NOT FREAKING EXTENSIONS: THE ARE SUFFIXES!
Yes, boys and girls, it's the height of idiocy to look at the NAME of a file to determine how to handle it when you can look in a file to see what sort of thing it actually is. One of the stupidest "features" of Microsoft Windows is it's inability to understand that a JPEG file is actually a JPEG file even thought it's named "Foo", or, gosh darn it, even maliciously renamed to "Foo.GIF".
5) Sort folders to top of directory listings
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Pick One: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~stremler/sigs/sigs.html (Note - disable Javascript first!)
Wrong.
How a context menu works is NOT completely understood.
The other night, my wife was on the phone with her mother providing tech support. I'm not exaggerating when I say that she said "NOT THE RIGHT BUTTON, MOM!" about 20 times. The context menu was coming up, and the selected action (default) was not the one needed.
Her mom is not stupid, but she does hit the wrong button on her mouse. To her, there's no difference -- they both click.
And keyboard combinations are not a valid comparison -- you don't accidentally click on the keyboard and the mouse at the same time.
Having a one button mouse makes sense for people like her. Power users who can (and do) benefit from multiple buttons can go out and buy a better mouse.
-ch
1. Compatible control keys
The gist of this writer's complaint is squarely focussed on the positioning of the 'Command' key (some call it the 'Apple' key) on the Mac keyboard. He goes as far as to say that 'Apple - and the zealotry - need to concede that this battle is lost..
I am both a Windows and OS X user (Windows mainly for games) and I can attest that the Mac keyboard command key layout is vastly superior to that of a standard PC keyboard because of the position that you must contort your hand into in order to use the latter.
For many PC users it is a case of simply not having experienced any better, so it's difficult to convince them to change their ways, but take an objective view of using both layouts with just one hand, and it's incredibly difficult to argue that the PC way is less strenuous. Perhaps this is responsible for much greater adoption of keyboard shortcuts among casual users on the Mac platform.
2. Save button on toolbars
Saving actively modifies a file on disk, perhaps overwriting or saving a 'bad' copy over what was originally a preferred version by accident. I am content not to have my toolbar filled with such items. However, this suggestion is not entirely devoid of merit (unlike the others, as we'll see).
3. A multi-button mouse
I don't understand why we still have this issue. You can plug practically any mouse into OS X, with any obscene number of buttons you desire and it will work. The writer continues: 'Why stop at two? Especially with things like Exposé, Dashboard and Spotlight.'. It would, frankly, be a nightmare for anyone but a poweruser to use. My mother does just fine with a one button mouse, she has enough trouble remembering what needs to be single clicked and what needs to be double clicked in the interface. This is truely a ridiculous idea. The preliferation of dozens of buttons of mice is a typical Windows thing - just look at how the Start menu itself has also grown from a simple and fairly useful applications menu (Win 95) to the default monstrosity of usability that it is today (Win XP).
It's also worth mentioning that the usability of software on the Mac platform benefits hugely by forcing developers to come up with more elegant ways with which to allow control of the app - rather than (as is all too often the case in Windows) relying on the context menu to shuffle all the little commands into.
4) Only show relevant file types in open and save dialogs.
This has the effect of confusing users by making it look as though some of their stuff may be missing. It also does not allow for the identification of a folder via its contents (looking for a folder: "It's the folder with the Picture of Mom in it" for example). The OS X way gives you the best of both worlds. If anything, it should be Windows changing to the OS X way here for these important usability reasons.
5) Sort folders to top of directory listings
Not without merit.
6) More context sensitive help.
God... please no. Tooltips should, in the perfect interface NEVER be necessary. They are analogous to sticky tape holding together the interface... 'what's that? I've designed a crap interface and no-one can tell what this button is supposed to do from it's placement and icon? Well I could go and redesign the interface, or I could 'fix' it by adding a tooltip, and leaving it up to the user to figure it all out."
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