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The Sketchbook of Susan Kare
theodp writes "The Mac wasn't the first computer to present the user with a virtual desktop of files and folders instead of a command line and a blinking cursor, but it was the sketchbook of Susan Kare that gave computing a human face to the masses. After graduating from NYU with a Ph.D. in fine arts, Kare was working on a commission from an Arkansas museum to sculpt a razorback hog out of steel when she got a call from high-school friend Andy Hertzfeld offering her a job to work on the Mac. The rest, as they say, is UI history. Armed with a $2.50 sketchbook, Kare crafted the casual prototypes of a new, radically user-friendly face of computing. BTW, just in time for holiday gift-giving, Kare has self-published her first book, Susan Kare Icons. So, could computing could use a few more artists, and a few less MBAs?"
Is there any field that couldn't use less MBAs? It is a sort of community service to get the poor critters off the street, but they sure make a mess of things. Maybe we can find them a nice island somewhere.
So not everybody who did well dropped out: a PhD in art history as well as a maker (her PhD thesis title "A study of the use of caricature in selected sculptures of Honore Daumier and Claes Oldenburg").
Nice to know it's possible to balance the two, it will make some of my PhD student friends very happy indeed :-)
The Plato IV protoypes used a plasma panel with touch screen in the late '60s, and had downloadable characters you could point to to activate different functions. Not a far reach to make those program and folder icons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system)
Susan Kare is very well known in the visual design world. She is the world's leading icon designer. Not only did she do the icons for the Mac, she did some of the icons for Windows. And Autodesk products. And PayPal. And Facebook.
(If the Linux crowd had someone that good, Linux on the desktop would probably be a success by now.)
getting rid of pretty much all the software infrastructure of the Xerox devices, stripping them down to a mere shell
Yeah, right. "Stripping". By adding things like pull down menus and drag and drop. Things that didn't exist on the Xerox system. Things that didn't exist at all till Apple invented them.
You simply don't know what the hell you're talking about. The normal human brain is very good a visual recognition of objects, and can find a familiar, distinctive icon for a program such as iTunes more quickly than it can find the word "iTunes". We recognize a red, hexagonal sign more quickly than we would recognize a white rectangle with black letters that read "stop". I'm sorry if the peculiarities of your brain development don't handle this properly, but don't begrudge the rest of us a UI that takes advantage of this.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
As someone with a BS in Computer Science and a BFA in Digital Media and Illustration, I'd certainly like to have more of the latter working in computing. Visual trainwrecks like the Windows XP Fisher-Price theme, usability disasters like Microsoft's game of "Where's The Button (and Menu)?" in every software upgrade in the last decade, and the less said about the uncanny valley that gaming has gotten lost in the better... sometimes make me want to quit tech and become an oil painter.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I do not know why I got marked as flamebait. I clearly stated it was my personal opinion and I meant every word without intent of inciting a flamewar. Mods are on crack.
That said, to me the ideal design of GUI so far has been Windows 95, with toolbar autohide. Horrible OS but imho best GUI ever. Clean, simple, rectangular without the horrible rounded corners. Grey background, forgettable fonts, and equally neutral pointer shapes.
I have always hated icons and preferred text instead but I have yet to see a GUI with labels instead of pictures by default. Other than that - Windows 95 got most things right.
Bullshit. Pulldown menus existed in many software products.
Name a single one that preceded the Lisa. You can't because Apple did indeed invent the pull down menu.
Wikipedia even mentions it. Though they erroneously call them drop-down menus (which was a Microsoft variant) rather than pull down menus as Apple called them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_interface
I recognise your user name as someone who is very often wrong. I suggest you should do a little research before posting in future.
Again, neither Xerox nor anyone else had pull-down menus nor anything like it. Xerox used buttons for commands. Either physical buttons on the custom keyboard, or screen buttons rather like a text button version of a modern day toolbar. Nothing like pull-down menus.
So, what you call "pull down menus" was a minor graphical variation on existing practice at the time.
There's nothing minor about it. The two dimensional menus within a menu concept was novel, new and is a central ingredient of most GUI OSs to this day.
Whether or not it's attached to the screen or the app window *IS* a minor variation, yet that's something you bring up in the hope of changing this from a discussion of fact, to one of preference.
No. You cannot compare it with anything that "was just around the corner" - it didn't exist yet. I don't recall AmigaOS being much ahead of the Mac (not "Mac OS", it wasn't called an OS for another 10 years), though it did have some nice features and eventually, some nice tools. Apart from Smalltalk, on which you might have a point, none of those other things would have been usable on a 68000 processor. It's questionable whether any sort of OOP runtime could have run on it. You could argue that the CPU was too small for the job, but the software was well tailored to the architecture they chose, for better or worse. The point is, it was a very productive way to program for a while. I'm not saying it was anywhere near perfect, but calling it a piece of shit is to judge it by the standards of today, not 1984.
With the death of Steve Jobs, I believe we are going to see more early Mac artifacts like this one begin to emerge, forming the framework for what will be the fastest growing religion of the coming decade. File this one under, "Mac Nativity". Sketchbooks of ur-icons. Alchemical workbooks for the transmutation of blinking amber cursors into personal computers. Into the Macintosh.
Do you remember the articles that came out every day after his death for more than two weeks? "The Last Words of Steve Jobs". "The Death of Steve Jobs" by his sister. "What Steve Jobs said about (cultural item here)". "The Early Days of Steve Jobs", "Steve Jobs the Lost Years", "Steve Jobs on the Road to Damascus" and "Steve Jobs rides into Jerusalem on the Back of an Ass". His great sacrifice of his own health so the Company can bring forth the iPhone 4S. His vision, his time in the wilderness and his rise and ultimate ascension. It's as predictable as the Perseids: this is the first 21st century faith. He even knocked the trial of the killer of that other mythical figure, Michael Jackson, out of the headlines for a solid month. Television programming was interrupted to make the solemn announcement. No mere text crawl could be sufficient.
I'm setting the over/under on the first miracle performed in Steve Jobs' name at October, 2012.
I am not joking.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Many systems had a global hierarchical menu, some put them at the top, some used vertically stacked buttons, some used a menu button. Apple's choice was a minor variation of these systems,
I've asked for a specific example. The only one you've given is Xerox, and you're wrong on that. Give it up.
Yeah, you're just the typical Apple fanboy trying to rewrite history.
On the contrary. I've given the history. I've linked to Wikipedia to prove it. You're the one who's denying history, without a scrap of anything to back you up. And the reason you're doing it is you hate Apple. Grow up.
For all you computer history geeks out there, here is a clip from Computer Chronicles of Susan Kare demonstrating the Mac back in 1984:
http://www.archive.org/details/Computer1984_3?start=772