Slashdot Mirror
Apple Doesn't Design For Yesterday
HughPickens.com writes Erik Karjaluoto writes that he recently installed OS X Yosemite and his initial reaction was "This got hit by the ugly stick." But Karjaluoto says that Apple's decision to make a wholesale shift from Lucida to Helvetica defies his expectations and wondered why Apple would make a change that impedes legibility, requires more screen space, and makes the GUI appear fuzzy? The Answer: Tomorrow.
Microsoft's approach with Windows, and backward compatibility in general, is commendable. "Users can install new versions of this OS on old machines, sometimes built on a mishmash of components, and still have it work well. This is a remarkable feat of engineering. It also comes with limitations — as it forces Microsoft to operate in the past." But Apple doesn't share this focus on interoperability or legacy. "They restrict hardware options, so they can build around a smaller number of specs. Old hardware is often left behind (turn on a first-generation iPad, and witness the sluggishness). Meanwhile, dying conventions are proactively euthanized," says Karjaluoto. "When Macs no longer shipped with floppy drives, many felt baffled. This same experience occurred when a disk (CD/DVD) reader no longer came standard." In spite of the grumblings of many, Karjaluoto doesn't recall many such changes that we didn't later look upon as the right choice.
Microsoft's approach with Windows, and backward compatibility in general, is commendable. "Users can install new versions of this OS on old machines, sometimes built on a mishmash of components, and still have it work well. This is a remarkable feat of engineering. It also comes with limitations — as it forces Microsoft to operate in the past." But Apple doesn't share this focus on interoperability or legacy. "They restrict hardware options, so they can build around a smaller number of specs. Old hardware is often left behind (turn on a first-generation iPad, and witness the sluggishness). Meanwhile, dying conventions are proactively euthanized," says Karjaluoto. "When Macs no longer shipped with floppy drives, many felt baffled. This same experience occurred when a disk (CD/DVD) reader no longer came standard." In spite of the grumblings of many, Karjaluoto doesn't recall many such changes that we didn't later look upon as the right choice.
So what's so "tomorrow" about change from Lucida to Helvetica, which impedes legibility, requires more screen space, and makes the GUI appear fuzzy? Is that the definition of "tomorrow" now?
The distortion is strong in that one. And now he must excuse his earlier brief glimses of reality.
Btw. Helvetica is a classic font that is more narrow and easier to read than Lucida especially on print, on a screen it is best with good hinting, which Apple's fontsystem doesn't do.
Ugh... when Microsoft throws out the old to make with the new, however stupid and ill-advised it really is, they justifiably get lambasted for it.
When Apple does it, they are "designing for tomorrow"
Um, ok, sure. Whatever. Ignoring good user interface design is still bad.
Perhaps "tomorrow" means that Apple has done internal tests to show Helvetica as more legible than Lucida on its Retina brand displays. We've come a long way since 1984 when Apple made 72 dpi the standard, and the iMac ships with a Retina display now.
Though I'm not a bit fan of MS... They continually have shown that they have no problem leaving old architecture in the dust -- when it suits them. When 2K3 came out, they made a "code optimization" change that left all P1, P2, P-Pro multi-processors behind. Few of their drivers are compatible from one version of an OS to another (and they can be digitally signed to one version). MS has not problem leaving "old" tech in the dust.
.. don't attack MS.
Because Mac chose a bad font
Whatever. Ubuntu Unity seems to be the only cool-looking UI left.
I'm on an macbook air with the new Helvetica font. It looks crisp and clear and I was totally lovin' it when this popped up on my RSS feed. Any application I use that requires study of small text, such as code editor or word processor, typically supports more than the default system font.
... Karjaluoto doesn't recall many such changes that we didn't later look upon as the right choice....
The opinion of whether or not it was the right choice is severely clouded by the fact that in the Apple environment, there is No Choice. The user Has To go along with what Apple decides is The Future.
.
Apple has built the walls so high around its empire, that few dare leave. Therefore, they must rationalize that whatever Apple decides for the future is The Right Choice.
Is this post really just an ad for apple?
I don't often use OSX, but I'm a little mortified that the system font is dictated by the whims of Apple, instead of being selectable by the user. When I install Windows, one of the first things I do is to change the system fonts. In KDE I used to, but now I'm happy with the defaults. But it never occurred to me that there might be a modern OS that doesn't give you this option!
Legibility and usability is no longer of importance. Their focus group isn't working professional any longer, its fashion sensible teens and facebookers. When you throw away usability of an item to make it look "cooler" it's no longer good design, it fashion and fashion never lasts.
IOs has required to have many of the usability "helpers", meant for people with disabilitys, turned ON for average users for some time now... and many of them hardly makes any difference. Sandboxing from hell makes several developers abandon the app store. There is NO real Mac Pro (WTF is up with that?).
I used to have an iPhone, I used to have an iPad. I have replaced them for Androids... Why? Because my eye sight is too weak to use an Apple product. I still have a $3000USD Mac Book Pro but im not sure my new computer will be a mac. I'm not sure my eyes are good enough for me to be included in the Apple family.
I was really happy when the retina displays came out because it gave me more legible fonts and and a sharper display, now the high res displays has turned OS design into a pissing contest to see who can draw the thinnest lines and use the least contrast... On my stationary machine I use Linux and Awesome (since there is no real Mac pro)... Its a tool, plain and simple, not something designed to use to impress others by looking "cool".
Apple doesnt design for the past or the future, or even the present. Apple products are designed using focus groups and industrial engineering teams. once the nuts and bolts are completed, apple checks current fashion and design trends as set by the industry (Pantone for example sets your "favourite" color or scheme for the year) and conforms as necessary. Then, the largest marketing firms in the world polls their focus groups and create a multi million dollar campaign rivalling anything seen at even the american political level. The product is advertised on television, internet, billboards, and subtly through product placement in your favourite television shows until it becomes an icon or status symbol. Finally, a handheld computer that costs around $50 to make is sold to the general public for upwards of $300 as dictated by the finance team, with futher successors of the product priced more competitively as deemed necessary.
arguably consumer driven development or manufacturing as its told in the fairytale of the free market has been dead for 50 years or more. Its eulogy was trumpeted by Jimmy carter in his malaise speech as he committed political suicide by telling americans that buying endless amounts of more goods and services was simply contributing to misery. Frankly, you buy what you're told to buy due to a combination of manipuative social psychology and indoctrinative marketing. No one really needs a lexus or the latest iphone.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The one that drives me crazy is removing the ethernet port on MacBooks. Which wouldn't be too bad if Apple's USB or Thunderbird ethernet adapters lasted more than 6 months before breaking, but I'm on my 5th in slightly over 2 years now... finally bought a third party one in the hopes that it will be less frail.
Both Apple and Microsoft have been using ripoffs of Helvetica for decades as their default font. That was what all the cool kids did back in the 1980s - if you didn't want to pay for a font, you paid some graphics artist to design one which looked a lot like it but was slightly different. Adobe bought licenses for the real fonts, and if you were in the printing industry and needed the real Helvetica you could buy Adobe Type Manager (originally for Mac, later for WIndows).
All this announcement means is that Apple has finally decided to pay whomever has the copyright on Helvetica for the rights to use it as their default system font. The bit about "tomorrow" is just marketing spin to make it sound like some awesome new thing, when the font itself was made in 1957.
And yes Apple abandons old tech and adopts new tech sooner than the rest of the industry meaning they're often at the forefront of tech which later becomes commonplace among PCs. You can cherry pick some of their successes (e.g. 3.5" floppy, abandoning optical drives) to make them seem brilliant. Or you could list some of their failures (e.g. firewire, lightning thus far, SCSI on the desktop, PowerPC which they abandoned for Intel) to make them seem like bumbling idiots. Apple isn't a prognosticator. They're making guesses about the future just like everyone else. For some reason people are less likely to remember their failures than with other companies.
Karjaluoto doesn't recall many such changes that we didn't later look upon as the right choice.
He must have never tried to use the hockey puck USB mouse. Truly a case of form over function....
Or rather, the famous reality distortion field later convinced Apple customer's that Apple must have been right all along. Because otherwise they'd have to admit that they'd been had, and no one wants to do that.
People who have paid a high price to enter a group tend to value that group, and people who are part of a group tend to conform to that group's judgments. It's terrible tech and terrible design, but it's great marketing.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
But in this case, well, Apple does something wrong (not even remotely comparable to the trainwreck that Microsoft did with Metro, I'll concede) that devalues the largest part of its already expensive product line, with the exception of the most expensive products, and without adding any value to those either, but Apple fan are happy nonetheless because... it's good to be shown how Apple does not care about who doesn't spend the most?
What is this, an exercise of asceticism in the path of the true Apple worship?
What really bothers me though is the removal of old SMB support (I don't know if it was Mavericks or ML) and now
the removal of the ipfw firewall. I had just gotten around to learning that and setting up a Launchctl plist.
The fact that the green button now fullscreens an application is another change I don't like.
Apple Changes System Font, Degrading Onscreen Readability
There, fixed that wonky headline for you. I suspect you were posting with the new OS X Yosemite and just couldn't read what you were typing?
ancarett, historian and zombie gamer
What really causes my eyes to bleed is the new "flat" buttons that don't really look like buttons; they look like text labels. The top of every window now looks like someone gave a junior high student a screenshot of a Mavericks window and told him to reproduce it using construction paper, scissors and glue.
And the frosted-glass semi-transparency effects are just a pointless and unnecessary in Yosemite as they were in Windows. I get the feeling that the Apple UI team has run out of useful work to do, and now they are just changing things because they're bored. The next OS/X release will no doubt change them back, and then add in some other dubious changes that be reverted in the release after that.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Exactly. Apple designs for the very near future, as in, when you download their new OMFG FREE operating system, you're going to need to upgrade your hardware in the very near future.
Highly accomplished designers tend to fall in love with and become obsessed by Bauhaus style in its various cyclical incarnations. The remaining 99.999% of the human race finds Bauhaus objects and systems very pretty to look and impossible to use for more than a few days, as documented by Jane Jacobs, William White, Tom Wolf, and many others. The designers believe the rest of the critics are blind and the human race is just using their wonderful Bauhaus stuff wrong.
sPh
This is just another sight that I was correct when I said that Apple computers are poised to become accessories for Apple's iOS devices, rather than the other way around. Apple, clearly, now caters to two groups: iOS device users (who will also be the biggest spenders on apps and media) and creatives. I don't see a problem with this, from a business standpoint it, as it makes perfect sense; I do see a problem from it from the standpoint of software developer and Apple user who loves his 17" MacBook Pro and wishes they'd once again target his demographic.
Creatives will naturally gravitate to the best available displays, which means either the retina-class iMac or MBP, or the Mac Pro and whatever their display of choice happens to be, and Apple definitely has them covered. Helvetica looks just fine on retina displays (honestly, I think it looks just fine @ 1200p on a 17" display, too), so these users won't be likely to complain.
They sell the most expensive hardware to the group least likely to buy a lot of apps and media from Apple, and I agree, that's the way to go. Users of iOS devices have voiced that they want the look and feel of their iPhone, iPod, and iPad everywhere they can possibly get it. Well, those use Helvetica, they also use flat neutrals, transparency, and blur. Apple catered to those users, who are likely to buy the cheaper computer and spend more on apps and media, without a second thought.
If you're not in those two categories or, at least, don't follow either of those spending patterns, I won't say Apple doesn't care about you at all; they certainly care about anyone who wants to give them money, just just don't care enough to give a shit what you want.
Again, I fully agree with this from a business perspective. Unfortunately, I have my own business, which comes with its own perspective, and if that's the view Apple wants to take, it's sadly incompatible with reality for a lot of professional users. It really saddens me, as they were making strides toward developing a huge presence in professional fields before Jobs passed; that has not only slowed, but reversed, since then. It doesn't seem to be hurting their sales, yet, but I imagine it will when they start making more obviously negative changes to OSX's UI. They'll still sell to iOS users and creatives, and they'll probably remain the college student's PC of choice; but, by crapifying the interface (observation of others in this thread, which I've already stated I don't necessarily agree with -- but, me vs them, they're the majority, so I'm using their opinion for my point) on lower-end-but-still-current hardware, which the mass market is more likely to be able to afford when they choose to buy Apple, they're removing much of the allure of their platform. This can't be a good thing.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Although it can be, also note that the Helvetica Nueu that Apple uses in Yosemite is heavily edited to look OK on LCD displays - just like other screen tuned fonts.
They also were trying to get the average size of sentences between the old and new fonts closers so programmers didn't have as much work to adjust for text changing sizes.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Perhaps "tomorrow" means that Apple has done internal tests to show Helvetica as more legible than Lucida on its Retina brand displays. We've come a long way since
As a former employee of Apple's (i still go back and forth as a contracter, so posting anonymously) the days of Apple doing internal UI and usability testing are a long ways away... it simply isn't how their product development began to work under Steve.
Under Steve, instead of paper prototypes and usability testing/science, it became much more "this is what I like and feels right, do that" and consumers agreed with him more often than not. Unless by internal testing you meant Ive liked how it looked when he squinted sideways to mandated it, then yes, I guess you could be correct.
For me, it isn't the Ethernet port, but the Kensington lock slot. It would be nice to be able to tie down a laptop when not in use, so it doesn't have to be in a rental car in a seedy area of town. Bonus points for a mechanism that deters opening if the lock slot is in use, similar to what the old IBM Thinkpads had.
vi is my shepherd. I shall not font.
It soothes my tired eyes
On screens of green; It speaks to me
In the quiet of the night
My code it doth record again
And me to type doth make
Within the paths of recursive loops
E’en for the program’s sake
Yea, though I work in a cubicle
Yet will I not use emacs
For vi is with me, and its colon
Efficiency it does not lack
My console it empowers me
In the presence of my foes
PHBs and HR drones
The source of all my woes
With Mountain Dew and salty snack :wq
I can code, and sigh
How happy can one programmer be
As long as he uses vi
Example: a few releases ago they made scrollbars thinner (making them harder to click), and also made them disappear by default. All this to "free up the space" that was being "wasted" by scrollbars. Now in Yosemite they're getting rid of window title bars in many apps, making it harder to move windows around. This is for the same reason: to free up space being used by title bars.
My computer has a 24" screen. The space taken up by scrollbars and window titles is completely insignificant. The inconvenience caused by not having them is very significant. This is a design decision that might have been justifiable 15 years ago when a 17" monitor was considered large, but today is completely absurd.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Apple does not design "for the future". They design for future purchases.
They drop support for older hardware to force you to upgrade, not because there is a technical problem mandating it.
I'm running Debian on a 12 year old box. It's had a CPU upgrade (to a whopping 3.8 GHz single core) and some extra RAM installed (4G total.) It's perfectly usable, and fully patched.
Had I bought a Mac, I'd have an unsupported paperweight years ago.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Those are hyperlinks. That's the generally accepted, even traditional, look for a hyperlink. You do know what a hyperlink is, do you not? When I click a hyperlink, I expect to arrive on a web page forthwith. That's what they mean. But that's not what these mean. These mean... random stuff. Normal words... are words. Underlined and/or blue-colored words are hyperlinks. Buttons, despite Ive's insane, drooling jihad against skeuomorphism, should look like you are expected to reach over and press them. This leverages the user's familiarity with the real world (something I admit I don't think I can assume you have) and creates a natural understanding of an implied action just by existing. An action, I might add, that is not hyperlinking. Because we use, you know, highlighted words for that. How would you react to a stereo that had no buttons, just words on its face? Is that intuitive? Of bloody course it isn't. You press a button, it depresses, it looks different, it clicks, you know to expect the action to occur. If it's a toggled state, the button stays in. Natural. Normal. Expected. But a word? Where's the premise for touching a word? Where indeed? Hyperlinks, you say? YES! BLOODY HYPERLINKS!
Ah. Ah ha. Ha. Ha Ha Ha. Oh, that is priceless. Just priceless. Ive's work is at best, a mixed bag, and he surely isn't the world's foremost designer. I can think of any number of designers that make him look like the pretentious hack he is. Starting with any number of supercar designers, wandering off into audio equipment and musical instrument design, heck, there are even refrigerators that are designed better than Ive's work product. Also, Scott Forstall's ideas were far better in terms of design than Ives. He just wasn't minimalist -- but minimalist is not a synonym for "good", and in fact, very seldom is that the case.
Also, look at the new Mac Pro. What a dysfunctional failure-storm. Can't install drives in it, doesn't fit in with other equipment well, requires desk warts to be even reasonably functional... expansion is a plug-addled nightmare... even the plugs themselves can be pulled right out, no security (physical or data) whatsoever. Oh yeah, Ives. I wouldn't let that guy "design" my kitchen. He'd probably take out all the plugs, knobs and buttons, color everything silver, and not allow silverware dividers in the drawers or pots on the stove. But you'd get a microwave with only one setting, and son, you'd be expected to like it. And you... well, you probably would. Lacking any kind of taste as you do. ;)
Yes, absolutely, that's why I praise Mavericks so highly after years of buggy OS's left unfixed. That's why I thought "awesome" when the fully expandable Mac Pro came out, and why I bought right in. That's why I changed from Windows to the Mac. That's why I generally have the latest in home theater gear. That's why I have a Tesla on order. That's why I cohabit instead of marry. That's why I'm atheist and not theist. That's why I just took in a severely injured kitten. That's why I get such a kick out of messing with a Raspberry Pi, cobbling up little RPi projects we can use around the house. That's why my favorite literary genre is hard science fiction. That's why I have moved to SDRs, away from conventional radios. In fact, that's why I write SDR software.
Yeah, I'm just terrified of change, you bet. You crack me up. Any other "insights" you might care to share while you're making things up out of the clear blue? I think Fox News is holding a place for you, better get right over there.
Let me at
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If you'd used Helvetica you'd have spotted it in time.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."