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How Apple Is Giving Design a Bad Name (theverge.com)
ColdWetDog writes: Co.Design has an article by two early Apple designers on how the company has lost its way, and quite frankly, lost its marbles when it comes to user interface design. In the search for a minimalist, clean design, it has forgotten time honored UI principles and made it harder for people to use Apple products. As someone who has followed computer UI evolution since the command line and who has used various Apple products for a number of years, the designers' concerns really hit home for me.
Of course, Apple isn't the only company out there who makes UI mistakes. And it is notable that the article has totally annoying, unstoppable GIFs that do nothing to improve understanding. User Interfaces are hard, but it would be nice to have everybody take a few steps back from the precipice.
Of course, Apple isn't the only company out there who makes UI mistakes. And it is notable that the article has totally annoying, unstoppable GIFs that do nothing to improve understanding. User Interfaces are hard, but it would be nice to have everybody take a few steps back from the precipice.
The Apple Music player app on IOS used to be at least usable. Now I have to google to figure out how to turn shuffle on and off. Everything is obscure and hidden where it used to be at least semi obvious. Controls are tiny when they used to be big enough for even my sausage fingers on a small screen,
.
Apple's reputation in design has been touted far and wide, so I though the design flaws in iTunes were my perception and/or due to my odd usage of iTunes.
It is good to see others who have also noticed that Apple may have lost its way regarding user-centric design.
Back in the old days before graphical user interfaces, test UIs were generally usable because the design elements were much more limited. No graphics, no fancy fonts, no dark green on almost dark green links (like the ones that appear in the story titles of slashdot).
Tools like MC (midnight commander on linux) have an ease of use and simplicity that is hard to beat. Same with Borland's non-gui IDEs for BASIC, C/C++, Pascal, and dBASE.
HTML, which was supposed to separate content from presentation, no longer does, thanks to "advances" that have strayed too far from first principles. We have seen the enemy, and it's not just those who write the code, but also the marketers who demand more bling over functionality, and the customers who respond to bling because BLING.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Those asinine, time-burglar eye candy transitions that occur for nearly every navigation you performed within iOS. Some of the most egregious ones can be "disabled" the 'Reduce Motion' option but rather than disable nausea-inducing animations like zoom it simply switches it to a dissolve, which executes just as slowly. And there is still no way to disable the most common animations like the sweep in an iOS Navigation Controller. I almost want to start a petition to all iOS developers to universally set the 'animate' parameter to False for all internal iOs methods that get passed the parameter.
My biggest gripe with Apple and Microsoft right now is the lack of progress bars throughout the OS. For example, when Windows 10 boots the first time it goes through all this "Let's get started..." "Just setting up a few things..." etc. But you literally have no idea how long it is going to be before you use the computer, and on a tablet device it can be quite some time. I feel like this is a huge UI miss. One step forward, two steps back.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
Why can I never figure out where a link is going? Read back over that. There are two hyperlinks in the summary. One is "an article by two early Apple designers" the other is "lost its marbles when it comes to user interface design."
So which one of those goes to the article that the summary is about? It's the second! That's so counter-intuitive! Seriously! Why do I have to click through your links to figure out what you're linking to?
You're probably going to be getting downmodded merely for mentioning systemd, but it is starting to have an impact on the perception of Linux as a viable OS, especially in high-availability server environments.
Recently, when I've suggested the use of Linux to clients, I've now dealt with several clients who have been uncertain of using it thanks to the complaints they've heard about systemd.
Systemd is like Ruby on Rails. Some people, typically those with limited experience and knowledge, are really gung-ho about it. They promise it will make things "easy" or "simpler" or "faster", yet that's not what happens in practice. They might work well initially, but as soon as something goes wrong it isn't just a minor problem, but a huge disaster, and it's rarely easy to fix.
Reputation is extremely important. Systemd is indisputably harming the reputation of Linux. This is really a shame, because it took Linux many years to build up a reputation as a reliable OS. Now it's all being thrown away thanks to systemd.
With the latest version of Safari, Apple removed from the right mouse click* contextual menu the ability to create a new tab. So instead of "right click, select the top item on the menu, left click" the only way now to create a tab is to either use the file menu or keyboard options. The contextual menu option of creating tabs has been like that for years and years and was not broken and I knew of no complaints about it. Removing it would have been a deliberate action that as far as I can see serves no purpose as the right click contextual menu still exists. And to add insult to injury the item that is now on the top of that list is "close tab", so every time my muscle memory kicks in I end up closing a tab I was viewing rather than opening a new tab.
* Yes, you can use non-apple mice with apple computers, and yes the right mouse button does work. And in general I dislike using Apple's mice and only use 3rd party mice (And Microsoft makes good mice and keyboards that I like and use as does Kensington)
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
tl;dr Criticizing design is easy. Any grad student that's taken a human interface class could write this article (and many do) illustrating how a certain design violates the criteria they just learned. But despite their background I would only start to take these guys seriously when they propose a touch interface designed for phones which has all the properties they espouse and retains all the utility of a modern smartphone. Sure it would be great if every single feature was immediately visually discoverable. But how do you do that when you have so little screen space? Do you sacrifice content for UI? Let's see their great alternative.
To respond to their points in detail:
You know how they say lead with your strongest point? Right off the bat the first thing they claim is that Apple's fonts are impossible for many people with normal vision to read. Nevermind many, show me a single person with normal vision that CANNOT read Apple fonts and I will save their life, because clearly they have a brain tumour and need treatment immediately.
Why would anyone take this article seriously when it leads with provably false claims? Anyway let's move on..
Of course much of the science was based on a mouse and keyboard interaction on a computer, not touch on mobile.
This is why those interfaces work. Let's take a scrolling view for example. The traditional approach is to put a scrollbar in, and that's what most everyone was doing before the iPhone came along. The scrollbar is discoverable and it provides visual feedback. Sounds good right? Well it turns out using a scrollbar on a mobile device is a miserable experience. Swipe to scroll turned out to be the vastly superior method, and as soon as you learn to swipe (my 1 year old figured it out watching me) it is trivially easy to operate without any additional visual clutter.
Same with other gestures in the iPhone.
Deleting a row in a table. You can put a button on every row to make that discoverable at the cost of high risk of accidental deletion and visual noise, or you can make rows swipe left to expose the delete function. The swipe once learned in 5 seconds is vastly superior for the rest of your lifetime using it.
Accessing the notification centre by swiping down from the top. You could put a button on every single screen, or you could save the space and use a swipe. Clearly the swipe is far preferable to using up screen space on a 4-5" screen.
So a person with a visual impairment used accessibility options to correct for it? This is a problem how? Later they confuse font weight with font size. Both are adjustable in iOS, of course if you really need very large fonts you will run into some sizing issues in some apps.
A vision impairment is a disability. A minor and common one, but still one. By the way, the common way to correct this disability is with glasses. I have poor vision, but never had an issue with reading Apple fonts because I've corrected my vision by wearing glasses. The author's implication that someone with a disability should be asha
Not sure who originated it, perhaps it was Apple, but the entire minimalist "flat" design paradigm is a UI shipwreck. Yet, everyone is jumping onto the badwagon, regardless of how awful it is. Apple, Android, Windows 10, even Gnome and to a lesser extent KDE are leaning in that direction.
It's pure shit. There's no definition or contrast. Where once you had hierarchical menus you now have hidden widgets, triple dots and hamburgers. Hamburgers? WTF? You have to swipe with two, three, four fingers? There's no control object, not even a visual clue of any kind? It's very much like the command line, but you have to touch/click it.
When Microsoft came out with the ribbon, I thought, this is bad. But, when the flat minimalist shit started, it was SO much worse. I look forward to the return of the discoverable and logical UI.
Drag all icons off the launcher bar. Drag command prompt to launcher bar. Open up as many command windows as will fit on your screen. Boom. Done. Well, you could also optionally set your bash profile to start emacs in the command window, depending on your UI preferences.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I read the article, expecting a typical no-thought blog rant, but this post is actually quite good (although it's rambling and too long). They discuss the principles of Dieter Rams, and show how Apple is horribly failing to follow them. They track the changes in Apple's interface guidelines over time. So there is actually some useful information in this post (unusual). Here are their main two complaints, things that Apple is missing:
1) Discoverability: The iPhone has plenty of gestures that don't have visual cues....it's often unknown whether clicking on text will perform an action, the latest iOS has "25 secret features." They shouldn't be secret, they should be discoverable to the users.
2) Consistency: Sometimes the back button is there, sometimes it's not. Sometimes gestures do things, sometimes they don't. The "mighty mouse" gestures work differently than the trackpad gestures, etc (more examples in article).
This chart really captures the changes at Apple, showing the changes in their UI guidelines over time. They've lost an entire section called "managing complexity in your software." Maybe Apple thinks software is no longer complex?
Form follows function, that is, you have to make your product work first, and then make it beautiful. If you have a beautiful product that doesn't work, then you have a "gold-plated brick."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Here's a tip: if ever you are unsure about whether to use "who" or "whom", use "who".
You know, I've read a lot of anti-systemd rants on here and other boards and there's always one of two angles. One: Rants about how it breaks the Linux culture of development and the "do one thing well" general policy. Two: Rants about how bad things could theoretically be if there is a problem. Not one post on any board has cited an actual problem they have encountered and how it damaged their infrastructure or workflow. I am not for or against systemd but, with the general consensus of the posters, there seems to be few real world problems with it and instead, a lot whining about how systemd breaks "their" precious Linux world view. I'm a casual Linux user with light server work and I went from a non-systemd to a systemd setup. What difference did I notice? A faster boot time. My world didn't end and my computers didn't melt down into a pool of children's tears.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
Mozilla still has Netscape, with an interface that hasn't changed in over 15 years. It's still the best in the business by far.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I'd say that Mac OS 9 has the best GUI so far.
What a great article. The writer slammed one right out of the park! As a retired IT guy, with suck vision, I curse Jony Ives and his ilk daily.
My biggest hate is scroll-bars. Pale grey with a very slightly darker grey thumb that's usually impossible to see. I don't find Windows 10 to be much better.
Thank God for Linux. I develop using QT so I use all three platforms regularly.
Why is all the good stuff already modded 5, when I have mod points?
There is, and has been since the lauded CLI "GUIs" (e.g. turbo pascal), a simple solution to this problem. Unfortunately many people simply don't understand the solution, and don't care to learn. In two steps:
1. Use an infinite progress bar (with or without a counter / percentage) rather than one based on time, when time is unknown or highly variable.
2. 'Step' the progress bar in code, don't use some automatically animated thing.
This provides positive user feedback that the operation will take an indeterminate amount of time, and also informs the user that the operation has not hung or stuck because it's still moving.
The MS file copy dialog failed because it didn't have a large enough sample window to make a guess about disk throughput or iops. Nearly all modern infinite progress indicators (computer, web, or mobile) fail because they use things like animated gifs or a separate thread to keep the indicator animation running, even when the task it's supposed to represent is stopped or slow.
And all I want is a pre-lenovo Thinkpad and a 7 day battery life flip phone with maps.
And emacs.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
even when checking to always show scroll bars in general preferences, it happened until recently that scroll bars would disappear in some applications or worse: be there and disappear if the mouse came close to them as if somebody played a hoax. Seems to fixed now in ElCapitan. Minimal is good but too minimal can sometimes look like a bad joke.
Seems like the whole industry, not just Apple, has succumbed to the same ethos in UI design. Gone are borders and shading. Can't have more than one obvious hamburger menu icon. It is all white on white other than lots of rectangles filled with imagery, probably updating the imagery frequently. Past that controls are hidden swipes, slides, presses and all guesses.
For somebody who claims to have "read a lot of anti-systemd rants on here and other boards", you must have a very hard time remembering what you have read! Or maybe you can't read in the first place?
Regardless, the fact of the matter is that any time systemd does come up here, there are lots of people who describe, in detail, very real problems that they've had with it. I found all of the comments below after about 30 seconds of searching.
Remember, those are just Slashdot comments, too! Go search the Debian mailing list archives for a whole lot of other people describing very serious problems with systemd. Or check the Debian bug tracker. Then go do the same for Arch, Mageia, openSUSE, Fedora, and the other Linux distros that use systemd. You'll find no shortage of people describing extraordinarily serious problems with systemd.
As I mentioned earlier, here are just a handful of Slashdot comments that I found very quickly that prove you to be totally wrong:
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5904953&cid=48278477:
http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8258597&cid=50840653:
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4608939&cid=45813431:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4792711&cid=46248835:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4792711&cid=46251405:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4792711&cid=46255615:
I keep wondering whether if I were to ship my 1100 page copy of Inside Macintosh VI (a.k.a "The System 7 Book") back to Apple anyone there might accidentally read it and stop screwing up iOS.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
If you say so man. I like my new car. You can drive off in your old POS beater
When Apple started making PowerBooks, the logo on the top cover was oriented so that it's upside down when the laptop is open. Why did they do something dumb like that? Because user testing showed that people naturally tended to orient the logo so it looked right-side-up to them before trying to open the laptop. In other words, it worked better for the user to orient it that way.
Unfortunately, that meant that someone looking at a PowerBook user saw the logo upside-down. How awkward! How unflattering! How inelegant! This simply won't do! So, the change was decreed: logos must be oriented to look nice to the audience, and users just need to train themselves to deal with it.
Old vs. new. Optimized for use vs. optimized for appearance and impression.
Look again, please. systemd breaks stable network configurations by unnecessarily replacing dhcp, it breaks daemon-startup debugging, it breaks decades of log analysis tools designed to work with text based rather than proprietezed binary logging format, it's repeatedly broken kernel startups, it's broken the stable model of attached storage being mounted under /media, and the attempts to replace all of "/etc" with a "stateless Linux" model is breaking tools that never volunteered to have anything to do with systemd. It's also breaking cross-platform compatibility of daemon initialization configurations.
A "light Linux user" may not see these issues becuase you wouldn't necessarily be debugging failed daemons, writing cross-platform tools, or trying to integrate stable business software with this latest fad for configurations.
It's all these moron programmers out there. Really a UI interface to get to a function is you SHAKE the phone. What the fuck is that?
I really want to blame the horrible professors at the universities, but I know it's these stupid under 30 programmers that are doing shit that they think makes sense and ignoring real UI design rules. but ohhh it looks pretty!
Dear mobile app programmers, pray I don't win a lotto because I will be making a sack of doorknobs and looking for each and every one of you that code with the stupidest UI ideas. It will be at night when you least expect it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I don't think Apple is new to poor user interface design. I installed iTunes (because there was no other easy way to put music on the dumb thing) and tried to copy some music files to the iPod. What a nightmare. That was a few years ago. I remember wondering what all the fuss about the "Apple user experience" was about. It seemed like the worst thing since Windows to me.
Previously, I had used SanDisk Sansa mp3 players. They couldn't have been simpler or easier to use. Apple could have learned a lot from them, if they cared about anything but trying to extract as much cash out of you as possible.
Disclaimer: I own Apple stock (which has been very good to me) but no Apple products. Please keep buying Apple products...I'm sure the usability will improve.
Look at the VLC app for Android. When it boots you are given half a second to memorize the entirely gesture based interface. And then that is it. That is all you can do with the app.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Do a short research on the writers of the article.
I agree entirely. My new Mazda is great. And I'm one of the Gen-X people who also hates these new hipster UIs. I will say the infotainment system in this thing could use some improvement, but that's the case for every car; it's been only recently that these systems have become widespread in the auto industry.
Casual Linux users really aren't qualified to comment on how an OS operates. I don't comment on Ford engineer's choices of emission control design. Why do you feel you have a valid opinion about systemd?
Because he's a user, you fucking moron. (He also said he's done some light sysadmin work.)
Are you some kind of elitist prick who thinks that car buyers have no right to comment on their own cars' features and usability? The emissions thing is a strawman; a good analogy would be if a regular car driver can comment on Ford's interior design, aesthetics, usability, performance, driveability, suspension/handling feel, features (like the availability of storage features inside, this is part of interior design though), etc. Of course a regular car driver is qualified to comment on all these things; these are things that affect whether they buy the damn car, and if they enjoy using it.
Same goes for systemd. If it gives users a better experience, and they don't have any *actual* problems with it, then what's the fucking problem? If it's poorly implemented or a bad design, then this would be apparent because users would have problems with it. If the users aren't having any trouble, then there is no problem. It doesn't matter if *you* personally don't like the design philosophy, because that's completely irrelevant; the only thing that matters is whether it works well for users (both casual users and sysadmins) or not.
weird... I have a mazda too! I was going to say "my new mazda" in my comment, but decided to keep it general. I have a 2015 mazda 3 touring. I'm a huge fan of the 'control shuttle' infotainment system. if anything, it's underutilized. The infotainment OS is open source, and as soon as I get around to it I'm going to hack in and make some improvements.
I will agree with this hardware issue. I'm using what is probably the best compromise in their laptops at the moment if it weren't for the problems that have led to recalls, a "Late 2011 15" MacBook Pro with the i7. This computer has Ethernet. Firewire 800, "Thunderbolt"/Displayport, USB3, and both headphones and microphone ports, plus an integrated DVD. Only things that would make it better would be a Blu-Ray, an option that Apple has never offered, and if this unit had a higher-resolution screen.
All models subsequent to this lack things that I regularly use and it's aggravating.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
weird... I have a mazda too! I was going to say "my new mazda" in my comment, but decided to keep it general. I have a 2015 mazda 3 touring.
Great minds think alike! I have a 2015 Mazda 3sGT.
I'm a huge fan of the 'control shuttle' infotainment system.
I wouldn't say I'm a "huge fan", but I like it well enough. I saw stuff much like it on high-end Audis ~5 years ago. The main problem with it is that it's too slow and buggy, but it has a lot of potential. I'd say one big problem is the software architecture: it's running on Linux, but the UI stuff is all done with Javascript. It'd be interesting to see someone try to make a complete replacement for the UI, running on Qt/C++ instead. It'd probably be far faster and more responsive.
and as soon as I get around to it I'm going to hack in and make some improvements.
Go to mazda3revolution.com; there's already a bunch of people working on this. Search for a thread called "The Infotainment Project". There's already a bunch of hacks out there. It's easy to hack in; just get a USB-to-Ethernet adapter (the Plugable one works well), ssh in with your laptop, and the login is root/jci. Be careful making changes though because if you screw something up, it puts it into an endless reboot loop which is very hard to fix. Two changes I've made are 1) eliminating the touch speed restriction, so you can use the touchscreen at any speed the car is moving, and 2) shortening the delay time for the initial warning screen. #1 is really useful because it's easier to scroll with the touchscreen, and also it allows a passenger to work with the nav system while the car is driving, instead of requiring you to pull over.
Also, if your system isn't running the latest 55.753A version, you can download it there and apply it yourself instead of wasting time going to the dealer.
actually, what I want to do is add more commands to the shuttle and then remove options from the menus. why do I need to always scroll past pandora, stitcher, aha, in order to get to my bluetooth? i figure I can just comment these out. on the shuttle I want to add next song, previous song, play, pause, and maybe some other stuff too depending on the context.
is there a big improvement in this version?
Casual Linux users really aren't qualified to comment on how an OS operates.
Are you some kind of elitist prick who thinks that car buyers have no right to comment on their own cars' features and usability?
Indeed. There's another problem, which I think is causing so much hatred. Regardless of the merits/demerits of the software itself, the software seems to come with a bad attitude. For a lot of people who got into linux, it was back when it was by hackers for hackers, and nothing was discouraged. The new attitude is the commercial style developer/user split. There are those who develop it and know what's best for you and you're the user. You're meant to use it, not dig into the guts. I think this attitude sits badly with an awful lot of people, people who feel the culture they are part of an in many cases helped build is being destroyed by large, moneyed interests.
Half (more?) of the hate for systemd I think comes not from the software itself but what it represents, and the attitude of those pushing it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that one. That's been done too. On mine, I stuck XM down at the bottom plus some of those other online ones, and I put my USB drive right at the top since that's what I almost always listen to. There's a tutorial about how to edit the .js file for this (be careful, if you put in an extra comma or omit it you'll get the endless reboots I think).
Bad.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Mobile changed a lot about how UI should work.
As a UI designer I can unequivocally say, No, no it did not. Mobile devices created a few caveats but did not change a lot about how UI should work. I am sick of these new UI/UX people that seem to think that all the lessons learned about good UI over the previous 30 years is somehow obsolete, meanwhile they keep making UI/UX mistakes that were made 20 years ago! The research and lessons learned from the 1980s and 1990s still apply to UI design today on mobile devices as they do on desktops and laptops. One major caveat being the input device and the corresponding minimum "click" area difference between a mouse pointer and a finger. There are others, but most are subtle variations on established best practices with only a few exceptions for things like gyroscope or accelerometer interactions.
We did flat interfaces well, and long before we tried faux 3D interfaces. So that argument also falls flat. We didn't replace long established iconography for things like shuffle and repeat settings with textual representations. Why? Because text takes longer for the brain to process! Good UI depends on established graphical standards and commonly used iconography to be successful, building on successes of the past. Now, everyone seems to think they can reinvent the wheel and are failing miserably.
I am all for innovation and new things, but not at the expense of efficiency and usability when applied to UI/UX design. Ive and these other UI/UX idiots need to be slapped and sent back to design school for UI/UX or just stick to hardware!
Not real big, just bug fixes. One big problem I had before was that half the time, it'd forget all my music on my USB drive and have to re-index it all. This is mostly fixed now. Others complained about spontaneous reboots in older versions.
... I've been purchasing Apple products solely for the hardware quality, while just barely tolerating the software. The UNIX underpinning is of course great but UI wise Apple has clearly lost its marbles some time ago.
How they could go from NeXT Step's clarity (and beauty) to the current mess is unfathomable to me.
Nice to see that they are finally getting called out for it.
From what little I've read about systemd (I'm still on an upstart-based system myself), it looks like it was designed to actually be *easier* for administrators. The config files are simpler (instead of big long bash scripts), it has a bunch of tools to handle the log files, and it's supposedly still backwards-compatible with the old bash scripts. That doesn't sound like something designed by devs with the "we know what's best for you" attitude. Also, it seems like systemd copied a lot of concepts from SMF, which of course is the init system of Solaris, the main UNIX still in use now.
I just have the sense that most people complaining about it just doesn't want any kind of forward progress and don't like things to change. The only good criticisms I seem to see are ones that basically allege that systemd is a good idea, but they have little confidence in the developers to do it well, which is a sensible attitude considering how vital a piece of software like that is in an operating system.
When I said many of the same things you and TFA are saying, several years ago, people on /. mostly tried to tell me I was F.O.S.
Nice to have some confirmation for a change.
I find it incredible that an article criticizing visual design elements lacks a single screenshot, graphic, or figure illustrating the problems they're talking about.
I suppose I'm in an ideal situation because I have unlimited data and subscribe to Apple Music
Then perhaps it might be useful to quantify the cost of entering such "an ideal situation". Start with a flip phone on a $100 per year plan and an iPod touch. How much does it cost over the three-year expected service life of a device to upgrade from an iPod touch to an iPhone, from occasional voice-only service to a plan with unlimited data, and from your existing collection to an Apple Music subscription?
Oh, but I forgot we are also just mimicking nice looking UI. However, we fail in both departments. For example, in Gnome if you want to log out, you have to click on the systems menu symbol in the upper right corner, which is a good idea, but then you can only see symbols for shutdown and configuration. The logout is hidden behind the user name. How stupid is that? Logout, Shutdown, Restart, Sleep and Hiberante are functional similar from a users point of view. Therefore, they should be accessible directly or it should be at least be obvious where to click to get that function. It is NOT part of the account information which you would expect behind the users name.
Personally, [to learn what shell command to use for a particular task,] I use this new "search engine" called Google.
If you try that on your MacBook, iPad Wi-Fi, or iPod touch while riding the bus, you'll end up seeing a Safari error message to the same effect as this error message from Firefox:
The workaround for that nowadays is to pay the recurring fee for an unlimited mobile data plan, if that's even offered in your area.
Besides, how was it done before BackRub existed?
Not one post on any board has cited an actual problem they have encountered and how it damaged their infrastructure or workflow. I am not for or against systemd but, with the general consensus of the posters, there seems to be few real world problems with it and instead, a lot whining about how systemd breaks "their" precious Linux world view.
I just had the latest (of many) systemd issues with a RHEL update to 7.2 hosing boot. Seems simple enough to fix, right? Downgrade to the previous kernel and figure things out. That hung too, though. Couldn't get systemd to boot into rescue more, or even emergency mode. It would simply "hang" for no reason. Booted from ISO and chroot'd in and things seemed fine enough. No logs of course, so nothing useful to diagnose with.
Three hours later, after my umpteenth boot attempt, I find that on some random virtual console I couldn't get to until I manually tweaked the grub line, systemd was deciding that that a selinux policy file was corrupt and halting... but it only displayed that after you WAIT 600 SECONDS for some other startup function to timeout. No log entry, no diagnosis until then.
Thanks, guys. Way to improve upon shell scripts.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Then perhaps a login shell should display a message after signing on: "To learn how to use the command prompt, type cli-tutor and press Enter." This would guide a new user through less, basic Bash built-ins, man, and apropos, after which the interested user would have enough information to continue learning.
One of the things I really hate currently is taking the current fads in interface design and applying them in the not unlikely scenario that I'm driving with my iPod/iPhone docked. If I'm plugged in, with my phone in landscape orientation for more than a few moments (ie, to make selection of a choice of things easier in the orientation layout), even if I'm not driving DON'T EVER ASK ME ANYTHING OR POP UP OR INTERFERE WITH ME AT ALL! I'm in a context where it is reasonable to assume I'm viewing something and don't want to be bothered.
You mention the shake interaction; I found out that Google Maps on iOS has this while driving and using it for navigating when something triggered it and in small text Maps pops up a "useful and helpful" explanation that I can report issues with the app by shaking the device. But then they took it one step further and made it a modal dialog with "OK"/"cancel" such that you have to read, process the info and successfully choose and execute one of two options. Did anyone at Google, at any point, think and articulate that perhaps having an easy to accidentally trigger interface was a bad idea and that perhaps the worst way to handle the fact that it was easy to accidentally trigger was to pop up a modal dialog box with small text and then proceed to force a user to use multiple higher level cognitive functions while the device's sensors indicate that, one could reasonably assume, they are in the middle of operating a vehicle at 75 MPH? Either they considered it and didn't care or they never considered in what context one might use their application. So they're either dumb or evil, take your pick.
That's the tip of the iceberg. I'm reasonably certain that the point of Google Maps when in GPS mode is to kill and maim as many as possible. It'd be one thing if they didn't have access to sensors that can give a very reasonable assumption as to the context in which the device is operating, but there's more than enough information to derive the context in which the phone is operating. GPS, power, Bluetooth, NFC, screen orientation, mic, etc. I cannot think of a situation in which I'm in a loud environment, Bluetooth connected to an audio device with remote controls, power connected, screen in landscape orientation, while moving at > 5 MPH, with a mapping application using GPS, in which it cannot be reasonably assume I'm driving. Yet, so many of these apps that only get used in that very context won't take that into consideration with regards to their interface. The only one I've ever seen get it right is a war-driving application. Feedback is large text in a dashboard mode in landscape orientation, or a different output in vertical orientation with configurable audio feedback at defined intervals. It never tries to ask you a question while its in use and the layout is such that you aren't likely to need to interact outside of one large start/stop button and changing the device's orientation.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Then what cues are "kids that don't have the preconceptions we have" using to distinguish an inactive label from an active control?
The new attitude is the commercial style developer/user split. There are those who develop it and know what's best for you and you're the user. You're meant to use it, not dig into the guts. I think this attitude sits badly with an awful lot of people, people who feel the culture they are part of an in many cases helped build is being destroyed by large, moneyed interests.
Agreed. But this attitude of "take what the privileged developer class gives you and like it" has been around for decades, dating back to game consoles with cryptographic countermeasures against running user-created programs.
He's all about the look and feel of the Mac, circa 1987. Apple moved on.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Poster is not hearing you. Because you can't get his reader to say d3^1!_w0r$h/p3r.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If Apple sucks so bad, what does that say about their competition? Windows is ugly as fuck, Android is ugly as fuck, and don't even get me started on the hodgepodge of ugly as fuck UI under the Linux banner.
Maybe what they mean to say is "40 years into the personal computer revolution, design still sucks all around" but everyone just likes to hate on Apple. Aroundhere, it's almost like they're the new Microsoft.
FC Closer
Adopt Microsoft's ribbon or Windows 8 interface?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I just have the sense that most people complaining about it just doesn't want any kind of forward progress and don't like things to change.
That plus those who just need something to hate. I have had perhaps two meaningful communications about systemd with others. Thee rest are people doing a computing version of the Thanks Obama meme.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The new attitude is the commercial style developer/user split. There are those who develop it and know what's best for you and you're the user. You're meant to use it, not dig into the guts. I think this attitude sits badly with an awful lot of people, people who feel the culture they are part of an in many cases helped build is being destroyed by large, moneyed interests.
Agreed. But this attitude of "take what the privileged developer class gives you and like it" has been around for decades, dating back to game consoles with cryptographic countermeasures against running user-created programs.
Who forced you to use systemd? There are alternatives, promoted by those who hate systemd - as superior, and free of systemd. Why are people complaining and not moving over to them?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You're probably going to be getting downmodded merely for mentioning systemd, but it is starting to have an impact on the perception of Linux as a viable OS, especially in high-availability server environments.
Recently, when I've suggested the use of Linux to clients, I've now dealt with several clients who have been uncertain of using it thanks to the complaints they've heard about systemd.
Sounds apocryphal to me.
Systemd would be pretty far down the list for people who think a computer must run Windows office or be unusable.
Besides, there's FreeBSD. Never had systemd, never will, and I've heard that it is sperior in all ways to any Linux distro that has systemd.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
At least Apple UI doesn't have a terminal case of creeping featuritis leaving you wondering what half the icons mean.
That plus those who just need something to hate.
Isn't it enough to hate Windows and Apple? Windows 8+ with Metro should have given them plenty to hate on; I hate Metro with a passion.
That plus those who just need something to hate.
Isn't it enough to hate Windows and Apple? Windows 8+ with Metro should have given them plenty to hate on; I hate Metro with a passion.
Metro did two things amazing to me. My wife refused to use her computer after a month because as she put it "This is the stupidest fscking thing I ever used!"
And it was so unpleasant for me, I refused to work on a W8X computer ever again.
Now she is incredibly happy with Linux mint, which as it turns out runs great on a touchscreen, and she understands why I like Linux and OS X. A happy ending.
full disclosure - From an operating standpoint, I don't hate Windows 10. Yesterday was the first time I had to go to the web, because of a computer that went through a power outage and surge, and I needed to find out how to safeboot it - no easy task. But 8 was a never-ending embarrassment to administer. No internet, and I was playing whack-a-mole trying to find stuff.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The Podcasts app on iOS 9 is unusable (hard to navigate, no full screen video). I bought one other app before buying Pocket Casts, which works a lot like the older, better Podcasts app used to work. I know fewer people are using podcasts, but there is no reason for Apple to redesign the app to turn people away from it.
Sent from my iPhone
It was cool to copy Apple. That's why the whole industry sucks.
It's just function following form instead of form following function.
Check again. Lenovo drank the Apple UI Koolaid and now the T450s, and many other thinkpads, have adopted the "logo upright when opened".
Just because someone has experience or works in a field does not mean they aren't trollish assholes.
This varies by person. I prefer text over images. I don't want long-winded prose when a good diagram will suffice, but I don't like icons. Symbols? No problem. Images? Horrible. I've been using GUIs since Windows 3.1, so it's not as if I haven't had sufficient exposure to the common set of icons over the past 25 years. My brain just doesn't work that way.
Click the Eject menu item was too hard for you? Did you have a Windows keyboard connected, so you didn't see the eject button? Did you not right-click on the icon and see the Eject menu item there? Dragging it to the trash is a hold-over from pre-OSX. You can eject media using all the same mechanism as any other desktop OS. It's a shame you're too stupid to get it.
You people amaze me. Systemd isn't hurting the reputation of Linux. Anyone who isn't already using Linux has no idea what systemd is.. Almost every complaint I have seen about systemd is about theory and not real world. All that PID1 and "Unix Philosopy" bs. If anything systemd will be a major step forward to people adopting linux. Init is terrible on so many levels and is vastly different across distributions. Just the fact that I have to know each distribution's init quirks is super annoying when you administer servers. It's also a horribly broken concept. Systemd actually works like a service system should, where you can actually account for processes and states without having to program ridiculous bash scripts to do all the logic.
Time makes more converts than reason
So your complaint is "it's new and isn't compatible with older configurations". Oh well. We have to get off INIT at some point. It's a broken mess. Sometimes you just have to rip the band aid. I'm not a huge fan of binary logs but it isn't the end of world. You can still use syslog if you like. The problems systemd solve vastly outweigh any complaints you or anyone else have put forth.
Time makes more converts than reason
Color alone doesn't work for the four percent of your audience that's color blind. This is why web pages use styling cues to mark controls. The Slashdot UI shows a few: Submit, the search box, and the follow buttons at the top have a contrasting background color. So do the comment counts on the front page, the share buttons on each story. Reply to This and collapsed comments use underlined text. On the comment form, the subject and comment have outlines, the Post Anonymously switch has the platform's standard checkbox/on-off styling, and the Preview button has both an outline and a background color. The trouble is that lately, a lot of mobile apps have become flat enough not to offer even those cues.
I'll agree with a lot of what you say, but I draw the line at replacing text with icons "Because text takes longer for the brain to process!" I doubt that, and at least in my case it's almost certainly not true. I've puzzled over a lot of odd icons, and even the ones that I can recognize I ignore for the text labels. (Heaven help me if they stop putting labels on the icons.) Also, as someone pointed out above what icons make sense has changed with newer generations. My generation (Old Fogies) would recognize file cabinets and file folders; not sure that makes sense to the latest generation. But "Files" and "Folders" probably does, if for no other reason than the fact that those are still the terms used by computer geeks (or "Directories").
What the fuck did any of that mean? You are insane.
Why? Because programs in those days could do the job with far fewer resources? Because layout based on a standard character cell size made things easier to lay out? Because the programs would work even over slow serial connections, without being the bandwidth hogs today's programs are (imagine never having to worry about busting a 1 gig mobile data cap)? Because the limited screen resources meant less time fiddling about with your boss trying to get things pixel-perfect, then changing their mind?
Simple is good.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The bookmarks/favourites bar (whatever it's called) uses fonts that are too small to read, AND it won't let me see the sites' favicons beside each item. They might even have ditched the bookmarks bar in the latest versions because (last time I bothered to open Safari) I didn't see anything resembling bookmarks until I clicked into the address bar. This is anti-usability. I want a bookmarks bar visible at all times. I DO NOT WANT an extra click between me and tasks I perform regularly (click clicking on favourite sites). And I want things in a font large enough for me to read (and that's not medium grey on a light grey background - contrast actually matters, too!)
Sorry, Apple, but Chome is my default browser on my Mac at home because your browser cares more about visual aesthetics than actual usability.
Mobile changed a lot about how UI should work. Not saying apple (or any mobile device) is always right, but a lot of UI principles from the 90's just don't apply today.
Yes, they absolutely DO apply. If you're using a desktop computer, nothing needs to change from the UI principles of the 90s. If you're using a mobile device, then sure, new UI principles are needed, but there is NO REASON to carry those principles over to a desktop device.
We didn't replace long established iconography for things like shuffle and repeat settings with textual representations. Why? Because text takes longer for the brain to process!
Presumably, this is only true if the icons are instantly recognizable and/or easily interpretable. If your users have to spend time thinking about what the icon actually means, you're probably better off using a word instead. Unless, of course, you're trying to train them so you can lock them into your particular UI dialect, as mentioned in earlier posts.
Another reason UI designers like to use icons is that icons are generally spoken language-agnostic. You don't have to translate your UI for different locales if you use icons rather than text. Of course, if your icons have tooltips you'll be translating them anyway, but it's always nice to minimize your translation work.
Also, let's not pretend that every interactive UI element can or should be iconified. Take a paint application; you can easily iconify common tools like the Pen or Paint Brush, but the properties of those tools (i.e. threshold, pressure, opacity, etc.) are too far from tangible real-world objects to iconify easily. Attempts to do so will probably end with frustrated users who now have to learn your special icon dialect.
Finally, the oft-quoted statistic that the brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text seems to be somewhat suspect when you start digging into it.
Whoever designed that power cord connector was a dribbling idiot, as was everyone in the design chain up to the level at which someone realised "we can make a shitload of profit on selling replacements when this breaks." Which moved it's problems from being design deficiencies to being business assets.
A reversible, magnetically latched power lead - sounds a cool idea. But the consequence of needing a contact pin, a sliding contact, and a spring instead of a static soldered joint triples the component count and triples the number of failure points. And sure enough, the guy in question has a useless lump of Apple hardware (until he gets to a store - next month) because of the failure of one of those 3 failure points. It's the third such failure he has had at the same point in consecutive power bricks, each brought from Apple at full retail price. We've got three Electronics Technicians on board with a reasonably equipped lab - and ont one of them wants to take responsibility for trying to repair this failed component, because it is very compactly put together and designed to be irreparable.
The guy with the borked Apple won't be buying any more Apple hardware - that's for certain. I won't either (I sold my Apple gear about 5 years ago).
Really great piece of design, Apple's business managers!
Actually ... I'm just wondering about proposing to the guy that we should be able to repair his machine by ripping it's shirt off, soldering flying leads into the inside of the power connector, then repeating the action with the power brick's lead. That should get him up and working again (well - his MacThing ; obviously since he had a MacThing, he brought along a working computer in addition, so he's able to do the paperwork part of his job on that) and be recoverable if he does decide to waste more money following the Apple route.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Tasks that were once obvious how to do such as adding a new reminder are now almost hidden. On older OSX / iOS versions, adding a new reminder had a prominent button on the top right of the screen; press it, enter your details, save it, done. Now? Scroll to the bottom (heaven forbid you have a hundred items) and tap in the blank gap below the last entry and THEN you get the ability to enter something. Gee, that was obvious? Fortunately, we've been at least granted a '+' in that blank gap now, but it is still ridiculous that we have to scroll down to add a task. Yes, you could probably do it faster with Siri but it isn't always appropriate to talk out loud when you're just trying to create a reminder to buy milk when you leave the office.
Take a look at the other personal management applications and you'll find similar oddities. Why one needs to battle with the Calendar to add or edit an item with some fields in there makes no sense unless you're of the school of "use as little real estate on the screen as possible" on our 4K displays >cough< .. it's OK, you can make the dialogs bigger; if we're typing in it, it is obviously the focus of our attention.. 'K?
I don't think this is a case of "you're holding it wrong", it seems to be more that some designer wanted to make an impact; a statement. Instead, you're making peoples' lives just a little bit harder for the sake of your "art". I'm not saying you need to design option monstrosities like you find on Windows and Linux platforms, but instead of finding the balance between design and usability it seems to be leaning far more heavily on unchallenged design.
Of course, we don't know what we're talking about because Apple knows what we want better than us, right? ;-)
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
There is no such bug. There's these things called "brakes": if your car did accelerate unintentionally, you could press those instead. Or pop the transmission into neutral.
With the millions upon millions of cars being sold with throttle-by-wire over the last 10-20 years, if there really was a problem like this, we would have heard about it by now. Instead all we had was the Toyota incident (mine's not a Toyota), and most of those incidents were proven to be just fraudsters trying to cash in on it.