I've already stated that this is a matter where no objective facts are to be found.
Please inform yourself about the topics you rant about. Let me help you with this:
Objective Fact: "We did studies, and on average, testing 100 people with varying degrees of computer experience, Interface A was 30% faster than Interface B, and users made 10% less errors using Interface A."
100% subjective: "It's really fucking confusing to not have each window with its own menu bar."
Hopefully, you'll be able to figure out the difference some day.
No. You're wrong. Apple's UI team is wrong too. It's really fucking confusing to not have each window with its own menu bar. A menu bar is, logically, something which is associated with an application.
Precisely. The menu bar is associated with an application and not with a window of an application. On the Mac, the menu bar is the application. You don't need a window for an application; an application can be open with many windows, or with none at all. That is kind of a pointless discussion, though, since tests show that the Mac menu bar is simply more efficient than the Windows menu bar, regardless of the logic involved.
Not the system. Of course, you also believe (wrongly) UI design is a science, so you're hopeless as far as I'm concerned.
You know, it would really help if you actually tried to argue for your position, rather than angrily claiming things without any evidence or logic to support your claims.
Aww, you made me proud of Gnome. Nautilus asks me "Empty all of the items in Trash?" in bold followed by a short description about items being permanently lost. The button choices are, "Empty Trash" and "Cancel", completely unambiguous. I agree about that thing about most people not reading the text on dialog boxes, I never used to.
Yeah, that's a great solution, beating out both OS X and Windows. Unsurprisingly, as Nautilus was originally designed by Eazel, with Any Hertzfeld as the UI designer (I think). Susan Kare was also at Eazel. They had some great UI designers and did awesome work.
I didn't know that about keyboard shortcuts, that's very interesting stuff there.
If you're interested in this kind of thing, I would suggest Tog's book where he talks more about keyboard shortcuts and the usability tests Apple did on them. UI design is absolutely fascinating.
Hmm... if the text has a different context then the buttons have to match that context. That's hardly a usability argument, more a grammatical argument.
"Are you sure you want to delete ?"
Seems like a pretty straightforward yes/no answer to me...
No, no, you missed my point. Maybe I didn't explain it correctly. The issue is not that the grammer of the buttons doesn't match the text in the dialog box. The issue is that reading only the buttons doesn't tell the user what happens. "Yes" could mean "yes, empty the trash" or "yes, keep the items in the trash", depending on what the text said. "Cancel" is obvious, it cancels the action.
Ala MAC...
"Do you really want to delete..."... erm, "cancel" ???
Just because we use computers, doesn't mean we have to speak "geek"... If I'm asked a yes/no question, I can manage to make a yes/no answer... I've been able to do it since I was about 3 I believe.
Being able to do it is not enough. People were perfectly capable of using DOS; that didn't make it a UI with good usability. Of course you're able to empty the trash - the question is: if you run a usability test and have 100 people empty the trash, how many of these have to read the text in the dialog box twice before they're sure what to click? How many make a mistake and click the wrong button? How long does it take on average to empty the trash?
Useability study my ass... how about a "common sense" study ?
But that's just the point: The most usable interface is often not the one common sense would suggest. Only a usability test can show you what the best possible solution to a given UI task is. I suggest you sit in at a few usability tests. Sitting behind the one-way mirror, looking at people trying to use a GUI (maybe even a GUI you created) is an eye-opening experience. It shows you just how little you actually know about designing good user interfaces.
And not to rip on your research, but I consider usability research pure BS. It's frankly impossible to objectively determine rules for what people find easier, when personal preferences vary so widely.
Again, you're wrong.
I think you don't quite understand how usability research works. This isn't some kind of voodoo where somebody simply determines that something works better than something else. These are valid studies, and there are rules that can be derived from doing these studies which apply to most people. GP mentioned the buttons in dialog boxes: On Windows, the default dialog box is a YesNo box. There's some text, then there are "Yes" or "No" buttons. On the Mac, the buttons contain verbs. For example, if you clean out the Recycle Bin, Windows asks you: "Are you sure you want to delete [your file]?" with "Yes" and "No" as possible answers. Mac OS X asks you something like "Do you really want to delete the Objects in the Trash? You can't undo this." with "Cancel" and "OK" as possible answers (I'm on Windows right now, so I can't check the exact wording). This is certainly not perfect, but it is better than Windows, because "Cancel" obviously cancels what you're doing, while you can't be sure whether "Yes" or "No" cancels the action on Windows. So, did somebody just set up this rule that you have to use verbs in buttons? No, Apple did a lot of usability studies when they originally came up with the Mac interface (read Tog's book on the subject for some interesting anecdotes about this). They found that people were faster and had less errors when the buttons contained verbs, because most people simply don't read the text in the dialog boxes (and if you have done support, as you claim, you'll know this).
Another example is the menu bar you mention. You complain that the "universal" menu bar on the Mac is dumb. That's an opinion. Usability tests have shown that it is, in fact, faster and less error-prone than the "menu bar inside the window" solution on Windows an Linux. Why? Because you can't overshoot the top-of-window menu bar. According to Fitt's law, entries in the menu bar have infinite size. You just jam the mouse to the top of the screen, and you'll hit the menu. Again, the Mac's solution is not perfect, especially if you have multi-window setups, but it is better than the Windows solution, despite of your dislike for it.
Which leads me to my final point: Unless you do studies, you don't know what solution is best, which is probably why you consider usability research BS. Results gained from studies often don't fit personal experience. The reason for this is not that the research is BS; the reason for this is that you can't evaluate usability objectively when you're observing yourself. A great example for this is keyboard shortcuts. People who use keyboard shortcuts think they're faster than using the mouse. Actually doing usability studies shows the mouse generally wins out, except for some specific, often-used shortcuts like Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V. This is science; hundreds of tests have shown this again and again. Your personal experience does not fit the actual facts. You can't evaluate usability based on your feelings (although a happy user is, of course, important, too:-).
whoever insisted on the "Hey guys, let's have only one menu bar for every window, ever!" idea should never get to design a GUI again.
Fitt's law. You're wrong, Apple's UI team is right. Not an opinion, either. UI design is science, not opinion.
Also, Ubuntu has a very nice UI, but Windows? I remember installing a wifi card in a Windows laptop. At one point, the installation instructions told me to open the context menu on a entry in a subment of the Start menu to get to the card's properties. Really? That's less confusing than Mac OS? You're probably used to Windows and thus find Mac OS X confusing. Fair enough. For somebody who uses both regularly, the winner is obvious.
And these mice came with your PC? Or did you buy them separately? Because, you know, you can use these mice with your Mac, they just don't come with 9+ button mice out of the box (last I checked, Apple mice had 5 buttons).
The SNES is the console where 2D gaming reached its pinnacle. The SNES is to 2D what the PS5 will be to 3D. It has some of the best games of all time; A Link to the Past, Super Mario World, Super Metroid, Mega Man X, Final Fantasy III, Super Mario Kart, Street Fighter 2: Turbo, F-Zero... If I could only take one console (plus games) with me on a remote island, the SNES would easily win. No other console has the same amount of quality games.
The PS1? Give me a break. Have you played a PS1 game lately? That crap has not stood the test of time. Apart from the 2D games like Castlevania: SotN, PS1 games look (and often play) like shit. The PS1 is to 3D gaming what the VCS2600 is to 2D gaming: A landmark, a tremendously important console, but not one whose games are still relevant. We played VCS2600 games because it was awesome to play anything. We played the PS1 because it was awesome to play anything in 3D. But best console of all time? Not by a long shot.
I don't know a single person who had pirated games for the PS1. That's not rampant, compared to what happened with the DC or the Amiga. The Xbox had some piracy, but it also failed. Both the DS and the GBA require hardware for piracy, which cuts down the audience tremendously.
There are cases where piracy is good for a platform, but your examples don't show that. piracy on the original Xbox was not widespread, so attach rate remained high, and the Xbox wasn't exactly a success, anyway. Piracy on the Amiga was really bad for the system; it's one of the reasons why a lot of games moved from the Amiga to the Genesis and SNES, which - in part - eventually killed the Amiga. The same applies to PC gaming. Piracy on the PC is bad for PC gaming, not good; see PC sale numbers of games like Crysis or Unreal. There's a reason why former PC only games are moving to the PS3 and 360.
An example of a platform (if you can call it that) that was made by piracy would be Microsoft Office. Without piracy, Office would not be the "industry standard" it is today.
It's unlikely that such an error would bring more than a minor section of the network down -- then the problem would be noticed and fixed before the software is widely deployed.
Unlikely is not the same as impossible. In fact, this has happened before. From the link:
"Given this, it's not hard to imagine how can one badly behaved application could cause big problems. In fact, I happen to know of one actual incident in which a bug in a certain first-party smart-phone application caused, essentially, a denial-of-service attack on an important data service--one that happened the same time every day for weeks before it was tracked down."
Also, do you really think that Apple inspects third party software to the extent where they would find such a bug?
They certainly could put software through Apple's own QA process, but I doubt they will. Even so, the question was whether an application could cause issues with the cell phone network, and the answer is yes, it can.
(Sorry, this is going to be a somewhat lengthy rant which isn't directed solely at parent, but at other posts asking about what people see in the iPhone)
I live in Switzerland, where the phone isn't even officially sold. I own an iPhone, I know six other people who own iPhones, and I've seen three people whom I don't know with iPhones on the street. So yeah, tons of people own iPhones, and they use them.
Personally, the iPhone is the best cell phone I've ever owned. It's also the cheapest cell phone I've ever owned. I use my cell phone as an organizer. I use the calendar extensively, I write and receive a lot of SMS messages. I generally use smartphones. I've owned a P800, a Treo 650, and a P990i. These phones suck compared to the iPhone.
For example, the P990i supports wifi - in theory. Actually using wifi means that you have to add each network you want to use to your list of networks (which involves going through a lengthy wizard where you tell the damn phone what specific setup the wifi network uses). This generally means that you have to create a second list of networks, because otherwise, you have wifi and umts in the same list, which means you never know whether the phone is actually using umts instead. So you create two lists, add wifi networks to the second list, tell the phone (or application, because sometimes that works on the application level and sometimes on the phone level) that you want to use the second list with the wifi network, then you connect to the network, and finally you can use the damn wifi network. After my P990i crashed half a year after I bought it and deleted all settings, I never bothered to go through this again. I simply avoided using wifi.
On the iPhone, you open Safari. If it can find a wifi network you've already used, it'll use that. If not, it'll give you a list of networks it can see. You pick one. If it's protected, it asks for the password. It connects. And that's all there is to it.
And don't get me started on how fucking abysimal the user interface on the P990i is. It's slow, with tons of crappy animations which add nothing to the UI other than preventing you from getting to where you want to be. The web browser on that thing is the worst piece of shit I've ever used. It's practically useless. Entering an appointment into the calendar actually takes around 20 taps with the stylus. In fact, it is so complicated that they added a second way of entering appointments using a shortcut menu entry, which takes a few taps less, but sometimes crashes or simply does not work at all. Oh, and when the phone crashes, it restarts and tels you that it had to restart in order to improve functionality. The phone crashes, and then it insults your intelligence, too.
The Treo was better - at least the UI was not designed by blind monkey on acid. Unfortunately, it had other issues, such as the fact that there is pretty much no multitasking. For example, if you open a site in the browser (which is better than the one in the P990i, but still sucks), get an SMS, write an answer to the SMS and go back to the browser, the state is lost and you start fresh.
I heard Windows Mobile was slightly better, but the last time I used it (admittedly a few years ago), it seemed to me the user interface was basically akin to using Windows 95 on a really really small screen.
In comparison to every other phone I've ever used, the iPhone is a breath of fresh air. It works the way you expect, it's damn fast, the browser is actually so usable that I often simply use the iPhone instead of going to my computer. The screen is beautiful and large, which makes it possible to watch movies during train rides. It synchronizes perfectly well with all computers I own, and when I start listening to a podcast on the iPhone, my iPod picks up where I stopped listening, and I can restart exactly where I was when I go jogging.
Everything about the iPhone is well thought out, and for once, I actaully like using my cell phone.
So screw the "emo demographic". People use the iPhone because it's quite simply one of the best - possibly the best - cell phones available, despite the fact that you can't install applications without jailbreaking it first.
It is quite difficult to break the phone network with a phone
It's difficult with a phone, but it becomes easier when you write software that runs on hundreds of thousands or millions of phones. Write an e-mail client which checks mail every hour. Forget to randomize when that occurs every hour. Next time the check triggers, millions of phones access the network at the same time. And that was that.
This is kind of a hard problem. In principle, I agree. I bought the damn machine, now let me do whatever the hell I want with it. It's kind of insane that I have a PS3 sitting next to my sofa and pretty much all I can do with it is play games. I could install Linux, but then I'd have to cope with the hypervisor... It would be great if I could just run unlicensed third-party apps inside the normal PS3 interface. Stuff like VLC would be really useful on something like the PS3.
On the other hand, you can't have unlimited third-party development, while at the same time prevent piracy. There were many reasons why the Dreamcast died, but one of them was piracy. You could buy the whole library of DC games for the cost of a single legal game. Most people I know who owned DCs had tons of copied games for them, and few legal games. If the hardware manufacturer intends to subsidize the cost of the hardware by selling software, piracy can kill the platform.
And there lies the solution, possibly: If the hardware you buy is subsidized, I don't think you have much of a right to complain. You got the hardware for less than it cost the manufacturer, so maybe you should put up with the restrictions the manufacturer put in place. You pay in party by accepting these restrictions.
If, however, the hardware is sold for profit, it's probably okay to complain about restrictions.
I did. You can hardly blame me for your post, which seemingly did not say what you wanted it to say and thus required interaction from me in order to find out what your point actually was. You should have had more information in your original post, obviously:-)
Macs are prettier than PCs, but not as powerful. You get something that looks nice, but is less capable
Define "powerful" and "capable". It seems the MacBook Pro is 2007's fastest Vista notebook. Mac OS X combines the power of Unix with frontend applications like Final Cut Pro, Aperture, Keynote or iDVD. I can run Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Safari and different versions of Firefox at the same time. I can run grep and gcc in Terminal while opening a.doc file in a native version of Word. I got a whole, fully functional IDE as part of my OS.
Now explain to me how my Mac is only prettier than a PC and not as powerful. Explain to me how my Mac, which runs Windows, Linux and Mac OS X at the same time, is less capable than a PC.
There is no interaction needed in 99% of all cases.
What does that have to do with anything?
You're starting to confuse me. In your original post, to which I replied, you suggested:
rather than throwing all the information on one page, you drill down from the summary into detail
So your point is that displaying a summary and then letting to user drill down to the information he wants is better than displaying all information into the first page. Drilling down is interaction. In this case, interaction is not needed (as all information could be displayed in the first screen), yet you suggest that it should be introduced.
If you can show the information the user wants to see, do it. Don't hide it.
Can you go back and show me where I suggested hiding information that the user wants to see?
Of course. Right in this sentence:
rather than throwing all the information on one page, you drill down from the summary into detail
And then again in this post:
instead of cluttering up the display or making the user drag it around like a magnifying glass over a phone book, you take advantage of the interactive nature of the device. Let the user ask for more detail for the 1% of the time they need it.
Of course, now you simply assume that people only use the summary in 99% of all cases, which wasn't clear from your original post. But that implies that the summary already contains all the information which the user wants to see, which means that you're back at square one: How do you put all that information into one screen? I really don't know why you're even arguing with me.
So I will agree, if you don't need a lot of capability, you don't need an interactive device.
That's not really the question, though. Although Apple did a good job getting rid of features, in this particular case, removing interaction is not the same as removing features. Removing interaction should just remove the barriers to the features, not the features themselves.
The widget he built is highly interactive. It only shows arrivals, departures, and trip times, and hides details like the map and other schedules until you request them.
Exactly. There is no interaction needed in 99% of all cases.
The article is about selecting the information that you provide in the overview so that you don't have to drill down most of the time.
...because drilling down is bad, exactly. But you wrote:
He's also really not understanding the capabilities of interactive interfaces... rather than throwing all the information on one page, you drill down from the summary into detail.
That is often a bad idea. If you can show the information the user wants to see, do it. Don't hide it.
He's also really not understanding the capabilities of interactive interfaces... rather than throwing all the information on one page, you drill down from the summary into detail.
That is generally a bad idea. Interaction should be considered as a compromise if not other solution can be found, not as a good idea in itself. Every time users have to interact with your application, a certain amount of users will fail. If you can show every information the user has to know without him interacting with your application, you've killed that source of errors.
You should read this paper on why interaction is bad, and how interaction can be avoided.
Quote:
The ubiquity of frustrating, unhelpful software interfaces has motivated decades of research into "Human-Computer Interaction." In this paper, I suggest that the long-standing focus on "interaction" may be misguided. For a majority subset of software, called "information software," I argue that interactivity is actually a curse for users and a crutch for designers, and users' goals can be better satisfied through other means.
No interaction is almost always preferrable to interaction. If you can display the information the user wants, display that information instead of making the user act to see the information. Every user interaction is a source of errors.
So Ron Paul is against abortion? I know little of American politics, but how can a candidate be the posterchild for individual freedom, and then be against abortion?
Slashdot Mirror
Please inform yourself about the topics you rant about. Let me help you with this:
Objective Fact: "We did studies, and on average, testing 100 people with varying degrees of computer experience, Interface A was 30% faster than Interface B, and users made 10% less errors using Interface A."
100% subjective: "It's really fucking confusing to not have each window with its own menu bar."
Hopefully, you'll be able to figure out the difference some day.
Precisely. The menu bar is associated with an application and not with a window of an application. On the Mac, the menu bar is the application. You don't need a window for an application; an application can be open with many windows, or with none at all. That is kind of a pointless discussion, though, since tests show that the Mac menu bar is simply more efficient than the Windows menu bar, regardless of the logic involved.
Not the system. Of course, you also believe (wrongly) UI design is a science, so you're hopeless as far as I'm concerned.You know, it would really help if you actually tried to argue for your position, rather than angrily claiming things without any evidence or logic to support your claims.
Yeah, that's a great solution, beating out both OS X and Windows. Unsurprisingly, as Nautilus was originally designed by Eazel, with Any Hertzfeld as the UI designer (I think). Susan Kare was also at Eazel. They had some great UI designers and did awesome work.
I didn't know that about keyboard shortcuts, that's very interesting stuff there.If you're interested in this kind of thing, I would suggest Tog's book where he talks more about keyboard shortcuts and the usability tests Apple did on them. UI design is absolutely fascinating.
No, no, you missed my point. Maybe I didn't explain it correctly. The issue is not that the grammer of the buttons doesn't match the text in the dialog box. The issue is that reading only the buttons doesn't tell the user what happens. "Yes" could mean "yes, empty the trash" or "yes, keep the items in the trash", depending on what the text said. "Cancel" is obvious, it cancels the action.
Ala MACBeing able to do it is not enough. People were perfectly capable of using DOS; that didn't make it a UI with good usability. Of course you're able to empty the trash - the question is: if you run a usability test and have 100 people empty the trash, how many of these have to read the text in the dialog box twice before they're sure what to click? How many make a mistake and click the wrong button? How long does it take on average to empty the trash?
Useability study my assBut that's just the point: The most usable interface is often not the one common sense would suggest. Only a usability test can show you what the best possible solution to a given UI task is. I suggest you sit in at a few usability tests. Sitting behind the one-way mirror, looking at people trying to use a GUI (maybe even a GUI you created) is an eye-opening experience. It shows you just how little you actually know about designing good user interfaces.
Again, you're wrong.
I think you don't quite understand how usability research works. This isn't some kind of voodoo where somebody simply determines that something works better than something else. These are valid studies, and there are rules that can be derived from doing these studies which apply to most people. GP mentioned the buttons in dialog boxes: On Windows, the default dialog box is a YesNo box. There's some text, then there are "Yes" or "No" buttons. On the Mac, the buttons contain verbs. For example, if you clean out the Recycle Bin, Windows asks you: "Are you sure you want to delete [your file]?" with "Yes" and "No" as possible answers. Mac OS X asks you something like "Do you really want to delete the Objects in the Trash? You can't undo this." with "Cancel" and "OK" as possible answers (I'm on Windows right now, so I can't check the exact wording). This is certainly not perfect, but it is better than Windows, because "Cancel" obviously cancels what you're doing, while you can't be sure whether "Yes" or "No" cancels the action on Windows. So, did somebody just set up this rule that you have to use verbs in buttons? No, Apple did a lot of usability studies when they originally came up with the Mac interface (read Tog's book on the subject for some interesting anecdotes about this). They found that people were faster and had less errors when the buttons contained verbs, because most people simply don't read the text in the dialog boxes (and if you have done support, as you claim, you'll know this).
Another example is the menu bar you mention. You complain that the "universal" menu bar on the Mac is dumb. That's an opinion. Usability tests have shown that it is, in fact, faster and less error-prone than the "menu bar inside the window" solution on Windows an Linux. Why? Because you can't overshoot the top-of-window menu bar. According to Fitt's law, entries in the menu bar have infinite size. You just jam the mouse to the top of the screen, and you'll hit the menu. Again, the Mac's solution is not perfect, especially if you have multi-window setups, but it is better than the Windows solution, despite of your dislike for it.
Which leads me to my final point: Unless you do studies, you don't know what solution is best, which is probably why you consider usability research BS. Results gained from studies often don't fit personal experience. The reason for this is not that the research is BS; the reason for this is that you can't evaluate usability objectively when you're observing yourself. A great example for this is keyboard shortcuts. People who use keyboard shortcuts think they're faster than using the mouse. Actually doing usability studies shows the mouse generally wins out, except for some specific, often-used shortcuts like Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V. This is science; hundreds of tests have shown this again and again. Your personal experience does not fit the actual facts. You can't evaluate usability based on your feelings (although a happy user is, of course, important, too :-).
Fitt's law. You're wrong, Apple's UI team is right. Not an opinion, either. UI design is science, not opinion.
Also, Ubuntu has a very nice UI, but Windows? I remember installing a wifi card in a Windows laptop. At one point, the installation instructions told me to open the context menu on a entry in a subment of the Start menu to get to the card's properties. Really? That's less confusing than Mac OS? You're probably used to Windows and thus find Mac OS X confusing. Fair enough. For somebody who uses both regularly, the winner is obvious.
And these mice came with your PC? Or did you buy them separately? Because, you know, you can use these mice with your Mac, they just don't come with 9+ button mice out of the box (last I checked, Apple mice had 5 buttons).
The SNES is the console where 2D gaming reached its pinnacle. The SNES is to 2D what the PS5 will be to 3D. It has some of the best games of all time; A Link to the Past, Super Mario World, Super Metroid, Mega Man X, Final Fantasy III, Super Mario Kart, Street Fighter 2: Turbo, F-Zero... If I could only take one console (plus games) with me on a remote island, the SNES would easily win. No other console has the same amount of quality games.
The PS1? Give me a break. Have you played a PS1 game lately? That crap has not stood the test of time. Apart from the 2D games like Castlevania: SotN, PS1 games look (and often play) like shit. The PS1 is to 3D gaming what the VCS2600 is to 2D gaming: A landmark, a tremendously important console, but not one whose games are still relevant. We played VCS2600 games because it was awesome to play anything. We played the PS1 because it was awesome to play anything in 3D. But best console of all time? Not by a long shot.
For Apple, improving usability improves profitability.
I don't know a single person who had pirated games for the PS1. That's not rampant, compared to what happened with the DC or the Amiga. The Xbox had some piracy, but it also failed. Both the DS and the GBA require hardware for piracy, which cuts down the audience tremendously.
There are cases where piracy is good for a platform, but your examples don't show that. piracy on the original Xbox was not widespread, so attach rate remained high, and the Xbox wasn't exactly a success, anyway. Piracy on the Amiga was really bad for the system; it's one of the reasons why a lot of games moved from the Amiga to the Genesis and SNES, which - in part - eventually killed the Amiga. The same applies to PC gaming. Piracy on the PC is bad for PC gaming, not good; see PC sale numbers of games like Crysis or Unreal. There's a reason why former PC only games are moving to the PS3 and 360.
An example of a platform (if you can call it that) that was made by piracy would be Microsoft Office. Without piracy, Office would not be the "industry standard" it is today.
Unlikely is not the same as impossible. In fact, this has happened before. From the link:
"Given this, it's not hard to imagine how can one badly behaved application could cause big problems. In fact, I happen to know of one actual incident in which a bug in a certain first-party smart-phone application caused, essentially, a denial-of-service attack on an important data service--one that happened the same time every day for weeks before it was tracked down." Also, do you really think that Apple inspects third party software to the extent where they would find such a bug?They certainly could put software through Apple's own QA process, but I doubt they will. Even so, the question was whether an application could cause issues with the cell phone network, and the answer is yes, it can.
(Sorry, this is going to be a somewhat lengthy rant which isn't directed solely at parent, but at other posts asking about what people see in the iPhone)
I live in Switzerland, where the phone isn't even officially sold. I own an iPhone, I know six other people who own iPhones, and I've seen three people whom I don't know with iPhones on the street. So yeah, tons of people own iPhones, and they use them.
Personally, the iPhone is the best cell phone I've ever owned. It's also the cheapest cell phone I've ever owned. I use my cell phone as an organizer. I use the calendar extensively, I write and receive a lot of SMS messages. I generally use smartphones. I've owned a P800, a Treo 650, and a P990i. These phones suck compared to the iPhone.
For example, the P990i supports wifi - in theory. Actually using wifi means that you have to add each network you want to use to your list of networks (which involves going through a lengthy wizard where you tell the damn phone what specific setup the wifi network uses). This generally means that you have to create a second list of networks, because otherwise, you have wifi and umts in the same list, which means you never know whether the phone is actually using umts instead. So you create two lists, add wifi networks to the second list, tell the phone (or application, because sometimes that works on the application level and sometimes on the phone level) that you want to use the second list with the wifi network, then you connect to the network, and finally you can use the damn wifi network. After my P990i crashed half a year after I bought it and deleted all settings, I never bothered to go through this again. I simply avoided using wifi.
On the iPhone, you open Safari. If it can find a wifi network you've already used, it'll use that. If not, it'll give you a list of networks it can see. You pick one. If it's protected, it asks for the password. It connects. And that's all there is to it.
And don't get me started on how fucking abysimal the user interface on the P990i is. It's slow, with tons of crappy animations which add nothing to the UI other than preventing you from getting to where you want to be. The web browser on that thing is the worst piece of shit I've ever used. It's practically useless. Entering an appointment into the calendar actually takes around 20 taps with the stylus. In fact, it is so complicated that they added a second way of entering appointments using a shortcut menu entry, which takes a few taps less, but sometimes crashes or simply does not work at all. Oh, and when the phone crashes, it restarts and tels you that it had to restart in order to improve functionality. The phone crashes, and then it insults your intelligence, too.
The Treo was better - at least the UI was not designed by blind monkey on acid. Unfortunately, it had other issues, such as the fact that there is pretty much no multitasking. For example, if you open a site in the browser (which is better than the one in the P990i, but still sucks), get an SMS, write an answer to the SMS and go back to the browser, the state is lost and you start fresh.
I heard Windows Mobile was slightly better, but the last time I used it (admittedly a few years ago), it seemed to me the user interface was basically akin to using Windows 95 on a really really small screen.
In comparison to every other phone I've ever used, the iPhone is a breath of fresh air. It works the way you expect, it's damn fast, the browser is actually so usable that I often simply use the iPhone instead of going to my computer. The screen is beautiful and large, which makes it possible to watch movies during train rides. It synchronizes perfectly well with all computers I own, and when I start listening to a podcast on the iPhone, my iPod picks up where I stopped listening, and I can restart exactly where I was when I go jogging.
Everything about the iPhone is well thought out, and for once, I actaully like using my cell phone.
So screw the "emo demographic". People use the iPhone because it's quite simply one of the best - possibly the best - cell phones available, despite the fact that you can't install applications without jailbreaking it first.
Yes. Although they usually do it if they think it improves usability.
It's difficult with a phone, but it becomes easier when you write software that runs on hundreds of thousands or millions of phones. Write an e-mail client which checks mail every hour. Forget to randomize when that occurs every hour. Next time the check triggers, millions of phones access the network at the same time. And that was that.
This is kind of a hard problem. In principle, I agree. I bought the damn machine, now let me do whatever the hell I want with it. It's kind of insane that I have a PS3 sitting next to my sofa and pretty much all I can do with it is play games. I could install Linux, but then I'd have to cope with the hypervisor... It would be great if I could just run unlicensed third-party apps inside the normal PS3 interface. Stuff like VLC would be really useful on something like the PS3.
On the other hand, you can't have unlimited third-party development, while at the same time prevent piracy. There were many reasons why the Dreamcast died, but one of them was piracy. You could buy the whole library of DC games for the cost of a single legal game. Most people I know who owned DCs had tons of copied games for them, and few legal games. If the hardware manufacturer intends to subsidize the cost of the hardware by selling software, piracy can kill the platform.
And there lies the solution, possibly: If the hardware you buy is subsidized, I don't think you have much of a right to complain. You got the hardware for less than it cost the manufacturer, so maybe you should put up with the restrictions the manufacturer put in place. You pay in party by accepting these restrictions.
If, however, the hardware is sold for profit, it's probably okay to complain about restrictions.
I did. You can hardly blame me for your post, which seemingly did not say what you wanted it to say and thus required interaction from me in order to find out what your point actually was. You should have had more information in your original post, obviously :-)
Like mine, they are unlocked and used on non-sanctioned carrierrs. No mystery there.
Define "powerful" and "capable". It seems the MacBook Pro is 2007's fastest Vista notebook. Mac OS X combines the power of Unix with frontend applications like Final Cut Pro, Aperture, Keynote or iDVD. I can run Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Safari and different versions of Firefox at the same time. I can run grep and gcc in Terminal while opening a .doc file in a native version of Word. I got a whole, fully functional IDE as part of my OS.
Now explain to me how my Mac is only prettier than a PC and not as powerful. Explain to me how my Mac, which runs Windows, Linux and Mac OS X at the same time, is less capable than a PC.
What does that have to do with anything?
You're starting to confuse me. In your original post, to which I replied, you suggested:
rather than throwing all the information on one page, you drill down from the summary into detailSo your point is that displaying a summary and then letting to user drill down to the information he wants is better than displaying all information into the first page. Drilling down is interaction. In this case, interaction is not needed (as all information could be displayed in the first screen), yet you suggest that it should be introduced.
If you can show the information the user wants to see, do it. Don't hide it.Can you go back and show me where I suggested hiding information that the user wants to see?
Of course. Right in this sentence:
rather than throwing all the information on one page, you drill down from the summary into detailAnd then again in this post:
instead of cluttering up the display or making the user drag it around like a magnifying glass over a phone book, you take advantage of the interactive nature of the device. Let the user ask for more detail for the 1% of the time they need it.Of course, now you simply assume that people only use the summary in 99% of all cases, which wasn't clear from your original post. But that implies that the summary already contains all the information which the user wants to see, which means that you're back at square one: How do you put all that information into one screen? I really don't know why you're even arguing with me.
I think we should just leave this matter be.
That's not really the question, though. Although Apple did a good job getting rid of features, in this particular case, removing interaction is not the same as removing features. Removing interaction should just remove the barriers to the features, not the features themselves.
Exactly. There is no interaction needed in 99% of all cases.
The article is about selecting the information that you provide in the overview so that you don't have to drill down most of the time....because drilling down is bad, exactly. But you wrote:
He's also really not understanding the capabilities of interactive interfaces... rather than throwing all the information on one page, you drill down from the summary into detail.That is often a bad idea. If you can show the information the user wants to see, do it. Don't hide it.
That is generally a bad idea. Interaction should be considered as a compromise if not other solution can be found, not as a good idea in itself. Every time users have to interact with your application, a certain amount of users will fail. If you can show every information the user has to know without him interacting with your application, you've killed that source of errors.
You should read this paper on why interaction is bad, and how interaction can be avoided.
Quote:
The ubiquity of frustrating, unhelpful software interfaces has motivated decades of research into "Human-Computer Interaction." In this paper, I suggest that the long-standing focus on "interaction" may be misguided. For a majority subset of software, called "information software," I argue that interactivity is actually a curse for users and a crutch for designers, and users' goals can be better satisfied through other means.No interaction is almost always preferrable to interaction. If you can display the information the user wants, display that information instead of making the user act to see the information. Every user interaction is a source of errors.
So Ron Paul is against abortion? I know little of American politics, but how can a candidate be the posterchild for individual freedom, and then be against abortion?