What I’d Like to See in Tiger: Part 3, A Consistent User Interface
Maybe it’s because I’m a graphic designer by training but I like things to be visually consistent.
One of the beautiful things about the original Mac operating system was its visual simplicity and consistency. A window in Macpaint had a similar look and feel (such a funny expression, look and feel!) to a window in the finder.
This consistency was, well, consistent throughout the entire classic operating system. OS X appears to have thrown all that out the window. Now we have some Apple applications with a metallic look and some without. Why does iPhoto get the metallic look and Mail doesn’t? Or, even more egregious, within the finder itself some windows are metallic and some aren’t. I’d like to see the dartboard at Apple where they figure this stuff out. Actually, I wouldn’t.
Consistency in a user interface is a good thing. At a certain point the UI should fade into the background. The early innovators on the Macintosh knew this, Windows copied it, and to see a somewhat scattered interface in OS X is disappointing to say the least. Yes, some of this visual vertigo has to do with the superfluous (albeit beautiful) over-the-top eye-candy in OS X. But a lot of it has to so with interface differences where they are not needed.
Let’s hope Tiger cleans up its act and bring the Mac back to the refined interface it was famous for.
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Slopes, I appreciate your comments but I find they are based on false assumptions, premises, and understandings. I can tell your origins are indeed with the Mac OS of old—and yet some of your assumptions are false even by the standards of THAT operating system.
For example, the desktop. All diehard Macintosh users (myself included) used to think of the computer screen as representing the desktop. We all heard about the desktop metaphor and so on. But this was really a misnomer from the start—which has led to a number of erroneous assumptions about the way a good computer interface should be designed. The screen has never accurately represented a desktop—again, not even under OS 9. What it represented instead was a workspace or work area—in short, an office. Of course, a desk is part of an office but ONLY a part.
Now OS X does a much better job of making this distinction than OS 9 ever did. The hard disk icon which you say is on your “desktop” is actually in your “office.” And you don’t delete your desk, do you? No, instead you only delete items ON your desk. And since the typical user can’t have multiple monitors—each one of which would represent one “view” of a workspace, a single screen must at once be our viewing portal into all these objects—the office, desktop, bookcase, filing cabinet, trash can, etc.
Now to be more accurate, the screen of an OS X computer is not so much likened to an office but rather to a SUITE of offices (because it is a multi-user OS from the ground up). When you enter the OS X kingdom, you walk into a corridor past different office doors until you reach the one for you. But OS X does give you the option of a shortcut in this regard; you can open windows which will instantly default to your OWN particular office (and spare you the trouble of walking pass all the other doors.
The problem is that some OS 7/8/9 people can’t let go of this idea that they are the king of their kingdom, the master of their destiny. They want the whole skyscraper of offices as well as full access to (and control over) the architect’s office and the engineer’s office. These people think it’s a UI advantage to be able to drag System Folder components to the trash for deletion—never mind if it will immobilize your system.
Let’s return to the font example. You say OS 9 is so much simpler because it has a single Font folder (which is located in the engineer’s office—i.e. the System Folder). Maybe you think it’s good UI design to encourage users to muck around in their System Folders and to just HOPE they will be able to accurately differentiate between the items which are user installable and discretionary and those which are not. But this is not my idea of a good interface. Also, under OS X, there are custom fonts for the user, custom fonts for specific applications, and fonts for the system itself. Under OS 9 there were two of these three kinds of fonts—user fonts and system fonts. But unlike OS X, OS 9 dumps them all into the same place, and the ordinary unwary user can’t tell which is which. Is this your idea of a good UI?
Under OS X, your home directory is your castle. You can do what you will with it and even delete it outright and it will do NO harm to the system’s health overall. The distinction between what the USER owns and controls and what the SYSTEM owns is clear. Not so under your beloved OS 9 approach.
Also, there is an irony here which clearly escapes you. The original design of OS X called for leaving control of the “desktop” entirely to the system. Users in early betas of the OS were not able to litter the desktop (or screen) with document icons of their choosing. It wasn’t until the OS 9 proponents protested that Jobs relented and allowed such control in the interface. And now we have you complaining that the design is not logically consistent. Go figure.
Again, under OS X the screen is not the desktop—it is much more inclusive than that. It is more properly analagous to an office or office suite. When you think of it in THESE terms, and THEN examine its behavior, it will suddenly appear more logical to you. Is it perfect? No. Hadley is right that it can be improved—of course. But even apart from its microkernel architecture and other internals (which make it superior to OS 9), I consider even its interface itself to be on balance superior as well.
Again, sit two wholly new users in front of both systems and ask them to set up fonts and printers—and see who does it faster (without actually damaging something). I still contend it will be the OS X user who catches on more quickly—and this is not generally an indication of a bad UI design.
Nice work Jeff! I’m glad you went to the trouble - I don’t have nearly the energy, but I agree with everything you said.
I would only add that GUI aside, the Terminal gives users that dare to delve, ALL THE POWER that they might think they are missing since OS9.
Not to mention the ability to run Apache, and PHP, and PERL, etc., etc.
Hell, even though I DO think the OSX GUI is definitely more efficient on the whole, the time I save by being able to dev/test on one box instead of 2 or 3 would be well worth ‘struggling’ with the GUI a bit, if it were.
“...the completely inappropriate (slippery-looking) liquid lozenge of OS X.” - Oh, please slopes, surely you are trolling with this one. The dynamically-sized ‘pills’ in OSX provide way more visual feedback about one’s scroll position and are far easier to grab than the little wanna-be Windows scroll boxes. What, do you want some text on the bars that say ‘Click here to scroll!’?
I’ll also add that while I initially missed the Apple Menu, after some adjustment (but no 3rd-party helpers), I’m completely happy with the Dock and Sidebar launching and navigation. I know there is a lot of cotroversy surrounding the column-view in Finder also, but I couldn’t live without it now. I RARELY use list-view anymore and being able to preview images and audio in column-view is a huge time-saver, well making up for other minor annoyances (if only the preview size could be changed or would scale larger to fit the window).
-Mark
PS Does anyone use the scroll bar anymore (short of a few apps that STILL don’t play nice with a scroll-mouse)? There’s nothing like scanning the latest MER images for alien footprints with the scroll wheel and the shift key.
Ah, Mark, excellent point about the Terminal. UNIX command shells give the user MUCH more control over his system than he could ever have dreamed about in OS 9—yes, even if he played around with ResEdit in the old days. There is no OS on the earth more flexible, customizable, and open to user configuration than the UNIX family of OS’s. Yes, for access to the more arcane or internal functions, one must use the command line, (though increasingly developers are creating GUI wrappers for these tools). But the point is that it CAN be done.
Jeff - I am surprised to learn that my assumptions about what the OS 9 Desktop represents are erroneous. For a �good computer interface� to be good it needs to obey the same natural laws as the real world.
It�s worth thinking about what the tech jargon �Graphic User Interface� actually means. From me it means drawn representational objects (Graphic) which a subject (User) relates with (Interface) - or in short: a computer space in which a successful Object/Subject Relationship can be achieved.
Of course for this to happen, our objects (whether real or virtual) must be inert, dependable, recognisable and fit for the purposes we desire to use them for. A Desktop object (for example) can only be (or represent) a blank two-dimensional boundaried plane akin to a blank sheet of paper, a canvas or a clear table surface etc - onto which I can place further objects of my own choosing… each of which have their own boundaries and defined uses. A Desktop - for it to be a successful object - cannot pretend to be an office or a many-roomed house, or anything other that what it actually visibly represents, without the whole metaphor breaking down. To argue that this object actually exists within an office (or house), within a street within a town etc etc etc all the way through to the universe - and that its meaning can therefore be substituted and changed at will to represent of any one of these - is a woeful muddling of boundaries which results in the potential chaos OS X is flirting with.
In discussing these issues it is tempting to draw into our frame of reference (or place on the table) the underlying mechanics of an OS - something Apple has clearly done with OS X and was careful to avoid with OS 9. In my view, these particular objects have been made too �public� by Apple as way of forcing yet more of their eye-candy on us. The unfortunate consequence of this is that it further looses sight of and undermines the OS�s purpose.
Slopes, perhaps my previous post was not well written or complete—because you still misunderstand me. It’s not the Desktop which is “pretending” to be the office but rather the SCREEN of the monitor which does so. The screen designates not the desktop but rather a workspace (which includes a desktop but is not confined ONLY to that). And the trouble we get into here is when we fail to understand what the screen represents.
The average person’s work space includes more than their desktop. It includes bookcases, filing cabinets, a desk, and perhaps a work table (dedicated to certain kinds of tasks). And I’m surprised if you feel a good computer interface can ignore all these things but a single desktop.
Do you typically put a trash can on your desktop? Is that representative in your view? When under OS 9 you eject disk volumes by dragging them to the Trash Can icon (i.e., the same procedure you follow to DELETE files and folders), do you consider that an example of good user interface design? Is that intuitive? Does that make good use of muscle memory?
Also, you can use the phrase, “eye candy” all you like, but I actually find the use of muted colors (for the close box, minimize box, and zoom box) on Finder windows to enhance the usability. These colors are not arbitrary or just for show. The idea of red for close, yellow for minimize, and green for zoom makes perfect sense. And for the most part OS X has a muted interface with conservative use of color. It’s not over the top at all. By contrast, I find the OS 9 look to be drab.
I think at bottom you just are USED to the OS 9 way of doing things and it has become like an old worn out pair of shoes for you. And that’s fine. But labor under no illusions that OS 9 is the “gold standard” of user interfaces TODAY. It has its own share of inconsistent behaviors and anomalous and anti-intuitive designs—only SOME of which I have detailed here.
[Troll check…] Slopes, I think your theoretical interface design argument is getting lost somewhere between Windows and reality.
“Forcing their eye candy?” Please! Sure, OSX likes to eat some CPU cycles, but you can’t refute the usefulness of some overlooked “eye-candy” such as window drop-shadowing, which is so far superior in OSX than any other OS I’ve used/seen. It has a huge, but completely subtle impact on ease-of-navigation. I’ll gladly trade a few cycles to save some frustration, and the lost cycles are almost always recaptured by the improved efficiency.
About the Desktop metaphor breaking down. I don’t know about you, but I have 5 desktops in my office, 1 in another room and 2 downstairs, and as far as I can tell, my house is still on my block, in my neighborhood… city… state… country… hemisphere… planet… solar system… galaxy… universe… multi-verse, without anyone knowing the wiser.
Hell, sometimes I even change the use of one of my desktops from something completely useful and business-like, to some inane repository of junk-mail, dirty plates and equipment I’ll never fix but like to pretend I will. The desktop doesn’t seem to mind - the users don’t seem to mind, and it serves its new purpose just fine… and doesn’t affect the use of the other desktops one bit.
-Mark
A multi-verse, eh? (As we delve into quantum physics a bit…)
This question about multiple desktops is an important one because veteran X11 (X Windows) users have long been accustomed to the idea of the VIRTUAL desktop in which the screen truly is a portal to many desktops which are generally broken down by categories of work or task. I myself have used virtual desktops under X11 (and with the aid of third-party tools under Quartz/Aqua), and I will typically have a graphics-oriented desktop, a multi-media oriented desktop, an office productivity desktop, a system admin desktop, and so on. And each desktop is customized specifically with a specific end in view.
So, once again, this helps to illustrate how the screen itself is not some static “desktop” as diehard OS 9 proponents may see it to be.
Jeff - your attempted correlation of Screen and Desktop makes no sense and confuses two different environments. Of course a screen is a material part of a computer which is a physical object in the real world. What takes place within the boundaries of the screen is a completely separate environment with its own set of rules and its own limitations - all of which are made comprehensible by being closely based on object relations in the real-world. A necessary starting point for that relationship is that the primary object is a representation of a surface area called the �Desktop� onto which any number of symbolic objects - ALL representing the containers you mention (bookcases, filing cabinets, trash cans etc) - are placed. To simplify matters, most of those containers are represented as identical �Folder� motifs, differentiated only by their titles. And, yes, we can choose to swap between any number of desktops BUT they still remain (and function as) Desktops.
Ce�i n’est pas une pipe
A blank piece of paper - like a blank screen - is of no interest (and of no use) until an image is rendered upon it, thereby transforming it into its own illusion of an environment. It is how those images are rendered and organised which determine how suitable they are for our interaction with them. This is what we are interested in here. I believe that it is the growing prevalence of the kind of (mis)understanding you articulate here - of what a computer GUI can and can�t be - which is weakening the Mac platform.
Well, Slopes, I guess we just have a different perspective on this. Yes, I grant you that the screen is a physical object and it must have to depict or represent SOMETHING. The question then becomes WHAT does it depict. You say it should depict the desktop and that this is the metaphor which works best for an intuitive interface between computer and human. Fair enough. But in evaluating a GUI of an OS, one must do so on the basis of what the OS designers say the screen is meant to depict.
Suppose you are a film critic. Would you fault comedies because they fail as dramas and would you fault dramas because they fail as action films? Of course not. Instead you would review each film against the standard of what its producer and director intended it to be. So if a film is intended as a comedy, and you feel it falls short of that standard, then it’s fair game to rate it accordingly.
So getting back to interfaces, if under OS X the screen is meant to represent the desktop and you find numerous inconsistencies as a result, then your criticisms are well taken. But if OS X was never intended to follow this model in the first place, then your criticisms are NOT well taken. Of course, even then you are still at liberty to make the case that the desktop model is superior as a GUI—no problem there. My problem is only when you impose one standard or model upon a technology which doesn’t use that standard in the first place.
You agree that a person’s work space includes all the things one typically finds in an office. Do you not also agree that a computer should adequately represent those things in its interface? If so, if you agree that a computer has the equivalent in functionality of a desk, desktop, filing cabinet, bookcase, etc., then why at the same time to you seek to restrict its interface ONLY to the desktop alone?
Again, do you put your trash can ON your desktop typically?
Slopes, are you from Boston or Cambridge?
Jeff - it�s not such a big leap to recognise that the essence of any �real� office is nothing more or less than the information rendered on the thousands of sheets of paper which are grouped, correlated and stored (according to type) in various containers called filing cabinets, bookcases, trash cans etc. A Computer substitute for an office environment succeeds BECAUSE it doesn�t need to laboriously reproduce pictorial representations of all the office furniture… the original authors of the GUI thought about the essence of an office and recognised - as I have, and you haven�t - that it boils down to four elements:
1. pieces of information (documents)
2. the themed containers that information is grouped into (folders)
3. a collection of tools (programmes)
4. the �ground� on which I can use tools to interact with, and manipulate, both the information and its containers (desktop)
It just so happens that the appropriate name for the �ground� in a working office environment is �Desktop�. But don�t get too stuck on this. In a football match the �ground� is called the Pitch, in the theatre it�s called the �Stage�, if you like driving it�s called the Road etc etc. What they all have in common is that they are the primary two-dimensional, boundaried, blank spaces on which we (the subjects) place objects in order to do things with them. I�ve been using OS X for a while now and I haven�t yet come across your mythical Desktop replacement called �Filing Cabinet�. If ever I do, it would seem as crazy and illogical as suggesting a football match should be played on top of the No6 centre-back.
I hope this helps you focus on what a GUI actually is (and isn�t). By the way, a �trash can� is little more than another folder which - uniquely - has a big �EXIT� button attached to it. And speaking of EXITS…
Slopes, if I were making the case that OS X pictorally—rather than functionally—represented the objects in an office, then your points would be valid. But of course I’m not suggesting that GUI objects be defined specifically so something which would look like a filing cabinet could be plopped on somewhere on the computer screen. But the point is that all the things in a real physical office DO have a specific function which makes having these separate objects necessary.
A desktop does not serve the same FUNCTION as a filing cabinet.
Now you say you have yet to come across my desktop replacement called “Filing Cabinet.” The reason for this is (1) I don’t contend there is actually an icon or picture which represents a filing cabinet and (2) I don’t contend that a filing cabinet REPLACES the desktop. Instead, what replaces the desktop model of OS 9 is an OFFICE SUITE model in OS X.
Does this ring any bells or have you simply missed it all this time?
It’s fine for you to disagree with me of course; I’m just astonished that after numerous posts in which I say that the screen represents not a desktop but an OFFICE that you come back with this “filing cabinet” thing—which is only one COMPONENT of an office.
OS X most certainly does have the equivalent of a filing cabinet—and that is its directory structure on disk volumes—pictorally represented on the screen by windows which contain folders and files. The “container” for these windows is what you want to call the desktop—but I still contend that it represents an offfice (or office suite) altogether, and that when you see it in this light, suddenly the GUI of OS X will begin to make more sense to you.
Also, OS X is moving away from the filing cabinet concept altogether. When Tiger comes out, the structure of folders on disk will become much less important—the idea being that users shouldn’t have to concern themselves with “where” a file is stored on disk and that this concept is an anachronism which comes precisely from the old and obsolete office model for GUIs. Instead interface designers have come to realize that a computer file system, (such as HFS+, NTFS, NFS, UFS, etc), is at bottom simply a DATABASE of records, and the concept of “where” a file is stored is actually an illusion. After all, seldom are files in contiguous blocks on a disk sector but instead scattered all over the place as many different read-write sessions take place. A “folder” and “file icon” represents the illusion that a file is intact when actually it is intact only insofar as a database, i.e. the file system, has a record of where a file begins and where it ends and on what sectors and tracks on a disk it is located. So, the reasoning goes, why make a user click through umpteen layers of folders in the first place if it’s only a database underneath? Why not provide dynamic searches which cut through all these layers to provide almost instantaneous access?
Hence Spotlight is born.
This evolution in interface design is very disconcerting to those like you who cling to the OS 9 way of doing things. I myself used to have a very elaborate filing system on my Mac—because I wanted good organization of my many different files. The problem was that good organization and easy accessibility were seldom compatible. I could have one or the other but not BOTH. But along comes the philosophy of Tiger to essentially turn the file system into a relational database with lots of metadata and this will have the ironic effect on the interface of “flattening” the file system. In other words, I will be able to have my cake and eat it too—I can organize files however I wish and still know I can call them up almost instantaneously.
Soon I will learn to let go of my need even to organize my files in elaborate “folder” structures because all that organization will be handled by the file system database which is MUCH more powerful yet. After all, some files are cross-disciplinary. They have elements that make you want to store them in one folder but they likewise have elements that make you want to store them in another folder. So which one do you use? Do you create numerous static alias files all over the place? Tiger will make all this unnecessary.
The people who can’t let go of this file-folder idea are going to have a very hard time with Tiger—so if you think it’s been difficult up to now, just wait—it won’t be getting any easier for you. This “desktop” model you have locked in your brain is something you will need to let go of. And if you continue to shackle Tiger with this standard, then the GUI will continue to look inconsistent and illogical to you—even when it is not. Again, do you fault a drama because it fails as a comedy?
What you say above about pieces of paper is true to a point. But pieces of paper cannot dynamically shuffle themselves into different folders in different filing cabinets to suit the searching needs of the user. If these papers contain music scores, they can leap into the composers’ filing cabinet when you are searching for all of Bach’s works and then leap into the artists’ filing cabinet when you are searching for recordings by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and then finally leap into the baroque cabinet when I search by music genre. These static classifications by cabinet and folder are fading and an interface has to adapt.
The Tiger interface will have virtual “smart folders” which are instantly adaptable to the search specs the user creates. Their “contents” are essentially nothing more than very fast database lookups rather than to be the result of a user’s having used the mouse to move icons around from place to place. This is a GOOD thing.
You prefer the OS 9 way of doing things—in which static unmoving folders are always in the same place where you originally put them—leaving aside that this whole concept of “place” in a computer is problematic. This is where the desktop and office concept lets us down and limits our power and flexibility. You thnk OS 9 gives you more control than OS X does but in fact it’s exactly the OPPOSITE.
I wish Hadley’s blog allowed for editing of posts. My writing lately is abysmal and there are also typos and such. Ah well—I just scarcely have the time to labor over some literary masterpiece and so I just dash these things off. I want to call attention to at least one typo above. The word, can, should actually be cannot in this sentence:
“If these papers contain music scores, they CANNOT leap into the composers’ filing cabinet when you are searching for all of Bach’s works and then leap into the artists’ filing cabinet when you are searching for recordings by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and then finally leap into the baroque cabinet when I search by music genre. ”
I think where slopes “slipped off the slope” was with his first post:
“In the same way of thinking, each of OS X’s many GUI faults is minute when looked at in isolation… (and, when criticised in isolation, perhaps seem too trivial to be taken seriously by Apple) but viewed as a whole they add up to a significant impediment to anyone who has always relied on their Mac for work”
Certainly Slopes is entitled to his opinion about his experience with OS 9 and OS X, but to claim that OS X is a “significant impediment to ANYONE who has always relied on their Mac for work” is way off base. There are simply too many graphic designers who are thrilled to be using OS X rather than OS 9 for that statement to be true. Facts are facts… OS X is, for most of us, the preferred OS version.
My own opinion of OS 9 is that it’s clunky, unintuitive and graceless. Slopes has a different opinion, which is fine. I’m just glad that my preference for OS X is shared by most professionals… I’d hate for Apple to trash the many great features of OS X.
As for Finder and Mail not matching… that was dealt with a year and a half ago. It makes as much sense to quibble about that as it does to be upset that iBooks got a speed bump even though they are “white” and thus a consumer level laptop that doesn’t deserve speedbumps. Give me a break!
In 1997 and 1998 Apple laid off almost all of its scientists (called ATG or Advanced Technology Group) and brought in about 100 engineers from NeXT. The NeXT people had a snearing contempt for the MacOS and many of them were in possitions of power when it came to making UI design decisions.
One of the big reasons many people see inconsistancies in the MacOSX interface is cultural. MacOSX originates from NeXT’s OpenStep with a bit of MacOS on top. If you look at Rhapsody its full of Next crap. Then the preview releases and then 10.1 thru 10.3 you see that Apple has been beating the NeXT out of the os with varying degrees of success, but some residue still remains. Its been a long 5 year stuggle, but with each version, the os has gotten better from a UI perspective. I am really hopeful that Tiger sees more NeXT residue falling out of the OS.
The other problem Apple has is that it fired most of its human interface scientists during the dark ages of the late 1990’s. The HUT (human interface team) in R&D one was about a hundred people that were almost insanely passionate about good design. They would argue for hours about the most mundane things (like a single pixel change in the close box of a window). This passionate attention to detail lead to a computer-human interface that may never be matched again, ever. Today, Apple just doesn’t have the same human factors engineers in positions of power that it had in the MacOS days.
To me, this explains a lot… Silly things like the dock, the brushed metal interface and various attempts at window dressing would never have seen the light of day because they would never have gotten past the world class group of UI engineers Apple had assembled. Today things are better than right after the merger, but many historical inconsistencies remain from the time when the UI engineers were thrown out and the Next people came in.