Re: First thoughts on Lion

Daniel Johnson stated in post ahc6c6ptiva08fedi02udv5qkia1h77aee@xxxxxxx on
10/23/10 12:36 PM:

On Sat, 23 Oct 2010 12:04:47 -0700, Snit
<usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Perhaps "dud" isn't the right word here. It was a minor upgrade but a
cheap one. They set expectations low, and avoided widespread
disappointment.

At the risk of being too wordy, perhaps it was "treading water
release"?

Snow Leopard was as it promised to be: under the hood changes and, as a
bonus, a number of UI improvements. It was not a huge upgrade in terms of
UI changes and it was not priced as one.

The trick to avoiding a debacle was expectations management: they told
you, right up front, that Snow Leopard was to be a minor release that
didn't do much, and they priced it accordingly.

It is not like other major players were offering more, faster. I think
Apple did fine. Actually, I think it was great that they largely focused on
bug fixes and minor improvements and not a bunch of big-wow factors. I wish
other software companies would learn from that.

I have no problem with that.

I don't actually have problem with it, either, really. But it's not an
isolated incident: it is part of a pattern.

It
did make some changes such as having a Cocoa Finder that have allowed third
parties to do more than they could otherwise have done.

This is new to me. I knew they rewrote the Finder in Cocoa, but I
thought that was strictly so it could be 64-bit. What does the 64-bit
Finder allow 3rd parties to do, that they could not otherwise have
done?

There are all sorts of add-ons that, according to the programmers, are much
easier to do now. Total Finder, BetterTouchTool, DockView, HyperDock and
others are all Snow Leopard only as far as I know (I am sure there are many
more). From what I understand, it is easier to modify Cocoa programs.

[snip]
The Finder with an application spotlight search (with some filtering) and
the ability to drag and drop one application onto another to create a
"folder".

The finder already has Spotlight search. I expect it could be given
the drag-icon-onto-icon=folder thing.

This is a premade "search"... which is good given the important of the task.
But I suspect that is basically what it is in the background.

Oh, I see, you don't mean the user gets to search. You think it's
implemented via a Spotlight search. That may be so, but it would be a
serious security flaw if so, and there is no evidence of it. More
likely: they've made themselves some sort of "registry" for apps. :D

I assume the search is cached... but that is not anything like the Windows
registry.

OTOH, wouldn't it be nicer if you could search Launchpad, like you can
the search with the Finder?

There may be a search to narrow things down. Would make sense.

[snip]
How is it different? How is the "context" different?

Seriously? You seriously do not see how a file / folder browser which
allows for moving of files and folders, renaming, and doing all the other
things a file browser does is different than an application launcher?

Yeah. The "pure" application launcher is not as good. :D

But how is the "context" different?

How is it not? Not sure what you are even asking. It is like asking how
the context of the dock and the finder is different.

[snip]
With Windows, they have a menu that looks very much like other menus but
acts differently... which makes it confusing to some.

It does not look the same. Sure, the 'hot hilight' effect is the same,
but they use that all over the place, including things like file icons
in the Explorer.

They have made it more different over time... a good thing in my view. Yes,
the *lack of consistency* there is good.

Heck, many users do
not even really understand how to use it to get to their apps. The Apple
solution, it appears, will make that very obvious.

This is, perhaps, an issue. Originally, the menu was labeled "Start"
and had a little bouncy arrow pointing at it (!) just to let new users
know: "click here to begin!". It even had a label that said that.

But to begin what?

This is not the case anymore; you just have to know that you click on
the orb with the Windows logo. Apparently, everybody is supposed to
already know about that.

I wonder what Apple will do to make users understand that they click
on this particular dock icon to get started. The MS approach, when
they were doing it, was not very... stylish.

It will be a default icon on the dock I bet. No flying text to tell users
what to do.

Honestly, it seems like "context" has become the magic
get-out-of-inconsistancy-free card around here.

Blindly having consistency is almost as bad as ignoring it. Look at the
Ribbon UI of MS Office - it is clearly not consistent with the menu /
toolbar paradigm, *but* it is done for user based reasons. Some like it.
Some do not.

They are doing a reasonable job of getting their numerous different
ribbons to be consistent with each other, though. It's not that you
are obliged to make every UI widget identical to every other one.

Right: the 2007 and 2010 styles are different, but that is somewhat to be
expected in a migration. I do not hold that against MS, even though it does
cause some problems. Hopefully MS is working to pretty much having a full
Ribbon UI for the whole Windows experience.

But the inconsistency there is for user-based reasons and is
well thought out.

Is it? It seems to me that mac fans defend it by just shouting
"context" and leaving it at that.

Huh? I do not follow. The context of MS Office 2003 and 2007 is pretty
much the same... but MS is migrating to a new UI.

Sure, there are still migration and new-paradigm pains,
as there will be with Lions' additions... but that is not the same as, say,
the completely arbitrary Save / Open dialogs used in Windows.

It's worse than those.

I was thinking, actually, of the Print dialogs - though it is not just
those. Here, from TomB (comparing Windows with Ubuntu).

<http://www.drumscum.be/cola/win-vs-ubu.pdf>

All sorts of pretty arbitrary inconsistencies in Windows. This is older,
but XP vs. OS X:

<http://csma.gallopinginsanity.com/interface/dialogs/>

At least at the time, OS X was *way* ahead.

Ignoring the 16-bit variations (which are virtually unheard of these
days), they are all pretty similar. The oldest lack a navigation panel
on the left, and only the newest can be collapsed like an OS X file
dialog.

But they all have a toolbar on top, a list of files in the middle,
file name, type and two buttons on the bottom. The newer designs are
bigger, and chromier, and what's in the navigation panel (if present)
varies.

But it's not a whole diferent UI. You never have to, say, flick your
fingers on top of the mouse to close the dialog box.

By the way, why can't I justify the differences that do exist by
citing "context"? I mean, the different file dialogs appear in
different apps. Is that not enough?

Is the context not opening files? Not sure what context difference you
mean.

[snip]
Ah, marketing. Apple is always giving things names like that.

It is a pretty darn descriptive name. Better than calling something "Start"
which can be used to do almost anything *but* start the computer.

Well, at least you can use it to shut down the computer. :D

Hey, on Classic Mac OS, what was so "special" about shutting down? :)

[snip]
Sure. The problem with this is that it would impair the aesthetics of
the thing. That's job #1 at Apple.

And yet they have a history of doing usability better than does MS.

Ancient history now. What they have today are fans who will excuse
everything they do wrong, praising their worst UI mistakes as genius.

So you say, but you offer no support.

[snip]
If MS did this, they absolutely would have a red "X" in the corner,
and it would look like a window close button. Just so you could see
the way out, and who cares if its an eyesore?

Well, it would be red in some, gray in others, and not there until you
moused over it in still others.

I actually checked this.

In WMP full-screen, it is red. It disappears with the rest of the UI,
but reappears when the mouse moves.

In IE it hidden until your mouse nears the top of the screen; it
becomes red when you mouse over.

In Media Center, it is visible, but only becomes red when you mouse
over.

In Word full-screen reader mode, it is visible, but becomes orange
when you mouse over. Guess they didn't get the memo.

LOL! Yeah, it is quite inconsistent (but almost always the X in the upper
right).

[snip]
Of course it is less available... if it was always available it would not
be very useful. How could you get any other work done with a huge
application selection mode there? That is like having the Start menu
always being open.

Maybe the LauchPad should be less huge.

Why? To have more clutter and less room?

To waste less space. I am not really sure when wasting a lot of screen space
became a virtue.

Waste space? What else are you going to be using the space for on such a
launcher? It is not always there... like the dock or menu.

[snip]
Isn't that better than giving you the 'clean' UI only when in
full-screen mode?

For a media player, sure (or at least possibly... does not really matter to
me). But we are not talking media players.

When is it better to have an unclean UI, then?

When the whole focus is on the content... but I am still not entirely sold.

[snip]
No, I mean that if you design a separate full-screen UI, you can do it
badly. The full screen UI could suck.

But you have no examples of this. Please wait until you actually find
some... I am sure some will exist (hint: read the iPhoto reviews at Apple).

I have only the recent demo, and that's not much to go on. But I am
undaunted, as you may have noticed.

Look at the reviews... you will be pleased at the displeasure.

[snip]
It looks to me like this has made the UI much more modal. There seems
to be a mode-switcher at the center of the toolbar; I presume you have
to select one of these before you can get to, say, your albums. I
believe in iLife 09, there's just a list of the them on the left.

There still is in non-fullscreen more I believe. But a list on the bottom
or on the side is not a big deal... and given that the idea is to see lots
of data and little else it makes sense to me.

It would make sense in full-screen mode, too.

When the focus is seeing as much data in the current view as possible, why
show other views, too? I would not be greatly opposed to a slide-in window
or something with the option to "pin" it in Windows terms.

[snip]
But also, my beloved resolution independence. Still AWOL in Lion, so
far as we know.

Did they promise that? I do not think they did.

They did promise it to developers, way back. The Steve never talked
about it on stage, however.

But it'll always be special... to me.

It would be a good thing, esp. as we get "retina displays".

And don't forget, Apple was at one time talking about their "top
secret" Leopard features- that never materialized at all.

There were many things which were not revealed until it was released -
though I agree it seemed like there should be more given what was said
prior.

I believe it lost more than it gained. I rank 64-bit Carbon well above
"Stacks", after all.

I do not begrudge Apple for changing plans, though I think they did it late
in the game.

--
[INSERT .SIG HERE]


.

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