[Vax]

Hi,

is there something like that in the net? I am searching for a user interface introduction to OS X, maybe with a comparison to XP.
Couldn't find anything.

Greetings
Vax

[Adam Betts]

Could you tell us why you would want a comparison on both interface? Do you plan to show it to your friends or you are thinking about buying a mac?

I'm sure people here would list some comparisons here

[BuonRotto]

Here are a couple of Apple links, made for developers coming from Windows:

http://developer.apple.com/macosx/wi...interface.html

http://developer.apple.com/ue/switch/windows.html

[CharlesS]

Here's a quickie comparison.

Mac OS X:

Windows XP:

That's all you really need to know.

[snerdini]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Here's a quickie comparison.

Mac OS X:

Windows XP:

That's all you really need to know.

ROTFL!

[Vax]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Here's a quickie comparison.

Mac OS X:

Windows XP:

That's all you really need to know.

Yeah, that's cool. I feel that way most the time at work. A friend of mine is working on some user interface projects. She never worked with a mac (what a shame) and i like to give her some links about user interface design under mac os x. I found an old article on arstechnica but it was from 2000.
So, some new articles about it would be nice.

[Adam Betts]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Here's a quickie comparison.

Mac OS X:

Windows XP:

That's all you really need to know.

That's one of the best comparison I've seen! Steve Jobs should use smileys instead of Photoshop bakeoffs!

[kman42]

Three words:

Windows in windows. This is the dumbest UI design I have ever experienced. Even if Windows didn't have all of the conflicts and irritations of DLLs, resource conflicts, and "plug-n-play", I would still hate using it because of this design flaw.

Whoever thought of putting windows inside of other windows should be Bravehearted in public right in the middle of the Redmond campus.

kman

[Millennium]

Originally posted by Vax:
Hi,

is there something like that in the net? I am searching for a user interface introduction to OS X, maybe with a comparison to XP.
Couldn't find anything.

Greetings
Vax

What exactly is it that you want in a comparison? Are you looking for a comparison to see which is better, or are you looking for a comparison just to see what's similar and what's different?

If you're just looking to see what's similar and what's different, then the Apple Developer Connection links that BuonRotto posted will do everything you need. If you're looking to see which is better, you may be better served by looking in Mac and PC magazines.

If you decide to look in Mac and PC magazines, though, look in some of each, because each magazine is going to be biased towards its own platform. By looking at many magazines from both sides, you'll get a better sense of what's really going on.

[Judge_Fire]

Like a broken record , let me once more state my opinion that the major difference between the two operating systems is in their consistency.

Windows XP is a nice app, and the underlying technology is quite ok. But few of the other apps on the platform look, feel or behave like it. Actually, IMHO, the third party app scene for Windows is a gallery of UI design horrors.

In Mac OS, there is greater discipline in application UI development, which results in a more wholistic experience, even with third party apps. There's a long tradition and good documentation. You could say the OS extends outside the Apple made stuff as a culture of UI design.

I've personally been worried about how OS X will affect this. A great number of Unix/Linux- based people have started developing for the Mac, while not necessarily having the appreciation for the UI that a long time mac user might have. Also, it seems the Apple of today bases its own UI design on visually 'experimental' stuff than more traditional research.

But the culture side of the OS seems to be adressing these problems, too. The mac user community isn't shy about giving either third party developers or Apple itself very vocal feedback on stepping out of line. So right now I'm not worried. The heated debate on tabs in browsers, for example, is a good indication that there is concern for these issues. Something good might come out of it.

So when comparing these operating systems, you should decide how you define the extent of "OS". Is it just the kernel and the barebones software for file and device management, without the windowing system? Is it both? Is it more, like I'm attempting to argue?

J

[CarpetFluff]

Originally posted by kman42:
Three words:

Windows in windows. This is the dumbest UI design I have ever experienced. Even if Windows didn't have all of the conflicts and irritations of DLLs, resource conflicts, and "plug-n-play", I would still hate using it because of this design flaw.

Whoever thought of putting windows inside of other windows should be Bravehearted in public right in the middle of the Redmond campus.

kman

Amen!

no no! I find it really useful to have the widget in the corner of my document window right next to an indentical widget in the application window which will close the whole application, honest I do!

[Judge_Fire]

My favorites are dialog windows with:

- Ok
- Cancel
- Apply
- Close window button

Particularly the last option... what happens?

Also, our PC admin always hits Apply before Ok, because he simply doesn't trust windows one bit

J

[Vax]

Hi,

I was looking more for something like the arstechnica article:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/4q00/...x-beta-11.html

It shows and describes the strengths and weaknesses of the user interface design. But it's old, so some new stuff would be cool

[kovacs]

Yep arstechnica has some interesting reviews of windows XP and Mac OS X, most of these articles are several pages but they are well written and you learn some new technical terms... You should also be able to find some comparisons of BeOS and Mac OSX ( use google ). Of course you can always read the apple interface guidelines but most of it is really boring, I only read the part about the icons.

I hate the windows GUI, the fact that you need a webbrowser to explore your hard drive is just absurd, but the biggest GUI disaster must be the start button, you have to click start to shut down the computer !

[Spliffdaddy]

explorer and internet explorer are two different animals.

[kovacs]

Yeah but they look the same and share some of the same functionality, you can type a URL in the explorer and you have acces to site specific options and your bookmarks ( or favourites ). Microsoft has tried to blur the line between internet explorer and the explorer, you can browse your hard drive as one big site with hyperlinks and backgrounds. This has some advantages but it also makes the GUI unnecessarily options and functions that don't directly apply to the window your in.

[sushiism]

http://www.webmastermac.com/macintosh/whymac/xvsxp/
cant believe no ones posted this

[rlmorel]

Having used both, I view them the same way I viewed the MacOS 9 and Win95/98/ME...I like the look and feel of MacOS better. Just my opinion...

[BuonRotto]

Originally posted by Judge_Fire:
My favorites are dialog windows with:

- Ok
- Cancel
- Apply
- Close window button

Particularly the last option... what happens?

I always liked the Dr. Watson errors in WinNT:

This application has had a fatal error and will be closed:

[that's not verbatim, but always in the passive voice]

Close / Cancel / OK

I always click "Cancel" just to see if I can cancel the crash.

Compare that to Apple's guide for Windows developers:

http://developer.apple.com/ue/switch...gnClearDialogs

[Coxy]

Originally posted by kovacs:
Yep arstechnica has some interesting reviews of windows XP and Mac OS X, most of these articles are several pages but they are well written and you learn some new technical terms...

Actually, most of their articles aren't *that* long, sites generally split up their articles into many pages so that you're hit by their advertising multiple times.

[JorgeLL]

Originally posted by kman42:
Three words:

Windows in windows. This is the dumbest UI design I have ever experienced. Even if Windows didn't have all of the conflicts and irritations of DLLs, resource conflicts, and "plug-n-play", I would still hate using it because of this design flaw.

Whoever thought of putting windows inside of other windows should be Bravehearted in public right in the middle of the Redmond campus.

kman

Dude

Windows within windows (MDI) haven't been used in MS Apps since more than a year now... Office XP, Windows XP... no MDI anymore, when you open two Word documents you get two buttons in the taskbar...

I know Windows has its problems but let's be fair and recognize improvement

[OwlBoy]

Originally posted by BuonRotto:
Here are a couple of Apple links, made for developers coming from Windows:

http://developer.apple.com/macosx/wi...interface.html

http://developer.apple.com/ue/switch/windows.html

Those are interesting links.

-Owl

[TheIceMan]

Originally posted by sushiism:
http://www.webmastermac.com/macintosh/whymac/xvsxp/
cant believe no ones posted this

Wow, he's thorough. Thanks for the link.

[Xeo]

Originally posted by OwlBoy:
Those are interesting links.

-Owl

Those are fantastic links.

[calle73]

Hi all!!!
There is a good site called The Gui Gallery, http://toastytech.com/guis/index.html

Where they don't compare different systems, but they hae a lot of screenshots and explanations of different Gui ideas.

Cheers,
carl

[Nathan Adams]

cheers calle73 for that link
I can't stop laughing about Microsoft Bob, utterly hilarious (and to think they brought some of that over to XP!! hahaha)
I must find a copy somewhere....

[thePurpleGiant]

Originally posted by Judge_Fire:
My favorites are dialog windows with:

- Ok
- Cancel
- Apply
- Close window button

Particularly the last option... what happens?

Also, our PC admin always hits Apply before Ok, because he simply doesn't trust windows one bit

J

LOL, I love them too And in my year long job as a computer tech (using windows), I too hit 'apply' before
'okay', I just had to...

[booboo]

Originally posted by Vax:
...A friend of mine is working on some user interface projects. She never worked with a mac (what a shame) and i like to give her some links about user interface design under mac os x. I found an old article on arstechnica but it was from 2000.
So, some new articles about it would be nice.

I think for this friend of yours a little historical overview of UI design would be in order: why Apple made the decisions they made, how the Mac GUI evolved from the very beginning, what MS lifted - and didn't lift - from the Mac, etc., and what OS 9 shortcomings OS X attempted to address.

There are probably some worthwhile articles over at Mackido

[BuonRotto]

Originally posted by JorgeLL:
Windows within windows (MDI) haven't been used in MS Apps since more than a year now... Office XP, Windows XP... no MDI anymore, when you open two Word documents you get two buttons in the taskbar...

You're right, its the third party developers that are laggards here. The self-proclaimed experts in clean user interfaces, Adobe, still uses MDI!

Office is not cleanly document-centric though. It's semi-MDI in the sense that if you have one document open, it has a document window and a parent window (look for the redundant close widgets), but if you open a second or more documents, each document has only one set of title bar widgets. they do this to get around the windows UI guideline that closing the last widow quits the app. It forces the semi-MDI interface of that last window because while they no longer recommend this parent-child relationship to windows, they have not changed the rest of their UE guidelines to accont for the repurcussions.

When you open a few documents in an Office app, each gets treated separately in the taskbar until you hit critical mass, then they combine into one parent taskbar button. This is a separate issue, and to me it's less problematic than the one aobve, but it's a bit perplexing at first.

[Tom N]

oops

[BuonRotto]

Let's see if this works...

(didn't work)

I was fortunate enough to save this article before the original web site took it down. Very interesting read with a nice summary picture gallery of prototype Lisa and the early OS X GUIs.

You can also download the html article here

[Vax]

Hey,

thank you for all the nice links. They are very helpful and now I can give my friend a nice introduction to Mac OS X.
If there are more interesting links out there about UI design...post them, post them, post them.........

[eyadams]

Windows within windows (MDI) haven't been used in MS Apps since more than a year now... Office XP, Windows XP... no MDI anymore, when you open two Word documents you get two buttons in the taskbar...

This statement is incorrect. While Word and PowerPoint no longer use MDI, both Excel and Access still use do. Personally, I don't find it annoying in Access, as databases are inherently multi-window (different views, forms, reports, etc.) and it would be unwise to use a different interface, even though MDI stinks.

Excel XP tries to be both MDI and not, and winds up being a thorough mess. It is basically MDI - each spreadsheet lives in its own window within the main Excel window; even if you maximize a sub-window it still has its own set of controls, right below the main window's controls. However, you can optionally have Excel put a window for each spreadsheet in the task bar. The end result is that if you have more than one spreadsheet open, each one will have a button in the task bar, but clicking on either of them brings up the same window (Excel) but with a different sub-window in the forground. It's an interface nightmare.

Several other MS products still use the MDI interface - it's especially common in the development tools. While third party vendors have been slower to get away from it, MS is certainly no paragon of virtue on this issue either.