OS X gui

[wlonh]

from MacInTouch, today:

..."Apple Squandering the Advantage" www.quailwood.com, (http://www.quailwood.com,) user interface guru Bruce Tognazzini writes that Mac OS X "is doing nothing other than running a 10-year-old and 20-year-old interface together at high speed." He then goes on to discuss more advanced user interface ideas. ("Tog" founded Apple's Human Interface Group and was an evangelist for user-centered design at the company, while he was there.)"

[gotterdamm]

Heh, and he wondered why we thought he was bitter.

[joe]

http://forums.macnn.com/cgi-bin/rolleyes.gif
i think tog's opinions on interface design and ergonomics would be more relevant if his own site wasn't so pathetic looking itself. his thoughts are intrigiung but the proof is in the pudding.
http://www.quailwood.com

joe

[Mac Guru]

Yeah such an expert on UI should have a sight that makes your jaw drop... He's just a bitter old fart.

MacGuru

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[markhers]

Urg. I wrote a really long comment last night, and it never posted...

--

If you read Tog's words as a technologist, and not as a Mac user, you would see that there is a lot of potential good in some of the things he puts out there. Just because we don't know what we would use them for doesn't mean they aren't great ideas.

And that whole judging by people's sites...that's just immature.

See, I think Tog has made a great point in a round about way. Apple and Microsoft have both, I'm sure, hit a wall of sorts. They can create technologies which will require business types and technology types to train to use, such as Access and WebObjects.

However, when it gets down to the public sphere, you run into a problem. You have to assume your users are, bluntly, idiots, and find imaginative intuitive ways of making your operating systems and programs do.

Object-oriented documents, for one, could be super amazing cool beyond words, and was one of the promises I have hoped for since I saw that OpenDoc-enabled version of ClarisWorks four or five years ago. But if it's not as simple as drag, drop, and resize, who's gonna want to use it. Have end-users tinker with outlets and the like..."You mean the thing in the wall?"

However, for the good Tog suggests, he doesn't deal with the side-effects of some technologies. Voice recognition could be hell if in a crowded office. Just try to imagine that dark, spooky undercurrent of mumbling flowing throgh the office. Talk about long-term depression cause...

All I'm really saying is that you should take a step back, forget about what you know, and imagine what could be. Computers are a lot more fun when you do.