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> It’s interesting how a lot of companies try to copy Apple but never seem to get it right. I think many companies see the features (windows flying around in E

> It’s interesting how a lot of companies try to copy Apple but never seem to get it right. I think many companies see the features (windows flying around in Exposé, brightly colored window management buttons, pulsing status light, etc.) but don't understand that generally Apple doesn't just throw something in for looks and has thoroughly researched and iterated internally on a particular solution. At the expense of sounding fanatic, generally an Apple feature looks the way it does as a result of its function. (What is the problem: make window management easy. how is that solved: make all open windows easy to see by spreading them out). When other companies attempt to copy, they look at what Apple's solution looks like, not realizing what it _does_. (e.g. Areo Flip 3D: what should it look like: windows flying all over the place. what problem does this solve: ???)

DavidSJ 16y ago
Cargo cult UIs.
danilocampos 16y ago
That's exactly it. Instead of copying Apple's intent, competitors instead copy the result without ever giving a moment to consider the original motivation. This reminds me of a post by Tog or someone similarly luminary. He explained that the Mac OS submenu behavior arose from multiple iterations, refining until everything worked easily. A big part of that was letting the user move their pointer at an angle into the next submenu region. A Fitts' law consideration -- this didn't require the user to be too methodical in their movements through the menus. Then, when Microsoft borrowed the UI, getting into submenus required the user to exactingly follow the path of the currently-highlighted menu item in order to traverse into the next. Breathe the wrong way and your whole drill-down progress just disappears. Microsoft's solution? Insert a brief delay as you hover over a drillable menu option. Result without intent. As it happens, this reminds me of the UI for Windows Phone 7. It's like a suit said, "Hey, go design me something that looks really modern. And hip. With sans serif fonts. Apple uses those right? They're really hip." And we end up with a UI that looks more like a magazine layout than a tool for using your phone.
- Timothee 16y ago
  Thanks for the description of the submenus in Mac OS! I've been using Macs exclusively for the past two years and, after starting to use Windows again last week, I couldn't really point out why the menus annoyed me so much. And it's exactly what you describe: on Mac OS, if a submenu is open I can go in a diagonal to the sub-item I want, even if I hover another item in the menu on the way. On Windows, as soon as I'm not hovering the original parent item, the submenu disappears, so I'm constantly going back and forth to reopen the submenu.
  - trop 16y ago
    The delay is called "hysteresis". Gtk implements this through "gtk-menu-popdown-delay", and seems to be making sure the mouse is moving in a triangle region towards the submenu. (See gtk/gtkmenu.c, esp gtk_menu_set_submenu_navigation_region.)
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- dieterrams 16y ago
  That's brilliant. I'd never noticed that about Mac OS submenus (although I definitely noticed how arduous it was to navigate Windows submenus). I do have one outstanding gripe about Mac OS menus, though, which is that if you misclick on some non-reactive part of the menu (a greyed-out option or divider line), it simply closes the menu. I can't think of any reason why this would be better behavior than leaving the menu open, since at least 90% of the time my intent was to actually click on something that would respond.
  - alex_muscar 16y ago
    Yep, that annoys me as well.
SandB0x 16y ago
Canonical have really upped their game recently. These days a fresh Ubuntu installation looks pretty slick, compared to a just few releases ago. Maybe it's not quite up to OS X standards yet, but reading the design team and Mark Shuttleworth's blogs it's clear they're thinking things through, and not just throwing bling at the screen: Ubuntu 8.04: http://polishlinux.org/reviews/ubuntu-8-04/default.png http://polishlinux.org/reviews/ubuntu-8-04/default.png Ubuntu 10.10 Preview: http://design.canonical.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/ambiance-maverick-preview_update.png http://design.canonical.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/ambia...
- jakevoytko 16y ago
  I've used Ubuntu for a few years now, and I adore Gnome's simplicity. For someone who mostly lives in Emacs and Chrome, its a great Desktop: its simple, it (mostly) works, and it stays out of the way! They must do some incredible usability testing, since it usually doesn't frustrate me like Windows does. If it didn't have such a single-minded fixation on warning you about Non-Free Components (gasp!) it would be almost unbeatable.
  - jemfinch 16y ago
    Except you still have to manage your windows. Since the whole point of a window manager is to manage my windows so I don't have to, I use xmonad. If you want simplicity, give that a try :)
    - sjs 16y ago
      xmonad is great and I used to miss it on OS X, but I've grown to appreciate SizeUp and Divvy for OS X. You get tiling functionality when you want it, and only when you want it. It's slightly more involved than xmonad but only slightly. And it's unobtrusive. They're certainly limited compared to xmonad but they get the job done for me. I only have a couple of configurations I use very often.
      - jemfinch 16y ago
statictype 16y ago
Why are the zoom/minimize/close-or-sometimes-quit button so small and difficult-to-acquire targets? I'm not complaining, mind you, I'm just wondering what the rational is for that. Also, why does the dock not stretch across the bottom? Apple certainly knows about Fitt's law - what's the reason for ignoring it?
- imajes 16y ago
  RE the dock: that's an awful lot of screen estate to waste - and how do you do it? make things space out wide when you only have a few items in the dock? (which increases the need for more precise mousing). remember that the dock can go the full width; you just have to fill it with crap. :)
  - statictype 16y ago
    RE the dock: that's an awful lot of screen estate to waste - and how do you do it? make things space out wide when you only have a few items in the dock? (which increases the need for more precise mousing). The screen space at the sides of the dock are already wasted aren't they? Do you keep anything important there (without it getting partially covered by the dock itself)? The items don't need to be evenly spaced out. They can just be packed in from left to right. remember that the dock can go the full width; you just have to fill it with crap. :) You can do some plist magic to make the dock flush to the left or right but can't make it take up the full width, alas.
  - petercooper 16y ago
    The dock is a waste of screen space full-stop. Almost any app can be launched more quickly with a Cmd+Space, 2-3 chars + Enter if you're already at the keyboard. I'd have it removed altogether if accessing minimized apps in other ways wasn't so sucky.
- marknutter 16y ago
  > Why are the zoom/minimize/close-or-sometimes-quit button so small and difficult-to-acquire targets? I'm not complaining, mind you, I'm just wondering what the rational is for that. My guess is because these are rarely ever used. I just use expose instead of minimizing windows, and I typically kill an app before I consider closing its window.
pkulak 16y ago
I think other companies just realize that Apple has already done the work of getting a feature (or style) well known to the public and that they don't need to solve the problem in a brand new way. That would require as much engineering and quality control work as Apple, plus you'd have to market the hell out of it so that people understood why it was cool, and then, after all that, still sell the product for way less than Apple's because no one is going to pay an Apple price for a Dell product. No, the way to make money is by paying a couple devs to hack up something that looks really wiz-bang cool in demos with very little regard to the problem it solves. Then you get people to think it's just like an Apple product, but cheaper. Until they use it for a week, but by then they've already bought it. I think the best example of this is all the custom Android skins out there. Without exception they are all worse (at usability) than what they are trying to improve, but the first Droid was the last Android phone to ship stock. Just look cool in the ad and you're done.

DavidSJ 16y ago

Cargo cult UIs.

danilocampos 16y ago

That's exactly it. Instead of copying Apple's intent, competitors instead copy the result without ever giving a moment to consider the original motivation. This reminds me of a post by Tog or someone similarly luminary. He explained that the Mac OS submenu behavior arose from multiple iterations, refining until everything worked easily. A big part of that was letting the user move their pointer at an angle into the next submenu region. A Fitts' law consideration -- this didn't require the user to be too methodical in their movements through the menus. Then, when Microsoft borrowed the UI, getting into submenus required the user to exactingly follow the path of the currently-highlighted menu item in order to traverse into the next. Breathe the wrong way and your whole drill-down progress just disappears. Microsoft's solution? Insert a brief delay as you hover over a drillable menu option. Result without intent. As it happens, this reminds me of the UI for Windows Phone 7. It's like a suit said, "Hey, go design me something that looks really modern. And hip. With sans serif fonts. Apple uses those right? They're really hip." And we end up with a UI that looks more like a magazine layout than a tool for using your phone.

Timothee 16y ago
Thanks for the description of the submenus in Mac OS! I've been using Macs exclusively for the past two years and, after starting to use Windows again last week, I couldn't really point out why the menus annoyed me so much. And it's exactly what you describe: on Mac OS, if a submenu is open I can go in a diagonal to the sub-item I want, even if I hover another item in the menu on the way. On Windows, as soon as I'm not hovering the original parent item, the submenu disappears, so I'm constantly going back and forth to reopen the submenu.
- trop 16y ago
  The delay is called "hysteresis". Gtk implements this through "gtk-menu-popdown-delay", and seems to be making sure the mouse is moving in a triangle region towards the submenu. (See gtk/gtkmenu.c, esp gtk_menu_set_submenu_navigation_region.)
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
dieterrams 16y ago
That's brilliant. I'd never noticed that about Mac OS submenus (although I definitely noticed how arduous it was to navigate Windows submenus). I do have one outstanding gripe about Mac OS menus, though, which is that if you misclick on some non-reactive part of the menu (a greyed-out option or divider line), it simply closes the menu. I can't think of any reason why this would be better behavior than leaving the menu open, since at least 90% of the time my intent was to actually click on something that would respond.
- alex_muscar 16y ago
  Yep, that annoys me as well.

SandB0x 16y ago

Canonical have really upped their game recently. These days a fresh Ubuntu installation looks pretty slick, compared to a just few releases ago. Maybe it's not quite up to OS X standards yet, but reading the design team and Mark Shuttleworth's blogs it's clear they're thinking things through, and not just throwing bling at the screen: Ubuntu 8.04: http://polishlinux.org/reviews/ubuntu-8-04/default.png http://polishlinux.org/reviews/ubuntu-8-04/default.png Ubuntu 10.10 Preview: http://design.canonical.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/ambiance-maverick-preview_update.png http://design.canonical.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/ambia...

jakevoytko 16y ago
I've used Ubuntu for a few years now, and I adore Gnome's simplicity. For someone who mostly lives in Emacs and Chrome, its a great Desktop: its simple, it (mostly) works, and it stays out of the way! They must do some incredible usability testing, since it usually doesn't frustrate me like Windows does. If it didn't have such a single-minded fixation on warning you about Non-Free Components (gasp!) it would be almost unbeatable.
- jemfinch 16y ago
  Except you still have to manage your windows. Since the whole point of a window manager is to manage my windows so I don't have to, I use xmonad. If you want simplicity, give that a try :)
  - sjs 16y ago
    xmonad is great and I used to miss it on OS X, but I've grown to appreciate SizeUp and Divvy for OS X. You get tiling functionality when you want it, and only when you want it. It's slightly more involved than xmonad but only slightly. And it's unobtrusive. They're certainly limited compared to xmonad but they get the job done for me. I only have a couple of configurations I use very often.
    - jemfinch 16y ago

statictype 16y ago

Why are the zoom/minimize/close-or-sometimes-quit button so small and difficult-to-acquire targets? I'm not complaining, mind you, I'm just wondering what the rational is for that. Also, why does the dock not stretch across the bottom? Apple certainly knows about Fitt's law - what's the reason for ignoring it?

imajes 16y ago
RE the dock: that's an awful lot of screen estate to waste - and how do you do it? make things space out wide when you only have a few items in the dock? (which increases the need for more precise mousing). remember that the dock can go the full width; you just have to fill it with crap. :)
- statictype 16y ago
  RE the dock: that's an awful lot of screen estate to waste - and how do you do it? make things space out wide when you only have a few items in the dock? (which increases the need for more precise mousing). The screen space at the sides of the dock are already wasted aren't they? Do you keep anything important there (without it getting partially covered by the dock itself)? The items don't need to be evenly spaced out. They can just be packed in from left to right. remember that the dock can go the full width; you just have to fill it with crap. :) You can do some plist magic to make the dock flush to the left or right but can't make it take up the full width, alas.
- petercooper 16y ago
  The dock is a waste of screen space full-stop. Almost any app can be launched more quickly with a Cmd+Space, 2-3 chars + Enter if you're already at the keyboard. I'd have it removed altogether if accessing minimized apps in other ways wasn't so sucky.
marknutter 16y ago
> Why are the zoom/minimize/close-or-sometimes-quit button so small and difficult-to-acquire targets? I'm not complaining, mind you, I'm just wondering what the rational is for that. My guess is because these are rarely ever used. I just use expose instead of minimizing windows, and I typically kill an app before I consider closing its window.

pkulak 16y ago

I think other companies just realize that Apple has already done the work of getting a feature (or style) well known to the public and that they don't need to solve the problem in a brand new way. That would require as much engineering and quality control work as Apple, plus you'd have to market the hell out of it so that people understood why it was cool, and then, after all that, still sell the product for way less than Apple's because no one is going to pay an Apple price for a Dell product. No, the way to make money is by paying a couple devs to hack up something that looks really wiz-bang cool in demos with very little regard to the problem it solves. Then you get people to think it's just like an Apple product, but cheaper. Until they use it for a week, but by then they've already bought it. I think the best example of this is all the custom Android skins out there. Without exception they are all worse (at usability) than what they are trying to improve, but the first Droid was the last Android phone to ship stock. Just look cool in the ad and you're done.