7 ms·

“Origins of the Apple human interface” lecture – an annotated transcription

150 points by NaOH 7y ago

ryanmarsh 7y ago
Can I just say that the typography of this blog is impeccable?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
jedberg 7y ago
If you’re interested in Apple UX design, check out this blog [0] from Apple’s first HCI engineer. This one [1] is one of my favorites, about the MacOS dock when it was first released. [0] https://www.asktog.com/ https://www.asktog.com/ [1] https://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html https://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html
- dreamcompiler 7y ago
  I still despise the Dock. I even figured out how to hack it to make it invisible so I could use DragThing instead. Over time those hacks stopped working and DragThing ceased to exist (or at least I think it did) so now I just live with the stupid Dock. Thanks Apple.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Dock does a lot more than just the part you can see at the bottom of the screen, so you're not going to be able to truly get rid of it without breaking pretty much everything to do with Spaces and Launchpad along with it. Perhaps you could set it to auto-hide and only show after an extremely long delay?
    - dreamcompiler 7y ago
      That's exactly my point. Apple wove so much functionality into the Dock that it's now effectively impossible to remove it. And I may be weird, but Spaces and Launchpad are two of the things I immediately turn off, along with Mission Control, Dashboard, Expose, etc. because all of the above consume needless RAM or just get in my way.
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        If you don’t like those things, then I don’t see why you can’t just prevent it from launching?
rosegarden0 7y ago
Not all is great when it comes to Apple’s UX & UI. Interesting read: https://hackernoon.com/dear-apple-please-fix-notifications-647fe26ff1c4 https://hackernoon.com/dear-apple-please-fix-notifications-6...
amatecha 7y ago
Another great link if you're interested in Apple's design insights: "Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines" , from 1995 or so. I keep a copy on my desk at work as it's a great conversation piece and full of fascinating HCI insights. You can download a PDF here: http://interface.free.fr/Archives/Apple_HIGuidelines.pdf http://interface.free.fr/Archives/Apple_HIGuidelines.pdf :) One of my favorite details that seems to be frequently overlooked in modern times is the ellipsis on menu items to indicate that further user input is required (see "The Ellipsis Character in Menus" in Chapter 4). Lots of software follows this pattern, but a surprising amount of software _doesn't_!
- sedatk 7y ago
  This was also replicated by IBM CUA standard so Microsoft Windows had it from day one, too.
- ken 7y ago
  The current HIG still says "Use an ellipsis whenever choosing a menu item requires additional input from the user", but doesn't elaborate on this. Even Apple seems to have abandoned their earlier conventions and mostly just resorts to "use an ellipsis if the control will show another window/dialog". Apple's guidelines used to make it clear that (a) if the only additional input was a simple confirmation, it shouldn't get an ellipsis, and (b) if the whole point of the menuitem/button was to show a window, then it doesn't need 'more input', so it shouldn't get an ellipsis. Both of these are violated by the Mac's built-in applications in Mac OS X, which is a shame.
  - josefrichter 7y ago
    Copy&paste from current MacOS HIG: "Use an ellipsis whenever choosing a menu item requires additional input from the user. The ellipsis character (…) means a dialog or separate window will open and prompt the user for additional information or to make a choice." Maybe you looked at other platform HIG? Can you share examples where the guidelines are violated by MacOS built in applications, please? Not saying it's not happening, just curious.
- noir_lord 7y ago
dang 7y ago
Video of the lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW-atKrg0T4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW-atKrg0T4
ngcc_hk 7y ago
If you looked the Mac OS review of arstechnica you can see how detail of apple and ars technica on the user interfaces.
meerita 7y ago
As a Macintosh user since System 7, I cannot be more in love with the old UIs and UX. I really enjoy the pixel era. Certainly, the introduction to OS X took Apple to a different level, but the OS 9 UI for me will be one of the best examples of the epitome of OS. Good in interactions, colors, details, sound feedback. I will always thanks Apple for such work poured on an OS.
- 0815test 7y ago
  Yes, when it comes to icons, pictures, non-trivial logos etc. the "pixel" style has always been the most effective way of coming up with something that will look appealing even with minimal effort. Even on modern screens, a properly-upscaled, pixel-based icon usually looks a lot better than the symbolic, vector-based look you most often see today, while taking a lot less time and effort to create. You can see this very well on other user interfaces from the 1980s and 1990s too, it's not exclusive to the Mac. (And there's a sensible reason for this, too - the "pixel art" style is unique in letting you set a uniform ceiling on high-spatial-frequency content and subtle color changes within a picture, while preserving unbounded choice within these constraints.)
  - meerita 7y ago
    I've been user of Microsoft, IBM's OS/Warp too. I liked a lot Windows 3.1 and the first Windows 95. They showed good level of work, not only in the guts of the OS but also the GUI. But those styles faded once I get back into the mac, with their icon styles, you can change icons on the fly it was so easy. It was part of OS 7, 8, 9.
  - amatecha 7y ago
    Right, the low fidelity of 32x32pixel icons means they are easy to "read" and make sense of. Conversely, SGI's IRIX OS had vector icons which made them extremely varied and IMO they sometimes required a lot of effort to understand. Check this screenshot[0] to get an idea of what I mean. They are not immediately obvious due to their high level of detail. That said, I found it super cool that the icons can scale, right in the file explorer (using the "scroll wheel" type thing on the left side of the window)!! :) [0] https://software.majix.org/irix/screenshots/screen.5.big.jpg https://software.majix.org/irix/screenshots/screen.5.big.jpg
woodgrainz 7y ago
Here's what a lot of early Mac OS design actually looked like (System 1 through System 9): https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/classic-mac-os https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/classic-mac-os
masswerk 7y ago
Complementary to Larry Tesler's talk, see "Busy Being Born" by Andy Hertzfeld on Bill Atkinson's work during this period (some of the polaroids are in the annotated transcript as well): https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Busy_Being_Born.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor... (Something I always found interesting about this, is Bill Atkinson's suggestion that some of the window related UI was already in place before the PARC visit. Having a look at the polaroids in question, seeing Smalltalk may have been even a distraction, at least in terms of the design language.)
morrick 7y ago
Thank you: to the person who posted the link to my blog; and to all the people who came and checked it out. I'm glad that my transcription efforts have been of use! Cheers, Riccardo Mori
- acqq 7y ago
  Hi, thanks for your work. Regarding: "I’ve listened to this bit many times and I’m pretty sure Tesler says ‘foils’, and I guess he’s using the term in its architecture‐related meaning of “a leaf‐shaped curve formed by the cusping of an arch or circle” — But I welcome any correction from native English speakers." He surely talks about preparing the "transparency" foils for presenting them using the overhead projectors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_(projection) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_(projection) "A transparency, also known variously as a viewfoil, foil, or viewgraph" That's how the presentations were done at that time, using the: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhead_projector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhead_projector The good side was that you were able to prepare the foils before but then annotate any (i.e. write or draw on it) during the presentation, which had its own dynamic -- it could have been a result of the interaction with your viewers -- like while you were answering some question. The foils were even used in the very talk you transcribed: https://youtu.be/OW-atKrg0T4?t=1295 https://youtu.be/OW-atKrg0T4?t=1295
  - morrick 7y ago
    Thanks! Maybe it's because I was overwhelmed by the transcription work itself, but while I know this meaning of 'foils', I was totally misled. Tesler was talking about this drawing program and all I did was fixating on geometric shapes, haha. Cheers!
- jdswain 7y ago
  Regarding the foil reference, it’s actually a reference to something that technology has made obsolete. Back then people used to use overhead projectors for presentations, and the sheets of transparent film were called foils. There were sometimes hand drawn with markers, people could have used LisaDraw to print foils. Later on programs like Aldus Persuasion and Microsoft PowerPoint were used, but for a long time their output was printed rather than used directly like most people know today.
jv22222 7y ago
There’s a story (Prometheus myth) that Steve Jobs and the Mac team copied the human graphical interface idea from Xerox. A fascinating read about it here: https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/sites/mac/parc.html https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/sites/mac/parc.html
- taneq 7y ago
  Well, there's always that quote from Bill Gates when Jobs accused MS of stealing Apple's GUI design: “Well, Steve [Jobs]… I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbour named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.” - Bill Gates Source: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/824084-well-steve-jobs-i-think-it-s-more-like-we-both https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/824084-well-steve-jobs-i-th...
  - kalleboo 7y ago
    I always found it weird that Gates characterized it as Apple "stealing" the TV set. Xerox gave the TV set away! They had made a pre-IPO investment in Apple and in exchange the executives were happy to show Apple what they were working on (to the dismay of the actual researchers)
- jplayer01 7y ago
  So the reality is that they copied it, it just didn't happen in some magical visit to wonderland.
- nolok 7y ago
  Not a story it's a fact of history. Xerox PARC is the lab where Xerox invented several parts of what defined computers up to today (the window oriented gui with mouse, the laser printer, ethernet,...They're even credited for invented the wysiwyg text editor, so basically Word), inventions that were then completely ignored by Xerox while the other companies around jumped on them. Bill Gates is much more open about how the Microsoft and Apple gui was copied / stolen from Xerox, but then again he and Microsoft never had the "we are the first / we invented it" thing that is so important to Apple mythos. Reading about Xerox parc is super weird though because it feels like the place was handled the way you expect a publicly funded place to be, being so open to share their finding with competitors and all. Truly a golden era, today those are much more closed, even places like MS Research.

150 points by NaOH 7y ago

ryanmarsh 7y ago

Can I just say that the typography of this blog is impeccable?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

jedberg 7y ago

If you’re interested in Apple UX design, check out this blog [0] from Apple’s first HCI engineer. This one [1] is one of my favorites, about the MacOS dock when it was first released. [0] https://www.asktog.com/ https://www.asktog.com/ [1] https://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html https://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html

dreamcompiler 7y ago
I still despise the Dock. I even figured out how to hack it to make it invisible so I could use DragThing instead. Over time those hacks stopped working and DragThing ceased to exist (or at least I think it did) so now I just live with the stupid Dock. Thanks Apple.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Dock does a lot more than just the part you can see at the bottom of the screen, so you're not going to be able to truly get rid of it without breaking pretty much everything to do with Spaces and Launchpad along with it. Perhaps you could set it to auto-hide and only show after an extremely long delay?
  - dreamcompiler 7y ago
    That's exactly my point. Apple wove so much functionality into the Dock that it's now effectively impossible to remove it. And I may be weird, but Spaces and Launchpad are two of the things I immediately turn off, along with Mission Control, Dashboard, Expose, etc. because all of the above consume needless RAM or just get in my way.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      If you don’t like those things, then I don’t see why you can’t just prevent it from launching?

rosegarden0 7y ago

Not all is great when it comes to Apple’s UX & UI. Interesting read: https://hackernoon.com/dear-apple-please-fix-notifications-647fe26ff1c4 https://hackernoon.com/dear-apple-please-fix-notifications-6...

amatecha 7y ago

Another great link if you're interested in Apple's design insights: "Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines" , from 1995 or so. I keep a copy on my desk at work as it's a great conversation piece and full of fascinating HCI insights. You can download a PDF here: http://interface.free.fr/Archives/Apple_HIGuidelines.pdf http://interface.free.fr/Archives/Apple_HIGuidelines.pdf :) One of my favorite details that seems to be frequently overlooked in modern times is the ellipsis on menu items to indicate that further user input is required (see "The Ellipsis Character in Menus" in Chapter 4). Lots of software follows this pattern, but a surprising amount of software _doesn't_!

sedatk 7y ago
This was also replicated by IBM CUA standard so Microsoft Windows had it from day one, too.
ken 7y ago
The current HIG still says "Use an ellipsis whenever choosing a menu item requires additional input from the user", but doesn't elaborate on this. Even Apple seems to have abandoned their earlier conventions and mostly just resorts to "use an ellipsis if the control will show another window/dialog". Apple's guidelines used to make it clear that (a) if the only additional input was a simple confirmation, it shouldn't get an ellipsis, and (b) if the whole point of the menuitem/button was to show a window, then it doesn't need 'more input', so it shouldn't get an ellipsis. Both of these are violated by the Mac's built-in applications in Mac OS X, which is a shame.
- josefrichter 7y ago
  Copy&paste from current MacOS HIG: "Use an ellipsis whenever choosing a menu item requires additional input from the user. The ellipsis character (…) means a dialog or separate window will open and prompt the user for additional information or to make a choice." Maybe you looked at other platform HIG? Can you share examples where the guidelines are violated by MacOS built in applications, please? Not saying it's not happening, just curious.
noir_lord 7y ago

dang 7y ago

Video of the lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW-atKrg0T4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW-atKrg0T4

ngcc_hk 7y ago

If you looked the Mac OS review of arstechnica you can see how detail of apple and ars technica on the user interfaces.

meerita 7y ago

As a Macintosh user since System 7, I cannot be more in love with the old UIs and UX. I really enjoy the pixel era. Certainly, the introduction to OS X took Apple to a different level, but the OS 9 UI for me will be one of the best examples of the epitome of OS. Good in interactions, colors, details, sound feedback. I will always thanks Apple for such work poured on an OS.

0815test 7y ago
Yes, when it comes to icons, pictures, non-trivial logos etc. the "pixel" style has always been the most effective way of coming up with something that will look appealing even with minimal effort. Even on modern screens, a properly-upscaled, pixel-based icon usually looks a lot better than the symbolic, vector-based look you most often see today, while taking a lot less time and effort to create. You can see this very well on other user interfaces from the 1980s and 1990s too, it's not exclusive to the Mac. (And there's a sensible reason for this, too - the "pixel art" style is unique in letting you set a uniform ceiling on high-spatial-frequency content and subtle color changes within a picture, while preserving unbounded choice within these constraints.)
- meerita 7y ago
  I've been user of Microsoft, IBM's OS/Warp too. I liked a lot Windows 3.1 and the first Windows 95. They showed good level of work, not only in the guts of the OS but also the GUI. But those styles faded once I get back into the mac, with their icon styles, you can change icons on the fly it was so easy. It was part of OS 7, 8, 9.
- amatecha 7y ago
  Right, the low fidelity of 32x32pixel icons means they are easy to "read" and make sense of. Conversely, SGI's IRIX OS had vector icons which made them extremely varied and IMO they sometimes required a lot of effort to understand. Check this screenshot[0] to get an idea of what I mean. They are not immediately obvious due to their high level of detail. That said, I found it super cool that the icons can scale, right in the file explorer (using the "scroll wheel" type thing on the left side of the window)!! :) [0] https://software.majix.org/irix/screenshots/screen.5.big.jpg https://software.majix.org/irix/screenshots/screen.5.big.jpg

woodgrainz 7y ago

Here's what a lot of early Mac OS design actually looked like (System 1 through System 9): https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/classic-mac-os https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/classic-mac-os

masswerk 7y ago

Complementary to Larry Tesler's talk, see "Busy Being Born" by Andy Hertzfeld on Bill Atkinson's work during this period (some of the polaroids are in the annotated transcript as well): https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Busy_Being_Born.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor... (Something I always found interesting about this, is Bill Atkinson's suggestion that some of the window related UI was already in place before the PARC visit. Having a look at the polaroids in question, seeing Smalltalk may have been even a distraction, at least in terms of the design language.)

morrick 7y ago

Thank you: to the person who posted the link to my blog; and to all the people who came and checked it out. I'm glad that my transcription efforts have been of use! Cheers, Riccardo Mori

acqq 7y ago
Hi, thanks for your work. Regarding: "I’ve listened to this bit many times and I’m pretty sure Tesler says ‘foils’, and I guess he’s using the term in its architecture‐related meaning of “a leaf‐shaped curve formed by the cusping of an arch or circle” — But I welcome any correction from native English speakers." He surely talks about preparing the "transparency" foils for presenting them using the overhead projectors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_(projection) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_(projection) "A transparency, also known variously as a viewfoil, foil, or viewgraph" That's how the presentations were done at that time, using the: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhead_projector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhead_projector The good side was that you were able to prepare the foils before but then annotate any (i.e. write or draw on it) during the presentation, which had its own dynamic -- it could have been a result of the interaction with your viewers -- like while you were answering some question. The foils were even used in the very talk you transcribed: https://youtu.be/OW-atKrg0T4?t=1295 https://youtu.be/OW-atKrg0T4?t=1295
- morrick 7y ago
  Thanks! Maybe it's because I was overwhelmed by the transcription work itself, but while I know this meaning of 'foils', I was totally misled. Tesler was talking about this drawing program and all I did was fixating on geometric shapes, haha. Cheers!
jdswain 7y ago
Regarding the foil reference, it’s actually a reference to something that technology has made obsolete. Back then people used to use overhead projectors for presentations, and the sheets of transparent film were called foils. There were sometimes hand drawn with markers, people could have used LisaDraw to print foils. Later on programs like Aldus Persuasion and Microsoft PowerPoint were used, but for a long time their output was printed rather than used directly like most people know today.

jv22222 7y ago

There’s a story (Prometheus myth) that Steve Jobs and the Mac team copied the human graphical interface idea from Xerox. A fascinating read about it here: https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/sites/mac/parc.html https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/sites/mac/parc.html

taneq 7y ago
Well, there's always that quote from Bill Gates when Jobs accused MS of stealing Apple's GUI design: “Well, Steve [Jobs]… I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbour named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.” - Bill Gates Source: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/824084-well-steve-jobs-i-think-it-s-more-like-we-both https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/824084-well-steve-jobs-i-th...
- kalleboo 7y ago
  I always found it weird that Gates characterized it as Apple "stealing" the TV set. Xerox gave the TV set away! They had made a pre-IPO investment in Apple and in exchange the executives were happy to show Apple what they were working on (to the dismay of the actual researchers)
jplayer01 7y ago
So the reality is that they copied it, it just didn't happen in some magical visit to wonderland.
nolok 7y ago
Not a story it's a fact of history. Xerox PARC is the lab where Xerox invented several parts of what defined computers up to today (the window oriented gui with mouse, the laser printer, ethernet,...They're even credited for invented the wysiwyg text editor, so basically Word), inventions that were then completely ignored by Xerox while the other companies around jumped on them. Bill Gates is much more open about how the Microsoft and Apple gui was copied / stolen from Xerox, but then again he and Microsoft never had the "we are the first / we invented it" thing that is so important to Apple mythos. Reading about Xerox parc is super weird though because it feels like the place was handled the way you expect a publicly funded place to be, being so open to share their finding with competitors and all. Truly a golden era, today those are much more closed, even places like MS Research.