16 ms·

The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

295 points by pcr910303 6y ago

notRobot 6y ago
(1996)
- flemhans 6y ago
  Jakob Nielsen ages well. And people keep repeating the same mistakes over and over - that they could have learned to avoid in eg. Usability Engineering (1994).
ggm 6y ago
Most anti mac interfaces are actually bound to the same constraints a mac is. We don't have good enough signal processing to do pure gaze based control systems. If we did, it might be worth not reinventing the mouse, that much I agree. If we don't have gaze directed into the computer it's move and click. If we do have gaze, we can discuss if blinking is clicking or if we are going to make a richer paradigm of action directed outcome.
aetherspawn 6y ago
I think that using a bookcase that can be spatially ordered (in 2 dimensions) would be a really interesting concept for an operating system. Applications and files alike, filed on the same bookshelf. A very easy metaphor that makes it easy to explain how computers work, but also locate files that you use often (perhaps by size, shape, colour and location) without using the part of your brain that processes language. Humans are spatial creatures, so I'd like to think that perhaps everything being in lists doesn't make sense and that's why we hate using them to find something. The traditional notion of the Desktop is a bit like this, but the presentation is messy. There's no nice way to order your desktop, and everything is the same size and shape. Despite this, many people work solely from their Desktop. Edit: It would be very interesting to have a check in/check out system where you can drag files on the shelf to your "working box", or check them out, or whatever. Basically the equivalent of your desktop. This gives you fast easy access to files from a variety of locations for whatever job you're doing. When you're done working with them, you can check them out, and poof they go back to wherever you got them from. This is an awesome physical metaphor to a library where the clerk does all the work for you in returning the books. This box could also give you a good metaphor for moving files, and cut/copy/paste. Move to box -> put back on the shelf elsewhere. Or, move to box -> duplicate -> put copies back on the shelf and send the originals back.
- reificator 6y ago
  I will say that the Amazon Fire tablets (used to?) do this, and my non-technical family/friends would often come to me for help because they didn't know how to do or find what they needed. As a side note, this caused me to throw Ubuntu on a desktop/laptop for a few of the people who needed the most support, and within a month they didn't need any help and were trying to get me to install it on their friend's machines. Seriously, I was constantly being asked by old ladies to start an underground Ubuntu support network. They just needed a way to browse the web, upload photos to facebook, and play farmville. That was it, that's all they wanted to use it for. If I were to do it again today I'd use ChromeOS probably.
  - wruza 6y ago
    I think it boils down to what experience a person had before and what they need to do. Anyone who played 3d games has better chances to have spatial and visual investigatory abilities (and benefit from it), and anyone who worked in business knows that your files have to be sorted and hierarchy’ed. When needs do not meet experience, they want a single always-on-screen button to start the part of a system they’re familiar with.
- chrismsimpson 6y ago
  Didn't the GNOME project try this in the mid 2000's? For me, that was peak GNOME: the 2.x series.
  - core-questions 6y ago
    Yes, Gnome 2.x was very usable. Have you tried MATE? It's just Gnome 2 continued.
- tomc1985 6y ago
  What does this do that the "sitting at my desk" analogy doesn't?
- wolki 6y ago
  There's been two major attempts to leverage spatiality: spatial file managers (most controversially, 2.6-era GNOME) and zooming interfaces. None have such a checkout by default, but it would fit both quite naturally. I don't have much experience with the zooming stuff, but I did use Nautilus heavily then (see also Siracusa's Mac-focused discussion here: https://archive.arstechnica.com/paedia/f/finder/finder-1.htm https://archive.arstechnica.com/paedia/f/finder/finder-1.htm). As soon as you got used to it, it was amazing -- accessing files felt natural in a way it just doesn't in other systems. It was both digital and leveraged our natural understanding that things are at particular places. It's no surprise people still miss it. A few people, of course. A very large majority of people absolutely hated it, and it's widely considered a huge mistake now. Familiarity and habits win out, users hate changing paradigms and unlearning habits.
ThomPete 6y ago
All metaphors are learned. Given that technology tend to replace things from the manual physical world these metaphors makes a lot of sense as they help humans transition. Over time new concepts emerge which are based on metaphors native to the digital space and understood by the new generations.
- kleer001 6y ago
  > All metaphors are learned. The really good ones are learned early and are highly conserved across time and culture.
- jpttsn 6y ago
  Digression risk: Unless we count human evolution as “learning” I’d disagree: some “metaphors” are surely innate. A snake is scary to babies who have not learned it’s dangerous. Symmetry is beautiful to an untrained eye. Design should be informed also by our innate traits; refrain from taking the “blank slate” idea at face value.
  - ThomPete 6y ago
    Evolution is one long learning game :)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
spankalee 6y ago
Take the team to read this one, especially the later section describing the Anti-Mac interface. It's incredibly prescient and basically describes the direction of modern desktop GUI + cloud + voice controlled assistants. The article might be a bit aggressive on suggesting that language _replace_ icons, rather than augment them - but it seems just as likely that we're still in the middle of the transition and assistants being built from the ground up without icon-based UIs is exactly what the article is predicting.
- shadowofneptune 6y ago
  Yeah, I scoffed at first reading it but by the end I was impressed. Definitely agree with the point that metaphors are less relevant in a time where many people know how to use computers. A virtual assistant with the power of a command line could be very useful (though you'd probably want to double check their work before executing it.)
kazinator 6y ago
That anti-mac table column near the bottom is eerily full of good predictions.
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  They seemed wooly and commonly predicted to me. The article was interesting though.
bfirsh 6y ago
This inspired some of our design principles in the CLI Guidelines: https://clig.dev/ https://clig.dev/ The CLI is the opposite of the Mac in a lot of ways -- reality instead of metaphors, remember and type instead of see and point, make it a conversation, and so on.
- xnyan 6y ago
  >Because people don’t understand what computing is about, they think they have it in the iPhone, and that illusion is as bad as the illusion that ‘Guitar Hero’ is the same as a real guitar.” For me, this was the signal that this as a "if only people used computers like I personally think they should" pieces. I know lots of people who play guitar hero, lots of people who play real guitars, and some who play both (me for one, mediocrely in both cases). I have met zero people who think guitar hero = guitar. They are different things that serve different needs. I use a cli to compute all day, every day. Can't imagine using computers without one. I have no empirical proof of this, but I would be willing to wager the deed to my house that the vast majority of users, having been explained what a cli is, the benefits of it, and how to use it, would chose to never use a CLI again. It's not what they want, it's what other people want and it's a myopic view of what computing is.
  - varenc 6y ago
    I believe Alan Kay is saying that while people know Guitar Hero isn't real guitar, they don't know that using an iPhone isn't "what computing is about". Here's the full quote from him: If people could understand what computing was about, the iPhone would not be a bad thing. But because people don’t understand what computing is about, they think they have it in the iPhone, and that illusion is as bad as the illusion that Guitar Hero is the same as a real guitar. That’s the simple long and the short of it. What’s interesting is, the computational ability of an iPhone is far beyond what we need to do good computing. What you wind up with is something that has enough stuff on it and is connected to enough stuff, so it seems like the entire thing. https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-about-the-iphone-and-technology-now https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-ab...
reidjs 6y ago
On other OS designs: “ They are navigationally cumbersome, asking users to go to the "other end of town" to pick up their email from the Post Office” Made me laugh, it seems silly now, but that’s a pretty creative way of describing what’s going on.
- mxcrossb 6y ago
  When I was a kid, I remember the Max my family owned have several different UIs you could enter in to. I think maybe the idea was that some of them were more kid friendly? When I saw those pictures in the article it took me back to that time.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    You’re probably thinking of “At Ease”! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Ease https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Ease
- dafoex 6y ago
  Sounds like the village that Microsoft Bob's house was in. I don't actually think the ideas of things like Bob were bad, though, I just think they were cumbersome. Using the post office example, a top down map would solve everything, and be close enough a "start menu" that a totally fresh user might feel confident trying a computer without balancing wheels.
- fbelzile 6y ago
  "Might as well check my Thunderbird mail on the way to open Firefox in Mozillatown!" :)
moron4hire 6y ago
> At recent user interface conferences, several speakers have lamented that the human interface is stuck. We seem to have settled on the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) model, and there is very little real innovation in interface design anymore. Ooof, and here we are, 25 years later, with an intervening opportunity to completely redefine HCI (smartphones), and it's still basically all WIMP.
- 2stop 6y ago
  We are still projecting stuff onto a 2D screen and wishing to interact with it. So fundamentally it's not a huge difference. I guess we have gyros, and cool audio processing and I think there have been decent UIs that use them. Maybe AR will change things on this front?
- dwighttk 6y ago
  Weird, my hand computer only has icons out of those 4.
  - dafoex 6y ago
    I feel many touch interfaces are still fundamentally WIMP. You can only use one, maybe two apps at a time, but they are still windows - just tiled, not floating, and always accessed from a list, not a stack. Icons are obviously still a thing, but I think we hit the nail on the head with those as uniquely shaped pictograms are easier to parse quickly than descriptive text. Menus are often minimal, but they still exist to the extent of "ordered list of things to interact with", and the only thing I think that can really be argued we've got rid of is pointers - but from where I see it, I just think we've added nine more pointers.
  - moron4hire 6y ago
    Look again.
cpeterso 6y ago
"General Magic: The Most Influential Silicon Valley Company No One Has Ever Heard Of" is a 2018 documentary about General Magic, the company behind the Magic Cap OS. You can stream the documentary for free on Kanopy (with a library card from a participating library) here: https://www.kanopy.com/product/general-magic https://www.kanopy.com/product/general-magic
joezydeco 6y ago
I was always intrigued by the Starfire project mentioned here. The concept video from Sun is definitely peak 90s, but some of the things inside have finally come true 20 years later. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9OKcKisUrY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9OKcKisUrY
- itisit 6y ago
  And Starfire was an updated take on Apple's Knowledge Navigator (1987): https://youtu.be/umJsITGzXd0 https://youtu.be/umJsITGzXd0 All of these visions feel like they stem from TMoAD. Does anyone make inspirational concept films for industry/academia/etc like these anymore?
  - joezydeco 6y ago
    No, and I like this blogger's reason why: https://web.archive.org/web/20120206012754/http://counternotions.com/2008/08/12/concept-products/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120206012754/http://counternot...
- uni_rule 6y ago
  That Consulier GTP is hot though
- blasdel 6y ago
  Now Tayne, I can get into: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maAFcEU6atk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maAFcEU6atk
dafoex 6y ago
I recall reading this and some related papers a while ago, and for the fun of it I tried my hand at mocking up a UI based on the ideas laid out. The basic premise was that the application menu was replaced with a "new document" menu (like Google Drive has) that would take you to the relevant place to get things done automatically. Standard apps could still be run, but like you might go "new>text document>template" you'd go "new>app>terminal" for example. The File Edit View menus were also gone, replaced with a search function much like the Unity Desktop HUD where you just type what you want rather than drill through menus and point at what you want. Window management would be mainly tiling except for dialog boxes related to the programme that made them, but ideally the search function would handle most cases where you need a dialog box, employing a simple command parser reminiscent of Zork and the like, where you would just type out what you want to be done in mostly natural language and the agent responsible for the programme will automate as much as possible. Finally, window switching and virtual desktops would be handled by an exposé similar to GNOME 3 Activities or macOS Mission Control. While I don't think its the best approach, a little bit of intelligent arrangement of windows so that maximised windows move to a new workspace, remembering what apps are opened together on the same workspace, and encouraging the user to keep to about three or four tiled windows per workspace just for the benefit of keeping clutter low, and I think it could be easily managed without too much effort - and some keyboard combos or trackpad gestures would go a long way to quickly switching workspaces.
- dafoex 6y ago
  Oh, feel free to run with any ideas of mine if they strike a chord. I'm not competent enough to tackle making a whole DE just to satisfy my curiosity at this moment.
amyjess 6y ago
> At recent user interface conferences, several speakers have lamented that the human interface is stuck. We seem to have settled on the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) model, and there is very little real innovation in interface design anymore. Alternately, you can say that UX design stabilized on a known good pattern. This reminds me of how some people will refer to stable software projects that only receive the occasional security patch as "abandoned". They're not abandoned, they're just stable.
- nappy 6y ago
  This comment is full of wisdom
- burnte 6y ago
  I completely agree. The design of a hammer hasn't changed much in centuries because it's already designed well for its purpose. Same thing with sharks, I don't hear biologists say "there hasn't been much innovation in sharks for millions of years."
  - suyash 6y ago
    I consider myself one of those people who would comment about the design of hammer being stuck and more people should, that is how we innovate. The real world is always changing and evolving with time, so are technologies be it for computers - UI that allowed for the desktop GUI paradigm in the 90's to today where Alexa, Siri can help us do lot of those tasks just by commanding over voice. We need to certainly move on and innovate the user interface for desktop GUI or for other devices.
    - wruza 6y ago
      What is new proposal for a hammer, may I ask?
      - blinkeer 6y ago
        Pneumatic press, nail gun, screwdriver, impact wrench, seems like these could work, while maybe not a direct dirivative. Some things persist, and are stable as others have noted. A cool thing about innovation is that the ideas are often things people didn't know they wanted until they see it.
dang 6y ago
If curious see also 2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9831429 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9831429
euske 6y ago
A somewhat historic article, but I think the comparison is off and dated too because the "Mac-ness" depends on the people's expectation of the day, which keeps changing. I tend to think that as more people are getting tech savvy they'll gradually move away from the classic physical metaphors and accept abstract concepts (e.g. "URL", "mention", "optional arguments") as natural.
arexxbifs 6y ago
Funny how all those visions (like the Starfire movie in the link, but certainly similar and even older ones, such as Xerox' promo for the Star or Apple's promo for Lisa) are almost always about some unspecified middle manager working either alone from home or in a large, private office. Imagine an open floor plan with a hundred programmers or administrators shouting code and commands at their giant, flashing 52" screens all day, having to raise their arm in some ergonomically counter-indicative way each time they need to swipe a pop-up ad away from their vision. I know what a general purpose computer is. I know how to control it. Without a reasonable interface to do so, being completely at the mercy of some "UI visionary" (probably the kind who decided we shouldn't be able to change the default fonts in programs made for text messaging), it'll be even more useless to me than most modern UI:s already make it.
nuker 6y ago
22 References and like 5 pics. TFA was about UI.
svat 6y ago
My favourite part of this article (disclosure: I've made almost this exact comment before elsewhere): > The see-and-point principle states that users interact with the computer by pointing at the objects they can see on the screen. It's as if we have thrown away a million years of evolution, lost our facility with expressive language, and been reduced to pointing at objects in the immediate environment. Mouse buttons and modifier keys give us a vocabulary equivalent to a few different grunts. We have lost all the power of language, and can no longer talk about objects that are not immediately visible (all files more than one week old), objects that don't exist yet (future messages from my boss), or unknown objects (any guides to restaurants in Boston). Does this mean a commandline is always better, because it's more expressive? No, it's a trade-off between this and ease of learning: > The GUIs of contemporary applications are generally well designed for ease of learning, but there often is a trade-off between ease of learning on one hand, and ease of use, power, and flexibility on the other hand. Although you could imagine a society where language was easy to learn because people communicated by pointing to words and icons on large menus they carried about, humans have instead chosen to invest many years in mastering a rich and complex language. There's a neat coincidence that illustrates this tradeoff. While this article says: > If we want to order food in a country where we don't know the language at all, we're forced to go into the kitchen and use a see-and-point interface. With a little understanding of the language, we can point at menus to select our dinner from the dining room. But language allows us to discuss exactly what we would like to eat with the waiter or chef. Joel Spolsky's User Interface Design for Programmers (an excellent book, looks like it's available online in full on his blog: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/10/24/user-interface-design-for-programmers/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/10/24/user-interface-des...) says: > Using a command-line interface is like having to learn the complete Korean language just to order food in the Seoul branch of McDonalds. Using a menu-based interface is like being able to point to the food you want and grunt and nod your head: it conveys the same information with no learning curve. I'm pretty sure it's a coincidence that the same example of a restaurant in a foreign country is used, but despite apparent contradiction, they make the same point: The text interface requires more time to learn, in return for being more expressive and powerful. Whether that's worth it to you depends on how long you intend to live in that environment, and how rich an experience you'd like to have.
- 6y ago
aasasd 6y ago
Jef Raskin—who led the Macintosh project for the first year (though apparently the design was changed further later on)—worked afterwards on a concept that incorporated typed-in natural-language commands. In his Archy, commands were part of an unorthodox GUI system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy Archy clearly hails from the eighties when it was still imaginable to change users' workflow with desktop computers—that users would type a command while holding a special key (also apparently the author wasn't a touch typist). The commands feature, isolated, was later adapted by Jef's son Aza Raskin, first as Enso (if I'm not mistaken), and then as a Firefox extension Ubiquity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquity_(Firefox) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquity_(Firefox)
- ttjjtt 6y ago
  This post introduced me to Archy which is exciting to discover. The zoomable interface of Archy addresses something fundamental that always felt off about current desktop GUIs - the inability to get a meaningful overview, that include both folder structure and file contents , and to be the inability to switch from higher to lower levels of perspective in a continuous way. It seems like Archy made the directory structure appear like a topographical landscape. Current desktop GUIs instead feel like navigating an endless Russian doll of drawers.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    In case you aren't aware Eagle Mode [0] (a self-described advanced zoomable interface) exists. [0]http://eaglemode.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html http://eaglemode.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
  - aasasd 6y ago
    ‘ZUI’ is a general approach, and there were a number of attempts at it. I've seen a bunch of ‘zoomable’ file managers here and there—however, since that's not my cup of tea, I don't actually remember any of them. But they exist, so I guess some googling might point you to them. Also I've heard about some ‘pasteboard’ service as an alternative to a internal corporate wiki: you likewise zoom around and slap content anywhere on the infinite canvas. The trick, of course, is to keep the content organized thematically and tidy it up so it can be found later. Again, chances are slim that I will remember the name of the service now. ‘Rizzoma’, which is a clone of the late Google Wave, may also be seen as ‘zoomable’
chmaynard 6y ago
Don Norman was a respected UI analyst during his days at Apple. How far he has fallen! I lost faith in his judgment after reading the NN/g article bashing PDF: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/pdf-unfit-for-human-consumption/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/pdf-unfit-for-human-consump...
mproud 6y ago
> Cray-on-a-chip RISC processors

295 points by pcr910303 6y ago

notRobot 6y ago

(1996)

flemhans 6y ago
Jakob Nielsen ages well. And people keep repeating the same mistakes over and over - that they could have learned to avoid in eg. Usability Engineering (1994).

ggm 6y ago

Most anti mac interfaces are actually bound to the same constraints a mac is. We don't have good enough signal processing to do pure gaze based control systems. If we did, it might be worth not reinventing the mouse, that much I agree. If we don't have gaze directed into the computer it's move and click. If we do have gaze, we can discuss if blinking is clicking or if we are going to make a richer paradigm of action directed outcome.

aetherspawn 6y ago

I think that using a bookcase that can be spatially ordered (in 2 dimensions) would be a really interesting concept for an operating system. Applications and files alike, filed on the same bookshelf. A very easy metaphor that makes it easy to explain how computers work, but also locate files that you use often (perhaps by size, shape, colour and location) without using the part of your brain that processes language. Humans are spatial creatures, so I'd like to think that perhaps everything being in lists doesn't make sense and that's why we hate using them to find something. The traditional notion of the Desktop is a bit like this, but the presentation is messy. There's no nice way to order your desktop, and everything is the same size and shape. Despite this, many people work solely from their Desktop. Edit: It would be very interesting to have a check in/check out system where you can drag files on the shelf to your "working box", or check them out, or whatever. Basically the equivalent of your desktop. This gives you fast easy access to files from a variety of locations for whatever job you're doing. When you're done working with them, you can check them out, and poof they go back to wherever you got them from. This is an awesome physical metaphor to a library where the clerk does all the work for you in returning the books. This box could also give you a good metaphor for moving files, and cut/copy/paste. Move to box -> put back on the shelf elsewhere. Or, move to box -> duplicate -> put copies back on the shelf and send the originals back.

reificator 6y ago
I will say that the Amazon Fire tablets (used to?) do this, and my non-technical family/friends would often come to me for help because they didn't know how to do or find what they needed. As a side note, this caused me to throw Ubuntu on a desktop/laptop for a few of the people who needed the most support, and within a month they didn't need any help and were trying to get me to install it on their friend's machines. Seriously, I was constantly being asked by old ladies to start an underground Ubuntu support network. They just needed a way to browse the web, upload photos to facebook, and play farmville. That was it, that's all they wanted to use it for. If I were to do it again today I'd use ChromeOS probably.
- wruza 6y ago
  I think it boils down to what experience a person had before and what they need to do. Anyone who played 3d games has better chances to have spatial and visual investigatory abilities (and benefit from it), and anyone who worked in business knows that your files have to be sorted and hierarchy’ed. When needs do not meet experience, they want a single always-on-screen button to start the part of a system they’re familiar with.
chrismsimpson 6y ago
Didn't the GNOME project try this in the mid 2000's? For me, that was peak GNOME: the 2.x series.
- core-questions 6y ago
  Yes, Gnome 2.x was very usable. Have you tried MATE? It's just Gnome 2 continued.
tomc1985 6y ago
What does this do that the "sitting at my desk" analogy doesn't?
wolki 6y ago
There's been two major attempts to leverage spatiality: spatial file managers (most controversially, 2.6-era GNOME) and zooming interfaces. None have such a checkout by default, but it would fit both quite naturally. I don't have much experience with the zooming stuff, but I did use Nautilus heavily then (see also Siracusa's Mac-focused discussion here: https://archive.arstechnica.com/paedia/f/finder/finder-1.htm https://archive.arstechnica.com/paedia/f/finder/finder-1.htm). As soon as you got used to it, it was amazing -- accessing files felt natural in a way it just doesn't in other systems. It was both digital and leveraged our natural understanding that things are at particular places. It's no surprise people still miss it. A few people, of course. A very large majority of people absolutely hated it, and it's widely considered a huge mistake now. Familiarity and habits win out, users hate changing paradigms and unlearning habits.

ThomPete 6y ago

All metaphors are learned. Given that technology tend to replace things from the manual physical world these metaphors makes a lot of sense as they help humans transition. Over time new concepts emerge which are based on metaphors native to the digital space and understood by the new generations.

kleer001 6y ago
> All metaphors are learned. The really good ones are learned early and are highly conserved across time and culture.
jpttsn 6y ago
Digression risk: Unless we count human evolution as “learning” I’d disagree: some “metaphors” are surely innate. A snake is scary to babies who have not learned it’s dangerous. Symmetry is beautiful to an untrained eye. Design should be informed also by our innate traits; refrain from taking the “blank slate” idea at face value.
- ThomPete 6y ago
  Evolution is one long learning game :)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

spankalee 6y ago

Take the team to read this one, especially the later section describing the Anti-Mac interface. It's incredibly prescient and basically describes the direction of modern desktop GUI + cloud + voice controlled assistants. The article might be a bit aggressive on suggesting that language _replace_ icons, rather than augment them - but it seems just as likely that we're still in the middle of the transition and assistants being built from the ground up without icon-based UIs is exactly what the article is predicting.

shadowofneptune 6y ago
Yeah, I scoffed at first reading it but by the end I was impressed. Definitely agree with the point that metaphors are less relevant in a time where many people know how to use computers. A virtual assistant with the power of a command line could be very useful (though you'd probably want to double check their work before executing it.)

kazinator 6y ago

That anti-mac table column near the bottom is eerily full of good predictions.

pseudalopex 6y ago
They seemed wooly and commonly predicted to me. The article was interesting though.

bfirsh 6y ago

This inspired some of our design principles in the CLI Guidelines: https://clig.dev/ https://clig.dev/ The CLI is the opposite of the Mac in a lot of ways -- reality instead of metaphors, remember and type instead of see and point, make it a conversation, and so on.

xnyan 6y ago
>Because people don’t understand what computing is about, they think they have it in the iPhone, and that illusion is as bad as the illusion that ‘Guitar Hero’ is the same as a real guitar.” For me, this was the signal that this as a "if only people used computers like I personally think they should" pieces. I know lots of people who play guitar hero, lots of people who play real guitars, and some who play both (me for one, mediocrely in both cases). I have met zero people who think guitar hero = guitar. They are different things that serve different needs. I use a cli to compute all day, every day. Can't imagine using computers without one. I have no empirical proof of this, but I would be willing to wager the deed to my house that the vast majority of users, having been explained what a cli is, the benefits of it, and how to use it, would chose to never use a CLI again. It's not what they want, it's what other people want and it's a myopic view of what computing is.
- varenc 6y ago
  I believe Alan Kay is saying that while people know Guitar Hero isn't real guitar, they don't know that using an iPhone isn't "what computing is about". Here's the full quote from him: If people could understand what computing was about, the iPhone would not be a bad thing. But because people don’t understand what computing is about, they think they have it in the iPhone, and that illusion is as bad as the illusion that Guitar Hero is the same as a real guitar. That’s the simple long and the short of it. What’s interesting is, the computational ability of an iPhone is far beyond what we need to do good computing. What you wind up with is something that has enough stuff on it and is connected to enough stuff, so it seems like the entire thing. https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-about-the-iphone-and-technology-now https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-ab...

reidjs 6y ago

On other OS designs: “ They are navigationally cumbersome, asking users to go to the "other end of town" to pick up their email from the Post Office” Made me laugh, it seems silly now, but that’s a pretty creative way of describing what’s going on.

mxcrossb 6y ago
When I was a kid, I remember the Max my family owned have several different UIs you could enter in to. I think maybe the idea was that some of them were more kid friendly? When I saw those pictures in the article it took me back to that time.
- Lammy 6y ago
  You’re probably thinking of “At Ease”! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Ease https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_Ease
dafoex 6y ago
Sounds like the village that Microsoft Bob's house was in. I don't actually think the ideas of things like Bob were bad, though, I just think they were cumbersome. Using the post office example, a top down map would solve everything, and be close enough a "start menu" that a totally fresh user might feel confident trying a computer without balancing wheels.
fbelzile 6y ago
"Might as well check my Thunderbird mail on the way to open Firefox in Mozillatown!" :)

moron4hire 6y ago

> At recent user interface conferences, several speakers have lamented that the human interface is stuck. We seem to have settled on the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) model, and there is very little real innovation in interface design anymore. Ooof, and here we are, 25 years later, with an intervening opportunity to completely redefine HCI (smartphones), and it's still basically all WIMP.

2stop 6y ago
We are still projecting stuff onto a 2D screen and wishing to interact with it. So fundamentally it's not a huge difference. I guess we have gyros, and cool audio processing and I think there have been decent UIs that use them. Maybe AR will change things on this front?
dwighttk 6y ago
Weird, my hand computer only has icons out of those 4.
- dafoex 6y ago
  I feel many touch interfaces are still fundamentally WIMP. You can only use one, maybe two apps at a time, but they are still windows - just tiled, not floating, and always accessed from a list, not a stack. Icons are obviously still a thing, but I think we hit the nail on the head with those as uniquely shaped pictograms are easier to parse quickly than descriptive text. Menus are often minimal, but they still exist to the extent of "ordered list of things to interact with", and the only thing I think that can really be argued we've got rid of is pointers - but from where I see it, I just think we've added nine more pointers.
- moron4hire 6y ago
  Look again.

cpeterso 6y ago

"General Magic: The Most Influential Silicon Valley Company No One Has Ever Heard Of" is a 2018 documentary about General Magic, the company behind the Magic Cap OS. You can stream the documentary for free on Kanopy (with a library card from a participating library) here: https://www.kanopy.com/product/general-magic https://www.kanopy.com/product/general-magic

joezydeco 6y ago

I was always intrigued by the Starfire project mentioned here. The concept video from Sun is definitely peak 90s, but some of the things inside have finally come true 20 years later. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9OKcKisUrY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9OKcKisUrY

itisit 6y ago
And Starfire was an updated take on Apple's Knowledge Navigator (1987): https://youtu.be/umJsITGzXd0 https://youtu.be/umJsITGzXd0 All of these visions feel like they stem from TMoAD. Does anyone make inspirational concept films for industry/academia/etc like these anymore?
- joezydeco 6y ago
  No, and I like this blogger's reason why: https://web.archive.org/web/20120206012754/http://counternotions.com/2008/08/12/concept-products/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120206012754/http://counternot...
uni_rule 6y ago
That Consulier GTP is hot though
blasdel 6y ago
Now Tayne, I can get into: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maAFcEU6atk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maAFcEU6atk

dafoex 6y ago

I recall reading this and some related papers a while ago, and for the fun of it I tried my hand at mocking up a UI based on the ideas laid out. The basic premise was that the application menu was replaced with a "new document" menu (like Google Drive has) that would take you to the relevant place to get things done automatically. Standard apps could still be run, but like you might go "new>text document>template" you'd go "new>app>terminal" for example. The File Edit View menus were also gone, replaced with a search function much like the Unity Desktop HUD where you just type what you want rather than drill through menus and point at what you want. Window management would be mainly tiling except for dialog boxes related to the programme that made them, but ideally the search function would handle most cases where you need a dialog box, employing a simple command parser reminiscent of Zork and the like, where you would just type out what you want to be done in mostly natural language and the agent responsible for the programme will automate as much as possible. Finally, window switching and virtual desktops would be handled by an exposé similar to GNOME 3 Activities or macOS Mission Control. While I don't think its the best approach, a little bit of intelligent arrangement of windows so that maximised windows move to a new workspace, remembering what apps are opened together on the same workspace, and encouraging the user to keep to about three or four tiled windows per workspace just for the benefit of keeping clutter low, and I think it could be easily managed without too much effort - and some keyboard combos or trackpad gestures would go a long way to quickly switching workspaces.

dafoex 6y ago
Oh, feel free to run with any ideas of mine if they strike a chord. I'm not competent enough to tackle making a whole DE just to satisfy my curiosity at this moment.

amyjess 6y ago

> At recent user interface conferences, several speakers have lamented that the human interface is stuck. We seem to have settled on the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) model, and there is very little real innovation in interface design anymore. Alternately, you can say that UX design stabilized on a known good pattern. This reminds me of how some people will refer to stable software projects that only receive the occasional security patch as "abandoned". They're not abandoned, they're just stable.

nappy 6y ago
This comment is full of wisdom
burnte 6y ago
I completely agree. The design of a hammer hasn't changed much in centuries because it's already designed well for its purpose. Same thing with sharks, I don't hear biologists say "there hasn't been much innovation in sharks for millions of years."
- suyash 6y ago
  I consider myself one of those people who would comment about the design of hammer being stuck and more people should, that is how we innovate. The real world is always changing and evolving with time, so are technologies be it for computers - UI that allowed for the desktop GUI paradigm in the 90's to today where Alexa, Siri can help us do lot of those tasks just by commanding over voice. We need to certainly move on and innovate the user interface for desktop GUI or for other devices.
  - wruza 6y ago
    What is new proposal for a hammer, may I ask?
    - blinkeer 6y ago
      Pneumatic press, nail gun, screwdriver, impact wrench, seems like these could work, while maybe not a direct dirivative. Some things persist, and are stable as others have noted. A cool thing about innovation is that the ideas are often things people didn't know they wanted until they see it.

dang 6y ago

If curious see also 2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9831429 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9831429

euske 6y ago

A somewhat historic article, but I think the comparison is off and dated too because the "Mac-ness" depends on the people's expectation of the day, which keeps changing. I tend to think that as more people are getting tech savvy they'll gradually move away from the classic physical metaphors and accept abstract concepts (e.g. "URL", "mention", "optional arguments") as natural.

arexxbifs 6y ago

Funny how all those visions (like the Starfire movie in the link, but certainly similar and even older ones, such as Xerox' promo for the Star or Apple's promo for Lisa) are almost always about some unspecified middle manager working either alone from home or in a large, private office. Imagine an open floor plan with a hundred programmers or administrators shouting code and commands at their giant, flashing 52" screens all day, having to raise their arm in some ergonomically counter-indicative way each time they need to swipe a pop-up ad away from their vision. I know what a general purpose computer is. I know how to control it. Without a reasonable interface to do so, being completely at the mercy of some "UI visionary" (probably the kind who decided we shouldn't be able to change the default fonts in programs made for text messaging), it'll be even more useless to me than most modern UI:s already make it.

nuker 6y ago

22 References and like 5 pics. TFA was about UI.

svat 6y ago

My favourite part of this article (disclosure: I've made almost this exact comment before elsewhere): > The see-and-point principle states that users interact with the computer by pointing at the objects they can see on the screen. It's as if we have thrown away a million years of evolution, lost our facility with expressive language, and been reduced to pointing at objects in the immediate environment. Mouse buttons and modifier keys give us a vocabulary equivalent to a few different grunts. We have lost all the power of language, and can no longer talk about objects that are not immediately visible (all files more than one week old), objects that don't exist yet (future messages from my boss), or unknown objects (any guides to restaurants in Boston). Does this mean a commandline is always better, because it's more expressive? No, it's a trade-off between this and ease of learning: > The GUIs of contemporary applications are generally well designed for ease of learning, but there often is a trade-off between ease of learning on one hand, and ease of use, power, and flexibility on the other hand. Although you could imagine a society where language was easy to learn because people communicated by pointing to words and icons on large menus they carried about, humans have instead chosen to invest many years in mastering a rich and complex language. There's a neat coincidence that illustrates this tradeoff. While this article says: > If we want to order food in a country where we don't know the language at all, we're forced to go into the kitchen and use a see-and-point interface. With a little understanding of the language, we can point at menus to select our dinner from the dining room. But language allows us to discuss exactly what we would like to eat with the waiter or chef. Joel Spolsky's User Interface Design for Programmers (an excellent book, looks like it's available online in full on his blog: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/10/24/user-interface-design-for-programmers/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/10/24/user-interface-des...) says: > Using a command-line interface is like having to learn the complete Korean language just to order food in the Seoul branch of McDonalds. Using a menu-based interface is like being able to point to the food you want and grunt and nod your head: it conveys the same information with no learning curve. I'm pretty sure it's a coincidence that the same example of a restaurant in a foreign country is used, but despite apparent contradiction, they make the same point: The text interface requires more time to learn, in return for being more expressive and powerful. Whether that's worth it to you depends on how long you intend to live in that environment, and how rich an experience you'd like to have.

6y ago

aasasd 6y ago

Jef Raskin—who led the Macintosh project for the first year (though apparently the design was changed further later on)—worked afterwards on a concept that incorporated typed-in natural-language commands. In his Archy, commands were part of an unorthodox GUI system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy Archy clearly hails from the eighties when it was still imaginable to change users' workflow with desktop computers—that users would type a command while holding a special key (also apparently the author wasn't a touch typist). The commands feature, isolated, was later adapted by Jef's son Aza Raskin, first as Enso (if I'm not mistaken), and then as a Firefox extension Ubiquity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquity_(Firefox) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquity_(Firefox)

ttjjtt 6y ago
This post introduced me to Archy which is exciting to discover. The zoomable interface of Archy addresses something fundamental that always felt off about current desktop GUIs - the inability to get a meaningful overview, that include both folder structure and file contents , and to be the inability to switch from higher to lower levels of perspective in a continuous way. It seems like Archy made the directory structure appear like a topographical landscape. Current desktop GUIs instead feel like navigating an endless Russian doll of drawers.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  In case you aren't aware Eagle Mode [0] (a self-described advanced zoomable interface) exists. [0]http://eaglemode.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html http://eaglemode.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
- aasasd 6y ago
  ‘ZUI’ is a general approach, and there were a number of attempts at it. I've seen a bunch of ‘zoomable’ file managers here and there—however, since that's not my cup of tea, I don't actually remember any of them. But they exist, so I guess some googling might point you to them. Also I've heard about some ‘pasteboard’ service as an alternative to a internal corporate wiki: you likewise zoom around and slap content anywhere on the infinite canvas. The trick, of course, is to keep the content organized thematically and tidy it up so it can be found later. Again, chances are slim that I will remember the name of the service now. ‘Rizzoma’, which is a clone of the late Google Wave, may also be seen as ‘zoomable’

chmaynard 6y ago

Don Norman was a respected UI analyst during his days at Apple. How far he has fallen! I lost faith in his judgment after reading the NN/g article bashing PDF: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/pdf-unfit-for-human-consumption/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/pdf-unfit-for-human-consump...

mproud 6y ago

> Cray-on-a-chip RISC processors