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Back around Vista time I went to watch a talk by one of MS's UI designers about all the time and effort they'd put into designing the Vista interface. He gave a
by drcongo 5y ago
Back around Vista time I went to watch a talk by one of MS's UI designers about all the time and effort they'd put into designing the Vista interface. He gave a demo showing a walk-through of some set-up "wizard" and talked about all the details he thought were important. At no point did he mention the fact that depending on which screen you were on the "next" and "previous" buttons would swap places with the "cancel" button. If you tried to skip quickly through a setup wizard by clicking on the "next" button, you'd cancel everything on screen 4.
This perfectly summed up Microsoft's understanding of UX to me. The things MS cares about in design are entirely unrelated to the things users care about. Users want to know where the next button is without having to hunt for it. Users want to not accidentally cancel something they've already spent time on. In many ways, this encapsulated Vista as a whole. None of that OS was made for the user, it was all territorial infighting inside MS.
Sadly, I think Apple has lost this focus now too. The Touch Bar is a load of accidents waiting to happen at any given time, and the new dialog boxes with a stack of buttons below remove the ability to use muscle memory to hit the right one and need to be scanned every time.
- nindalf 5y agoWith any luck the Touch Bar is on its way out. The M1 MacBook Air doesn’t have it and is honestly a better laptop for that sole reason.
- Ashanmaril 5y agoThat was mostly based off the base-model 13" MacBook Pro from before which didn't have a touchbar.
- arn 5y agoThere are legit rumors that Apple is specifically killing the Touch Bar as well.
- Ashanmaril 5y agoI know, I'm just saying the M1 MBP isn't an indicator because it's not a new design.
- aroman 5y agoNo, it is based on leaked schematics[1] from one of Apple's component suppliers who were the unfortunate victims of a ransomeware attach. [1] https://www.macrumors.com/2021/04/21/macbook-pro-stolen-schematics-ports/ https://www.macrumors.com/2021/04/21/macbook-pro-stolen-sche...
- Ashanmaril 5y agoI'm aware of the leaks/rumors, but I'm saying the M1 MBP isn't any indication. It's not an entirely newly designed body, just the old base model with a new processor (and I think the new non-butterfly keyboard?)
- aroman 5y agoI don’t follow. The leaks indicate Apple is planning a fully designed MBP. The schematics show a completely redesigned chassis and the removal of the touch bar. i’m not sure why the current M1 MBP is relevant here.
- alas_coo 5y agoThe introduction of invisible gesture control on iOS was the end of UX for Apple.
- hangonhn 5y agoDoes anyone else have this issue? On a Macbook Pro with Touchbar, when you bring up Quicktime to do a screen recording, there are no controls to stop the recording on the screen. All the controls are now in the Touchbar. OK, brilliant. Except when I have the laptop closed and connected to an external monitor. It took me 30 minutes to figure this out. So I HAD to do my screen recording with the laptop open. Not the end of the world but wish there was a warning, etc. Maybe my MBP preferences are setup incorrectly but Apple does have a tendency to hide those controls too. :-/
- auiya 5y agoIsn't Apple walking-back that whole Touch Bar fiasco now?
- Ashanmaril 5y agoThat's the rumor, but nothing official has been shown off yet
- tomduncalf 5y agoInteresting point about the new dialog button layout. I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re right, it is a step back in that regard!
- walrus01 5y agoOEMs also shipped Vista on laptops with as little as 256MB of RAM, where the silly thing was immediately deep into swap space (on a slow 4200 or 5400 rpm 2.5" spinning hard drive) immediately after booting. It was the most excruciating experience.
- mustacheemperor 5y agoAnd on the other hand 4GB or more of ram would require Vista 64bit, which today remains the most crash-prone and unstable leaky bucket of an operating system I’ve ever been subjected to, at least in the first year of release.
- anthk 5y agoNo it doesn't. Both Windows and Linux have PAE.
- mustacheemperor 5y agoAha, thanks for the correction! This was based on some distant, traumatic memories with an HP Touchsmart prebuilt.
- Imnimo 5y agoSometimes my work-issued Macbook decides that it no longer wants to display an escape key on the touch bar (and there is no physical escape key). People joke about not knowing how to exit vi, but it turns out the game is even harder when your machine takes away your escape key!
- LennyWhiteJr 5y agoRemap caps lock to escape.
- Imnimo 5y agoYeah, I strongly considered that last time it happened. Eventually I was able to fix it by restarting a few processes related to the touchbar, and decided to leave well enough alone for fear of breaking something else. I think if it starts happening more frequently, I'll remap it.
- jeromenerf 5y agoCapslock as esc/ctrl is great. Or Delete/Cmd. Whatever actually, as long as it’s not capslock.
- pkulak 5y agoI'm a big fan of using "jj".
- artificialLimbs 5y agoI use kj to save time. ;)
- wildrhythms 5y ago+1 One of my most impactful "ergonomic" changes I've made!
- dharmab 5y agoThankfully they gave us back the physical escape key in the next version! I had the version you're using for 3 years as a work issued machine. Between the touchbar and the butterfly keyboard repeatedly failing on me it was pretty bad.
- olyjohn 5y agoYou'd think they'd figure out by now how to build a website that doesn't redirect you 50 times and break your back button.
- Saris 5y agoThe centered taskbar in Windows 11 is a perfect example of this kind of stuff, instead of muscle memory to click something you have to hunt for it because everything moves around.
- NoblePublius 5y agoSteve Jobs would have never let the TouchBar come to market, if not outright fire the inventor of it. I’m on my second MacBook Air because of how bad is touchbar.
- vkou 5y agoSteve Jobs championed the abomination that was the hockey puck mouse, and did not think that mice, in general, needed more than one button.
- NoblePublius 5y agoSingle click is still the default on every mac. You have to turn on right click clicking. Most don’t.
- ramesh31 5y ago>Steve Jobs would have never let the TouchBar come to market, if not outright fire the inventor of it. Same with the stupid camera lens bump that is now ubiquitous across the iPhone. I just picture some engineer walking into his office to show him the iPhone 7 prototype, and he flips it over, runs his fingers over that bump, and fires the guy on the spot.
- bluedino 5y agoIf you want to see horrible, horrible UX, check out Microsoft 365. Everything is a giant mess, violating every rule in the book. Azure, Exchange, nothing even looks like it’s from the same company.
- slumdev 5y agoThe Office UI, in general, hasn't improved since 2007 introduced the ribbon. Recent changes to Outlook make it seem like nobody at MS is even thinking about these issues.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y agoNot to mention by default assuming an executable download outside of the appstore must be malicious so you have to jump through red tape just to enable it. It's like they assume all their users are just morons and can't be trusted.
- markkanof 5y agoI remember around this time talking with a coworker about the Vista UI and questioning why they made the start button smaller, round, and protruding out above the taskbar. He looked at me with credulity and said “they made it look like a gem”. From his perspective this completely explained and justified the change. But from my perspective I was even more confused.
- dhosek 5y agoI'm in the minority on this, but I like the touch bar, especially in the newer Macbooks which have restored the physical escape key. I can never remember what F-key is supposed to do what and having contextually significant buttons that I can press is, for me at least, an improvement. When I'm using my Macbook docked with my big monitor and with an external keyboard and trackpad, I'll sometimes still reach over to the Mac keyboard to use the touchbar for things like stepping through the debugger.