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> I’m hoping that the post-Ive Apple - an Apple more comfortable with “pro” users and beauty in utility versus form - will try to fix that one… and bring back a

> I’m hoping that the post-Ive Apple - an Apple more comfortable with “pro” users and beauty in utility versus form - will try to fix that one… and bring back all the good Mission Control stuff from Snow Leopard (which IMO is the greatest OS ever released). I wouldn't hold my breath. They've been gradually hiding controls behind buttons and popovers. The proxy icon (folder or document icon in the title bar of a window) was hidden by default in I believe Big Sur. There's a `defaults` command to make it visible at all times in Monterey, but hiding it is a foolish design choice on Apple's part. Look at the debacle with Safari last year. The software is form over function for the last few years. I can't remember the name of the guy everyone blames for this, but he talks about minimalism and reducing app UI in favor of putting content forward during OS feature reveals. The approach is completely backwards, imo. BTW: thanks for the tip about Listary. I'll check it out.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
> There's a `defaults` command to make it visible at all times in Monterey, but hiding it is a foolish design choice on Apple's part. It's also a setting under Accessibility > Display > Show window title icons, so there's little danger of it disappearing since it's not a hidden setting.
- jen20 4y ago
  You can also hover over the title to get the proxy to appear.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
I worked on the Preview app for a number of years during a time when the app more or less flew under the radar. It was easy then to simply add features that "we" wanted as users of the app. At that time, the design team was less interested in Preview, more interested in Mail and Safari (of course). Design would come in and maybe tell us to put the thumbnail drawer on the right vs. the left. Honestly, I think the design team found Preview useful as well and didn't stand in our way when we wanted to add "instant alpha" or simple annotations.....
- dschuessler 4y ago
  I love HN for tech discussions in which the actual people involved pop up. Thank you for that great piece of software you worked on. Out of curiosity, was there a team exclusively dedicated to the Preview app? How autonomous were you in deciding how to improve the application?
  - JKCalhoun 4y ago
    At first Preview landed in my lap exclusively. Someone had shimmed in some code to open Quicktime image types that NSImage (NeXTStep, AppKit) did not recognize — "BMP" just as an example. I was told, "Hey, we have a rich PDF API/SPI in CoreGraphics (Quartz2D) maybe you can beef up our PDF support in Preview." PDF at that time was quickly rasterized (by AppKit) and really treated no differently than, say, a multi-page TIFF file in Preview. As I started to switch over to rendering PDF's using CoreGraphics rather than NSImage, another engineer (Werner) took over the image side of Preview. For a while then it was a team of two — me and Werner. Werner did the image side (but also owned and had responsibility for ImageIO) and I did the PDF side (I eventually wrote PDFKit but also had things like the Displays Prefs pane, some Color Sync stuff as my other responsibilities as well). Werner is smarter than me though so where there were shared resources in Preview (like the toolbar, for example) often Werner handled that. What I gave above is more or less the direction we were given — so there was a good deal of autonomy. I think everyone sort of had their hands full just trying to get a new graphics system up and running and to move functionality over from System 9 to OS X such that Werner and I were free to just add the stuff we wanted. Initially I think we tried to keep some commonality — if images could be rotated, I would try to also rotate PDFs. Image zoom in/out? PDF zoom in/out. But when I added text handling (text selection, search) we kind of acknowledged that the two really were separate beasts. I was surprised later though when the same annotations I had added to support PDF also were added as mark-up tools to images (I was no longer on the team then as I recall). Preview eventually went to its own team though and the engineers working on it did not have other duties/distractions like Werner and I. This is when signatures, instant-alpha, and other niceties were added. I definitely enjoyed the years Werner and I were on it and we could just add "cool stuff" we wanted. I remember someone asking for the "blank page" feature — where you can insert a blank page into a PDF – it allows you to play with even/oddness (front/backedness) of pages when printing 2-up. It was cool so we added it. I like to point out that "we" were the users of the app as much (or more so) than some manager up the chain. To that end, I always felt we more or less knew what users wanted. I think eventually the designers came to use Preview quite a bit and so had their own suggestions but they certainly weren't standing in our way early on.
333c 4y ago
> I can't remember the name of the guy everyone blames for this, but he talks about minimalism and reducing app UI in favor of putting content forward during OS feature reveals I believe you might be referring to Jony Ive (who is named in the portion you quoted). He left Apple a few years ago, which is what the comment you quote is talking about.
- alsetmusic 4y ago
  No, the person I’m thinking of is his successor. Ive ruined a lot of UI, but I’ve known his name for many years.

kitsunesoba 4y ago

> There's a `defaults` command to make it visible at all times in Monterey, but hiding it is a foolish design choice on Apple's part. It's also a setting under Accessibility > Display > Show window title icons, so there's little danger of it disappearing since it's not a hidden setting.

jen20 4y ago
You can also hover over the title to get the proxy to appear.

JKCalhoun 4y ago

I worked on the Preview app for a number of years during a time when the app more or less flew under the radar. It was easy then to simply add features that "we" wanted as users of the app. At that time, the design team was less interested in Preview, more interested in Mail and Safari (of course). Design would come in and maybe tell us to put the thumbnail drawer on the right vs. the left. Honestly, I think the design team found Preview useful as well and didn't stand in our way when we wanted to add "instant alpha" or simple annotations.....

dschuessler 4y ago
I love HN for tech discussions in which the actual people involved pop up. Thank you for that great piece of software you worked on. Out of curiosity, was there a team exclusively dedicated to the Preview app? How autonomous were you in deciding how to improve the application?
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  At first Preview landed in my lap exclusively. Someone had shimmed in some code to open Quicktime image types that NSImage (NeXTStep, AppKit) did not recognize — "BMP" just as an example. I was told, "Hey, we have a rich PDF API/SPI in CoreGraphics (Quartz2D) maybe you can beef up our PDF support in Preview." PDF at that time was quickly rasterized (by AppKit) and really treated no differently than, say, a multi-page TIFF file in Preview. As I started to switch over to rendering PDF's using CoreGraphics rather than NSImage, another engineer (Werner) took over the image side of Preview. For a while then it was a team of two — me and Werner. Werner did the image side (but also owned and had responsibility for ImageIO) and I did the PDF side (I eventually wrote PDFKit but also had things like the Displays Prefs pane, some Color Sync stuff as my other responsibilities as well). Werner is smarter than me though so where there were shared resources in Preview (like the toolbar, for example) often Werner handled that. What I gave above is more or less the direction we were given — so there was a good deal of autonomy. I think everyone sort of had their hands full just trying to get a new graphics system up and running and to move functionality over from System 9 to OS X such that Werner and I were free to just add the stuff we wanted. Initially I think we tried to keep some commonality — if images could be rotated, I would try to also rotate PDFs. Image zoom in/out? PDF zoom in/out. But when I added text handling (text selection, search) we kind of acknowledged that the two really were separate beasts. I was surprised later though when the same annotations I had added to support PDF also were added as mark-up tools to images (I was no longer on the team then as I recall). Preview eventually went to its own team though and the engineers working on it did not have other duties/distractions like Werner and I. This is when signatures, instant-alpha, and other niceties were added. I definitely enjoyed the years Werner and I were on it and we could just add "cool stuff" we wanted. I remember someone asking for the "blank page" feature — where you can insert a blank page into a PDF – it allows you to play with even/oddness (front/backedness) of pages when printing 2-up. It was cool so we added it. I like to point out that "we" were the users of the app as much (or more so) than some manager up the chain. To that end, I always felt we more or less knew what users wanted. I think eventually the designers came to use Preview quite a bit and so had their own suggestions but they certainly weren't standing in our way early on.

333c 4y ago

> I can't remember the name of the guy everyone blames for this, but he talks about minimalism and reducing app UI in favor of putting content forward during OS feature reveals I believe you might be referring to Jony Ive (who is named in the portion you quoted). He left Apple a few years ago, which is what the comment you quote is talking about.

alsetmusic 4y ago
No, the person I’m thinking of is his successor. Ive ruined a lot of UI, but I’ve known his name for many years.