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I find it curious that the menu bar in these patent example images is no longer pinned to an edge of the "screen." The major historical justification for the M
by DLWormwood 18y ago
I find it curious that the menu bar in these patent example images is no longer pinned to an edge of the "screen." The major historical justification for the Mac OS X having a single global menu bar was to exploit Fitt's Law by giving the menu bar an effective "infinite" height. Unless there is a pointing device that handles 3-D positioning or otherwise provides some feedback or scroll dampening when traversing a corner of this "virtual room," Apple may as just as well give up and pin menus with each window like all the more recent GUIs do...
- anewaccountname 18y agoThat was part of the justification. The other part is you get duplicate clutter all over the screen. 15 instances of "File, View, Preferences, Help" spammed all over your screen instead of one. When you almost never use a menu if the window doesn't already have focus.
- DLWormwood 18y agoI agree with that. (I'm a long time Mac user all the way back to the 68k era.) It's just that ever since Steve's return, there seems to be a subtle disregard for the history of the platform and a willing forgetfulness of the R&D effort expended by the company over the last few decades...
- unalone 18y agoHow so? I've only started following Apple in the last few years; my first Mac ran Leopard. Were there anything big that disregard previous usability, beyond the reflecting dock?
- DLWormwood 18y agoI know this is a late response, (I only just found it on my comments page) but major usability loss occured with the introduction of the "non-spatial" Finder with OS X. This guy summarizes things much better than I ever could... http://daringfireball.net/2002/11/that_finder_thing http://daringfireball.net/2002/11/that_finder_thing