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On October 25, 1988, I gave Steve Jobs a demo of pie menus, NeWS, UniPress Emacs and HyperTIES at the Educom conference in Washington DC. His reaction was to ju

On October 25, 1988, I gave Steve Jobs a demo of pie menus, NeWS, UniPress Emacs and HyperTIES at the Educom conference in Washington DC. His reaction was to jump up and down, point at the screen, and yell “That sucks! That sucks! Wow, that’s neat! That sucks!” I tried explaining how we’d performed an experiment proving pie menus were faster than linear menus, but he insisted the liner menus in NeXT Step were the best possible menus ever. When I explained to him how flexible NeWS was, he told me "I don't need flexibility -- I got my window system right the first time!" But who was I to rain on his parade, two weeks after the first release of NeXT Step 0.8? He just wasn't in the mood to be told that he could have a better user interface. So I gave him one of the a "NeRD" buttons I'd made for NeWS NeRDs, which he appreciated. Up to that time, NeXT was the most hyped piece of vaporware ever, and doubters were wearing t-shirts saying “NeVR Step”! Even after he went back to Apple, Steve Jobs never took a bite of Apple Pie Menus, the forbidden fruit. There’s no accounting for taste!

voidUpdate 1y ago
Do you mean like a radial menu? I love those and I don't understand why more software doesn't use them. The GTA V weapon wheel is a great interface for selecting a weapon, and they are really fast to use in Blender.
- DonHopkins 1y ago
  Yes that's right! The pie menus in Blender are wonderful, as is the whole Blender app, ecosystem, and community. Here's the paper we published in 1988 showing that pie menus were 15% faster and had significantly lower error rates than linear menus, which I 3/4 unsuccessfully tried to explain and demonstrate to Steve Jobs. (At least I got three "that sucks" to one "Wow, that’s neat" out of him. ;) An Empirical Comparison of Pie vs. Linear Menus. Jack Callahan, Don Hopkins, Mark Weiser, and Ben Shneiderman, ACM SIGCHI '88: https://donhopkins.medium.com/an-empirical-comparison-of-pie-vs-linear-menus-466c6fdbba4b https://donhopkins.medium.com/an-empirical-comparison-of-pie... The purpose of visualization is insight, not pictures: An interview with visualization pioneer Ben Shneiderman: https://medium.com/multiple-views-visualization-research-explained/the-purpose-of-visualization-is-insight-not-pictures-an-interview-with-visualization-pioneer-ben-beb15b2d8e9b https://medium.com/multiple-views-visualization-research-exp... Here is a 30 year retrospective of pie menus that I wrote 7 years ago (the 37 year anniversary of the paper is coming up in a few days on May 15): https://donhopkins.medium.com/pie-menus-936fed383ff1 https://donhopkins.medium.com/pie-menus-936fed383ff1 Lots of demos of different kinds of pie menus here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KfeHNIXYUc&list=PLX66BqHq0qTCWwzRxTJ-XQ8o5vP7pjDbv https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KfeHNIXYUc&list=PLX66BqHq0q... It's near impossible to convince people like Steve Jobs and organizations like Apple, Microsoft, Sun, Open Software Foundation, and even less open-to-outside-ideas open source projects like GIMP, to adopt unconventional ideas like pie menus. One of Blender's outstanding qualities is that they listen to their users and don't suffer from NIH syndrome, fortunately! I got frustrated at trying to get pie menus into official corporate user interface toolkits, and took a job in the game industry at Maxis, where you're not only allowed but even required to roll your own user interface, and got them into SimCity and The Sims: The Sims, Pie Menus, Edith Editing, and SimAntics Visual Programming Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exdu4ETscs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exdu4ETscs Open Sourcing SimCity, by Chaim Gingold: https://donhopkins.medium.com/open-sourcing-simcity-58470a275446 https://donhopkins.medium.com/open-sourcing-simcity-58470a27... X11 SimCity Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvi98wVUmQA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvi98wVUmQA Multi Player SimCityNet for X11 on Linux: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fVl4dGwUrA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fVl4dGwUrA Micropolis Online (SimCity) Web Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8snnqQSI0GE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8snnqQSI0GE

voidUpdate 1y ago

Do you mean like a radial menu? I love those and I don't understand why more software doesn't use them. The GTA V weapon wheel is a great interface for selecting a weapon, and they are really fast to use in Blender.

DonHopkins 1y ago
Yes that's right! The pie menus in Blender are wonderful, as is the whole Blender app, ecosystem, and community. Here's the paper we published in 1988 showing that pie menus were 15% faster and had significantly lower error rates than linear menus, which I 3/4 unsuccessfully tried to explain and demonstrate to Steve Jobs. (At least I got three "that sucks" to one "Wow, that’s neat" out of him. ;) An Empirical Comparison of Pie vs. Linear Menus. Jack Callahan, Don Hopkins, Mark Weiser, and Ben Shneiderman, ACM SIGCHI '88: https://donhopkins.medium.com/an-empirical-comparison-of-pie-vs-linear-menus-466c6fdbba4b https://donhopkins.medium.com/an-empirical-comparison-of-pie... The purpose of visualization is insight, not pictures: An interview with visualization pioneer Ben Shneiderman: https://medium.com/multiple-views-visualization-research-explained/the-purpose-of-visualization-is-insight-not-pictures-an-interview-with-visualization-pioneer-ben-beb15b2d8e9b https://medium.com/multiple-views-visualization-research-exp... Here is a 30 year retrospective of pie menus that I wrote 7 years ago (the 37 year anniversary of the paper is coming up in a few days on May 15): https://donhopkins.medium.com/pie-menus-936fed383ff1 https://donhopkins.medium.com/pie-menus-936fed383ff1 Lots of demos of different kinds of pie menus here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KfeHNIXYUc&list=PLX66BqHq0qTCWwzRxTJ-XQ8o5vP7pjDbv https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KfeHNIXYUc&list=PLX66BqHq0q... It's near impossible to convince people like Steve Jobs and organizations like Apple, Microsoft, Sun, Open Software Foundation, and even less open-to-outside-ideas open source projects like GIMP, to adopt unconventional ideas like pie menus. One of Blender's outstanding qualities is that they listen to their users and don't suffer from NIH syndrome, fortunately! I got frustrated at trying to get pie menus into official corporate user interface toolkits, and took a job in the game industry at Maxis, where you're not only allowed but even required to roll your own user interface, and got them into SimCity and The Sims: The Sims, Pie Menus, Edith Editing, and SimAntics Visual Programming Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exdu4ETscs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-exdu4ETscs Open Sourcing SimCity, by Chaim Gingold: https://donhopkins.medium.com/open-sourcing-simcity-58470a275446 https://donhopkins.medium.com/open-sourcing-simcity-58470a27... X11 SimCity Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvi98wVUmQA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvi98wVUmQA Multi Player SimCityNet for X11 on Linux: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fVl4dGwUrA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fVl4dGwUrA Micropolis Online (SimCity) Web Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8snnqQSI0GE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8snnqQSI0GE