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How Apple designs a virtual knob (2012)
- brudgers 1y agoUp and down virtual knobs are entirely unintuitive to me. I understand the rationalization, but a knob is not a slider and what's the point of non-skeuomorphic skeuomorphism?
- dsego 1y agoIt's a visually more compact interface element, but still allows the same simple interaction as a slider?
- brudgers 1y agoWe don't steer automobiles with reins because new technologies work better with interfaces that match their technological properties. We've learned a lot about human computer interaction since the 1970's.
- Dylan16807 1y agoWhat about this interface isn't matching the technological properties? Screens are good at showing tiny knobs. Mice are good at sliding.
- quitit 1y agoThis approach solves a common problem in apps that need to surface a lot of controls. Problem 1: Sliders take up a lot of space. Problem 2: Fine control of a mouse or touch-driven interface is provided by sliding, not by rotational gestures. The idea here is to use a virtual knob to save space, while providing the fine control possible with a sliding interface. The sliding direction is generally chosen to be intuitive to the function of the knob. (Locking to horizontal or vertical also assists with fine control.)
- brudgers 1y agoUsing a knob when using a knob doesn't solve the problem is poor design...then again, skeuomorphism is usually bad design. Here a counter that increases and decreases with mouse movement would take less space and be more intuitive. And a much much better design because it would provide a numerical readout of the value directly at the point of interaction. But in fairness, most design is bad because designers tend toward satisfying themselves rather than users...ok, I will stop ranting now.
- pegasus 1y agoA counter provides more information but takes longer to read and appreciate than a simple angular magnitude.
- quitit 1y ago[dead]
- notapenny 1y agoJust flat counter fields are terrible in audio software interfaces. Sliders and knobs give you visual feedback of where you are along a line and an easy way to quickly increase/decrease speed when adjusting. Most software I use does still show some numeric value somewhere, either around the element when changing it, or in some other panel. This way you get some more information than in the hardware equivalent if you need more granular control. Its particularly nice if they allow you to click/double-click for editing values. From my perspective as a user, knobs convey exactly what I need. Mostly I don't care about the exact number, just about what position something is in. Knobs behaving like sliders is fine. I'm not physically moving a knob, I might be moving it with a mouse or touchpad. You can't stray with a physical control the way you can with a digital one. And they allow interface designers to put a lot more information on screen where space is at a premium. Honestly, just go download a trial version of something like Reaper or Reason and go make some music. You'll get a better feel.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Synaesthesia 1y agoIt's quite common in DAWs, it allows you to adjust knobs quite easily with a mouse.
- duped 1y agoIt's a fixed size slider which uses the rotation of the indicator to tell you its position, instead of the position of a thumb in horizontal or vertical position. If you replaced it with text or a bar that filled the area it would be the same. It's better than a linear sliders because it takes up less space. It's better than a bar slider because you have more range to display (the length of the arc of the indicator is longer than the horizontal and vertical dimensions). This in turn makes it better for putting into tighter spaces.
- brudgers 1y agoYour rationals don’t mention users and if you are short on space, that’s poor design — just as a 12” (300mm) bedroom door would be poor design in a dwelling.
- duped 1y agoBy way of survivorship, every popular DAW and plugin responsible for music made over the last 30 years has made extensive use of knobs. If it's poor design that's news to the industry. Like if knobs suck, then every audio UI has always sucked.
- brnaftr361 1y agoI didn't read the writeup. The result was pretty gnarly. The active area on a phone left me scrolling up and down and I had to go very slow once I got purchase on the knob or it would rotate back after a quarter turn. Please no.
- hackernudes 1y agoAgree. Makes sense for a mouse cursor but not touch.
- amelius 1y agoHuh, the knob turns back when you attempt to turn it circularly (the most intuitive gesture). How difficult can it be to make a knob that works when turned both linearly and circularly?
- weinzierl 1y agoCame here to say that. They over-engineered it in a way that killed the only truly intuitive way to interact with a knob.
- hannesfur 1y agoHaving played a lot of MSFS 2020/2024 recently, I feel like I can appreciate this way more now. Since they have to make these knobs realistically and in 3D, when using them with a keyboard and mouse (or even worse a controller) it’s incredibly difficult to see and turn them. It gets even worse since you can push and pull many of these knobs (the difference being potentially catastrophic as well).
- bee_rider 1y agoInteresting. I could imagine a knob not being so bad with a controller. But maybe I’m miss-imagining or maybe they implemented it poorly.
- quaintdev 1y agoThe whole idea of knob is stupid both on touch screens as well as desktop. There are other good alternatives which are far more intuitive than knobs. Knobs are good when you can physically rotate them like for example in a car. But there we are removing knobs and adding touchscreens.
- LoganDark 1y agoHmm, for alternatives, are you thinking of things like spinboxes? (I know them mainly from Blender)
- MattPalmer1086 1y agoCompletely agree. They are very prevalent in DAWs and audio plugins, as they try to look like physical hardware. I absolutely hate interacting with them, either with touch or mouse. I guess the one advantage they have is they don't take up as much room as a slider, maybe?
- bigyabai 1y agoI tolerate knobs in DAWs/plugins... if they let you manually enter a value. So much fiddling can be skipped by dialing in a value directly. Without manual entry, you trap users in fiddly UI hell.
- dleeftink 1y agoWhen knobs are fiddly, most VST3s offer high-resolution midi mapping for precise automation. I agree through, that a precise readout is a must as the 'knob units' may not always map to what is displayed by the VST host.
- hermitwriter 1y agoDesigning 3D real-world interactions for 2D screens is fun. Literally fun. Rarely useful.
- sethwebster 1y ago
- surfingdino 1y ago[flagged]
- dang 1y agoPlease don't do this here.
- alberth 1y agoQuickTime use to have a wheel as a volume control. It’s was a pain to use and they later dropped it for a slider. http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/qtime.htm http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/qtime.htm
- Cockbrand 1y agoYou beat me to posting this. When this version of the QuickTime player came out, I couldn't understand how Apple of all companies could ship this obviously awkward control. Edit: Scrolling further down on the article, I get reminded of the weird pop-out drawer at the bottom of the player. I had totally forgotten about it, and it was also a very awkward and un-ergonomic piece of UI.
- 62 1y agoI don't know who they think they are fooling but these are all garbage. Jerky and frustrating to use, same as always.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dvh 1y agoThe one called garage band synth knob with 17 images is available as MF-A01 in real life. But beware there are 2 versions with same model number get the one with the set screw and brass bushing.
- ranger207 1y ago> After using the knobs in Garageband for a while, I noticed that they didn’t always react the way I thought they would. Most of the time the little indicator dot on the knob would follow my finger as I spun the knob around in a circle. Other times the knob wouldn’t follow my finger at all and seemed to go in random directions. I eventually figured out that I had stumbled on three different ways to turn a virtual knob. > ... > Apple’s attention to detail is what has propelled it to be the most valuable company on earth. Whether it’s the click of a physical button or the math behind inertial scrolling, Apple employees work really hard to make products that are deceptively simple and just feel right. The virtual knobs found in Garageband are no exception and I hope others enjoyed learning about them as much as I have. I think these two statements are contradictory. Personally, I've noticed a pattern when people post about Apple UX that seems to go "yes this thing may be unintuitive but actually it's a sign of really good design!" that I can't quite seem to wrap my head around
- al_borland 1y agoI think it's more that someone may assume how something works, and it isn't exactly that, so they say it's unintuitive. But there could be multiple assumptions on how it should work on first use. Covering all of those possibilities, and integrating them into a cohesive experience that works the first time, and makes even more sense as you continue to use it and learn the other ways to interact, shows a strong attention to detail and design. This is opposed to something that may be very intuitive for 30% of people, but the other 70% are lost, and the implementation doesn't scale.
- PunchyHamster 1y agoI think in UX there is general lack of desire to properly explain how stuff works instead of relying on just "guessing user expectations right" like if said knob just displayed a vertical bar with marks signalling up and down also works it would be very clear to person that tried to just spin it
- capex 1y ago
- Zak 1y agoI'm amused by the contrast between Apple's attention to detail on the implementation and their failure to recognize that a virtual knob with a touchscreen or mouse is a fundamentally bad idea. The author also makes this error, praising Apple's design prowess and denigrating its competition while failing to recognize they "didn’t always react the way I thought they would" because they're ill-suited to the medium.
- oncallthrow 1y agoLiterally every DAW has knobs everywhere: it would be impossible to use sliders everywhere in a DAW's UI, there simply isn't enough room.
- HeWhoLurksLate 1y agowas going to say, heaven forbid we use a little skeumorphism
- o11c 1y ago"Make [a slider] bigger while the mouse button is held down, and warp the mouse so that when you let go you pick up where you left off" has been a solved problem for decades. And with traditional toolkits (i.e. not HTML) it will even be fast.
- llbbdd 1y agoThis would be a few lines of CSS and it would be very fast
- baxuz 1y agoIt's not all about the interaction, but also the visual representation which can be much finer and granular in small spaces with a knob. I can make a 16x16px knob where you can see almost the entire 320° of the range. It's also easier to see fractions, such as 1/2, 1/3 or 1/4. Sliders, especially in 16px possess none of those.
- duped 1y ago
- jasonjmcghee 1y agoPretty interesting- on the first knob (with vertical and horizontal disabled) works great with how I thought the horizontal and vertical gestures were supposed to work - the difference being I did them on the edges instead of the center. I found this knob to be the best experience. Curious if others feel strongly for the centered experience.
- nixpulvis 1y agoIronically, this post perfectly demonstrates up why these gestures should not be used together. I could not reliably make it trigger one vs. the other and which mode it selects is not something the code can detect without continued input which will lead to discontinuities in value.
- HPsquared 1y agoIt gets very glitchy if the pointer/finger is near the centre of the knob. Really that area should be disabled or "worked around" somehow. The hard part is you can't stop the user's finger/pointer from crossing through the middle, like a physical knob does by its physical construction. So there's a mismatch there.
- SonOfLilit 1y agoThis is not an Apple original design, this is standard fare in DAWs and VST plugins and has been since at least the early 00s. In the beginning of the article he talks about context menus as something that is not one GUI's but just standard in the industry - these knob interactions are like that for the audio industry.
- JeremyHerrman 1y agoauthor here - I was specifically talking about digital knobs on touch screens having both spin gestures AND horizontal/vertical slide gestures. If you can point me to a DAW besides Garageband on iPad which was on a touchscreen with those three gestures I would love to try it out!
- squeaky-clean 1y agoThose gestures have been pretty standard with mouse movements in music software for a while. Apple brought it to touchscreen, but they didn't invent the multi gesture knob interface. I had a Novation Zero SL mkii in 2008 which had a "universal knob". It acted as an HID mouse input and when you spun the knob it would click your mouse and drag it vertically. It worked with most music software at the time because vertically dragging a knob had become fairly standard.
- JeremyHerrman 1y agooh wow this is my article! wild to see it pick up traction after 13 years. I guess I should probably publish more of my drafts... Thanks for reading/commenting!
- 1oooqooq 1y agofanboys are out of this world. i can guarantee the only reason there's 3 input types for the knobs, is because three different teams did their own thing and nobody cares.
- talkingtab 1y agoIt is interesting how opinionated people are. Personally, I think we just don't know enough to do a reasonable assessment. If we had some example of where a knob might be good and then try to understand whether it was good and if not, why not? One of the issues (in my opinion) is how much control per pixel you get from a control. Certainly a knob has more control factors than a button. If nothing else you can click it and turn it. In the same size, a knob has much more control effect. The other issue is how easily and comfortable a person can be using the control. This is complicated. If you see something on a screen that looks like something from the real world, then you have an idea of how to use it. And many of us became very comfortable with the old goofy Windows controls. But initial comfort is not necessary. Learned comfort is. If initially we don't know what it can do and how to use it, can we learn and once we do will we be comfortable? It is not straight forward. The challenge I face is using a very small form factor - a mobile phone screen - to inter operate with complex systems and vast amounts of data. The fact that it embodies more control factors in a small package makes it interesting.
- twodave 1y agoIt would be nice if these had a 4th way of manipulating: focus + up/down arrows. They’re pretty inaccessible as is.
- notpushkin 1y agoI love how it’s handled in design software. Drag on a numeric value and it adjusts. I think it works the same in some DAWs for cases where you can display a numeric value / note / etc, but I guess in many cases knobs don’t have that and it’s some abstract percentage thing instead?
- Razengan 1y agoThis year so much has gone to shit in Apple's OSes (Tahoe and the other version 26 ones) it's unbelievable. Did some CxO let their brother-in-law's cousin's nephew have a go at managing all the teams? I haven't felt this kind of frustration with an operating system since jumping from the Microsoft ship during Windows 8. Some basic UI is literally unreadable on the dumbass "glass" implementation. There are blatant rendering bugs and placeholders still in the shipped version, just look at the effing Contacts app. DRM slowdowns have crippled the Music and TV apps so much I literally cancelled my subscription and went back to piracy. I'd post example screenshots but I already wasted enough time just writing this ragecomment.
- putna 1y agosad this attention to details is gone
- putna 1y agosad this attention to details is gone
- jheriko 1y ago[dead]
- som 1y agoA circular man proto I put together a little while back https://codepen.io/theprojectsomething/pen/JjmgXrg?editors=0010 https://codepen.io/theprojectsomething/pen/JjmgXrg?editors=0...
- amadeuspagel 1y agoI don't find these knobs any less irritating then the knobs in other music software. Sliders are the perfect way to change numbers with a mouse or a touchscreen. I don't understand why music software sticks to a level of skeuomorphism that has been abandoned in every other field.
- ano-ther 1y agoThe knob is clever and very well emulates a physical knob. That's not a good design for an on-screen one though. - Going "around the rim" in an arc is difficult both for touch and mouse. Results in jerky motion. - Defining the direction based on which outer rim I am closer to makes it unpredictable, especially for small knobs. Best in my opinion is the "click / hold the knob and pull vertically or horizontally with up/right turning to the right. Makes it fast and predictable even with little space like a DAW audio mixer.
- adamauckland 1y agoThere's a lot of people complaining "Why use knobs?" and a lot more people giving the reason "Because DAWs use them" without explaining why DAWs use them. First, it's a visual representation of the value, and it's easier to map "Slightly more to the right" than "an extra 0.7" More importantly, all DAWs can map physical control surfaces to the on-screen knobs, and control surfaces all use knobs and sliders. For example https://mackie.com/en/products/mixers/onyx-series/Onyx16.html https://mackie.com/en/products/mixers/onyx-series/Onyx16.htm... or https://faderfox.de/pc12.html https://faderfox.de/pc12.html
- lunias 1y agoSeems like a "can't see the forest for the trees" situation... skeuomorphism gone wild.