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Jef Raskin On OS X: "It's UNIX, It's backwards."
Posted by
Hemos
on Thu Feb 01, 2001 04:05 PM
from the sure-to-spark-controversy dept.
from the sure-to-spark-controversy dept.
drfalken writes "Interesting piece here about OS X from Jef Raskin's point-of-view (he was one of the wizards behind the original Mac GUI). He thinks that even the concept of an OS is a hold over from an older era, and that work should be done to get the user closer to the app. I dunno if I agree. "
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Jef Raskin On OS X: "It's UNIX, It's backwards."
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Re:We are approaching the days of the final app. (Score:4)
The servers you speak of are actually "slightlly thicker clients" connected to "almost fat clients" connected to "so close to servers that you can't really tell the difference clients" connected to Bill G's personal desktop. Think Amway and you're almost there.
Jef's right -- to an extent (Score:3)
Criticizing OSX because it is an OS is rather pointless, in my opinion. OSX is what Mac users (and arguably, the industry as a whole) needs today. In ten years, the world may look more like Jef's view of it, but there's still al lot more work to do. Appliances will probably become more like PCs, and PCs more like appliances until we find some sort of happy medium that works for most people.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu [wildtofu.com]
Re:price effectiveness (Score:4)
<stepping onto soapbox>
At the rate software "technology" is going, it will never happen, as word processors and browsers keep growing in their memory consumption, at about the same rate as the prices decrease.
Consider, if you will, running Netscape 1.1 and MS Word 4.0 (admittedly only on the Mac). Netscape 1.1 ran on PCs with 8 megs of RAM, perhap better than today's 4.x and 6.0 versions, and MS Word 4.0 worked quite well about 1.5 megs of ram allocated to it. These apps were about as responsive, perhaps better in many ways (on 486/68040 CPUs) as today's versions. It's amazing that today's word processors and browsers aren't any faster (often slower) and exceed the computer's memory capacity, despite a 20 to 40 fold increase in CPU speed and 6 to 10 fold increase in available memory.
<steping off soapbox now...>
Embedded Versus General Purpose Systems (Score:3)
- Embedded special purpose systems
- General purpose computer systems
There is a place for both approaches to computing, and the growth of PDAs may be suggestive of a way of "melding" them in a useful way.Such as an "address book," an "email system," a "web browser," a "word processor" and such.
There do exist appliances of these various sorts.
Unix is the "granddaddy" of this sort of thing; with the "duct tape" of scripting languages, you can readily hook together a Unix box to do a vast assortment of different sorts of stuff.
PDAs like the PalmComputing platform provide somewhat "dumbed down" interfaces, and are nevertheless useful. Due to limited screen, memory, and storage, they are largely kept to more "appliance-like" applications.
The long term might well move towards having homes that use a paradigm somewhat reminiscent of this, with a "server" in a back room that provides Internet access, storage of documents, and a repository for "scheduled stuff." It would be entirely sensible for this to be something like a Unix box.
There would then be "satellite" systems around the house, including:
These would be well-suited to "document processing."
Virtually all of these could be implemented as "general purpose computers," but you're then left with the job of having to manage all the computer systems.
It would be rather more attractive for most of these to instead be "appliances" that connect to a central "home server."
Various of them make more sense if you integrate a PDA into the appliance, and have a wireless local connection so that they can get at the data on a local server.
I would think it a slick idea to have a PDA running Linux, but that doesn't mean that I want to use a stylus to write in cd ~/addressbook; grep -i browne * | grep -i david | phonehome to dial my brother's phone number. The merit of running Linux would be that of having a well-understood robust portable platform for the developer. Given those things, to make life easy for developers, I'd be more than happy to have hardware where I press a couple of buttons to search for names in an address book.
I would think it a suboptimal thing to just use a bunch of completely independent appliances, as with "MailStations" and such; the step forward is to have the appliances, and have a way for them to interoperate usefully with a "home server."
Re:A Limited Vision (Score:4)
It's ironic that you accuse Raskin of having "A Limited Vision" when yours is just as limited!
Why not wait and see what it's like using these distributed types of applications before slamming them? To me, being able to have my desktop and all programs available from ANY WEB BROWSING DEVICE is unbelievably cool. It will probably take 2-3 years for the speed of the net and the quality of these types of applications to become really satisfactory, but have some patience, and a little "Vision," why don't you?
-thomas
Re:Prompts (Score:3)
The difference is that you are using linguistic constructs to effect an action; UNIX command shells have a syntax approaching that of a simple yet powerful language. On the other hand, most people deal with computers through mechanical constructs, e.g. "Press this button", and the GUI/OS edifice merely serves to confuse them, especially those who can't visualize operating system constructs (files, directories) into internal representation of physical objects. They simply press a button "download this" and don't understand what happened to the file. They expect a concrete, finite amount of knobs and tools that produce a finite, limited amount of results.
So for those users, the idea of a magic box with magic buttons that just do what they want it to do is in fact what they really want. I fully expect that for this reason, we will see a simplified PC where applications are no more complex (or piratable) than a springboard module for the Visor. Such a device will be hugely popular; it also avoids the mistakes of the "network appliance" or .NET models. People expect and want concreteness and physical availability.
These devices are more likely to run linux in some embedded sense than anything else. It's a perfect toolkit to produce these machines, eventually.
But for those of us who use these devices for any reason outside the 90% that most people do - cutting edge gamers, programmers, people who work with databases, etc, the flexibility of a multi-purpose device is paramount. It must do magic, and we will learn the proper incantations. The PC will not die, but it will become ossified and optimized into such devices to such a degree that most will no longer need to be aware of it's inner workings - and in my experience, they close their eyes to it already.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
It's time Apple went backwards, just a bit (Score:3)
I look forward to watching the arguments between folks who think OS X is better because of it's ease of use vs. those who love it because it is BSD underneath.
Rasking is trying to rewrite history (Score:3)
One of the pioneers in this area was probably Smalltalk, which provided a tightly integrated set of applications and let applications easily share data. Data in Smalltalk is, in a sense, "self-describing", so it can be exchanged easily between different parts of the system. And because Smalltalk is a safe language, errors in one application would usually not kill another application. That made it possible to build fairly large systems of closely interacting parts.
UNIX, of course, came more out of a mainframe tradition. For its applications, it made sense to isolate processes well from one another. And that's why programming languages for UNIX and mainframe systems do not have to be particularly safe (the operating system will prevent the worst disasters from happening), and because they can't easily exchange data, data doesn't have to be self-describing.
Apple copied the look of the Smalltalk interfaces but tried to build them out of what amounts to mainframe languages without even the benefit of mainframe process protection. The result was a system that was quite unreliable, leading eventually to the adoption of memory protection. But I guess some people at Apple, like Raskin, eventually figured out their mistake.
The yearning for a Smalltalk-like system is also expressed by de Icaza and Microsoft, who come up with all sorts of complex COM-like systems.
The fact is that the industry is still in a state of confusion. Many programemrs are too conservative to give up their mainframe style tools, but they still want to build Smalltalk-like dekstop systems. The result of using the wrong tool for the job is desktop software that ends up being both bloated and complex, and still is lacking in integration and extensiblity. This is, sadly, true for MacOS X as much as for Windows, Gnome, and KDE.
I couldn't disagree more (Score:3)
An OS is *not* something that gets between a user and what they want to do. Instead, it's the tool that provides consistent services to both the user and the applications running on it.
An OS provides:
- device access
- task management (multitasking)
- one or more interfaces for the user (yes, I think interfaces are becoming a part of the OS. Live with it.)
How would Rankin's ideas be implemented if *not* for an OS? How would a system be consistent and user-friendly without an OS+interface?
I just can't see it?
Re:I couldn't disagree more (Score:4)
Walk up to an Apple Cube+SE with Bluetooth and wireless firewire and, miraculously...
It detects your PDA and starts synching
It detects your MP3 player and starts up background processes to configure and transfer music
It detects your cell phone/pager unit and starts updating information
Then when you sit down to the OS, and start on a document, that application gains central focus. They tried this in OS X with the one application mode, but that sorta lost out to general opinion.
Their view that the Finder is just an application into browsing and viewing the PC and network, and not the PC or network itself, is one step I think. It's a very strong bias into the shaping of what the user thinks the PC or network is, but it can be swapped out into an email program, so that the network appears to be email lists, users, websites, emails, notes, attachments, and local storage. Or switch it into a web browser, and the device starts to look like web pages, music, movies, external sites, local storage, and information.
Does that sound right?
Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]
Reasons we have OS's (Score:3)
-Portability: not everyone makes the same hardware, and you want your app to run on as many systems as possible.
-Security: without an OS, there is no security whatsoever, except that built into the application; though, windows is ahead of the curve in this case - it has no security models and very little protection against a runaway app determined to trash the system. Most (all) other operating systems provide protection in the form of permissions against poorly-written or exploitable apps.
-Ease of programming: without an OS to provide an additional abstraction layer, programming must interface directly to the hardware, a nightmare of excess code that should only need to be written once.
Tiny little embedded systems designed to serve only one purpose might be better off without a true OS. A complex piece of hardware will never operate without a full OS. Think of the complexity that goes into the linux kernel, and think about the fact that only one application could run at any given time without the OS to run them in separate virtual machines.
--nick
Not new... (Score:5)
They all fail for the same reason. Joe Blow gets the thing home and uses it for a week just like IBM et.al. intended. Then he heads over to CompUSA and sees how the $10 calendar program lets him put his own pictures on a calendar. "Why can't my computer do that?" he ask. Then he gets mad at whoever it was that sold him the computer in the first place, and starts looking to buy a real computer.
Computers are complex and get in the way, because people want to do complex things that go in so many different directions that no matter where the OS is it is bound to be in the way eventually.
"Former MacOS developer wishes OS's would fade..." (Score:5)
Good point... (Score:5)
Hmm...but I want to run more than one...hey wait a minute, I have a great idea! Let's get rid of the OS and just make an app. We'll have the app hold a bunch of shared files, and then we can fiddle with it so it allows multiple instances of one program. No wait, let's make it so we can run a bunch of different apps at once and change between them. And let's make our app "special" so that if one of the mini-apps breaks, the big app can just kill it without the mini-app taking out the whole system. Man, this is going to be GREAT!
Oh yeah, that app would be an, uh, OPERATING SYSTEM. Oops.
The article says nothing, and has no clue. (Score:4)
- "Raskin goes on to illustrate that a computer should be as easy to use as to start typing on a keyboard to open a word processor -- with no lost keystrokes, or to put a stylus to a tablet and start drawing in a graphics app."
This is all very nice and good, but what if you wanted to use a spreadsheet instead? Not everyone wants to only use a word processor. You have to decide what you're going to do mentally, then tell the computer "I'd like to do this now." Just because I start typing numbers doesn't mean I want to create a spreadsheet, but then again typing words doesn't mean that I'm continuing with my novel - I could be typing the headings for my spreadsheet.- "The idea of walking up to a PC in sleep mode and hitting a button, which would instantly activate a specific app, is compelling. The OS would manage all the applications in the background. If you wanted to switch apps, you hit another hot key. Work files could be stored in yet another "button." Interactivity between the apps could be facilitated the same way they are now, with a GUI shell, but without the preponderance of icons, start menus and switchers, and without the tedious effort of installing apps via the GUI or customizing your environment."
Okay, so now I need a keyboard which has an extra 20 buttons for the apps that I want to be able to access. Great. Saving state on exit is a good idea, but that can already be done. You may have already seen it - it's the 'document changed; save?' dialog box.You're not giving anyone more usability through this. You're giving people something close to PalmOS on a computer, which a few might like, but many would disapprove of. What happens when I want to have two spreadsheets open? do I have two of my keyboard buttons allocated now, or is this even possible? Multitasking on a user level gets thrown out the window with a system like this, and that's a loss in functionality.
- "'One big mistake is the idea of an operating system... It does nothing for you, wastes your time, is unnecessary'"
This is where I laughed the most. The OS doesn't "get in the way", it provides basic services that all applications need. The whole reason that Windows or Linux or the BSDs (even PalmOS is big when you consider the total amount of storage available to the devices) are big is that they don't just act as system kernel, but they come bundled with tons of standardised libraries that make your life as an app writer easier. Probably the most dumb thing I've ever seen someone in the industry say.I wouldn't be following these guidelines too much if I was a system designer.
UNIX backwards? (Score:4)
yeah right (Score:3)
And with a few simple presses on the arrow keys, you can start tetris and already have one block in the lower left corner. Or will it start sokoban? And God forbid if you even dare to touch your mouse, because suddenly you're in the middle of a quake deathmatch, no matter if the boss is looking at your screen at the time or not.
Game console? (Score:3)
We've had devices where one could sit down and start typing with no loss of keystrokes, they are called typewriters. We've had drafting devices that allowed one to sit down and draft without an OS getting in the way, they are called drafting boards and pencils.
The device that comes closest to an all-purpose device that Raskin is intimating is a game console. However, to switch between games (or theoretically applications) we still need to pop open the machine to swap media. Essentially the OS has been moved out of the machine into the user's brain. However, the device ceases to be an all-purpose device once an application is selected. How would I be able to check email while playing Tekken Tag? Without an OS to handle multiple programs simultaneously, to handle peripheral control, and to handle booting, I am SOL.
If he is interested in devices that do one job really well (toaster, lightswitch) then he'll have to settle for a plethora of devices tailored for a specific task. If he wants a transparent OS that allows him to run multiple programs on his PC, he'll have to sell his snakeoil somewhere else.
It's one thing to make an OS as non-intrusive as possible, but it's a whole different proposition to remove any semblance of an OS altogether.
Dancin Santa
It's Not FUD but... (Score:3)
People like my mom would love computers if the operating system and by extension the apps didn't have a high learning curve. A good example is my TiVo. Once I gave her the DVD menu metaphor she started "getting it". I don't know if it qualifies as an app, an OS or both but it works really well for what it does.
One thing I feel he left out is that (IMO) computers need to come out of the computer room and make their way into the living room. I'm talkin connected to your TV (+cable) and stereo and then distributed to the rest of the house. A terminal in each room. Then you can use biometrics instead of keys and voice command instead of remotes. Just picture it, you could say "Clap Off!" instead of actually clapping off! wow
"Me Ted"
Everyone here is missing the point (Score:3)
it's UNIX, it's backward.
his point IS:
It's an operating system, the paradigm for which is backwards.
Computers, according to Raskin, should operate more like appliances. Reliably and simply.
Start typing at the keyboard, and it's a document.
start doodling at the tablet, and it's a graphics file. Make the computer as simple as a consumer television.
Linguists have talked about this for some time-
The computer interface consists of a mouse and keyboard.
The mouse knows one word with modifier states. That word is "click." it can be modified with "right-", "double-" "middle-" or even "scroll-wheel"
The keyboard is great, but slow, and the computer command line understands words, but usually requires two and three letter commands that need to be learnt, like a new language.
The concept of an OS (cli or gui) is backwards and outdated for most things. It's very powerful, very functional, and even pretty when skinned with jelly-beans.
But let's get forward thinking-- voice-controlled (and I mean, good voice controlled, not viavoice or dragon from two years ago) and gesture oriented.
command line was pioneering in 1968 or 9.
the mouse was incredible when Engelbart thought of it.
Click and Drag was cool at PARC and Apple.
Microsoft was innovative when they figured out how to market the masses to death, club OEMs into submission and buy up any product that was halfway decent.
All of these things are old news. Yes they're being improved upon, but the improvements are EVOLUTIONARY.
Raskin is interested in the REVOLUTIONARY.
So am I.
I'd like to ditch my keyboard and mouse, put on two gauntlets and a headset mic, and gesture and speak to my computer. Oh, and make the gauntlets and headset mic use bluetooth-- I like to walk around my office when I'm dictating.
This comment is copyright of ME. using this comment without my permission is violating my ownership rights.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
apple is doing this. (Score:3)
imho apple is already experimenting with this. the new itunes software [apple.com] contains a single window that does everything, with connections to mp3 players occuring transparently in the background. idvd and quicktime are the same. it seems apple is moving its consumer apps to one gigantic window that require no interaction with the os or other apps
pro apps continues to add multiple windows and palettes, and require interaction with other apps
i think there is room for both, depending on skill level and use. the computer is general enough that interactions with other apps will continue to be useful, though for simpler use it can simulate a single device
scroll this [macedition.com] article down to: the plot thickens
Re:Good point... (Score:3)
Maybe Raskin will eventually figure out something for those people who "just want it to work" and have to deal with an Enterprise-level directory structure filled with documents of widely varying types.
Until he shows me at least a prototype, heck a screen mockup, Jef Raskin can just shut up.
On second thought, Bruce Tognazzini [asktog.com] already prototyped one of those for Sun. See The Starfire Project [asktog.com] for more details on a really powerful but very usable system.
Re:Prompts (Score:5)
Wanna bet?
Here's the process I used:
Here, I'll press command-v for ya here:
(Of course, HTML doesn't know what to do with the linefeeds, but they are there.)
That's a directory listing of my Sinfest [sinfest.net] archive.
Nothing in that procedure that would be unknown to any Mac user.
--
A Limited Vision (Score:5)
Handhelds and kitchen-counter-top Internet appliances have a totally different engineering goal: "What the hell is Bob's phone number?" or "Mommy, can I check my email before dinner?" Just because a user wants to have total convenience in one context does not mean he or she desires the trade-off in flexibility in another. The workstation paradigm still has its place.
As for those who say that Internet-distributed apps via Mozilla-XUL or MS-.NET are the future, you are omitting an important human element: Territory. My workstation is my territory; I want to control it's config to suit my tastes, I want to determine its design tradeoffs (e.g. speed v. portability), etc. I would not be comfortable with getting all my apps via the Net no matter the speed, for it would just as weird as living in barracks and getting my toiletries by ration every morning.
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
Re:I couldn't disagree more (Score:4)
Just how often does a painter immersed in the creative act stop to think about minutiae of the paintbrush? Or worse still, get interrupted by the paintbrush? Not often, and that's a hallmark of a good tool -- that it be subsumed as completely as possible beneath the user's attention to the task. The PC as we know it can undergo vast improvement towards being a really great tool for a particular task -- and this will likely involve some specialization. Again, read the above books and get a leg up on the next wave...
Doesn't make much sense (Score:3)
Sounds very similar to the Dock in OS X. With a good VM and inter-app communications (also in OS X), for the most part it doesn't matter if an app is currently running or not, as soon as you need it it will be.
Unless somebody has a telepathic user interface, you're going to need some way of telling the computer what you want to do, and I fail to see why clicking on an icon to do this is unreasonable. Regarding installers, the author appears to be unaware that it is possible and recommended in OS X to build your app so that the "install" process consists of copying a single file, ditto for uninstalling.
I disagree with the fundamental attitude of this article, which is that because some people find current OSes too hard to use, they must be dumbed down for everyone. Certainly OSes can and should be more accessible to novices, but that does not have to take away power and flexibility for advanced users. OS X is a perfect example of this; with some few improvements to the public beta UI (many of which have apparently already happened), it can be both more approachable for new users and more powerful for experts than the classic Mac OS, Windows, or (flame retardant activated) Linux.
Could this be why I don't like Eazel's Nautilus? (Score:3)
Jef Raskin refers to the OS as a "program you have to hassle with before you get to hassle with the application." To me, Nautilus seems like just yet another program you have to hassle with before you get to hassle with the application. I don't see how it can make things any easier for me that would make me run Linux as a desktop environment instead of MacOS.
As to the OS itself, I don't really see what it does that gets in your way, aside from maybe requiring you to save your data files in its directory hierarchy. Certainly you can use OS X without having to care that it's running Unix underneath the hood. Much more noticable is that "classic" apps have to run in their own little sandbox, because the OS is different, not because it's there.
Even the Palm OS, which is specifically mentioned as one that doesn't get in your way, is still an OS, and still there. You could run a Palm-like interface on top of Unix and be none the wiser. It seems to me what he has a problem with is the user interface environment, not the OS.
Would such an appliance -- a home browser, word processor, spreadsheet, and game console -- be a popular item that would replace the PC in the household? Wildly so, especially if installing new programs was made simple, such as inserting a disk, selecting its activator key, ejecting the disk and running it, installed on your system until you remove it.
Installing programs under Windoze is a total fuckup because of all the DLLs and inevitable scores of data files that have to be installed along with the application itself. I'm sure InstallShield is making a lot of money off of this. Under MacOS, it is possible to install (properly written) software by simply dragging its icon out of a CD-ROM's Finder window. Such software doesn't even have to be installed; it can usually be run right from the CD-ROM. This used to be common, but nowadays big apps want to be run from an installer because they have so much baggage that goes along with them. OS X will make this easier to do by allowing an application and its files be packaged in a folder that appears to be a single object.
Sure, the Unix basis of OS X can be considered a step backwards when compared to something like BeOS or even the Xerox Smalltalk environment, but the reason to go with it is because it's a solid solution, and it's much better than the ad-hoc design of MacOS, which was never intended to do multitasking. Multitasking the MacOS was an amazing hack.
price effectiveness (Score:4)
In the real world, we have limits on hardware performance, some subsystems are far more limited than others, then price comes into the equation, for various subsystems; Video, RAM Storage, Disk Storage, Network IO, etc.
Right now, Network IO is prohibitively expensive, and the state of the technology is way behind that of Disk Storage; it's currently cheaper, and more convenient (offers better price/performance ratio). This is the ultimate factor in why
For what this guy is talking about, today's computers can't possibly do these things. For one thing, we still need disk storage. If RAM Storage was cheaper, and didn't have the volotility issues, then we wouldn't need Disk Storage, and all apps could be in RAM all the time, and we could do things like, sleep a machine, and press a button to be instantly-on in the Word Processor, or instantly-on in the Web Browser. But RAM is still WAY too costly, compared to Disk, so it ain't gonna happen.
Computers and their OSes have been the way they are from day one, because the balances in cost and performance on the hardware side have always been pretty much what they are now. In the early days, of course, Disk Storage was highly cost prohibitive, so those machines were diskless (I'm talking TRS-80). Network connections were unheard of in your standard consumer machines until about 7-15 years ago, this came on gradually, then full-force as the technology evolved into something people could afford. We're experiencing another shift in network availability, speed, and cost, with DSL/Cable, and that's what Microsoft is betting on with
So, the kinds of paradigm shifts that this guy's talking about require the hardware to change, either in performance or cost. If that happened, you can bet the software guys would jump on that damn fast - lots of money to be made during those kinds of periods.
Flatscreen monitors don't appreciably change things. We all thought that super-duper 3D cards would change our user experience into a 3D one (but just because the video could display lots of 3D information quickly, doesn't mean that the rest of the computer can get at that information as quickly, so the 3D interfaces we've seen have been slow, jerkey, useless eye-candy).
My guess is that the next paradigm shift will be a result from an increas in bus speeds. CPU speeds may continue to ramp, or they may stall, network speed will increase per dollar, but I doubt we're going to see an increase in user-trust and reliability. So internal bus speeds are going to change things, and we're going to see computers doing things that they can't currently do, because bus and memory speeds are way too slow. Of course, the technology for this is not even on the horizon yet, so this is all pulled straight out of my ass - but the only other possibility is if RAM gets really cheap. I mean really, really cheap. Cheap enough to make disks look as unattractive as tape currently does. Either of those would surely change the model by which we compute, and OSes run.
And Unix will still be Unix.
Raskin's genius and his problem (Score:4)
Essentially, the article says that Raskin doesn't like MacOS X, MS Windows, or any other general purpose operating system for that matter, because he thinks that computers should be pure appliances, relieving the user of having to worry about mundanities like file storage or program launching, rather than infinitely mutable environments. Raskin is a visionary, which is a good thing, but it means that he is concentrating on the future possabilities of ideal computer interfaces, while missing the more prosaic uses of technology today.
Personally, I agree with Raskin on what I would like my computing experience to be like, but I also recognize that we are a long way from making that experience happen in a ubiquitous manner. For the moment, I get more milage out of an OS centric system that provides me with the primitives that can be combined into a tailored work environment (e.g. Linux running X and Fvwm2 with a small collection of application programs and shell scripts) than I would out of a more turn-key system that wasn't designed by me for my own uses (e.g. MacOS, Windows, PalmOS, and even Gnome and KDE).
Raskin is talking about a system that would be preconfigured to do exactly what the user wants to do, but he fails to mention, and possibly fails to consider, that such a system is nearly impossible to produce, simply because there are too many different kinds of user with too many different preferred modes of work. It is much easier to produce a clumsy generic environment that can be shoehorned into many different task niches, than to custom engineer a system and user-interface for each prospective user.
The users that really care about a streamlined work environment (sometimes referred to as Power Users) will take the time and effort to tailor their system to their tastes. The users that don't care, and such users do exist, will either suffer (silently or otherwise) or pay someone else to produce a more tailored configuration for them. (while I am no Libertarian, or even much of a Capitalist, and as much as I hate to point this out, the dominance of generic, operating system centered, computing environments looks like a perfect example of the free market at work)
Re:Not new... (Score:5)
No, he's not really saying that at all. Raskin goes into quite a bit of detail about his vision in his book, The Humane Interface [jefraskin.com] , and it doesn't involve most of the things people are attributing to him in this thread. It's not about locking people into one application provider, or even eliminating menus, or not having what I would call an OS (controlling devices, managing resources, etc.) It just doesn't look like what we often think of as an OS. There's a summary [jefraskin.com] of the book on the site. Read it, then shoot your mouth off.
I'm not sure I agree with him entirely, but the book is interesting reading and does bear some thought, and it's clear he's no "bozo".
Re:I couldn't disagree more (Score:4)
Certainly I, nor a large portion of the general computing public, would ever accept such a PC. My computer can be anything from a game console to a web server: I want and need and OS I can work with as an application. But what I want and need isn't necessarily what my uncle or grandmother wants and needs. Yes, anyone can be taught how to operate a computer to make it useable (how to install apps, how to run a program, etc), but why should navigating an OS be a requirement for using a computer, be it Windows, Linux, Be, or whatever?
The idea of being able to walk up to a machine and just start typing a document, or drawing a picture seems interesting to me. Of course, it would take a very powerful OS to give this level of functionality while still remaining transparent, without degrading itself to little more than a toy. At the very least, it's an idea worth exploring at the research level.
OS's & GUI's (Score:3)
This was why in the early PC world WordPerfect was such a hit: The program came on 1 or 2 floppies & the device-drivers (mostly printer) came on another 7 or 8.
Eventually MacOS & Windows came out with the idea of universal drivers in the OS. No longer would each program need to supply it's own video or printer drivers, rather the OS would get installed with a driver for the device and everything would go through it. This was as much a reason MacOS & Windows succeeded so well as their GUI's.
Later this expanded to typefaces and cross-application clipboards and inter-application communications and built-in scripting and system-supplied text-edit boxes and graphics widgets and a host of other services. Indeed today's OS's are about half of the application.
The dividing line between application and OS has grown very fuzzy indeed.
Starting in the mid-80's there were a series of projects to help further break down this distinction. Next had their object-oriented operating system, Apple/IBM/Novell had their OpenDoc component-architecture, Aple even did something of the like in their Newton OS, now in Linux there's Bonobo and it's cousins.
Lots of users I know consider their computers to be Email/Word Processors/Web Browsers - they don't use or care about anything else. It could be green cheeese for all their overt interaction with the OS.
So this leaves us with the question: When does the OS's GUI begin to dissolve into the applications? Will it? Will it completely? Is this a "good thing"? Or will there always be a clear distinction?
Much ado about nothing. (Score:3)
As per the OS as an interface between applications and the computer, that is *always* necessary even if it's nothing more than an abstraction layer that allows applications and devices to communicate with a uniform series of APIs. In which case OS X is bundles, Quartz, Cocoa, XML configuration files, Quicktime, a filesystem, the Finder, and a few other things.
Aqua, as a GUI, is an interface between which a human user can interact with the network, the applications, documents, data, and other tools. It is, as the name implies, just a Graphical User Interface into which all the other components plug in. Apple is espousing the digital lifestyle, in which you work with PDAs, mp3 players, camcorders, cameras, VCRs, TVs, radios, what have you, as these little tools Jeff may be talking about, but using OS X, Aqua, and all the other little things as a glue to network them all together.
Nothing is conflicting or contradictory, except perhaps in the analysis that OS X gets in the way, or enhances one's 'digital lifestyle'. Steve thinks it's a multiplier. I have to agree, in that having iMovie, which sits on top of the OS X, using the Aqua interface, allows us to do non linear editing and connects our camcorders, our imaginations, our CD-RW and DVD-R devices together in ways that cannot happen without an OS and without a UI, especially a GUI.
The same can be said with MP3s, mp3 players, CDs, and iTunes. Or Final Cut Pro, DVD-R, camcorders, digital cameras, CDs, MP3s, and DVD players. Aqua is the interface between all the software, the software is enabled with Quicktime, Quartz, and firewire, and all of the above sits on OS X.
It's like arguing language is an impediment to understanding; it is, because it's constructs and semantics can create misunderstanding, when one needs to also see that without language, there doesn't exist a medium from which communication exists (yet).
When devices all talk to each other wirelessly with XML packets and have AI to the point of 'grokking' each other, then OSes and such will not be needed. Until then, OSes and GUIs will allow such devices to interface with each other and with us.
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Consistency of interface extremely important (Score:4)
This reminds me of the constant wrangling in the web interface community about consistency of interface between sites. How do you create a site that does what you need it to do and conveys whatever aesthetic you're after, without making the site difficult to use? To put it in application terms, how do you build an app that people will appreciate for its innovation, and be able to use the first time around?
Raskin's idea of a disappearing OS seems counter to the quote above about consistency and stability. In the *real world* companies and even Open Source projects are going to create applications that use their own metaphors for movement, action, and so on. Currently, the OS is the only thing keeping interfaces even remotely consistent.
One of the reasons the Mac has such a well-loved interface (how many PC interface zealots do you know?) is that it's consistent from app to app. Basically, you buy a new Mac app, you launch it, and you figure it out on the first try.
I just don't see how an OS-less computer would somehow make things easier for users, when every app would be allowed to have whatever interface it wanted.