Jef Raskin On The Mac 539
der Kopf writes "Jeff Raskin, one of the creators of the Macintosh and inventor of the click-and-drag interface, states in an interview for the British newspaper The Guardian that "the Mac is now a mess. A third party manual (Pogue's The Missing Manual) is nearly 1,000 pages, and far from complete. Apple now does development by accretion, and there is only a little difference between using a Mac and a Windows machine."" While I think Raskin has some good points, I think there's a far cry between the Mac & XP.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Is This Personal? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The difference is (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand- as a person who used Macintoshes from 1985, until about 1999, when I switched to Windows...I find the Mac OS X to be completely confusing, and more difficult to use than either OS 9, or Windows XP.
I don't think is is a bad OS- but it suffers from the same problem that people complain about in Windows. There are just so damn many features now, that it is difficult to figure out where stuff is.
I'm sure that if I had been using the Mac for the last 5 years, everything would be fine. But right now, I would guess that the barrier to entry for a new user is very similar for either Mac OS X, or Windows XP.
I fear that Raskin has made himself irrelevant (Score:5, Interesting)
However, by failing to recognize the changes in HCI introducted by the pervasive, multi-modal, non-linear interface known as the world wide web, along with the slow but steady increase in users' basic knowledge, his comments have become more and more out of touch with reality.
It is worth noting as a postscript that his theory for a Humane Interface was strikingly similar to vi: interact with the computer by memorizing an array of keystroke commands.
Not worth it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple is making money again selling their new products. They must be doing something the public wants.
Jef Raskin's involvement with the Macintosh (Score:5, Interesting)
He was strongly against giving it a GUI at all, that was Steve Jobs' influence.
The closest widely-marketed computer to Jef Raskin's vision of How Computing Should Be was the Commodore Plus/4.
--AC
Re:Boinc has a diffrent view (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I'm not buying it either. Certainly we all know where he's coming from - the boot up time on an old Apple II was faster than the boot up time on a modern Mac or PC. However, I cannot imagine how a useful program can be faster on an Apple II than any modern language on any modern hardware. I suspect he's taken the boot-up analogy and way over extended it.
I remember having an old program that calculated bifurcation trees that used to take 24 hours to complete on my old Compucolor II (which as you all know, was made by that wildly successful company Intecolor). When we got an Apple II, I ported it over to Apple Basic (from Compucolor Basic, the graphic commands of which are horrifyingly delicious) and got about a 20-fold increase in speed. Now I only had to wait a couple hours. If I run that same program today on a modern computer (using a modern language and a modern compiler) it finishes too quickly to time without using a timing macro. (I haven't run it in 5 years or so, and even then it was too fast to accurately time - less than a couple seconds, as I recall.) Granted, I might be misremembering some details, and I might have improved the efficiency of the program myself. However, it was a fairly simple program, so I'm not sure how I could have written it that inefficiently.
Re:Not jaded at all (Score:5, Interesting)
-Billy
Re:GUI design (Score:2, Interesting)
The issues you stated are simply organizational issues. For instance, You know how to set up a printer, and most GUI's do well to present all the relevant information to you. You just need to know where to click to get that widget to appear. Same thing with menus. They have different names and such, but they all behave the same (click on it and it expands).
In that respect, MacOS, Windows, and Linux (with the appropriate window manager) are all the same.
Re:What is it with one-button mice? (Score:4, Interesting)
As a Mac user, I'm annoyed that I have to "Option-Click", "Control-Click" and "Command-Click" --- i.e. make motions which require two hands, when a simple 3-button mouse would let me do all of these quickly and easily. How are these key-click combinations "more user-friendly" than single clicks on a multi-button mouse?
And I like your response to those who say "You can always buy a multi-button mouse". Yea. I have a Logitech USB scrollwheel mouse that I use, but why did I have to buy one??? Why didn't I just GET one that came with my Mac?
Re:GUI design (Score:5, Interesting)
This is an important thing that I think Jef and many other UI researchers are missing. There aiming at an old target -- back in the 80's there were a lot of people who didn't know how to use a computer. Having a PC at home or school was rare.
These days, there are kids who have never known what it's like to live in a house without a computer. Or a school that has a computer lab. Like learning a language, it becomes second nature as you grow up. You get to the point where you don't even know that you know it.
As time passes, the proportion of the population that "gets it" becomes much larger than the part that needs a simpler UI.
Of course, there will always be people that need dead simple UI, and it's appropriate for many specialized interfaces (e.g. the iPod.) But it seems to me that research towards more complicated UIs (and how to manage the complexity) would be a better course -- that's where the "computing population" is headed.
-ch
Re:The whole one-button mouse thing has to go... (Score:4, Interesting)
Different crowd (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, I own a powerbook. ;)
Re:The whole one-button mouse thing has to go... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not buying it. (Score:4, Interesting)
As to the interfaces that we're trapped in... I use OSX, OS9, NT, and XP pretty much every day. I'm the kind of Mac user that will break a bottle on the bar and cut you for trashing my preferred OS. Even so, I will say that I am perfectly functional in Windows, and don't mind using it. I prefer OSX. I have fewer problems with it and I find it to be organized in a way that works better for me.
They are similar enough now, that if a Windows user sits down at a Mac, and their IQ is above room temperature, they should be able to navigate it just fine. Same goes for Mac users sitting down at an XP box.
What I don't get, is how the UI is supposedly so oppressive... The desktop metaphor was a good one because it related to real-world environments that we were familiar with... files go in folders, things go on your desktop... pretty simple. Behind the scenes, there are improvements that could be made, like using metadata to help you relate files to one another, etc. Other than things like that, I'm just not seeing how there needs to be such a huge revolutionary change in user interfaces. Maybe I lack 'vision', but I just don't see what the big hassle is. If the work you're doing is held up by the fact that you have to open two folders to get at it, maybe you're in the wrong line of work.
As to the never ending 1 button vs. 2 button debate... give it a rest. Macs can use just as many buttons on their mice as Windows. If you need more buttons, as many of us do, GO BUY A 3RD PARTY MOUSE. It just isn't an issue anymore.
HyperCard (Score:4, Interesting)
HyperCard was wonderful. I did a lot of programming in HyperCard, embedded sounds and movies, and controlled an externel Laser Video Disc (the 12" variety) with XCMD "plugins".
However, the basic functions of HyperCard can be simulated with web technologies and are available to any platform, not just a HyperCard playing Mac. In a Net connected World (and most Macs users have Internet access) the old HyperCard stacks lose their appeal. This probably was a large factor in Apple's decision to give up HyperCard.
There are still two downsides to HyperCard's demise. (1) You can't distribute Apache/Mysql/PHP environment on a floppy/CD/thumb drive and just have a user double click on your creation, without an internet connection, and run your "stack"/Application. (2) The ease of development and debugging offered by HyperCard is till unparalled by any app/web development environment today, IMHO.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:That _is_ a nice sharpener (Score:3, Interesting)
and that's the kicker really. the devil is in the details. many user environments have made a desktop that resembles a mac, but no one has created an environment that has fixed all the minor details yet. whether by virtue of it's longer existance, or maybe just better designers and developers, apple's user environment is always one step ahead of most the others.
Re:GUI design (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, me too. Windows XP seems stable and very usable to me (c.f. Win95 etc) but there are strange backward steps.
1. The Windows XP start menu is just stupid, especially if you use the keyboard a lot.
2. I just started using XP Pro at work, and Alt-Tab task switching is practically broken. When you hit Alt-Tab to switch programs, the task switcher comes up and starts drawing a little thumbnail of the active application (instead of just the icon). This means just switching back to the last active window takes about half a second on my machine. (Anyone know if it can be set back to the old grey box with the icon in it?)
BTW, my colleagues are trying to persuade me to get a Mac. I don't know much about 'em, but they do seem to inspire loyalty.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing wrong in OS X (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't count the number of times I have had to explain, for example, that first you have to click in the AppleWorks document window and then the so-and-so menu will appear, because they had closed the last window in some other application and they are looking at an AppleWorks document, but AppleWorks is not the top application. The slightly grayed out title bar isn't much of a hint. Maybe background applications' entire windows should be grayed out/dimmed and more so (the content not just the title bar) to distinguish them from the frontmost app. Or translucent, although I find translucency to be wildly busy looking so I prefer the idea of graying out the entire window.
Re:GUI design (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you freakin' nuts? What Raskin wanted to create in the original Macintosh project was, essentially, the Canon Cat. No mouse, no GUI, no 32-bit CPU. In short, an information appliance rather than a computer, and something no one would ever recognize as a Macintosh. He lost a power struggle with Jobs early on, when his Mac team was a half-dozen people, and left Apple.
Viz, www.folklore.org [folklore.org]
I think history has pretty much spoken on the viability of his design choices, especially the relative success of the Cat vs the Mac's GUI. Ask yourself this, if those leap keys were such a breakthrough in the UI, why hasn't something analogous caught on in the last two decades?
Tyler
*snore* (Score:5, Interesting)
A: The unfoldable portable-shaped box on a stalk? It is a practical and space-saving design. But the interface needs fixing.
Well, it's been 23 years since you left Apple, Jeff. Where's *your* fix?
One only cares about getting something done.
And a simple to use, no muss, no fuss, all in one computer fails on that front... how, exactly?
Apple has forgotten this key concept. The beautiful packaging is ho-hum and insignificant in the long run.
Insignificant to Jeff Raskin, that is.
You know, there's a reason people hide their gray boxen PCs under their desks, and a reason there exists an aftermarket case mod industry.
Re:on the other hand... (Score:4, Interesting)
The 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall Virus. I didn't hear any Windows machines belting out that song through a voice synth.
For every 100 times my friends had to deal with registry corruption
For every 100 times my friends had to rebuild their desktop/extensions...
let alone constant crashing.
My favorite Mac user quote: "Don't go so fast! You'll lock it up!"
It wasn't perfect, that's a gimmee, but you got to admit reality
Indeed. The reality was that Microsoft beat Apple to building a modern OS for consumers. The real question is why did that happen? The answer is probably that Jobs forced innovation, while the Apple Corp. of the time simply tried to milk its existing investments. As a result, what was once a very beautiful design, became rusted and ugly. It desperately needed an overhaul to retrofit the proper tech for 500+ MHz machines, and multimedia programs that consumed memory like candy.
Now Jobs is back, NeXTSTEP lives on, and life is good.
Re:GUI design (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Switched BACK (Score:2, Interesting)
I do not know of a way to activate the menu bar in OS X, so you just plain old have to memorize keyboard shortcuts. If you want to avoid the mouse you have to pick your own keyboard shortcut and hope that you are not over-writing some other keyboard shortcut.
Meanwhile, to give up on the Mac and go back to XP, where the wrong install can mean a complete re-install of the OS - that's boggling. It's not worth it. I somehow trashed
Re:Not jaded at all (Score:5, Interesting)
Protected memory ensures that if a misbehaving program crashes, the entire system isn't brought to a screaming halt. It's annoying when one's word processor crashes while one is writing a letter. It's even more annoying when the entire system is brought down as well, necessitating a lengthy reboot cycle. A user of a protected memory system need not worry about running finicky programs in the background, or discovering that an application really doesn't like being run on Tuesdays or months ending with "r"-- a program crash need not bring everything on the computer to a screeching halt.
As for multitasking-- the macs used to feature cooperative multitasking-- wherein each program would voluntarily give up control of the system. I suppose this might have been a boon for running a Real-Time Application, but many programs proved to be resource hogs. Ultimately, if one is running multiple programs at once, each with the same degree of urgency, it's better to let the operating system handle prioritizing time-slicing.
Now, some might still argue that puny humans are only capable of doing one thing at a time, and that it would be better to focus one's efforts on a single-tasking operating system-- but I believe most people are familiar with the practice of letting one's email client fetch mail in the background while responding to silly slashdot posts.
Re:Not jaded at all (Score:2, Interesting)
Probably because he wants you to read his book [slashdot.org].
I've had it lying around for a few years, but haven't managed to finish it. From what I've read, he doesn't say, "This is a spec for a good interface," but more talks about the what should be taken into consideration when designing a good interface.