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.
Not jaded at all (Score:5, Funny)
If you are attacked by one of these creatures, your best course of action is to appease it with a lollipop and a Cherry iMac running Mac OS 9. Ignore the sobbing that may result, as it is only an opening for renewed attack.
In case anyone's interested, Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] knows who Jef Raskin is.
Mac OS X "Manual" (Score:5, Informative)
A default install of Mac OS X contains a full Unix environment. (You can opt to not install the "BSD Subsystem", which just doesn't install terminal.app and several Unix userland applications).
I've seen emacs books that are 400+ pages and I've seen a 700 page sendmail manual. There are entire volumes of perl manuals. One could easily write a 10,000 page Mac OS X "Manual".
Maybe Apple should team up with ORA to write a 100 page getting started / user manual, like NeXT did in 1988. The Mac OS X interface is actually pretty simple, and an average user can only initially see about 20 control panels, about 15 applications, and about 15 utility applications. As long as you ignore the command-line world and don't write chapters on file sharing fundamentals or netbooting, I'll bet a 100 page manual would be quite sufficent.
Re:Mac OS X "Manual" (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not jaded at all (Score:5, Interesting)
-Billy
Re:Not jaded at all (Score:4, Insightful)
Fair enough. The article didn't state that clearly, so I didn't realize that he simply hates all interfaces.
One thing I do find amusing, however, is that he's apparently a big proponent of Zooming User Interfaces [wikipedia.org] like Pad++ [umd.edu]. Yet the ultimate irony is that the Display PDF layer of Mac OS X makes it the perfect OS to add Zooming interfaces to! Apple has clearly demonstrated this with the Éxpose feature. Somehow, though, that doesn't seem to sink in with this guy.
Re:Not jaded at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not jaded at all (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not jaded at all (Score:3, Insightful)
Hawk [reference.com]
Different crowd (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, I own a powerbook. ;)
on the other hand... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's only relatively recently in the past few years, that a home consumer could get an offering from any OS vendor that was at least half assed stable and half assed secure and functional from raw noobs to advanced professional level users. Before that time, Macs had at least the security part correct, along with the GUI, and were 1/2 way to functionality across the board. that's a 2.5 rating out of 3. MS barely gets a 1.5 until recently, same with linux.. Now I would say that the top 3 OSes are tied at 2.5 still, but Mac got there a lot sooner. And if GUI isn't important, then why has it become an industry standard, across all vendors of the major OSes? Could it be because it's a good idea, that people appreciate the ease of use of GUI? I think so, so do all the folks who have developed and distributed such OSes. I'd say that's some fairly good proof.
There's a REASON that there is something beyond a CLI offered by EVERYONE now. And Apple knew this quite a long time ago and specialised in it, it wasn't an afterthought or a "me too" offering.
With that said, I switched fulltime to Linux once it hit a 2.5 rating on my personal home joe user scale, because it's freer, runs on cheaper hardware I can afford, and at least achieved parity with what I had before. I wouldn't have if it hadn't been developed to that point.
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:Not jaded at all (Score:5, Insightful)
You lose sugarpuff:
A third party manual (Pogue's The Missing Manual) is nearly 1,000 pages, and far from complete.
As another poster so helpfully expanded on for me, Mac OS X has an entire Unix subsystem and feature set that are designed for power users and developers. Your average user knows nothing of these, nor do they need to. That doesn't stop people from documenting all those extra "cool" features in OS X.
Apple now does development by accretion, and there is only a little difference between using a Mac and a Windows machine.
An unsubstantiated statement. I suppose he felt that his statement about the manual should have given him the right to make this statement, except for that statement being based on flawed logic.
My original vision is outdated and irrelevant.
He recognizes that the original Mac interface is unsuitable. But then he goes on to say:
The principles of putting people first, and designing from the interface to the software and hardware, are as vital today as they were then.
Ok. But what does that mean? He gives no examples of proper interfaces, nor does he explain why OS X fails to achieve the "People first" status.
And the iMac G5? Was the original iMac a step on the correct path?
The unfoldable portable-shaped box on a stalk?
Ouch. You'd almost think he doesn't like the thing. But then he says:
It is a practical and space-saving design.
So which is it?
The truth of the matter is that he didn't actually make a single significant point in the entire article. He made several claims to the effect of Mac OS X being "a poor user interface", but never once gave an opinion as to why or how to fix it. Granted, that may be the fault of the editor, but then we need a better article. There were NO points made in this one.
Re:Not jaded at all (Score:3, Insightful)
Because every time you want to add a feature, you should redesign the OS from the ground up.
There's some good background on Raskin at Folklore.org [folklore.org], including my favorite, I Invented Burrell [folklore.org]
Re:Not jaded at all (Score:4, Informative)
Which all assumes that Jobs did not hire design people who understood such issues.
The truth is that NeXT, while a commercial failure, had a UI which was already superior to the Mac in several ways, and included many former Mac-heads among it's fanatical followers.
OS X is an improvedment on the NeXT concepts, which also retained many of the best things about the old Macintosh interface.
At the same time, it gave the option to dump things it supplanted... As a former MacOS7/8/9 user (I couldn't afford a NeXT Cube), I originally was keeping my internal HD's mounted on the desktop, just like any Aplle True Believer would probably insist on. The Finder for OS X has become so useful, however, that now the first thing I do when I work with a new Mac is turn off desktop drive mounting. I'm sure Apple would turn it off by default if it weren't for all the Jeff Raskin types who consider the old desktop metaphor such a vital security blanket that the thought of accessing all their drives through that icon on the left side of the dock merely frightens and confuses them.
The more I use OS X, the more I like it, and the more certain I am that I would never want to go back to the way that OS 9 organized the UI.
Re:Not jaded at all (Score:5, Insightful)
When he has one, I'll give it a shot.
OS X is vastly more simple for a beginner to use than the old "System 7" Macintosh. He's coming at OS X the same way a Windows geek does, as somebody who is used to the way a different operating system does things, and therefore a slanted opinion about the way things "should" be done.
The dock, the new multi-tiered finder, and the "no button" mouse are all ultra-friendly on-ramps for a new user to get up and running on all the basic apps. Once the stuff "grandma" needs to learn to do e-mail and surf are mastered, digging deeper into the OS is remarkably simple. After a year or so with her first iMac, my previously-computer-illiterate aunt is comfortably trouble-shooting her own network issues.
The old Mac OS was simple and elegant for the apps and environments which existed in 1989, but ten years later it was getting awfully long in the tooth, and some of the paradigms which seemed like simplicity itself did not adapt well to the way people are using computers today.
Pat yourself on the back for making something which was way ahead of the pack at the time, Raskin, but stop being a crybaby now that your work has been eclipsed and made redundant.
You don't hear this kind of whining about the web from people who used to write CD-ROM encyclopedias, but this article is pretty much the same sort of thing.
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:3, Informative)
GUI design (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, Raskin's complaints about Windows and OS X being similar could come down to other explanations: 1) convergent evolution or 2) Microsoft blatantly ripped off Apple in look and feel and continues to do so. I am inclined to believe both options as there are simply efficient ways of interfacing with computers in a GUI paradigm. That said, how many times have we seen MacOS features show up in Windows some time later? I am by no means suggesting they are equivalent however. OS X is so much better than Windows in terms of function and interface, but Windows has made huge strides in the last few years, although I do find myself applying the "standard" Windows scheme on my XP machines.
Re:GUI design (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an interesting point - we have had, in essence, the same UI experience since Windows 3.x, GeoWindows, and the original Apple user interfaces - it's all, at this point - increased productivity features and eye candy.
Moving away from this UI-locked experience requires radically different thought. While not touting the technology-forward-seeing abilities of movie producers and directors, you'll notice that most "UI" in future computers stand more for "User Interaction" than "User Interface" - that is, interaction becomes more integrated with daily life. Computers track eye movements, "read" thoughts, anticipate needs, and almost always have overly-simplistic and well thought out data displays (my favorites are displays on panes of glass.)
Point is, as pretty as the Mac OSX interface is (and it is...) making it prettier and reevaluating the decades-old principals of PC user interfaces and user interactions are completely different topics.
GeoWindows?? (Score:3, Informative)
Ripping off goes both ways (Score:5, Funny)
Re:GUI design (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:GUI design (Score:3, Insightful)
Now you know how I feel about OS X and especially Expose. I don't know how many times I go to hit F9, F10, or F11 at work ... which is a pity when I'm in our Oracle forms.
Re:GUI design (Score:5, Informative)
He did, though it was a long time ago. See information on Raskin's Canon Cat [landsnail.com]. It would be interesting to see him make a more modern computer interface, but he seems content to just make vague complaints nowadays.
Re:GUI design (Score:2)
I think the credibility of his opinions comes into questions when he's put his theories into code, and they just end up a clumsy mess of UI that's painfully difficult to use, and he actually develops these ideas as code so damn slowly, because he's still using the archaic development met
Re:GUI design (Score:4, Informative)
And your claim that Jef designs interfaces for novices is purely ignorant. Jef designs interfaces almost completely without regard for novices; all of his calculations are designed to ensure ease of use, NOT ease of learning. He does give lip service (and work) to ease of learning, but all the math calculates and optimizes actual ongoing ease of _use_.
-Billy
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:GUI design (Score:3, Informative)
And that's just what Jef Raskin's doing in his daily job. Your point is?
Re:GUI design (Score:5, Informative)
My impression is that he would prefer an entirely different machine that may perhaps be radically different than what we have now. If this is so, Raskin should go out and create his OS of choice.
He is doing it. It's called The Humane Interface, and you can download it from sourceforge and give it a try.
Given that some strengths of this interface are the same which make the CLI a good tool for advanced users, you should at ponder about it for a while.
If you believe that the current GUIs is "quite efficient" for intermediate users then you have not seen many of then doing something even a little bit complex. This quote from the interview perfectly resumes the real situation:
" There has been immense progress, primarily in the richness of applications. But all this power is lost on many people, and impedes the utility of it for the rest, because of the unnecessary complexity of using computers. "
You have to bear in mind that the human brain is a processor with limited power, it's main bottleneck being it's small short-term memory. Also the Input/Output protocols are constrained by perceptive capabilities. A guy who promotes design ing software optimized for this restrictions is worthy of some respect, moreover given that he is able to provide some actual solutions.
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
Re:GUI design (Score:5, Insightful)
Having read his book, I don't think that that is the case at all. The main thrust of his dream OS is to get rid of a certain class of errors (modal errors) which cause problems, regardless of your skill level. Infact the more you become familiar with the system the worse they get. A perfect example of this is shortcut keys. I have to use a half dozen text editors in windows, (for various IDEs etc), each of which has keyboard shortcuts. After using an interface for a while you get used to it and the actions become reflexive. So I find myself constantly hitting the wrong shortcut key in the wrong program. Is find Ctrl-F, Ctrl-S, or Ctrl-E, F3, or Shift-F3? I reflexively hit Ctrl-F, to find myself with a forwarded email or error message. The Mac is better because more of the shortcuts are standardized and more applications actually follow them, but I still run into the error. These errors decrease my productivity slightly, but more importantly they make using the computer frustrating. It is impossible not to develop a reflex when you use an interface often, and when that reflex betrays me, and the computer does not do what I expected because someone swapped the gas and brake pedals out from under me, it makes me agrivated. So that is his primary vision - not necisarrily to make computers easier or more efficient but more pleasant. Concidering how much stress there is concerning computers even among people who know how to use them, I think that this is a laudable goal.
But in addition to that I also get the impression that he is overly obsessed with perfection in interface efficiency and elegence. Think of the kind of person who will spend days hand coding assembly, even when the same program written in python still has tons of CPU cycles to spare. His current prototype project to implement his OS seems bogged down in optimizing the low level atomic user interactions. Theortically, some of these changes will let me work faster, but in reality, my limiting factor when typeing is not how fast my fingers move, but how fast my brain words and rewords what I want to say. The same for 2D and 3D graphics.
His arguments in this article are also primarily esthetic - OS X is very complicated and no-one will every understand it all. It is the age old argument between an elegant, small well-designed system, and an amalgemation of existing parts which does the same tasks, but is 10 times more complex because it carries the baggage of compatibility.
I sympathize with his desires, but I don't know that complete elegance will ever win out over ugly practibility. Elegant systems are a joy to use for tasks that mesh with the flexibility built into the system, but once one needs to do something that doesn't quite fit the system, the grand design becomes an obsticle instead of a help, and those loosely bound, ugly amalgamations begin to look more appealing for the absolute freedom that they provide.
Ugh. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Meta-Tab : a Windows first. Swiped by Apple for OS 8.5.
2. Windows that minimize to a dock/taskbar, rather than windowshade in place : a Windows first, and the Windows-like behaviour I hate the most about OS X. 9 Windowshades, goddammit. It's a third party hack on Windows and OS X.*
3. Preview-in-filebrowser : A feature that had been standard with Explorer and missing on the Mac until OS X.
There's others, but it's been awhile since I've been a regular Windows user, so I'd be hard pressed to recall others.
Raskin had almost nothing to do with the Mac as it's known now, or as it's been known for years- his own computer design concepts called for a command line interface, not a GUI. He gets a lot of credit for the Mac but the fact is that he left Apple long before it was ever released. MacOS System 1 was shaped much more by Andy Hertzfeld, Steve Jobs and Burell Smith than it was by Raskin.
As for Windows useability.... ugh. Apple's ripped some features, but they're mostly good ones. Minus that whole "losing the windowshading" thing, which I'm still pissed about. If you want Windowshading without third party hacks, your only option these days is an X11 window manager.
Of course, that could lead me to ranting about the state of X11 "desktops" and how much of a letdown it is to see the big DMs turning into shit Win32 clones with bad implementations of all of the worst features of OS X jammed on top- and I've already strayed too far into troll territory, so I'll just stfu.
* You would think that with the zero-pixel borders around sides and bottom of non-Brushed Metal windows in OS X that they would have included windowshading or at least allowed applications to implement it on a per-app basis... but since ALL windows minimize to the dock, it's easy to make one hell of a mess out of it really, really fast in the process of working with Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Photoshop and Fireworks... not the cleanest solution in the world, thank you.
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 applicati
Um, Yeah, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Um, Yeah, but... (Score:4, Informative)
XP *is* NT.
Well, OK, XP is NT 5.1.
Windows 2000 (NT 5.0) is NT 4 with minor kernel updates and modern DirectX support. (I think NT 4 was limited to DX4!) There are also some minor control panel and admin application updates.
Windows XP is NT 5.0 with minor kernel updates and a new appearance manager. There are also some minor control panel and admin application updates.
Interestingly, XP SP2 has a very significant update: out-of-the-box support for multiple simultaneous users, via the local console and/or remote desktop.
Re:Um, Yeah, but... (Score:3, Informative)
I'd use mod points, but there is no "uninformative" choice.
XP SP2 has no such feature! Granted, early betas of SP2 did have this feature, but it disappeared at least 6 month ago. This feature may live on in XP Media Center Edition 2004, as I hear it may be used to handle some multi-room a/v features, but it is certainly not a feature of XP Home SP2 or X
Re:Um, Yeah, but... (Score:4, Informative)
p.3 [anandtech.com] and p. 4 [anandtech.com] are particularly pertinent:
The fundamental difference between OS X and Windows is how applications and windows are handled. What OS X has going for it is uniformity between applications and windows; for example, the keyboard shortcut for the preferences dialog in any OS X application is Command and the "," key. So, regardless of what application you're in, the same keystroke combination will have the same expected effect - pretty useful.
Check the whole article out. There are some things he's got wrong, but not surprising for anyone whose just switched to a totally new platform.
Boinc has a diffrent view (Score:5, Insightful)
That is quite odd of him to say. I just checked on seti@home [berkeley.edu], climate prediction [ox.ac.uk] and predictor@home [scripps.edu] via boinc, I don't see any Apple IIs on top of any lists. Well maybe the distributed computings teams should hire Jef Raskin and his Amazing Basic programming abilities - right?
I think sometimes, you wake up for an interview and haven't had coffee yet and say things that are not quite what you intended - it happens to me all the time ya know...
Re:Boinc has a diffrent view (Score:2, Informative)
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:Boinc has a diffrent view (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Boinc has a diffrent view (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Raskin's Bitterness (Score:4, Insightful)
Jef Raskin has good reason to have been bitter about the way the Macintosh has turned out. His description of the Mac's history ( http://mxmora.best.vwh.net/JefRaskin.html) provides a good introduction.
However, UI's have had to change as computing technologies have become more complicated. When the Mac was introduced, the Internet was still in its developmental stage; computer graphics were limited; and hardware devices were essentially permanently connected to the computer (no plug-and-play type technologies). The world changed, and the interface had to change with it.
It would be great to follow Raskin's advice and reevaluate the Mac GUI - however, it's apparent that Apple is constantly trying to do this. The X GUI has had changes (remember the purple window-shade type button in the X beta's?), and will no doubt continue to change. Right now we're looking at a (I'd say) fairly succesfuly merger of Mac OS 9 and NeXT UIs. But things can always get better.
I respect Raskin tremendously, but I would take his opinions with a grain of salt. His comments should be appreciated and considered, but I certainly don't believe that Apple has abandoned its quest for usability.
Is This Personal? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Is This Personal? (Score:3, Informative)
If you take a look at The Humane Interface book, you'll see that this is wrong. He spends one section talking about how the Mac's application pulldowns at the very top of the screen are superior to pulldowns at the tops of each window.
Re:Is This Personal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That _is_ a nice sharpener (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that he's right that MacOS X is too complex to be a simple appliance. But I think that general purpose computers are by definition complex, because they can be used for *anything*, and his vision holds more true for specialized devices. For example, the iPod is elegant and transparent to use.
That being said, I'm sure that usability could always be improved. But I don't agree that there's not much difference between XP and MacOS X -- while they're similar at a very high level (mouse/windows/icons over multi-tasking OS, etc.), MacOS X is better in almost every detail. But it's best not to get into a religious war here. I can only guess that Jeff has such a radical vision for how computers could be that from his perspective XP and MacOS X aren't too different.
Hmm, kinda like Nader!
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.
Can you say bitter, angry, rejected, scorned? (Score:2, Insightful)
If he's so damn pissed that he got fired and the Mac UI is in the toilet, maybe he should go and work on some Open Sores desktop project and get it right
Apple today is NeXT (Score:5, Informative)
The original Macintosh and the original Macintosh OS had input from Raskin, but also from a whole score of designers working to make a GUI-based computer for "the rest of us". (http://www.folklore.org). Over time, Apple added more and more features to Mac OS until it became the Mac OS 9 horrible mess.
Mac OS X **IS NOT** the "Classic" Mac OS by any stretch of the imgination, the GUI and system design are 90% NeXT. Even most of the codebase is derrived from OpenStep 4.x. (And updated, obviously, also borrowing from newer versions of Mach and BSD). If you run across something about Mac OS X that seems un-mac-like or just plain weird (and isn't a true bug), it's probably an intentional NeXTism.
Raskin didn't like the NeXT in 1988, there's no reason why he'd like Mac OS X in 2004.
Re:Apple today is NeXT (Score:3, Informative)
While the general principle applies, I think you're somewhat underestimating the role classic Mac OS concepts play in Mac OS X (90%). At the highest levels, you have things like the menu bar at the top of the screen, Mac keyboard shortcuts, aliases, QuickTime,
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.
Re:I fear that Raskin has made himself irrelevant (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe Raskin's approach also differs in that once the command pseudo-mode is entered, a list of available operations is presented, a feature I can't say vi would be worse off to implement. (I might be wrong about this, I don't have Classic installed right now to run THE and apparently he isn't offering it for download anymore...? [sourceforge.net])
I admit that I wish som
Not worth it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple is making money again selling their new products. They must be doing something the public wants.
The difference (Score:5, Funny)
Agreed, OS X has a usable shell.
Seems like people want a mess... (Score:5, Funny)
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:Jef Raskin's involvement with the Macintosh (Score:2, Informative)
--AC
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Die, mice, die! (Score:5, Insightful)
If he hadn't been replaced by Jobs as the team lead, the Macintosh would have no mouse, using keyboard function keys instead.
Lack of Content (Score:4, Funny)
The result is pretty much nothing but `Jef Raskin is a grumpy old man'.
How much more 'good old days' can he spread? (Score:3, Funny)
NPR interview (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor
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.
Notoriously whiny (Score:3, Insightful)
Jef Raskin, who is often mis-labelled as "The Father of the Macintosh" (despite the fact that he left the Mac team three years before the Mac's unveiling) has been a notorious critic of Apple. He bashes the leadership, the GUI, and the hardware. The more he does this, the harder it gets to construe it as anything other than sour grapes. Especially since his only real attempt at designing "his" computer interface was the complete flop of the Canon Cat [jagshouse.com]
Note to Jef: if your design is so awesome, make it happen! If it's that much better, I'm sure you'll get more than enough sales to rake in the bucks! I know that I, for one, would love to see what it is you consider to be the ideal interface!
those who can do, those who cannot... (Score:5, Insightful)
The result an utter failure, Canon dropped the product in 6 months. Jef claimed that he did not get the support he wanted and had to make compromises on his vision. Bullshit, this man had his time to impress us with his interface expertise and product design skills. It was an utter failure.
Remember, Jef was a professor by training... his ideas are at best academic. If Jef had his way, the Mac would have been a glorified typewriter. It took the the genius of Bill Atkinson, Bruce Horn, Steve Jobs among many others to give us the Macintosh. These guys are the true fathers of the Mac.
Jef has a case of sour grapes, being kicked out of the Mac team by Steve Jobs, and then having his beloved Cat being canned by Canon at Steve's insistence. Jobs, insisted the Canon drop the Cat, if they were to invest in NeXT. Canon invested close to $100M in NeXT!
What we are left with is an academic who time has passed by.
I call bullshit on this one (Score:3, Insightful)
If anyone can be credited with that invention, it would have to be Vannevar Bush with his prescient thoughts on the memex (ie pc). And if not him, then the guys at Xerox-Parc most definitely preceed this Raskin guy.
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.
*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.
Raskin has always been a HUI snob (Score:4, Insightful)
The real test of an interface is its adoption in the public. This being said, OSX is a hit.
"In the Good Old Days..." (Score:3, Insightful)
The world changes and raskin won't... Jobs gets it.
Out perform the competition and delight the user.
Raskin hasn't made a contribution in over 20 years.
Rage on old fart... It was better before... sure.
A friggin' free cellphone has better software than those "good ol days".
McD
My Litmus Test... (Score:3, Insightful)
She is not a programmer. She is a user. Worse a user who sez "why can't it just do this". She is brilliant in that her view has nothing to do with programming and everything to do with human interface.
She is quite happy with her Mac. Oh, sure, there are things she would prefer to be different (and she NEVER touches the command line interface). But, for the most part, she is happy.
She uses Peecees at works and find them utterly baffling (not that she doesn't use them, but finds them to be an affront to the user).
Raskin may find XP to be the same as OS 10. Fine, he is entitled to his opinion. But real users know the difference.
The Mac is better than it was a few years ago (Score:3, Insightful)
Well DUH! (Score:3, Funny)
especially since one is an operating system and one isn't.
Re:The difference is (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The difference is (Score:2)
The primary application of the second mouse button on both platforms seems to be the activation of a context menu. However, from my experience it seems that the context menu of Windows applications is a lot better than that of Mac OS apps. Probably due to the fact that MS has embraces more than one mouse button from the start and has pushed for context menus, while Apple decided to stick with single mouse bu
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.
Re:The difference is (Score:4, Informative)
I personally find Mac OS X to be rather simple (unless you dig into the NetInfo database or fire up terminal.app). There aren't that many applications or control panels in a default install. Adjusting settings are also much easier these days in 10.3 Panther than they were in the wild days of 10.0 Public Beta in 1999.
Mac OS X is only slightly more complex than NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP of 1988/1994. (Unless you're a developer... not just ObjC and NSAPI, now you have C++, Java, OpenGL, OpenAL, CoreThis and CoreThat, etc...)
Re:The difference is (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The whole one-button mouse thing has to go... (Score:3, Informative)
We tend to have lots of cheap USB mice with multiple buttons lying around the house, so not including one in the box is not a big deal.
not an issue (Score:5, Insightful)
You can always use it with a two-button mouse if you want.
Re:The whole one-button mouse thing has to go... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The whole one-button mouse thing has to go... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the Apple Macintosh that doesn't. There is a difference between the operating system and the hardware - the combination provides an easy to use solution but does not restrict the user.
If you find a two or more button mouse that you like you are more than welcome to plug it into your Mac - and the buttons, scroll wheels and the like will work. Out of the box. Without extra software. In most applications.
All this because hte OS has been designed to cater for both modes of operation.
Re:The whole one-button mouse thing has to go... (Score:3)
Have you ever tutored truly novice user? Someone with absolutely no clue about technology or computers in general? They constantly click the wrong button and get confused when a right click menu appears as opposed to opening the document or program. You have to keep reminding them that it's the left click unless otherwise indicated.
People like you and I are practically hardwired for dealing with computers, (heck I learne
Re:The whole one-button mouse thing has to go... (Score:3, Insightful)
The answer is simple. One button is usually enough. Mac OS and all the available programs can live perfectly with "just" one mouse button. So why bother?
Re:The whole one-button mouse thing has to go... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The whole one-button mouse thing has to go... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The whole one-button mouse thing has to go... (Score:2)
Is that why every Mac user who uses his/her machine professionally that I've ever met has ditched their one-button mouse in favour of something that has two, three or even more buttons? Because Apple's approach to the issue is beyond criticism?
Re:Anti-MS jabs (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Anti-MS jabs (Score:2, Informative)
When I fire up my PC with Win XP and compare it to my G5 with 10.3.5, there's a fair bit of difference between them.
It's not a jab if it's the truth.
Re:What i like about XP (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What i like about XP (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you read the install notes on the box, or the website or during the installation process??? No.. Right that's your problem. All the info and minimum requirements are posted there.
I'm also burnt out on the brushed metal look, the costly updates and dodgy performance unless your willing to fork out big $$$
Explain to me how $999 iBook is expensive? or $799 eMac? If you don't like the look of the hardware. Well, tough. I guess you can buy anything in the gray ai32 world.
I can buy an old PC and know it will be slow - but it will work - and with everything plugged in
I won't even begin to digest this erronous statement. I will say one thing tho - minimum requirements. I have been burned by this before on the ai32 platform. Or have you ever tried using a scanner that had a proprietary pci card? I didn't think so.
Mac OS X hardware (Score:5, Informative)
That said, I've found Mac OS X 10.3.x to run fine on a 500 MHz G3 with 384 MB of RAM and Rage 128 graphics. 10.3 will work "OK" on 350 MHz with 256 MB (basiclly the slowest slot-load iMac or slowest blue & white G3 tower). 10.2 and older are far slower, and performance on a first-generation tray-load iMac or a beige G3 is slower yet.
Rule of thumb:
With 256+ MB RAM,
OS X on Beige or Black hardware: SLOW
OS X on Colorful (slot-load) hardware: OK
OS X on Silver hardware: AWESOME
A default install of WinXP SP1a is quite sluggish on my Dell: PII/350, 192MB, RagePro. Disabling the appearance manager service (giving it the WinNT4/Win2K look) makes it quite a bit faster.
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:Wannn...... (Score:3, Informative)