Hacker News Reader

Comment by mycroftiv | Hacker News Reader

I get so frustrated reading blog posts by user interface designers. They almost invariably consist of reasoning I disagree and conclusions I disagree with in support of user interface decisions that make my experience as a user worse. Ubuntu Unity is pretty much an anthology of user interface decisions that are exactly wrong by my perception, and "lets get rid of quit" is just another one. Of all the actions in any menu ever, "quit" is one of the few that I thought confused no one. Then I read something like: "in Ubuntu, we have some elements waiting to help out: the messaging menu, the me menu, and the sound menu" and discover the concept is stuffing functionality into a maze of predetermined slots based on a set of usage assumptions. I don't think any of this is responding to the needs of users, I think its the equivalent of rearranging the furniture in the middle of the night so people trip over the couch when they are walking to the bathroom.

View on HN

I don't know that I'd necessarily attribute it to the Canonical team, but the best UI designers make decisions that don't sound right out loud, but actually work quite well in the product.

That's often the very point of UI, is in studying behaviors and responding to them in ways that aren't obvious, and that often sound wrong on their face. Apple, in particular, are considered a paragon of UI excellence, yet many of the decisions they make SOUND downright terrible.

Of course, using their products is generally easy and convenient.

For the record, I am not a UI/UX guru, so all I can offer are anecdotes on this, but I think that the important takeaway is that good UI/UX should not be obviously right. If it were, everybody would have already been doing it, and I think that we can all agree that most UI of yore is downright bad.

Recently, meaning in OS X, I've felt like the Apple UI has degenerated through the use of "easy looking" UI elements that remove every "confusing" element to the point of preventing the user from doing anything.

Not only can I not find files when Finder doesn't use folders but my parents and my friends who actually have Macs can't find files either.

It seems to me the Mac doesn't win by real usability but by looking beautiful on first glance, having a reputation for usability and having a strong following of folks who will teach people who otherwise struggle with the interface.

I agree, generally. I find Mac the most irritating platform to use -- the shortcuts are all different because Apple has a silly insistence of using Super where they should use Ctrl, and common shortcuts are supplanted by the OS, leaving apps to have to find new ones. The Dock is a slow method of switching and Sup+~ shortcut to switch to a windows is more annoying than a straight Alt+Tab. Sup+H and your window goes away; this has confused a lot of people I know, and it annoys me a lot when I try to look at history.

I really see no serious UI benefit in Apple's products. It seems roughly equivalent to me, and it uses the same paradigms as other conventional systems, it just does it in a shinier way, and it seems cool just because Apple does it, just like everything MTV does seems cool to a teenager.

Huh. I find that shortcut consistency is actually a strength of the platform. Are you talking about inconsistencies between OS X's choice and the other OSes you use? Because otherwise, I don't see it. Only on the Mac do I know that I can use the same key combo (apple-,) to get to the preferences of an application, regardless of where it came from. And I'm not sure how apple-` is "more annoying" than alt-tab; apple-tab still exists for switching between applications. apple-` just switches between the windows of an application. I actually like that ability, and again, it's consistent across applications.

OS X may not be your cup of tea, and that's just fine. You just happened to attack what I perceive as one of its strengths, so I'm surprised by your choice of targets.

I agree with this. The fact that you can cycle through both applications and a specific applications' individual windows (in a consistent way) is definitely a perk of the way that OS X handles windows.

I do mean that it's inconsistent between OS X and other OSes. I mean that Apple+Tab is more annoying, and I would prefer it all to just switch windows instead of applications. Most apps on other platforms have a consistent shortcut to the preferences and/or menu bar (Alt).

Actually, Apple's use of the Command key for GUI shortcuts both precedes the use of Ctrl for the same task and pioneered many of the conventions, such as Ctrl/Cmd x, v, c & s, that are universal today.

Although I was a bit skeptical at first, once I got used to the concept it made a lot of sense. On a Mac, Ctrl+key combos are for contextual menus in the GUI and navigation/commands in terminals and text areas. For instance, you can navigate to the beginning and end of nearly any text element in OS X by using Ctrl-a and Ctrl-e, the standard Emacs shortcuts. And the Cmd+key combos are for GUI and application-level shortcuts, such as copy, paste, print, close, etc. There are two different contexts being handled, so it makes sense to use a different key. The combo to copy a line from a terminal window should not interfere with the combo to cancel the running process within that window, as an example, and on OS X it doesn't.

Most importantly, those shortcuts are implemented consistently across applications. No matter what app I'm working on, Cmd+, will always bring up the Preferences window, Cmd+w will close the window, Cmd+q will quit the application, Cmd+h will hide it, Cmd+p will invoke the print dialog, Cmd+s will save, Cmd+S will save as, Cmd+z will undo, etc. I never have to stop and think about it, or get jarred out of my train of thought by an application that uses some non-standard shortcut to save, or quit or similar. I use Ubuntu at the office and while many apps are making good progress on presenting a consistent interface across the OS, I still get frustrated regularly by apps that do things differently.

Finally, Cmd+Tab provides the same functionality as Alt-Tab on Windows and Linux. Cmd+` lets you switch between the windows of a particular application, which I've found to be quite useful on a many occasions.

Point being, don't knock it till you understand why others like it. While I don't agree with all of Apple's UI decisions, there are plenty of excellent usability features in OS X and I now prefer it to both Windows and Linux because those features line up nicely with the way I work.

Aside from a few crappy lowest-common denominator Java desktop apps that haven't been optimised for OS X, but thankfully those are disappearing fast.

My apologies for the formatting being messed up, I forgot that the * character invoked italic formatting. That last sentence was supposed to be a footnote.

> Not only can I not find files when Finder doesn't use folders (...)

Huh? Do you mean things like iPhoto that bundle photos?

I really don't understand how current finder works, having used it a dozen times. Whatever it does, doesn't seem to involve separate folders. Seems Prima facie evidence of lack of usability since I have been able to reasonably easily understand Windows, Linux and the older Macintosh finder-thing.

And yes, iPhotos seem to be a problem. I watched a friend spend three hours trying to find some photos they'd previous loaded in iPhoto.

A right click in most programs on a "file" will reveal an option that is along the lines of reveal "filename" in finder. iPhoto does this.

I don't know if I understand what finder is doing different than say windows explorer or konqueror in linux. when you click on finder it opens a new file browser that has the typical list and icon view as well as some quicklook view that I don't like much and a nested list view where each column is a different folder. It seems pretty similar to windows in my opinion. (not that it's all peaches, I would really like to have a file cut and paste option instead of only copy but I digress)

edit: Looking at your higher up comment I guess you are talking about the isuite of programs that aggregate all your files and handle them internally? even that is a folder on your hard drive(~/usrname/Pictures/iPhoto Library is still a folder just right click on it to select show package contents and you can get to all your files or just open iPhoto and right click on a picture you want to locate and select reveal in finder) though and it's less of a function of finder and more of a function of the iphoto itunes etc.

Are you sure iPhoto still has a 'reveal in finder' option? I"m not seeing it... Though I don't know why you'd need it with iPhoto since you can just DnD photos out to the desktop (or wherever) if you want to work on them.

It had it the last time I looked but I use picasa now.

I guess it's part of the file menu now... http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2639319...

> Are you sure iPhoto still has a 'reveal in finder' option? I"m not seeing it...

Right click on a photo in iPhoto, then click on "Show File".

edit: ah crap I forgot a new iPhoto had been released and you're probably talking about '11, not '09. Ignore this comment.

- In the case of iPhoto, I remember the program automatically copying the files from a camera to some folder deep within the hard drive and then giving not a clue later as to which folder that was and certainly not allowing any exploration between folders...

- Don't you find "a right click" with a one-button mouse a bit tricky? I did try it but somehow it wasn't happening... maybe that's where things went South.

- Plus, being a geek, I always can do what I need to do. I'm not really looking for solutions here. My main argument is that despite a reputation for usability, OS X seems to me to lack practical usability and to instead mostly coast on good and reputation.

> I remember the program automatically copying the files from a camera to some folder deep within the hard drive and then giving not a clue later as to which folder that was and certainly not allowing any exploration between folders...

Well the fundamental idea behind iPhoto is: why would you care where it put your files at all?

* If you want to see or edit your pictures, you can do so via iPhoto (or iPhoto-compatible image manipulation)

* If you want to mail or export pictures, iPhoto has "Share" and "Export" options

* If you want to open one of your pictures in a third-party software, OSX's standard file picker has a "media" section which gives you a special iPhoto file picker (which works extremely well, it can even search through all your tags and faces)

All the iLife apps (iMovie and GarageBand, mostly) work this way. So does iTunes.

> Don't you find "right click" with one-button mouse a bit tricky?

Control-click. And every mac that has shipped in the last 3 or 4 years can right click.

> Well the fundamental idea behind iPhoto is: why would you care where it put your files at all?

As you say, it's not just iPhoto - it's a big part of the iVillage. Certainly some people - not just geeks - like this approach, but I find it patronizing ("Don't worry your pretty little head about where we store the files.") and authoritarian ("You may not delete the Pictures folder from your home folder or give it an alternative name.") all at the same time.

Long story short, I shouldn't have to open an application to grab one file. I should be able to use the file explorer. Apple seems to go out of its way to make that harder for me.

> Certainly some people - not just geeks - like this approach

I would argue that non-geeks are, in fact, far more likely to enjoy this approach than geeks.

> I find it patronizing ("Don't worry your pretty little head about where we store the files.")

Well except it's easy to know where they're stored.

> and authoritarian ("You may not delete the Pictures folder from your home folder or give it an alternative name.") all at the same time.

And this one is utterly bonkers: it's an open not-secret-at-all that iTunes and iPhoto let you move, create switch library by pressing Option as you start them.

> Long story short, I shouldn't have to open an application to grab one file. I should be able to use the file explorer.

You are. It's not like the file is stored in a secret binary database.

> Apple seems to go out of its way to make that harder for me.

Whatever.

> Well except it's easy to know where they're stored.

Sure, I can control-click the folder, select "Show Package Contents" (?!? an obvious way to say "open this folder"), open the directory named "Originals" and then drill down into the year-stamped folders until I find my albums. But clearly Apple doesn't want me doing that. Otherwise, the photo library would work like all the normal folders. I could simply double click to open it and view its contents.

This is all I meant by "Apple goes out of its way to make this harder."

So, "drag and drop" out of iPhoto isn't what you want, and you don't want to just use the "open file" dialog from another OSX app (since that lets you access all parts of the iPhoto library), and then you don't like how you have to click down a few folders once you do use "show package contents"?

The only person going out of their way to make this difficult is you.

FFS, Apple is far from perfect, but the things you're complaining about have pretty simple answers.

Let's imagine I use a Mac. I open Gmail and I want to send my father a cute picture of his niece. There's no direct way to do this without leaving the application I'm in (Safari) and going somewhere else to get at the picture.

By contrast, if this were a Pages document, I could simply click on "Attach a file" and then browse to the folder where the document lives. In the case of iPhoto and iTunes, this feature - file browsing - is simply not as straightfoward. I don't think that's up for debate. You are free to suggest ways that I can get at the photo (through iPhoto, through another OSX app), but I can't browse to the item the way that I can browse to other files on my filesystem.

> The only person going out of their way to make this difficult is you.

I really don't see how. I want something perfectly normal: I want "Attach a file" to work. In many cases, with many Apple programs, it does. But in a number of other cases (iPhoto, iTunes), it does not. This is not my fault. I am not doing anything special or nerdy or geeky here.

> There's no direct way to do this (...)

Ah, but you can access anything in iPhoto in the "open file" dialog that opens up when you go to attach a file in gmail. It's in the left sidebar under "media", from there you can get to anything in iPhoto organized in the same way they are in iPhoto (here is a screenshot: http://civicit.com/~tvon/files/osx-open-file.png).

Obviously though, you didn't find this, and I can see how that could be a bit obtuse if you expect to browse "Pictures" and find a bunch of image files.

> Let's imagine I use a Mac. I open Gmail and I want to send my father a cute picture of his niece. There's no direct way to do this without leaving the application I'm in (Safari) and going somewhere else to get at the picture.

I hope you are not serious, because it's not only trivial, I explained how it works in the comment you first replied to:

> * If you want to open one of your pictures in a third-party software, OSX's standard file picker has a "media" section which gives you a special iPhoto file picker (which works extremely well, it can even search through all your tags and faces)

OSX's standard image picker has a direct access to iPhoto libraries, and gives you direct access to iPhoto's search engine as well. Likewise for iTunes.

> I really don't see how. I want something perfectly normal: I want "Attach a file" to work. In many cases, with many Apple programs, it does. But in a number of other cases (iPhoto, iTunes), it does not. This is not my fault. I am not doing anything special or nerdy or geeky here.

Out of 6 phrases in this comment, only 2 are correct. And one of them only barely.

I was serious, and I was wrong. Thanks and thanks to tvon for explaining how this works. I didn't read your initial comment that far down since I thought I knew how it worked. I was busy being annoyed at Apple and in a rush to write my response.

In any case, thanks for clearing this up for me.

Welcome to the Dark Side.

Why are you using iPhoto again? It’s not for you. I see no reason whatsoever why I would ever want to touch my photos in the filesystem (and there is nothing wrong with that) but you seem to need that functionality (and there is nothing wrong with that).

Apple has always provided an alternative way of importing photos in Mac OS X (it is, in fact, the way of importing photos that predates iPhoto), the application is called “Image Capture”, it’s in your applications folder and you can make it you default for whenever you are connecting a camera. It puts photos in folders.

"Don't worry your pretty little head about where we store the files."

It's just a different type/style of abstraction that may not be suited to you!

All file systems essentially hide the nasty details of where and how files are stored (which inode does it start at, is it fragmented across multiple sectors, which physical device?).

From a UX point of view there is a lot to be said for not treating every single file in exactly the same way.

I'm sure it's an approach that will get more and more prevalent in future (context relevant functionality for the types of files you're currently interacting with/managing).

Control-click.

Needing two hands to get a context menu is the kind of thing that makes me question the 'minimalism' of OSX. Same as needing two keys(/hands) to do 'delete to the right'

I can't verify this at the moment, but I'm pretty sure that you can assign the right and middle click actions on a three button mouse to do Cmd- and ctrl- clicks, so this is a nonissue for those of us with a standard mouse.

I'm thinking more about the macbook pros that I see lots of people with. Another pet peeve with apple laptops is that the physical click is only at the bottom of the trackpad - why not the top? I have large hands and it's really not anywhere near the resting place for my fingers, especially if I'm typing.

So the news that you can use a two button mouse with Mac OS X since, oh, I don’t know, forever haven’t reached you?

Unless it ships with one it doesn't exist for most users, especially most Mac users.

All current Macs ship with mice or trackpads that support right clicking.

I've used an iMac that shipped with Snow Leopard and it shipped with a single-button mouse.

Check System Preferences. It’s off by default.

Mice that support right clicking have been shipping with every Mac since 2005, trackpads that support right clicking with every Mac since 2006 or so.

> Check System Preferences. It’s off by default.

If it's off by default it doesn't exist for most users.

You were completely wrong and I corrected you. That’s it. I was not commenting on the wiseness of not enabling the right click by default.

So... when I help someone out and need to right click, it's not an annoyance to either alter their settings or have to use two hands? The 'single button interface' demand is silly - all it does is force people to use modifier keys to get the functionality they need. How this is different to just enabling right-click I'll never know.

I don’t know if you noticed but I was at no point defending Apple’s decision to disable the right click by default. I was correcting a comment.

My apologies.

> Whatever it does, doesn't seem to involve separate folders.

Sure does, it overlays a standard Unix filesystem with some OSX-specific features (hides "system" folders such as /bin or /tmp, displays "bundles" as files).

I'm really confused about what you mean. OSX's Finder hasn't changed much in years. This is actually a big complaint of the OSX user community. They want it to change more. Finder in 10.6, even 10.7, is really not much different than Finder from OSX 10.1 though quite a lot different than Finder from Classic.

>Apple, in particular, are considered a paragon of UI excellence, yet many of the decisions they make SOUND downright terrible.

And some, like the UI of iTunes and their elimination of the right mouse button, are terrible.

I don't see Apple as innovative on the UI front... more so in terms of visual design.

Hmm,

Why "modern, up-to-date design decisions" tend to actually make computers lousier despite their being conceived of by people whose very job it is to make things better?

And especially, why do they tend to make open source GUIs especially shitty?

Well...

First, what's good and desirable about these "modern, up-to-date design decisions" UIs is that they are organized around a tightly integrated, sort-of-intuitive metaphors in theory, and even in UI Labratories, let the average person accomplish more things, and accomplish those thing more quickly. The Office ribbon is fine example. In order to let a person accomplish more while confusing them less(giving fewer choices), it must anticipate what the user does...

Anticipation... stop there, there's the first problem - anticipating the users intentions. It's not just that the anticipation can be just wrong from get-go (though that happens too). It's that anticipation is an approach in it's present incarnations scales very badly. As soon as you want to do something hard, the system will stop anticipating you and so the hard thing is twice as hard.

And problem two of tightly integrated metaphors is that since they inherently have to abstract from how a computers' software and hardware actually work, any task that's hard for the machine will suddenly have to be done in a fashion that takes into account the machines' limitations and so violates the metaphors - if your app takes up 10GB, it need a quit menu item, damn - but giving it that menu now puts it in conflict with the "UI guidelines".

And finally, the reason tightly-integrated metaphors are especially bad in Open Source is they require more consistency so the user can count on them (even from otherwise separate applications). And you'll have a hard time getting that with a horde of volunteers. IE, why KDE 4 was terrible.

rearranging the furniture in the middle of the night so people trip over the couch when they are walking to the bathroom

Exactly how I felt about the "new" Microsoft Office UI and the straw that broke the camels back on my continued use of that software.

It's funny, because from my perspective as a casual office user, I actually thought the menus made things a little easier to use, even if I needed to "re-learn" where things were.

My wife however, much more of a "power" office user, has completely sworn off of them. This is a person that knew pretty much where every menu item on word and excel was by memory. Her experience has been destroyed, so much that I needed to re-install 2003 on all the machines that she would use.

Most certainly tripping on couches.

As a casual user, it's made Word usable when I need to use it.

This is the engineering equivalent of offering discounts to new users, while ignoring loyal customers; it leads to churn, but not much progress for day to day users (i.e. the biggest users of the software). Applications that I like the most have "levels" of the user interface; you can switch to a more complete, complex, user interface once you get more used to the program.

Your wife might like this: http://www.ubit.ch/software/ubitmenu-languages/

It would seem that existing users' knowledge of menu/button layout was sacrificed for new users' organizational benefits.

From a "never having used Office before" point of view, it is more logical now. From my power user's point of view, the first 30 hours of usage had an additional 5-10 hours (wag) of "okay, where would they have moved THAT feature to?"

I went back to Office (after switching to OpenOffice) when the ribbons came out.

Now I know what I'll be doing at 3am tonight.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com