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I understand what you're saying, and despite the content of my above post I've never been an Apple guy, always a Windows one. Every time I went over to the Apple OS I felt I had one hand tied behind my back by lack of options. I also try to keep in mind that I'm not typical. I started on "PCs" in 1981 and have grown with them, this all comes naturally. So when I judge a UI I literally stick my Mom on it... she's 68. I have also had the good fortune to work with a lot of 'artistic types' over the years as well, and in turn I watched how they use a UI. In my experience they just don't use much more than what is presented before them option wise.

Trust me, I agree that this new ribbon is very cluttered and contains too much visual noise, but in turn I don't mind exposing things visually to the end user. I hate MS Office with the ribbon, but I deal with people all the time who love it. Just let me turn it off :)

". I also try to keep in mind that I'm not typical. ... So when I judge a UI I literally stick my Mom on it... she's 68"

Well she no more typical a computer user than you are I would think. I like to see a curve of typical computer users age distribution (but I understand it would be a little skewed if it's hard for the older generations to use computers).

I feel that ribbon is designed for a select group of new users who need that kind of help. And I hope it's easy to disable it. It's fine for Microsoft to use something like this as a default mode as long as power users are able to turn that stuff off.

This is what turns me off on OS X, there is often no way to do certain more advanced things. Or it's hidden so well it requires hours of searching on the web for what plist to modify.

The only thing I felt missing that I needed from OSX Finder is "Rename All". Do you have any other examples of this?

Cut and pasting files would be useful, but that's about all I miss.

In Lion, after copying a file in Finder, you have available both Paste and Move.

Thanks, I didn't notice that!

The shortcut for move is Cmd-Option-V, if anyone wants to know.

What "advanced" things are you talking about that a regular user would need?

I would love to be able to remove a (huge) file without going through the trash can.

> I would love to be able to remove a (huge) file without going through the trash can.

1. Why?

2. `rm huge-file`

I felt I had one hand tied behind my back

That reminds me of the first few times I tried to learn vim.

It reminds me of why I stopped using vim after switching to Dvorak.

Shit that sounds painful.

Yea. For me it was like two hands... :)

Now though, any other editor that's not Vim or Emacs feels like that...

"Just let me turn it off"

Just double click on one of the tabs.

Ctrl+F1?

It's cumbersome because you have to navigate through a bunch of menus - however, its easy because you have a finite, visible set of actions to look through those menus (tap, swipe, repeat) and a finite set of menus themselves.

In a desktop OS, you have a seemingly infinite set of modifiers (Ctrl, Alt, Double click, click, right click, Ctrl + Shift), which are not 'logical' operations like tapping and swiping - they must be learned and remembered.

Tap, swipe, draw apart, draw together, click home button, double click home button, click headset button, double click headset button, triple click headset button, Press external volume button, flick mute/screen-lock button, press lock button, hold lock button.

I'm sure there's a few more buried in there that I haven't discovered. (Like swipe backwards to delete an item from a list)

Don't forget "tap and hold" on Safari. Found that one by accident.

Are you referring to tapping and holding images to save them to the library?

It works on links too, allowing to open them in a new tab or copy the link.

I was referring to this. Didn't know about the other.

Except that those boil down to a couple of basic gestures: tap, pinch, swipe. The hardware buttons are irrelevant in this case. Oh, and swipe to delete? That's in the "manual" that comes with the device. It's smaller than a dollar, for god's sake.

Wonder how many iPhone users have read their user manual, I sure threw out the manual on day 1.

which are not 'logical' operations like tapping and swiping - they must be learned and remembered.

And now even those are getting out of control:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/whats-new/gestures.html

Pretty soon I'm going to run out of fingers, and these certainly aren't easily discoverable.

Yeah, because those gestures are more akin to keyboard shortcuts, i.e. something for power users. OS X is perfectly usable without complicated gestures. Two-finger scrolling is the most complicated thing an average user has to learn.

This same pattern continues on iOS devices. They don't ever use complicated gestures, certainly not as the only way to accomplish something. The most complicated gesture you need is pinching.

The new iOS 5 has gestures to switch apps and get home, but those are really like keyboard shortcuts since the home button is still there and offers a simpler alternative.

There is still a problem when you accidentally trigger gestures. All my friends are scared to touch my Mac because they'd trigger hot corners all the time. With 10.7, you can easily trigger gestures even on default settings. I am worried the iOS5 gestures will have the same problem.

I'm not sure if it's just me, but the 'pinch with 3 fingers and thumb' gesture seems to be practically impossible on the older macbooks with a separate pad & button - there just isn't the space.

That's completely okay because those older touchpads don't support gestures beyond two-finger-scroll anyway.

No, it supports both 3 finger swipe (fwd/back in browsers), and 4 finger swipe (change Space), as well as, iirc 3 finger touch & click (although I haven't got this working since I installed Lion)

its easy because you have a finite,....

Easy? Maybe for some. I bet the same people who have to be told to right-click also have to be told how to work their bluetooth/wifi connection (and never bother to turn it off to save battery).

But I'll grant you this point if s/easy/possible/

Probably because people think it looks fun and are wiling to put in the few minutes it takes to not a be completely useless with the device.

I don't know why you got downvoted, and I upvoted to try and offset, but ignoring that...

I think that you overstate the importance of turning off wifi and bluetooth. Those are power user options, for sure. When you're trying to conserve battery power, you're trying to streamline how you use the device, which to me, smacks of 'power user'.

The flipside to that argument is that it is ridiculously easy to browse a web site, check your email and play Words with Friends and Angry Birds. These are the things that the majority of people care about... not whether or not a given physical interface is active or not.

I agree with you- that example may not fit everybody's problem. When I switched from a simple phone to a smart phone it was important to me, but now I don't bother (never too far from a charger).

And you are right, of course, in that ios allows most people to do the things they most care about very easily-- that's probably the takeaway. If you do that, then, apparently even if the other stuff is hard, people will probably figure out how to do it when they need it. Somehow.

Yes, absolutely. There is almost no reason to touch wifi and bluetooth settings on iOS devices. I have wifi enabled all the time, and battery life is still excellent.

Android devices on the other hand, need constant fiddling. My Droid would barely last a day with everything turned off, and with wifi, etc. turned on, it would die after only about 6 hours.

I'd hazard a guess your Android experience was a year or two ago. My Nexus 1 lasted barely a day when it arrived, but now lasts 48 hours on Gingerbread (2.3) with everything (including wifi, bluetooth and GPS) on.

Actually, it's probably the mobile network that's killing you. I get about a day of battery life with everyone on, and about a day of battery life with wifi and bluetooth off. But when I turn the cell phone radio off, suddenly my battery life increases to nearly a week. (I found this out by accident. I went to Sweden where my phone doesn't work, so I turned off everything except Wifi. A few days without charging later, I still had about 60% battery!)

Getting on a plane would be a fairly common use case, and independent of the 'power' level of the user.

Disclaimer: I don't own an iOS device, so don't know how intuitive it might or might not be.

Well, for plane use, it has "Airplane Mode" as the first option of the Settings app, so at least for that it's covered.

But airplanes have wifi now, so you can still want the cell radio off and have the wifi on. Yup, it's complicated. The world is a complicated place.

That misses the point of "airplane mode". Airplane mode is for use during take off and landing. Ie, you'd need to turn wifi off too.

The only reason to turn off the cell radio but not the wifi radio is to conserve battery, which again puts you well outside the use case of the typical apple user.

In the US, airlines require that electronic devices be turned completely off during takeoff and landing.

In my experience, this is rarely enforced.

No. For takeoff and landing, no power should be applied to any of the electronics. You have to turn the phone off.

(In fact, I just got off a plane, and the announcement is "electronic devices must be off, not in airplane mode. that's for after we're in the air.")

They are taking off because they are touch devices and not mouse devices.

I believe that it's only part of it. Another part is the lack of a filesystem. Many, if not most users, just don't like it or understand it. Though there are functions that are seriously lacking in iOS, I can't help but think that they're much closer to what is needed than MS.

It's only part of it but the primary reason.

The actual removal of abstraction (mouse) have made it much easier to use it. This is why my son at 2 can use the ipad and he can't use the mouse and keyboard for the desktop and laptops.

I agree but what would happen if your son had to navigate Windows Explorer on a touchscreen? He may never have to but if older users are experiencing similar difficulties with the filesystem, little can be done with the command bar to completely fix this issue.

I have no doubt that this UI, though cluttered, will help users out but I question whether this is ultimately the best solution.