Stop making me think, Apple!
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Apple used to reign supreme at providing a simple, obvious UI for their products. The iPhone famously doesn't even come with a user manual, which is astounding given it was one of the (if not the) most sophisticated and complex consumer devices launched. They Just Worked. Further, they were fairly obvious in how they worked. But how times have changed. Each iteration of the OS and the associated apps seem to involve more and more hidden UI cues. Jakob Neilson once railed against poorly discoverable UIs and it seems Apple is going deeper and deeper down that path. iTunes on the desktop and on the mobile device are two very different beasts, but they share a multiple personality disorder when it comes to trying to understand how the UI works. Is it a menu at the top? A sidebar? Is it a section heading that's actually a dropdown menu that switches the context in exactly the way (but different!) to the icons in the bottom bar? It's turned into a huge guessing game. I think I'm going to send the Apple UX guys a copy of the book Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability[^]
cheers Chris Maunder
Chris Maunder wrote:
it was one of the (if not the) most sophisticated and complex consumer devices launched
LMAO.
Decrease the belief in God, and you increase the numbers of those who wish to play at being God by being “society’s supervisors,” who deny the existence of divine standards, but are very serious about imposing their own standards on society.-Neal A. Maxwell You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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Apple used to reign supreme at providing a simple, obvious UI for their products. The iPhone famously doesn't even come with a user manual, which is astounding given it was one of the (if not the) most sophisticated and complex consumer devices launched. They Just Worked. Further, they were fairly obvious in how they worked. But how times have changed. Each iteration of the OS and the associated apps seem to involve more and more hidden UI cues. Jakob Neilson once railed against poorly discoverable UIs and it seems Apple is going deeper and deeper down that path. iTunes on the desktop and on the mobile device are two very different beasts, but they share a multiple personality disorder when it comes to trying to understand how the UI works. Is it a menu at the top? A sidebar? Is it a section heading that's actually a dropdown menu that switches the context in exactly the way (but different!) to the icons in the bottom bar? It's turned into a huge guessing game. I think I'm going to send the Apple UX guys a copy of the book Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability[^]
cheers Chris Maunder
My prediction is Apple will go the way of Walmart. Steve Jobs was extremely influential in that company, just like Sam Walton was with Walmart. Walmart went to sh*t now because he's gone, and I expect Apple will be no different. Right now, they're just riding on the coattails of what Steve built, but that won't last forever.
Jeremy Falcon
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My prediction is Apple will go the way of Walmart. Steve Jobs was extremely influential in that company, just like Sam Walton was with Walmart. Walmart went to sh*t now because he's gone, and I expect Apple will be no different. Right now, they're just riding on the coattails of what Steve built, but that won't last forever.
Jeremy Falcon
Not so sure. Product quality has never been a concern in the "apple purchasing decision" - most of 'em are sold to people who would buy a turd if it was polished and stamped with the logo because if they don't their mates will laugh at them.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Not so sure. Product quality has never been a concern in the "apple purchasing decision" - most of 'em are sold to people who would buy a turd if it was polished and stamped with the logo because if they don't their mates will laugh at them.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
That's presumptuous.
Jeremy Falcon
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Apple used to reign supreme at providing a simple, obvious UI for their products. The iPhone famously doesn't even come with a user manual, which is astounding given it was one of the (if not the) most sophisticated and complex consumer devices launched. They Just Worked. Further, they were fairly obvious in how they worked. But how times have changed. Each iteration of the OS and the associated apps seem to involve more and more hidden UI cues. Jakob Neilson once railed against poorly discoverable UIs and it seems Apple is going deeper and deeper down that path. iTunes on the desktop and on the mobile device are two very different beasts, but they share a multiple personality disorder when it comes to trying to understand how the UI works. Is it a menu at the top? A sidebar? Is it a section heading that's actually a dropdown menu that switches the context in exactly the way (but different!) to the icons in the bottom bar? It's turned into a huge guessing game. I think I'm going to send the Apple UX guys a copy of the book Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability[^]
cheers Chris Maunder
I think you should've started thinking before you bought an Apple product :)
Visit my blog at Sander's bits - Writing the code you need. Or read my articles at my CodeProject profile.
Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. — Edsger W. Dijkstra
Regards, Sander
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That's presumptuous.
Jeremy Falcon
Really? There's a whole lot of evidence to what he says.
Decrease the belief in God, and you increase the numbers of those who wish to play at being God by being “society’s supervisors,” who deny the existence of divine standards, but are very serious about imposing their own standards on society.-Neal A. Maxwell You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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Really? There's a whole lot of evidence to what he says.
Decrease the belief in God, and you increase the numbers of those who wish to play at being God by being “society’s supervisors,” who deny the existence of divine standards, but are very serious about imposing their own standards on society.-Neal A. Maxwell You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
I don't have time for this anymore in life. Bye bye.
Jeremy Falcon
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I don't have time for this anymore in life. Bye bye.
Jeremy Falcon
Good call. Me neither.
Decrease the belief in God, and you increase the numbers of those who wish to play at being God by being “society’s supervisors,” who deny the existence of divine standards, but are very serious about imposing their own standards on society.-Neal A. Maxwell You must accept 1 of 2 basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe or we are not alone. Either way, the implications are staggering!-Wernher von Braun
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Chris Maunder wrote:
Apple used to reign supreme at providing a simple, obvious UI for their products. The iPhone famously doesn't even come with a user manual, which is astounding given it was one of the (if not the) most sophisticated and complex consumer devices launched.
Made me laugh :) I remember the DOS 5 manual, you could kill a man with it. Then came Windows, with no manual at all. I think that a desktop is a somewhat complexer environment than a phone. The ux-guide for the common controls has been around for quite some time, so we are talking about a tested and well-documented framework here, recognized by most people who touched a PC. Still, it is a dumbed-down interface compared to any command-line. Making the buttons bigger and giving yet even less options is more of designing for toddlers.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^][](X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett)
Note I said "consumer device". Maybe I'm sheltered, but from memory every consumer device (including those tiny MP4 players) came with manuals in 10 languages that told you everything except how to most efficiently throw it against the wall when it stopped working.
cheers Chris Maunder
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My prediction is Apple will go the way of Walmart. Steve Jobs was extremely influential in that company, just like Sam Walton was with Walmart. Walmart went to sh*t now because he's gone, and I expect Apple will be no different. Right now, they're just riding on the coattails of what Steve built, but that won't last forever.
Jeremy Falcon
It's not just Walmart, remember that Apple itself has already gone through that after Jobs was fired. The question is, how long will it take this time around? Considering they have a few hundred billions sitting in the bank doing nothing, I suspect a lot longer...
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It's not just Walmart, remember that Apple itself has already gone through that after Jobs was fired. The question is, how long will it take this time around? Considering they have a few hundred billions sitting in the bank doing nothing, I suspect a lot longer...
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My prediction is Apple will go the way of Walmart. Steve Jobs was extremely influential in that company, just like Sam Walton was with Walmart. Walmart went to sh*t now because he's gone, and I expect Apple will be no different. Right now, they're just riding on the coattails of what Steve built, but that won't last forever.
Jeremy Falcon
Jeremy Falcon wrote:
Walmart went to sh*t now
Interesting. I think Walmart is better than it ever has been, especially since they came online with their website. Perhaps the location makes a difference. :^)
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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Jeremy Falcon wrote:
Walmart went to sh*t now
Interesting. I think Walmart is better than it ever has been, especially since they came online with their website. Perhaps the location makes a difference. :^)
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I shop at Walmart as a last resort; I detest having 15 or more check out stations with only 1 or 2 open and a line of people at each one.
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Not so sure. Product quality has never been a concern in the "apple purchasing decision" - most of 'em are sold to people who would buy a turd if it was polished and stamped with the logo because if they don't their mates will laugh at them.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
I knew an electronics engineer who took an iPad apart and he said that the design of the product was of an extremely high quality. The only Apple product I have is one of the old iPods with an 80gb hard drive. I have tried to persuade myself to buy an iPhone or iPad, however whenever I do this and weigh up the benefits and costs I always find that I already have everything that these two pieces of hardware would provide. The way I see it is that Apple products are luxury products aimed at the top end of the market, price-wise, at a price most Western working people can just about afford - however I have no need for luxury electronic goods, which is why I don't pay that extra to get that little bit less(Apple locking everything down).
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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I shop at Walmart as a last resort; I detest having 15 or more check out stations with only 1 or 2 open and a line of people at each one.
Tim Carmichael wrote:
I detest having 15 or more check out stations with only 1 or 2 open and a line of people at each one.
That doesn't happen at the 1 or 2 that I shop at. :^) Self-checkout is great; unless you have a lot of stuff.
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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Note I said "consumer device". Maybe I'm sheltered, but from memory every consumer device (including those tiny MP4 players) came with manuals in 10 languages that told you everything except how to most efficiently throw it against the wall when it stopped working.
cheers Chris Maunder
Chris Maunder wrote:
Note I said "consumer device".
Noted. Please do take note that Personal Computers have replaced the so-called Home Computer.
Chris Maunder wrote:
Maybe I'm sheltered, but from memory every consumer device (including those tiny MP4 players) came with manuals in 10 languages that told you everything except how to most efficiently throw it against the wall when it stopped working.
Even my mechanical alarm-clock with bells has a manual in umpteen different languages. Nearly everything comes with a set of instructions, a
DISCLAIMER IN CAPS, a copyright notice, a trade-mark notice, list of ingredients, whether it is kosher or not and no real instructional value. The last VCR I have seen came with a manual that would make you cry as much as some XML-generated comments generated from source-code. You were talking however about UI-design on consumer-devices, something mostly dictated by the OS. I would say that the Workbench from the Amiga is still superiour, but in terms of killing documentation on consumer-devices, I'd say Windows was a step ahead.Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^][](X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett)
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dandy72 wrote:
Considering they have a few hundred billions sitting in the bank doing nothing
I'll gladly babysit it. :-\
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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It's not just Walmart, remember that Apple itself has already gone through that after Jobs was fired. The question is, how long will it take this time around? Considering they have a few hundred billions sitting in the bank doing nothing, I suspect a lot longer...
Good point. I suppose it's time for me to become a Linux fanboy. :laugh:
Jeremy Falcon
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Jeremy Falcon wrote:
Walmart went to sh*t now
Interesting. I think Walmart is better than it ever has been, especially since they came online with their website. Perhaps the location makes a difference. :^)
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
RyanDev wrote:
Perhaps the location makes a difference.
All I can say is that, in the south at least, more often than not they've gone through crap ringers. I've found most of the associates aren't helpful and have very little knowledge of what is going on with the store. I used to work at Walmart as a kid before getting into tech for living, and back in the day Sam Walton was known for going to stores and letting go of unhelpful associates on the spot. Those days are gone. But if your Walmarts are nirvana, cherish them man. Cherish them like the jewels they are.
Jeremy Falcon
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Apple used to reign supreme at providing a simple, obvious UI for their products. The iPhone famously doesn't even come with a user manual, which is astounding given it was one of the (if not the) most sophisticated and complex consumer devices launched. They Just Worked. Further, they were fairly obvious in how they worked. But how times have changed. Each iteration of the OS and the associated apps seem to involve more and more hidden UI cues. Jakob Neilson once railed against poorly discoverable UIs and it seems Apple is going deeper and deeper down that path. iTunes on the desktop and on the mobile device are two very different beasts, but they share a multiple personality disorder when it comes to trying to understand how the UI works. Is it a menu at the top? A sidebar? Is it a section heading that's actually a dropdown menu that switches the context in exactly the way (but different!) to the icons in the bottom bar? It's turned into a huge guessing game. I think I'm going to send the Apple UX guys a copy of the book Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability[^]
cheers Chris Maunder
Chris Maunder wrote:
involve more and more hidden UI cues
What like having to move the mouse the the top right/left hand corner of the screen to make some option appear. I don't think it is just Apple!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
