Apple execs to keynote WWDC, issue final Snow Leopard preview - Page 2

Yes I'm sure the UI will be tweaked the same way it has always been between releases, but nothing tells me it will be radically changed, only vague rumors.
Marble ? \

No idea if they will introduce the next iPhone during WWDC or in a separate event. But as this event creates a lot of free publicity and world-wide coverage, it would be rather stupid to make it separate. If the keynote would be all about developers "only", Schiller would not really be the right person to present it. If a marketing guy is giving a keynote, there'll better be new products.

The UI has needed to be upgraded for a couple of years now and hope they leave no stone unturned. I'm glad to hear the finder is cocoa, the new interface to Quicktime X, but would have liked to see resolution independence.

I wonder what the real world performance increases will be. I hope the performance increase is very noticeable or I'll be a little disappointed.

I thought Schiller did well with what he had at Macworld. I would prefer to Jobs or Ive but Schiller will do just fine.

No offence, but you are seriously dreaming here. The MenuBar is as integral to the Mac OS as the command line was to DOS, or the minimise button is to Windows.

It's not even part of the GUI in the sense of being some sort of "window dressing" as you imply, it's an integral functional part of the whole OS. The main difference between Mac OS/OS-X and Windows is that Windows is a document-centric OS and Mac OS/OS-X is an application-centric OS and the MenuBar has a lot to do with that. It's worth noting also that the menu bar is almost the only piece of the original Mac OS that survived the transition to OS-X. The whole damned interface, and the entire functionality of OS-X is tied into the fact that Macs have the MenuBar.

People are confusing the fact that there will be some kind of new "look" to Snow Leopard (because the Finder is completely re-written), and the idea that the GUI is going to "change." This might be why cozagada is questioning the idea above, because a couple of idiots are pushing this idea that the whole interface will change or some such rot. It's not.

Apple is not going to change the entire GUI to a Windows oriented approach, or get rid of it's singularly successful and self-defining features just to "jazz up teh sales." The MenuBar will stay, the Dock will stay, Windows will still look like Windows etc. Snow Leopard will look a bit "fresher" and more modern, but it will sell because everything runs twice as fast and it's full 64 bit and Cocoa everything, not because some widget designer ditched the MenuBar.

Did Jobs say he himself is a living legend in modern business?

"Apple is not going to change the entire GUI to a Windows oriented approach, or get rid of it's singularly successful and self-defining features just to "jazz up teh sales." The MenuBar will stay, the Dock will stay, Windows will still look like Windows etc. Snow Leopard will look a bit "fresher" and more modern, but it will sell because everything runs twice as fast and it's full 64 bit and Cocoa everything, not because some widget designer ditched the MenuBar."


I wouldn't be to sure about that.. i've been using the development builds (adc member) And there a lot of elements changed that don't quite fit the current UI. i don't see it as a major overhaul but enough to really notice the change, even the beta 4 version of safari has a different page load effect not found in the current public beta version.

I'm sort of hoping for a little bit of a refresh myself, i'm hooked already on the new quicktime x interface..

Couldn't the same thing have been said about Leopard before Apple introduced the new UI? Leopard is pretty distinguishable from Tiger, is it not? 3D Dock, Stacks, unified window borders, CoverFlow in Finder, etc.

I don't think I said it would be a "radical" change, but I think we'll see something noticeably different because of the very fact that there are no TimeMachines or iChat Theaters this time around to dazzle people with. Apple can make the old seem new again with intuitive UI changes to the entire OS or individual apps. Then of course, they can introduce hardware that further sets the Mac apart like, as has been predicted by others, a replacing of MacBook's glass, MultiTouch trackpads with glass, MultiTouch displays, enabling direct manipulation of objects pulled down into the trackpad's display; just moving Dashboard into such a display would be quite useful and something competitors couldn't easily duplicate.

There are many things that could be done to Mac OS X to make it more intuitive for new users:

1) Look at the installation process for third party apps. Mount a virtual drive? Many inexperienced users run the app off the disk image itself and then when they save its icon to the Dock and eject the virtual drive, they wonder why the drive keeps remounting when they run the app (or if they didn't put its icon in the Dock, why the app just disappeared!). Introducing a Mac section into the App Store that works like the podcast directory where data is stored on the podcasters' servers with no real approval process would be a boon for developers. Meanwhile, the whole mounting of virtual drives could be streamlined for those apps that people download off the internet, i.e., apps Apple would block (P2P/torrent clients, porn apps, etc.)

2) Look at the way Mac OS X handles ejecting things in general: drag the item to the trash, which turns into an eject icon, or go into a Finder window. \ They have a keyboard button, but it only ejects discs. How about a HUD that appears when holding down the eject button?

3) The Menu Bar. I already discussed this, but it really is outdated. A button bar or pop-up HUD could be used to offer visual cues for common tasks so users won't have to navigate drop down menus full of text. Get all those actions buried in Services in front of the user.

4) The icons of apps could be replaced with more self-explanatory alternatives. The Finder is a fricken happy face for crying out loud! Safari looks like a compass, though MobileSafari for iPhone is much better simply because the land masses are well defined; those land masses are nearly invisible in Safari for Leopard. I can't tell you how many times at college I've had to help people by telling them the web browser "the compass." iTunes needs to get rid of that CD behind the music note, no one uses CDs anymore.

No, that's the difficult bit.

Yesterday I discovered my certificate had expired. How did I discover this? A cryptic error message with "Application verification failed". After a while of searching, I saw it showed as expired in keychain. So I created a new one on the programme portal, and generated new provisioning stuff, but kept getting that message.

Turned out, after half an hour of getting more and more annoyed, that you have to manually delete the old certificate through keychain: it does a text match on the first certificate it finds with your name. The old one was still there so it was still using it, even though my provisioning profile was linked to the correct one.

Not documented anywhere. Also, the error I got is usually caused by an incorrect bundle identifier, so I spent a while trying various permutations of that.

For the record, I have already shipped an app, so it's not like I'm clueless here

Amorya

Sorry for the somewhat misleading wording: I have no inside info. I think, however, that the post in it's entirety makes it clear that this is an educated guess or wishful thinking, whatever you prefer.

There always are interface tweaks. Leopard vs Tiger was an interface tweak, not a new UI. Some of the reasons for this expectation are discussed in the previous posts.

More reasons:

1. Aesthetic.
The Aqua interface was made after the blue iMac and blue and white G3. I am pretty sure Steve hates it since the release of all-aluminum line. Some of the changes were showing up here and there, but Apple did not have the time for full change. Apple is definitely working on a new UI. The big question is whether it will be ready for Snow Leopard or not. The wording of the WWDC keynote press release brings my hopes up.

2. Competitive tactics.
When Apple said there will be no new features they could have two reasons: a) they were hiding their real plans (less likely) or b) they expected that Microsoft will be in a limbo how to fix Vista and will not be ready with the next release till late 2010 at the earliest. They could afford to keep the new development in-house and release lots of changes with a bang. Now that Windows 7 got positive reviews they need to speed up.

I also think they will market Grand Central and OpenCL and will make a couple of shiny demos during the keynote. They marketed AltiVec few years ago. This was not a user feature and it needed developer support to have effect. Grand Central and OpenCL are much easier to use then AltiVec BTW.

Well we might even be on the same page here.

I'm arguing that the UI will look different/refreshed/etc. but that the main elements will remain the same (dock, menubar, windows).

I don't have access to the developer previews other than looking over a few shoulders, so I can't say for certain, but the idea that the menubar will be dropped is just not on at all IMO. Half of the Apple community would leave overnight if that happened. Similarly, the dock can't really be removed at this point and why would they want to? It would certainly be pretty much the opposite of what they said they wanted to do with Snow Leopard to radically change the major elements of the interface even though we all expect something a bit different from "regular" Leopard.

I'm thinking the interface will be greyer and more professional looking with less of the aqua gaudy (or none at all), and it sounds good to me as I happen to like grey interfaces that don't compete with the content for your attention. I've never been super keen on the Leopard GUI from an artistic point of view even though it's functionality is better than Tiger.

As lame as it might sound, the biggest disappointment to me in Leopard and the number one thing I hope changes in Snow Leopard GUI-wise, is ... the desktop wallpaper. It's the ugliest, most garish, windows-like backdrop for a Mac desktop ever IMO and everyone I know gets rid of it ASAP.

My private fantasy is that Steve Jobs agrees with me since when he demoed Leopard he pointedly used the green grass wallpaper and not the purple "space-smear." I'm hoping he was over-ruled by the other execs on that and has been fighting a rear-guard action all this time to get it changed to something more aesthetically pleasing (fingers crossed).

To me, Leopard was the big (and somewhat trashy) "consumer release" of OS-X that got a lot of people on board, but I'd really like to see the needle swing back to the "understated, classy and professional" part of the spectrum.

I am with Virgil.

When I say "new UI" I mean no blue buttons, no blue scroll bars, interface refinements, scalable elements (if no resolution independence, RI ready).

Removing the menu bar and the Dock does not count as a new UI. This counts as destroying the OS

Oh I disagree. For starters, much of what the Menu Bar does is provide redundant, text-based "shortcuts" to different functions that often have corresponding buttons in the application. That's the left side of the Menu Bar. The right side is more useful as it's all visual: BT, Wi-Fi, sound, battery (if it's a laptop), day and time (the only text) and Spotlight.


No no, I agree and I'm not one of those people. Many elements of Mac OS X's interface will remain largely the same, otherwise Apple would have given developers a heads up by now considering they said at WWDC last year that SL would ship "in about a year."

But that doesn't mean Apple can't change certain aspects of the UI to present data in a new, more visual and intuitive manner. I'll ask you the same question I asked cozagada: how often do you miss the Menu Bar (or perhaps more specifically, the left side of it) on the iPhone?

While I don't own an iPhone, I can tell from using my friends' and store models that I won't miss the Menu Bar. Sure, a small part of that is thanks to direct touch manipulation, like OS 3.0's copy and paste, but most of it is because there are visual UI elements or gestures, neither of which are unique to OS X iPhone. Many MT gestures are already present in OS X Leopard and that's going to be expanded in SL. Likewise, obviously, we've had buttons since object oriented operating systems materialized.

Very rarely do I use the Menu Bar because it's slow and requires far more mousing than keyboard shortcuts or just using buttons. Many users may never learn keyboard shortcuts, but that doesn't mean they prefer looking through text menus in the Menu Bar over intuitive gestures or buttons. If Apple introduces glass, multitouch trackpad displays to their MacBook line, this could go even farther.



Haha, I'm not advocating moving the Menu Bar's text menus into the window as Windows does, I'm suggesting a more visual and intuitive menu.

When you right-click something in Mac OS X, a (GASP!!) contextual, text-based list of commands that AREN'T part of the Menu Bar appears, correct? Replace that simple, text-heavy menu with visual, intuitive actions. Would you be against that?

Oh and for the record, I never said anything about replacing the Dock. Look at the iPhone. It has a Dock. Why do I like the Dock? It's visual and intuitive.

I'm not sold on the idea of a icon-based menu.

The concept, while strong, doesn't lend well to screen space, or to concentrating on the actual work you're doing.

By adding icons, the menu-bar's height will almost certainly need to be changed, if only to actually see what you're clicking on on a 30" screen. This is distracting, and a screen waste.

When using a new application I often use the menu to find out what I can do and to see the shortcuts. It works better for me than reading help files. Trackpad display is a bad idea IMO. The nice thing is I can navigate my apps without looking at the trackpad. And I will hate to clean it 15 times per day. Oh, and the menu bar works for the help search. Contextual menus do not, and can't.

Yes, I am definitely against that. It won't work for 90% of the users I guess. Contextual menu should always play supplemental role. One of the bad UI practices in Windows is that certain things are available only in the contextual menu. The developers and PMs who developed the app know where to look for it, but the new user doesn't.

I was lucky to have a NeXT Cube during my college days. When Apple bought NeXT along with SJ, I couldn't wait for the adoption of superior UI elements as detachable menus and column view. I think SJ wanted to morph NeXT's paradigm into Apple's OS pretty much as I enjoyed it, but long time interface elements ended up lingering behind, such as the menu bar.

It is a big change and takes a while to get used to. But being able to customize your Apps with the perfect set of commands around the window was a pretty powerful feature. Far less mousing and less confusion about active Apps.

We'll get there some day because NeXTStep was better. I think Apple fans sometimes are the last ones to really think different. Tabs on top caused quite an uproar for being such a minor tweak.

Bah, I'm not suggesting stuffing the Menu Bar with commands represented as buttons either.

Look at the iPhone's Menu Bar (if it can even be called that). Does it have drop-down menus? No, it's basically the right-hand portion of Mac OS X's Menu Bar: indicators. Indicators for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, battery, and time. You don't interact with those indicators, at least not directly because they're self explanatory.

I do NOT want those indicators to go away in Snow Leopard. But the text-heavy menus on the left side of the Menu Bar have not changed since 1984. Apple shouldn't just change things to change them, but there are alternative approaches to contextual menus (which is what the left portion of the Menu Bar is) that could make common actions more intuitive through visual, HUD-like visual menus.

At this point I hope the hold up is due to quality control and nothing more. That would be a good reason for a longer wait.

I think that is what is refered to as wishful thinking with little to no evidence to support you conclusion.

Don't you think it is a little to late for that massive of a change. Not to mention if you want to build an entirely new user interface, with resolution independence you would want the features of Snow Leopard under your belt and stabie before implementing.

Just the oposite in my mind as you will want the current API stable and competitive while building up your replacement. Thus I could see minor tweaks to Aqua.

Besides that your negative attitude with respect to Aqua is misplaced. It really isn't that bad. Further Apple can go a lingvway to keeping developers happy by working on Aqua and it's stablization. Developers want to know that their choosen tool kit is going to be around for awhile and not grow wildly. I'm not against resolution independence by the way, I just see it as a bridge to far for Snow Leopard.

1. That would not be a merit but rather would indicate that Apples management was very misleading. Now that doesn't mean I don't expect new features visible to the user just that I don't expect major overhauls tied to a massive new User Interface.
   
   Quote:
2. It will greatly increase the perceived advantage over Windows 7. The press spent a lot of time comparing Vista with Leopard and now, a couple of years later, Apple will look like puting on the table a completely revamped OS while Microsoft - an improved version of Vista. The real picture is not that simple because both companies are following different development cycles and even version strategies, but we are talking about the perceprion here (well, a bit oversimplified anyway).
   Windows had nothing to do with my Mac choice. In anyevent I don't see this as a consideration at all.
   
   Quote:
3. We all hope that if there is a new design it will be better than the current one. I am pretty sure it will take some time to get used to. Also. I know it will be critisized for certain details, but I believe we will all like the refresh.
   Again how does that relate to defending your position.
   

Well to an extent I'd have to agree. One big issue is the back to school crowd, having SL ready by the end of July for back to school would be huge. If not then maybe a free voucher system for an upgrade. In the long run it just doesn't matter who is first as they serve different markets.


Dave

If an application's UI is so sparse, or alternately, so convoluted that you have to search through its Menu Bar menus, that's called bad design. When I open GarageBand, most of what I can do is obvious because it's all at my "fingertips" rather than hidden away behind text menus.


You would still be able to mouse around as usual. But when you wanted to directly manipulate somethingpull down a Google Map, place pins, pan around with gestures; pull down a photo, doodle or use burn effectsyou'd hit a hardware or software button and it would turn on the trackpad's display.


This concern has kept you from buying an iPhone I presume.


Sure they could if you simply provide a visual shortcut to help files.


Pfft, where'd you pull that percentage from?


News Flash: the Menu Bar is one BIG contextual menu. I would suggest looking over THIS guy's ideas for better, more intuitive, visual contextual menus to understand where I'm coming from.

Whew, neither of those reasons make logical sense.

Apple won't be introducing a bunch of new features in Snow Leopard because there are few consumer-facing features/software left to introduce! With the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard they finished covering their bases in that regard. Snow Leopard will offer a next generation foundation for future hardware advances, which includes custom parts from PA Semi. Then it's just a matter of refining and optimizing things until some new computing paradigm shift becomes possible.

The iPhone essentially represents a shift to direct manipulation and gestures. If MacBooks get glass, multitouch, trackpad displays in place of their current glass, multitouch, static trackpads, it will make direct touch manipulation of things pulled down into the trackpad display a standard for Macs (or at least MacBooks, but people are moving away from desktops more and more), putting Macs far ahead of PCs running Windows.

For any text heavy application and many others it's faster to access features through keyboard shortcuts than finding and clicking on buttons. If the menu bar goes it'll need keyboard shortcuts or it'll be a huge step backward.

What do keyboard shortcuts have to do with the Menu Bar? They're listed next to their associated Menu Bar commands, but they don't depend on the Menu Bar to work.

Anyway, I'm not against keyboard shortcuts and I certainly don't want to get rid of them, but many people don't know them by heart and some don't know they exist at all. Rather than making people memorize keyboard shortcuts or forcing them to navigate text-heavy menus in the Menu Bar, why not introduce a contextual HUD?

Hypothetical situation:
You select some text within a document and want to do something with it. Activate the contextual HUD and it will display different tasks you can perform in a visual way. Select one of the tasks and the OS will perform the operation, then drop the result back into the document when finished. Make sense?

Mock up (note: this is not my handy work):


Source

I can see now I've made my argument far confusing than it needed to be by using the word "replace" rather than "change" or "rethink" in regards to the Menu Bar. Some of the Menu Bar is quite useful, namely the indicators for Wi-Fi, sound, battery, day and time, and of course, Spotlight too. I want those to stay. Perhaps Apple will keep the Menu Bar and simply introduce a pop-up visual HUD system for actions, but that would make the left-hand text menus of the Menu Bar even more redundant than they already are.

We'll find out soon enough.

Actually, the keyboard shortcuts completely depend on the menu bar to work. I cannot think of a way that a non-power user could discover them more efficiently, other than the Help search box. Admittedly, I do not use any menu items in Safari myself, apart from Develop and Services, as I prefer direct mouse-based manipulation or keyboard shortcuts. The Services menu is horrible to use, just downright awkward. However, the highlight of a menu bar item is invaluable to show the correct shortcut has been entered and received, by the right app, and the required action is in the process of being undertaken whilst it stays highlighted. The fact that (should be) all applicable actions can be accessed or searched through at any time from one unobtrusive place, that cannot be lost or hidden (think palettes/NeXT) is a godsend in terms of using anyone else's account/computer or telling someone how to do somehing on their Mac remotely. From there, it's easy to progress to shortcuts or customised tool bars, and then to Automator/Scripts. But, from a design perspective and a new user perspective, there is no workable way to retain the huge functionality or discoverability with any other method. Who said icons instead? They're gonna have to be pretty recognisable and system-wide (perhaps closed to devs), and probably pretty big, would need text labels if not, kinda defeats the point. An easily-accessible list of possible commands is fantastic for anyone who is visually impaired or otherwise needs support when using a computer. Sometimes, some of us forget there are far, far more people using macs than us geeks.

Reflecting that edit above, Gosh. So many people love the idea of these pie-menus. As someone else said in another thread, they're not more efficient, the placement needs to be static between apps, it's easy to overshoot items, and sub-menus do not work with any imagining. Personally, I learnt doing human-computer interaction at uni that many of these "dream interfaces" are mainly unworkable and test really badly amongst users, like bumptop or a desktop multi-touch screen. There is no place for a complete paradigm-shift in the near future, the Mac user-base is still comparitively small, that will not increase if they become less discoverable. The best example of a truly new (or at least evolved) interface that really works is that of the double or category slider/scroller in the iPhone list views that include an A-Z. This has been studied in great depth by many interface designers, and is pulled off fantastically on the iPhone, the best implementation I have seen, as it is immediately intuitive. Things like this need to be seen on the Mac first, before we go all Pie-menu.

All I meant by "depend" was that keyboard shortcuts don't require the Menu Bar in order to exist. That is the truth.


Says you. There are more visual ways of displaying different processes than the highlighting of a Menu Bar item that exist today, like...loading bars and other indicators.



So you think menus of text are more intuitive than, say, a Play button in iTunes?

As for contextual menus outside of the Menu Bar, other than right-clicking, did you ever see the Finder's amazing Action button!?

Sorry, I'm bad about making lots of edits.


Whoa whoa whoa, where did I say a HUD would be more "efficient"? I hope I didn't use that word anywhere because mousing around a HUD or Menu Bar will never be as "efficient" as keyboard shortcuts, I agree.

On that note, I wonder why we have object oriented operating systems at all.


Ooh, that'll be hard to do, NOT.


Argh, I should have said "one mockup". I don't necessarily think a pie-menu is the answer, just something visual and HUD-like.

With that understood, do you find the command-tab interface to be "easy to overshoot?"

Well everyone I have a good idea to what's going on in the world of apple. Possibly, a new iphone could be unveiled at WWDC and it will be the new iphone everyone is expecting the one with the supposed chinese screen shot (Iphone 2,1). However at another event perhaps a month later apple could unveil...wait for it THE IPHONE PRO. (Iphone 3,1)

I know it's a little out there in terms of actually happening but if you think about it, it goes together nicely with lots of the rumors. For example the whole "Iphone 3,1" thing operating under the 3.0 software. Also wasn't there a rumor about a 3.2 megapixel camera order with a 5.0 megapixel camera coming later on in the year? Hopefully it will go on the Iphone pro. Also this could be the family of iphones mentioned above and would be a nice way to welcome Steve back- by introducing a device nobody thought possible ( 64 gigs, 5 meg camera, 1Ghz processor, slide out keyboard or keyboard "attachement" to appeal to business/former blackberry users?)

Let me know what you think.

Cmd-Tab is not analogue, like xy coords, it requires a discrete number of key presses. But yeah, it can be over-shot through a random fumbling. Re: NOT (so Borat), most apps do not have the same amount of menu items, so yeah, it would be hard to do. It doesn't even quite work with the current menu bar, muscle-memory-wise, but at least they're all at the top of the screen. Dan comes up with some great ideas, but his most fanciful never come to fruition in the way he sees it, simply because there are many people far more experienced, and perhaps cleverer than him thinking about the same problems.

Something else I was thinking about: Since my swap to Safari 4, I've done a a few double-mouse-takes going for the refresh button, only to remember it's moved. I've also started to click on the Add Tab button, when I would seldom double click the tab bar before (unless the keyboard was off somewhere). Anyway, I realised this: Apple bringing items out of the menu, and not letting me remove them from my interface or move about them has actually decreased my efficiency rather dramatically, and, somewhat strangely, actually decreased my use of quicker keyboard shortcuts. I know that sounds odd, but it really is true for me. Anyone?

In any case, for me at least, any more arbitrary changes with no clear benefits (such as replacing the menu bar) would have me pulling even more metaphorical hair out, doubtless the same for others, potentially outweighing any possible benefits for existing users. New users I've already covered.

Interesting you haven't commented on accessibility. I suppose there really is no argument against the menu bar for anyone but yourself, or other fully-capable power users (incl. me I s'pose... )

PS I think maybe I was a little harsh on the ol' Prince of Drafts (as he is often known...), he's just not researched it enough for my liking.

Will never happen.

The rest is feasible though, yeah. Not sure whether it could be more differentiated than that, though. I have a feeling there's a strong desire (from devs, at least) for the iPod touch to include more iPhone-exclusive hardware/ for the iPhone to get a faster processor, decreasing the disparity between the existing products. We'll have to see if Apple listens to them. If you are correct, I'll be frickin' kicking myself if I get a new iPhone this summer. And they're so not going to warn us either. Almost worth waiting forever though, with Apple.

That's all I ever meant: a pop-up HUD, which would be activated by keyboard press, or a specified keyboard button, or an on-screen icon. It wouldn't be there all the time, just when you needed it.


Not if you hit tab, tab, tab. Shoot, now you can do it with a 4-finger swipe.


This suit is black pause NOT. Thanks for reminding me of that movie.


I'm not necessarily talking about app-specific functions, but system-wide things like cut copy paste, Send as Email, translate, etc. It's nice that there are Menu Bar commands for these under File or Services, but if no one ever uses the Services, it defeats the point of including said functions.


Sure but first, I want to reiterate that while my ramblings are influenced by Dan's post, I really don't think pie-shaped contextual HUDs are the way to go. I don't know exactly what it would look like; I leave that up to Apple.


Well exactly, that's where I was coming from with my button bar ideas, though I don't know how that would fair either. It's not more efficient but it's far more intuitive to have visual elements, whether they be buttons or some HUD.

Haha, it's funny, I had the same reaction to Safari 4 as you, yet we have opposing behaviors. In Safari 3, I often double-clicked the tab bar to create new tabs. Now that that functionality is gone, I use the keyboard shortcut!! I know that seems hypocritical but my reasoning is this: I get tired of telling people how to use Macs, especially Safari. When I saw Safari 4's obvious (+) New Tab button, I rejoiced even though I knew I'd rarely, if ever, use it myself.

With most web browsers, many non-power users (which I like to think I'm not, but I probably am) have no clue about tabbed browsing unless they randomly discover it in a menu or by surprise. Opera has had a New Tab button for a while now, but few use Opera. I give Google's Chrome much of the credit for making tabbed browsing very clear and obvious. Safari 4 took it a step further and I don't think it's a fluke. I would not be surprised to see the Finder, TextEdit, and other apps that benefit from tabbed browsing to gain the Safari 4 New Tab button.


So wait, do you rely more on searching through the Menu Bar or on keyboard commands (in most apps, Safari 4 aside)?


What about accessibility? Why couldn't a HUD or visual display for a system standard clipboard, for instance, be more intuitive than the Menu Bar alternative?

Also, I'd really like to hear your impressions on the Action menu in Finder windows.

It's like 5 in the morning in the UK...

... I think we're getting a little off-topic, and have kinda hijacked this thread. Needless to say, I think most interface changes we be in the form of a "new skin" rather than anything drastic with the menu bar, as people have already said, though what would Apple change? I want more transparent menus back, though my love-affair with the menu bar is already on record, anything more sheer will do me...

Add 1 to supporting Virgil-TBs comment in full.

Agreed, though keyboard-based with mousing alternative like cmd-tab, yeah?





Agreed, there is a desperate need for this.


Fair.


Yeah, not sure. Always use cmd-T, me and my girl have a stupid joke about Apple Tea even though there are no open apples now It's f*ed up all my behaviours in Safari, so ingrained after countless hours. The tab bar and button were actually real easy compared to that damn elusive refresh button. Though I've started using cmd-. now I have to hover. What's wrong with displaying progress, too? Improved add bookmark behaviour might have been nice to go along with that permanent button as well, maybe like hold it down actions (tabs, folder, then full bookmark browser in sheet?) This could go on for a while.
Depends how much I use the app. Menus for less-used apps, then toolbar/shortcuts mostly, yeah.


Maybe. It breaks the document model a little though. Would be nice for Pages for me.


Ah... it's to do with the nature of text. Chances are a text-alternative or labels would be necessary anyway for screen readers etc. Great to be able to type first letter have it jump, generally uniform unlike Windows menus will have many icons etc. next to items, easily translatable into other languages compared to say pictures (does this mean what I think it means, eg. emoji, these fellas \). It's mainly why they changed the transparency in the early days of leopard, my friend got an email from Apple to that effect when he complained about legibility/accessibility. Damn him! Well that may be a little harsh. Still, Action button/menu... why? Just why does it exist? We all have right click and/or the menu bar (or even control-click). It doesn't even have "More", so it's actually worse. Horrible. Take it out back and shoot it whilst you still can. Not as bad as the Spotlight Show All window/Finder/Non-customisable despite actually setting it up in plist only works with cmd-f if no other finder windows open/no categories/no need for most of the finder chrome for a search results window. Just "simplified" in the worst possible way. I won't use it. If it's not in the top results, I'm not being specific enough. Menus are really useful coming off the right-hand icons for diagnostics, simple tasks etc. Wish could turn 3G on/off etc. by tapping the status bar on the iPhone. Such a pain to go to the settings app for everything. [/RANT]

edit: Realised hate for action button not really congruent with want for pretty much the same thing on the bookmarks button in safari. I may just be irrational.

Yes. And I think Apple would have to do something to encourage the use of such a thing otherwise it might wind up like Dashboard: some know about it but many people don't. (Separately, I think it would make sense to move the Dashboard into the multitouch trackpad display that Dan also envisioned; probably one widget at a time and a way to pull down elements into the display for direct manipulation.)


Hover over what? The refresh button?


You're talking about the removal of the progress bar in the address field, right? I miss it to some degree, but it was only ever an approximation. Maybe they're trying to find a non-Aqua way of displaying progress aside from the spinner.


Ok. As for the behaviors, you want those to appear when pressing the Add Bookmark button!? You already get a list of tabs when you've opened over 12 tabs and what's nice about Safari 4's tabs compared to Safari 3 and Chrome is that they resize when selected, making their titles readable.


Agreed. I like Expose for that stuff and maybe I should change it so it only exposes the documents within the application, but for many new users, they end up minimizing things to the Dock in order to see what's open. Cycling through windows using command-` is no fun either. While tabs shouldn't be implemented for every app, document-based apps (and perhaps the Finder) should at least have the option IMO by way of the + button in the title bar of the window.


Hmm, the more I think about it, the more the Menu Bar seems like a necessary evil or at least something similar. That's why I asked your opinion on the Action menu. I see it as a nice alternative to scrapping all text menus from applications, which would be a mistake. But then again, maybe the HUD should replace the idea of an Action button/menu instead of replacing the Menu Bar.

Whew, I did sort of derail this thread, huh?

That'd be cool, but the more I think about it, the more I think that it's like moving the touch-sensitive area into the display: Ergonomically, it doesn't fit well with laptops. It would be OK for short bursts of efficient use, but not a constant thing, and not a necessary thing, just an option for someone who likes to keep an eye on the weather, or whatever, the equivalent of having desktop {as opposed to dashboard} widgets.


Yeah, I was feeling a little guilty about derailing the thread, but it's really dead now anyway so there's no need to be brief ah well. Yeah, to make it go from the spinner to the stop {on hover} it sometimes takes a little bit to change or whatever, leading to hesitant clicks or too many, or whatever, then the page refreshes blah. Cmd-point/fullstop (.) works easier now for me, but that's more a fault {in the program} than an advantage of shortcuts imo.


True, but it was at least some indication. Now I find myself staring at the status bar trying to figure out if it's taking too long to connect or whatever, it's just a step backwards. At least do like firefox and have one in the status bar too, most people don't use it {the status bar} anyway, where's the harm?


Yeah I said that weirdly. As with the back/forward buttons, holding down the add bookmark might show "Add Bookmark For These 5 Tabs" or "Add Bookmark Folder" etc. as well. Then, on the sheet, have a down arrow {like on printers or save/open} where you could do all the manipulation of the bookmarks page {Show All Bookmarks}. This is something I still miss from Windows is that the open/save dialogs were, in effect, Finder (well, Explorer) windows allowing all actions permissible in the shell like copy/paste, rename etc.


Yeah, I really would have thought Apple would be better at handling tabbed interfaces, the Window menu has some good stuff normally, and a right-click on the Docked app icon shows the same, exposé of course as well, spaces is nice etc. So what's with tabs? One list when you (essentially) have too many tabs open in one window? Each item on the {Window} menu {or on a right click of the app's icon} should be a submenu or something like that to let the user alternatively choose between the tabs on that page too. Or the "Application Windows" Exposé could show all tabs seperately, whilst the "All Windows" showed only windows (as you might expect). Something like this is quite needed, though there would have to be an API, and it's probably not going to work with Firefox or anything with non-native code/widgets and chrome. Terminal and Safari are different now too, it seems a common API has been scrapped for the time-being. Shame.


For us, that's probably quite right.


Yeah, I can see that, I would just never use it instead of right-click when you're most likely already hovering over the item you want to manipulate. Seems like old mac thinking


It'd be nice to get more out of get info/inspector windows, and some sort of preference to have one or the other or combine them somehow with two sections. At least the finder has different title bars. It can get just damn confusing in QuickTime, for example, and some apps only have inspector, some get info (iTunes ) with weird next/previous item or being able to select objects behind or not etc. Get info appears in exposé, inspector just ethereally melts away? I'm sorry, what? It kinda makes sense, but why? And iCal? don't get me started. The property dialogs in Windows are more uniform across its programs than that. And I friggin hate Windows. {I digress...} Point was, all these floating windows and HUDs (incl. Quick Look and others) could be unified with predictable behaviours and more functionality, or broken up when there is just too much information in one panel. Unified HUDs would sell me on Snow Leopard/10.7/10.8 whatever. {and more HUD functionality would be fantastic, yes}


Yeah, well, I guess we killed it together, people are using other threads for pointless speculation now anyways. At least we're discussing something somewhat useful.

edit: added stuff in {curly braces}.

How does it not fit well with Apple's MacBooks? They already have glass, MultiTouch trackpads. Mac OS X's gestures aren't "necessary" - you can scroll most windows with the arrow keys, for instance. But I and many others appreciate two-finger scrolling because it's more natural.

Which is more intuitive and natural, the iPod classic with its static click wheel, or the iPod touch with its gestures and touch display? Of course a trackpad display wouldn't be something you use constantly: that's what an iPhone/iPod touch is for. But for those instances where direct touch manipulation is preferable to indirect mousing—turning dials in a GarageBand widget, turning up/down the sound with the iTunes widget perhaps even while in another application, doodling and using burn effects on pictures in an iPhoto widget, placing pins and moving the path in Google Maps pulled down into the trackpad, or as you say, taking a glance at the weather—what other alternatives are there?

We already agree that simply slapping a touch screen on the main display like HP's horrendous TouchSmart PCs is impractical and uncomfortable. LIkewise, a super-sized iPhone or iPod touch-like tablet isn't ergonomic, nor would it be affordable. Replacing the MacBook's physical keyboard with a big touchscreen ain't happening. That leaves the trackpad or a tethered (wired or wireless) iPhone or iPod touch acting as an external touch controller. The latter option truly makes it optional, which would greatly impact developer interest.


I see. I swore in Safari 3 you only needed to hit Escape and it would pause loading, but that isn't the case with Safari 4. \ Maybe I'm just imagining things. But you don't have to wait for the spinner to become an X, it recognizes the click regardless; try it.


Well if most people don't use the optional status bar, why bother including a load bar in there?

I remember going to some sites where it never stopped loading (*cough* Gmail *cough*), which was very distracting. I think Apple could show loading on the spinner itself by shading in the spinner as it loads. I'm 80% sure there was a way to turn on radial loading like that in Safari 3, similar to the hidden option to open all new windows in tabs. I'll try to find a link to radial loading...if it actually exists.


Ooh, agreed. You can do "Add Bookmarks for these # tabs" with a ctrl-click on Safari 4's title bar, but your suggestion is both visual and logical.


Some good suggestions, particularly the breaking apart of tabbed windows when using the app-specific Expose command. This could also be something the super duper multitouch trackpad display (or the equally amazing HUD, haha) could do. Look at Safari on the iPhone and how it handles multiple websites: scroll through via swiping gestures. The same thing could be done in the trackpad. They could also allow the History Cover Flow to be done in the trackpad as well. Separately, when in iTunes, using the iPhone's far more useful implementation of Cover Flow (i.e., tap album cover to view songs) combined with iTunes 8's more useful Group Artists setting+Grid View (which makes iTunes 8 a lot like iPhoto, but for music) and you've got something special (if you followed all that stuff in parenthesis). Scrolling through artists in the trackpad using Cover Flow would be sweet, perhaps with a A-Z UI line (which you noted earlier).


You got me there.

I suspect changes to the UI will mainly focus on increasing consistency and (multi)touch support. Nothing terribly major.

Just in terms of posture, really, couldn't use it for any period of time. I would love it for levels in garageband, or (please!) a system-wide equaliser like in iTunes, yeah. Another example could be zoomed-in view of an image for editing. Fantastic potential. I've been wanting it since RDM suggested it. I can just understand why Apple could find it somewhat awkward, and I think it's been complicated by their studies into the low-friction glass trackpads and putting the button underneath in the last revision. I don't think they'd do it without a lot more obsessive thought than most people are comfortable with It would be awesome though.


Yeah, that's certainly the case in Firefox, and I could have sworn it was in Safari before, too. I still use cmd-shift-[ and ] or cmd-{ and } if you like to change tabs, that still works, weirdly.
I normally don't wait for the spinner, but then safari will hang or something, best just to stay away from it


um. Firefox do? I don't know. You're right there.


That certainly has happened before to me, I usually just refresh on automatic


Yeah, it seems to, but removes any ability to have a stop/refresh button it seems? edit: I actually read it, apparently you just have to manually add it back as a stand-alone button.
macosxhints.com - View a pie-chart-style ... Safari 4 Beta



I was sort of trying to provide a counter-example, in a way. It frustrates me that the add bookmark button is non-removable. As a somewhat necessary/permanent element (the bookmark/address/stop/progress/search/RSS/SnapBack control), that button should at least do a couple of things You're right, a right click on the tab bar (strangely title bar, seems weird to say that) does it anyway. It would be nice to enable Autoclick (like bookmark bar folders of bookmarks) for the bookmark menu, in that a click on the folder would open it in tabs, where's currently, it does nothing other than close the menu on a secondary click. Maybe it should be disabled by default, only enabled when bookmarking a set of tabs together?



Do you not use a two-fingered sidewards scroll for that now? It frustrates me how badly it works in the iTS, and also doesn't on the apple website, but meh
Either scrolling through active tabs with cover flow or having them laid out in a grid like top sites could be really cool, the blanks in the final row would be fine. A shortcut of just the number keys (as opposed to cmd-number for bookmarks) could work well for well 9 tabs or so.

Personally, I care whether he gets well because he happens to be a 'fellow human' but I'm not waiting for him to 'come back' because unlike Apple over a decade ago, its a completely different beast today. Mac OS X can be easily upgraded, expanded and enhanced; most importantly, management is being developed organically within Apple with the best rising to the top based on talent - rather than the situation of Microsoft where the one with the loudest voice and the biggest ego rises to the top.

I must be the only person here who actually likes the Finder and how everything actually is; the Cocoa finder apparently is far superior when it comes to responsiveness, OpenCL and Grand Central (FYI, stop calling it GC, GC stands for garbage collector - it does NOT mean Grand Central) has improved the speed when it comes to general 'teh snappy' along with improvements in video compression speed.

Maybe a unified theme would be nice, but apart from that, I am happy with how things are.

Yeah, I'm sure they want to get it right if they decide to do it. I'm not sure how bad it would be for posture. Perhaps they could angle either the physical trackpad display itself or angle how the trackpad displays the interface so it appears visually correct while looking at it at the usual viewing angle. This would allow you to manipulate things without craning your neck over the trackpad.



Hopefully in not so distant future we will no longer have to refresh the page at all. Things will just appear dynamically, pushed from the server.


Whoa, you found it. I guess I should have tried "pie-chart style", instead of "radial" in google. Why Apple doesn't use this is beyond me, if only for the currently active tab.


Yeah. Well, you know you can command-click on a Bookmarks Bar folder and it will open all of the bookmarks within said folder in separate tabs, right? If you have a folder in the Bookmarks Bar full of RSS feeds and command-click that, it will open all the feeds in one window.


Yes, but I wasn't suggesting to simply move iTunes existing Cover Flow into the trackpad display, I was saying give it the same behavior as the iPhone's Cover Flow. In other words, you could cycle through the albums then tap one with your finger to have it flip around (as they do on the iPhone and iPod touch) and show you the songs therein. This would be far more intuitive than navigating on the main display using a combination of two-finger horizontal scrolling and clicking on individual songs with the pointer in iTunes 8. Is that clearer?

In addition, it would be nice for Cover Flow on the Mac and iPhone/iPod touch to support Artist Grouping, which associates an artist with album art (similar to how iPhoto lets you set a picture in a given Event to one of the pictures therein). Currently this feature only works in Grid View in iTunes 8.


Doh, forgot about Top Sites! Never mind about navigating bookmarks with Cover Flow (though that could work too, I guess).