The direct manipulation paragraph you added is completely on point as well. This is why I personally hate “natural scrolling” on macOS because unlike the iPhone/iPad where I’m directly dragging the entire canvas with my finger, on macOS I am controlling the scroll bar through a device that is not directly the screen (a mouse, a trackpad). Therefore the “unnatural scrolling” should be default setting in my opinion, and they should have added the option “touchscreen style scrolling”, or something of that kind.
Although on iPadOS I like the multi-tasking aspect that Stage Manager brings and the fact this can be turned on/off, I find it confusing in some situations. ...
It’s a difficult task for them I realize, to support all these use-cases on a tablet that has a bit of an identity problem.
It's not a difficult task per se, but the design and engineering teams are definitely developing features that the product marketing team is telling them to implement. It's a "team" effort at the VP level and they are not that siloed, so features are agreed upon on that level I think. There seems to be a guiding principle for iPads at the VP level that they have maintained since the beginning. And there are a gazillion constraints that we are not appreciative of.
Apple does not put in PC style WIMP UI design and features in iPads. They have stubbornly refused. I think if you go back to the original introduction video done by Steve Jobs in 2010, Jobs presents his vision for the iPad as a device that sits between an iPhone and a Mac, in display size and in features. They've stuck to this vision.
Stage Manager is right down the middle of this iPad product vision. It's a simplified app multitasking system. Apple is continually trying to get more novice users to use their devices and having a your typical overlapping, arbitrarily sized app management system is going to be too complex. They have been working simplified app multitasking designs at least since 1999 with Mac OS X betas. Stage Manager was something they prototyped for Mac OS X 15 years ago, but never made it to production as a simplified app multitasking system until next week.
That Stage Manager has so many software bugs is probably more due to Federighi and the framework design of UIKit than Alan Dye. There are likely issues with UIKit apps where apps have been designed for a single window UI with fixed display sizes, and getting developers to put in some work to change it to more modern frameworks is drudgery. They really have to make it work without developers doing anything. I definitely pin the auto-sizing and auto-moving of apps on Dye though. It's one of those "assume that users have no idea about multitasking" and make it so they always see multiple apps on the display.
I use natural scrolling on Macs. Apple addressed it by removing scroll bars so users know they are not manipulating scroll bars, though they allow the whole quadrant of states. Theoretically, it could be made more obvious by doing focus-follows-mouse.
The direct manipulation paragraph you added is completely on point as well. This is why I personally hate “natural scrolling” on macOS because unlike the iPhone/iPad where I’m directly dragging the entire canvas with my finger, on macOS I am controlling the scroll bar through a device that is not directly the screen (a mouse, a trackpad). Therefore the “unnatural scrolling” should be default setting in my opinion, and they should have added the option “touchscreen style scrolling”, or something of that kind.
I’ve often wondered where the term “natural scrolling” came from. Is there something in nature that humans have been scrolling that established such a precedent? The only thing I can think of, which isn’t even natural, is the old Rolodex organizers.
Personally, I gave up on try to figure out which scrolling is right or wrong on whatever platform and tried to force consistency as much as I can across all platforms, even on Windows and Linux machines. Anything that scrolls, whether it’s a web page, list view, spreadsheet, etc., I’ve set to what Apple calls natural scrolling where possible. On the Mac I always have a trackpad, scroll wheel, or gesture-compatible device (like Apple’s Magic Mouse) close at hand. My mind has been trained to accept a trackpad or gesture surface as a proxy for touching the screen directly. Yes, it’s a learned behavior but it’s so ingrained that when I use an iPad with a trackpad I rarely touch the actual iPad screen, which is doubly satisfying because I’m OCD about fingerprints on touch screens.
The one thing I distinctly dislike is using a pointing device to scroll by dragging the thumb or clicking on a scroll bar.
The only major gripe I still have with the UX on many Apple devices, and within many apps and non-Apple devices, is the uncertainty and lack of consistency when it comes to knowing when settings or modifications to current settings are applied (or committed) to the state of the underlying data model. There is simply no consistency. Sometimes the edits are applied as soon as you lose focus on the edit control. Sometimes you have to explicitly save the edits and do a bulk commit. Some apps even introduce things like soft commits that let you exit an app without saving and without a warning prompt because they save whatever you’ve done up to that point in a temporary or draft file. I would love to see some level of consistency in this area. I think Apple finally improved this in the latest versions of the Calendar app, which I truly appreciate.
I wonder if there is something wrong with apple culture now that turns off geniuses like I’ve/Hanke and talent like ahrendts, though I don’t put her in the same air. Whatever it is, they need to fix it.
Come on, now, staff comes and goes. Where is Steve Wozniak? Where is Andy Hertzfeld? Where is Jean-Louis Gassée?
You don’t lose TWO industrial design LEADS in three years time unless there’s a problem.
There’s a culture weirdness at apple that needs to get sorted stat. Keep the normal, hardworking, talented people and stop bowing to the agenda people.
Of course you can. People leave for their own reasons. And these are very accomplished, successful, wealthy people - they can go anywhere.
She probably grew tired of the fact that Apple is no longer an innovator of new products but instead a refiner.
Nonsense. Apple continues to lead the way and is emulated by entire industries.
But as for product refinement, that’s always been how Apple rolls. Iterative product development is the name of the game. It’s how we got from the original iPhone/Mac/Watch/whatever to the current versions, or iterations. They don't pop out of a clamshell, fully formed.
The direct manipulation paragraph you added is completely on point as well. This is why I personally hate “natural scrolling” on macOS because unlike the iPhone/iPad where I’m directly dragging the entire canvas with my finger, on macOS I am controlling the scroll bar through a device that is not directly the screen (a mouse, a trackpad). Therefore the “unnatural scrolling” should be default setting in my opinion, and they should have added the option “touchscreen style scrolling”, or something of that kind.
I’ve often wondered where the term “natural scrolling” came from. Is there something in nature that humans have been scrolling that established such a precedent? The only thing I can think of, which isn’t even natural, is the old Rolodex organizers.
Fairly certain they’re referring to scrolling a piece of paper on a desk, or a globe. Push up to move your focus area continually downward. That’s how it works when enabled on a touchpad.
Sounds like Hankey leaving on her own terms. Righted the design ship to at least consider function as a legacy, and has no doubt enough money to do what she wants.
A total winner.
Function was always a priority. But do something long enough mr you’re bound to have a miss like the board and hardware team did with the butterfly keyboard, Touch Bar, limited ram capability MacBook Pro. Not a miss from Ive. He has a target given to him and he knocked it put of the park. The hardware team has learned since then to plan better and allow overhead in case of failed silicon roadmaps.
Hankey did what I’ve would have done. And she did it with aplomb.
I truly hope she is leaving on her terms and wasn’t crushed by some toxicity masquerading as the opposite of that at apple. Would love to see her at LoveFrom or start her own studio.
Did you miss the part where she isn’t leaving for six months? That’s on her terms.
After some thought, I think Hankey's, and the product team's, biggest miss is the iMac 24. The iMac 24 is the last hurrah of the Ive design ethos. It's a continuation of where he wanted to go with the iMac.
I'm fairly ok with it as long as they provided user accessible ports and an internal power supply. By user accessible, I mean don't make me get up and look behind the machine to plug in a USB drive. They should have done the work to have a power supply that could go in there. The more user accessible ports could have been done in a couple if ways. Put a couple of USBC or TB3 ports on the side like they did with the audio port, as well as a SD card slot; or, put a couple of USBC ports, audio port, and a SD card slot in a USBC keyboard. They designed a keyboard for the iMac 24. It's not much of a leap to make it a USBC keyboard that includes a dock. Still quite baffling why they didn't design it for an M1 Pro.
She probably grew tired of the fact that Apple is no longer an innovator of new products but instead a refiner.
Do you honestly think with all the money that Apple has in the bank, all the money that they spend on R&D that they do not want innovative products? There are so many ways you can design a laptop, an all-in-one, an ultra-thin desktop, beyond that it being functional. You better believe Apple is always looking at ways, but if it ain't broke, why fix it? It cost money to make brand-new designs for every single iteration of a product.
She probably grew tired of the fact that Apple is no longer an innovator of new products but instead a refiner.
Do you honestly think with all the money that Apple has in the bank, all the money that they spend on R&D that they do not want innovative products? There are so many ways you can design a laptop, an all-in-one, an ultra-thin desktop, beyond that it being functional. You better believe Apple is always looking at ways, but if it ain't broke, why fix it? It cost money to make brand-new designs for every single iteration of a product.
So many Apple critics think the only way Apple can prove it is still a viable, worthwhile company, would be for them to originate some new product concept no one else has ever conceived. They seem to think that Apple has done this many times in the past and now the lack of utterly new products is some sign of failure.
Apple didn't invent the personal computer.
Apple didn't invent the cellular telephony system.
Apple didn't invent digital watches.
Apple didn't invent MP3 players.
Apple didn't invent microchips.
Apple didn't invent laptop/notebook computers.
Apple didn't invent high quality LCD monitors.
Apple didn't invent voice controlled home assistants.
Apple didn't invent tablet computers.
And yet they have made trillions from all of the above products.
Apple has always improved on others creations. They still create, but they don't always originate.
The exit of a lead designer is not a sign of anything. It's just a person making a change in their life.
She probably grew tired of the fact that Apple is no longer an innovator of new products but instead a refiner.
Do you honestly think with all the money that Apple has in the bank, all the money that they spend on R&D that they do not want innovative products? There are so many ways you can design a laptop, an all-in-one, an ultra-thin desktop, beyond that it being functional. You better believe Apple is always looking at ways, but if it ain't broke, why fix it? It cost money to make brand-new designs for every single iteration of a product.
So many Apple critics think the only way Apple can prove it is still a viable, worthwhile company, would be for them to originate some new product concept no one else has ever conceived. They seem to think that Apple has done this many times in the past and now the lack of utterly new products is some sign of failure.
Apple didn't invent the personal computer.
Apple didn't invent the cellular telephony system.
Apple didn't invent digital watches.
Apple didn't invent MP3 players.
Apple didn't invent microchips.
Apple didn't invent laptop/notebook computers.
Apple didn't invent high quality LCD monitors.
Apple didn't invent voice controlled home assistants.
Apple didn't invent tablet computers.
And yet they have made trillions from all of the above products.
Apple has always improved on others creations. They still create, but they don't always originate.
The exit of a lead designer is not a sign of anything. It's just a person making a change in their life.
I absolutely agree with you 100% Thanks to Steve Jobs, he was able to save the company in the late 90s. They had a good run while he was at the helm but he and Ive and Co did not always innovate either, they simply created products of the times which is precisely what Apple is doing today. Apple is not in the business to come up with a completely new product line, nor have they ever.
Today Apple is living in Steve's legacy, remembering his ways of what works and what doesn't work, although the iPad lineup is looking a bit like the Quadra and Centris line at the moment! I have faith that where Apple is, and where they are going, is the right path and they will continue to come out with improved products based on others' creations, as well as improvements on their own that will excel them further in said category (AppleWatch Ultra, Apple Siliconto name a couple!)
I think I would have preferred Alan Dye to depart over Evans Hankey.
The industrial design of the MBP14/16 and M2 MBA are great. I've been using a work issued M1 Pro MBP16 for the past that month, and it's probably the best Mac laptop ever. It finally looks and feels like a workstation laptop. Always cool to the touch. Incredibly quiet. It leaves an impression of dependability, performance, and robustness that prior Mac laptops have not. It has its quirks that I'd like to change, but overall quite impressed. That's Evans Hankey leading the design team. The iMac 24? I'm neutral on, and I haven't used it.
I'm not sure if Alan Dye is a net positive. The dynamic island looks to be promising, but I haven't used it, and may not even get the chance by the time I have a new iPhone. The GUI designs have been treading water at best? He seems to like dynamic UI elements but hasn't learned where and when dynamic UI elements should be used. The Safari UI has dynamically scaling browser tabs. They widen or shorten depending on input focus. Then, Stage Manager applied that to the app views.
Users do not like things that dynamically change without their input. Perhaps I'm speaking two generally here, and it's just me, but this type of dynamism is disorienting to users. As soon as I saw them demo Stage Manager where windows were moving and changing sizes without user input, I immediately knew people were going to have problems with that, and Apple would have to at least have a Setting to turn off auto-sizing, auto-placement in Stage Manager. A person at Dye's level should have learned that when he was in his 20s, perhaps even earlier. It's an affectation that he really needs to learn when to apply it.
Edit: The iPad UI team should really thinking of the UI as a direct manipulation UI. Users are moving and touching physical objects. There's a bit of gesture input UI in iPadOS that makes it harder or unpleasant to use. Been waiting for them to understand this for the longest time.
The direct manipulation paragraph you added is completely on point as well. This is why I personally hate “natural scrolling” on macOS because unlike the iPhone/iPad where I’m directly dragging the entire canvas with my finger, on macOS I am controlling the scroll bar through a device that is not directly the screen (a mouse, a trackpad). Therefore the “unnatural scrolling” should be default setting in my opinion, and they should have added the option “touchscreen style scrolling”, or something of that kind.
Lol no it’s not “controlling a scrollbar”. Why do you think they hid the scrollbars? You are controlling the content, just as you would with a touchscreen, just indirectly. It took me like 48 hrs for it to completely feel natural to me. You’re still fighting it how many years later? Since Lion. Yikes.
Comments
Apple does not put in PC style WIMP UI design and features in iPads. They have stubbornly refused. I think if you go back to the original introduction video done by Steve Jobs in 2010, Jobs presents his vision for the iPad as a device that sits between an iPhone and a Mac, in display size and in features. They've stuck to this vision.
Stage Manager is right down the middle of this iPad product vision. It's a simplified app multitasking system. Apple is continually trying to get more novice users to use their devices and having a your typical overlapping, arbitrarily sized app management system is going to be too complex. They have been working simplified app multitasking designs at least since 1999 with Mac OS X betas. Stage Manager was something they prototyped for Mac OS X 15 years ago, but never made it to production as a simplified app multitasking system until next week.
That Stage Manager has so many software bugs is probably more due to Federighi and the framework design of UIKit than Alan Dye. There are likely issues with UIKit apps where apps have been designed for a single window UI with fixed display sizes, and getting developers to put in some work to change it to more modern frameworks is drudgery. They really have to make it work without developers doing anything. I definitely pin the auto-sizing and auto-moving of apps on Dye though. It's one of those "assume that users have no idea about multitasking" and make it so they always see multiple apps on the display.
I use natural scrolling on Macs. Apple addressed it by removing scroll bars so users know they are not manipulating scroll bars, though they allow the whole quadrant of states. Theoretically, it could be made more obvious by doing focus-follows-mouse.
Personally, I gave up on try to figure out which scrolling is right or wrong on whatever platform and tried to force consistency as much as I can across all platforms, even on Windows and Linux machines. Anything that scrolls, whether it’s a web page, list view, spreadsheet, etc., I’ve set to what Apple calls natural scrolling where possible. On the Mac I always have a trackpad, scroll wheel, or gesture-compatible device (like Apple’s Magic Mouse) close at hand. My mind has been trained to accept a trackpad or gesture surface as a proxy for touching the screen directly. Yes, it’s a learned behavior but it’s so ingrained that when I use an iPad with a trackpad I rarely touch the actual iPad screen, which is doubly satisfying because I’m OCD about fingerprints on touch screens.
The one thing I distinctly dislike is using a pointing device to scroll by dragging the thumb or clicking on a scroll bar.
The only major gripe I still have with the UX on many Apple devices, and within many apps and non-Apple devices, is the uncertainty and lack of consistency when it comes to knowing when settings or modifications to current settings are applied (or committed) to the state of the underlying data model. There is simply no consistency. Sometimes the edits are applied as soon as you lose focus on the edit control. Sometimes you have to explicitly save the edits and do a bulk commit. Some apps even introduce things like soft commits that let you exit an app without saving and without a warning prompt because they save whatever you’ve done up to that point in a temporary or draft file. I would love to see some level of consistency in this area. I think Apple finally improved this in the latest versions of the Calendar app, which I truly appreciate.
But as for product refinement, that’s always been how Apple rolls. Iterative product development is the name of the game. It’s how we got from the original iPhone/Mac/Watch/whatever to the current versions, or iterations. They don't pop out of a clamshell, fully formed.
Gruber wrote about over a decade ago:
https://www.macworld.com/article/1151235/macs/apple-rolls.html
I'm fairly ok with it as long as they provided user accessible ports and an internal power supply. By user accessible, I mean don't make me get up and look behind the machine to plug in a USB drive. They should have done the work to have a power supply that could go in there. The more user accessible ports could have been done in a couple if ways. Put a couple of USBC or TB3 ports on the side like they did with the audio port, as well as a SD card slot; or, put a couple of USBC ports, audio port, and a SD card slot in a USBC keyboard. They designed a keyboard for the iMac 24. It's not much of a leap to make it a USBC keyboard that includes a dock. Still quite baffling why they didn't design it for an M1 Pro.
Today Apple is living in Steve's legacy, remembering his ways of what works and what doesn't work, although the iPad lineup is looking a bit like the Quadra and Centris line at the moment! I have faith that where Apple is, and where they are going, is the right path and they will continue to come out with improved products based on others' creations, as well as improvements on their own that will excel them further in said category (AppleWatch Ultra, Apple Silicon to name a couple!)