It's not just NeXTSTEP that had that, Windows has had it for donkeys years, and I would go so far as to say this is probably the only thing Windows has, that I wanted brought to the Mac! Seems like a trivial thing, but when you have to use a PC and a Mac on a day to day basis, it's surprising how irritating not having it on the Mac is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fishstick_kitty
Agreed...and the video was ridiculous how long they spent demonstrating it...I think I get it, you can resize from anywhere on the edge.
Other features look very cool though.
When people were asking for this feature back in the System 7 days, the responses were usually something like: "Who cares", "If you don't like it, get a PC", etc.
I don't remember Publish and Subscribe (similar to services?), but I do remember tear off menus.
Switching to a Mac with Mac OS X wasn't difficult at all, but I had to wait for 2005 to be able to do that.
NeXT was ahead of its time but if you look at the interface now it's really archaic.
And if I remember correctly, the reason Mac OS X was delayed so much was because of Apple users with no love at all for the new OS.
J.
You're right.. I had to use an Apple reference there. I can't remember what it was called on the NeXT. It even worked over networks.
My NeXT cube still runs and the OS could blend in with today and do just fine.
Here's another neat feature: you could click the 'lips' icon in any email window and attach a quick voice message.
But back to Lion. I remember seeing a Mac II at a store, gasping at the beautiful colors. The store owner was giving a great demo and a customer ended up buying it for over $5K. I couldn't wait till I could afford one. I imagined a world where we finally put the gray interfaces to rest!
There's a nice, subtle way to use color in an OS and I hope if we see a redesigned UI in Lion that it uses color in an intelligent way. Gray scale is safe but a little drab.
Um... also BTW... you should know that if you're in a list view, any menu or finder window, you DO only need to type the first couple of letters to select the item, then hit return (or Cmd-Down Arrow in the Finder).
I read that Steve originally wanted the Mac keyboard to have no arrow keys, in order to force people to use the mouse.
Quote:
@Bigpics - hopefully you know that Apple introduced the modern GUI interface well before Windows. One of the things that MS did to try and skirt the copyright issue of flat out copying the Mac, was to rearrange the close/min/max buttons, and use a different control-key.
Didn't the NeXT operating system also put the Close button in the top right corner of the window?
Hidden scrollbars and some of these other "new features" violate apple's own human interface Guidlines.
I think you are confused. APPLE makes Apple's human interface guidelines. So, at most it can violate the CURRENT interface guidelines...
Quote:
Originally Posted by stokessd
Full screen apps? What's next MDI?
Full screen apps are quite useful and help keep distractions away. The MDI is a dead design concept --as is the floating mess, with palettes and windows from a single app all over.
The new king is what I call the *integrated* window interface (think Aperture, Logic, Adobe's Lightroom and the half-arsed implementation of Photoshop "application frame" etc). That is, multiple windows are shown as tabs or in a grid, and palettes are attached to the overall frame. Highly convenient and Expose friendly.
When people were asking for this feature back in the System 7 days, the responses were usually something like: "Who cares", "If you don't like it, get a PC", etc.
And they still should be. OK, now it can resize from everywhere. No big deal.
I am not a journalist. Guys, a lot of you here don't seem to get it.
If you expect to be taken seriously as a journalist, you should use your name. As least if you do write under a pseudonyms, stick to it. Don't change your name depending on the particular story because you are afraid of Apple. Or you don't want any criticism about said story to be directed at you - the real you. Either that or simply don't post stuff within NDA as a news story.
AI isn't the New York Times, its a tech blog. So shut up and go back to doodling UI pictures. I don't think you're very good at that, but I'll refrain from going on and on about it.
Seriously, if anyone cared about what you think Ireland, we'd be reading your blog. We're not.
In Lion '~/Library' is hidden, WTF is this invisible?? Stop trying to hide shit like this, we need access to Library all the time.
Most people don't need to go into their Library folder. If you do, I suggest you're not typical. And Lion will in no way restrict your access to it. It's just hidden. This is going to be a good thing for most people.
And they still should be. OK, now it can resize from everywhere. No big deal.
Looks like some people just can't stand having to eat crow after years of dismissing and even arguing against being able to resize widows from any side or corner.
You're right.. I had to use an Apple reference there. I can't remember what it was called on the NeXT. It even worked over networks.
My NeXT cube still runs and the OS could blend in with today and do just fine.
Here's another neat feature: you could click the 'lips' icon in any email window and attach a quick voice message.
But back to Lion. I remember seeing a Mac II at a store, gasping at the beautiful colors. The store owner was giving a great demo and a customer ended up buying it for over $5K. I couldn't wait till I could afford one. I imagined a world where we finally put the gray interfaces to rest!
There's a nice, subtle way to use color in an OS and I hope if we see a redesigned UI in Lion that it uses color in an intelligent way. Gray scale is safe but a little drab.
I remember that one. One of the things I liked the most was a very impressive music/synthesizer application called 'Ensemble' It used the onboard 56000 DSP and had a fantastic layout. I've never seen a more inspiring application, not even on the iPad. Another incredible thing was seeing RenderMan (used by Pixar) come to life one the screen.
I've stopped using my NeXTStation 10 or 12 years ago. Had to replace the harddrive, and it wasn't completely stable after that.
But I had a blast with it when I used it the most (1990-1995). And your maybe right, archaic is a bit to strong a word, I should probably have said 'dated'.
Lion is I think a big leap in the right direction. And thats because of usability. I've noticed that It's much easier to use some (most) application on the iPad and this is now replicated on Mac OS X.
Your signature: Mac OS X Lion. I want the window-zoom changed to a "fullscreen" button (in reality it looks like we're getting an extra button). I want decent native mouse-tracking software (no changes so far). I want AirPlay built into QuickTime.
Window Zoom
I would abhor fullscreen behavior for the green zoom button.
The fact that it toggles between a user-defined window size and an optimized window size is one of the refinements that sets the Mac off w.r.t. Windows.
Especially with the advent of very large screen sizes, it turns out that a lot of window content is not designed for full screen.
Also, Mac users often like to understand the global context of windows, which is entirely lost in full screen and/or (worse) in the abutting of window title/scrool bars, which gets really confusing, and, which, by the way, also uses a lot of screen real estate. Many users rely on positional information (not only for icons within windows, but also) of the active windows.
Exposé, or its successor in Lion, do provide a quick way of switching and have a quick overview of the active windows, which is not only useful with full screen, but also in the multiwindow case.
There are situations, though, in which one would like full screen behavior, and Apple will be addressing this in Lion, without giving up the optimized windows version.
Mouse Tracking
I never missed it, until recently (I don't know what changed), and for a few applications, including some games, where some prefer more linear behavior.
Also, some Web apps, and Flash, modify the mouse tracking behavior, which is an absolute pain, especially for scroll-button like swipes, which become either too slow or too fast.
Therefore, some advanced user control would be a nice boon, but I'd keep it tucked away deep into the prefs, under an "Advanced" button or so. Maybe on a per-window or a per app basis only, maybe with a dropdown button in the title bar or an additional item of a gear button, allowing one to choose one of many mouse tracking setups.
Airplay easily accessible under Quicktime
Sounds like a nice feature to be able to dispatch stuff to another screen, e.g., from my iPhone / iPad / 9inMcBookAir to the mcMiniTV / AppleTV or to my 27in iMac.
Honestly I couldn't comment on a trackpad, as I do not have one. I am however thinking of purchasing one to play with as I think some of the gestures that have been created have been geared more torwards that piece of hardware.
Your right. Can't wait to be able to deploy the trackpad completely.
I'm curious how you select the last item in Finder's list view when there will appear that horizontal scroll bar on top of it (as can be seen in the video)?
I think it is the right direction to move the UI forward but will it work well at the end? On the other side the scroll bar in the Cover Flow view should be an overlay too, would make a lot more sense there.
Comments
It's not just NeXTSTEP that had that, Windows has had it for donkeys years, and I would go so far as to say this is probably the only thing Windows has, that I wanted brought to the Mac! Seems like a trivial thing, but when you have to use a PC and a Mac on a day to day basis, it's surprising how irritating not having it on the Mac is.
Agreed...and the video was ridiculous how long they spent demonstrating it...I think I get it, you can resize from anywhere on the edge.
Other features look very cool though.
When people were asking for this feature back in the System 7 days, the responses were usually something like: "Who cares", "If you don't like it, get a PC", etc.
What about making it easier to access menu commands when you have multiple monitors?
I don't remember Publish and Subscribe (similar to services?), but I do remember tear off menus.
Switching to a Mac with Mac OS X wasn't difficult at all, but I had to wait for 2005 to be able to do that.
NeXT was ahead of its time but if you look at the interface now it's really archaic.
And if I remember correctly, the reason Mac OS X was delayed so much was because of Apple users with no love at all for the new OS.
J.
You're right.. I had to use an Apple reference there. I can't remember what it was called on the NeXT. It even worked over networks.
My NeXT cube still runs and the OS could blend in with today and do just fine.
Here's another neat feature: you could click the 'lips' icon in any email window and attach a quick voice message.
But back to Lion. I remember seeing a Mac II at a store, gasping at the beautiful colors. The store owner was giving a great demo and a customer ended up buying it for over $5K. I couldn't wait till I could afford one. I imagined a world where we finally put the gray interfaces to rest!
There's a nice, subtle way to use color in an OS and I hope if we see a redesigned UI in Lion that it uses color in an intelligent way. Gray scale is safe but a little drab.
Um... also BTW... you should know that if you're in a list view, any menu or finder window, you DO only need to type the first couple of letters to select the item, then hit return (or Cmd-Down Arrow in the Finder).
I read that Steve originally wanted the Mac keyboard to have no arrow keys, in order to force people to use the mouse.
@Bigpics - hopefully you know that Apple introduced the modern GUI interface well before Windows. One of the things that MS did to try and skirt the copyright issue of flat out copying the Mac, was to rearrange the close/min/max buttons, and use a different control-key.
Didn't the NeXT operating system also put the Close button in the top right corner of the window?
Hidden scrollbars and some of these other "new features" violate apple's own human interface Guidlines.
I think you are confused. APPLE makes Apple's human interface guidelines. So, at most it can violate the CURRENT interface guidelines...
Full screen apps? What's next MDI?
Full screen apps are quite useful and help keep distractions away. The MDI is a dead design concept --as is the floating mess, with palettes and windows from a single app all over.
The new king is what I call the *integrated* window interface (think Aperture, Logic, Adobe's Lightroom and the half-arsed implementation of Photoshop "application frame" etc). That is, multiple windows are shown as tabs or in a grid, and palettes are attached to the overall frame. Highly convenient and Expose friendly.
When people were asking for this feature back in the System 7 days, the responses were usually something like: "Who cares", "If you don't like it, get a PC", etc.
And they still should be. OK, now it can resize from everywhere. No big deal.
I am not a journalist. Guys, a lot of you here don't seem to get it.
If you expect to be taken seriously as a journalist, you should use your name. As least if you do write under a pseudonyms, stick to it. Don't change your name depending on the particular story because you are afraid of Apple. Or you don't want any criticism about said story to be directed at you - the real you. Either that or simply don't post stuff within NDA as a news story.
AI isn't the New York Times, its a tech blog. So shut up and go back to doodling UI pictures. I don't think you're very good at that, but I'll refrain from going on and on about it.
Seriously, if anyone cared about what you think Ireland, we'd be reading your blog. We're not.
In Lion '~/Library' is hidden, WTF is this invisible?? Stop trying to hide shit like this, we need access to Library all the time.
Most people don't need to go into their Library folder. If you do, I suggest you're not typical. And Lion will in no way restrict your access to it. It's just hidden. This is going to be a good thing for most people.
deleted
And they still should be. OK, now it can resize from everywhere. No big deal.
Looks like some people just can't stand having to eat crow after years of dismissing and even arguing against being able to resize widows from any side or corner.
All those OS environments including XWindows showing that behavior came after NeXTStep. NeXT was showing that behavior off in 1986.
XWindows showed that behavior in 1987, a year later.
So a pre (pre) release of NeXTStep showed this behavior? Did you actually see that? Or do you actually have prove of that?
What about X (the versions of X before X11, and all the versions of X from different vendors) are you sure they couldn't resize in the same way?
I think I've seen this on X in 1986, I've seen it on NeXT in 1989.
J.
You're right.. I had to use an Apple reference there. I can't remember what it was called on the NeXT. It even worked over networks.
My NeXT cube still runs and the OS could blend in with today and do just fine.
Here's another neat feature: you could click the 'lips' icon in any email window and attach a quick voice message.
But back to Lion. I remember seeing a Mac II at a store, gasping at the beautiful colors. The store owner was giving a great demo and a customer ended up buying it for over $5K. I couldn't wait till I could afford one. I imagined a world where we finally put the gray interfaces to rest!
There's a nice, subtle way to use color in an OS and I hope if we see a redesigned UI in Lion that it uses color in an intelligent way. Gray scale is safe but a little drab.
I remember that one. One of the things I liked the most was a very impressive music/synthesizer application called 'Ensemble' It used the onboard 56000 DSP and had a fantastic layout. I've never seen a more inspiring application, not even on the iPad. Another incredible thing was seeing RenderMan (used by Pixar) come to life one the screen.
I've stopped using my NeXTStation 10 or 12 years ago. Had to replace the harddrive, and it wasn't completely stable after that.
But I had a blast with it when I used it the most (1990-1995). And your maybe right, archaic is a bit to strong a word, I should probably have said 'dated'.
Lion is I think a big leap in the right direction. And thats because of usability. I've noticed that It's much easier to use some (most) application on the iPad and this is now replicated on Mac OS X.
J.
Your signature: Mac OS X Lion. I want the window-zoom changed to a "fullscreen" button (in reality it looks like we're getting an extra button). I want decent native mouse-tracking software (no changes so far). I want AirPlay built into QuickTime.
Window Zoom
I would abhor fullscreen behavior for the green zoom button.
The fact that it toggles between a user-defined window size and an optimized window size is one of the refinements that sets the Mac off w.r.t. Windows.
Especially with the advent of very large screen sizes, it turns out that a lot of window content is not designed for full screen.
Also, Mac users often like to understand the global context of windows, which is entirely lost in full screen and/or (worse) in the abutting of window title/scrool bars, which gets really confusing, and, which, by the way, also uses a lot of screen real estate. Many users rely on positional information (not only for icons within windows, but also) of the active windows.
Exposé, or its successor in Lion, do provide a quick way of switching and have a quick overview of the active windows, which is not only useful with full screen, but also in the multiwindow case.
There are situations, though, in which one would like full screen behavior, and Apple will be addressing this in Lion, without giving up the optimized windows version.
Mouse Tracking
I never missed it, until recently (I don't know what changed), and for a few applications, including some games, where some prefer more linear behavior.
Also, some Web apps, and Flash, modify the mouse tracking behavior, which is an absolute pain, especially for scroll-button like swipes, which become either too slow or too fast.
Therefore, some advanced user control would be a nice boon, but I'd keep it tucked away deep into the prefs, under an "Advanced" button or so. Maybe on a per-window or a per app basis only, maybe with a dropdown button in the title bar or an additional item of a gear button, allowing one to choose one of many mouse tracking setups.
Airplay easily accessible under Quicktime
Sounds like a nice feature to be able to dispatch stuff to another screen, e.g., from my iPhone / iPad / 9inMcBookAir to the mcMiniTV / AppleTV or to my 27in iMac
Honestly I couldn't comment on a trackpad, as I do not have one. I am however thinking of purchasing one to play with as I think some of the gestures that have been created have been geared more torwards that piece of hardware.
Your right. Can't wait to be able to deploy the trackpad completely.
i love that i'm on an apple fansite with my ipod and can't view the videos because they're in flash.
so what
Always innovating, never being satisfied, always improving.
Most (if not all) companies would be satisfied that its okay, but not Apple.
You have to hand it to them for at least trying new things to make the GUI more enjoyable and productive.
I don't have the Beta, but will patiently wait for Lion and upgrade immediately.
I love Apple, iPhone, iPod, iPad, Macs, now Lion, its going to be a very interesting and rewarding time indeed, can't wait.
Thats what I love about Apple.
Always innovating, never being satisfied, always improving.
Most (if not all) companies would be satisfied that its okay, but not Apple.
You have to hand it to them for at least trying new things to make the GUI more enjoyable and productive.
I don't have the Beta, but will patiently wait for Lion and upgrade immediately.
I love Apple, iPhone, iPod, iPad, Macs, now Lion, its going to be a very interesting and rewarding time indeed, can't wait.
You're so hard to please.
I think it is the right direction to move the UI forward but will it work well at the end? On the other side the scroll bar in the Cover Flow view should be an overlay too, would make a lot more sense there.