Task based interfaces on computers arent a bad thing.
Microsofts wizards are.
The reason that wizards suck is that it is supposed to walk you through a non-task based process. Which it does. But it hides all the relevant information, and many options, and doesnt teach the user. Wizards should _show_ the user how to use the interface to do something. If the interface is too complex to remember then it needs to be redesigned. Wizards have been used as a catch all to remove the need to design good interfaces.
There are a couple of task based interfaces on your mac already, iphoto and itunes. The tasks are organising photos, and organising music, and they both do a pretty good job.
On the topic of databases, information about files needs to be system wide. By hiding that info inside another program it becomes unleveragable. That is useless. Information is only useful when you can use it. The way email is wrapped up in a file is a great example of this sort of crap. Ive got 500,000 files on my PC, Do you really think adding 10 or 20 thousand more would be an issue? ( it does make imap hard )
...Wizards should _show_ the user how to use the interface to do something. If the interface is too complex to remember then it needs to be redesigned. Wizards have been used as a catch all to remove the need to design good interfaces.
There are a couple of task based interfaces on your mac already, iphoto and itunes. The tasks are organising photos, and organising music, and they both do a pretty good job.
On the topic of databases, information about files needs to be system wide. By hiding that info inside another program it becomes unleveragable. That is useless. Information is only useful when you can use it. The way email is wrapped up in a file is a great example of this sort of crap. Ive got 500,000 files on my PC, Do you really think adding 10 or 20 thousand more would be an issue? ( it does make imap hard )
I understand what you're saying about wizards but I think it isn't a wizard anymore if it doesn't "take you out of the interface", then it's just good visual cues and interactive help. Wizards are linear and you can accept or cancel the whole thing at once. They are not fast, and they are not very flexible, but they are among the most easily learned interfaces, therefore they're well suited to a complicated linear process that you have to do rarely. A good example of one is a typical software installation on Windows - the whole InstallShield interface is a wizard, and works pretty well for that specific use.
iTunes and iPhoto don't really seem task based interfaces IMHO. If they are task based, then every normal app is. At least Microsoft Word has a preview mode, Photoshop usually takes you to a different screen when using filters, etc. Those features make the programs more "task based", meaning, there are some well defined tasks within the program that (once begun) have to be completed before doing something else. You'd probably find a totally task based interface in a disk partitioning program.
You're right about IMAP, but that'll just have to go then. POP3 works fine with the "archive system". It's not like our e-mails are going to exhaust our bandwidth.
On the topic of databases, information about files needs to be system wide. By hiding that info inside another program it becomes unleveragable.
Not on the Mac, which has any number of robust and mature ways for applications to communicate with each other.
If Apple makes the API standard, then there'll be a standard suite for querying applications about what information they have about a file, and there won't be any significant obstacles: It'll be about as simple as asking the OS what information it has. In fact, you can currently ask the Finder for that sort of thing. Finder is just another application, so it would fit right into this paradigm.
Also, by divorcing metadata from the actual files, you could continue to work with documents that were individual, portable files. No resource forks, no bundles, just old-fashioned files that you could send to a Windows user if you needed to with no further hassle.
There is a bit of extra complexity up front, because you have to know who to ask for what, but I honestly think it would be worth it (not much, either, since you could get that from Finder: Which app is associated with this file type?). Every approach has tradeoffs, it's just a matter of determining which are the most acceptable given the benefits. In this case, the benefit is full, standard, customizable metadata support without either closing or complicating the data files.
I was smiling nicely yesterday as I read an article re: the bind Micro$oft is finding themselves in. (I'm not sure where the link went but it's not important).
The article was discussing the new SQL database, Longhorn, Office, etc and the interdependencies being built into them.
I assume the interdependencies could be a very powerful however each Apps Development has to wait for the other to progress. So one App development slips and......weee...... the slippery slope.
And slipping they are. This is also pissing off buyers of that licensing program that Micro$oft devised/strong armed. One time fee every three years for free updates/upgrades. It seems that a lot of companies spent a lot of $$$ and aren't going to be getting any of the upgrades (Cow, SQL, Office) they thought they were paying for. Imagine that, I'm shocked!
Not on the Mac, which has any number of robust and mature ways for applications to communicate with each other.
If Apple makes the API standard, then there'll be a standard suite for querying applications about what information they have about a file, and there won't be any significant obstacles: It'll be about as simple as asking the OS what information it has. In fact, you can currently ask the Finder for that sort of thing. Finder is just another application, so it would fit right into this paradigm.
Also, by divorcing metadata from the actual files, you could continue to work with documents that were individual, portable files. No resource forks, no bundles, just old-fashioned files that you could send to a Windows user if you needed to with no further hassle.
There is a bit of extra complexity up front, because you have to know who to ask for what, but I honestly think it would be worth it (not much, either, since you could get that from Finder: Which app is associated with this file type?). Every approach has tradeoffs, it's just a matter of determining which are the most acceptable given the benefits. In this case, the benefit is full, standard, customizable metadata support without either closing or complicating the data files.
I don't see a real upside compared to the low-level metadata. Multiple applications will have data about a single file, and you want data to remain if you switch between applications, or switch your old app to its competitor. Having Finder arbitrate this zoo puts a very large burden on the Finder. It's not so great even now to have those .DS-stores and whatnot.
If you take the database approach to its logical extreme, one piece of metadata on the files is a string that describes a hierarchical "/usr/foo/etc.txt" address for the file. If you want "links" it's just a matter of saying the file can have many of those hierarchical metadata. The new model can fully consume the old.
An "export" procedure when you ship stuff over to other systems like Windows is nonexistant when you do this in the lowest possible level. You just strip all metadata away, just like access bits are stripped away when you copy things from Unix filesystems to FAT disks. What the target system does not understand, it does not receive.
"Our OS of 2 years in the future will beat your OS of today!"
Heh, two years if you're lucky. 3 or 4 according to Gartner.
So.......will your OS of 2007 be better than ours of 2004? Well, it ****in' well should be! But....y'know....I kinda sorta think Apple maight offer a couple more upgrades in themeantime, hmmmm?
I am wondering something though, that may have crossed everyone's mind here at least once in their Mac using time.
Although I have huge faith and trust in Apple as a company, I often wonder whether the amazing quality of their software, hardware and other products was due to their lack of market share/profit.. I know this sounds awful and I hope it never happens, but what if Apple does start becoming the most widely used OS? Will quality and care be sacrificed now that the battle for the user base is won? Or will they keep innovating forever?
The last thing I would want is for Mac to become the leader, and for their ethics to transform into those resembling ossified, passive Microsoft business standards, leaving end-users unsatissfied and disappointed..
I don't think I could ever turn on a computer again..
Longhorn could indeed have some really savvy technologies thrown in, but they seem to be just that.. Microsoft has so much money, that they can literally afford not to care about quality. And it shows in every operating system they created so far.
Imagine what MS would be like if they had standards like Apple with their cash!!
Although I have huge faith and trust in Apple as a company, I often wonder whether the amazing quality of their software, hardware and other products was due to their lack of market share/profit.. I know this sounds awful and I hope it never happens, but what if Apple does start becoming the most widely used OS? Will quality and care be sacrificed now that the battle for the user base is won? Or will they keep innovating forever?
You are absolutely right. The constant ringing of the death knell has kept Apple on its toes for years.
The G4 debacle with Motorola a few years ago, for example, forced Apple into heavily optimizing code and pushing AltiVec, dual processors, and good multithreading. We would likely have little of those goodies if not for Apple being backed into a corner and being forced to implement them.
If not for the downward spiral of Apple in the mid 90s with the fractured product line, failed OS development, and horrible management, Apple would never have brought back Steve Jobs. We wouldn't have Mac OS X and the whole lineup we do today. If the Apple of the mid 90s had been a success, I would probably be typing on some random model number Apple PowerMac 12000B/500.
If not for being such a small player with Microsoft's proprietary business looming overhead, Apple would have never joined the fold of Open Source technologies. Since we wouldn't have Mac OS X, Apple wouldn't be the "good neighbor" to the other *nix OSs it is today.
This is why I hope Apple stays a niche player. It would be really nice to see Apple hit 10% or %15, but beyond that I can imagine some arrogance and other problems taking hold.
Though, this kind of talk is really meant for another discussion. If anyone wants to carry on speculating about "what ifs", I'll split these posts into their own thread.
People don't need to be guided all the time. ... I was taught how to wipe my ass when I was 3 in my house and I can now do it whenever I'm confronted by a public bathroom.
congrats!
but really, this is just more fud from redmond, Steve has his RDF, and Bill has his fud maker+tosser (think mulch or fertilizer)
That's gotta be some kind of record for a zombie thread on this board...
i just joined. if bringing up an old but useful thread alive bothers you, then please accept my apologies.
and thanks to those who have contributed to this thread, so that newbie like me know better what's makes apple better than windows, and where apple still needs improvement.
i just joined. if bringing up an old but useful thread alive bothers you, then please accept my apologies.
and thanks to those who have contributed to this thread, so that newbie like me know better what's makes apple better than windows, and where apple still needs improvement.
i love seeing the occassional old thread. i didn't remember this particular one and i was scrolling through, thinking what i was reading was new and then i saw my name with a post. i was like WTF, i never posted. what is going on here? but then i looked up and saw the post was from about a year ago.
and yeah, way to search through threads when necessary.
Heh, two years if you're lucky. 3 or 4 according to Gartner.
So.......will your OS of 2007 be better than ours of 2004? Well, it ****in' well should be!
But the plain and simple truth is - it won't. If they think they're gonna nail this first time out, then they're certainly not aware of their own track record.
i just joined. if bringing up an old but useful thread alive bothers you, then please accept my apologies.
No, no bothering here, it just happens so rarely that someone actually searches back and finds a relevant topic before starting a new one, and especially dredging up such an old one, that I was kind of shocked. Pleasantly so though.
I think this article does more justice to Turrot's idea. While I think XP has done a crap job of doing this so-called Task Based Interface, I feel that it is a good idea, and I hope Apple will take it upon themselves to accomplish it.
Yeah, it's a better article, but it's still pretty light on informed reality... take this quote:
Quote:
And in Longhorn, they will stop having to worry about "where" that file is.
Actually, they won't get the benefits of WinFS's searching until it finally comes down the pipe sometime after Longhorn ships.
Meanwhile, Spotlight will deliver it to Mac users in 10.4, for real, for us to be using. And yes, he's right in that it will fundamentally change how users work with their computers, but it will be Apple, not MS, that brings it to their users.
Comments
Microsofts wizards are.
The reason that wizards suck is that it is supposed to walk you through a non-task based process. Which it does. But it hides all the relevant information, and many options, and doesnt teach the user. Wizards should _show_ the user how to use the interface to do something. If the interface is too complex to remember then it needs to be redesigned. Wizards have been used as a catch all to remove the need to design good interfaces.
There are a couple of task based interfaces on your mac already, iphoto and itunes. The tasks are organising photos, and organising music, and they both do a pretty good job.
On the topic of databases, information about files needs to be system wide. By hiding that info inside another program it becomes unleveragable. That is useless. Information is only useful when you can use it. The way email is wrapped up in a file is a great example of this sort of crap. Ive got 500,000 files on my PC, Do you really think adding 10 or 20 thousand more would be an issue? ( it does make imap hard )
Originally posted by mmmpie
...Wizards should _show_ the user how to use the interface to do something. If the interface is too complex to remember then it needs to be redesigned. Wizards have been used as a catch all to remove the need to design good interfaces.
There are a couple of task based interfaces on your mac already, iphoto and itunes. The tasks are organising photos, and organising music, and they both do a pretty good job.
On the topic of databases, information about files needs to be system wide. By hiding that info inside another program it becomes unleveragable. That is useless. Information is only useful when you can use it. The way email is wrapped up in a file is a great example of this sort of crap. Ive got 500,000 files on my PC, Do you really think adding 10 or 20 thousand more would be an issue? ( it does make imap hard )
I understand what you're saying about wizards but I think it isn't a wizard anymore if it doesn't "take you out of the interface", then it's just good visual cues and interactive help. Wizards are linear and you can accept or cancel the whole thing at once. They are not fast, and they are not very flexible, but they are among the most easily learned interfaces, therefore they're well suited to a complicated linear process that you have to do rarely. A good example of one is a typical software installation on Windows - the whole InstallShield interface is a wizard, and works pretty well for that specific use.
iTunes and iPhoto don't really seem task based interfaces IMHO. If they are task based, then every normal app is. At least Microsoft Word has a preview mode, Photoshop usually takes you to a different screen when using filters, etc. Those features make the programs more "task based", meaning, there are some well defined tasks within the program that (once begun) have to be completed before doing something else. You'd probably find a totally task based interface in a disk partitioning program.
You're right about IMAP, but that'll just have to go then. POP3 works fine with the "archive system". It's not like our e-mails are going to exhaust our bandwidth.
Originally posted by mmmpie
On the topic of databases, information about files needs to be system wide. By hiding that info inside another program it becomes unleveragable.
Not on the Mac, which has any number of robust and mature ways for applications to communicate with each other.
If Apple makes the API standard, then there'll be a standard suite for querying applications about what information they have about a file, and there won't be any significant obstacles: It'll be about as simple as asking the OS what information it has. In fact, you can currently ask the Finder for that sort of thing. Finder is just another application, so it would fit right into this paradigm.
Also, by divorcing metadata from the actual files, you could continue to work with documents that were individual, portable files. No resource forks, no bundles, just old-fashioned files that you could send to a Windows user if you needed to with no further hassle.
There is a bit of extra complexity up front, because you have to know who to ask for what, but I honestly think it would be worth it (not much, either, since you could get that from Finder: Which app is associated with this file type?). Every approach has tradeoffs, it's just a matter of determining which are the most acceptable given the benefits. In this case, the benefit is full, standard, customizable metadata support without either closing or complicating the data files.
The article was discussing the new SQL database, Longhorn, Office, etc and the interdependencies being built into them.
I assume the interdependencies could be a very powerful however each Apps Development has to wait for the other to progress. So one App development slips and......weee...... the slippery slope.
And slipping they are. This is also pissing off buyers of that licensing program that Micro$oft devised/strong armed. One time fee every three years for free updates/upgrades. It seems that a lot of companies spent a lot of $$$ and aren't going to be getting any of the upgrades (Cow, SQL, Office) they thought they were paying for. Imagine that, I'm shocked!
Originally posted by Amorph
Not on the Mac, which has any number of robust and mature ways for applications to communicate with each other.
If Apple makes the API standard, then there'll be a standard suite for querying applications about what information they have about a file, and there won't be any significant obstacles: It'll be about as simple as asking the OS what information it has. In fact, you can currently ask the Finder for that sort of thing. Finder is just another application, so it would fit right into this paradigm.
Also, by divorcing metadata from the actual files, you could continue to work with documents that were individual, portable files. No resource forks, no bundles, just old-fashioned files that you could send to a Windows user if you needed to with no further hassle.
There is a bit of extra complexity up front, because you have to know who to ask for what, but I honestly think it would be worth it (not much, either, since you could get that from Finder: Which app is associated with this file type?). Every approach has tradeoffs, it's just a matter of determining which are the most acceptable given the benefits. In this case, the benefit is full, standard, customizable metadata support without either closing or complicating the data files.
I don't see a real upside compared to the low-level metadata. Multiple applications will have data about a single file, and you want data to remain if you switch between applications, or switch your old app to its competitor. Having Finder arbitrate this zoo puts a very large burden on the Finder. It's not so great even now to have those .DS-stores and whatnot.
If you take the database approach to its logical extreme, one piece of metadata on the files is a string that describes a hierarchical "/usr/foo/etc.txt" address for the file. If you want "links" it's just a matter of saying the file can have many of those hierarchical metadata. The new model can fully consume the old.
An "export" procedure when you ship stuff over to other systems like Windows is nonexistant when you do this in the lowest possible level. You just strip all metadata away, just like access bits are stripped away when you copy things from Unix filesystems to FAT disks. What the target system does not understand, it does not receive.
Originally posted by Eugene
"Our OS of 2 years in the future will beat your OS of today!"
Heh, two years if you're lucky. 3 or 4 according to Gartner.
So.......will your OS of 2007 be better than ours of 2004? Well, it ****in' well should be! But....y'know....I kinda sorta think Apple maight offer a couple more upgrades in themeantime, hmmmm?
Originally posted by Chinney
Windows is Microsoft's strength and foundation...and its curse.
Its preciousssssss......
I am wondering something though, that may have crossed everyone's mind here at least once in their Mac using time.
Although I have huge faith and trust in Apple as a company, I often wonder whether the amazing quality of their software, hardware and other products was due to their lack of market share/profit.. I know this sounds awful and I hope it never happens, but what if Apple does start becoming the most widely used OS? Will quality and care be sacrificed now that the battle for the user base is won? Or will they keep innovating forever?
The last thing I would want is for Mac to become the leader, and for their ethics to transform into those resembling ossified, passive Microsoft business standards, leaving end-users unsatissfied and disappointed..
I don't think I could ever turn on a computer again..
Longhorn could indeed have some really savvy technologies thrown in, but they seem to be just that.. Microsoft has so much money, that they can literally afford not to care about quality. And it shows in every operating system they created so far.
Imagine what MS would be like if they had standards like Apple with their cash!!
Jimzip
Originally posted by Jimzip
Although I have huge faith and trust in Apple as a company, I often wonder whether the amazing quality of their software, hardware and other products was due to their lack of market share/profit.. I know this sounds awful and I hope it never happens, but what if Apple does start becoming the most widely used OS? Will quality and care be sacrificed now that the battle for the user base is won? Or will they keep innovating forever?
You are absolutely right. The constant ringing of the death knell has kept Apple on its toes for years.
The G4 debacle with Motorola a few years ago, for example, forced Apple into heavily optimizing code and pushing AltiVec, dual processors, and good multithreading. We would likely have little of those goodies if not for Apple being backed into a corner and being forced to implement them.
If not for the downward spiral of Apple in the mid 90s with the fractured product line, failed OS development, and horrible management, Apple would never have brought back Steve Jobs. We wouldn't have Mac OS X and the whole lineup we do today. If the Apple of the mid 90s had been a success, I would probably be typing on some random model number Apple PowerMac 12000B/500.
If not for being such a small player with Microsoft's proprietary business looming overhead, Apple would have never joined the fold of Open Source technologies. Since we wouldn't have Mac OS X, Apple wouldn't be the "good neighbor" to the other *nix OSs it is today.
This is why I hope Apple stays a niche player. It would be really nice to see Apple hit 10% or %15, but beyond that I can imagine some arrogance and other problems taking hold.
Though, this kind of talk is really meant for another discussion.
Originally posted by Brad
If anyone wants to carry on speculating about "what ifs", I'll split these posts into their own thread.
Not me.. Too worried now!
I'll start having nightmares about virii in Mac OS soon...
And my lord was that ever a quick response.. You scare me sometimes Brad..
But thank you for elaborating. That's exactly the stuff I'm talking about..
Jimzip
Originally posted by Chucker
http://www.winsupersite.com/images/reviews/wme9_01.jpg
so after reading all these, task-based interface = wizards?
OMFG. i want my time back...
Originally posted by kim kap sol
People don't need to be guided all the time. ... I was taught how to wipe my ass when I was 3 in my house and I can now do it whenever I'm confronted by a public bathroom.
congrats!
but really, this is just more fud from redmond, Steve has his RDF, and Bill has his fud maker+tosser (think mulch or fertilizer)
That's gotta be some kind of record for a zombie thread on this board...
Originally posted by Kickaha
11 months between posts?
That's gotta be some kind of record for a zombie thread on this board...
At least someone is searching before starting a new thread.
Originally posted by Kickaha
11 months between posts?
That's gotta be some kind of record for a zombie thread on this board...
i just joined. if bringing up an old but useful thread alive bothers you, then please accept my apologies.
and thanks to those who have contributed to this thread, so that newbie like me know better what's makes apple better than windows, and where apple still needs improvement.
Originally posted by hltommy2
i just joined. if bringing up an old but useful thread alive bothers you, then please accept my apologies.
and thanks to those who have contributed to this thread, so that newbie like me know better what's makes apple better than windows, and where apple still needs improvement.
i love seeing the occassional old thread. i didn't remember this particular one and i was scrolling through, thinking what i was reading was new and then i saw my name with a post. i was like WTF, i never posted. what is going on here? but then i looked up and saw the post was from about a year ago.
and yeah, way to search through threads when necessary.
Originally posted by jouster
Heh, two years if you're lucky. 3 or 4 according to Gartner.
So.......will your OS of 2007 be better than ours of 2004? Well, it ****in' well should be!
But the plain and simple truth is - it won't. If they think they're gonna nail this first time out, then they're certainly not aware of their own track record.
Originally posted by hltommy2
i just joined. if bringing up an old but useful thread alive bothers you, then please accept my apologies.
No, no bothering here, it just happens so rarely that someone actually searches back and finds a relevant topic before starting a new one, and especially dredging up such an old one, that I was kind of shocked. Pleasantly so though.
And in Longhorn, they will stop having to worry about "where" that file is.
Actually, they won't get the benefits of WinFS's searching until it finally comes down the pipe sometime after Longhorn ships.
Meanwhile, Spotlight will deliver it to Mac users in 10.4, for real, for us to be using. And yes, he's right in that it will fundamentally change how users work with their computers, but it will be Apple, not MS, that brings it to their users.
Oops.