Isn't early OSX objectively easier to navigate?

[dextructor]

My grandmother born in 1916. Turned on a Performa 6400 mac os 7.5.3. She was online reading the new, printing stuff out, e-mailing. Today people younger then me, tech savvy generation, They can't do anything with out IT.

Your grandmother was from a generation where you need to use your resources available, think and solve your problems, that's why she (and a fair number of that generation forwards could) do things. (many to not say almost all products came with manuals)

One of the problems of younger generations it's the laziness that's come of a totally plug and play, always connected, always available, and "web-browser centric no need to install everything".

Instead of searching, building knowledge, just see the need for an ongoing "disposable content", just see an Reddit (at least it's searchable) but unless with an moderator/community effort, you see the same question day after day in many subreddits. Facebook I totally give up those communities and platforms.

I'm really curious of what will least of all of it.

 

[Tozovac]

lol can't get sharper than black and white pixels

Maybe, but with so much more to work with and exploit now, sure is sad seeing Windows 95-era looking interfaces on our Macs sometimes, or Fisher Price My First Iphone-looking flat design monochromatic apps on the i-device.

 

[thinkinginventor]

Maybe, but with so much more to work with and exploit now, sure is sad seeing Windows 95-era looking interfaces on our Macs sometimes, or Fisher Price My First Iphone-looking flat design monochromatic apps on the i-device.

I can see it totally, Mac OS mavericks looked nice. Mac OS face looked much better! They dumbed that down too. I think apple got rid of the chime at some point. Brought it back lol

 

[trifid]

Not sure if anyone is still using Apple's Music app, but it's a complete UX disaster. I would love to know who is in charge of the dev team from this app, since the whole UI language is so foreign and non-native and to be blunt, just stupid.

One simple example, why is the search box hidden by a scrollable panel? Standard mac OS UI has search UI always visible and accesible in the top navigation bar.

Also, I keep running into this issue where I want to search for a song in my local library, and I get no results, it turns the search defaults to "Apple Music" and the filter for "Your Library" is not easily visible or intuitive since they are on opposite sides of the search box.

 

[Nermal]

Not sure if anyone is still using Apple's Music app, but it's a complete UX disaster. I would love to know who is in charge of the dev team from this app, since the whole UI language is so foreign and non-native and to be blunt, just stupid.

Indeed. In some recent feedback to Apple I pointed out that the very fact someone took the time to create Retroactive, for installing iTunes on a modern OS, is a sure sign that things are not going well.

 

[Tozovac]

Not sure if anyone is still using Apple's Music app, but it's a complete UX disaster. I would love to know who is in charge of the dev team from this app, since the whole UI language is so foreign and non-native and to be blunt, just stupid.

One simple example, why is the search box hidden by a scrollable panel? Standard mac OS UI has search UI always visible and accesible in the top navigation bar.

Also, I keep running into this issue where I want to search for a song in my local library, and I get no results, it turns the search defaults to "Apple Music" and the filter for "Your Library" is not easily visible or intuitive since they are on opposite sides of the search box.

View attachment 2104619

Well come on now. Aren’t you being a bit harsh? The design was so unfunctionable and hard to use before around 2012. Don’t you remember how distracting it was back then, when everything was so obvious and a little more intuitively laid out? It was rather insulting to those of us who learned how to use electronic interfaces to have those affordances slapping us in the face in plain sight. I feel much more appreciative of interfaces that assume I know how to explore and find the tools and features. Or google or YouTube it.

 

[Amethyst1]

It was rather insulting to those of us who learned how to use electronic interfaces to have those affordances slapping us in the face in plain sight.

Yeah, it was so much better when computers booted into a BASIC environment and required you to punch in code or load stuff from tape!

 

[Tozovac]

Yeah, it was so much better when computers booted into a BASIC environment and required you to punch in code or load stuff from tape!

Oh yeah ok. Then it was even better with cave wall scratchings!

 

[panjandrum]

Not sure if anyone is still using Apple's Music app, but it's a complete UX disaster.

Yep; it's just breathtakingly clear that nobody at Apple has any idea whatsoever what makes a good UI (or UX) these days. I mean, no idea. None.

Other than still using iTunes Music to occasionally rip or convert tracks I simply rely on a directory structure and stream my own music (still managing to use the old Serve to Me and Stream to Me package, as it has far and away the most simplistic and clear UI. Someday it will die, but I'll use it until then.)

But this is one of the clearest examples of Apple no longer having any consistent design philosophy (unless that philosophy is "Apple, it used to just work!") They now flail in the dark just like Microsoft and Google.

Side note to Apple: stop naming your Apps for the exact thing they do: Try Googling "Photos" vs. "iPhoto" or "Music" vs. "iTunes." Another great example of Apple's idiotic decisions; they've named their software in such as way that it's dramatically more difficult to locate helpful info when you need it. Even "iMusic" would have worked. But nope.

 

[B S Magnet]

Not sure if anyone is still using Apple's Music app, but it's a complete UX disaster. I would love to know who is in charge of the dev team from this app, since the whole UI language is so foreign and non-native and to be blunt, just stupid.

One simple example, why is the search box hidden by a scrollable panel? Standard mac OS UI has search UI always visible and accesible in the top navigation bar.

Also, I keep running into this issue where I want to search for a song in my local library, and I get no results, it turns the search defaults to "Apple Music" and the filter for "Your Library" is not easily visible or intuitive since they are on opposite sides of the search box.

View attachment 2104619

I live in a home setting where every Mac in the home, save one, runs iTunes 10 — 10.6.3 on everything except 10.4.1 on SL-PPC and 9.1.1 on my lone G3. This set-up just works, and I have no trouble finding my content — which is solely music and music videos.

Yes, unlike Music, iTunes is a 32-bit application which didn’t survive the all-64-bit nudge to Catalina. Yes, iTunes has origins in an era when personal multimedia content management was managed locally, centred on the user. Music is built to funnel cloud-content-as-a-service to the user. As such, the user comes second to service delivery.

As Apple’s current UI/UX designers are preoccupied less by how they themselves use their own systems for their own personal archives (if they even have any), and more with making sure that valuable content-as-a-service gets delivered to the end-user as content owners want it delivered (and, frankly, tightly controlled), end-user considerations fall down the list. It’s not just Apple. It’s the current paradigm across all online content platform services preoccupied with hyper-monetization, micro-purchases, and “free-to-play” gateways.

As I wrote earlier, all of this makes me tired and cranky.

 

[Tozovac]

As I wrote earlier, all of this makes me tired and cranky.

The problem can be expressed in a formula:

Minor wastes & frustrations x hundreds of millions of users
= design crisis of epic proportions.

I can’t take credit for that. It came from this excellent article that is no longer available other than via the web archive and which sums up the problem pretty well. Things were worse 10years ago before Apple started back-tracking some of the forced and unnecessary interface minimalism but enough still remains that some of the complaints in this article still ring true:

LINK

Then this article touches upon two other excuses justifications for changing the design to match Jony Ive’s whims “upgrading” the iOS interface:

“When we sat down last November (to work on iOS 7), we understood that people had already become comfortable with touching glass, they didn’t need physical buttons, they understood the benefits,” says Ive. “So there was an incredible liberty in not having to reference the physical world so literally. We were trying to create an environment that was less specific. It got design out of the way.”

Translation: It’s not that there are major shortcomings to fix; I want to change the design away from all the decades-refined Uix elements.

And what exactly was “design” in the way of in his last sentence?

How ironic that so many find that aspects of the current iOS/OSX interface designs get in the way of efficient and quick and intuitive comprehension and use.

Even Craig F bought into the nonsense:

“This is the first post-Retina (Display) UI (user interface), with amazing graphics processing thanks to tremendous GPU (graphics processing unit) power growth, so we had a different set of tools to bring to bear on the problem as compared to seven years ago (when the iPhone first launched). Before, the shadowing effect we used was a great way to distract from the limitations of the display. But with a display that’s this precise, there’s nowhere to hide. So we wanted a clear typography.”

I’m surprised a supposed smart designer like Craig would go on record as dismissing interface cues that are universally helpful regardless of screen resolution.

For reference: The never ending preference of the majority for round buttons in cars for volume control, if not also station selecting. Or the ipad/iPhone’s retaining physical buttons for volume long after Jony’s war on ports & buttons. In those two examples, it’s their instant-availability and tactileness and ease of recognition of their function that is appreciated. If certain cues in the physical world seemingly never go out of style, why then does it seem like such a good idea to force-change things in the digital world to such a minimalist level after decades of learning & refinement?

Why again are flat design, buttonless, low-contrast thin-font text and minimalist translucent interfaces an improvement? What problems did those fix? I have yet to read a reasonably objective response based on how users use and can benefit from those changes.

Any discussion on rationale for current OS/iOS language that’s completely dissimilar from anything pre-2013 reads as an excuse for designers to design.

 

[chaosbunny]

For me the most annoying thing is how they keep rearranging system preferences and changing icons. I recently installed Jaguar on my iBook G3 and used that OS for the first time since maybe 2003. Yet I instantly found everything in system preferences. In Montery on my 2019 mbp and 2010 mb I always search a few seconds for simple things like "users". And Ventura will only make things worse. Vertical scrolling preferences make sense for the iPhone, which you hold vertically, but not on a widescreen Mac. That's just change for changes sake.

 

[B S Magnet]

Yeah, it was so much better when computers booted into a BASIC environment and required you to punch in code or load stuff from tape!

I’m still mad my DSL modem isn’t equipped with an acoustic coupler for resting a standard telephone cradle, to say nothing of a mobile phone. 😡

 

[panjandrum]

A 'fun' email I just got after updating one of our staff from Mojave to Ventura. This really sums up a lot of what we are talking about - at least the surface-level UX issues:

Of course, I have to tell her; "I'm sorry, there isn't anything I can do. That's what Apple thinks is 'good' these days." 😂😂

Although it's not exactly the same topic; failures of the MacOS are getting some attention:

 

[Tozovac]

A 'fun' email I just got after updating one of our staff from Mojave to Ventura. This really sums up a lot of what we are talking about - at least the surface-level UX issues:

View attachment 2115718

Of course, I have to tell her; "I'm sorry, there isn't anything I can do. That's what Apple thinks is 'good' these days." 😂😂

Although it's not exactly the same topic; failures of the MacOS are getting some attention:

This is exactly it, sadly. Interface design nowadays is too based on adherence to a strict style-focused theme based on “trendy” or “modern” monochromatic flat minimalism rather than adherence to the time-proven cues that help the user. Outside of the digital world, human nature has a tendency to stick to things that work by clever use of color, shading, borders, textures and shapes. Yet there’s this ridiculous notion Apple and others are still clinging to (starting around 2013 and ios7) that anything even slightly resembling those things which work so well in real life are to be avoided in icon design, app design, website design, interface design. It’s Sick and unfortunate, and a detriment to many users.

Is there absolutely nobody at Apple who feels even slightly similar to your employee?

 

[MysticCow]

Is there absolutely nobody at Apple who feels even slightly similar to your employee?

Well, speaking for myself, and I am unanimous in this, the Human Interface Guidelines are there for a reason. The guidelines change due to human behavior and never the other way around.

 

[Tozovac]

Well, speaking for myself, and I am unanimous in this, the Human Interface Guidelines are there for a reason. The guidelines change due to human behavior and never the other way around.

Right-o. Except when science-based design is polluted by trendy fashion fads.

So is it realistic to think that human behavior changed 10 years ago so drastically that the flat, minimalist approach suddenly became more intuitive and efficient across the board? Or did a new designer-in-charge finally get his way (which prompted the lemming designers of the world to follow Apple)?

The fact that Apple’s walked back so many interface details in the past 10 years to be closer to how they were before ~2013 tells me all I need to know about the chicken/egg argument of interface design “reacting to human nature“ vs. being changed by designer whim first and foremost followed by humans reacting by needing to relearn (or Google or YouTube it) how to use it.

 

[ojfd]

I'm a bit late to the UI bashing party, but I have to agree that everything after Snow Leopard has been going downhill. Starting with 10.9, user intarface, in my opinion, is just a POS.
I use SL most of the time and only occasionally take a 'forced' trip to Yosemite because of some of the internet stuff and a handful of applications.
I've managed to manipulate several Yosemite appearance files, system font and icons to get rid of that fugly bleached out UI, but still hate that system, because of lack of 'open folders in new window' function the way it used to be for 3 decades.

Spoiler

Yes, there is 'Open folder in tabs instead of new windows' checkbox, and, if one unchecks it in Finder preferences and does not activate either 'Show toolbar' or 'Show sidebar', the folder opens in new window, as expected.
As soon as 'Show toolbar' or 'Show sidebar' or both are set, folder opens in same window and opening it in new window requires modifier key (!). Idiots!

So, when using Yosemite, I have to either stick to simple windows in Finder, or, if using sidebar and toolbar for ease of navigation, like it was up to 10.8.5, continue swearing every minute or so.
Left hand on a keyboard, 25+ years of muscle memory, cmd+w closes window... fark, there was only one window, all previous navigation is gone..
Using back and fwd navigation arrows is extra mouse movement and extra clicks - i.e. it's back to Win95. Using columns is not a Mac at all - it's a Norton Commander. Yuck!

What also wonders me all the time is this - am I the only one on this planet who considers this Finder "feature" (since 10.9) a major flaw and why anyone haven't come up with the app/utility/hack to fix it yet?

 

[B S Magnet]

Right-o. Except when science-based design is polluted by trendy fashion fads.

So is it realistic to think that human behavior changed 10 years ago so drastically that the flat, minimalist approach suddenly became more intuitive and efficient across the board suddenly? Or did a new designer-in-charge finally get his way (which prompted the lemming designers of the world to follow Apple)?

The fact that Apple’s walked back so many interface details in the past 10 years to be closer to how they were before ~2013 tells me all I need to know about the chicken/egg argument of interface design “reacting to human nature“ vs. being changed by designer whim first and foremost followed by humans reacting by needing to relearn (or Google or YouTube it) how to use it.

Adding to this, an HID standards guide must not only be maintained periodically with updated editions, but it also necessitates a custodian involved with OS development to audit, assure, and enforce that the OS dev/UI teams are adhering to the current edition with utmost consistency. This was a central tenet behind why OS X versions were so tightly consistent for many major versions. Inconsistencies began to show through the cracks in fits and starts after around Yosemite, but the big escalation — and the fuel for this discussion — seems to have coincided with the company’s move away from macOS 10.x and into 11+ land, by making, as someone already put it, iPadOS less like macOS by making macOS more like iPadOS.

As the LTT video earlier in this discussion revealed, either that custodian is absent or else the HID standards guide is no longer being prioritized, much less adhered to and maintained.

 

[mectojic]

I use SL most of the time and only occasionally take a 'forced' trip to Yosemite because of some of the internet stuff and a handful of applications.

The fact that you and myself included prefer using 10.6 over any newer operating system just goes to show how basic, solid features like a consistent UI have been lost.

 

[ojfd]

Most of you have probably read this already, but I'll post the link anyway for those who might have missed it.

By Bruce Tognazzini, the father of Apple’s human interface:

First Principles of Interaction Design (Revised & Expanded)

The following principles are fundamental to the design and implementation of effective interfaces, whether for traditional GUI environments, the web, mobile devices, wearables, or Internet-connecte…

asktog.com

 

[ojfd]

What's also getting worse with the time are application user interfaces themselves. These days anyone but his brother have his own idea how the UI should look like. Forget the Apple guidlines.. Bleached out interfaces, funny color schemes, strange navigation logic, oversized buttons, ugly looking pull-down menus, almost nothing in the menu bar, cmd+w quite often doesn't work, one have to press OK or Cancel and so on.
Worst offenders IMO are cross-platform developers that rely on Qt libraries for their apps. My observation is, that, starting with Qt5, it gets more and more buggy. And it bloats and bloats. What was relatively small set of libs in Qt4, now is zillion of interconnected files that get distributed together with and inside every Qt based application.
Qt maintainers try to fix bugs, but, in the process they continue to raise the minimum system requirements so fast, that it's almost impossible to find any apps that I might be interested in for systems below 10.13 these days. Only few are for 10.9/10.10 (Qt5.9 and below). Bastards! Those that use wxWidgets are a bit better, but not by much.
Can these apps be made/compiled to work on SL? I'm almost certain that they can and there are a few examples out there, but, in general, many developers (not all), especially from UI department, are not interested/too lazy/too dumb/after a quick buck. That's my verdict. Rant over.😁

Ugly UI examples from my collection. Note - first two fill the entire 13" MBP screen (and can't be made smaller) to justify the app's "importance". Hence the oversized buttons in a lot of empty estate.

Spoiler

Re. programmers. This one is quite funny:

Spoiler

 

[Tozovac]

Most of you have probably read this already, but I'll post the link anyway for those who might have missed it.

By Bruce Tognazzini, the father of Apple’s human interface:

First Principles of Interaction Design (Revised & Expanded)

The following principles are fundamental to the design and implementation of effective interfaces, whether for traditional GUI environments, the web, mobile devices, wearables, or Internet-connecte…

asktog.com

It's astounding how many of those principles are "violated" by iOS since 2013, and by OS X since Yosemite.

What happened to capitalizing upon clear successes and continually refining what was proven to work?

Has anyone else noticed that we stopped hearing "it just works" in regards to Apple products around a decade ago?

It begs the question, who's "right" and who's "wrong?" Bruce, or the those in management positions at Apple who are in charge and have the final say regarding major changes to interface details?

 

[za9ra22]

Has anyone else noticed that we stopped hearing "it just works" in regards to Apple products around a decade ago?

This is certainly true. Apple's previous predisposition was very clearly user-oriented with products designed to be familiar, friendly and easily navigable. Even the simple 'happy Mac' icon of the early versions of the System/MacOS were important factors because right from applying power, the message was that this machine was happy to see you.

Of course Apple dropped that a long time ago, presumably in the belief they might be taken rather more seriously in the computer business if they played at being more business-like. It obviously worked, though not without Jobs returning to the fold and correcting some of the egregious product and marketing decisions that had gone before.

But the real problems didn't really begin until a combination of events: Firstly, Jony Ive taking the design reigns for the OS interface as well as products, and secondly, the growing need to add complexity of features to keep up with/keep ahead of the competition.

Ive's primary interest was making the human interface and interactions with the hardware as neat, shiny, and free of clutter as possible, which in other situations might be laudable, but combined with growing complexity meant that features ended up being crammed in, often into sub-strata of user controls, so it was decreasingly clear where the user needed to look for something they might need.

'It just works' relies on the combination of simplicity of function and elegance of design that makes the user feel at home with the user experience. Neither of these things is part of Apple's philosophy these days, because the company is in too much off a hurry to catch up/keep ahead of a market that moves far slower in hardware than in OS and software.

And what we get is jumble. Much like Windows in fact, and every bit as unhelpful.

(Edited to repair another grievous OS function - autocorrect, where the name is only half right)