Mac UI Round-Up: OSNews
Posted February 12th, 2003 @ 11:24pm by Erik J. Barzeski
Given that OSNews is now linking to some mini-rants by Vinay, Matt, and myself, I thought I'd pull them all (the ones I find anyway, to this point) into one post. My posts, anyway - hit the trackbacks and links in the articles themselves to find most or all of Matt's and Vinay's.
- "You Can't Escape Ken Burns" and Other Horrid iMovie "Ughs"
- Mac OS X: Where'd Our UI Go?
- More on Apple UI
- More Bad UI
And hey, while you OSNews people are here, take off your coat and stay awhile. Get comfy. I don't plan to read the comments at OSNews, but if you feel inclined to leave some here, I'll at least read them before I delete any stupid ones 🙂
Donate Life
Posted 20 Feb 2003 at 1:57am #
Jeez, I'm glad this is finally getting airplay. But by this point I feel like a geezer, since I've been harping on this UI thing since OS X's DPs. You guys have done an outstanding job (something I've been too lazy to do, hat's off) of defining and singling out these problems. And there are more yet to come, so GET CRACKIN'! 🙂
But I wanted to make one comment regarding all of this, and it is in reference to Eric Albert's suggestion to file this stuff. His suggestion SOUNDS great...unfortunately, as eric mentioned, HE HAS FILED stuff. Between Radar reports that go into the ether, feedback that offers no feedback, bugs that persist from revision to revision to revision, and Apple folks at Expos WHO JUST DON'T WANT TO LISTEN, I'm frankly tired (frustrated) of spending the brain cells on it. And from Apple's reponse to the help (from absolutely nothing to combative retort--at the Expos naturally), that's exactly what they are comfortable with.
Perhaps I've been spoiled by the interactiveness of the open source community. I mean I can check on Chimera's bugs list before posting "feedback". And I can watch problems with CommuniGate Pro get fixed in near real time. (It is almost better than the Weather Channel!) And I have even had a Microsoftie take my comment, say "Hold on...", drag me around the booth, and introduce me to a REAL, LIVE PERSON who worked on the project, was interested (at least seemingly) in what I was describing, and interacted with me for nearly a half hour regarding how I'd like to see it resolved. Did it get resolved? No. But did the engineer give me more than cursory details as to why it couldn't be done? Yes. (shout out to Jorg 'dbx' Brown, an icon in mac development) Apple doesn't do this anymore.
One of the most basic things I'd like to see Apple implement is some form of Slashcode styled ranking for Feedback issues. I'd like to know what has been reported (at this stage I KNOW I won't get to see any internal workings), what is being investigated, be able to contribute to prioritization (say by "voting" on an issue by accruing the dups), see response coming BACK from Apple in situations involving KNOWN issues (ie- we know, working on it, or we need more reports), and get some cross-correlation from Feedback to Bug reports/closings.
Aww, who am I kidding. They aren't listening. (I know this because I once had a senior Apple hardware schmuck tell me --with a straight face-- that MacOS 7.5.2 was a stable OS release. More recently, I was told I was "too demanding" when I mentioned that iCal 1.0 was "too slow" at MWNYC last year. Riiiight.)
It is rather humorous (in an ironically wry, I'm afraid to fly and the plane crashes the first time I do, way) that the Apple of today so closely reminds me of the arrogant, "we're right, and you're dumb" snobbishness of another computer company I had the distinct pleasure of steering clear of many years ago...NeXT. Gee, wonder what they're up to nowadays. Riiiight.