The Lisa, started in 1979 to provide an inexpensive business computer to Apple's line-up, enjoyed little success. With its advanced object oriented UI and powerful office suite, the computer was priced well above the means of most businesses. Despite its failure, the Lisa influenced most user interfaces, and introduced many features unheard of in earlier systems (like the Xerox Star or VisiOn). Read the story of the development and demise of the Apple Lisa here.
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Member since:2005-09-28
Actually, OS/2 was also (object) document orientated in some of of its operations.
For example, to create a new text file, you could drag from a 'blank text file' icon. You then rename the blank text file and then double click on it to open it in an ascociated application.
OS/2's WPS took the idea even further as you could make nearly any type of object into a 'template'. Create an empty .zip file. Call it 'blank.zip' and then check the 'template' flag in its properies. By way of further example, you might create a directory with a few files and some sub directories and then use that as a 'new website' template.
RISCOS drag and drop saving is also a very neat feature which promotes a logical way of interacting with documents. No doubt MS will 'invent' it soon.
Member since:2005-07-11
This is a very interesting point. Everybody knows that the file dialogs you find in just about every OS on the planet really is a PITA. If the reason why we have to deal with them is because of a limitation in the Macintosh System Software that was eliminated ca 1988, it just shows how little UI designs have changed over the years and how we accept what we are used to as "the right way", even when it's not.
Member since:2005-07-06
so maybe its time for the open source community to pick up the banner and implement these features into their favorite desktop system?
hey, why not stuff it into gnome? its as if they are trying to clone everything else apple so...
ok, that was inflamatory, sorry...
anyways, eliminating the need for a save dialog (i dont recall the last time i used a load dialog) would be great.
hmm, there is the new document submenu in windows tho if you right click inside a folder. dont know how many actualy use it as they may be to used to think in app terms. fire upp the app, create the stuff that needs creating, hit save as a browse to the place it should be saved...
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight.""And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.
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When it was released the Mac was a crippled version of the Lisa and it's amazing how long the Mac OS took to completely catch up with the Lisa's UI.
One example of the inferiority of Mac OS is the horrible modal file dialogs that hung around until Mac OS 8. IIRC the whole idea of file dialogs to open and save documents was created because of the lack of multitasking in Mac OS. They integrated a mini-filemanager into applications because the Mac OS wasn't capable of switching to the Finder when running another app. The Lisa's document centric UI didn't need anything like that, you used the main file manager for all those file operations. Unlike the Mac it was designed to allow efficient multitasking from the very start.
Probably the most ridiculous thing is that other companies like Microsoft copied Mac compromises rather than the more elegant Lisa. RISC OS is one of the only other OSes I can think of that's close to being as document centric, which is one of the things that makes it a very elegant OS.