We hail those who attempt to create new operating systems from scratch. They are the leaders, the visionaries, the influencers of this great tech-age. There will always be only 2 areas of how an OS can be great – great marketing (which provides great third party support), and great design. Microsoft has always invested more in the former, and Apple in the latter. This article discusses some design aspects. Update: The article has been updated at several places. And this list is only the beginning, basic computer needs and usage are constantly changing and growing. But the list represents what a “basic” user OS of today (Dec 2001) should contain.
The most important thing during a startup I believe, is to learn from the experts who have created great operating systems before. Like Mac OSX or BeOS.
Designing an OS for the masses is about creating that ultimate user experience. It is about designing something to increase workflow and productivity, without having the users fiddling around with the default settings just to get some tasks done. The masses are those who are afraid of a command-line interface (CLI), and if a Graphical User Interface (GUI) is designed with a CLI as a central core or generator for everything else, it is designed to fail in its mass appeal.
Although I’m primarily a Windows user, I believe I know why the Mac GUIs have such a long standing in their user friendliness. Many users who have had no prior computer experience have been captivated by the Mac GUI and stuck with it over the years despite the instability and sluggish performance. The secret to this success lies in the hiding of its CLI. The Mac OS designers have gone to great lengths to either eliminate the CLI (older Mac OS), or hide the CLI (Mac OSX). Microsoft knew from the start the importance of hiding the CLI (DOS) and “borrowed” the idea from Apple. Hiding the CLI meant that everything that could possibly be done should now be possible with the GUI. With this regard, Linux may never take off as a desktop OS, as long as the CLI is kept in the foreground, and that users would still have to grapple with it, even if it’s a simple command.
Everybody knows and has seen the three ugly, top right buttons found on Windows, whichever version it may be. Apple and BeOS designers know that although the buttons work, they’re unappealing. They know that the ultimate user experience is formed by locking together design and function. They’ve endeavoured to design smarter, slicker and more beautiful looking navigational qualities that do not detract from the function. Although the issue of aesthetics is subjective, I’m sure that many agree that the Mac OSX Aqua aesthetics beat the Windows equivalent hands down. I remember when I first used the Mac Classic interface, everything worked like charm – I knew how to click, I knew what to click. It was easy to get things done. This wasn’t so with Windows95 – it took slightly longer to grasp the essentials before actually being productive, and boy it was sure ugly in comparison to the Mac’s interface.
What has aesthetics got to do with GUI design? Everything. Aesthetics are what people are willing to pay for in this world – designer clothing, designer cars, designer goods, designer houses. Image is what many companies and corporations set out to create. A good-looking GUI will entice the user. It would drive some obsessed users to put up with it no matter how painfully slow the system is.
In my humble opinion, the Macintosh OSX and BeOS user interfaces are THE GUIs to learn from. Not Windows. Taking a calculated guess, Microsoft may have a team of UI designers tearing Mac OSX and BeOS apart to “borrow” some
ideas from these great operating systems. Microsoft has been doing this for so long – “borrowing” open source code and ideas from others and turning them into huge profits that it’s not funny anymore. I’m therefore trying to
understand why UI designers or start-up OS creators strive to make their designs look more Windows oriented: it’s like taking the leftovers and throwing it back into the stew pot again.
Scot Hacker’s article, “Tales of a BeOS Refugee” was the best OS article I have ever read. This bit about interface design is excellent:
“…it is difficult to describe how visually beautiful OS X is. Screen shots don’t do it justice. Much has been said about animated elements in OS X — dialogs that slide into position, the “genie” effect upon window
minimization, the poof of smoke that appears as you drag an item out of the Dock, etc. But the important point about these animations is that they aren’t just eye candy. Each of them is a carefully designed quantum of feedback. The OS is informing you non-verbally where something has gone or what needs to be done next. These UI cues are clear enough to speak for themselves, but unobtrusive enough not to annoy power users.”
I observed that on the average only 1/1000 actually did something to the initial interface of Windows when I worked as a tech-support in a large telephone company servicing 1000+ users. That means that general users either didn’t know how to modify the look of their GUI, or only cared about work productivity and management. Some may say that this isn’t so for home users, and that home users prefer customised design. I beg to differ. All my non-technically abled friends and family seldom, if ever, alter the
aesthetics of their home computers, be it Mac or Windows. My brother’s computer of which I’m typing this article from, is running the standard original blue-colored WindowsXP. He finds it annoying when I perform changes
to the default interface or when I demonstrate to him that it’s possible. The most I have seen general users been able to do or be bothered about is changing the wallpaper.
With these observations in mind, default interfaces should be attractive, slick and extremely easily to grasp. Be it navigation, file searches, opening and closing applications, window positioning, resizing, maximising,
minimising, drag dropping.
My greatest peeve about Windows apart from the three ugly buttons, is the ability to resize windows by simply highlighting the mouse over the edges, as this has created my fear of accidental clicking. Another dislike is that there are sometimes too many ways to do to something specific, or having too many ways to get to one place (like components of the Control Panel in Windows) as this confuses users. Sometimes, having things too customisable or feature packed isn’t necessarily a good thing. Mac and BeOS have done this right, having the right balance by not having overly bloated or inefficient GUIs. The ability to skin everything would be great of course, but here we are primarily dealing with default interfaces. These are the initial impressions people get when they’re pulling the GUIs out of the box, or when they’re looking at a screenshot.
These important default initital impressions are:
– dialogue boxes,
– text editor screens,
– hierachial menu design,
– navigational buttons design (close, open, back, forward, resize),
– icon scalability (new vector based OSX icons are amazing),
– scrollbar design,
– newly opened windows that correctly fit within the screen resolution
– window positions are remembered when closed and re-opened.
– simplicity in default design eg. simple window borders
– pulldown menus
– radio buttons, crosses, ticks
– confirmation buttons
– tooltips
– virtual workspace navigation
– universal drag and drop ability (Windows)
– proper well known keyboard shortcuts
– taskbar or docking area (BeOS has its at the top right which is also very nice)
– typography and correct font usage. Serif fonts are much better than Roman fonts for UIs for wider mass appeal, however it varies at different sizes, Apple design employs a special Roman styled font when the font gets larger, and is Serif when used for smaller bit. There is a whole market on industry that resolves around correct typography usage and design (including anti-aliasing).
– the ability to hide things easily (correct right-clicking usage)
– settings, customizations and or preferences all in one easy to access place.
– last but not least, correct colour employment, proper or no gradients, pixel lines and anti-aliasing.
…and the list goes on. When the OS starts up for the first time, everything should look complete and function perfectly using one’s common sense. The last thing a new user wants to do is to contact tech-support and
discover that the implementation was in fact there, but common sense couldn’t get him or her there. Keeping in line with the old adage, “Keep It Simple Stupid”, is a good strategy to follow.
This is the part where it gets tricky – hardware support, application support, and what the OS should be able to do on initial boot up without the need of third party software. With today’s computing power and cool hardware, I believe the basics of a good mass appeal OS that should allow you to perform these things at a click of a button, hassle free:
– Networking (plug in the Ethernet cables and you’re done)
– Proper Application binding (extensions) and Filenaming systems
– File system navigation (learn from BeOS FileSystem including image viewing and previewing)
– File tracking and searching (learn from the good points of BeOS Tracker, OSX Finder and Sherlock)
– Watch and edit DVDs, MPEG, Quicktime (Learn from iMovie, iDVD, personalStudio)
– Simple image editing (Mini-Photoshop)
– Listen to 5.1 DTS Dolby enabled sound (learn from Mac iTunes and BeOS Soundplay)
– Encode music (learn from Mac iTunes)
– Email (learn from BeOS/AppleMail)
– Internet Browsing and FTP (learn from Internet Explorer and Mac)
– ICQ and IRC
– DVD & CD burning (yes, you heard it – DVD)
– Creating disk images (like Norton Ghost but simpler)
– USB support (instant plug and play for digital video cam, digicam, webcam, printer, scanner, joystick, gamepad controller)
– Scripting (learn from BeOS scripting)
– It should come an optional of a Office Suite (Office X).
The essential core of a new OS would only work well if it is fast, lightweight and employs efficient multithreading and multitasking. Mac OSX does not perform so well in this area but BeOS sure does.
Other functions that are important for possible “Server” editions include support for multiple processors, all the common networking protocols and formats, dumb terminals (which are great for internet cafes, libraries, information kiosks), multiple-users, restricted access and security. The possibilites are endless.
Imagine all this for free…
We conclude the article with this tongue-in-cheek question -Is this too much to ask for?
About the Author:
Desmond is currently studying architecture at an Australian university. Due to the changing nature of the architectural industry, architects have to learn and grasp different computer technologies and different types of OS. He has to engage and learn different multimedia, CAD, and documentation applications between systems and file formats all the time. He currently runs a small personal web site, http://dezzo.net (often offline) from an AMD AthlonXP 1500 running IIS v5, and has maintained an interest in OS development since the DOS running on XTs days. Desmond can be reached on [email protected].
The author had some good points to make, but it wasn’t clear to whom the article was directed. Was he making general statements to be read by anyone designing an OS, or was he talking to Linux developers, or Microsoft, or even Apple? Maybe this should have been presented more in a format of “Open Letter to New Operating System Developers” rather than its current nebulous form.
In other words, good thoughts, bad journalism. Sorry!
Jared
true, it the artic;e didn’t say to whom it was addressing, did it need to? it was clearly relavent for linux developers who want to make a real swing at the desktop market, tho it never said “ALL LINUX DISTROBUTIONS PAY ATTNETION HERE: …”. Some things, aticles, life, whatever, require you to make assumptions. If you NEED an article to tell you who shoud be reading this, then well, wow.
In this article you can assume they they are talking about someone who is looking for or making an operating system.
Now about the article and not the studip reply:
I liked this article very much, it gave a layout, a checklist(literally) of features any operating system ESPECIALLY LINUX should have if they want to win over the desktop world.
Desmond, I hope that you have much success with Architecture since journalism doesn’t quite suite you. Onto my pompass opinions…
Again we see people bashing Microsoft apriori. Just like most visitors to this website, I too used to be a M$ basher but hopefully I’ve overcome this traite. Yes, they’ve ripped off almost everyone in the industry, but as a product user I demand to have every good idea ever conceived implemented on my system – regardless of origin, and Microsoft abides to our requests and implements these features. Things like themes, sorted elements on the task bar, file attributes etc. Hopefully the next version of windows will rip of BeOS’s right click directory drilling and use MIME attributes in their file system (live queries and such). With MacOSX, I feel as if Apple took a step back in time. No virtual desktops, no springy folders, limited keyboard navigation, grouped resize/close window buttons etc. As a power user I find MacOSX less efficient than BeOS and Win2K.
Trying to stick to the topic at hand, what is my dream OS/GUI? The perfect GUI is one which doesn’t get in my way, and lets me accomplish my work as effortlessly as possible. Some points to consider:
– full screen apps (without window borders, menus, scrollbars and such) – try Opera after pressing F11 (full screen mode) to get my drift. Its amazing how much screen real-estate is wasted on these widgets. The OS should provide an environment which encourages a full-screen method of working. BeOS workspaces and Amiga Screens were on the right track. Missing from Win2K/XP and MacOSX.
– seamless seperation of applications and data. To be productive, I need to use various tools to manipulate data. A swiss army knife will never do, I need applications to talk to each other and delegate assignments to help me better process the data. An OS needs to provide an environment in which I can easily assign app#1 the task of applying a filter, app#2 will preform some transformation while app#3 will integrate the result with audio coming from app#4. Each app shouldn’t know/care about the other apps existance, and its up to the OS to provide an easily accessable way for apps to exchange data/tasks.
– a clear layout under the bonnet to ease maintainance. Lets face it, every advanced piece of technology needs maintainance and a clear and concise layout will make all repairs easier. BeOS actually excells here due to its legacy free design and its directory structure. Case in point – last week Win2K wouldn’t boot due to a corrupt \WinNT\System32\Config\System.ced file (the registry balooning to over 16Mb – why? no-one knows). It was a pain to fix due to booting from recovery disks (4 of them), accessing the Command prompt and shuffling files around and restoring drivers. Lets face it, only a small percentage of the population could do it, and thanks to another OS on another partition (BeOS) I was able to hunt down support info from the web and fix my problems. BeOS driver maintainance (when a driver exists which is actually rather good all things considered) is a dream due to its valid initial design.
– easy GUI programming. Without apps, an OS is doomed and the OS developers need to ease the process of application development. Visual tools and project builders are a must. Taking this a step further, end users should be able to customise the interface, so the OS should provide this service.
Since people have short attention spans, I’ll end here. BTW – Happy 2nd January everyone…
i still think x is not good enough for a desktop os. slow and un-spiffy.
sorry.
-j
The author started of well with the coments about the cli, i fully agree. From there is very much disagree.
Windows GUI is not that bad. I have never meet a human who had a problem with the three buttons at the top. They work just fine and seam to be a very obvious way to do things. I don’t see how BeOS was much differant the buttons aside from being a small yellow tab. I would hardly call the three buttons ugly. Far as the modifying the gui goes. Most people don’t care. theres nothing wrong with how it is. I’m happy for the updated version in XP cause the old look was getting old. But theres nothing wrong with it. I don’t see how changing colors makes any differance, especially if say your color blind. I think being able to change the desktop(the physical layout) can be a bad thing. People like consistancy and if they go from one computer to the next they expect it to be the same if its Windows. Other wise every time you sit down at a computer your lost again as to how things work.
I think many people suffer from the problem that the get to dependant on short cuts and little keystoke tricks. I make it a habit not to learn these aside from copy and paste. When you get those so embedded in your routine you stuggle when switching OS’s cause there not the same and you find this to be some bad thing about the OS. Theres nothing wrong with the OS its you. I switch back and forth between BeOS and Windows and have no problems and find both work equaly in the navigation department and such.
Will people stop ranting about mac interfaces. I don’t know why people think they are so great. In my experiances I have found most people can’t stand them and i can’t ether. They are horibly confusing and just plain messed up. I think this is the root of mac users not liking the windows interface is that windows is much more simpler than mac. I have been forced to use macs and just plain tried to use them many times. I’ve yet to figure out basic things like how to shrink a window or make it full screen. I despise how a app aparently takes over the deskbar or whatever mac calls the bar at the top. having to click the desktop so you can get the app out of your way is nuts. and having shut down hidden under special is just plain insane. took me forver to find it the first time i used a mac and i think i had to ask for help. If your were using windows for the fist time and couldn’t figure out how to shut it down real quick then you shouldn’t have a computer. In general i think mac users have become blind to how messed up their interface is. Also how ugly it is. The main reason windows interface has not changed is theres not much need. aside from multi workspaces its fine (and you can have multi-workspaces in windows you just need a program to do it and i for get the name). If my problems are because i don’t know what i’m doing that just further shows how unituitive it is. If mac did some serious rework and brought in things like multi button mouse ( i know you can add one but this is somehting that should be there from the start). And just plain made it more freindly to doing more than one thing at once they might be on the right track. I have yet to see OSX as a step in the right direction. I had no clue with it and just don’t find it to be very great aside from sucking CPU.
The people here seam to suffer from way to much bias towards what they use. I’m by no means a MS freak but windows for most part works fine. I have most my experiance with windows beos and OS/2 and found jumps between them effortless. Linux is not very great for many things. But once say you get in to say KDE going things are ok. Mac is by far the most messed up interface there is. I some what fear OSNEWS is becoming what slashdot is to linux for mac freaks. There is an extreme bias towards macs far as posters go and the have a tendancy for the extreme. Please look at the linux nuts and grammar nuts on slashdot and see what you may become. My post above may make me sound like a Windows freak by i by no means am. I’m more defending it against unfair attacks.
With due respect, I agree with much of what you say, but I want to address one point: OSNews is most certainly not becoming the Slashdot for OS X. If you want that site, refer to http://www.macslash.com. In the meantime, remember that the writers of OSNews are interested in lots of different OSes and investigate all semi-complete OSes worthy of mention. Though we have featured lots of articles recently about OS X, there is a FreeBSD week scheduled for the future, you’ll find that most of us are current or former BeOS users, and that many of us run some flavor of Linux on our personal PCs. I have been using Mandrake 8.1 and falling in love with it and I’m all but completely sold on the completeness, stability, usability and ease of Windows XP! Hardly a Mac biased bunch! I propose you re-read the articles you feel are slanted and ask yourself if the they are truly biased or simply opinions that spark interesting debate.
Respectfully,
Adam Scheinberg
OSNews contributor
Nice article! I think Kurt (the creator of AtheOS) should read this to get some tips for when he goes to design AtheOS’s new GUI. It has a lot of good ideas about what make a good GUI and OS, I think this could be very helpfull to most GUI designers…
I’m not saying OSNEWS as in the posted stories are showing a slant. I think you people do a great job there. I was saying people in there responses go a little nuts. I to was/am a beos user and try various things. I like to see open debates and veiw points but am getting sick of all the OSX rocks you should by a mac windows sucks because these things (when it doesn’t suck at what they say). I think the bulk of the posters hear to give well balanced veiws. And i don’t think all the mac fans are nuts or stupid. But I see a large group of them becoming very zeleot(sp?) and troll like. Thank you for your reponse
brad
IMHO, BeOS was the best OS out there in terms of speed and interface design. What it lacked was device drivers and apps both of which would have happened over time. Neither, however, was an interface or OS design flaw. A joy to use OS.
Mac OSX is a step in the right direction. It has a pretty interface, it has a preemptive multitasking OS and a CLI. It took 15 years to get there but they finally did it by buying NeXt. What it doesn’t have is a responsive UI, non-proprietary hardware and a journaling file system. Sure there’s the UFS but it’s not the default file system. Also, what’s with the single button mouse? I hope it doesn’t take another 15 years for them to come up with a two-button wheel mouse as the default. If you don’t mind spending twice as much for the hardware it’s an OK OS but slow.
MacOS 9.x and it’s predecessors, on the otherhand, are the equivalent to Windows 3.1 and the UI is as just as bad. For example, dragging a disk into the trash to eject or unmount it doesn’t make sense on this or any other planet. It has, of course, the very fragile file system in two flavors – HFS and HFS+.
Windows, Linux (KDE), OS/2, Amiga OS, and QNX Neutrino all have UI’s that are fuctionally equivalent. If you know how to use one you can within a short period of time get use to the others. What it get’s down to eventually is finding one OS that has both a fast UI and a fast OS. Guess I’ll be using BeOS for as long as possible because with the current crop of OSes I can’t get both.
I have a mac at home-ok so it’s my sister’s ibook but still…so at least I have some idea of what MacOS 9 is like. I also played around with MacOSX at compusa. I have to say MacOSX looks really cool but is that what a UI is all about? Windows came up with some good things such as the taskbar, keyboard navigation, pushing the mouse to the max with buttons and a scroll wheel-Apple is still fixated on one button for some odd reason. I also like that menus belong to each app instead of having to move the mouse all the way up to the top and then all the way down to use the app. But just because Windows gets it right on these issues doesn’t mean that’s it for UI’s and we have no room for any other ideas. It’s too bad MacOS X won’t work on my PC. I’m not getting a whole new computer just to try an OS. It may have some nice features and worth a try but not enough to throw out my investment in hardware and software
> there is a FreeBSD week scheduled for the future
cool! freebsd is my fav unix! i look forward to the freebsd week ^_^
A great design and GUI is nice and all, but to me, the most important aspect of an OS is application support. I don’t care how fast it is, how easy to use it is, or how ‘technically superior’ it is … if I can’t get my work done on it, it’s like having a luxury car with no wheels. This is the hardest thing for ‘alternative OS’ advocates to understand and I don’t know why – it’s really not that complicated.
As for Windows, I don’t have a problem with it. Sure, it’s not the most customizable desktop enviroment in the world, but I hate skinnable things anyway, and the buttons work just fine for me.
I’ll admit it, linux has a bad GUI. The problem is that its not a GUI, its a Windowing System. Its made for a client/server environment, not for little jimmy’s neat mp3 collection.
It has widget sets, which are a big plus, but at the same time a big its a kick in the ass. Making applications talk to one another is hard, unless you are using the same widget set, i think its even impossible. Thats what X is missing, “drag and drop”, from one app to another, it gets handy in windows. Someone was saying:
“- seamless seperation of applications and data.”
This made me think of one thing…UNIX Pipes, ask any UNIX fan how fun it is to play with pipes, its my favorite part about UNIX (that and cat + /dev file system). But how to put that in a GUI? Pipes are a pre-meditated thing, that require standard input/output, which a GUI lacks. Maybe a type of scripting language for a GUI could do it if the applications used compatible functions.
Incredible how the author tries to tell us how important the looks are and then goes on to prove this isn’t true: only 1 in 1000 of windows users changes the looks of their interface.
And telling Microsoft is concentrating on Marketing while Apple concentrates on design proves the marketing of Apple is superior, everyone believes them.
I think that the look and feel of a GUI is a very important aspect, the idea that 1 in a 1000 will change its background is probably over exagerated and from a business area. From the people around here, I would say that 90% of the people have at least changed the background picture, and 50% changed the windows theme, 20 to 30% have changed some other colors or sounds in their os, and a couple excentric and hard givers went further modifying the entire desktop.
I got to agree that the article was really biased, Microsoft did a good job at standardizing the interface offered to the user. A Windows user would not be searching around in the menus to find the “save file as”, it is always were expected, copy/paste is always the same combination of keys accross all windows products, etc. This really helps, and just to think that one will have to relearn all those short-cuts is enough to make him stick to windows for quite a couple more release if not even forever.
There is one general note I would also like to bring foward, do not try to copy windows, try to take the best out of all the GUI ever designed, like the author and so many others said, there are lots of good ideas out of BeOS, OS X and even the widgets of X.
Happy new year
>>I got to agree that the article was really biased, Microsoft did a good job at standardizing the interface offered to the user. A Windows user would not be searching around in the menus to find the “save file as”, it is always were expected, copy/paste is always the same combination of keys accross all windows products, etc.<<
Of course Microsoft gets credit again for some type of standardization, please give me a break… everyone (including Xerox) has had something to contribute. And if Microsoft is so straightforward and streamline, why is it that when the normal person is searching for Preferences and other such they are never where you expect them to be, the “save file as” is not a good example!
I think the article was fair and precise on most of the topics discussed!!
GUIs, for me, haven’t moved forward at all in recent times. All they have done is gotten glossier and slower.
I liked somebody’s idea of how a GUI shouldn’t define how programs look, but how they interact with each other. There should, of course, be a default look for programs but it should be an easy task to give a program a different look. Perhaps have programs define their input/outputs so you can simply drop a new look on top of it. But these kinda ideas are too revolutionary for any current desktop OS to adopt.
>>”Microsoft has been doing this for so long – “borrowing” open source code and ideas from others and turning them into huge profits that it’s not funny anymore. I’m therefore trying to understand why UI designers or start-up OS creators strive to make their designs look more Windows oriented: it’s like taking the leftovers and throwing it back into the stew pot again.”<<
And the *nix community *NEVER* copies anything from MS. Omygawd, KDE’s stanky-ass UI is 100% original. Asamatteroffact I can’t think of even one Linux application thats not a cheap knockoff of something else.
Hm…didn’t like the article that much. It’s just asking for yet another WIMP, with no ideas for innovative designs. There are some interesting ideas out there, just waiting for implementation: Zooming UIs, NLP and the anti-Mac Interface on the UI side, and you could start implementing some of e.g. Mr Keedys ideas on the kernel/system services side (http://www.informatik.uni-ulm.de/rs/mitarbeiter/jlk/ResHighlights.h…).
Besides, the point “hiding the CLI” is ridiculous. The CLI and the GUI are both on the same level, and a good GUI never sits on top of a CLI. The reason why you can’t boot MacOS 9, BeOS or AtheOS can’t boot in a command line is because it has never been there.
People often comment on how UI’s are so `primitive’ these days and how they
just can’t wait until the next big shift in how GUI’s look and operate. They say
how radically different things will be in the future. (I’m not particularly
referring to the author of the above article.)
I don’t buy this for a minute. Computers are still the same machines that they
always were. They’re still for creating files and moving them around — and
that’s it.
OS’s are very complicated. Creating them is fighting entropy every step of
the way. Even with UML diagrams and design review meetings it’s not a bug-
free proposition. W2k is around 29 Mloc. I don’t know about WXP. To make
them much bigger, you can’t just throw more programmers at it (see Fred
Brooks, Mythical Man Month).
The very fast hardware of today is also very complicated — This complexity
takes power (Watts) to keep everything humming along in proper order. My
Athlon heats my little computer room for me. Heh, better than electric
baseboard — my computer’s got a `circulating fan’.
With this in mind, here’s what the next revolution in OS/UI/GUI tech will
be (if it ever makes it): A small, fast, clean system that helps you create files
and move them around. That’s it. No adware, no automated wizards, none of
this business of the OS trying to guess what you’ll do next. No getting in
the way.
Well, that’s the OS I’ll be using anyway. Let the masses continue using
the advertisement-ridden, buggy, do-everything-for-you OS’s if that’s what
they want — as long as we can benefit by that via driven-down hardware
prices that result from it.
My perfect GUI is,
Vector based so that I can have clear crisp images and me exploit my graphics hardware to the fullest without worrying about things becoming small and unreadable.
Reflective decides themes based on a per-user skill setting of 1 or 2. 1 means don’t show me anything that my Father couldn’t understand (ie, remove ‘View Source’ from IE – only a 2 would want that). 1 should only ever have three or four buttons in the application, and sparse items in drop-downs. Even BeOS kinda screwed this up by having the a filesystem link as an icon on the desktop by default.
Visually Clean which BeOS had in bucket loads. It may not have been wowing like OSX but BeOS was simple-looking.
OSX Bundles I want to install software by dragging it around, or deleting it, or moving it.
Kill button away from the maximise button and speaking of window decorations when I maximise my window and push to the rightmost edge I do not want to resize the window – I want to scroll.
“icon scalability (new vector based OSX icons are amazing)”
OS X’s icons aren’t vectors; they’re plain old bitmaps. Just bigger ones.
“My perfect GUI is Vector based”
Since CCDs and whatnot provide a certain resolution, this would seem to pose problems when dealing with non-vector images such as photos and things of that nature. But other than that, it’d be nice.
Other than that, I would like to thank the author for writing a five-page article without a single useful or insightful thought throughout it. What a complete waste of time.
For what it’s worth, Microsoft is also the only OS company I know of left that actually has a usability team and lab. Food for thought.
bkakes, it’s a pity that there’s just a couple of monkeys with bananas staring at win95 working in the usablility lab.
>>For what it’s worth, Microsoft is also the only OS company I know of left that actually has a usability team and lab. Food for thought.<<
And here is the dessert…
Apple is the only OS company that has over 30 million mac freaks on its usability team (no need for a lab). I trust the opinions of real users, not some over paid kiss a$$ techies trying to say “Windows is perfect, no need to fix it!”
Makes you wonder huh!!!
CattBeMac:
Apple is the only OS company that has over 30 million mac freaks on its usability team (no need for a lab).
What do you mean by this? Back when I used to use Apple computers regularly, I remember it being neigh on impossible to give Apple feedback on what I thought needed to be improved in the os.
As for Microsoft, there isn’t just one usability lab; there is a usability division for each product group (i.e. Office, PocketPC, AutoPC, … ), and each one has it’s own labs.
CattBeMac, you’re wrong on that. Users are not usability experts, and as you can see, Apple doesn’t even really listen to it’s users (otherwise my iBook had two mouse buttons and a wheel).
OTOH, Microsoft is not the only OS company left with Usability labs. I don’t know about Apple (however, OS X looks like Apple did not have such a lab), but Sun and IBM have UI labs.
>>Apple is the only OS company that has over 30 million mac freaks on its usability team (no need for a lab).
What do you mean by this? Back when I used to use Apple computers regularly, I remember it being neigh on impossible to give Apple feedback on what I thought needed to be improved in the os.<<
Well I don’t know where you’ve been lately, but before Apple released Mac OS X they had a Public Beta program 9 months prior with all the beta testers giving feedback on a regular basis (including myself). I saw a big change in Mac OS X from the public beta to the official release, and now with it being open source (with some control) like Linux, Apple Developers and freelance power users (or just anybody with some creativity) or users just giving usual feedback can help Mac OS X evolve!!!
>>CattBeMac, you’re wrong on that. Users are not usability experts, and as you can see, Apple doesn’t even really listen to it’s users (otherwise my iBook had two mouse buttons and a wheel).<<
That argument isn’t really a good example if you ask me… my advice to you is to go out and buy one from one of third party vendors, there is plenty of choices believe me.
As for the one button mouse, I truly like it and even more so now with Apple’s Pro Mouse (it’s all just a button). If the OS needs it, then fine… but I think in Mac OS’s case it doesn’t!
I feel kind of like Billy on this article. Journalistically unsound. I think the author should take some writing classes to learn how to express ideas much more clearly. The article just seems to be a quick list of what he likes and dislikes without any real explanation behind his declarations (why such a choice makes sense or not, what exactly he means when he says he just couldn’t figure out a UI). I don’t mean that the author should never write another article, I just mean that his use of language needs to be strengthened quite a bit before trying another public article. There is more to publishing and journalism than having good ideas and opinions.
Granted, the first part of the article (about hiding the CLI) is good as long as you believe that all operating systems are CLI at some level (which is not true at all). But he’s right to say that the CLI should never be required for any general purpose activity (or even most advanced activities). The CLI has its place in history and in user-land if you’re the kind of user that wants it. Otherwise, there should never be something that “Harry Homeowner” needs to grok the CLI for. This is why I refuse Linux (okay, ONE reason why). I did my time in the command-line and it isn’t for me any more.
<blockquote>Since CCDs and whatnot provide a certain resolution, this would seem to pose problems when dealing with non-vector images such as photos and things of that nature. But other than that, it’d be nice.</blockquote>All pixel-based images would be applied as textures. Although this would look damningly ugly and stretched the image-viewer application would have a way of querying the natural resolution of the image and lining up an image pixel for a screen pixel.
For low resolution monitors you have the same problems as vector fonts and it would require careful hinting.
Users are being held back by pixel-based GUIs. Vector based guis tend to be more light-weight (for remote desktops/network transparency). I just want to crank up my resolution to what this monitor can do (1856×1392) without having to worry about some archaic pixel-based internal measurement.
The design for a great OS is always something of debate, but I have to agree that BeOS was one of the best in recent memory. Having tried ever flavor of Windows, Classic Mac, OSX, and a little bit of Linux I can say that they all had their positive points, but BeOS seemed to be one of the most intuitive GUI wise. While Windows has many technical mistakes that make it slower and more unstable than it has to be I can’t really see how anyone could think that the classic mac was any better than windows at much when it came to interface. I discovered most tricks of windows in hours, while the classic mac separation between windows and menus, lack of contextual menus, and other oddities made using the OS more work than it had to be. In my experience many common tasks on classic mac took twice as long as they did on windows. The perfect OS I really doubt would separate the menus from the windows. Outside of the mac community I have never met anyone who thought it made any sense. What’s so logical about it? I may never know.
The author mentioned BeOS scripting as an ideal form. Forgive me my ignorance if I’m wrong, but isn’t Amiga scripting (i. e. ARexx) far more elaborate and “system-wide”?
Pretty good article, but I think you missed one major feature of a good OS: Error Handling! This is something that Windows bombs out at.. in fact, I have yet to see a good OS error handling system. At the least with Linux, you can usually check some type of log… An OS that does not deliver feedback on what has gone wrong, and which does not do so in an easy to comprehend manner will never be a very efficient OS…