Fuck Apple.
That’s why I don’t complain about nor want to complain about people who make different technology choices than I do.
Because people are different and like different things.
To take it personally and complain incessantly about “fanboys” is kind of sad.
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No. Just no. It was a decent music purchasing app, I’ll give it that. But seriously no version of iTunes was better than piss poor for managing a music library. Lousy format support, bad UI, limited tagging and sorting ability, obscene CPU and memory requirements… it’s just not capable of managing a large high fidelity music collection.
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I love that website. That wire wrapped prototype is a thing of beauty.
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Jobs insistance on a one-button mouse was perhaps his first great achievement in human engineering. With it, you could control an entire computer with just an index fnger. Right or left hand did not matter.
The Alto needed three buttons.
This desire for intuitive interaction was also what guided his development of the iPhone. Now it has become loaded with obtuse gestures. You have to learn to use it, instead of the machine conforming to human expectations.
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Version 4 was where they introduced the store.
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I think you nailed it with these posters. It shows how Apple have lost their way.
I’ve only ever had an iPhone but my current iPhone 7 Plus will probably be my last.
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Wouldn’t have worked in Germany, as the cross-application of the wheel from ships to the car would’ve been deemed trivial and obvious. Many, many patents awarded in the US would simply not count as an invention, especially the interface and design patents. (We have a different category for that, but that’s also severely limited.)
That said, Samsung did copy a lot of design stuff that wasn’t necessary but to get as close as possible to the look and feel of an iPhone. That it wasn’t necessary is shown by their later models, which established their own design language and, depending one one taste, were equal or superior to the way the iPhone did things.
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I find this statement quite puzzling. All the recent changes, like allowing more access to the file system, even acknowledging that there are things, are reactions to other systems and the incessant whining of users and tech journalists to be more like the “the more open systems”.
I don’t consider myself to be an apple fan, but it kind of annoys me that they have given in to public pressure and made this phone just because it looks pretty. If you actually think about it, it is obvious that a phone like this is a step backwards, but everyone is more interested in having a nice looking full screen device, than something that is actually user friendly. Maybe these issues will be worked out in years to come, but currently there are just too many compromises and I’m not going to pay $1000 to essentially be a beta tester
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There’s a reason Stern’s the Journal’s #2 reviewer…
For the primary use – accessing the phone and apps – Face ID and the replacement for the home button is in fact an improvement.
Nearly all the crap about the buttons is pretty much apples (of course no pun) and oranges – and how often are any of those things done?
And, BTW, for those of us paranoid about being forced to give access to our phone, if you know what I mean, the system on the X beats all other iPhones – much easier.
To call Stern’s tweet stupid or idiotic is an exaggeration, but not by much. That said, I appreciate the graphic. Helpful!
Those posters show that Apple was driven by usability through good design. It’s what attracted most of us in the first place. Now it just seems to have to design itself out of usability corners (e.g. diagonal-three-finger-fuck-you-swipes instead of a universally understood button).
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The “universally understood button” already had four modes of operation. Five, if you include login.
- One Press
- Back to home screen when in App
- Back to first home screen when on another homescreen
- Nothing when on first home screen
- Double Press
- List of running apps
- Long Press
- Siri
- Double tap
- Reachability
And I bet most users navigate just fine with the first one - back to home screen. And don’t even need more.
I’ll gladly admit that its discoverability is easer because it is an obvious interface elements with clear haptic feedback.
Like with right click and keyboard shurtcuts (a practice endorsed by apple from the start). Multi-Button mice had been introduced well during Steve Job’s reign, by the way.
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I do not think that it an obvious step back.
So it wasn’t even a decent music buying app! 
No, the Alto/Dorado/DandeLion series had three buttons because the fairly sophisticated users that were the staff at PARC thought it was a good idea and that a quick explanation would be sufficient for new users.
I had no problems explaining the Smalltalk select/context-menu/window-menu regime to students back then, even people that had never seen a mouse before.
The problem the one-button mouse solved was the people that had never seen them and that wouldn’t bother to read a manual. It works perfectly well to point, drag, click on menus etc, and when you have a small screen the top-of screen menubar is excellent. Travel from any part of the screen to the menu bar is short and fast and difficult to mess up.
It rapidly becomes less useful when screens get bigger and applications get more complex. Local context sensitive menus save time and keep that context in your mind but require a different affordance, typically a mouse button modifier. Old Mac single button mice (and modern trackpads, touch-whotsits, and those idiotic keyboard dildoes) mean using ctl/option/alt/whatever keys. Proper three button mice avoid that. Apple mice have done three button stuff perfectly well for a long time now. I don’t really know about Windows mouse handling these days because I haven’t used it since ‘96 but I expect it’s as bad as ever.
RISC OS had one of the best mouse related UI setups, but nobody had the wit to steal it and spread it more widely. Tragic.
It was good at burning CDRs of music. That’s about all I can remember really using it for.
These days, I just sort of reply “I disagree” to the license agreement whenever it pops up.
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This is just what happens when you use a mouse; it has nothing to do with the number of buttons on the mouse.
Also, I can’t think of any Macintoshes which shipped with large enough displays to make using a single-button mouse actually a problem when it comes to screen real-estate. Anyone dropping the cash for a large screen and a display card was also probably investing in other tools to go along side it. E.g., if you have a tablet to go with the large screen, the mouse doesn’t actually matter.
Untrue: keyboard-button modifiers were still a thing for even 3-button mice/pointing devices. (E.g. Alias Power Animator or Maya on an SGI.)
Everyone forgets the NeXT!
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Incorrect. When you have a single button mouse based UI you have to go to a menu opening location for the single button action to mean ‘open menu’ - or use a modifier key on the keyboard. When you have a larger screen the average distance you have to move to get to the menubar increases, increasing the Fitt’s Law numerator. If you have a Windows style menubar per window it reduces that problem a little but drastically reduces the size of the target area, thus buggering you from another Fitt’s parameter.
A multi-button mouse can solve this by using the buttons to do what the Smalltalk folk did (select/context/window) or RISC OS (select/menu/modify-operation) and that reduces the distance aspect of Fitt’s law to essentially 0.
More than 3 buttons on a mouse is getting silly because one generally uses little-or-ring-finger/thumb to hold it and middle two/three fingers to operate buttons. The insane 5 button mouse Apple shipped for a while was… insane.
