

Uniformity vs. Individuality in Mac UI Design - mqt
http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/uniformity_vs_individuality_in_mac_ui_design

======
fingerprinter
This feels like Gruber being Gruber.

For me personally, I love Apple hardware, love the iPhone and like the iPad. I
am just not a fan of OSX. I was, for about a five year period, but have gone
back to Linux this past year in Ubuntu and have not looked back.

I bought my first mac in 2003/2004, Power Book G4. Tolerated the slowness that
the UI had b/c it gave me something I didn't have in any other OS: A *nix base
w/ a great UI.

Over time I feel that OSX's lead in this eroded as Ubuntu kept getting better
and better and OSX stagnated. Now I feel I can have a rock solid Linux (Debian
based Ubuntu) with a really good UI that just works without weird
restrictions. OSX isn't the only player in town anymore in that front and
since I can install it on cheaper hardware, that is awesome.

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jckarter
A big difference between iOS and OS X is that desktop applications have more
than 20 years of UI research and convention behind them, while touch
interfaces have less than half (maybe even less than a quarter) that. There's
thus a lot more room for experimentation in touch interfaces since there isn't
as large a body of best practices. Apps that try to go their own way UI-wise
on OS X are more than likely going to end up subtly violating the norms of OS
X application behavior that standard Cocoa apps all follow implicitly, much
like Qt apps on OS X do. Indeed, Gruber's example of Twitter 2 already
misbehaves in a number of head-scratching ways: among the ones I've noticed,
hitting cmd-W from the tweet list hides the entire app rather than closing the
tweet window, and the "compose tweet" box floats over everything even when the
app is in the background. I think the tolerance for UI annoyances like these
is a lot lower, and apps that try to go their own way are going to expose them
a lot more than apps that stick to the tried and tested standard widgets.

~~~
zoul
Good point. One of the main reasons against non-standard UI design is that
there is a _huge_ amount of behaviour attached to the standard UI and once you
start implementing your own interface elements, you’ll almost never get
everything right. Keyboard shortcuts, accessibility, system hooks for other
apps, etc.

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redial
For better or worse, I think he is right. Non-uniformity has been the norm in
Apple's apps for a while, Garageband, Aperture, every iTunes release, among
others. I believe the majority of third party mac developers used to be pre OS
X developers, and because of that they had and incredible amount of respect
for the HIG, but now, the (problematic) apps in the Mac App Store are coming
from iOS developers, who didn't grow up with the guidelines. A different UI
has given them an edge in the iOS App Store, and the are gonna try the same on
the mac.

~~~
danieldk
Maybe. But if the HIG is not that important anymore, I think that should also
imply that Apple should allow for other UI toolkits in its stores, such as Qt.

~~~
Xuzz
There's a difference between "ugly attempt at matching the standard controls"
and "extending nicely into a different style of UI".

~~~
danieldk
The average user would not be able to tell the difference between a well-
adapting Qt application and a Cocoa application. We have a Qt application for
searching treebanks, and when showing it to another Mac user, he replied
"nice, you wrote it with Cocoa?".

Twitter's (or the App Store's) deviation from the Mac look and feel, on the
other hand is very noticeable. And I am not sure it is proven that we are
talking about "extending nicely into a different style of UI". The Twitter UI
is plainly confusing (where do you drag this window?) and having the
backward/forward buttons next to the window controls is questionable at the
very least.

~~~
wtallis
Did you just show it to the Mac user, or did you let him actually sit down and
use it? Qt does a great job of mimicking the look of Cocoa apps, but it
doesn't always get the behavior right, and if you're going to behave
differently, you ought to warn the user by looking different.

------
Entlin
"In Mac OS X, Apple began experimenting"

Just a little nitpick: Actually, it started already with OS 9. Who does't
remember the ugly brushed metal changes to Quicktime Player 4 and Sherlock 2?
Apparently Gruber :-)

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gregschlom
The question in the title remembered me of this quote:

"Good design is design that surprises, something that is unexpected but
immediately comprehensible and pleasing."

Source:
[http://info.psu.edu.sa/psu/cis/phalloran/Teaching_Learning/g...](http://info.psu.edu.sa/psu/cis/phalloran/Teaching_Learning/gooddesign.pdf)

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statictype
I think the cold truth is that in the OS X era, Apple's designers have been
increasingly favoring eye candy over usability and consistency. OS X certainly
looks better than just about any other OS I've seen, but other things like
Fitt's Law and consistency have taken a back seat.

~~~
gnok
Do you have any examples of violations of Fitts law in OS X that weren't
present in OS9?

~~~
statictype
Those small traffic light buttons come to mind. The traffic light buttons are
tiny and extremely difficult to acquire targets. The resize handle is another.
It's not only small, often times it's right near the dock at the bottom and ao
whenever you try to resize a window you end up moving over the dock. This is
exacerbated by the magnification effect on the dock of it's turned on.

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chadk
Consistency is still important, especially on the "truck" computers which are
much more prone to damaging actions by novice users compared to iOS. Hell,
messing with standard interface elements can even mess advanced users up.
Opened up Logic or Sound space designer recently?

Maybe regular users _are_ getting more used to different looking widgets (eg.
All the different kinds of custom buttons on websites) but I don't think the
HIG should be binned just yet. It needs to be abstracted: specific UI
concepts/patterns, rather than specific colors of dropdown menus etc. That
said, universal, system level elements like window controls shouldn't be
messed with IMO.

~~~
toddmorey
I really agree with this perspective. I think folks get too hung up on the
actual appearance vs. the usability. Sometimes I don't like the look when apps
recolor standard controls, but I don't find them less usable. Just don't
change usability patterns like keyboard shortcuts or the ability for a window
to be minimized to the dock.

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haribilalic
The most striking thing for me between Tweetie and Twitter for Mac (Tweetie
2), other than the dark sidebar, was the use of Helvetica instead Lucida
Grande. It's subtle, but I believe it's a big step toward making an app feel
like it was made for OS X instead of iOS.

Reeder for Mac, another port of an iOS app, is another good example. It uses
Helvetica and it uses slide animations that make me think that the Reeder
window has moved a few hundred pixels to the left.

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Corrado
I think maybe the OS X HIG is still in place, but it is migrating to the iOS
HIG. We will increasingly see more and more apps falling over to the iOS "dark
side" and culminating with the release of Lion.

Personally, while I loved my iPhone and think the iOS is a great thing on a
small screen I'm not a big fan of the iPad. Let me re-phrase that, I'm not a
big fan of the iPad's launcher. Anyway, Lion will be a big UI step, probably
in the direction of iOS and away from OS X. That kind of makes me sad and
worried about the future of Mac products. On the other hand, I'm very happily
a Ubuntu and Android user and maybe they will pick up the torch and grow
better and better.

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hkuo
I don't think people should look at this as an all-or-nothing debate. I think
there is an importance to following an HIG as a basic guideline and stray from
it as it seems appropriate or for the sake of creativity. It's when it strays
too far from it when things can become problematic.

Just like with traffic laws, not coming to a full stop at a stop sign is not
equal to speeding down a highway going in the opposite direction of traffic.

Apple straying and introducing a metallic patten does not equal the extent of
an Adobe Air application forcing me to hit an icon button to access
preferences rather than through the common menu bar location. One is aesthetic
while the other is functional. And basically, one irritates me way more than
the other.

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jasonkester
That screenshot sums up my experience with Twitter nicely: A dozen random
thoughts, truncated to fit a certain size, thus requiring investment to
decipher, which at the end reveals somebody talking about something that's
only really interesting to themselves, and actually makes you feel slightly
embarrassed for them.

My assumption was that other people were using some form of magic tool that
filtered out relevent stuff and presented it in a coherent form. Since this
looks like a screenshot from the author's own system, it seems that even
power-users are seeing the same useless garbage that I do.

Why would you install something like this on your computer?

~~~
nollidge
On Twitter, you don't follow people who talk about things you're not
interested in. It's that simple.

Now, obviously, nobody's 100% interesting all the time. So, yes, there is a
"magic tool" to filter out uninteresting things: your brain. You see something
that relies on context you're not privy to, you skip over it. It's that
simple. You don't _read_ Twitter, you _scan_ it.

Everyone who criticizes Twitter seems to think that people use it to read
boring things. No, I don't usually care what the people I'm following had for
breakfast - except when Patton Oswalt describes his quick eats on a busy day
[1]. Now, you might not find that funny. In which case, you stop following
him, or you just furl your brow and keep skimming.

[1] <http://twitter.com/#!/pattonoswalt/status/23362445531684864>

~~~
jasonkester
Was that link an attempt to point out something good on Twitter, or to point
out one of the tweets that you have to filter out to get use from it? It took
a while to parse, then turned out to be, well, let's say I want my 5 seconds
back.

Actually, can anybody here point to a single good Twitter message so that I
can see what one looks like?

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Timothee
I think that HIG and default UI libraries are great to give the default app a
consistent and decent look and UX. It makes it possible for anyone to write an
app that behaves and looks at a good enough level.

But, unique interfaces that stray away from these are just fine as long as it
results in a better UI/UX. iOS apps have shown in a lot of cases that
developers _that care_ can make something that are highly customized for the
better (e.g. apps from TapBots (<http://tapbots.com/>) or TapTapTap
(<http://taptaptap.com/)>)

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trezor
I must admit I'm not really surprised to see Gruber suddenly claim non-uniform
application design is a good thing when everyone starts critizing Apple for 1.
inconsistent UIs and 2. bad design. Also note how he completely focuses on the
inconsistent UI-issue and completely ignores the part about bad design in the
OSX App Store, probably hoping it will go by unnoticed.

Really though. Isn't it _always_ this way with Gruber? If Apple or OSX does
something better or _different_ than the other platforms it's not only good,
it's the standard. It's the only way(tm). End of story. Whoever disagrees be
uneducated and unsophistitcated.

The second Apple strays away from that, his response is always "but this isn't
important any more" or "this is a good thing, really". Really, Gruber?

I must admit I'm getting fed up with his appologyism. If there is still
insight and actual content to be found in his blog-posts, he is making it
very, very hard to find.

~~~
demallien
Wait, you can't claim that Gruber is never critical of Apple. For example, he
was one of the first and most persistent critics of the iPhone App Store's
submission guidelines until they were amended by Apple.

It's true that he rarely criticises Apple's design choices. But I don't think
it's because of any sycophantic defence of Apple, but rather because his
design aesthetic is very similar to that of the lead designers at Apple.
Still, I wouldn't be surprised to see him do a piece soon on the sub-par
design of the Mac App Store, because it _is_ sub-par (at least in some
aspects).

~~~
tjogin
Here's a few links to Gruber criticizing the poor state of the HIG, and
Apple's design decisions:

<http://daringfireball.net/2007/07/hockenberry_hig>

<http://daringfireball.net/2004/10/brushed-metal>

[http://daringfireball.net/2003/05/much_ado_about_click-
throu...](http://daringfireball.net/2003/05/much_ado_about_click-through)

<http://daringfireball.net/2006/08/highly_selective>

<http://daringfireball.net/2003/02/inconsistencies>

<http://daringfireball.net/2004/10/themes>

<http://daringfireball.net/2006/04/more_smart_cut_copy_paste>

<http://daringfireball.net/2003/02/when_in_rome>

<http://daringfireball.net/2004/10/does_brushed_metal_matter>

That Gruber rarely criticizes Apple's design decisions is simply false.
Apple's inconsistency in UI design and application of the HIG is _a pet peeve_
of his, and it has been _for many years_.

~~~
vamsee
That's like 9 articles in as many years. How many did he write in support of
them? Not that there's anything wrong with it - just that I don't think I can
count his writing about Apple as "objective criticism".

~~~
tjogin
Articles I found mentioning HIG wherein Gruber praises Apple's design
consistency: zero. Why don't you try finding some for yourself?

Like I said, this has been a pet peeve of his for years.

~~~
vamsee
Hmm, was I misunderstood? I didn't mean to ask you how many articles he did
supporting Apple's HIG consistency. I was just pointing out that that it's a
small minority among the total articles he writes about supporting everything
Apple does. At least that's my understanding. Like I said, I wouldn't really
go to Gruber's blog for objective analysis, though he does make some good
points. I used to enjoy his writing about Apple quite a bit a few years back.
Now the blatant fanboism kinda turns me off. FWIW.

~~~
tjogin
I've read Gruber since he began writing Daring Fireball, I don't think he's
changed much at all. I don't see how he's turned from Apple _pundit_ to Apple
_fanboy_ , a rather peculiar thing to happen to _anyone_ with time, really.

What has changed is that Apple's success has accelerated, exposing Apple to
more customers, press and analysis. Gruber has _always_ covered these things,
but with more of it there's more to cover, and with more clueless analysts
claiming things about Apple, there's more of that to dispute and ridicule.

And let's just face it, he's usually _right_ about the significant things.
That's not fanboyism, that's insight.

Besides, I don't think Gruber very often writes articles just to "support"
anything (what would be the point?), usually he's trying to understand where
Apple's motivations come from — _why_ they're doing what they're doing — which
is the part where most other analysts are fumbling in the dark.

Sometimes he agrees with them, but really, a lot of the time he doesn't (that
usually makes for more interesting articles as well). Just writing support for
a decision or strategy makes for a really _boring_ read, what he usually does
is explain the underlying reasons for it, whether he agrees with it or not.

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Hopka
First time Gruber embeds images into a post?

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larsberg
Well, all the OSX users should just Thank Steve that the XCode designer is no
Visual Basic so at least you're limited to people with a significant amount of
development savvy doing non-standard UI. Otherwise, you'd have the hodge-podge
horror that's been visited upon Windows for the last decade and a half or so.

It'll get there, though, just wait! I'll chuckle when I see the first 200x200
OK/CANCEL buttons in AppStore screen shots :-)

