
The Post-Mac Interface - Artemis2
https://medium.com/@twomonthsoff/the-post-mac-interface-1031b94df77b
======
hunter2_
"Most of us don’t even need all the computing power in our pocket. We’ve
gotten to a place of sufficiency, when just about any computer or smartphone
is good enough for what we want them to do."

This is a fairly timeless sentiment. Even more ubiquitous is looking back and
laughing at just how primitive formerly-sufficient technology was. You'd think
we'd know by now to just not have this thought anymore!

~~~
gizmo686
My laptop has a 2.7GHz possessor. When I need to conserve power, I lock in
down to 0.8GHz, sometimes I forget to unlock it. Most of the time I don't even
notice the difference.

Maybe, at some point, we will come up with a use-case that needs more compute
that what we currently have, but for most people's current usecase, compute is
not the limiting factor.

~~~
knodi123
Don't mean to derail the conversation, but, -wha?!?!? That's amazing, I had no
idea you could do that. How do you do that?

~~~
escap
on OSX: [http://superuser.com/questions/8381/can-i-reduce-the-cpu-
spe...](http://superuser.com/questions/8381/can-i-reduce-the-cpu-speed-of-my-
macbook-when-on-battery)

on Windows: [http://superuser.com/questions/565347/how-does-windows-
limit...](http://superuser.com/questions/565347/how-does-windows-limit-the-
cpu-power-options-battery-saving)

On Linux:
[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CPU_frequency_scaling](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CPU_frequency_scaling)

You can also play with the BIOS, according to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underclocking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underclocking)

------
melling
"I use Siri all the time to set up reminders, but not much else."

Siri, Google Now, or Cortana are on the verge of becoming something quite
useful. Hopefully, all three. Voice as a user interface is perfect for many
tasks:

I use Siri all the time with Apple Music:
[https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/31/apple-musics-
killer-...](https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/31/apple-musics-killer-
feature/)

Someday soon, we'll even use voice recognition to help write code:

[https://www.extrahop.com/blog/2014/programming-by-voice-
stay...](https://www.extrahop.com/blog/2014/programming-by-voice-staying-
productive-without-harming-yourself/)

[http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/using_voice_to_code.html](http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/using_voice_to_code.html)

~~~
jpollock
I can see it now, an open plan office, 100 developers with noise cancelling
headphones on, yelling at their computers because they can't tell how loud
they are.

~~~
melling
In the movie Her, there were several office scenes and a subway? scene with
Joaquin Phoenix talking in a low voice to his computer. You probably need a
directional noise canceling microphone, but not headphones. In the last link
that I gave, there is a recommended microphone that Tavis Rudd uses.

------
k_thorisson
>"Think of how often you Undo every day. Undo makes lots of apps safe for
exploration and regular use."

In 2015, when I see and use software that doesn't subtly prompt the user to
undo actions for a short period of time after an interaction I just shake my
head.

It's such an easy way to reduce customer service complaints it's ridiculous.
Empirically, with the companies I have consulted, 'ridiculous' often means
20-40% instant reduction of complaints.

~~~
applecore
The Unix shell, one of the most successful user interfaces ever developed,
doesn't support undo nor does it need to. It's successful because it doesn't
presume to know better than the user.

~~~
epidemian
> The Unix shell doesn't support undo

Oh but i would like it _so_ much if it did. There would be no need for --dry-
run options on commands, and it would be much easier to test command-line
software and do exploratory learning.

I think it would be a great usability improvement. Even if it were "only" on a
file-system change level. And even if weren't always enabled, like, maybe make
it so you have to first "begin" a file-system transaction to be able to roll
it back if you don't like the changes you did. Imagine something like:

    
    
      $ begin-tx
      tx$ ./some-script-i-am-not-sure-works-properly
      tx$ # Check if everything looks good.
      tx$ # In case everything went good:
      tx$ Ctrl+D # ...or "commit" to end the transaction.
      tx$ # Or, in case i see something went wrong:
      tx$ Ctrl+X # ...or "abort" to roll back the changes.
      $
    

(Disclaimer: maybe something like this already exists, is widely supported,
and i've just been doing it wrong the whole time.)

Strangely, the only command-line software where i feel i can do exploratory
learning, instead of always having to resort to the man pages, is git. With
git, even if i'm making the most destructive history rewriting with `git
filter-branch`, i know that if i screw up i can always run `git reflog` and
checkout some ref that i know was OK.

~~~
gizmo686
You would need to implement this at the file-system level. You should be able
to do this easily with any file-system that supports snapshotting, such as
btrfs.

~~~
anon4
I don't think it's that easy and I do think the parent has a point. I mean,
while you're busy writing a perl one-liner to munge on your file, ten daemons
are writing to their log files, all on the same file system. You want to roll
back the effects of your script doing an accidental rm ~/*, but not what's in
the logs. Probably a better idea is to strace the shell's children and record
changes, then apply or forget them.

------
alexqgb
My iPad has been sidelining my MBP for some time. Installing the public beta
of iOS9 - which includes cmnd. + tab switching between apps - accelerated that
trend. And increasingly, I'm using Siri / voice input for more and more stuff.
Now my biggest frustration is that my physical keyboard doesn't include a mic.
button like the iPad's onscreen keyboard.

If anyone from Apple is reading this, not that you've got two empty spots on
either side of the up arrow. The other one would be fine for emoji ;-)

~~~
ggreer
Apple's latest design removed those empty spots.[1] But don't despair, you can
already get a lot of what you want without dedicated buttons.

To open an emoji menu in OS X (10.10 or later IIRC), just focus on a text
input and hit ^ + ⌘ + spacebar. You can also search for other unicode
characters. "⌘" is a little tricky to find, since it's named "place of
interest marker" or something like that.

OS X doesn't yet have Siri, but it does have Dictation. I assume that when
Siri replaces Dictation, the typical keyboard shortcuts for toggling it will
stay the same: double-tapping fn or ⌘.

1\.
[http://geoff.greer.fm/photos/pics/IMG_1269.JPG](http://geoff.greer.fm/photos/pics/IMG_1269.JPG)

~~~
gknoy
I see now why my mac-using friends love vim keybinds: those arrows look like a
nightmare to use. ;)

------
ommunist
I like that superposition of "Anti-mac's" Reality vs "Mac's" Metaphore. Dudes,
even us, mere mortals only interact with "Reality" with interfaces through
convenient metaphors delivered with imperfect senses to adaptive neural
networks of the "mind". How can "Anti-mac" interface with Reality is beyond my
understanding, some enlightenment would be much appreciated.

------
cm2187
I am starting to see a trend of GUI being structure-less / hierarchy-less. A
prime example is amazon's Music App for windows. It moves from screen to
screen with no apparent logic, with some screens (like the download manager
tab) appearing sometimes but with no obvious way to get back to it if we hide
it. Same thing for the itunes app which doesn't show on a screen how we got to
it. Both seem to be inspired from the web, except that the web pretty much
always has a menu at the top which gives a good idea of where we are.

The Windows 10 UI also seems to follow this logic and seems to have ditched
the idea to show any apparent hierarchy in the sub menus of the control
panels. Particularly in full screen mode.

I can't tell if it is because I am used to deal with GUIs that have a clear
hierarchy that this design upsets me, or if it is simply because it is badly
designed. I guess the acid test is whether a kid can find his way comfortably.

------
dustyrb
What's the difference between an app and a program? Author talks about older
programs and newer apps; syntactically it would seem to me that any program
would have several 'applications.' But that doesn't seem to be how the word is
used since everything wants to be an app today.

~~~
wodenokoto
I think app is just a trendy word for application (or computer program)
possibly with the implication that it has a user interface.

So application are old apps and apps are new applications.

------
habitue
> I own my iTunes library, don’t need a membership card, and I don’t exactly
> “borrow” items from it.

Depends on how many songs have DRM on them I guess. It's certainly not true
for iTunes shows and movies

------
likeclockwork
> You do less pointing-and-clicking; instead you tell the computer what you
> want.

Sign me up, can't stand all the pointing-and-clicking.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
It's called a terminal. hehe.

~~~
harperlee
We need a formal language that is a little more amenable than what we need to
put in the terminal. But dictating to a comfortable hearing terminal would be
great!

