

Apple vs. Microsoft: Which user interface do you prefer? - cek
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/apple-vs-microsoft-which-user-interface-do-you-prefer/3887?pg=2

======
Groxx
I don't know how much they've actually used iPhoto. Page [4] has a good
example of this (or, specifically, this [picture]) - why are they going into
the _menu_ for rotating, when there's a big-ass "rotate" button right on the
right-hand side? And if you're on new-enough hardware to have real multitouch
(the past what, 4 years?), they've already seen the gestural approach because
it's been pushed at them from every angle multiple times - rotate 2 fingers =
rotate picture. And that works from the editing perspective, the single-
picture, and the bunch-o-pictures list. _Zero_ clicks!, since they seem so
focused on clicks as a measure of UI design.

also, I'm not sure what their point is in these paragraphs on page 5, but it
reads like a poorly-executed ad-hominem:

> _One enormous difference between Microsoft and Apple is the amount of public
> communication each company puts out. In the last five years, Microsoft
> engineers and executives have written the equivalent of several big books
> about the process of designing and building the user interface for Windows
> and Office.

The Windows 8 blog, with its epic posts from Steven Sinofsky and the Windows
team, is just the latest in a long line of similar efforts. Jensen Harris, who
led the development of the original ribbon in Office 2007, wrote an eight-part
series of blog posts titled “Why the UI?”

I am certain that Apple’s designers do just as much thinking, research,
prototyping, and testing as their counterparts in Redmond. But they don’t talk
about that work. Instead, the results are described in press releases and
promotional web pages with terms like “easier than ever” and “incredibly
easy.”_

[4]: [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/apple-vs-microsoft-which-
user...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/apple-vs-microsoft-which-user-
interface-do-you-prefer/3887?pg=4) [picture]:
[http://www.zdnet.com/photos/windows-live-photo-gallery-
versu...](http://www.zdnet.com/photos/windows-live-photo-gallery-versus-
iphoto/6289917?seq=11&tag=content;siu-container)

~~~
kiiski
> why are they going into the menu for rotating

Some quotes from the article regarding that (2 separate quotes; there was text
between them):

"To make changes to the photo, you have to use commands located in two
places."

"In iPhoto the same option is not so easy to find. If you click the Edit
button and look on the Quick Fixes tab, you’ll find a Rotate button. But
clicking it rotates the selected photo (or photos) counterclockwise only. If
you guess that Rotate options are on the Edit menu, you’d be wrong. Instead,
you have to look on the Photos menu, which is where the Rotate Clockwise
option appears.

In Windows Live Photo Gallery, just about every task and command is available
from the ribbon. The design allows you to pick a tab and then scan its
contents to see commands that apply to the task you’re trying to accomplish.
In iPhoto, you have to learn where each command lives.

A good example is the option to use the current photo as your desktop
background. In Windows Live Photo Gallery you’ll find a Set As Desktop button
at the left of the Create tab, or you can right-click on a photo and choose
Set Desktop Background. In iPhoto, that option isn’t available on a right-
click menu. Confusingly, it’s not available from the menu that pops up when
you click the Share button at the bottom of the window; you have to use the
pull-down Share menu instead."

> And if you're on new-enough hardware to have real multitouch (the past what,
> 4 years?), they've already seen the gestural approach because it's been
> pushed at them from every angle multiple times - rotate 2 fingers = rotate
> picture. And that works from the editing perspective, the single-picture,
> and the bunch-o-pictures list. Zero clicks!, since they seem so focused on
> clicks as a measure of UI design.

Using the multitouch gestures is not quite that obvious. I've used mac for a
little over a year and I've never used any other gestures than the two-finger
scrolling. Besides, clicking on a single button is just simpler than rotating
your fingers (assuming you want to rotate the image 90 degrees).

~~~
steipete
What's wrong with just pressing the rotate button more than once? When I see a
picture that has is rotated wrong, i just think "rotate". Thinking about left?
right? needs more brainpower, and finding the small icon also. I'm faster just
hitting the button until I'm satisfied with the rotation. It's EXIF rotate
anyway, it doesn't change the picture quality.

~~~
kiiski
Some people just prefer to use the button that says it does what they want to
do rather than thinking about how to do it with multiple operations.

------
makeramen
This guy really doesn't have enough UX/human factors experience to be saying
anything about these UIs. His opinion appears to be based on a few commands,
and a generalized opinion with little quantitative support.

"In Windows Live Photo Gallery, with the program window at least 1200 pixels
wide"

That's quite a wide screen to expect someone to have in order to see all the
available commands. I feel like this limit is even larger in more involved
programs such as Word, Excel, etc where I've frequently run into the issue of
having to click the "more" button, only not to find the command I'm looking
for.

Also, counting clicks is a very weak UI rule to follow. Navigation time is
key. The "clutter" description of the windows toolbar comes from the varying
sizes of buttons that don't follow any regular order for the eye to follow,
resulting in greater confusion and potentially slower responses.

~~~
camtarn
1280x(anywhere from 720 to 800) is probably the most common resolution for a
modern widescreen laptop, and it's very common for Windows users to run with
their windows either maximized or manually dragged to take up the entire
screen. The ribbon appears to be designed for this, with the option to present
a less optimal interface for smaller screens by a combination of resizing
interface elements and eliminating uncommonly used ones.

Try resizing the Ribbon all the way from super-wide (if you've got dual
monitors, it's particularly interesting) to really narrow. It's quite fun to
watch, especially in Office products with zillions of interface controls - the
giant buttons and large scrollable boxes full of options become groups of
smaller buttons with text, then even smaller buttons without text, then
collapse into a single menu, before disappearing altogether into the 'more'
button.

~~~
Jamiecon
Conveniently enough, this article has a helpful graph of the most common
screen resolutions on Windows:

[https://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/08/26/improvements-...](https://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/08/26/improvements-
in-windows-explorer.aspx)

~~~
camtarn
Interesting - the most common resolution is even wider than I thought. Thanks
for pointing that out - I'd read the article not long ago but had forgotten
about that particular point :)

------
zarify
Headlines like this really irritate me. It should read "Apple vs Microsoft:
Here's what I prefer" rather than making it out that the article is about
public opinion (ie "you").

There were some valid comparisons for why he evidently prefers the new MS UI
(in the iphoto vs picture gallery comparison, anyway), but the whole way
through all I could think was "don't tell me what I prefer".

~~~
5hoom
Yeah, it gets a bit old. While we're at provocative flamebait titles, how
about:

\- Vi vs. Emacs. \- Ruby vs. Python. \- GNU vs. BSD. \- Republican vs.
Democrat.

There are some insightful differences that can be pointed out by comparing
between the two, but that doesn't seem to be where this sort of 'story' is
leading.

~~~
rbanffy
I miss the TRS-80 vs. Apple ][ days...

------
sirn
>In Windows Live Photo Gallery, just about every task and command is available
from the ribbon. The design allows you to pick a tab and then scan its
contents to see commands that apply to the task you’re trying to accomplish.
In iPhoto, you have to learn where each command lives.

Little known feature: in Mac OS X just open the Help menu and type in any menu
item you want to access. The menu will just point you to where that menu item
is[1]. I always use it as a quick access when trying to accomplish any task
that requires menu bar access; pressing Cmd+Shift+/, type in whatever I want,
select the first item and press enter, hooray for global keyboard actions!

[1]: <http://i.imgur.com/8QzXw.png>

------
egypturnash
> With the View tab visible in Windows Live Photo Gallery, it takes two clicks
> to sort your photos by tag in reverse order. In iPhoto, it takes six
> clicks—after you sort by keyword (three clicks), you have to reopen the View
> menu, click Sort Photos again, and then click Descending (three more
> clicks). In fact, most options on the ribbon are one or two clicks away,
> whereas most options using iPhoto’s pull-down menus involve a minimum of two
> and often three or more clicks.

What? You don't have to click on sub-meus to open them up. You just move the
mouse over them and they open.

The example he gives would actually be:

    
    
      * Click on "View" menu.
      * Move mouse pointer down to "sort photos", then right into the submenu.
      * Click on "Descending".
    

Is "click on submenus to open them" a Windows thing that he's doing by habit?
I haven't used a Windows machine in years.

also holy crap that "ribbon" thing is a big noisy bar of colors and illegible
text, sheesh. No visual hierarchy whatsoever.

~~~
Derbasti
Don't forget that the ribbon expands and collapses its individual blocks
dynamically based on how big the window currently is, thus switching around
the look and position of menu items (at least in Office, it does that). That
can make re-finding 'menu' items painful.

In general, I applaud the idea of unifying the menu bar and the tool bar into
a 'ribbon'. That said, many programs do not need much menu interaction at all.
In that case, the ribbon just looks noisy (explorer 8).

~~~
camtarn
I wonder if the resizing behaviour was based on data about the amount of time
Windows users run programs in any state other than maximized - if they have
the program window maximized (or manually dragged to fill the monitor) 99.9%
of the time, then they'll almost always see the Ribbon in the same state. Of
course, this could lead to user confusion when they move to a new computer
with a different resolution (whether upgrading, switching between desktop and
laptop, or using a friend's/library/work/etc) and the Ribbon they're used to
has been replaced by something completely different...

------
dimmuborgir
I'm a Linux user who hasn't used Windows for years and who hasn't used OS X at
all. But I must say iPhoto looks more sane and intuitive compared to Windows
Live Photo Gallery. (that's one lengthy name!).

Can't imagine how netbook users running Windows deal with that ribbon thing
which I think covers almost half the screen.

~~~
tintin
Some time ago I discovered ribbons can be collapsed (Ctrl+F1, or the icon on
the far right). I hated them but when they are collapsed everything is looking
clean and they just work like a drop-down-menu with icons.

Ribbons are a big mess but now I don't have to look at them all the time,
clearing my mind and my screen.

~~~
iaskwhy
Double-clicking also works as explained in the article: "Double-click any tab
heading to collapse the ribbon so that it looks indistinguishable from a
traditional menu bar."

------
revorad
Thanks for posting this. I'm working on a new product design and am constantly
struggling with the question of how many controls to keep visible at all times
and how many to hide behind clicks. There is a difficult tradeoff between
functionality and keeping the UI simple.

I've been erring on the side of hiding (and if possible eliminating) less used
controls. And this comparison pushes me more in that direction.

I find it quite funny that the author "concludes" that iPhoto looks more
cluttered than the Microsoft design, especially with the last screenshots on
the last page[1]! In iPhoto, you can clearly see the image you are editing,
whereas in Photo Gallery, the hovering menu is hiding part of the image.
Ironically, he spent the rest of the article criticising iPhoto's dropdown
menu controls in favour of Microsoft's convenient ribbon layout.

[1] [http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/apple-vs-microsoft-which-
user...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/apple-vs-microsoft-which-user-
interface-do-you-prefer/3887?pg=5&tag=content;siu-container)

------
rbanffy
I'm baffled he finds it natural to set the desktop wallpaper from the "Create"
menu on Windows while he is also confused it's not in the "Share" button on
the Mac... It confuses me more it _is_ in the "Share" menu.

Obviously, setting your desktop background is all about creative sharing.

------
tomelders
Some of the comments are priceless (as you would expect in a Mac vs PC piece),
but this one really takes the cake...

"if you want to examine an OS' UI that has barely changed in 10 years, you
only have to look at OSX."

------
sjwright
Articles like this make me happy I run ad blocking software. The last thing
I'd want to do is give a monetary reward to amateur-hour reporting link-bait
like this.

------
tzs
Why does the link go to page 2 of the article?

------
Feinux
Microsoft just treats each application as an OS,like sub-OSes integrated in
one big OS, then it is call Windows.

------
abc_lisper
Hmm.. What is this but not a troll

------
tomelders
is this a trick question?

