
“Origins of the Apple human interface” lecture – an annotated transcription - NaOH
http://morrick.me/archives/8432
======
morrick
Thank you: to the person who posted the link to my blog; and to all the people
who came and checked it out. I'm glad that my transcription efforts have been
of use!

Cheers, Riccardo Mori

~~~
acqq
Hi, thanks for your work. Regarding: "I’ve listened to this bit many times and
I’m pretty sure Tesler says ‘foils’, and I guess he’s using the term in its
architecture‐related meaning of “a leaf‐shaped curve formed by the cusping of
an arch or circle” — But I welcome any correction from native English
speakers."

He surely talks about preparing the "transparency" foils for presenting them
using the overhead projectors:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_(projection)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_\(projection\))

"A transparency, also known variously as a viewfoil, foil, or viewgraph"

That's how the presentations were done at that time, using the:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhead_projector](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhead_projector)

The good side was that you were able to prepare the foils before but then
annotate any (i.e. write or draw on it) during the presentation, which had its
own dynamic -- it could have been a result of the interaction with your
viewers -- like while you were answering some question.

The foils were even used in the very talk you transcribed:
[https://youtu.be/OW-atKrg0T4?t=1295](https://youtu.be/OW-atKrg0T4?t=1295)

~~~
morrick
Thanks! Maybe it's because I was overwhelmed by the transcription work itself,
but while I know this meaning of 'foils', I was totally misled. Tesler was
talking about this drawing program and all I did was fixating on geometric
shapes, haha. Cheers!

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amatecha
Another great link if you're interested in Apple's design insights: "Macintosh
Human Interface Guidelines" , from 1995 or so. I keep a copy on my desk at
work as it's a great conversation piece and full of fascinating HCI insights.

You can download a PDF here:
[http://interface.free.fr/Archives/Apple_HIGuidelines.pdf](http://interface.free.fr/Archives/Apple_HIGuidelines.pdf)
:)

One of my favorite details that seems to be frequently overlooked in modern
times is the ellipsis on menu items to indicate that further user input is
required (see "The Ellipsis Character in Menus" in Chapter 4). Lots of
software follows this pattern, but a surprising amount of software _doesn't_!

~~~
ken
The current HIG still says "Use an ellipsis whenever choosing a menu item
requires additional input from the user", but doesn't elaborate on this. Even
Apple seems to have abandoned their earlier conventions and mostly just
resorts to "use an ellipsis if the control will show another window/dialog".

Apple's guidelines used to make it clear that (a) if the only additional input
was a simple confirmation, it shouldn't get an ellipsis, and (b) if the whole
point of the menuitem/button was to show a window, then it doesn't need 'more
input', so it shouldn't get an ellipsis.

Both of these are violated by the Mac's built-in applications in Mac OS X,
which is a shame.

~~~
josefrichter
Copy&paste from current MacOS HIG: "Use an ellipsis whenever choosing a menu
item requires additional input from the user. The ellipsis character (…) means
a dialog or separate window will open and prompt the user for additional
information or to make a choice."

Maybe you looked at other platform HIG? Can you share examples where the
guidelines are violated by MacOS built in applications, please? Not saying
it's not happening, just curious.

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meerita
As a Macintosh user since System 7, I cannot be more in love with the old UIs
and UX. I really enjoy the pixel era. Certainly, the introduction to OS X took
Apple to a different level, but the OS 9 UI for me will be one of the best
examples of the epitome of OS. Good in interactions, colors, details, sound
feedback. I will always thanks Apple for such work poured on an OS.

~~~
0815test
Yes, when it comes to icons, pictures, non-trivial logos etc. the "pixel"
style has always been the most effective way of coming up with something that
will look appealing even with minimal effort. Even on modern screens, a
properly-upscaled, pixel-based icon usually looks a lot better than the
symbolic, vector-based look you most often see today, while taking a lot less
time and effort to create. You can see this very well on other user interfaces
from the 1980s and 1990s too, it's not exclusive to the Mac.

(And there's a sensible reason for this, too - the "pixel art" style is unique
in letting you set a uniform ceiling on high-spatial-frequency content and
subtle color changes within a picture, while preserving unbounded choice
within these constraints.)

~~~
amatecha
Right, the low fidelity of 32x32pixel icons means they are easy to "read" and
make sense of. Conversely, SGI's IRIX OS had vector icons which made them
extremely varied and IMO they sometimes required a lot of effort to
understand. Check this screenshot[0] to get an idea of what I mean. They are
not immediately obvious due to their high level of detail.

That said, I found it super cool that the icons can scale, right in the file
explorer (using the "scroll wheel" type thing on the left side of the
window)!! :)

[0]
[https://software.majix.org/irix/screenshots/screen.5.big.jpg](https://software.majix.org/irix/screenshots/screen.5.big.jpg)

~~~
meerita
I never had the chance to use SGI's IRIX OS. I was teenager and the pricess
where so prohibitive for such workstations. I had the luck to start a job
where the owner had 15 Macs, among them, they throw me all the older models so
I learnt that way.

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jedberg
If you’re interested in Apple UX design, check out this blog [0] from Apple’s
first HCI engineer.

This one [1] is one of my favorites, about the MacOS dock when it was first
released.

[0] [https://www.asktog.com/](https://www.asktog.com/)

[1]
[https://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html](https://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html)

~~~
dreamcompiler
I still despise the Dock. I even figured out how to hack it to make it
invisible so I could use DragThing instead. Over time those hacks stopped
working and DragThing ceased to exist (or at least I think it did) so now I
just live with the stupid Dock. Thanks Apple.

~~~
saagarjha
Dock does a lot more than just the part you can see at the bottom of the
screen, so you're not going to be able to truly get rid of it without breaking
pretty much everything to do with Spaces and Launchpad along with it. Perhaps
you could set it to auto-hide and only show after an extremely long delay?

~~~
dreamcompiler
That's exactly my point. Apple wove so much functionality into the Dock that
it's now effectively impossible to remove it. And I may be weird, but Spaces
and Launchpad are two of the things I immediately turn off, along with Mission
Control, Dashboard, Expose, etc. because all of the above consume needless RAM
or just get in my way.

~~~
saagarjha
If you don’t like those things, then I don’t see why you can’t just prevent it
from launching?

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masswerk
Complementary to Larry Tesler's talk, see "Busy Being Born" by Andy Hertzfeld
on Bill Atkinson's work during this period (some of the polaroids are in the
annotated transcript as well):

[https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...](https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Busy_Being_Born.txt)

(Something I always found interesting about this, is Bill Atkinson's
suggestion that some of the window related UI was already in place before the
PARC visit. Having a look at the polaroids in question, seeing Smalltalk may
have been even a distraction, at least in terms of the design language.)

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ryanmarsh
Can I just say that the typography of this blog is impeccable?

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jv22222
There’s a story (Prometheus myth) that Steve Jobs and the Mac team copied the
human graphical interface idea from Xerox.

A fascinating read about it here:

[https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/sites/mac/parc.html](https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUL/sites/mac/parc.html)

~~~
taneq
Well, there's always that quote from Bill Gates when Jobs accused MS of
stealing Apple's GUI design:

“Well, Steve [Jobs]… I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbour
named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that
you had already stolen it.” - Bill Gates

Source: [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/824084-well-steve-jobs-i-
th...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/824084-well-steve-jobs-i-think-it-s-
more-like-we-both)

~~~
kalleboo
I always found it weird that Gates characterized it as Apple "stealing" the TV
set. Xerox gave the TV set away! They had made a pre-IPO investment in Apple
and in exchange the executives were happy to show Apple what they were working
on (to the dismay of the actual researchers)

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ngcc_hk
If you looked the Mac OS review of arstechnica you can see how detail of apple
and ars technica on the user interfaces.

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woodgrainz
Here's what a lot of early Mac OS design actually looked like (System 1
through System 9):

[https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/classic-mac-
os](https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/classic-mac-os)

------
dang
Video of the lecture: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW-
atKrg0T4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW-atKrg0T4)

------
rosegarden0
Not all is great when it comes to Apple’s UX & UI. Interesting read:

[https://hackernoon.com/dear-apple-please-fix-
notifications-6...](https://hackernoon.com/dear-apple-please-fix-
notifications-647fe26ff1c4)

