
The Third User (2013) - occamschainsaw
https://asktog.com/atc/the-third-user/
======
jasonkester
This resonates with me. I just bought a Pixel 3a and you can tell they spent a
lot of time and energy working on all the little sounds and chirps and lights
and buzzes that the thing makes whenever it powers on or does anything. It
really was amazing the way it did all those little effects in coordination.

And the first thing I did after finishing setup was to find the screen where I
could turn all that crap off because really, why would I want my phone to buzz
at me ever single time I pressed a key on the keyboard. I mean yeah, it’s
delightful and all. But it’s also terrible.

It’s like the “torch mode” that TVs have so that they’re extra bright and
colourful in the shop. The one that’s off by default on the one in the box
because the tv you bring home needs to be able to display tv shows without
burning out your retinas.

~~~
stormbeta
The navigation gestures and movements on iOS are a prime example.

They're plenty intuitive, but they're obviously timed for the slowest possible
user using them for the first time - so by the hundredth time you try to do
something, you're getting really frustrated by having to make grand,
exaggerated gestures to get the OS to understand what you want, and I
frequently find myself having to repeat actions 2-3 times for them to "take".

~~~
saagarjha
I strongly disagree: iOS’s animations are slow, but its gestures follow your
finger and move as fast as you do.

------
ericye16
I can’t help but think that Apple was eventually right. Using gestures or
scroll wheels to scroll feels superior to dragging a bar with your mouse, and
3D Touch for fine cursor placement on iPhones that support it is better than
arrow keys could have been. (Admittedly, I guess this was not a solution when
the post came out.)

Disclosure, was once an Apple intern though not on these teams.

Edit: going deeper, I think the reason why you wouldn’t want scroll bars and
arrow keys is because they’re designed for the wrong modality. They were
necessary when a mouse and keyboard were the only ways to interact with stuff,
but they don’t really make sense on touchpads and touchscreens and have their
own limitations that can be overcome with gestures (like accurately scrolling
large distances at once, for example.) Imagine if today’s high-precision touch
sensors were ubiquitous before the mouse. Would it make sense in that world to
ask for a scroll bar to be constantly beside the window or for arrow keys in
your phone? I don’t think so.

~~~
chrischen
Scroll bars actually show if you don't have a trackpad and are using a mouse.

~~~
ericye16
Yep, I’ve noticed that too. It’s a nice touch.

------
_bxg1
This is ranty and subjective. Reduction of visual clutter isn't just for
people in a store; as someone who uses a Mac professionally, I don't cease to
appreciate it.

I was reluctant when I had to enable persistent scroll bars because they
affected the layout of the applications I was building, and our users were not
all on OSes with that feature. Even on my PC I virtually never drag a scroll
bar manually, opting instead for the mouse wheel. With momentum scrolling it's
even easier to get straight to where I want to be. And, funnily enough, I only
find myself wondering how long a document is at the same time that I'm already
scrolling down a bit.

Mobile touch keyboards have very limited real-estate, and arrow keys would be
hilariously wasteful of it. Instead iOS lets you drag across the whole
keyboard, moving the cursor like a trackpad. I believe this feature didn't
exist in 2013, although I also think there was an earlier version confined to
the space bar which did. I could be wrong.

The hiding of redundant UX elements isn't an affront to expert users. Expert
users appreciate having more space for content that matters and less mental
clutter; just ask someone who uses Vi or Emacs. It just happens that Apple has
figured out a couple of UX features that are obvious enough to hide even for
regular users.

------
ziari
The author shares my frustrations with Apple's scroll bar gimmicks. Honestly,
I'm surprised that Sublime-style minimaps haven't been adopted by web
browsers, word processors, and other mainstream software.

For example, the linked blog post only occupies half of the vertical space on
the webpage. The rest is showing comments. So, while reading the article, it's
impossible for me to assess how much is actually left... without laboriously
scrolling down, hunting for the end of the post, glancing at the scroll bar,
and setting a mental checkpoint near the midpoint.

Scroll bars are practically meaningless because they reflect a property of the
webpage (instead of the real content therein). This problem is even worse on
websites with "infinite scroll" UIs that cause the scroll bar to abruptly
change size/location without user input.

------
dschuetz
It's an excellent read.

The same thing that Apple does is also happening in the Linux desktop
"department". Just compare GNOME2 and GNOME3. Back in the days I spent hours
on configuring GNOME, and that was a lot of fun. Now I have GNOME3. I have to
actually modify/hack its config files or even source code in the ugliest ways
just to bring back something familiar.

I understand that GNOME3 was an (successful) attempt to attract more users
which were intimidated by the more "tractor" or "steam engine" like designs of
Linux desktops back then (edit) and they were right! You could break something
with a Linux desktop tweak! "Yast!" was a common exclamation for me! It could
break the whole OS and prevent it from booting.

~~~
danieldk
_I understand that GNOME3 was an (successful) attempt to attract more users
which were intimidated by the more "tracktor" or "steam engine" like designs
of Linux desktops back then. _

But was it successful? Are there any user statistics? A lot of people I knew
were pretty happy back in the day with GNOME 2. After GNOME 3, people fled in
all directions (macOS, Xfce, MATE, Cinnamon). I rarely meet new GNOME users or
someone who is really happy with GNOME 3.

I am still using GNOME, because it is the best Wayland + HiDPI. Otherwise, I
would be looking somewhere else --- I strongly dislike the removal of menus,
system tray icons, etc. and having to use flaky extensions to bring some of
the functionality back. I just do not understand the GNOME project, they could
cater to _a lot_ of people if they brought back some UI elements that people
are used to.

~~~
dschuetz
I agree that GNOME in particular has spooked away power users, yet in terms of
usability it also has attracted more naïve users (also thanks to Steam). It
was successful attracting less experienced user at the cost of expert users.
Exactly what Apple has had achieved. But, all of that is guesswork without
numbers.

Has anyone ever conducted a big fat user computer desktop UX survey yet?

~~~
ddeck
I'm not sure if qualifies as big and/or fat, but LinuxQuestions perform an
annual poll of their users on all manner of topics [1] including "Desktop
Environment of the Year"[2].

Not sure how representative it is and it's only a few hundred participants,
but here are the top 5:

29% - Plasma Desktop (KDE)

26% - Xfce

11% - Cinnamon

10% - GNOME Shell

10% - MATE

This (larger) poll over at r/linux[3] puts GNOME Shell in 2nd place:

29% - KDE

21% - GNOME Shell

14% - xfce

12% - i3

[1] [https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-
news-59/2018-...](https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-
news-59/2018-linuxquestions-org-members-choice-award-winners-4175648153/)

[2]
[https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/2018-linuxquestions...](https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/2018-linuxquestions-
org-members-choice-awards-128/desktop-environment-of-the-year-4175645570/)

[3]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/879ram/poll_which_de...](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/879ram/poll_which_desktop_environment_do_you_use_on_your/)

~~~
emilsedgh
These surveys are taken within "linux community". Therefore, they are pretty
wrong in numbers, as all those moms and granddands using Ubuntu are not part
of "linux community".

Debian's Popularity Contest shows 10% for Plasma Desktop [0] and 26% for Gnome
Shell [1] installations. Which seems more accurate in terms of usage and
popularity.

Although Debian has been traditionally a more Gnome-friendly distro. But most
popular distro's are.

[0] [https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=plasma-
desktop](https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=plasma-desktop)

[1] [https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=gnome-
shell](https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=gnome-shell)

------
eight_ender
I feel like Apple's approach to UI/UX is one half care and consideration for
the current user and the rest is "training" for whatever they intend next.

The design world at large gave them shit for excessive Skeuomorphism but it
really did train a huge group of people young and old how to use a touch
screen.

------
dang
A related discussion from earlier today:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19887519](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19887519).

------
pcr910303
Okay, before tech-savvy vim-using HNers complain about Apple not making proper
computers, touchbar is an unpredictable/unfixable mess, worst UX ever, please
think about what kind of tools you’re using with your computer. For a person
who regularly uses Emacs for coding, Photoshop and Illustrator for graphic
design, Xcode sometimes, and casual apps like Safari, Finder, Powerpoint,
etc... the touch bar is an innovation. It allows using context-aware menus
without moving my hands from the keyboard to my trackpad or mouse; and it is
much more discoverable since the touch bar items are shown at a glance. Isn’t
one of the biggest reasons of using vim/emacs is that one doesn’t have to move
one’s hand from the keyboard? Why complain about the touch bar when the editor
you’re using is failing to show context-sensitive menus...? I’ve once wrote a
super hacky script I made by copy-pasting some plugin codes and some shell
script, pandoc, some elisp and some AppleScript, hooked the script up with a
touchbar item to scrape the DOM, convert into org/md and open a new buffer in
emacs with the appropriate mode on. I’ve used it very effectively until I
formatted my computer by accident and my code disappeared. Don’t complain with
the touchbar; complain to your tools. To get the most out of your computer,
use tools or make one that is designed for your computer.

BTW, I’m not saying everything is right; I think that hapic feedback should be
given when the touchbar is pressed; some touchbar default layouts aren’t
consistent between apps; etc... I’m saying that it’s not right to call the
touchbar as shit when you’re not using the appropriate tools.

------
ma2rten
I don't think anyone buys computer because they looked at it in the store and
the display looked clean. Tech savvy users have very specific requirements.
Tech unsavvy users typically just want to buy something that's familiar.

This article claims that the UX community doesn't like Apple. I always thought
that Apple was considered to be the epicenter of good, functional design.

~~~
dehrmann
These days, you can't tell whether or not something's a button on iOS, and
I've "lost" files in Finder because there weren't any scroll bars, and it was
off-screen.

------
golergka
Apple already does this: Garage Band, Logic and then Logic with enabled
additional features is exactly the progression author describes. (I assume
that iMovie and Final Cut are similar).

If only they did it with the OS as well.

------
atemerev
I don’t know. For me, these are some rules of thumb for a successful UI
design:

1) If you don’t need some UI element or feature right now, it doesn’t stay in
your way;

2) Still, it remains easily discoverable.

Auto-hiding scrollbars are a perfect examples of successful application of
this rule. I like them. Apple are the experts along these lines: nearly
everybody else either exposes all knobs and controls as the authors of this
article advocate (it creates visual clutter), or keeps power features
undiscoverable, relying on documentation and keyboard shortcuts (as UI
minimalists advocate).

The truth is in the middle.

------
rajacombinator
The key to understanding Apple is that they could do somewhere between 1-3
things company-wide really well, when Steve Jobs was there to focus on them.
Now that he’s gone, as in the 90s, it’s just a question of how long they can
run on fumes.

------
thelehhman
Excellent read.

I would like to point out that the scroll bars can actually be made to show
"always" in the Preferences.

------
bartimus
I'm super intrigued by the question of which approach leads to the best
products:

Engineering (technical) vs industrial design (arts)

Companies like Google, Microsoft, Tesla, PayPal, SpaceX, Facebook, Amazon were
all born out of the technical discipline. The founders were engineers. They
also did the UX.

Then there's Apple. Who was Steve Jobs? To what extent was he an engineer? Did
he approach product design from an engineering discipline or an industrial
design (arts) discipline? Is industrial design the secret key to Apple's
success or was it primarily the result of an excellent hardware/software
engineering approach?

