Melée, hotch-potch, and other UI terms (1)

If there is one positive thing to come from the abrupt change of GUI occurring in the change from MacOS 9 to Mac OSX, it is the renewed awareness one gets of the importance and functionality of the interface between user and hardware. Here are a few thoughts about that.

The playful Finder of the first Lisas and Macintoshes was there to make the user feel at home. Where DOS insisted on a computer-user interface based on logos, on being logical, Finder presented a user-computer interface, based on the visual, on the associative. DOS was still, as is any other CLI, a virtual interface: it doesn't insist on binary input. Instead it parses the alphanumerical phraseology - which is also sets of calculations - into binary before running them.

The icon-movement Finder also presents a kind of input which has to be parsed before being run. Here the input is just more simple and the macro-transactions it represents that much more complex. The virtuality distance from the computer is greater, and conceptually it represents a leap from inputting fixed variations (keys representing symbols) to inputting relative movement-fixed value combinations (mouse movements, pointing, clicking, holding). Introducing relative physical movement necessitates that the parsing accepts a certain amount of leeway, of inaccuracy. This is also a major change of perceptive interaction, moving it into the everyday territory of human experience. Whereas theoretical science work is based on absolute stringency, daily interaction involves a large amount of physical and mental correctional feedback - that is, a dynamic experience based on recursive, rather than causal, orientation.

The metaphors* used by Finder to shorten the virtuality distance to the user are very much based on the tactile, referring to files, folders, drawers, blinds, arrows, hands. Arrows, however, have for thousands of years been dead metaphors: although you can recognize the original meaning of the word, its primary use today is to express that meaning which was original just metaphoric: direction.

Interestingly, the MacOS X interface (which is called Aqua although confusingly, that is also the name for the section of graphical routines used to construct the interface) is a hybrid in several ways. Not only does it reintroduce the CLI as a possible interface choice, it also "reneges" on several of the Finder metaphors. The relative movement-fixed value input concept is retained outside the CLI, but the Drawer icon has now been replaced by a picture of a - box! Details reveal to a computer-cognizant onlooker that it contains a harddisk - in other words, the physical functionality of a harddisk is expected to be so well-known that the translational metaphorical value of Drawer is no longer needed. Also, the details signifying that this box contains a harddisk have reached such universal recognitial value that an image of it can be used as an iconic signifier. What has happened is that certain hardware-entities have earned individual, iconic status, possibly because the translational distance to the signifier in the original metaphor is large enough to make the transfer worthwhile: the functional difference between signifier and signifiee (between Drawer and harddisk, for instance) has become greater than the distance between its real function and the physical representation. Notice, however, that there is still some virtual distancing involved: the harddisk image pertains whether it is a physical unit or the virtual unit of a partition!

The hybridity moves towards confusion when one considers that such conceptual entities as the Dock - the name implies a set of metaphorically translated functions but they are neither visually nor functionally connected to a Dock metaphor) - are implicated in highly visual, even animated metaphors such as the "Pop goes the Dragon" functionality deletion. We will not enter a discussion of the metaphorical validity of that animation; instead we will point to the mixture of virtuality distances involved which to some extent forces the user towards the precision demanded by the CLI: you need to know how to activate the individual function. It is not possible to infer the existence or the abilities of a function from the overall metaphor as it was in the Finder - you extend your range of commands by learning about new ones from sources OUTSIDE the GUI, or you embark upon a blind search by doing non-intuitive actions and observing their result(s). By varying the virtuality distance between individual functions through using "mixed metaphors", the ease of use which comes from the acceptance of imprecision in user handling is lost, and the flattening of the learning curve which is a consequence of logical consistency and simplicity has been lost.

Granted, a number of functionalities introduced in Aqua are abstract and therefore not easy to translate into physical concepts - again with the Dock as a good example - but the confusion is lessened when the overall metaphor of the UI has a number of consistent submetaphorics embedded, rather than each functionality is represented singularly. For instance, the Finder function is so universally understood now that it doesn't need a perceptually metaphoric superstructure but just a consistent graphical presentation. Since the functionality involved is the same as in "Open" and "Save As..." situations, why not use the same graphical representation (the same box, if you will) there too? Those users that already enjoy the benefits of the shareware program Dialog View or Snax will immediately see the consistency involved. This is one area where OSX has improved metaphorical coherency.

The second part will discuss more specific details of Mac OSX.


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* Please notice that I avoid the use of the terms "allegory", "analogy" and "parable". Instead the terms "metaphor" and "metaphorics" are used, the latter to indicate a set of associatively connected metaphors.

The PDA Apple should have made (2)

I have discussed this before in a previous MacBloQs, so this is just another brief reference to an article about the Simputer. This is not just the kind of PDA that Apple should have developed and produced - it's THE PDA.

It's inexpensive, it contains the most relevant software, it runs on Linux but might as well have run on Darwin, and it could have been made extensible to enable both versions for poor areas (where the Simputer is intended) and for more wealthy markets - where the low basic price level (including the impact of scale-of-production) would be appreciated (~ market share) and many higher-margin extensions could have benefited the profit margin of Apple.

At this time, Apple is trying desperately to get "on the wave" of IT investments in poorer Asian countries - not just China, but also Malaysia, India and Pakistan where it has already had some success. Selling this kind of PDA would be the thin end of a wedge of future gold - and it would do Apple's public image a world of good.

Not to mention: Apple would show that it thinks different - ethically too.

It's the Interface, stupid

"There's all sorts of other devices we would like to see this in. I would like to listen to my music that's on my computer on my stereo. How do I do that? Build Rendezvous into the stereo. I have photos on my computer, but I would like to watch them on my big-screen television. How do I do that? Build Rendezvous into the TV." (S. Jobs, Paris Expo)