I think it mostly looks excellent, I love the boot screen and "dark mode", but I agree about folder color, and probably would remove the red, yellow, green colors on the buttons all together if it was up to me... I'd be curious to see dark mode apply to windows title bars as well, I think it would look pretty slick. Sorry you dislike it, is a shame we can't have choice between glass dock etc, something for everyone seems like such an easy feature to add.
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Yosemite looks terrible!
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Well, the office literally next to mine happen to be a lab which studies eye saccades, so I could in principle borrow the eye trackers and do a proper study on that
At any rate, it seems to me that you are interpreting too much into these papers you quote. Working with a computer UI is a learned experience. It is not in least surprising when we seek information in the high-frequency areas such as top of the window (where we expect to find the title), because that's were the UI normally puts it. But I don't see how this matters to your argument (see point 1. below).
Few unordered thoughts (I have to prepare my lectures so I can't spend too much time polishing this post, sorry)
1. All Yosemite apps are uniquely identifiable only by looking at the top middle window area, even if they don't have a title. There is no way to confuse the Calculator, Calendar, Messages and Contacts, because all of them look differently. — and that last bit is the key here. Subsequently, these windows do not need a title to be distinguishable, and they also don't need a title to show any useful information. In fact, I could claim that without titles they are actually more distinguishable, because the difference in apperiance is more prominent (but don't quote me on that).
2. Safari is also uniquely identifiable — but the difference here is that it actually has some useful information to show in a title. And — as I argued before — Safari has a title, which is exactly where the user expects it. Safari's window title doubles as the address bar. However, Apple has desired to obscure the actual webpage title in a single-page mode, which can be argued as limitation of usability.
3. The expectation depends on the context. The saccades you refer to are not part of our genetic code. They are learned experience. If the window title were on the bottom, you would look at the bottom. I am absolutely confident that this is also true for different applications, once you learn how they work. For Safari, it means that we know where to expect the website title — in the tab bar. And that is where we look for it. I can partially confirm it by self-observation — when I work with Safari, I almost never focus the toolbar (unless I need to open a new window), but I frequently look at the tab headers.
4. nontroppo has already commented on one of the papers you quote, and I fully agree with the comment. Again, it is not surprising if we learn marked stimuli more quickly, after all, this is what the brain is designed to do. And Yosemite employs clear visual cues to mark key areas — tranclucenty, contrast and animations.
5. A different question is about identifiability of a window area. This is a more complicated topic. Some (you included) have argued that windows in Yosemite are difficult to distinguish because they lack contrast. Personally, I do not have any difficulties with that, but I understand that this is a valid concern.
In the end, if I look at your arguments more strictly, they boil down to 'Safari 8 makes it more difficult to see the website title' (which is a regression in usability and should be probably fixed) and 'Yosemite looks different'. I do not believe that your argument about lack of window title impairing identifiability holds up to detailed discussion (for the reasons I have outlined above). In my opinion, the difficulties you have with Yosemite (Safari aside) are based on two main issues: a) reduced contrast between windows (I can absolutely imagine that you and many other people find this problematic), and b) changed approach to application design.
More specifically, I think what we have here is a combination of a genuine issue (window identifiability) and the old good inertia of habit — you feel uncomfortable about the visual change. I have no doubt that Yosemite requires relearning of some habits (after all, the UI has changed). I do not believe however, that the concept leads to impaired identifiability. And I have already argued to some extent that Yosemite is quite consistent within itself and in regards to Apple's design guidelines, even though it takes a more relaxed approach to being pixel-perfect compared to most other OSes.
Well, based on your links, I'd say either your saccadic eye movements and/or your implicit learning mechanisms are deficient!
Again, appeal to the "authority" of poorly understood psychophysics won't help make the point you are trying to make. I'm a full time visual neuroscientist, and if I had a dogmatic horse in this race, I would have to cherry pick studies one way or the other to "prove" whichever of the two very similar horses I had my money on...
I honestly do appreciate the sharing of so much information, and I might come back to you for help on some of it, but again, I can't help but switch off from some of it, because at present it makes no sense to discuss your past imagination of my future thought processes.
That was true then, it's true now. I don't know whether I'll read that article (or the other) before I go away.
You can predict neither my future, nor my future thoughts.
The more that's guessed by other people about my own thoughts, the more that those guesses are wrong, the less that will be truly understood
Postscript
This at least must be corrected
The first of the two interpretations is good.
Your second interpretation shows that you simply don't get it; you're going round (and round and round) in circles with an excess of your own imagination of what I do, of what I think. You're super-polite, and for that I'm most grateful, but you are not me.
You sometimes write as if you're putting yourself in my shoes when in fact you're unshakeably in your own. In itself that's not too much of a problem attempts to sympathise or empathise with a person's point of view may be welcomed, and I do welcome your attempts to understand but I must emphasise that some of your my-shoes-your-shoes moments of confusion occur at/around the most important points.
And so those point are entirely lost, or badly misinterpreted, and so things go on and on with people maybe imagining that the penny has dropped but no! It is metaphorically something like a Borg coin. What's dropped, heard, seen and exchanged by other people as thought currency of significant value is quite different from what's truly valuable to me.
All that virtual money changing hands, and people naturally feel good about shared values, and there's richness but (no offence to anyone here) people simply don't get it. No offence because I don't expect my 'its' to be got. Each person has their own 'it', or set of 'its', and I don't expect mine to be got within the constraints of MacRumors Forums.
Some great discussions here (thanks folks) but let's not forget that we can't get real with vBulletin.
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Well, you were talking about saccades so I though that you were referring to the papers (because otherwise that reference did not make much sense to me) . I did see your post that you are still to read them, but I assumed that you found some time to do it in the 24 hours between the post #750 and #775
I am deeply sorry if I assumed wrong. Even I am not infallible. At any rate, how about ignoring this little blunder of mine and commenting on the remaining points of my post? The bit you quote is probably the least relevant and interesting part of it, content-wise.
Well, the office literally next to mine happen to be a lab which studies eye saccades, so I could in principle borrow the eye trackers and do a proper study on that
Few unordered thoughts (I have to prepare my lectures so I can't spend too much time polishing this post, sorry)
1. All Yosemite apps are uniquely identifiable only by looking at the top middle window area, even if they don't have a title. There is no way to confuse the Calculator, Calendar, Messages and Contacts, because all of them look differently. — and that last bit is the key here. Subsequently, these windows do not need a title to be distinguishable, and they also don't need a title to show any useful information. In fact, I could claim that without titles they are actually more distinguishable, because the difference in apperiance is more prominent (but don't quote me on that).
2. Safari is also uniquely identifiable — but the difference here is that it actually has some useful information to show in a title. And — as I argued before — Safari has a title, which is exactly where the user expects it. Safari's window title doubles as the address bar. However, Apple has desired to obscure the actual webpage title in a single-page mode, which can be argued as limitation of usability.
As much as I'd like to avoid this particular argument I feel compelled to oppose this nonsense.
Titles are not to "identify" the application, titles tell about the "content" of the particular window. For example I have 10 spreadsheets, I know its Excel, but I'd like something a little better than digging around in the inside each one to ID the account, hence the title!
For desktop toys like calculator yes, calendar not so fast, haven't you ever opened more than one calendar window? Contacts, same argument, how do you suggest we ID those, by the picture of the person?
Safari, if your reading this forum, and you're not in tabs, and it's a long thread, what's the name of the thread? Without scrolling back to the top, you loose.
In your argument, the usage model is wrong, you have very phone centric view, using one application at a time, sure its content. The thing is people on desktops have more real estate and divide it up among many applications and many windows per application.
Removing the title is just not a good idea, its just stripping away a useful tool. If you really want a real reference see;
https://developer.apple.com/librarY...Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/Intro/Intro.html
Last but not least, I can list 100 cases were we use titles, but let's try and keep these responses short and succinct, reduce eye strain ;-)
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Apple really should just let title bars be an option. Those that want the extra information can have it, and those who don't need it and would prefer to save a bit of space can do so. Surely it would not be so hard to do?
Currently it is an option, full screen uses no titles. People who prefer one application at a time don't need a title, so we have full screen. People who prefer lots of visible windows, we have titles, simple. Makes everyone happy.
from what I see, you're faultlessly and consistently polite. How neat and timely that your politeness coincided with my (too) long postscript that described you as super-polite!(Off-topic from the appearance of Yosemite: as someone might have properly guessed by now, part of my online personality in media such as this has its origin in online troubles elsewhere. In as few words as possible: the short and very positive book Dealing With Disrespect is my ideal guide, but I sometimes pay the price of wilfully ignoring some of its ideals. Maybe https://forums.macrumors.com/forums/47/ if anyone would like to spin this into a separate discussion.)
With pleasure, already there's some commentary in that postscript, which crossed paths. It's somewhat blunt sorry but please don't take the bluntness too personally. Many people might make the same mistake(s) as you but then you alone get barked at by me. I sort of can't help barking sometimes (there's that wilful ignorance again, tsk tsk) so if you can, just think of the barks as strength of feeling.
Yep. See the first of my posts about OmniWeb and imagine the frustration when you have umpteen topics on the go and all pages have the same marked-up title.
In the complete absence of words to properly identify long topics, I relied much more than usual upon the learnt shape of each topic that I frequented. In each shapely tab of OmniWeb I saw, in miniature, the shape of the head of each page. No miniature word was legible, but most page shapes were recognisable.
(If that's not proof of willingness to adapt, I don't know what is.)
Been there, tried that. I thought the HIG were written well enough to produce reasonably good levels of shared interpretation. It seems not. /sad face
Incidentally, some interpretations of the HIG were amongst the inspirations for me littering the forum with absurdities such as this, this, this, this and this. (And this. No, pressing the buttons of someone who hates text language is not amongst the ideals promoted by Bacon but at the time, I couldn't resist a dig at a post that appeared to imply that progress and improvement should be guided by majority hatred.) But more than anything, I lapse into flippancy and stupidity when after pages and pages (and pages) people find themselves back at square one with most squares unread, ignored or misunderstood.
I'm a windmill! Apple's a windmill! The winds of analysis and pretence cause the sails to go bonkers! Randomness whilst tilting keeps me healthy
Maybe hard to believe from me, but +1 to that!
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With much titled content in Yosemite: no title after you exit full screen.
With much titled content in Yosemite: no title after you exit full screen.
My bad, by currently I meant what's shipping, 10.9.
+1
I thought about attempting to learn how to modify source code to produce for myself (and for others interested) a WebKit nightly Safari that shows the expected titles in the expected places.
I gave that not much thought, because the longer that Apple proves itself to be a company that no longer gets it, the less painful it is to plan my abandonment.
The kicker is, it's more complicated than that. We also reference the title (and use it for a quick jump) in the Main Menu / Window and the Dock icon contextual menu. Which still exist in the Beta 1 of 10.10, BTW.
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Lovely. And where exactly did I speak about removing titles from Excel? If an application can convey useful information in the title, it should have one. In Yosemite, this is a decision made by the developer of the app. Not Apple. If Excel removes titles, go complain with Microsoft.
You can have multiple windows for Contacts? That is new to me; at any rate, I was unable to find the corresponding option. With Calendar, apparently there is possibility to open specific calendars in different windows. Those window actually have titles (albeit the location of the title is not consistent with the normal position, so this is a design flaw).
Frankly, I don't care, because I always have tabs. I also explicitly write that lack of title in Safari is a usability impairment and should be fixed.
Again, lovely, grahamperrin and me have been quoting those documents for the last few pages of this thread. Window titles are neither a design invariant in the guidelines, nor is it always useful. Yosemite is moving towards giving utility applications unique flavours, which makes titles unnecessary for those applications. Document-based applications should obviously have a title, but nobody is arguing against this.
So given that we seem to have a very similar view (titles are there to provide meaningful information about content, which necessarily means that they have no purpose if there is no information to provide), I don't really see what exactly are you opposing here.
Its nice to be appreciated, thank you
Its interesting that you see it this way. I am a scientist, so having debates is part of my daily job. There is of course some degree of empathising, as you say. But the much more crucial bit is understanding. Understanding the reasoning, the argument and the background. I have read (I hope) most of the posts you wrote in this thread, and I believe to recognise a certain pattern in them. You repeat certain criticisms and you present arguments to why your criticisms are valid. Some of them, I can sympathise with (e.g. usability of Safari without website title or reduced contrast between windows). Most of them, I cannot agree with, because I find them erroneous (or at least questionable) at the logical level (such as necessity of the title for quick window identification or your claim that Yosemite violates the Apple design principles). It is clear that you have some gripes with Yosemites design, but your story simply does not add up for me. So when I write things I write it is certainly not an attempt to put things in your mo... errm.. keyboard, but rather my opinion on what might have went wrong here.
Of course, I am completely open to the possibility that I am the one who misunderstands things and you are right. Or maybe there is no right and wrong at all, just different opinions which cannot be argued at all. But what would be the fun in that, right?
Maybe parts of it are state of the art. Its graphic drivers and 3D system (i.e. OpenGL is not even current, let alone vastly better than Direct3D) is definitely NOT state-of-the-art. Finder is sub-par, outdated and more importantly, suddenly much slower than its ever been in Mavericks here. My PPC running Leopard responded more quickly in Finder to some events. I get these random 2 second delays when I click on folders. I feel like I'm using a ten year old computer, which is ironic since my PPC machine was an eleven year old computer (albeit CPU/GPU/SATA updated) when I finally retired it.
Also, while Mavericks multiple monitor handling was a much needed improvement, the dock won't migrate to another monitor unless it's on the bottom (ridiculous oversight) and frankly they should have just had a dock for each monitor, something they apparently STILL have not addressed in Yosemite. It just amazes me that the most basic things that would make OS X better are overlooked while they gut the entire GUI just for looks. And you can't say they don't realize it because some of us have given them feedback on these things repeatedly for some time. But a "state-of-the-art" OS would not have such arse-backwards basic functionality issues, IMO.
I have not tried with Yosemite but if it's like Calendar in Mavericks and if you already use Google Calendar the quickest approach to have more than one account(s)-oriented window (for want of a better expression) may be to view Weather in the web interface to Google Calendar, then (with OS X configured to work with that Google account), choose Weather from the Window menu of Calendar.
Contacts in Yosemite: I have not tried.
Contacts in Mavericks: each contact can be opened in a separate window. I can get no more than one Contacts-style window. It would be nice, not essential, to allow per-account windows to be opened I assume that there are enhancement requests to that effect.
Incidentally, this (in Mavericks) is exemplary of a non-traditional approach to titling that works well for me:
and more traditional, working equally well:
Contacts or Address Book in prior releases of the OS: I can't recall.
Some people who argue vigorously for Safari to not show the title in the toolbar do not easily realise that Safari can be largely document-based until that basis is demonstrated to them (typically with screenshots). Then, it seems, unfortunately, most such people either go quiet or change the subject. leman, you're amongst the few people who are prepared to engage in reasonable discussion with an open mind.
Still, with emphasis (green) added by me
still, I suspect that (for example) those uses of the word "we" are subtly intended to make it appear (to other readers) that you and I agree on those points. I don't, I can't agree; in that phrase you omit (intentionally?) the place where I expect a title to appear.
(Confession time! I'm sometimes 'guilty' of presenting another person's words in a way that might encourage them to open their mind. I probably don't do that unless the person appears to take an unreasonable approach to discussion.)
Yes, I use tabs in some windows so yes, I look at titles (usually abbreviated) in tabs when for example, I aim to bring a different tab to front.
For any front tab, it's certainly not my habit to look first to the tab when seeking the title. I habitually look first to the dead centre of the word(s) of the title in the title bar. Truly. Truly. Truly, I do and I sense that most people are either ignoring that fact, or failing to understand it, or quietly changing the subject.
Yes and yes, but ultimately no! Because the feeling is equally genuine, the discomfort is equally genuine, and discomfort is too weak a word. The profanity that's disguised in an earlier post was not so disguised at the times of the feedback. This is absolutely not an encouragement to testers to shout or use foul language, but Apple's approach to seed testing with its customers emphasises real-world quality and usability feedback, and the reality was that I deplored the reductions in usability. Deplored is not too strong a word.
Some of the criticism is passionate. I use the word cleaver because, amongst other things, there's a heavy-handedness to what has happened with Yosemite; and because the approach is unnecessarily divisive. The phrase cack-handed did not mean left-handed when I wrote it (I discovered that word association just a few minutes ago). It's a cack-handed, clumsy lobotomy because no matter how precise the incisions: what's removed may be irreplaceable; the operating system is becoming to me subtly, insidiously, a shell of its former self.
More later. (Sorry for the length of my posts. When I last tried concise, the first response was both lazy and offensive.)
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Dyslexia, learning and unlearning
A learning support tutor helped me to slowly realise the ways in which I'm dyslexic.
A learning support tutor helped me to slowly realise the ways in which I'm dyslexic.
Thanks to all of you complaining about the thinner fonts in Safari (which I loved) now they are FAT.
Thank you.
Thank you.
They're not done yet, functionality is loosing badly. This is Beta 2, new disk icons, I don't really care about the color, orange, but I do care about removing the type. These are a USB and a FireWire Drive, which ones which?
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I can't believe they actually removed that cue. It makes zero sense to do that, at least I can't figure out a good reason.
Who has a Firewire drive these days? Maybe < 1%? Apple has been phasing it out for years. There are so many ways to mount a disk at this point labelling each on the icon would be complete clutter.
People who prefer a little performance have Firewire, Thunderbolt, there will always be many interconnects.
Its not clutter its smart. Its informative.
That's why Apple is developing Metal. OpenGL in its current state has no perspectives.
Not to mention that 'state of the art' depends on how you define it. You mean cutting-edge software? Try Linux for that, OS X is not even close.
Finder is still better than Window Explorer and all of the file navigators I saw on Linux. But sure, it is not the most feature-rich application out there. I think this is intended. The performance must be a bug, Finder is blazingly fast on my machine. No slowdowns. I already started playing around with Finder Sync, that stuff is amazing!
I don't think you read too carefully about Metal or you'd know it's only for iOS and there are no known plans to bring it to OS X as they are completely different chipsets.
No, some things in Linux are "cutting edge" (as in the latest crap to try out here first). That's not the same thing as "state of the art". Art implies a near whimsical simplicity and ease of use that Linux has NEVER had. Linux is a PITA to use and having tried about 12 different versions in the past 12 years (not one a year, but sometimes 2-3 in one year), I think I can say that without feeling completely ignorant of the situation. Linux is about 15 years behind OS X in usability and that's saying a lot since OS X hasn't been around that long.
Yeah, if you don't ever install any software except from default repositories, it's a breeze to use something like Ubuntu on most setups. The problems start when you go to customize and add new software that you want to use that isn't on the repository or is the FAR more typical 3-4 versions behind on the repository because people working for free don't move too fast.... Then you get to see why repositories exist in the first place. You can pray that your distribution is supported by whatever vendor/person that is making it. OR you can use a generic build that may or may not work with your distribution depending on where your various resources and libraries, etc. are located exactly and if not, you can always jsut COMPILE COMPILE COMPILE it yourself like most software ten years ago in Linux. Yeah! That's a good way to spend a few hours to get Mame to work right on your machine! Woohoo. I know I've done it many times in the past. YOu get this feeling of accomplishment that you can actually run a tiny little utility that would have just been a "drag and forget" in OS X. And it's all due to the total and utter lack of compatibility between various Linux "flavors" and that's due to Linux being a mishmash of a thousand somewhat incompatible variations of "hacker happy happy joy joy". And having watched the Linux crowd for the past 14 years on and off, all I can say is they often ENJOYED being "elitist" and obtuse and hard to use and HATED developments like KDE and Ubuntu that tried to make it more mainstream. If you can't make Slackware work (and better yet in 2004 instead of 2014), you're not a real Linux user.
Yeah, I don't know if it's better than Windows Explorer. It's more of a step sideways in some respects, IMO. You might prefer one method over another, but frankly I preferred Dismaster II on my Amiga 3000 nearly twenty years ago to either one's default setup.
I knew it wouldn't be long before the first fan showed up to to tell us why it's a good move to get rid of identifying information and useful features. Obviously, NO ONE uses Firewire drives (I must imagine owning two myself, one FW400 and one FW800 since it's been a whole TWO YEARS since USB 3.0 came out and THREE since Thunderbolt that obviously FW800 drives are suddenly USELESS.
Frankly, I don't care if only one person still uses one. Why "break" something that isn't broken??? The point is the OS is now LESS functional than before.
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