Text 2171, 253 rader
Skriven 2006-06-08 11:43:00 av Robert E Starr JR (2617.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Atheists: America's m
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* * * This message was from Josh Hill to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.m * * *
         * * * and has been forwarded to you by Lord Time * * *         
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@REPLY: <HNmdnQoR869v3R7ZnZ2dnUVZ_tednZ2d@comcast.com>
On Wed, 7 Jun 2006 21:37:36 +0000 (UTC), Gregory Weston
<uce@splook.com> wrote:

>In article <602e82l0kjmcjj1onrvk4stpsl8077h4if@4ax.com>,
> Josh Hill <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> >> There just aren't enough ways to do things in a Mac. In the PC, you
>> >> can do everything from the keyboard and the interface is feature rich.
>> >> For example, only fairly recently did the Mac acquire context menus,
>> >
>> >False. The Mac OS had contextual menus in 1987. No stock component of 
>> >the system used them, but that's a _very_ different statement
>> 
>> Doesn't seem so to me. A capability ain't a capability if it ain't
>> used.
>
>A) That's a false statement.

>B) I didn't say it wasn't used. I said it wasn't used by any stock 
>components of the system. Those are different notions.

A) Of course it's a false statement, if you read it so literally that
you miss its rhetorical intent. More properly, it's an oxymoron.

B) You seem to be suggesting that a tree that has the potential to
bear fruit is the same as a tree that does. I'm saying that that has
significance to the horticulturist, but not to the kid who wants an
apple. (No pun intended?)

>> >and it was 
>> >a conscious decision based on a fair amount of usability testing. (The 
>> >Finder in the very earliest test builds of System 7.0 did have context 
>> >menus.)
>> 
>> Just goes to show that usability testing can be a crock.
>
>Um. Reproducible empirical data don't agree with your fetish, so the 
>reproducible empirical data are flawed?

You know, I'm not particularly inclined to reply to this, given that
you seem to have been reduced to arguing with irrational insults,
e.g., the insulting and in this context meaningless term "fetish."

That being said, any scientist can tell you that reproducible
empirical data don't mean shit if the experimental premises are wrong.
That's because experiments test only a small subset of possibilities
and circumstances, whereas to be valid, those possibilities must be
representative of a larger class.

Or, to put it another way, an experiment is only as good as the theory
behind it.

Or yet another, he who accepts experimental results that contradict
observation is a fool and a half times two.

Anyway, dollars to donuts Apple stuck these things in the face of
neophytes and observed the results without seeing what happened once
the users had become familiar with the system by using and exploring
it over a period of time. And dollars to donuts they interpreted what
worked best for the majority of users as sufficient for all users,
including users who are not naive. Both common mistakes.

My stepmom doesn't use the context menus -- I doubt she even knows
they're there -- but /I/ do.

>> >> and only very recently were they right-clickable.
>> >
>> >Again, false. Unless you have a strange notion of "very recently."
>> 
>> Dude, they didn't even have more than one button on the mouse until
>> what, a year ago?
>
>On the stock mouse, yes. So?

You're appear to be grasping at straws here, rearranging things to
make it seem as if the Mac experience consisted of programming hooks
and third-party tools rather than the computers we actually used.

I referred initially to a friend who said that when he used a Mac, he
felt like he was wearing mittens. I've no doubt that had he gone and
written applications to take advantage of the right-clickable mouse
he'd bought at a computer store to replace the one he had, those
mittens would have sprouted a finger or two. But he didn't, and most
people didn't. For most of us, the Mac was pretty much what it was,
and for a PC user, that meant elegant and consistent but crippled and
dumbed-down.

>> You could of course buy a third party mouse, but the
>> bottom line is that there were lots of Macs out there without usable,
>> accessible, right clickable context menus long after people were using
>> them on PC's.
>
>Again, so? Anyone who wanted a multi-button mouse on the Mac in the last 
>15 years had one. Admittedly notebook users were in a bit of a spot (and 
>I'm frankly surprised that they've not done the same thing with the 
>trackpad button that they did with their current mouse to support 
>multiple click zones) but I can't take seriously anyone who objects to a 
>desktop Mac based on the number of buttons in the included pointing 
>device.

Do you know how arrogant and self-serving remarks like "I can't take
seriously anyone who says" sound? Not to mention intellectually
dishonest: I never said that the number of buttons on the mouse was my
/sole/ criticism of the Mac. It was simply an example of a design
philosophy that emphasizes simplicity at the expense of power.

>> >> But any PC user who
>> >> had used them could tell you that they save a /lot/ of time.
>> >
>> >And for PC users, they _do_ save a lot of time. But there are some 
>> >fundamental differences in the UI of the Mac from that of Windows that 
>> >mean that benefit doesn't, in the general case, survive.
>> 
>> Such as?
>
>In context? The comparison between screen-hosted, window-hosted and 
>contextual menus. Contextual menus are a _huge_ win over window-hosted 
>menu bars. But they're generally a significant loss in effeciveness 
>and/or efficiency compared to the screen-rooted menu structure of the 
>Mac.

The screen-rooted menu structure is a user-confusing relic of the
Mac's non-multitasking days. I don't see how it can eliminate the
benefits of right-clickable context menus, given that using screen
menus rather than context menus for common tasks requires larger mouse
movements and at least one extra layer of menu navigation.

>> >> >> Combine that with Jobs's stubborn insistence on removing power and
>> >> >> expandability from his machines -- the tiny built-in monochrome
>> >> >> monitor on the original Mac, yada
>> >> >
>> >> >You might want to think back to the context in which the Mac existed 
>> >> >when it was designed and the market for whom it was intended. You seem 
>> >> >to have lost some context in the intervening 22 years.
>> >> 
>> >> I mentioned that because we were addressing reputations, which in this
>> >> case were for the most part formed many years ago.
>> >
>> >Yes, but when the Mac was introduced, that display was eminently 
>> >suitable for the market for which it was introduced. You saw "tiny 
>> >built-in monochrome monitor" as a bad thing. But physically the CRT 
>> >wasn't significantly smaller than most other displays in use in 1984
>> 
>> Actually, it was, ...
>
>Actually, it wasn't. (Your turn.) 9- and 10-inch CRTs were quite common 
>when the Mac was introduced.

Now you're just making stuff up! The original IBM PC monitors were
14", and even the grandfather of terminals, the DEC VT100, had a 12"
CRT when it was introduced in 1978.

>> and that made more of a difference given that
>> monitors back then were so small.
>
>And oddly you're the first person I've ever heard suggest that the Mac's 
>screen was a turn-off to any significant number of people. Most people 
>never seemed to get past the fact that there was no compatibility with 
>any legacy software even for Apple's prior machines.

>> >> I don't believe that, never have. I don't like systems that are geeky
>> >> or aren't friendly, and there's plenty of that. But I don't like
>> >> systems that are cutesy and talk down, either, or that substitute
>> >> visual orientation for ergonometrics, or that reduce the power user to
>> >> the least common denominator.
>> >
>> >I think we've probably left any sort of common ground for discussion 
>> >right there. I don't, and have never, understood the term "power user." 
>> >It's meaningless to me, and seems to generally be thrown out as a 
>> >prelude to an elitist dismissal.
>> 
>> I confess you've mystified me here.
>
>I'm not sure how. I don't understand the term power user. That's fairly 
>straightforward. I don't understand it because it doesn't actually have 
>anything resembling an agreed-upon meaning. You followed up with two 
>paragraphs describing traits of those you do and don't consider power 
>users but how would anyone know that's what _you_ meant just from those 
>two little words? Maybe for someone else a power user doesn't dig into 
>the innards of their system but does use their machine in such a way 
>that the resources are routinely taxed. And, as I said, typically when I 
>run into the phrase it's the ramp for a rant about how one persons' 
>needs trump every other concern.

You seem in general to prefer the literal and concrete, and that's
probably a good quality in someone who works with computers.
Unfortunately, there are many words and concepts that can't be reduced
to rigid classification. For example, "that's big" will never be
defined as "that's larger than 10 feet" or "that's larger than 78% of
the objects in our homes" because a big shrimp is by necessity smaller
than a big man and a big man is by necessity smaller than a big star
or galaxy.

A Supreme Court justice, I forget which one, once remarked that while
he couldn't define pornography, he knew it when he saw it. I'd say
that the same thing is true of the power user. Not every power user
uses the command line, not every power user writes code. But it
doesn't matter, because what they have in common is that they're
unusually knowledgeable about the practical use of computers and tend
to get a lot out of them. They're the very antithesis of my
Stepmother, say, who uses computers only as a matter of necessity and
had to ask me to set up a key for her so she could get to her email.

I've long believed that a good UI design should and can accommodate
both.

>> By way of contrast, I've noticed that that smiling face and simplicity
>> hold a powerful attraction for people who are scared of computers. And
>> I've met more than a few Mac users, including some very smart ones,
>> who were convinced that PC's were hard to set up and use long after
>> they'd become for all intents and purposes as easy to use as a Mac.
>
>There are a lot of non-novice people who don't agree with that last 
>statement. Half of the network services department in my company have 
>switched to Macs as their primary home machines in the last 3 years 
>precisely because they're tired of maintaining Windows boxes and don't 
>want to have to do it in their free time as well. And while I'm a 
>Windows programmer by profession, I won't go near Windows without being 
>paid. It's not worth it to me.

I said "use," not "maintain." When it comes to maintainability and
software reliability, I agree with you -- the Mac wins hands down over
the PC. It's not for nothing that I've been criticizing Windows here:
I use the PC because I have to, but they're a constant headache.

I mean, yesterday my browser got funny after I opened a PDF, and I had
to reboot my supposedly robust OS thanks to the wretched design that
integrates IE with the OS and with Explorer (you can shut down and
restart Explorer, but like people who have been Shadow ships, your
system is never quite the same again until you reboot). And the
morning before that, I woke up to find my computer so sick that it
wouldn't shut down and couldn't flush the writeback cache. I had to
risk file corruption by using the reset button.

So yeah, from the perspective of maintainability and reliability,
Windows sucks. If there were a realistic alternative, I would run, not
walk, to my friendly neighborhood Internet computer store.

-- 
Josh

"I'm not going to play like I've been a person who's spent hours involved with
foreign policy.
I am who I am." - George W. Bush
                                                                    
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