December 3, 2000
Untitled
Screen Wars
It was bound to happen. The graphical user interface has become uptown just enough to get the treatment by Newsweek. With the lightly-rumpled Steven Levy driving the tour bus, we get a quick glance up the driveways of the current profluency of next generation operating system outerwear. There’s not a lot of new information to be shared here, but you’ve just got to love some of the freshly plopped quotes in the article. Dig these gems:
“Once the Web became popular, it was clear that the old Mac style outlived its usefulness.” — Jakob Nielson
Once again our man in the field Jakob is trying to explain his way out of a wet paper bag. The funny thing is, I haven’t noticed any real resemblance between the Mac style and most web page design, regardless of the celebrity of the medium. In most cases the current web populi sports the combined visual attractiveness of a self-published pizza flyer and a PowerPoint presentation formatted with a default template. The web would be fundamentally better if it would just shut up for a minute and pay attention long enough to follow some of the basis tenets set down by Apple in its Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines.
“We wanted to go and clean up all the barnacles that have been connected to Mac, crush them and start afresh as if we were first designing this today. Getting rid of all the crud and not redoing things, but rethinking them to make them far more elegant in today’s world.” — Steve Jobs on Mac OS X
Aside from the forced reference to Aqua with the barnacle spin, this is more like it. Although I seriously doubt whether pulsating buttons and mighty morphin power window effects are more elegant. Arguably, they could be considered crud in their own right.
“Folders are ridiculous! Computers have 20 things that are important, 10 things you use often and a bunch of crap. Let’s put it all on one screen — go for it!” — Steve Capps on MSN Explorer
Keeping in mind that this is probably a fairly accurate statement regarding how many items are important on our computers. All on one screen, eh? How many of us can realistically decipher, let alone interact with, more than one or two things at a time? There’s a reason why you shouldn’t read a newspaper while you’re driving your car. Then again, that rationale doesn’t explain the continued existence of America Online. And I’d pay a dollar to see Mr. Capps functionally perform even a portion of his current position within the ranks of Microsoft without folders. Analog or digital.
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