Usability/Usability humor
Friday, February 15, 2002[10:01:36 AM]
Andrew Orlowski [theregister.co.uk]: "Like an unloved Liberian-registered container ship full of nuclear waste, the Dock is making its lonely way across the screen, being bounced from port to port." It's a geek story: he tried to bribe Apple to throw out the dock. I'll add a few bucks to the bid.
[I think the smart money puts the dock on the *right*, where it doesn't cover up the bottom of windows, and doesn't cover up the left side of windows. Apple people are mostly used to arranging icons on the desktop over there anyway, so it fits their history, too.]
Thing is, OS X may have unix underneath, but it's really a Win CE competitor: a gui designed to do nothing more than run one consumer program at a time. The gui is perfect for a five-inch screen, for example.
My favorite Orlowski article is the one where he calls Palm the stupidest technology company on Earth [theregister.co.uk].
I'll admit one thing I like about Palm: one of my favorite user interfaces is the desktop memopad approach. You don't have to think about filenames, you don't have to think about saving. But in return, the maximum length is about twelve words (exxageration), and you don't have the choice to use a filename and a file in the file system.
© Copyright 2002 john robert boynton.
Last update: 9/8/02; 11:28:07 AM.