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From: blh@vlsi.cs.cmu.edu (Bruce Horn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Poor Mac Design Philosophy
Message-ID: <1084@vlsi.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Fri, 9-Oct-87 17:24:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: vlsi.1084
Posted: Fri Oct  9 17:24:38 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 11-Oct-87 16:50:45 EDT
References: <1076@houtz.UUCP> <21205@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <400@sdics.ucsd.EDU>
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 48
Keywords: Mac design blinking apple


Although I mostly agree with Don Norman's view, I feel that he in
particular, and people in general, tends to forget the circumstances behind
the design of the Macintosh.  Limited ROM, RAM and *time* made us choose
what we felt were the most important things to work on.  Of course, many of
us in the Mac group were aware of these problems, but the time/memory wasn't
there to allow us to fix them.  The blinking Apple was one of those things.
Certainly now that Apple has time to take care of problems like these, they
will;  but again, there will be some things with higher priority than
others.  Completely user-centered design takes lots of time, money, and
memory (but I would agree that it is worth it.)

Also, Don Norman suggests several alternatives to hidden power keys,
including context sensitive help, menus and so on.  These are valid
*alternatives*, but as people get more used to the system, having to go
through these different contexts can be a waste of time.  Power keys are
just part of the context/expression tradeoff:  you can have complicated
expressions (command-option-shift click on the xyz icon) or context shift
(new window or dialog), followed by a simple expression (just a click on the
option you want).  My "perfect system" would allow both options.

Apple needs to continue to ensure that extensions to the user interface are
consistent, *including* the power keys.  For example, option-drag should
mean "copy" in all contexts where this makes sense.

I don't agree with his implication that the one-button mouse is the reason
that there are unmemorizable "power keys."  Yes, people tend to want to
classify clicks more specifically to add functionality, but there are other
ways to do this (see paragraph above).  Also, have you ever used a three
button mouse with the X window system?  "Power clicks" with multiple-button
mice are just as horrible as "power keys" are on the Mac.

His example of "alarm on" being threatening to some people reminded me of
our first naive-user reaction to the system error bomb:  she thought her Mac
was going to blow up!  Somebody suggested that we replace the bomb with a
flat tire, but we never got around to it.

To paraphrase Alan Kay, "The Mac is the first computer worth bashing".  Go
ahead and bash constructively--that's one way that the machine will be
improved.  I wouldn't say globally that the Mac was poorly designed...but
I'm biased.



-- 
Bruce Horn, Carnegie Mellon CSD
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