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From: barmar@think.COM (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc,comp.sys.next,comp.sys.mac,comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: replacing the desktop metaphor (Why any metaphor?)
Message-ID: <34979@think.UUCP>
Date: 30 Dec 88 18:51:01 GMT
References: <850@mtfmi.att.com] <673@cogsci.ucsd.EDU> <1489@umbc3.UMD.EDU> <66512@ti-csl.CSNET> <22626@pbhya.PacBell.COM>
Sender: news@think.UUCP
Reply-To: barmar@kulla.think.com.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
Lines: 46

In article <22626@pbhya.PacBell.COM> whh@pbhya.PacBell.COM (Wilson Heydt) writes:
>  Now please tell me what is
>intuitive about selecting some particular button to push on a mouse and how
>many times (*and* how fast) to press it?  The Mac use of the "double-click"
>is *not*--I repeat *not*--intuitively obvious.  And yet--you can not use
>a mac (at least as a novice) without knowing that.

Apple's solution to the "selecting some particular button" problem was
to use a one-button mouse.  While I personally prefer the three-button
mouse on my Lisp Machine, I suspect Apple was correct because of their
intended audience.

As for the the double-click, I've never used a Mac application that
requires the user to double-click.  It's always used as a short-cut
for some operation that can be performed in a more intuitive manner
(e.g. in the Finder it's a shortcut for the Open menu choice, in word
processors it's usually a shortcut for dragging the mouse over a whole
word).

Yes, there are some operations that can only be performed in
non-intuitive ways.  For example, paint/draw programs frequently make
the shift keys affect the way the mouse is used (such as forcing a
drag to be strictly vertical or horizontal).  And it's certainly not
obvious that you move a window by clicking in its title bar.  No one
ever said any of these environments are perfect.  However, if 90% of
the stuff one does is in a menu it means you only have to "learn" how
to do 10% of the things you need to do, instead of 100%.  This
obviously means that the menu-based system is more intuitive than the
command-based system.

It's like the "real world".  Driving a car is a relatively easy skill,
and many things are pretty intuitive (turn the wheel right and you go
right, step down harder and you go faster, "D" stands for Drive and
"R" for Reverse).  However, when I first sat behind the wheel, it
wasn't obvious to me that I needed to step on the brake before putting
the car into Drive.  I assumed that since I wasn't pressing on the
accelerator it wouldn't accelerate.  But just because there are some
non-intuitive aspects it doesn't mean that the whole system is
non-intuitive.


Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar