Hi Robert,
> Since Apple makes just about the best easy to use software that most people
> can use without a hefty manual and is clearly miles ahead in the field of
> ease of use of a computer of anybody for a while to come, I think it's a bit
> farfetched to deride them just as a cool looking design company...
That was convincingly true 15 years ago and has become progressively less
true in recent years. With the new OS, usability has taken a dive because
the engineering is not very good, mainly because Jobs regards usability as a
matter of taste and not subject to the quantitative analysis that it can be.
There are so many logical and operational inconsistencies in the latest OS
that the interface is looking incoherent - but people are very adaptable and
will use anything presented to them as long as it gets them to their
intended goal.
All the original designers and creators of the Mac, who took usability very
seriously, do not wish to be associated with what is happening now because
it offends what they were trying to achieve and the basic understanding of
human-machine interactions that they pioneered and which make the Newt a
gem.
Some of the people I have talked to within Apple, who are writing bits of
the OS, tell me they find the new interface so clumsy they prefer to use the
command line.
Most of the people who devoted web sites to the Mac or championed it in
various enthusiastic ways because of the clarity of thought that went into
designing it (and the Newt), have melted away. Many have stated that the
heart and soul of the company has been smothered.
When Jobs insisted that his people use OS X internally at Apple there was
huge discontent.
Woz can be cajoled into saying that OS X is OK, out of loyalty to Apple,
because the underlying architecture is more robust but is clearly not an
enthusiast because he can see the stagnation that is afflicting the company
he created.
When I state that Apple has become a marketing company, it's based on the
design of the OS to make it as non-threatening to PC users as possible by
eliminating those very qualities that made the Mac what it was. Using a Mac
now is much more like using a PC than it used to be and Windows XP is much
more like a Mac. To a first order of approximation, everyone is using a Mac.
New Apple have tried to be more like Microsoft in many ways and in the OS it
reveals itself as a convergence with Windows paradigms.
Jobs may be right that Apple can survive by producing good looking boxes
including an OS that is merely good enough but there is no sign anymore of
Apple leading with technologies that will change the face of computing, or
even apply some aftershave. No significant patents or research papers. No
evidence of groups working internally at Apple on new things, no groovy
prototypes - all gone.
Since the launch of the Newt in 1993, nothing of any importance has come out
of that company other than Firewire and both of these were pre-Jobs
technologies.
OS X is no more than a commodity product whose only claim is that it's not
quite as bad as Windows. Having to exist in a world dominated by Windows
means that expediency was the only practical course of action in the absence
of any good ideas. Warming up Next and making it palatable to Mac
application developers is not what I call innovation. If anything, Next had
a better interface and was far more efficient.
It's the perversion of engineering goals to those of marketing ones that
hurts anyone who cares what Apple represented.
It's the memory of that original passion that drives me.
Joel.
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