In asking "Where is Apple going?", I am wondering if Apple has a roadmap for the Mac and iOS operating systems beyond Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and iOS 5. At WWDC in early June, Apple talked about the new features incorporated into these operating systems. You can watch the WWDC keynote to learn about even more features of both OS's by going to Apple's home page.
Operating system updates can generally be divided into two buckets. There are features that are under the hood, features that update the system's ability to manage resources, such as files and memory. That's what the Snow Leopard update was all about. Users complained they didn't see a lot of new features, but Snow Leopard had many updates in the software for managing the resources of your computer.
The Lion and iOS 5 updates are all about the other kind of updates, the additions to the system that can be directly used by the human, such as new ways to handle files in the Finder or new FaceTime capabilities. There are some worthwhile new features in both systems. Lion has auto-save, versions and AirDrop. iOS 5 has the Notifications Center, and quick access to the camera from the home screen.
But, I am concerned Apple is just piling on features that look good in marketing materials without the real effort it takes to integrate these new features smoothly into the existing system. It isn't just Lion and iOS 5 that concern me. This pattern of piling features on has been going on for some time, but it has now become very evident.
To put this in context, think about the earliest design ideals Apple tried to follow in creating the original operating system for the Mac (and the Lisa too). The basic paradigm behind the then new graphical operating system consisted of objects and actions; objects refer to items on the screen, such as files and folders, and text in a text document. These items correspond to things on your desk or in a hand written document; they are all "things." The mouse can be used to select one or more of these things.
Apple invented the unified menubar always found at the top of the screen. The menubar contains menus and menu items. The menu items are primarily actions applied to the objects. There are other things such as buttons that can be clicked, but the basic paradigm is objects and actions. The great thing about this type of interface is that it is "discoverable." If you cannot remember what actions can be applied to specific objects, just poke through the menu items until you find what you need.
You may have learned techniques such as double clicking on a file to open it, but this is a shortcut for selecting an object and using the Open command found in the File menu. If you forget the shortcut, you can scan through menu items to find what you need.
Over the years, the interface has become more complex as features have been added. The simple paradigm of the original OS is not always followed, and the methods for accomplishing tasks can become difficult to discover. If the interface element lacks consistency with other interface elements, it will lack discoverability.
For example, the ability to resize the width of columns in Finder list views is based on positioning the mouse pointer in just the right location above a column label boundary until the cursor changes to that little vertical line with left and right arrows. Learning this ability does not translate to the same technique for changing column widths in Finder column views. But, these tasks are not very critical for using your computer.
So, I look at Lion and wonder about the changes being introduced in July. Yes, there are some nice additions to Lion, such as AirDrop for transferring files between Macs. But in looking the list of new features over, it seems most are ideas taken in some form or other from iOS. Are these features are meant to make the Mac easier to use or are they intended to help sell Macs to Windows users who are now using iPhones and iPads? The problem is these features appear to get in the way of people who already know how to use the Mac, including those of us who consider ourselves power users.
One example throughout OS X and the applications that come with the system is the inclusion of gestures. Gestures refers to the finger swipes made on the trackpad to cause actions. Swipe from left to right with two fingers will cause one thing to happen, while swiping from the top to bottom with three fingers will cause a different action.
This is of course taken from iOS. iOS 5 is full of new gestures throughout the system and accompanying apps. There are many other features, new in iOS 5, such as the new Notifications Center that is less intrusive than the old notifications. The new notifications is taken as an idea from the Android OS, because it was so badly needed.
But, I am less than happy with all of these new features in both Mac OS X and iOS, because they do not seem to be well integrated into the existing interface. They are heaped on top of past features, as though their only importance is in being counted on a list for marketing purposes.
In fact, my biggest gripe among all of the new features is with these gestures. They are useful only if you memorize each gesture individually. You cannot logically remember that two fingers swiped in a particular direction will cause a certain action, and therefore three fingers in the same direction will cause an associated action. This will mean you will be distracted from the task at hand. Working on a document? Well, take your thoughts off the task and pause to remember the gesture you need.
And, gestures are not discoverable. There are no menu items you can poke through to find that action you have forgotten. And, like the other features added to these to operating systems, gestures have been thrown on the heap in an unorganized fashion. These features are distracting to me as I try to write this piece; I am not using them, I am simply trying to imagine them. One can only imagine how cluttered the released system will be for the user.
One of the reasons we like the Mac over Windows is the logical organization in the interface. Work we do with the Mac reflects this organization. As the interface becomes less organized and more scattered, our work reflects this. Getting work done with the Mac or an iOS device will become more laborious, and no one likes this.
So, what can Apple do about this? Well, they can stop giving every little feature its own name, just for marketing. AirDrop looks very nice and is a cute name, but it's simply an improvement on file transfers. It is not some computer interface revelation; it should not be designed to stand out from all of the other methods of file transfer. It should be integrated carefully into the existing file transfer interfaces.
In a like manner, all of these other, new features of these operating systems need to be better integrated. If this requires a major reorganization of the entire interface, then get it done!
This integration and possible reorganization needs to be done now… I can only imagine the mess apple will make of the OS X and iOS interfaces in another major release or two over the next two or three years.
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