Close Remixes Of The Third Kind Mac OS

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Apple keeps doing things in the Mac OS that leave the user-experience (UX) community scratching its collective head, things like hiding the scroll bars and placing invisible controls inside the content region of windows on computers.

Apple’s mobile devices are even worse: It can take users upwards of five seconds to accurately drop the text pointer where they need it, but Apple refuses to add the arrow keys that have belonged on the keyboard from day-one.

Apple’s strategy is exactly right—up to a point

Rated 5 out of 5 by Gamingpip from My Kind of Game We all play for different reasons. One reason I play is keep my mind sharp. One reason I play is keep my mind sharp. I imagine the game developers and myself in a battle of wits and each time I can find an object or figure out a puzzle, I win. This is a remix of the Close Encounters alien communication five notes. Created on Reason and using only the five tones. Tribute to John Williams. In the OS X era I’ve tested close to a dozen list-making/time management apps including Things, OmniFocus, and many others. And I’ve read books on productivity and task management, too. Support Everything is a Remix by backing us on Patreon, the world's largest crowdfunding site for artists and creators. Additional sponsorship, underwriting, in-kind donations, patronage, and speaking engagement opportunities are also available.

Apple’s decisions may look foolish to those schooled in UX, but balance that against the fact that Apple consistently makes more money than the next several leaders in the industry combined. While it’s true Apple is missing something—arrow keys—we in the UX community areN missing something, too: Apple’s razor-sharp focus on a user many of us often fail to even consider: The potential user, the buyer.

Who’s talking?

Bruce Tognazzini was hired at Apple by Steve Jobs and Jef Raskin in 1978, where he remained for 14 years, founding the Apple Human Interface Group and designing Apple’s first standard human interface. He is named inventor on 57 US patents ranging from a intelligent wristwatch to an aircraft radar system to, along with Jakob Nielsen, an eye-track-driven browser.

During the first Jobsian era at Apple, I used to joke that Steve Jobs cared deeply about Apple customers from the moment they first considered purchasing an Apple computer right up until the time their check cleared the bank. Of course, in later years, the check was replace by a credit card, and check clearance was replaced by the 15-day return period, but Steve’s and Apple’s focus remained the same.

What do most buyers not want? They don’t want to see all kinds of scary-looking controls surrounding a media player. They don’t want to see a whole bunch of buttons they don’t understand. They don’t want to see scroll bars. They do want to see clean screens with smooth lines. Buyers want to buy Ferraris, not tractors, and that’s exactly what Apple is selling.

The tipping point

While Apple is doing a bang-up job of catering to buyers, they have a serious disconnect at the point at which the buyer becomes a user. That same person who was attracted to that bright and shiny computer in the showroom, as opposed to those dull-looking things in the Microsoft look-alike store, may not be so happy when denial breaks down, and he admits to himself that it’s so bright and shiny that the reflection of his office is blocking out the image on his screen.

(Steve had a habit of setting up impossible tasks for his people, only to have them overcome them anyway. This year, Apple release the latest round of bright and shiny monitors except they don’t reflect the office to the exclusion of the screen. 75% reduction in reflections and just as glassy smooth. Some kind of magic.)

But let’s talk about software. Let me offer two examples of Apple objects that aid in selling products, but make life difficult for users thereafter. Then I’ll talk about a simple, zero-downside solution that would solve the unnecessary problems Apple has been making for itself before presenting a very valuable lesson the rest of us can learn from Apple.

The Apple Dock

The Apple Dock is a superb device for selling computers for pretty much the same reasons that it fails miserably as a day-to-day device: A single glance at the Dock lets the potential buyer know that this a computer that is beautiful, fun, approachable, easy to conquer, and you don’t have to do a lot of reading. Of course, not one of these attributes is literally true, at least not if the user ends up exploiting even a fraction of the machine’s potential, but such is the nature of merchandizing, and the Mac is certainly easier than the competition.

The real problem with the Dock is that Apple simultaneously stripped out functionality that was far superior, though less flashy, when they put the Dock in. The Mac is a powerful computer with lots and lots of room. There was no reason to strip anything out. The flashy-demo Dock object and the serious-user objects could and should have continued to coexist.

Invisible Scroll Bars

“Gee, the screen looks so clean! This computer must be easy to use!” So goes the thinking of the buyer when seeing a document open in an Apple store, exactly the message Apple intends to impart. The problem right now is that Apple’s means of delivering that message is actually making the computer less easy to use!

When we were first implementing GUIs at Apple in the early 1980s, scroll bars were primarily an input device: Any document you saw on your screen was likely one you had written, destined eventually to be printed and distributed. Today, most documents are web pages or email you’ve never laid eyes on before, and the scroll bar has become a vital status device as well, letting you know at a glance the size of and your current position within a document.

Hiding the scroll bar, from a user’s perspective, is madness. If the user wants to actually scroll, it’s bad enough: He or she is now forced to use a thumbwheel or gesture to invoke scrolling, as the scroll bar is no longer even present. However, if the user simply wants to see their place within the document, things can quickly spiral out of control: The only way to get the scroll bar to appear is to initiate scrolling, so the only way to see where you are right now in a document is to scroll to a different part of the document! It may only require scrolling a line or two, but it is still crazy on the face of it! And many windows contain panels with their own scroll bars as well, so trying to trick the correct one into turning on, if you can do so at all (good luck with Safari!) can be quite a challenge.

This article in WordPress editor in Safari with Mac set to “Alway Show” Scroll Bars

(The scroll bars, even when turned on, are hard to see with their latest mandatory drab gray replacing bright blue and are now so thin they take around twice as long to target as earlier scroll bars. When a company ships products either before user testing or after ignoring the results of that testing, both their product and their users suffer.)

One might argue that eye-tracking could be used to turn on the scroll bar as needed, but let’s consider that: In the above example, if the center scroll bar suddenly hove into view every time your eyes wandered between the left and right columns, it would be more than a little distracting. OK, so then maybe we force the user to stare fixedly at the place the scroll bar should appear for some set amount to time. Hey, now there’s a bad idea!

Fortunately, the answer to both these and other problems is much simpler and needs no such sophisticated technology as I will soon reveal (I promise). First, however, let me present a new model.

The User Spectrum

The UX community generally considers users to be arrayed along a spectrum that stretches from naive to expert. Apple expands that array by prefacing it with buyers. The following chart shows that more complete spectrum, flowing from the buyer before the sale, through the dashed red line at the point of sale, and then moving along from naive to expert user with the continuing passage of time.

Supporting “The Third User”

Apple has concentrated virtually all their effort on potential users—buyers—and new users, leaving out, in the last several years, experienced users almost entirely. The User Experience (UX) community are in the opposite position, rarely considering our user’s wants, needs, or desires until the moment they first open their newly-purchased products.

Both our efforts should resemble the third line on this chart, with all of us properly supporting people through a continuum stretching from customers’ first faint desires to the point at which they’ve become seasoned professionals.

Industrial Design: The Source of Apple’s Secret

Apple has drawn from the lessons of industrial design, applying them not only to external hardware, but software as well, a brilliant step forward that has made their products as appealing when turned on as when turned off.

Industrial design & “the message”

A primary purpose of industrial design is to deliver a carefully-crafted message. Let’s look at two products, the tractor and the Ferrari.

“I am powerful, and I should like to remove your arm”

The raw form of a tractor delivers a simple, brutal message: “I am powerful!” Unfortunately, people often see an unwritten message accompanying it, such as “I should like to remove your arm,” or simply “I’m way too powerful for the likes of you!”

“I am amazingly fast, and you are devastatingly attractive.”

A Ferrari also delivers a power message, but not by displaying its engine. Instead, the Ferrari’s message is indirect, rather than direct, the hallmark of industrial design. The reality of the Ferrari’s powerful drive train is entirely hidden, skinned over with a second, completely independent message in shaped steel that not only screams power, but adds in the promise of speed, fun, and the granting of an instant increase in physical attractiveness to those who would possess it.

The reality and the message are truly independent. A sleek Italianate body could be gracing a Volkswagen Beetle chassis, and, as long as the buyer never made the mistake of turning the key in the ignition, the message would continue to ring out loud and true. What you are seeing in the photo above is actually a Sterling Nova composite body. The Nova, a design inspired by the Lamborghini Miura, was developed in England as an after-market body kit for bolting to, yes, a Volkswagen Beetle.

Industrial design: Borrow the aesthetic, ignore the limitation

While Apple has copied over the aesthetics of industrial design into the software world, they have also copied over its limitation: Whether it be a tractor, Ferrari, or electric toaster, that piece of hardware, in the absence of upgradeable software, will look and act the same the first time you use it as the thousandth time. Software doesn’t share that natural physical limitation, and Apple must stop acting as though it does.

Apple need change nothing about their support for buyers and very little for new users. They need only add support for experts, and they can do so without any effect whatsoever on either of the first two groups.

If Apple’s goal is to sell computers by having the interface look clean in the store, there’s no reason the interface need remain obscured after the sale. As soon as users get home and register, the software can flip the option to display scroll bars to Always, triggering the start of a gradual, planned transition from training-wheels to full-fledged computer-user. That’s good and proper design.

Clutter (noise) vs. Dense Information

What we see as clutter (known as “noise” in Information Theory) when we look over someone’s shoulder is often a screen with a high concentration of information meaningful to them. If your personal aesthetic by nature or by training is tuned to seek visual simplicity, you may find that distressing. It is our job to remove real clutter—any tools or data not needed right now—but it is not our jobs to hide what experienced users need just to make ourselves feel better when we look at their screens.

The cost to Apple for ceasing to support expert users is spilling over into lost hardware sales. I myself have stopped buying both new iPads and iPhones because Apple’s increasingly powerful hardware is so badly crippled by its software. Having shot more than 20,000 digital photos, I’d like to access them on my iPad from memory, lots and lots of memory. Not going to happen. Why? because when I transfer my photos, Apple strips off all my titles, date, time, location info, and keywords, then randomly shuffles all my folders. Individual photos are impossible to locate should I carry around more than 100 or so. I already have plenty of memory for 100 photos.

Last year’s buyers, so confused by what a pinch gesture was or how use a trackpad, have become expert over the next twelve months, ready to move up to the next level. In fact, there are millions of these now-expert users. Inside Apple today are employees who understand that. These same employees understand that shipping a product like Aperture that, after almost five years, is still not even feature complete and is rife with>Designing for People by Henry Dreyfuss. Dreyfuss was the greatest industrial designer of the last century. He churned out everything from locomotives to cars to flying cars to the Trimline phone to Polaroid cameras to the round Westclock alarm clock to the equally round Honeywell thermostat, inspiration for the Nest.I am a particular fan not only because he was a brilliant industrial designer, but because he understood the vital importance of usability testing to validate designs, specifically ensuring that the desires and needs of the full spectrum of users—buyers, naive, and expert—were being met. We have much to learn from him, and this book is an excellent starting point.Henry Dreyfuss: The Man in the Brown Suit by Russell Flinchum. If Dreyfuss’s own book has whet your appetite, this well-written biography will help sate it.While Designing for People gives us insight into Dreyfuss’s mind at the time of its writing, this biography gives us insight into his thinking as it changed over the decades, adding dimensionality. It is filled with illustrations and personal details missing from Dreyfuss’s own work. I have gleaned much from each.Games People Play by Eric Berne. Freudian psychoanalyst Eric Berne’s Transactional Analysis (TA) altered mainstream therapy and sales psychology forever. You can apply TA’s simple, reliable model of human behavior from first field study to final usability follow-up to ensure you cover both the wants and needs of all users, including buyers.The initial 3000 print run turned into 5 million. A fun read, it will alter your view of users forever. I’ve read every one of Eric Berne’s books and research papers. This is a perfect starting point.“An important book…a brilliant, amusing, and clear catalogue of the psychological theatricals that human beings play over and over again.”— Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. Yeah, that book. If you haven’t read it, you should. This man was the greatest industrialist of our time and was responsible for the creation of the most revolutionary products in our industry.Steve Jobs was also one of the greatest human-computer interaction designers of all time, though he would have adamantly denied it. (That’s one of Apple’s problems today. They lost the only HCI designer with any power in the entire company the day Steve died, and they don’t even know it.)Walter Isaacson was able to get further into Steve Jobs’s head than any save perhaps Steve’s own wife. It is a must-read for all of us, including those who might have thought we knew him.

All three of these men have had a profound influence on my life for decades. I’m sure there are other people and other books of note that could help all of us to even-out our support of the spectrum of users. Please help out by suggesting more books below.

When you visit a forum, you are visiting my home. You will not see personal attacks on myself or other writers here because Siri automatically forwards them to the writer’s mom, along with a letter of explanation. My apologies. She’s rather strict about this. My long-time editor, John Scribblemonger, will then publish comments that are on point, but may edit for brevity and clarity. This being “asktog,” I will then often chime in, even if not explicitly asked.

I hope you will find the result worth reading, as well as joining.

Use iCloud Photos

iCloud Photos keeps your photos and videos safe, up to date, and available automatically on all of your Apple devices, on iCloud.com, and even your PC. When you use iCloud Photos, you don't need to import photos from one iCloud device to another. iCloud Photos always uploads and stores your original, full-resolution photos. You can keep full-resolution originals on each of your devices, or save space with device-optimized versions instead. Either way, you can download your originals whenever you need them. Any organizational changes or edits you make are always kept up to date across all your Apple devices. Learn how to set up and use iCloud Photos.

The photos and videos that you keep in iCloud Photos use your iCloud storage. Before you turn on iCloud Photos, make sure that you have enough space in iCloud to store your entire collection. You can see how much space you need and then upgrade your storage plan if necessary.

Import to your Mac

You can use the Photos app to import photos from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to your Mac.

Connect your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to your Mac with a USB cable.
Open the Photos app on your computer.
The Photos app shows an Import screen with all the photos and videos that are on your connected device. If the Import screen doesn't automatically appear, click the device's name in the Photos sidebar.
If asked, unlock your iOS or iPadOS device using your passcode. If you see a prompt on your iOS or iPadOS device asking you to Trust This Computer, tap Trust to continue.
Choose where you want to import your photos. Next to 'Import to,' you can choose an existing album or create a new one.
Select the photos you want to import and click Import Selected, or click Import All New Photos.
Wait for the process to finish, then disconnect your device from your Mac.

Learn what to do if you can't import photos from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to your computer.

Import to your Windows PC

You can import photos to your PC by connecting your device to your computer and using the Windows Photos app:

Make sure that you have the latest version of iTunes on your PC. Importing photos to your PC requires iTunes 12.5.1 or later.
Connect your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to your PC with a USB cable.
If asked, unlock your iOS or iPadOS device using your passcode.
If you see a prompt on your iOS or iPadOS device asking you to Trust This Computer, tap Trust or Allow to continue.

Then, visit Microsoft's website to learn how to import photos to the Windows Photos app in Windows 10.

If you have iCloud Photos turned on, you need to download the original, full resolution versions of your photos to your iPhone before you import to your PC. Find out how.

When you import videos from your iOS or iPadOS device to your PC, some might be rotated incorrectly in the Windows Photos app. You can add these videos to iTunes to play them in the correct orientation.

If you're having trouble importing photos from your iOS or iPadOS device to Windows 10, try these steps:

On your iOS or iPadOS device, open the Settings app. Tap Camera, then tap Formats.
Tap Most Compatible. From now on, your camera will create photos and videos in JPEG and H.264 formats.

Learn what to do if you can't import photos from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to your computer.

Learn more