Jef Raskin: The Mac is now a mess
Guardian Unlimited — “Yes, but unfortunately, the Mac is now a mess. A third party manual (Pogue’s The Missing Manual) is nearly 1,000 pages, and far from complete. Apple now does development by accretion, and there is only a little difference between using a Mac and a Windows machine.”
October 27th, 2004 at 12:27 pm
I’ve heard a bit lately when learning about usability, about how operating systems are now completely irrelevently designed. They need a new metaphor, a new concept, to make them easier to use and understand. I’m not really sure what these critics envision… I’m used to the way Windows and OS work, and I think learning an entirely new way of operating computers might be just as difficult as continuing using the ones we have is, or seems to be to the critics. Although, the point is, if they’re designed well, they won’t be difficult to learn and use at all.
October 27th, 2004 at 4:00 pm
Is this the best Raskin can do, provide fluff pieces for newspapers? I don’t see much progress in what says and writes about in the past decade:
Unfortunately, it takes more than principles to create good designs. Developers and designers need to know how to assess and improve the interface. “Hire me and I’ll do it” or “Buy my book” aren’t solutions to this problem.
October 28th, 2004 at 10:17 am
That was from me, thanks to the auto-logout feature of WebWord.