Apple vs. Microsoft: Which user interface do you prefer?

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/apple-vs-microsoft-which-user-interface-do-you-prefer/3887?pg=2

by cek • 15 years ago

28 38 15 years ago

zarify• 15 years ago

Headlines like this really irritate me. It should read "Apple vs Microsoft: Here's what I prefer" rather than making it out that the article is about public opinion (ie "you").

There were some valid comparisons for why he evidently prefers the new MS UI (in the iphoto vs picture gallery comparison, anyway), but the whole way through all I could think was "don't tell me what I prefer".

PakG1• 15 years ago

Questions about something do not necessarily indicate statements about that thing.

abrimo• 15 years ago

Yea I agree, this is quite annoying.

I stopped reading on the first page where he showed a 'default' screenshot from each program and stated they were strikingly similar. Only to spend the next 3 paragraphs explaining how he customised the Windows version to achieve that similarity.

At the bottom of the first page he compares the number of places to click and comes up with a figure of 14 for iPhoto and 5 for Windows. Apparently it made sense to include all the navigation for iPhoto in the count but only include the menu bar for Windows.

It was clear which he preferred so no further reading was necessary.

5hoom• 15 years ago

Yeah, it gets a bit old. While we're at provocative flamebait titles, how about:

- Vi vs. Emacs. - Ruby vs. Python. - GNU vs. BSD. - Republican vs. Democrat.

There are some insightful differences that can be pointed out by comparing between the two, but that doesn't seem to be where this sort of 'story' is leading.

rbanffy3• 15 years ago

I miss the TRS-80 vs. Apple ][ days...

dbtc2• 15 years ago

instead of x vs. y we need abs(x-y).

bradleyland• 15 years ago

This is an Ed Bott column. Sometimes I like Ed's writing, because he pays a lot of attention to detail. One common thread I see throughout Ed's writing is that he cannot comprehend why some people prefer OS X. His opening statement belies his true feelings:

"Everyone has an opinion about user interfaces, but most people don’t have enough experience to back those opinions up."

In other words, if you like Apple computers, it's because you are a noob. Or maybe, if you like Apple computers, it's because you haven't used Windows enough.

I find that tone really obnoxious. Many of us in software development that happen to prefer Apple computers have to use Windows more than we like because of testing requirements. I love my Mac, but I have a small form-factor Dell tower here running Windows right next to my Mac. I don't hate Windows, but I unquestionably prefer OS X. Many of the points Ed makes in his column are valid, but it doesn't change the way I feel.

makeramen2• 15 years ago

This guy really doesn't have enough UX/human factors experience to be saying anything about these UIs. His opinion appears to be based on a few commands, and a generalized opinion with little quantitative support.

"In Windows Live Photo Gallery, with the program window at least 1200 pixels wide"

That's quite a wide screen to expect someone to have in order to see all the available commands. I feel like this limit is even larger in more involved programs such as Word, Excel, etc where I've frequently run into the issue of having to click the "more" button, only not to find the command I'm looking for.

Also, counting clicks is a very weak UI rule to follow. Navigation time is key. The "clutter" description of the windows toolbar comes from the varying sizes of buttons that don't follow any regular order for the eye to follow, resulting in greater confusion and potentially slower responses.

dbtc2• 15 years ago

Another factor to consider when talking about navigation time is what level of experience the user has.

timc3• 15 years ago

Couldn't agree more. This article is useless in its approach to analysing UIs and the author really should have gotten this thrown out by the editor of ZDNet.

Hope this doesn't get picked up by a wider audience.

rbanffy3• 15 years ago

> should have gotten this thrown out by the editor

Would happen on a print magazine, where space is limited, but on a website there is no such thing. Besides, Ed Bott generates pageviews and that's their performance metric.

camtarn3• 15 years ago

1280x(anywhere from 720 to 800) is probably the most common resolution for a modern widescreen laptop, and it's very common for Windows users to run with their windows either maximized or manually dragged to take up the entire screen. The ribbon appears to be designed for this, with the option to present a less optimal interface for smaller screens by a combination of resizing interface elements and eliminating uncommonly used ones.

Try resizing the Ribbon all the way from super-wide (if you've got dual monitors, it's particularly interesting) to really narrow. It's quite fun to watch, especially in Office products with zillions of interface controls - the giant buttons and large scrollable boxes full of options become groups of smaller buttons with text, then even smaller buttons without text, then collapse into a single menu, before disappearing altogether into the 'more' button.

Jamiecon• 15 years ago

Conveniently enough, this article has a helpful graph of the most common screen resolutions on Windows:

https://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/08/26/improvements-...

makeramen2• 15 years ago

The resizing behavior you outline for the Ribbon is actually a horrible UI design decision for repeat actions, which most are.

Example:

If a user remembers the "Copy" button as the first big button, or paste as the third little button, etc. Next time you open the window at a different resolution, or you resize, everything changes. Your positional memory of this button is gone. I absolutely hate the Ribbon's design for this. (I don't have windows running, so I'm making this up as an example, but I know it has happened to me before)

I prefer apple's "old" menu design over the Ribbon. Albeit seemingly archaic, it's actually a very useful place to store multiple commands in easily readable text that never changes position (especially on a mac, where the menu is always at the top toolbar).

egypturnash• 15 years ago

> With the View tab visible in Windows Live Photo Gallery, it takes two clicks to sort your photos by tag in reverse order. In iPhoto, it takes six clicks—after you sort by keyword (three clicks), you have to reopen the View menu, click Sort Photos again, and then click Descending (three more clicks). In fact, most options on the ribbon are one or two clicks away, whereas most options using iPhoto’s pull-down menus involve a minimum of two and often three or more clicks.

What? You don't have to click on sub-meus to open them up. You just move the mouse over them and they open.

The example he gives would actually be:

  * Click on "View" menu.
  * Move mouse pointer down to "sort photos", then right into the submenu.
  * Click on "Descending".

Is "click on submenus to open them" a Windows thing that he's doing by habit? I haven't used a Windows machine in years.

also holy crap that "ribbon" thing is a big noisy bar of colors and illegible text, sheesh. No visual hierarchy whatsoever.

cormullion• 15 years ago

Many years ago Apple introduced the click/release alternative way of choosing menu options. Old school Mac users usually still select submenus by holding the mouse button down and sliding right. The volume control is a good example; I do it with a single dragging click, others (especially switchers) would do it with two.

The multiclick menu selection is useful for long scrolling menus, such as font lists. Click, release, type first letters, then click again.

Derbasti• 15 years ago

Don't forget that the ribbon expands and collapses its individual blocks dynamically based on how big the window currently is, thus switching around the look and position of menu items (at least in Office, it does that). That can make re-finding 'menu' items painful.

In general, I applaud the idea of unifying the menu bar and the tool bar into a 'ribbon'. That said, many programs do not need much menu interaction at all. In that case, the ribbon just looks noisy (explorer 8).

camtarn3• 15 years ago

I wonder if the resizing behaviour was based on data about the amount of time Windows users run programs in any state other than maximized - if they have the program window maximized (or manually dragged to fill the monitor) 99.9% of the time, then they'll almost always see the Ribbon in the same state. Of course, this could lead to user confusion when they move to a new computer with a different resolution (whether upgrading, switching between desktop and laptop, or using a friend's/library/work/etc) and the Ribbon they're used to has been replaced by something completely different...

iaskwhy2• 15 years ago

Can't be a Windows thing since it's been like that for so long I can't even remember (Windows 3.1 maybe?).

Groxx• 15 years ago

I don't know how much they've actually used iPhoto. Page [4] has a good example of this (or, specifically, this [picture]) - why are they going into the menu for rotating, when there's a big-ass "rotate" button right on the right-hand side? And if you're on new-enough hardware to have real multitouch (the past what, 4 years?), they've already seen the gestural approach because it's been pushed at them from every angle multiple times - rotate 2 fingers = rotate picture. And that works from the editing perspective, the single-picture, and the bunch-o-pictures list. Zero clicks!, since they seem so focused on clicks as a measure of UI design.

also, I'm not sure what their point is in these paragraphs on page 5, but it reads like a poorly-executed ad-hominem:

>One enormous difference between Microsoft and Apple is the amount of public communication each company puts out. In the last five years, Microsoft engineers and executives have written the equivalent of several big books about the process of designing and building the user interface for Windows and Office.

The Windows 8 blog, with its epic posts from Steven Sinofsky and the Windows team, is just the latest in a long line of similar efforts. Jensen Harris, who led the development of the original ribbon in Office 2007, wrote an eight-part series of blog posts titled “Why the UI?”

I am certain that Apple’s designers do just as much thinking, research, prototyping, and testing as their counterparts in Redmond. But they don’t talk about that work. Instead, the results are described in press releases and promotional web pages with terms like “easier than ever” and “incredibly easy.”

[4] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/apple-vs-microsoft-which-user... [picture]: http://www.zdnet.com/photos/windows-live-photo-gallery-versu...

kiiski2• 15 years ago

> why are they going into the menu for rotating

Some quotes from the article regarding that (2 separate quotes; there was text between them):

"To make changes to the photo, you have to use commands located in two places."

"In iPhoto the same option is not so easy to find. If you click the Edit button and look on the Quick Fixes tab, you’ll find a Rotate button. But clicking it rotates the selected photo (or photos) counterclockwise only. If you guess that Rotate options are on the Edit menu, you’d be wrong. Instead, you have to look on the Photos menu, which is where the Rotate Clockwise option appears.

In Windows Live Photo Gallery, just about every task and command is available from the ribbon. The design allows you to pick a tab and then scan its contents to see commands that apply to the task you’re trying to accomplish. In iPhoto, you have to learn where each command lives.

A good example is the option to use the current photo as your desktop background. In Windows Live Photo Gallery you’ll find a Set As Desktop button at the left of the Create tab, or you can right-click on a photo and choose Set Desktop Background. In iPhoto, that option isn’t available on a right-click menu. Confusingly, it’s not available from the menu that pops up when you click the Share button at the bottom of the window; you have to use the pull-down Share menu instead."

> And if you're on new-enough hardware to have real multitouch (the past what, 4 years?), they've already seen the gestural approach because it's been pushed at them from every angle multiple times - rotate 2 fingers = rotate picture. And that works from the editing perspective, the single-picture, and the bunch-o-pictures list. Zero clicks!, since they seem so focused on clicks as a measure of UI design.

Using the multitouch gestures is not quite that obvious. I've used mac for a little over a year and I've never used any other gestures than the two-finger scrolling. Besides, clicking on a single button is just simpler than rotating your fingers (assuming you want to rotate the image 90 degrees).

steipete• 15 years ago

What's wrong with just pressing the rotate button more than once? When I see a picture that has is rotated wrong, i just think "rotate". Thinking about left? right? needs more brainpower, and finding the small icon also. I'm faster just hitting the button until I'm satisfied with the rotation. It's EXIF rotate anyway, it doesn't change the picture quality.

bandushrew• 15 years ago

"The design allows you to pick a tab and then scan its contents to see commands that apply to the task you’re trying to accomplish."

? That is learning where the command lives, you just happen to be comfortable with the places you should look first.

pooriaazimi• 15 years ago

I think that mac's Help menu is also an example of great UX. If you don't know where 'copy' is, just click on the Help menu and start typing 'cop..' and you'll be presented with a beautiful animation (sort of) that shows you exactly where that command is. The great thing about it is that it's system-wide and works in every single application (and for those who don't know: the key shortcut is Command+Shift+/, you can use it as a menu-item launcher!)

dimmuborgir• 15 years ago

I'm a Linux user who hasn't used Windows for years and who hasn't used OS X at all. But I must say iPhoto looks more sane and intuitive compared to Windows Live Photo Gallery. (that's one lengthy name!).

Can't imagine how netbook users running Windows deal with that ribbon thing which I think covers almost half the screen.

tintin• 15 years ago

Some time ago I discovered ribbons can be collapsed (Ctrl+F1, or the icon on the far right). I hated them but when they are collapsed everything is looking clean and they just work like a drop-down-menu with icons.

Ribbons are a big mess but now I don't have to look at them all the time, clearing my mind and my screen.

iaskwhy2• 15 years ago

Double-clicking also works as explained in the article: "Double-click any tab heading to collapse the ribbon so that it looks indistinguishable from a traditional menu bar."

rbanffy3• 15 years ago

I'm baffled he finds it natural to set the desktop wallpaper from the "Create" menu on Windows while he is also confused it's not in the "Share" button on the Mac... It confuses me more it is in the "Share" menu.

Obviously, setting your desktop background is all about creative sharing.

Feinux• 15 years ago

Microsoft just treats each application as an OS,like sub-OSes integrated in one big OS, then it is call Windows.

revorad• 15 years ago

Thanks for posting this. I'm working on a new product design and am constantly struggling with the question of how many controls to keep visible at all times and how many to hide behind clicks. There is a difficult tradeoff between functionality and keeping the UI simple.

I've been erring on the side of hiding (and if possible eliminating) less used controls. And this comparison pushes me more in that direction.

I find it quite funny that the author "concludes" that iPhoto looks more cluttered than the Microsoft design, especially with the last screenshots on the last page[1]! In iPhoto, you can clearly see the image you are editing, whereas in Photo Gallery, the hovering menu is hiding part of the image. Ironically, he spent the rest of the article criticising iPhoto's dropdown menu controls in favour of Microsoft's convenient ribbon layout.

[1] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/apple-vs-microsoft-which-user...

sirn• 15 years ago

>In Windows Live Photo Gallery, just about every task and command is available from the ribbon. The design allows you to pick a tab and then scan its contents to see commands that apply to the task you’re trying to accomplish. In iPhoto, you have to learn where each command lives.

Little known feature: in Mac OS X just open the Help menu and type in any menu item you want to access. The menu will just point you to where that menu item is[1]. I always use it as a quick access when trying to accomplish any task that requires menu bar access; pressing Cmd+Shift+/, type in whatever I want, select the first item and press enter, hooray for global keyboard actions!

[1] http://i.imgur.com/8QzXw.png

tzs• 15 years ago

Why does the link go to page 2 of the article?

tomelders2• 15 years ago

is this a trick question?

tomelders2• 15 years ago

Some of the comments are priceless (as you would expect in a Mac vs PC piece), but this one really takes the cake...

"if you want to examine an OS' UI that has barely changed in 10 years, you only have to look at OSX."

sjwright• 15 years ago

Articles like this make me happy I run ad blocking software. The last thing I'd want to do is give a monetary reward to amateur-hour reporting link-bait like this.

abc_lisper• 15 years ago

Hmm.. What is this but not a troll

Apple vs. Microsoft: Which user interface do you prefer?

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