LukasMathis

I had the same issue, and I'm working on an ebook reader that does exactly what you're asking for. It's not available yet, but there are screenshots here:

https://leafl.it/

The page with my name in the HyperCard 10th Anniversary Stack is a stack I made that was added to that project. It does a bunch of weird things to simulate the Mac Finder, none of which seem to work in the simulator (which makes sense, it's possible that it even uses Apple Script, I don't remember the details).

After finding out that this stack still exists, I also found it on archive.org. It works correctly (although slowly) on the Archive.org emulator: https://archive.org/details/hypercard_hc_10th_anniversary

Holy moly, this has a stack in it that I made 30 years ago! Unfortunately, it doesn't work correctly in the simulator.

I guess the point is that she, herself, was not notable at that point, since her work was not widely and publicly known. Otherwise we'd already know her pre-transition name.

If I tell you that I'm rolling a die, and ask you whether I rolled a six or not a six, offering you 100$ if you guess right, you very obviously should say "not a six", even if we only play the game once.

I would argue that if you start out knowing that you will switch, you essentially do lie, because you initially pretend to pick a box (or door) that you know you will not end up opening.

It is true that this approach adds additional layers of thinking, but the problem is that without those layers, the solution to the problem is simply not intuitive for the vast majority of people. Adding these additional layers helps at least some people gain a more intuitive understanding of why switching helps.

Why do we need to criticize one tool because it is not equal or better to another?

Probably because we want it to become better :-)

But calling the iPad a failure because it doesn't fit to your work

I'm sorry that's the impression you took away from the article, because that wasn't what I was trying to communicate. Perhaps I shouldn't have said "failure", but I did try to explain what I meant by the word, by going back to what the iPad was originally meant to be: the car to the PC's truck, a better device than a PC for the vast majority of users.

I think it's unfortunate that it failed to achieve this.

It's great that there are authors who still use typewriters, but that's exactly my point: that's what the iPad is. It's a niche tool for people who have very specific needs. That's fine, but I don't think it's the iPad's full potential.

I also don't think it's a problem, I just think it's a missed opportunity. I think the iPad could have had the potential to be a better computing device for many, if not most, people, had Apple made better decisions.

What is this silly ‘real work’ gate-keeping? I guess the author means their work.

I used the term "real work" because that's the term people use when they write "you can actually use the iPad for real work" articles. I think it's clear from context that "real work" means the kind of work Steve Jobs introduced the iPad for, i.e. the work people traditionally do on PCs: writing letters, creating presentations, doing spreadsheets, and so on.

I do acknowledge that people do real work on iPads; I pointed out some examples in the first paragraph. The problem is that these are clearly niche tasks, as is reflected in the iPad's sales numbers.

The iPad works well for some people, who do very specific tasks. That's genuinely great for them, but it's clearly not what Apple had in mind for the iPad. And in my opinion, it's not what the iPad's true potential could have been.

Then why don't these people use iPads? (Maybe because iPads are actually more complicated for most common work-related tasks.)

Your claim that only a minority of people use more than two applications needs a source, because I don't know a single person who gets by with just two applications for work. Pretty much everybody uses at least an email client/office messaging app, a browser, and Word, and those are just the generic tools; there are very few people who don't also use work-related, specialized tools.

I'm sorry.

I'm kind of in the same boat, and I'm slowly, gradually, replacing my Macs with both Windows and Linux devices. As somebody with zero investment in earlier Windows versions, I quite loved Windows 8, and found Windows 10 to be a step back from that, but still a good alternative to the Mac. There are also various different Linux systems that make great desktop operating systems.

Reading the linked article, I have some observations, particularly about the requirements Wesley lists:

One tool for each job.

This strikes me as a somewhat peculiar requirement. The Mac certainly doesn't work that way, particularly since OS X, and as long as the different tools available aren't hurting you, their availability won't be much of a problem.

A sensible/minimal selection of pre-installed applications.

To me, a more useful requirement would be "no bloatware". Linux distros in particular often come with a ton of pre-installed applications, but they are generally good applications, and having them does not cause any harm.

If you buy a Windows computer, on the other hand, you'll likely find its installed Windows version to be borderline unusable due to all of the preinstalled manure.

Simple, easy to use/understand interface

As somebody who has used Macs since the early 90s, I'd argue that ever since Mac OS X, the Mac hasn't really offered that. It's still ahead of most Windows versions (excluding perhaps Windows 8, but clearly including Windows 10, which sadly has reintroduced much of the clutter from earlier Windows versions), but many Linux distros are now much cleaner and simpler than OS X (both Elementary and Pixel come to mind as examples of this).

So to some degrees, Wesley is requiring these operating systems to offer things that the Mac hasn't truly offered since the late 90s. This is not entirely unfair; as a Mac user, he's used to the Mac's oddities and flaws, and so it is perhaps useful to require the system he's switching to to be better than Mac OS in some respects.

Still, I think it's fair to point out that the Mac itself probably couldn't easily fulfill all of these requirements.

Fair points, though I would say two things:

1. Touchscreen computers are in the minority now, but I don't think they'll remain in the minority. Kids are growing up on iPhones, Android phones, and iPads. A computer without a touchscreen will seem increasingly anachronistic to them, so designing against that trend is a backwards-looking strategy.

2. I don't see how the changes Microsoft has made in Windows 10 so far were necessary to make it a better desktop OS. Removing charms, for example, did nothing for desktop PCs. Microsoft could have made the charms features (e.g. search) accessible via the taskbar without removing charms for those who do have touchscreen computers, and can access it easily.

I specifically point out in the article that it is not just loss aversion, but that there are valid reasons to dislike Windows 8.

I also don't criticize old interfaces because they are old. I specifically point out that the desktop metaphor was created for use cases that are very different from how we use computers nowadays. Desktops are not problematic because they're old, but because what we use desktop PCs for has changed a lot.

Yes, precisely!

I'm pointing that out multiple times in the article :-)

The difference is probably that Microsoft's Windows 10 demonstrations show a manually customized system, while my screenshot shows what it looks like by default, on a newly installed system? Other than that, I'm not sure how I could not be running the current Windows 10 preview, because, as far as I know, it's the only build that supports continuum.

I've never seen the wifi connection issue you describe on my Surface. And I know a bunch of people who, like me, use Windows 8 in Metro mode.

I like Windows 8 on the desktop. I agree that it has issues, but I also point that out in the article.

As for "undermining people's opinions": while I have no doubt that there are plenty of people who genuinely gave Windows 8 a chance, and found it severely wanting, I think it's fair to say that there are at least as many who never did, and just joined in on the bashing. Personally, I've seen a number of people who made jokes about Windows 8, but changed their opinions once they actually saw it on my Surface. It's a bit like Windows Vista, which people suddenly quite liked, once it was renamed to Windows 7 :-)

The actual point of the loss aversion thing, though, was to point out how Microsoft failed when it introduced Windows 8. I write this blog for designers, and learning from other people's mistakes is one reason why I write it. Loss aversion is an important concept in design; a conclusion to draw from this is that design changes should occur gradually, and not be forced upon people with a single, sweeping change.

Yeah, I didn't put down the whole story in the article. I actually did talk to support at some point (there's no email address, so I had to call them). The first-level support rep wasn't able to help me, and I spent so much time talking to that person that I simply didn't have the time to start fresh with somebody else. Maybe I'll try again when I have a day off.

I think that's a fair point if you're talking about a disk that's attached to a computer. Yes, the file system on the disk restricts what you can do.

For a cloud file synchronization app, though, I'd expect Microsoft to not let these kinds of restrictions leak down to clients.

Yes. Lots of Mac users do it. Goes back to the old 68000 Macs, still works on OS X. True, it's not a great idea if you use the CLI to interact with your computer, but old Macs never had a CLI, and lots of OS X users never open Terminal.

I think the relevant thing is the d-pad.

I think the fact that there were many joysticks before the NES came out, and many other kinds of input devices, kind of shows that the d-pad was a non-obvious invention. In hindsight, it seems super obvious, but back then, it was a major invention.

You're right, I forgot about the fact that it was "bundled" with an additional game. Personally, I only found out about this after I bought it; I'm not sure how much the bundling helped Mario Kart's game sales. But it's a fair point.

I didn't want to pick Nintendo Land because the way it was sold is not entirely straightforward. For example, some copies were bundled with a controller.

I didn't want to use NSMB or 3D World as examples because Mario platformers are often outliers when it comes to sales. I guess The Wind Waker HD would have been a good example, because it sold really well despite being an HD remake of an older game.

Nintendo also released PC software, e.g. Mario Teaches Typing. And they've released a Pokédex for iOS.

I think it is party due to marketing, but I don't think that's the only issue with the Wii U. Other issues include the fact that there's no killer game that explains why the new controller is really needed (most games just mirror the TV to the controller, or show inventory or a map on the controller), the fact that there's only one controller with a screen, so most games that use it have asymmetric offline multiplayer gameplay (which can be difficult to explain to people), and the fact that playing the Wii U doesn't look as much fun as playing bowling or tennis on the Wii did.

Don't get me wrong, I think the Wii U is a console worth owning, and right now, it probably has the best games library of all current-gen TV consoles. I also think that poor marketing and misguiding naming play a role in its poor performance — why not call it the Wii 2, to clearly show that it is different and new?

But I don't think that its failure can be attributed solely to marketing.

I think this is a little bit revisionist. In hindsight, much of what Nintendo did seems common, because it has become common. Back then, stuff like the rumble pack or the analog stick or a controller that has directional control on both sides actually was innovative.

I think they can keep the prices for their old games up by keeping them on their own platforms. On iOS, Super Metroid would look expensive at 8 bucks. On the 3DS, that's just what games cost.

Yes, you're right, Apple has added more stuff to the Finder, but as you imply when you mention Path Finder, accretion of stuff isn't really progress.

Here are some specific things that I'm thinking about when I say that "the world has changed":

When the Mac came out, the idea was that you'd have a small number of locally stored files from a small number of applications. You'd have some text files you created in your text editor, some image files you created in your image editor, and so on.

Today, though, neither the "few files" assumption, nor the "locally stored" assumption, nor even the "files" assumption holds true.

"Few files": people have a lot of files. They have thousands of images, downloaded mp3s, a decade of documents and letters, possibly hundreds of thousands of emails, electronic bills, applications, and so on.

"Locally stored": files aren't just local anymore. People may have images on Flickr, spreadsheet documents on Google, letters on their Office account, and so on. And files should be accessible from their phones, their tablets, their computers, the web...

"Files": These things aren't even necessarily files. From the user's point of view, is an mp3 a file? Should it be shown in file system? How should something like a piece of music exist in something like the Finder? What about a friend on Facebook, or somebody from your email client's address book, would it make sense to show something like that inside the application that appears when you start your computer? If somebody sends you a file via email, would it make sense for your file browser to understand that relationship, and allow you to, say, browse files based on people?

I think all of these changes in how we use computers warrant a rethinking of how we should interact with our data.