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Living Room / Re: Why Macs Suck
« Last post by Carol Haynes on January 19, 2006, 04:47 AM »Actually I agree too - user interface design standardisation should be adhered to - that doesn't mean that all apps have to look like clones- but standard ways of working should be common to all applications. Problems really arise under all OS's when developers go their own way - especially when they take over the whole screen and stop you working with multiple apps, or hog the CPU so much that the system grinds to a halt.
Both Doze and OSX suffer from the same design floor though - fixed place menu access is inefficient, especially if you are doing something keyboard based. In Doze it is worse as the menus are at the top of the current window but below the window title - it is therefore very easy to move the mouse and miss. OSX menus are at the top of the screen but they also suffer from a similar problem - if you move the mouse to the top of the screen you hit a row of dead pixels.
I read an article a while ago where a group of users were studied using cameras and screen capture software to measure eye/hand movement and interface usage, and the common problem with OSs at the present time is that they are all inefficient in their use of menus in terms of forcing care onto users motor skills. They cam to the conclusion that a good design criteria is that over shooting with a mouse should have no consequences to efficiency - ie. on a Mac bash the pointer to the top of the screen however hard you like and menu opens.
The other major criticism they had could be levelled at many developers and especially MS and Adobe for the plethora of small buttons which need to be hit very accurately and the speed cost of using this method.
Shame I can't remember where I saw the article.
Both Doze and OSX suffer from the same design floor though - fixed place menu access is inefficient, especially if you are doing something keyboard based. In Doze it is worse as the menus are at the top of the current window but below the window title - it is therefore very easy to move the mouse and miss. OSX menus are at the top of the screen but they also suffer from a similar problem - if you move the mouse to the top of the screen you hit a row of dead pixels.
I read an article a while ago where a group of users were studied using cameras and screen capture software to measure eye/hand movement and interface usage, and the common problem with OSs at the present time is that they are all inefficient in their use of menus in terms of forcing care onto users motor skills. They cam to the conclusion that a good design criteria is that over shooting with a mouse should have no consequences to efficiency - ie. on a Mac bash the pointer to the top of the screen however hard you like and menu opens.
The other major criticism they had could be levelled at many developers and especially MS and Adobe for the plethora of small buttons which need to be hit very accurately and the speed cost of using this method.
Shame I can't remember where I saw the article.
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