Comments on: Apple’s Grand User Experience Unification

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By: Hey, Windows 8 doesn’t suck – iMobitech | Internet Mobile Technology

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 09:45:29 +0000

[...] iOS vs. the desktop version, and former Apple President Jean-Louis Gassee points out that the two Apple user interfaces are converging in terms of [...]

By: Microsoft Surface and the Unified User Experience | Involution Studios

Microsoft Surface and the Unified User Experience | Involution Studios — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 03:56:16 +0000

[...] February, when Apple announced OS X 10.8, Mountain Lion, software industry thought leader Jean-Louis Gassée coined the phrase Grand Unified User Experience to describe what he saw in Apple’s multi-platform operating systems that crossed mobile, [...]

By: MX

MX — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 02:26:14 +0000

“Furthermore, when you close an app’s last window, the app quits. Apple recently started doing something similar, but it’s apparently limited to a few utility programs…”

Unless I’m misunderstanding your meaning, this isn’t quite right: there’s nothing at all new about Apple apps that quit when you close the window. The utility apps you mention have worked this way for many years.

Yes, at first it looks like two uncoordinated models for whether app quitting behavior upon closing the last window – but there’s actually a logic behind this, and it’s a sensible logic – *when it’s consistently followed*. (Unfortunately, Apple itself doesn’t consistently follow it, and that’s where criticism is deserved.)

For anyone not aware of the Mac’s logic behind window closing and app quitting, here’s an overview:
http://www.mactivist.com/blog/macemx/2009/01/understanding_macs_and_pcs_closing_apps

Final note: Re the Mail app, let me note for the record that the problems you experience are by no means universal. Mail is fast and rock solid for me. I hope Apple can find and fix the reason why it isn’t so for everyone…

By: .log : об избирательности

.log : об избирательности — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 09:17:29 +0000

[...] devices will still likely choose an Android device in the near term. But people looking for a “grand user interface unification” may give up some control in order to gain a seamless experience across devices and choose iOS, [...]

By: Hamranhansenhansen

Hamranhansenhansen — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 12:16:49 +0000

I wanted it to be called “Lioness.”

The original Mac OS X was “Mac OS Pro.” It had to appeal to Mac OS users as a better Mac OS. Then the Intel Mac was “PC Pro” — a better PC for PC users. Now, the Mac is an iPad Pro. You already have an iPad and you need more. It makes sense for all the iPad things to be the same on the Mac. But the reason you use a Mac will be what is different from iOS. For example, running Xcode or Photoshop.

Another big thing will be Retina Display. If that comes to the Mac this year then a lot of app resources would have to be redone for Retina. In that case, the realistic interfaces make more sense. The idea that you can just paint the entire digital universe in blue or blue gradient is the absurd result of making unrealistic interfaces. You recognize an app based on its look, including the texture. These are 3D GPU objects we are looking at. They have texture, even if you choose a flat one. If every app does that, it’s Soviet.

By: Why Mountain Lion Could Blunt Android’s Momentum | GambiaPage

Why Mountain Lion Could Blunt Android’s Momentum | GambiaPage — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 06:51:29 +0000

[...] getting to my own experiences, let me share a thoughtful piece that homes in on what Apple is doing, from Jean-Louis Gassée’s point of view. Here is a key excerpt from his most recent Monday [...]

By: Why Mountain Lion Could Blunt Android’s Momentum | androidless.net

Why Mountain Lion Could Blunt Android’s Momentum | androidless.net — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 06:25:43 +0000

By: The Internet of Things, Seeding Boston Start Ups, and One User Experience for All | Involution Studios

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:01:54 +0000

[...] has a great article dissecting Apple’s Grand Unified User Experience, the term coined by Jean-Louis Gassée in his analysis of the OS. The essential idea is that no matter what the device — laptop, tablet, or phone — the user [...]

By: Lun Esex

Lun Esex — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 22:46:18 +0000

“What I fail to hear is an explanation for the need to have two menubars: one on top of the 27″ iMac I’m using right now, and one inside the Safari or Pages window.”
.
@ JLG: As you wish:
.
First off, Safari and Pages don’t HAVE menu bars in their windows, they have tool bars. A menu bar and a tool bar are very different in form, function, and purpose.
.
As distinct from a tool bar, a menu bar can be clicked once and scrubbed across to reveal all of the menus*. The major items in a menu bar are single, succinct words. The layout of a Mac’s menu bar is very standardized: The user always knows where the Apple, (application), File, Edit, and Help menus are going to be, and the Window menu is always going to be one of the furthest right items. Widgets that effect the system as a whole are always going to be on the far right of the menu bar. Most of these standardized options would be inappropriate and/or cluttering inside a document window.
.
A tool bar, on the other hand, has none of these conventions. The arrangement of items in a tool bar is entirely arbitrary. Any consistency in tool bars between applications is litte more than coincidental. Many tool bar controls are single-click items, with no menus attached to them. The tool bar is populated exclusively with options that apply solely to the document you’re working on in that single window. Tool bars are customizable by the user, allowing more or less frequently used options to be added or removed.
.
Then consider that Apple’s best selling computers are not 27″ iMacs with wide, expansive screens like you have. Instead they are laptops with a most common screen size of 1440×900 (on the 15″ MacBook Pro and 13″ MacBook Air), and as small a size as 1366×768 on the 11″ MacBook Air. On your 27″ iMac it might theoretically be possible to fit all of the items from both an application’s menu bar and its tool bar into a single strip at the top of a window or the top of the screen, but this is not possible on these smaller laptop screens. Even though there appears to be an amount of duplication of items between menus and toolbars in Pages and Safari, removing these duplicates still wouldn’t reduce the total number of options and controls required in these applications enough to make them fit. So there’s always going to be at least two rows of controls. In this case, it’s best to take advantage of Fitt’s Law and have one row of them be at the very top of the screen.
.
Given all this, full screen mode is really targeted at use on constrained displays like these laptop screens. Automatically hiding the menu bar and dock gives that much more screen real estate for the single document that full screen mode is supposed to allow you to focus on. The toolbar remains, again, to provide you with only the controls that are appropriate for the document in that window.
.
*Fitts’s Law helps here, with the top edge of the screen providing a barrier for you to “push against” as you’re scrubbing. Menus grouped together in a tool bar could be made “scrubbable,” but without that top edge it would require more effort to keep your mouse pointer aligned to them.

By: Jean-Louis Gassée

Jean-Louis Gassée — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:39:52 +0000

@ WaltFrench: Coriolis/Coriolus. Is it a discrete, learned way to say: “Company XYZ is circling the drain”?

By: EB

EB — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:35:51 +0000

Yes, I think we all evolve in our views (I wonder what Tog would say if asked again. I’m sure Romney would change back and forth multiple times ). If you asked me if I’d ever use full screen mode 5 years ago I would have said no (that was before having an iPhone/iPad). Then again, it drives me batty that I cannot have a video window in QuickTime player be full screen on one of my monitors and not take over (Thankfully VLC 2.0 gives me the option of Lion/Mountain Lion full screen, or old style full screen).
And yes, as a developer who is used to using lots of windows, I am not the biggest fan of full screen – but then again, I am not bothered by the single menu up top (the menus you refer to that are on the windows are document windows, and while I see that fitt’s law does not work with those, I am content with them being attached to the documents).
Thanks for engaging!

By: Jean-Louis Gassée

Jean-Louis Gassée — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:34:21 +0000

@ Grzegorz Maj: you’re right, I was speaking metaphorically, that is minimalism versus throe everything against the wall and see what sticks. In that sense, I find the calendar, the address book and, I forgot to mention it, the bookshelf, deviant flourishing that bring neither cognitive nor aesthetic benefits.

By: Jean-Louis Gassée

Jean-Louis Gassée — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:29:22 +0000

@ EB: You’re right, the full-screen setting works great on my 11” MB Air, not so much, IMO, on my 27″ iMac. I used the link in your comment, and also went to the quiz it links to and found both quite interesting. In particular, in view of Apple’s recently increased use of auto hide/reveal for menus and the Dock in full-screen mode, I found askTOG’s condemnation of such features in Windows quite interesting. I much prefer the overall Mac experience to Windows; each time I have to go back to on of my Windows computers, or to tha Parallel VM insided one of my Macs, I find the experience frustrating. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t on eor two ideas to drwa inspiration from. For example, as stated in the note, Windows clones have had recovery partitions for several years, more than 5 if memory serves. OK, I know, they needed those

By: EB

EB — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:23:18 +0000

“What I fail to hear is an explanation for the need to have two menubars: one on top of the 27″ iMac I’m using right now, and one inside the Safari or Pages window. Why are two menubars better than one — especially in the context of Apple’s justly revered less-is-more culture?”

I hear what you are saying. I think that is why they are pushing for yet another Windows (and now iOS) feature, the full screen apps. With the app at full screen, and Mission Control used to move between them, your document’s menu rides right below the menubar.

By: Jean-Louis Gassée

Jean-Louis Gassée — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:13:42 +0000

@ Experienced Mac User and others: I respect your view. What I fail to hear is an explanation for the need to have two menubars: one on top of the 27″ iMac I’m using right now, and one inside the Safari or Pages window. Why are two menubars better than one — especially in the context of Apple’s justly revered less-is-more culture?

By: Jean-Louis Gassée

Jean-Louis Gassée — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:07:31 +0000

@ Alan Goldberg, @ Brian and others: You’re right, terminating a single-window app when its window closes is simple, logical. And, shutting down a multi-window app such as Pages/Word under the same circumstances can be annoying if one wants to immediately start/open another document.
On the other hand, as I do tech support to family/friends/colleagues, I see the confusion between open and not open apps.
This said, as mentioned in the piece, Lion/Mountain Lion is acquiring iOS-like ways of deciding how applications are kept open, or dormant right under the surface, or completely off. See how, as a default, Lion hides the “app open” white dot in the Dock.

By: Jean-Louis Gassée

Jean-Louis Gassée — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 20:59:08 +0000

@ All: Thanks for the “vigourous” feeback, especially on the menubar. Having had several in-person instances of this discussion in various Palo Alto watering holes, I knew I was in the minority.
@ Alan Goldberg: I want to reassure you, I’m not in the Truth business, I just have opinions. One Guardian commenter once hectored me asking ‘Where is your objectivity?’ I was tempted to ask if he could lend me some of his overflowing supply. My views are subjective, honest ones, I try, and, on occasion, misguided.

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:44:51 +0000

Window’s nonsensical closing of app based on the last window is incredibly irritating. It’s assuming you are finished when in fact you are not. I have some apps which behave this way, ported from Windows. For instance, in SPSS, the very widely used statistical software, the app os now compiled in Java. This means that is not only runs slow, can’t print, etc… but it also insists on quitting if you close the last database window. It’s absurd, I have to open an empty database to prevent the stupid app from quitting. And it’s a monster, so it takes a good while, even on the latest hardware, to open.

Menu bar on the window? This is even worse. I don’t care how large the screen is, that is pointless. The edge of the screen is still easier to hit and is consistent. You can turn up your mouse/track speed if it’s taking more than a little flick to get to it. The menus on the window are just ugly, look at iTunes in Windows, for a great example.

By: Alan Goldberg

Alan Goldberg — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 10:34:08 +0000

>Furthermore, when you close an app’s last window, the app quits. Apple recently started doing something similar…

There is a logic behind this. C’mon JLG. Please don’t confuse opinion with fact.

Applications which are uni-window e.g. DVD Player, System Prefs, will quit if you close their window because there is no reason for them to hang around anymore. However multiwindow apps (e.g. apps which enable you to create multiple documents (Pages, Word, Keynote etc.)) do not. Because you might want to create another doc after you’ve closed the last one and not want to wait for the app to relaunch.

The multitouch user experience is only now starting to hit adolescence. Look at the new Clear iPhone app for an example of an iOS app which has NO buttons – which are probably a legacy from a point and click interface.

We live in exciting times.

Alan

By: Lun Esex

Lun Esex — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 10:02:39 +0000

Surely there’s no coincidence to JLG’s desire to see menu bars moved into app windows that his own, long departed BeOS had them that way.

I personally expect that what we’ll see Apple do with the menu bar is allow it to be scalable, like the Dock, once 4x HiDPI displays come to Macs. The Apple menu and all the menu bar widgets are going to need new 4x graphics, anyway. It would make sense at that time to give them even higher resolution versions that can be scaled like icons in the Dock and Finder windows are. With your big 27″ display you can then choose to upsize the menu bar a bit to make using it easier (and seeing the name of the current app easier, too). This will also greatly help people with vision problems, so it might be targeted specifically at them. The Universal Access control panel would then be the place you’d find the menu bar scaling options.