First of all, i grew up on mac os 6 and 7, and I would like to thank you for contributing to one of the most enjoyable experiences i have ever had from a computer. to this day, with dozen other operating systems under my belt, i still look back fondly to my days on os 7.
the unix editor vi flys in the face of every usability guideline on the planet. yet it has enjoyed widespread use and popularity, even amoung people who arnt forced to learn it. wouldnt new users want something that doesnt send their brain into tailspins when they operate it? wouldnt we get a natural selection effect, where given the choice between an editor that is easy on the brain, and one that requires it to adjust to an alien paradigm, new users would choose the easy one?
at one point do things like functionality and flexibility start to outweigh consistancy in design? you can accomplish more in five keystrokes in vi then five minutes of clicking in word, does that sufficiently outweigh otherwise unnacceptable behavior from an application? what about things like the unix cli, where the arbitrary linking of various commands can almost give you an on the fly program. i would say that the mac ui is much more usable then bash based on what i know of design principals, but there are things that the gui simply cannot do, and the cli can.
thanks in advance for the help,
Matt
Bruce Tognazzini 2005 [email protected] 3/11/05
to me Natural selection is indeed at work. VI is a way of maintaining the priesthood, forcing those who can't learn it out, providing job security for those who can. You see the same forces at work in other industries, such as flying.
The ideal interface 1) eliminates unnecessary complexity, 2) offers a visual, straightforward path to all necessary functionality, and 3) offers higher-speed, more abstract methods to produce results in the most efficient way possible. Mac does the first two; VI does the last. Windows does 2 only.
-tog Bruce Tognazzini Principal Nielsen Norman Group 2 Medway Rd. Woodside, CA 94062