(That title amused me far more than it should have … that’s the kind of day I’m having). So, what was I going to write about? Oh yeah: I just read a review of Apple’s OS X Leopard release and, well, ‘disappointing’ is how the new user interface sounds.
The review, Doing the Leopard Moan, by Matt Neuburg on TidBITS paints a sad picture of what was an excellent user interface that experts, deaf to real world user input, have “improved.”
I have to confess that I have yet to get my hands on Leopard but if even a quarter of Matt’s criticisms of the UI are reasonable then Apple has taken a significant step backward rather than forward.
I find it curious that Apple seems have gone down a similar path to Microsoft with their Vista operating system and produced a product that appears to have been designed to meet marketing goals rather than user needs and wants. Sometimes improvements should be incremental – evolutionary rather than revolutionary – to ensure that people who want to remain productive don’t have to change the ways that they think and work.
Imagine if the car industry pulled stunts like Apple and Microsoft have done with their user interfaces: When you got into your new car you would have to experiment for a few hours just to figure out how to turn on the radio and a few more to roll the windows up and down.
If only Apple had made all of the user interface “improvements” optional … that would mean that if the new ideas were truly useful users would try them and stick with them while the UI features that didn’t really work would languish. Apple could then learn from that process and ensure that the next round of polishing was built on solid ground. That’s where the wisdom of crowds really pays off …
