How Apple made me hate lions

Posted by iCello on December 25, 2011 06:46 pm 24

I'm a Mac user. It's traditional in my family, and I have been for most of my life, after a short, painful interlude with Windows XP. I like the industrial design of the hardware, the attention to little details, the keyboard and trackpad on their laptops. You get the picture. However, the main thing I've always loved, that I've bragged about to my Windows-using friends, is the OS. It's so beautiful, so fast, so easy to use, and it just works. But on July 20th, 2011, it all changed: Apple released Lion.
I wasn't particularly looking forward to it, I didn't like most of their ideas, and I was mad that they were trying to make their product that I do like(OS X) more like the product that I don't(iOS, the OS of the iPad and iPhone.) But, like any good iLemming, I upgraded on day one. There was a short honeymoon, new-OS-smell period where I liked some of the changes. I still do like a few of the features, including Mission Control. But then the problems started really setting in. The new multitouch gestures are awful. Full screen apps are a decent idea, and I thought the solution to one of my problems with Macs, but if you use two monitors, you can't use your second display when your're running a full screen app. It turns your secondary monitor into a completely useless picture of faux-linen. The "re-open windows" feature is truly annoying. Plus, Lion is horrifically slow and crashy, at least on my 3 year old laptop. Read on after the break:

But worst of all is the design language and metaphors. Since Lion is the last major OS that Steve Jobs had a hand in designing, I find this strange; He was one of the most famous designers of all time, and was obsessed with everything about a computer, from the software to the packaging, and even the internal components, being beautiful. Then why, may I ask, did he write off on this:

That is, quite possibly, the most sickening example of user interface design I have ever seen in my life. And that includes Sony's old Connect music player. I actually felt very slightly physically ill the first time I opened the Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Address Book, which the above picture depicts. But it's not just that app... It's everything. Mission Control, though a nice feature, looks pretty bad:

Again, with the fake linen. Here's the calendar app, iCal, which admittedly has never been very well designed, even pre-Lion, and is quite buggy, to boot

It looks even worse on month view, but I don't hate my readers so I'm not going to include a picture of that. Oh, and then there is the ultimate in UI annoyances, which goes by the deceivingly innocent name of Launchpad:

Launchpad's actually pretty nice looking, it's more the functionality and the general design philosophy that bothers me. A grid of icons is debatably useful even on the small screen of an iPhone; Personally, I prefer both Android's approach of widgets, free space and occasional icons, and Windows Phone 7's Live Tile UI language. But on a Mac, it's just plain stupid. There is so much more you can do with your home screen, and besides, if you want to see all of your apps, just go to the Applications folder in the Finder. Or use Spotlight, one of OS X's best features. Oh and that brings me to another issue with modern OS X: By default, there is no hard drive icon on your desktop. This implies to me that Apple does not want you using the Finder, OS X's file manager, and just hasn't gotten around to getting rid of it yet. This is not a good thing.

I know that appearances are very objective, and that my dislike of the UI metaphors of Lion may be just my personal taste. But if we know anything about the inner workings at Apple, we know that function follows form. I think that therefore, interface design can be seen as a sign of the more overarching philosophies in the company. And I don't like the direction that the new UI choices imply that they're heading.
Who's doing it better? If I don't like Apple's design choices, who's do I like? And why is this posted in the Microserfs forum if its about Apple? Well, I'm not firmly convinced by every element of any OS. But right now, I'm really liking what's going on in mobile UI design. HP Palm webOS was revolutionary at its time, and I still think its one of the best platforms around, at least from a pure design perspective. But its competitors are catching up, and it's not moving forward. I love Google, and Android, but at least up till Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, the UI wasn't cohesive enough to really be good. With ICS, though, I think Google is doing much better. In fact, version 4 of Android is my favorite mobile OS, from both design and functionality perspectives. Nokia's failed MeeGo platform was also quite beautiful. But, and this is going to sound strange coming from me, particularly if you know me, the company that I think is doing UI design best right now is Microsoft. It may sound crazy, since Microsoft is traditionally considered to be horrible at design, though I'm not sure I agree with that. But regardless, with their modern interfaces, they really have an idea. Their Metro style design language is, to me, quite beautiful, and even if you hate it(I know people who do,) you have to admit how great it is that they've unified their products around it. A cohesive ecosystem, with the same design language on every single product, is a great concept: When you go from using your phone to your computer to your TV, you shouldn't have to adjust to an entirely new UI, should you? And Microsoft is doing that.

Additionally, I really like their "Purely Digital" esthetic, which Google is also embracing. Computer programs should not try to look like real devices. The calendar app should not try to look like a paper calendar. The notes app shouldn't look like a memo pad. It may give new users an initial sense of security and familiarity, but ultimately it's deceiving, and pointless: Those apps can't be as good as their real world counter points, but they can be better. This is, I believe, a widespread issue within Apple - just look at the earlier screenshots in this post, or the iOS user interface.

There are certainly elements of Microsoft's design ideas that I don't like, and Metro hasn't been enough to convince me to switch to Windows Phone or seriously contemplate using Windows 8 as my primary OS. And the huge amount of white space is excessive for larger screens, in my opinion. It works on a phone, but not quite so well on a TV or monitor.

By and large, our computers are powerful enough now, and feature complete. There are two avenues that still need to be enhanced in my opinion: Design and intelligence. Intelligence, or making the computer smarter so that it can interact more sensibly with users, and eventually artificial intelligence, seems quite difficult. But making a truly great, cohesive UI, across all platforms, seems doable - I just wish someone would do it. But Microsoft is probably the closest right now, I believe.

Note: This is a slightly modified version of an article I posted on my blog.