Eduo's Profile

Zahadum: This is not misleading. Foxtrot indeed works better than spotlight, as it's explicitly compared with it (and comes ahead) and this can only be done in Tiger. I personally love the idea of Spotlight, but hate its execution. It feels slow when searching globally (I don't have issues with search within Safari, iPhoto or Mail, on the other hand). I'll take Foxtrot for a Spin, as so far I've lived happily with Quicksilver (which is also much faster).

MacGlee: This is hardly to make mail.app look like Outlook. Vertical panes have been used for mail for a long time (back to text interfaces and X11 programs). The view is nice and the space is better used in a widescreen monitor if mail.app is set-up this way (as it's the same orientation of the monitor itself). Obviously, it's subjective. You should not use it because it doesn't fit your style or you are not convinced by the different layout, but deciding not to use something because it looks similar to outlook is not the best of reasons, to my eyes.

I think there is a lot of misunderstanding of history here coupled with an attempt to make a point that was already decided before the argument and investigation started. All OSes have IGs. The first HIG was from Apple and the key word here was the H. The study was sponsored by Apple to try and find what would be the best way to do things that were NOT being done for average users at the moment. Menus, icons, windows and the like were unknown at the time, which meant they all had to be "invented" in a way (not conceptually, but in the sense that they had to be defined in a way that made sense for the public, that at the time knew nothing about them). Now there may be other OSes that have their own HIG, but this is because the name has stuck. Most of the early Microsoft IGs were focused on doing the same as Apple but differently enough so they couldn't be sued. Almost everything in the linux world GUI is copied from any of the two above so it doesn't cound (no, really, it doesn't. Very few attempts at creating new GUI conventions in Linux have passed the "grandma" test and this is not a coincidence). So, yes, Apple funded their research. This isn't big news. It's not important that Apple did it but that it was done to come up with the best possible GUI conventions for the time. Apple didn't define the HIG after the whole OS was defined but it was the other way around. What keys to use, how should icons behave, what should the location of menubars be and, yes, how many buttons should a mouse have. A completely different point is the fact that nowadays Apple is one of the companies that stomp all over the HIG documents but to me that is a good sign. The HIG was originally designed for a different public than the modern one (yes, there are people these days that know as little as new users did back then, but information is more readily available) and its showing its age. You should do much better pointing the incompatibilities between the HIG and Apple soft itself than taking the completely misguided route of missing the point that the HIG was made before the Mac GUI was completed and, thus, the GUI is *obviously* based in the HIG and not the other way around. Apple went with one-button mice because the HIG specified so, and it specified so because the study had shown it was easier for new users (the original mac was all about friendliness and ease of use). You're also incorrect in thinking that disagreeing with you means we agree with your arguments. I disagree in the way you have put the HIG documents and the history behind it. I'd be the first one to say no IG can ever be universal and the most I'd say is that Apple's is the closest I have ever seen to take as much care of new users as experienced users (experienced users usually forget they were n00bs once and decide all the little things that made their lives easier should be scrapped). I like a set of IGs that *tries* to make a computer as easy to use for me as for my dad or my son. I think that is a very commendable position. Again, the point is moot, both for you and for the users you refer to. The HIG is wonderful and probably the best IG there is, but Apple itself doesn't follow it coherently and the discrepancies of the OSX HIG vs. the Classic HIGH (which is the better of the two) are enough to separate them as different beasts. Also, when will you fix the damned comments page so one doesn't spend half an hour writing a response just to have it error out because it didn't provide fields for registering simultaneously? Either put the authentication fields or don't put a falsely-available form or put the authentication afterwards remembering the comment text.