Niko Kitsakis (via Michael Tsai’s blog):
People called good Macintosh software “Mac-like” because that’s what it felt like.
If an application did not adhere to those seemingly unwritten rules, you would develop an itch in the back of your head. Something was off.This “Mac-like” feeling was at the core of the classic Mac OS era. It’s what gave the Mac its legendary status and its place in history. And while the first versions of OS X broke with some conventions, things became better as OS X progressed. That is to say, until 10.7 came out and started a trend of questionable design decisions that has been continuing ever since.
This is a short-but-sweet post that lays out a specific example of the power of a properly constructed interface. The oldest “Save changes” dialog asked a question, but populated the response buttons with Yes, No, and Cancel. A look at the button only was not helpful.
This evolved into the use of verbs in response buttons, with Save, Don’t save, and Cancel.
The Mac design language was so powerful, and so widely adopted, that any app that did not follow the rules stood out like a sore thumb. Mac applications were instantly recognizable, and apps from outsiders tended to look ugly, in comparison, as those outsiders did not know the rules to follow.
Does the modern macOS and iOS app universe still hew to a common standard? Are Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines lost in the incredible complexity of application creation? Are we better off with fewer rules and less oversight on the things we create? Or might the pendulum swing back, with apps that are recognized as following the iOS and macOS HIGs?
Design drift happens to a lot of companies that started out with consistent usability in mind.
The obfuscation of Save and Save As… into Save/Duplicate/Rename/Export/etc. was the stupidest thing ever. And NOW when you edit something like a jpg in Pixelmator you have to export the new version of the picture as a jpg (which is not new), but then when you quit the program it comes up and asks you if you want to save the picture (in .pxm format) with DELETE button in the dialog box. I never saved a .pxm version, so what am I supposed to be deleting!? It’s just crazy. It’s unbelievable how calming it is to use my old iPod touch on iOS6 or fire up Snow Leopard on an old MacBook to test something. They were so clear and obvious and simple and snappy. Now everything is just a mess of hidden things.
“This evolved into the use of verbs in response buttons, with Save, Don’t save, and Cancel.”
What’s the difference between “don’t save” and “cancel”…?
Cancel means “don’t do the thing you were just asked to do.” I think it would have been more fair to call it “Don’t Close” or “Don’t Quit,” but the behaviour of Cancel used to be pretty standard. I think it’s less so now.
I totally disagree there. Making users EVER think about saving was a necessary tradeoff in the floppy days; it should have disappeared as soon as we moved to hard drives.
And multi-level Undo/Redo should have been ubiquitous sooner.
But the obviousness of “Cancel” was always reliant upon the clarity of the query, no?
Well, yes and no. Theoretically the user knows what they just tried to do, and Cancel means don’t do it. 🙂
I never had a problem distinguishing the first to mean ‘don’t save and continue closing’ and the second to mean ‘stop closing this file’, nor did most of the people I’ve ever worked with.
“No icon, no verbs and the unsafe option is right in between the safe ones. This is what happens when you hire Windows developers.”
That is pure golden TRUTH!
Thanks, I’m rather proud of that bit 😉