This is a guest post by Yuvi Zalkow. He writes books and makes cool screencasts.
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John Gruber pointed to a post last week on Microsoft’s blog regarding the new Windows Explorer.
The blog post goes into great detail about Microsoft’s thinking with regard to redesigning Explorer for Windows 8. It talks about how they carefully considered what users use most in Explorer and how they tried to make those things more accessible (by sticking those features in their toolbar ribbon thingy).
Now before I criticize Windows Explorer, I should clarify that I don’t think Apple’s Finder is a beautiful thing. It’s awkward and unintuitive to the non-power-user. Whenever I’m helping a novice Mac user, I always initially sympathize with them (“I know, I know, it’s pretty squirrelly…”). And I myself make heavy use of third party tools to get by (e.g. Total Finder, Default Folder X). There have been some nice changes to Finder in Lion, but it still suffers from many of the same awkwardnesses. I still see the look of fear in a new user’s eyes when they have to confront Finder to find something.
But here’s the thing. Gruber mentioned that “Apple and Microsoft are heading in very different directions, UI-wise.” That’s totally true. But I think this Windows Explorer article illustrates something bigger than a UI issue. As far as I can tell, with the promise of iCloud and other Mac OS trends, Apple is trying to do away with the average user even thinking about the idea of a file system. That’s the promise for tomorrow with Apple. In the meantime, Microsoft looks like they’re attempting to build a slightly better yesterday.
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Great minds think alike Yuvi (or at least we do). I’m biting off that Gruber piece (I mean adding commentary) as well tomorrow. Hope you don’t mind I just ripped some of this off as well to add to it.
Really hits on the difference between the two companies approaches to problems. If it’s broken, keep fixing it vs If it’s broken, can we get rid of it… I’ll let you guess who is who.
Michael — Cool. I look forward to reading your piece. Yeah, it feels like the Microsoft blog post illustrates some clear differences between the companies. Will be interesting to see where things go over the next few years…
And more often than not it just seems as if they are making those decisions to amplify the differences. Not to make a better experience.
[Windows 7 is much more user-friendly than Windows Vista. I don't like that. - The Big Bang Theory - YouTube](http://youtube.com/watch?v=QKZUg-bTOak)
I basically stopped using Windows before XP came out. Windows 95′s and 98′s more Mac OS-like UIs still seem like the easiest to use to me. My dad (the stereotypical noob user) also preferred 98 to XP and XP to 7.
Unlike Gruber, I see both Apple and Microsoft going in the same direction. Apple’s philosophy is veiled in thinking like “we can abstract out the file system by hiding ~/Library”. But both Mac OS and Windows are getting increasingly bloated and breaking conventions that really shouldn’t be broken. Over time, focusing on trends or marketable aspects like tablet or smartphone-like interfaces and teh Cloud will only make things worse.
Funny video clip.
Though I agree that doing things like hiding the user’s library folder is not such an interesting step, I’m still curious where this whole iCloud thing will go. It’s true that it would be a mistake to excessively mimic the smartphone interface. But Apple’s iOS interface successfully got the average user to stop thinking “where exactly did I put that document?” I have no idea what iCloud will look like (I’m not a developer either) but I still have a sense that Apple (with iCloud and the Mac App Store and other recent changes) could eventually get regular Mac OS users to also stop asking that same question.
I think it is a baby step. First hide it, eventually take it away. Otherwise we’d just freak when the try to pull the rug out from under us.
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