News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

December 30, 2006

software

Inconsistency breeds contempt

Posted Dec. 30, ’06, 8:03 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Software

iTunes Scroll barAround the time of the “15 Things Apple Should Change in OS X” piece, one user offered a counter-argument titled “The Genius of Apple’s User Interface Themes.” His rebuttal, unfortunately, struck me as not-quite-on-the-mark and I intended to write a response that was both incisive and insightful, along with a splash of flair.

Then I got distracted, apparently—probably by something shiny. This morning, I found the wind taken out of my sails by none other than my close friend and frequent collaborator Jason over at Doombot. As usual, Jason touches on most of the points that I myself was planning to make. Isn’t he smart:

Tim (of the “Genius” article) argues that the violations described in the “15 Things” article must be both intentional and brilliant. He offers an analogy: if all your remote controls looked exactly the same, wouldn’t it be hard to figure out which remote control to use? But hey, I can make up weird analogies too: if your TV came with six remote controls and they all looked different, could you tell it apart from the remote for your VCR? Or: if your TV remote had buttons in the shape of a bear, a wombat, and a cherry, which would you use to change the volume? (Hint: second analogy may be less useful.)
To his analysis I add this: Tim’s argument is that variation makes it more useful to tell applications with different functions apart. That’s true: I don’t want my music player or my mail app to look like my web browser. But that’s no excuse for using different scrollbars and button styles in places where using consistent widgets would work perfectly fine. That is, variation for the sake of variation seems to me both pointless and misguided.


6 Comments

DWesnor said:

There is one good reason for changing things up a bit - to throw it out there and see what people say about it. Apple may have changed up iTunes to get a reaction to something they were thinking about putting in 10.5.

December 30, 2006 9:08 AM
Mikolaj Kamler said:

I absolutely agree with you Dan - consistent interfaces were always the strength of Mac OS - even more with OS X. The interface inconsistencies are even more disturbing in Apples' pro-level apps, but that's probably also because they are more complex... That said, the latest iteration of iTunes is IMHO the best so far. I dislike too much eye-candy (see Aqua) and neither am I a fan of the brushed-metal look. The polished, clean version of iTunes' interface is what I'd like to see in Leopard - but system-wide of course, without any weird inconsistencies...

December 30, 2006 10:00 AM
Tim Bromhead said:

Hi, thanks for continuing the debate! I've written a follow up here:
bla.st/site/blog/33/

December 30, 2006 3:56 PM
James said:

Hi Tim,

I want to bring the discussion back here since your website does not have comments.

Your observation on differentiating Folders, Icons and such belong to common usability findings. Icons need to be distinguishable when converted to B&W and when slightly blurred to account for color blindness and poor vision.

The problem is that the interface itself should not always change because this prevents the application for being easily learn-able. I however do not see much inconsistency between the different graphic themes on the Mac. iTunes, Safari and the like are all easily usable applications. I think iTunes on a Windows box is the odd one out, because unfortunately Apple doesn't make it XP enough for those users.

December 30, 2006 7:46 PM
Island in the Net Author Profile Page said:

I agree with you Dan and I like the remote control analogy. Imagine if each electronic makers used a different icon set of icons for play, fast forward, stop etc instead of the large right arrow, the double right arrow, and the the black square.

December 31, 2006 4:24 AM
spiderbat said:

Consistency is paramount in an OS! One of the best features Mac OS possessed from the start was due to the ability of its creators to select some fundamental actions that have to be performed while using the OS and the applications (cut, copy, paste, scroll, etc.) and to dictate an unique way they had to be performed throughout the system and every application.

December 31, 2006 8:26 AM

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