Ranting Kenya

Due to my desk positioning in the office, I’m frequently privy to many conversations around the office. One that caught my ear the other day was a coworker complaining about the Mac OS X GUI and that they preferred their Windows 7 laptop for many tasks. Music to my ears. Not because I hate Macs (far from it), but the general public consensus about seems to be all pro-Mac without really any hard thinking about the platforms.

Most of the people who switched to Mac in the last couple years have switched likely from an old Windows XP installation, bypassed Vista and Windows 7. Vista aside (not terrible if you waited for service pack 1), Windows 7 is fantastic, and many people don’t realize this.

But this isn’t a post regarding Windows 7 specifically, or the “which is better a better OS” debate. They’re both great at different things. This is a post comparing the two GUIs assuming the user is using the mouse the year is 2010. I’m going to look at user behaviour, Fitts’ law (in concept, not with hard figures) and computers and how they’ve advanced hardware-wise and how this affects GUI elements.

Fitts’ Law

A quick review of Fitts’ law, upon which all my points refer to. The law essentially states that for user using a mouse cursor on a screen, the distance the mouse must travel and the size of the target are related to how easy it is to acquire a target. Target acquisition is the most fundamental action a user takes in any GUI. So, if a mouse must travel far, the difficulty goes up. The difficulty also increases if the target is small.

The Law Applied

The application of Fitts’ law is obviously the most important aspect of it. A little trick that UIs have been doing is placing buttons or menu items on the edge of the screen. This has the effect of making a target area of infinite size (since the mouse cursor cannot extend past the edges of the screen). In the case of Apple’s computers, due to their patent, they always place their menus on the very top edge of the screen (not sure why Linux distros aren’t affected by this patent, obscurity I suppose). File, Edit, View etc. are always in the same place for every program. This is great because it makes consistent mousing to the menu bar much easier. This is good for Macs since they’ve always been mouse-oriented.

Similarily, Windows has been using this trick for the start menu (and some other elements). And in fact, the start menu is probably the easiest to acquire of any UI element on any OS since it’s in the bottom left corner (by default). It essentially has infinite width and height. You don’t even have to look, just throw the mouse that way and click and you got it. However, depending on what you’re doing, you probably don’t need to access this menu nearly as much as the file menu in a program (this is just assuming your only mousing within the active program).

At any rate, due to the way the Mac OS was designed (I’m not just talking OS X… pretty much every version I can think of), this has always been an advantage for Apple.

Things Change

I believe Mac’s advantage in this area is now a liability for many users for a number of reasons.

1. Computer resolutions are much much larger. Just ten years ago (anecdotally), 1024 x 768 was the resolution used on nearly every computer. Now, computers are generally at least 1280 x 1024, or any number of widescreen resolutions (1920 x 1200, 1680 x 1050, 1280 x 960). This means total screen area has increased in general anywhere between 150% to nearly 300%. This doesn’t even take into account multiple monitor setups, which are continuing to gain in popularity. Multiply this effect for Mac users since Apple has truly been pushing high quality, larger displays in the last ten years. Ask any user of a 27 inch iMac how large the display is. A far cry from the resolutions when the patent was filed. What were they? 480 pixels wide?
2. Computer power in terms of multi-tasking is also generations ahead. More and more computers are now truly capable of running multiple programs simultaneously. Having a program open on the right-hand side of your 27 inch iMac, and going to the file menu that’s in the top left corner is a huge distance for the mouse to travel.
3. Users are now more physically capable users. Having a button on the screen of infinite size benefits the user new to a mouse (or trackpad, track ball, whatever) much much more than an experienced computer user. Most people have been using computers now for well over a decade. It’s the same as a new driver. Control of the gas pedal in a car is more erratic for new drivers than drivers with even one month of experience. Most people now click on relatively small targets with their mouse with little issue.
4. So much of what everybody does on a computer now is browser based anyway. The internet has been stealing users of applications for years now. You’ll probably hit the back button in your browser many more times a day than file and quit. This post was typed in wordpress, not Word or Textedit.

But wait, all of these points aren’t Mac exclusive!

Windows resolutions are up, multitasking’s never been better, the users are also experienced, and we have the internet in Windows too! But here’s my reasoning for windows superiority…

1. Combine points one and four. Most of what people do on computers now is browser based. Meaning, user aren’t going to the file menu for all their operations. The most common action for a browser from the file menu is probably quit. Well, if the browser is maximized (it’s probably the most commonly maximized program used now), then quitting on windows is just throw the  mouse to the top right without looking and click. That’s faster and easier then getting to the file menu alone.
2. Consider also that if a program in windows is maximized, you can actually close it in the top left corner by double clicking.
3. If a user is multi-tasking in windows, and you’re working in a specific program, unless the program currently in use is in the top left of the screen, then getting to the menus is vastly shorter for the windows user. Combine that with point three, then hitting a menu that’s not on the top edge of the screen’s advantage is lessened by computer user skill.
4. If you need to get rid of all the windows open to get to your desktop on your Windows 7 installation, just chuck the mouse to the bottom right and click. No need to minimize, minimize, minimize etc.
5. Accessing your pictures, documents, “My Computer” or any number of other items that may not sit on your dock can all be found one level deep on your start menu, which is super quick to access.

Basically, strictly from a mousing usability perspective, Apple’s hold on the most usable OS has eroded away since the early days of GUI computing. Today, Windows (more specifically Windows 7) is a better OS overall for mousing (which is kind of ironic since the Mac OS is more mouse focussed).

That isn’t to say that the Mac OS is unusable. I believe that they are advancing GUI OS’s more than anyone on a large perspective. iOS is a perfect example. While not a GUI by traditional standards, their touch-centric interfaces still rely on GUI elements. Combine this with the desktop trackpads with multi-touch they now offer, they’re obviously attempting to move away from the standard GUI’s we’ve become accustomed to the last 20ish years.

I was thinking about the clickwheel on Apple’s iPod and where they got the idea from. I also wondered why this strange circular movement of the thumb is so easy to use.

Well it finally dawned on me. Combination padlocks.

Personally, I don’t use the “pinch and rotate” technique with my fingers to select my combination on my padlocks, I use my thumb over the actual numbered surface. This, I found, was more accurate and quick for me to open up my locker at the gym, in college, high school etc.

Then it dawned on me, virtually everyone has used this type of lock before. It’s a brilliant evolution of an interface everyone has used. Nobody realizes their thumbs have been trained for the iPod for years. Maybe the lock manufacturers should sue Apple. I’d say prior art is definitely established.

Let me begin by stating that I have not used Windows Vista, and I have not seen it in person. All my assumptions are based on the screen shots of vista and on the design of Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP.Now let me begin with a little background information.

There is a concept called Fitts’ Law. Basically it translates extremely well to computer GUI interfaces (graphical user interface, basically, using a mouse to click on icons etc). In simple terms, Fitts’ law shows that the difficulty to point a mouse pointer at a target is directly related to the distance the mouse pointer must first travel and the size of the target. Seems pretty obvious, I know. There is a mathematical formula to gauge this movement, but I’m not getting into that. Truth be told, you don’t need to be able to use the formula to make better designs with Fitts’ law in mind. Understanding how it works is more than enough.

You may have also noticed that when using a Windows, Macintosh, or a Linux machine, the mouse pointer cannot move outside of the boundaries of the screen. Go ahead and try, you’ll never get that last sliver of the pointer to leave the screen. Now together, Fitts’ Law and the inability to extend the pointer beyond the screen creates an excellent phenomenon. Essentially, the edges of the screen have infinite area.

Something that Apple Computer (now just Apple Inc.) did way back in the beginning of their GUI interface design, was patent the placement of the menu bar on the very top edge of the screen. This lends a HUGE usability advantage to Mac users. It is far easier to target a menu when it has infinite height.

Windows doesn’t have this advantage. But it don’t count it out yet. Windows places the “Close” button in the upper most right-hand corner of the screen. A user can close applications so quickly with the mouse by simply throwing it upwards and to the right. It has infinite width and height. It is much faster to do that than it is to aim right at the center of a little “X”.

Which brings me to the reason for this post. The button design in Windows Media Player 11 is slightly different from that of version 10. The button’s are done using the new Vista style. They are attached to the very top of the screen, but not the right hand side. There is a seven pixel gap.

Users (such as myself) continually fail to close the application because their brains are trained to heave the mouse to the top-right rapidly without regard. The button is less usable than it’s older version, despite being wider (which I believe Microsoft widened for this very reason).

This style of button is present on all Vista windows and programs, as far as I have seen. This is a huge loss of usability to the Windows Vista interface. I can’t and don’t understand why Microsoft would make critical design error, especially since they had already did something good. Of all the features that they’re “copying” from Mac OS X, you’d think they’d try not to give anything up.