what happened to the touch bar? I think people hated it because it didn’t give them anything new, so they focused on what they lost instead.
Touch bar was a second, optional way to do things we already could do. You didn’t GET anything. Whatever you were given, you already had it. Nothing to be excited about.
So people focused on what was taken away: tactile Escape key. Important or not, when you don’t get anything in exchange, it _is_ a loss.
To win their customers back, touch bar should start doing something really important for them. My idea is to put Dock there. On small screens (and 12"-13" Macbooks’ screens are not very spacious) Dock eats up a significant amount of screen real estate that you value very much. Apple has a couple of solutions already (automatically hide Dock and fullscreen mode), but both are _compromises_: you don’t see what’s happening, you don’t see badges/running app indicators and, in case of fullscreen mode, can’t use Dock at all.
Instead, if we put Dock to the touch bar, we can free up a significant portion of the screen for the users. There are apps that offer that already but they are mostly app launchers, which is just one of the many Dock’s functions. No, it has to be real Dock: app shortcuts, minimized windows, badges, quick access folders, and, most importantly, Dock on the main screen should disappear.
If we can have that, there’s a good chance we can change people attitude about this invention. That and, maybe, a dedicated tactile Escape key 🙂
Touch bar was a second, optional way to do things we already could do. You didn’t GET anything. Whatever you were given, you already had it. Nothing to be excited about.
So people focused on what was taken away: tactile Escape key. Important or not, when you don’t get anything in exchange, it _is_ a loss.
To win their customers back, touch bar should start doing something really important for them. My idea is to put Dock there. On small screens (and 12"-13" Macbooks’ screens are not very spacious) Dock eats up a significant amount of screen real estate that you value very much. Apple has a couple of solutions already (automatically hide Dock and fullscreen mode), but both are _compromises_: you don’t see what’s happening, you don’t see badges/running app indicators and, in case of fullscreen mode, can’t use Dock at all.
Instead, if we put Dock to the touch bar, we can free up a significant portion of the screen for the users. There are apps that offer that already but they are mostly app launchers, which is just one of the many Dock’s functions. No, it has to be real Dock: app shortcuts, minimized windows, badges, quick access folders, and, most importantly, Dock on the main screen should disappear.
If we can have that, there’s a good chance we can change people attitude about this invention. That and, maybe, a dedicated tactile Escape key 🙂
how many alarms do you have? I have 51 at the moment, and it’s a mess. Every time I need to wake up or remember to do something at specific time, I set up an alarm that will stay on the list forever. Even if it was just for one occasion.
I wouldn’t mind cleaning the list, but there’s no easy option to do it. Each individual alarm must be deleted separately, and you have to do that by opening a menu for each one first.
There’s no option to delete all alarms at once as well. Trust me, there’s not a single alarm I feel I should keep. If I need one, I’ll just set it up again — it’s not a big deal, after all.
But what puzzles me most is why do the alarms persist in the first place? Why not set it once — fires once — disappears? Why keep everything and clutter the list? Might need it again tomorrow? Next week? Well, clean them if they weren’t touched in a week then. Do something. I don’t like the mess, and I don’t like that you make me feel that I created it all myself.
I wouldn’t mind cleaning the list, but there’s no easy option to do it. Each individual alarm must be deleted separately, and you have to do that by opening a menu for each one first.
There’s no option to delete all alarms at once as well. Trust me, there’s not a single alarm I feel I should keep. If I need one, I’ll just set it up again — it’s not a big deal, after all.
But what puzzles me most is why do the alarms persist in the first place? Why not set it once — fires once — disappears? Why keep everything and clutter the list? Might need it again tomorrow? Next week? Well, clean them if they weren’t touched in a week then. Do something. I don’t like the mess, and I don’t like that you make me feel that I created it all myself.
Spotlight matching algorithm. It almost always correctly guesses what I want from the first letters—usually it’s the most used app. But when I finish typing it switches to something else entirely. Why?
maybe someone can explain this to me. Why can some apps be deleted from Launchpad while others can’t? I’m not new with computers, I’ve been around Macs since 2007, I work in IT and I’ve seen a lot of “programmer’s logic” type of UIs, but still, I can’t come up with an explanation here. Those same apps are perfectly deletable from the /Applications folder, for example.
how not to design “top apps of the year” lists. Huge, meaningless, painfully boring illustrations nobody is interested in and small, barely recognizable app icons people actually came for. Don’t
this happened yesterday. Some unknown popup popped up and demanded immediate attention. It said my data wasn’t backed up. What data? It didn’t say. The name on the notification was “Google Play services” which wasn’t very enlightening: I don’t keep any data in Google Play, let alone its services.
Ok, let’s click and see what’s it about, I thought. Which lead me to the screen of an unknown origin. It said words “back up” three times (five times if we count notification) but that didn’t make it any clearer.
Dear developers! If you want to bother us users with a favor, at least take your time to explain what it is about. No, repeating “back up” five times is not an explanation. Thank you
Ok, let’s click and see what’s it about, I thought. Which lead me to the screen of an unknown origin. It said words “back up” three times (five times if we count notification) but that didn’t make it any clearer.
Dear developers! If you want to bother us users with a favor, at least take your time to explain what it is about. No, repeating “back up” five times is not an explanation. Thank you
transparency is ugly. It doesn’t automatically make your UI lighter nor does it add “another dimension” to the UI. It’s just noise and dirt and it makes everything messy no matter how hard you tried to clean it up. It has no function (it would be foolish to pretend someone could see anything through that “glass”) yet it distracts the hell out of me. Don’t
all of the sudden new Android 8.1 started to display those little arrows next to every notification. Remember Windows 95 shortcuts? These look exactly the same.
As I understand, they mean “you can reply to that notification”. But the language is all wrong: if you put something next to the person avatar it’s supposed to reflect person status or some other property of that person. Here, it’s supposed to mean affordance for you. I’m also not sure why we needed these arrows when big “reply” buttons were already there under each notification.
Sadly, it’s really hard to ignore those arrows because they are all bright and foremost for some reason. Do you really think that fact that you can write a reply is more important than the picture of a person who wrote the message? Seriously?
As I understand, they mean “you can reply to that notification”. But the language is all wrong: if you put something next to the person avatar it’s supposed to reflect person status or some other property of that person. Here, it’s supposed to mean affordance for you. I’m also not sure why we needed these arrows when big “reply” buttons were already there under each notification.
Sadly, it’s really hard to ignore those arrows because they are all bright and foremost for some reason. Do you really think that fact that you can write a reply is more important than the picture of a person who wrote the message? Seriously?
for some time I’ve been wondering why Google started reporting that I’m 2-3 mins from home when I was clearly at least half an hour away. Turned out that was _time of the notification_, not the actual information. But the context was so strong it was almost impossible to read it any other way
I love good UI animations. They are natural, visual, easy to read and immediately obvious. Except when they aren’t.
Here I’m trying to save a picture to the desktop by dragging it there. I’ve done it million times, and usually it works. But not this time. It just silently gets pulled back to the source. Why? What happened? Why did the drag failed? Was it something I did? Is there a technical reason? Is computer in the bad mood today?
No clue. It just won’t save ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Thanks for at least notifying me about it with this cute animation
Here I’m trying to save a picture to the desktop by dragging it there. I’ve done it million times, and usually it works. But not this time. It just silently gets pulled back to the source. Why? What happened? Why did the drag failed? Was it something I did? Is there a technical reason? Is computer in the bad mood today?
No clue. It just won’t save ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Thanks for at least notifying me about it with this cute animation