Software Usability is All That Matters
GUI, or Graphic User Interface is the term tossed about by
technology geeks to define the only thing that matters to the
rest of us. How we interact and deal with our software is
entirely determined by programmers based upon instructions they
receive from whomever hired them to do their jobs. Their job is
to make software use easy, obvious - even invisible.
I don't want to know how computers work. Don't care in the
least! I only want them to work. I don't want to become a geek
in order to visit a web site. I don't want or need instructions
from the geek that designed the web site about how the page was
coded or what server software they use. I don't want to know
anything about my car, my computer, my home appliances or even
my wrist watch. I just want them to do their job without
breaking and without cryptic error messages meant for software
engineers.
I have owned and happily used four or five generations of Apple
Macintosh computers for precisely these reasons. Those machines
have happily answered all of my needs, and for the most part,
run all the software I have bought and loaded into them without
a hiccup. If there was a goofy message on the screen telling me
there was a problem, I called the support phone number on the
box or on the web site and got instructions about how to make
the message go away.
Whenever technology is new, users of that technology must become
experts in the inner workings of it to be users, expertise is
often required. Now that the personal computer has passed its
twentieth birthday, it's time to stop talking about users as
experts and for users to simply be users. Mac OS X is another
very proper step in that direction.
I attended Seybold San Francisco, where I heard Steve Jobs
intro- duce Mac OS X (that's Operating System Ten). I loved that
this apparently powerful guy came on stage at a keynote address
in his faded jeans and tennis shoes. Here is a human being I can
relate to who dresses as I do even if he can easily afford to
outdress me. Here is a guy that makes computers do their job so
I don't have to.
Jobs then introduced Phil Schiller, Apple's vice president of
Worldwide Product Marketing, also dressed casually, to discuss
all the new goodies in OS X and show off its increased speed
since the March 2001 release. System 10.1 is now so much faster
that you don't notice the machine taking time to "think" when
you open a program.
As it should be.
Also, as it should, the user interface offers a wonderfully easy
to comprehend tool bar incorporating their powerful graphics
engine to provide on-screen imagery that, as always, makes you
smile while subtly showing you what is happening as you click
stuff. It's fast, it makes me smile and you don't have to be a
geek to get it. That's for me. I want it.
I heard a very long time ago that defragmenting disks was very
important to do and even though I don't understand WHY, I do it
often because I can do it by starting the program and walking
away from the computer while it goes about this important task
by itself. Why not automate the process when it's so important
to do?
I heard the other day about someone having the brilliant idea to
make disk defrag programs run automatically because users don't
understand what they do and don't use them. Brilliant! DOH! Just
as I haven't got a clue what to do when my washing machine stops
working, so to do I remain puzzled when my computer stops
working. My Maytag doesn't flash error messages, it just quits.
A friend asked me about an error message she was getting on her
Compaq Desktop machine tonight and when I sat down in front of
the screen I was greeted by a dialog box that said something on
the order of "Regenv32 has caused an error in and will
now shut down" and of course, the only choice is "OK" and it
did. She only uses her computer to surf the web, read email and
use the word processing program occasionally. Should we track
down and fix this meaningless "problem"?
Several Apples ago, I bought a book called "Macs for Dummies"
and my all time favorite line from that book is repeated over
and over again throughout the book. "This message is
meaningless, ignore it and reboot" in reference to any one of
many possible error messages in dialog boxes that appear on
screen before, during or after a system crash.
One thing I understand very clearly on the list of benefits Phil
Schiller's numbered powerpoint slides was point number 3.
"Embrace Open Standards" that means that Apple is committed to
coming out of hiding when it comes to proprietary software. It
means that the new core of Unix that underlies OS X makes it
incredibly stable, available to tweaks and improvements in
security and usability by geeks worldwide, not just those in
Apple headquarters in Cupertino.
OS X crashes less often, makes me smile more than the OS 9 did,
it does its job faster and even comes with System 9 built in, to
run all the software that worked on it before you upgraded. I
struggled to remember how much RAM I had in my iMac DV when I
spoke to an Apple representative on the trade show floor and
recalled that I had asked them to double what it came with when
I bought it, so that means it will run OS X, according to the
rep.
COOL! I don't know how it works, but I use it 8 hours a day so
it's important that I like using it. I do.