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From This Week's TechWatch

Is it easy to use?

By Jon Peddie

I love Apple computers, but they sure are a fussy thing to use, and not nearly as efficient as a PC, requiring several clicks and mousing around to do things that can be done in a couple of clicks and little to no mousing on a PC.

The UI is delightful, and very entertaining, but after the novelty of it wears off and you have real work to do, the Apple becomes an obstacle not an aid.

The lack of a second mouse button and the ability to click within menus is a case in point. At first I thought I was just being hard-headed and stuck in my ways, but over the course of a few days, where I was forced to use an iBook G4 in lieu of my Compaq nw8040 workstation (because it was in the hospital having its VGA connector re-plumbed), I could not help but want the convenience of that right mouse button.

I also didn’t like having to through the undocking dance when I wanted to move my USB 4-GByte Verbatim disk drive from the iBook to another computer. I’m spoiled with Windows plug&play tolerance for quick disconnect and reapply capability. This feature is so insidious it can force you to have to reboot in order to get the Mac to re-recognize the USB disk that was plugged into it just a few minutes before.

And the Apple is overly protective of what it assumes is my ineptitude—i.e., it thinks I’m an idiot and treats me that way—“Yes, I’m finished; yes, I really, really, really am sure I want to quit, shut down” or whatever.

But Apple will continue to wow me in spite of my frustrations. (It just occurred to me I don’t recall reading about Apple computer difficulties anywhere else; I wonder if I just stepped into a minefield—it’s always dangerous criticizing someone’s religion.)

In any case, I am looking forward to Leopard, and not the least of which its way-back machine—they call it the “Time Machine.” I wonder how many SP upgrades Vista will have before it gets a feature like that? If you’re not familiar with the time machine, it’s possibly the ultimate backup and finder system on the planet. When you go searching for a file it gives you a vertical vernier on the right-hand side that you can slide up and down, which corresponds to moving back in time and shows various files translucently with perspective to a vanishing point. It’s a delightful metaphore and you can have a sneak peak of it at www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/timemachine.html.

Ease of use is the key. It used to be there was a certain right of passage, a priest-like badge of honor if you could master a series of arcane and complex keystrokes to make a computer do something you wanted done, like cut and paste. And we have a remnant of that today with the “keyboard shortcuts.” Keyboard shortcuts—what an archaic oxymoron that is. Why, if my GUI is so powerful and enabling would I, do I, need a keyboard shortcut? The answer is simple—my GUI sucks as a productivity tool, no, wait, that’s not fair. My GUI lacks the application interoperability needed to be a productivity enhancer. I can’t easily and seamlessly move from one application (even if they are made by the same company) to another and expect the same type of operation to work or even be available.

In a closed garden environment, like the Apple, you get closer to a seamless operation of the GUI across various operations and applications, but even there, when an Apple has Microsoft Office on it you run into the metaphor clash.

One of the reasons for that is the lack of a true dictatorship. All OSes have rules and guidelines and templates, and every application team or company thinks only they really know how the user wants to, or should, use the app. It’s like each car company having a different size or shape steering wheel in various locations in the car—an oval on the right for the Razamota car company, and a slightly squared off one in the center for the Dippity-do company, and a half-moon–shaped thing between your legs for the Igotit car company. We make fun about a car stopping, everyone opens the doors, closes them and then the car restarts. But the car companies think PCs (this includes Apple) are ridiculous with the lack of standardization and ease of use—and they’re right.

So if it isn’t easy to use, not dumbed down or treat me like an idiot, but genuinely easy to use, then it fails. Remember, despite all the hoopla about the PC being a convergence device or a media player, its first and foremost use is to be a productivity enhancer. And if I have to take extra steps, or search for a function by looking at a half dozen menus, I’m wasting time, losing my concentration, and diminishing my productivity by the square.

Xerox PARC understood this better than anyplace, and the early Mac benefited from some of the seminal work done at PARC. Alas, we don’t have a PARC today or anything like it. Microsoft has a research team that are looking into these issues, and Apple has a similar usability lab. They need to rededicate themselves to making my life easier, more productive, and the product and marketing managers need to listen to them and stop imposing artificial rules on them. Now that’s not going to be easy.