I just read this post from Marcin Wichary's Unsung, where he points out a peculiar macOS dialog box that shows boolean toggles in four different shades of grey:
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When Apple introduced the first iPad in 2010, I bought one immediately. I didn't know what I'd use it for, but I was sure that I would find some use for it. I never did. I played around with it, wrote some code for it, but eventually stopped using it. I would pick it up from time to time to read something or watch a…
The history of the visual design of user interfaces can be described as a gradual change towards more realism. As computers have become faster, designers have added increasingly realistic details such as color, 3D effects, shadows, translucency, and even simple physics. Some of these changes have helped usability…
A while back, when Skype's group videochat feature was still free, a friend of mine sent me a Skype message, asking me whether it was possible to do videochat with more than one person in Skype. "Sure," I replied, "you can do that, but you need to install the new Skype 5 beta." I sent her the link. A few minutes…
Like any self-respecting UI designer, I have a microscope 1 sitting on my desk. 2 Here are some pictures comparing a bunch of different screens. They're all taken at approximately the same magnification. 3 At the scale that the pictures were taken, the width of this bar equals about 1mm:
Steven Frank's essay on the current state of the desktop UI 1 reminded me of Oberon, a delightfully insane system I used back when I was studying computer science at ETH Zürich. The first thing you have to understand about Oberon is that it evolved entirely outside of the normal genealogy of user interfaces…
When I posted the link to Andrew Durdin 's visual guide to the iPhone's home button , a number of people sent me messages that basically said "I don't see the problem".
Right now, people are burying Windows 8. Even people you'd normally expect to be on Microsoft's side are unhappy with it. Me, though? I kind of like it.
Two days ago, ZDNet published this article: Meet the iPad, your work computer: These 10 apps make real productivity possible . These kinds of articles, where writers explain how they use their iPads productively, musicians talk about how the iPad is truly a professional tool, or painters show how they use the iPad for…
In an essay titled "The Capacitive Button Cult Must Be Stopped" , Jon Bell writes:
In spite of some of the reaction to it , I find Google Wave to be surprisingly useful. One thing I don't really understand, though, is its scrollbars. They behave quite differently from regular scrollbars, and I can't discern any overwhelming advantages of Google's implementation. It seems I'm not alone. The…
When Apple originally released the iPhone SDK in 2008, I was extremely excited about it, and immediately started working on multiple different iPhone apps. By 2009, though, I had become so uncomfortable with Apple’s stewardship of its mobile platform that I released the one game that was furthest along, and…
Executive summary: I've written a book. If you like this site, you'll love the book. You can buy it printed on paper or as a DRM-free ebook on the Pragmatic Programmers website .
Around 2015, I started to realize that I was no longer part of Apple's target audience. I've since found that Windows, and the devices available on the Windows side, from gaming laptops to convertibles to custom-built PCs, are just a better match for my requirements.