Wednesday, April 25. 2007Usability - A dark future for the Windows OS?
Back in January Jeff Atwood wrote a post about how there are no “design leaders in the PC World”. His point was that the majority of Windows software looks like shit, and how applications are generally pure functionality with no consideration for interface, or the other extreme — the “artistic” ones that look like they were designed by Picasso in a bad humour. In case you're already dismissing this post, this wasn't the ramblings of a Apple or Gnome fanatic, Jeff Atwood is a highly respected Windows developer, he is a clever guy. Since reading that post I find myself agreeing with it more and more on a regular basis. This week I’ve used software that has shown me the following screens…      Seen there are Roxio, Intel Wifi Tools, SQL Tools, and two consecutive versions of Windows Media Player, both on XP. You wouldn't guess these applications came from the same decade, let alone same week in the life of a Windows user. Looking further afield, we have there are more comical car crash interfaces, such as the ever popular FileMatrix… 
It’s not just the lack of graphic design that’s astounding, most of these applications have a UI from the 80s yet are all “modern” software. It’s hard to blame Microsoft, they established User Interface guidelines for developing Windows apps, but for some reason most Windows developers just don’t seem to give a shit. Windows users, and I include myself in this, tolerate shit software. You could argue that we have no choice. Whatever about Graphic Design, there are very few companies fighting for simple usable desktop software on Windows XP. Even within Microsoft it seems that only the Office 2k7 team really produce good stuff, and funnily enough Office seems kind of alien on the Windows Desktop because of how different it looks, and usable it is. The big problem is that every single company who decides to distuingish themselves based on presenting a high quality User Interface ends up establishing new conventions and style guides anyways. If and when all the crappy software gets cleared away, the average user will then be stuck using 4-5 different applications, some with brushed metal, some shiny black, some have a menu bar, some don’t, some will use the new ribbon interface, some won’t. Zero consistency, zero muscle memory, zero software familiarity. It’s not Microsofts fault (although the Wizard metaphor didn’t help), but Windows users, including myself, are headed in for a rough ride while their Apple counterparts will be busy laughing from their beautiful usable consistent User Interface. Did you ever wonder why Java apps aren’t popular on OSX? They just don’t fit in. They are horrendous to look at, unusable, and slow. The technical term for that is “shit software”, and it’s starting become clear to me that Mac users don’t tolerate shit. Before the strawmen start attacking me, I need to make this clear. I am not saying Microsoft will suffer because of this, their profits won’t be affected, they’ll still be the number one in operating systems and office software. All I am saying is that the desktop experience is getting worse despite the release Windows Vista. Reflective glass, shadows and weather widgets are just band aids over bullet wounds. Trackbacks
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I agree with this blog very much.
Apple users get a lot of software that they get excited for. Coda by Panic Software is very nice. http://www.panic.com/coda/ What Windows software do get excited for? Firefox? We have Firefox too. Microsoft needs better small companies to write for it good software. Apple has many good companies producing great software, who has Microsoft?
That article on DaringFireball kind of resonates with me. Basically no matter what way you look at it, as Windows users we will always have a hard time security wise, we'll always have to inspect software, re-boot Windows, run Adware scanners.
This article kind of saddens me, cause I don't know of many cool programs on Windows, that I was able to just use. I don't even know many good software houses. Who cares what the reason is, whether it's popularity or poor security? We're kinda fucked either way.
Hi Jeremiah,
Thanks for reading. I agree with you re: reasoning. If someone told me that no one will ever rob my car, I'd be happy. I wouldn't give it a shit if it was because : 1) There is no incentive to rob my car, because no one wants one. 2) My car is infinitely more secure than other peoples cars 3) My car has a far smaller market share, therefore people haven't started stealing them yet. As soon as it's popular it'll be stolen just as much as everyone elses. None of that matters to me. What matters is knowing my car is still in the driveway.
Shock horror, Bart's going to pull you up on the Java thing!
Mac users won't use badly written Java Apps that use custom GUI components. If you write a Java GUI app using the standard Java GUI libraries and then run that app on the Mac you will get an app that looks like a Mac App. This is because Apple have their own version of the standard GUI Libraries for OS X so that the Java GUI Elements are rendered as OS X GUI Elements. Apple also go one step further, they provide a free tool for turning a JAR file into an OS X app and, if the app was written using the proper APIs it will then start using the standard OS X menu bar at the top of the screen for the menus for the Java App! I wrote a post about using this little wrapping program a while ago: http://www.bartbusschots.ie/blog/?p=296 On the Mac it's possible to use a Java app without realising that you're using a Java App. You really can't say that about other platforms. As for the mess of UIs on Windows not being Microsoft's fault. That's certainly partly true, but only partly. The reason just about every App on the Mac looks cool and consistent is because Apple provide great APIs like Cocoa (and in the past Carbon) and a large set of free developer tools to help you make you Applications truely fit in with the OS. MS don't do that to the same extent. And then of course you have, as you said, the fact that Apple users don't tollerate crap software. If it's crap it won't get used or sold.
re: Java, that's fair enough. I was aware of the skin Apple provided to make Java apps look good, but the Java isn't really popular on any desktop because they're usually dodgy programs.
Basically on Windows, Java apps are slower and uglier than C/C++/C# ones. On OSX I reckon the developers just figure "Why not use Cocoa?". re: APIs ..."MS don't do that to the same extent." They do. Microsoft give away free software for developing Windows Apps, they also provide UI Guidelines for developers. But as I said in the post, windows devs just don't seem to give a shit. I guess the only real way Microsoft are at fault is that their desktop isn't soo fancy that ugly programs look wrong on them. If you run something ugly on OSX it stands out a mile (I'd imagine), because everything else around it looks good and works well. Windows users need to demand more from their software. They need to tell Dell to fuck off with their 10 x 30 day trial noise that ruins the Windows experience. They need to start paying for programs that work well, and removing the ones that don't. Otherwise the situation will only get worse.
I don't want to derail things too much but I do want to defend Java a bit. Yes, there are some really crappy Java Apps out there, but there are also some good and even excellent ones.
Just looking at my dock I can give you three examples: 1) jEdit (good, not excellent) 2) Eclipse (Excellent) 3) NeoOffice (not pure Java but a lot of Java in it all the same) Now, back to the core of the matter, there is no reason Java can't look as good on Windows as it does on the Mac. It's just that neither Sun nor MS have bothered to make it look like part of Windows. Also, there is the Win32 API and there is a list of coding giudelines, but somehow that doesn't seem to be quite up to the level of Cocoa. If there were as good a system as Cocoa for Windows surely it would be in common use? I mean, why waste your time reinventing the wheel (badly)? Or am I missing something?
If your argument is purely that the Win32 API doesn't look as good as Cocoa, then yeah I totally agree. But then Windows never had the luxury of proprietary hardware and as such couldn't use things like drop shadows, or anti-aliased fonts as liberally as Apple could.
But for me the core of the matter is that Windows software houses don't seem to give a shit about UI or graphic design. Take Panic Software as Marco pointed out in comment #1. Their softwar e looks deadly. It looks beautiful and usable. But there doesn't appear to be anyone trying to do things that slick on Windows. Same with the Omni Group, their stuff looks fantastic too. Windows developers don't seem to produce really nice software. Even if both Windows and Mac were stuck using 3 colors, and no fancy effects, the mac software still seems to be better. It's not just the lipsticks, it's the lips as well.
I'm not sure I quite buy the argument that Apple is shinnier because they control the hardware but for the sake of this discussion I'm prepared to accept that as given.
Shinny is nice, I like shinny, but that's not what makes the Mac so much more usable than Windows. Like you said, the lips are fine too, it's not just lipstick. Personally, I think it comes down to consistency. Once you get to know one Mac app you pretty much know them all. Even if we accept that a Windows Cocoa equivalent would have no drop-shadows, no cool water effects on the progress bars and no cool transparencies, it should still provide a good set of consistent and well thought-out GUI elements that people could just use. Then we would have a unified look and feel on Windows too. It would be a less cool unified look but just by being unified it would make everyone's lives easier. This obviously didn't happen so as I see it there are a few possibilities: 1) The libraries etc MS released are not as comprehensive and good as Cocoa so devs don't use them 2) PC Software firms believe you have to make your app look different to make it stand out 3) PC Software firms don't get basic HCI and design principles It's probably a little of all those things. I don't know enough about the PC software industry to judge. But you are dead right that there are no leaders in the PC software world. You mentioned two amazing companies, Omni and Transmit, they don't have opposite numbers in the PC software scene. Not sure if that's a symptom or a cause, but it's certainly not good news for Windows users!
You kinda forgot one thing... apple make it VERY easy to code on the mac...
not only that, they make it VERY HARD to stuff things up... you'd have to go against using their pre-built stuff, so it'd be like reinventing the wheel. It's so much more difficult to NOT use the cocoa framework. Does windows have a similar framework? nup!
Yeah, that's fair enough, it's definitely some combination of those 3 things.
In my opinion it's a lot more of the latter two, because tools like MS Word, Visio etc, are pretty decent and they only use the MS libraries. If most Windows apps have the consistency and usability of the Office suite, I wouldn't have written this post.
Have you seen Microsoft Blend? It's a software design tool aimed at getting designers into the process of creating user interfaces, and integrating with the development workflow. The difference to old windows form designers is that this is a completely separate tool and more like Flash or Photoshop than anything we've seen before.
On the one-hand is potentially has the downside you mention regarding creating a lot of different user interfaces, but it also has the potential to seriously improve the quality of them, but actually moving towards a more design-centric creation process. The idea is to have actual UI designers lead a project rather than leave it to developers.
I hadn't seen it before, thanks for mentioning it. It sounds like a good idea, I'm surprised it hasn't been more popular.
Thanks for you comment. Des
I think it's still in beta at the moment, as it's part of the whole Vista/WinFX/.Net3 thing.
It certainly has a lot of promise. I expect we'll hear a lot more about it in the future.
So why don't Windows devs give a shit? I think it's because Microsoft doesn't give a shit. Look at Windows. The start bar alone contains four different kinds of icons that all look pretty much the same, but behave differently. Another example: Microsoft will not let you use the new interface guidelines for Office if you develop competing products! Microsoft actually actively discourages consistency.
Why should developers strive for consistency in an environment where the alhpa male neither is consistent nor promotes consistency?
LKM, In fairness regarding the new Office UI. Why should Microsoft spend years innovating an entirely new kind of user interface, then give it to their competitors. The fact that they licence it to people at all is great, but expecting them to give it to other office products is just naive.
I disagree Kevin.
Apple do just that. They develop a new GUI and then actively encourage all developers on their platform to use it. That's why the Mac is such a nice platform. By being so proprietary MS are making their own platform worse for their customers.
Why should Microsoft develop a new UI and then let third-party devs use it? Because they should have the platform's best interests in mind! And even if you think they shouldn't, it doesn't matter for my argument. If they don't, the platform suffers.
I'm not sure Apple would be so benevolent if someone copied the iTunes UI and used it in a competing product.
This innovation came from the Office Team, which has revenues only beaten by the Windows team in Microsoft, they're not going to hand such innovation to their direct competitors for such a key product. That would really just be foolish. To say they are being really proprietary is simply not true. They've opened up usage of the ribbon and even created a free 'component' for people to use. The only single exception to that is anyone developing a rival Office suite. So, in reality, they're being very open indeed, more so than ever before, and doing exactly what you're saying they should do. You're focusing on one small, and quite understandable restriction, rather than looking at the whole issue.
Actually, Apple is so benevolent. I assume you're developing for Windows, and I can see how this is hard to believe for you, but it's true. Many Mac apps mimic the iTunes UI, and Apple actually creates libraries to make it easier.
The fact that teams within Microsoft compete with each other and don't all have Windows' best interest in mind is precisely why Windows apps are so inconsistent! Letting third-party devs use the Office UI for their Office apps would not be foolish. It should actually be obvious that Microsoft needs to do that if they want a healthy, consistent third-party market for Windows. And even if it's not obvious to you, it should at least be clear that Microsoft's actions hurt the consistency of the Windows platform. You can't change the UI of the most important apps on your platform, and then not let your competitors use that new UI. This isn't some "small, understandable restriction." This is the very recipe for inconsistent UI. Furthermore, it sends the false signal. Basically, Microsoft is telling its developers that it's okay to just invent some new paradigm and then keep other apps in the same genre from using them. Quite frankly, I don't understand why you can't see that this leads to a less consistent experience for users and is bad for the Windows platform as a whole.
To be fair, Apple would probably sue someone who created a music program which looked exactly like iTunes.
In Microsofts case they are allowing people to use the Ribbon UI, just not for any commercial application which is a direct competitor to any of the Office tools. The problem we should really be discussing is why no one uses the Office Ribbon anyways. Or why no Windows Developers follow their UI guidelines in general. I've never programmed anything use Cocoa /Carbon, so I can't say for sure what it does, but I imagine at its core its a set of desktop widgets (buttons, sliders, menus etc). Microsoft provides the exact same thing. The difference is that Windows developers don't see the point in laying the widgets out correctly. Both operating systems have comprehensive libraries for desktop development. Lets imagine that both widgets looked identical (as in pixel to pixel identical). Apple applications are still better to use, in my (limited) experience. Why is that?
How is claiming that Apple would sue an iTunes copy "fair"? There is no reason to believe that. In fact, I can't think of one single instance where Apple sued a developer of Mac apps for copying Apple's UI. It makes no sense at all - if anything, Apple encourages copying its UI. In fact, there are many Mac apps with iTunes-like UIs.
You should have a look at Apple's Interface Builder. It offers a lot of help with setting up margins and the like correcly - much more so than Visual Studio (I use both). But the main point is probably that Mac devs care more, because Mac users care more. An ugly Windows app can still sell if it works well. An ugly Mac app can't.
Microsoft put that ruling in to ensure that Open Office can't copy their UI.
I believe if someone tried to rip off the iTunes UI, then Apple would come after them. Whether that's right or wrong is a different story. Your final point : "An ugly Windows app can still sell if it works well. An ugly Mac app can't." is exactly what I was addressing in my argument. Windows users (like me) seem to have resigned themselves to shitty looking applications.
It doesn't matter why Microsoft doesn't allow third-party office apps to copy the UI. It's a stupid restriction coming from a platform vendor, and it makes the Windows UI less consistent. People who use Windows suffer for it.
People rip off the iTunes UI every day. Apple encourages it.
"People who use Windows suffer for it" is simply not true. Windows users who run Open Office will suffer from it, and um, that's about it.
And by suffer, we mean they will still be able to use the office software they have been using which will continue to advance in its own ways.
The change is that OOo can't copy Microsofts ribbon UI, which they probably never would have created anyways, and they also would never have used the API cause it's a different language.
It astonishes me that you can write a blog entry complaining about inconsistent software UI on Windows, yet defend the fact that two applications, which essentially do the same, are forced to basically fork their UI and go into different directions.
OO's "advancing its interface in its own way" is not a good thing. The fact that OO would not have invented the UI does not matter. The fact that they could not use the APIs does not matter. Microsofts reasons for not letting OO copy the UI do not matter. The simple fact is that we have two apps that do exactly the same thing, and Microsoft, the platform owner, forces these two apps to become inconsistent.
I agree, I think every single application that does the same thing should look and work exactly the same and we should force the Open Office people to copy Microsoft Office exactly.
Well it should be possible to not use the ribbon interface, and still be consistent.
We shouldn't be stuck in a situation where every UI feature Microsoft uses becomes part of the Windows standard.
I agree, it's possible to not use the Ribbon UI and still be consistent. However, it would be better to use the Ribbon UI, and Microsoft knows it. Here's the relevant definition of "consistency," courtesy of dictionary.com:
"correspondence or uniformity among the parts of a complex thing" I think we can all agree that Office apps are complex things. Furthermore, Microsoft Office is the one suite of apps most Windows users are very likely to use at least semi-regularly. This means that Office is where Windows users form a large part of their expectations towards all other applications, especially towards other Office applications. To me, it seems clear that applications such as the Office Suite, Internet Explorer and the Media Player are the apps people use to form their mental model of how Windows apps should behave. Apps wishing to be consistent with the Windows experience should thus take those applications as examples and be uniform with them. It would be in the platform's best interest for all Office apps to be uniform with Microsoft Office. And that is the issue: Windows' consistency is not the only thing on Microsoft's mind. It seems that keeping the Ribbon UI away from competitors helps Microsoft precisely because it leads to less consistency. It makes it harder for Windows users to switch to alternatives like OO. Which was my argument all along: Apple makes money selling hardware. They do compete with some software companies, but in the end, selling hardware makes a lot more money than selling software. So having a consistent user experience is very important to Apple, because it sells hardware. It is, in fact, more important to Apple than selling software, which is why Apple wants third-party devs to copy its UI. Microsoft, on the other hand, sells software. This means that in some cases, sacrificing consistency to gain software sales makes sense.
Fair enough. For the record I never said it was a good thing that MS patented the ribbon or put restrictive conditions on using it for developing applications. I just said it was understandable from the point of view of a company trying to flog office software.
I agree that it is a regrettable decision that will lead to more inconsistency on the Windows desktop, that said I'm not sure how many windows apps will be using it, or even how many of the remainder of the office suite. Outlook 2k7 doesn't use it for example, and it breaks any other attempts at consistency by using a 3 column monster layout. (http://www.gaborcselle.com/blog/images/outlook_2007_screenshot_l.gif) Thanks for taking the time to read and comment LKM, I hope you'll check back often. (Just for future reference, I can look up words in a dictionary myself. )
I realize that you're probably entirely capable of using dictionary.com
 I looked the word up for my own sake. I tend to lose myself in semantics, so I find it's often useful to step back for a moment and think about what a word actually really means (and obviously, English is not my native language, which also often makes it kind of difficult for me to get the tone right). So it's not that I thought you didn't know what consistency meant, or that I thought you couldn't look it up. The issue was that I didn't want to confuse the word's meaning myself, so I looked it up to get a clearer line of thought. Finally, I enjoy your blog. It's in my RSS reader (and hopefully you'll take that as good news - I'll try not to be so argumentative the next time I disagreee with something .
Actually, I'm fairly certain the margins on hardware are very slim, and they make more 'profit' selling per-seat software such as their 'Pro' tools.
Of course revenue wise they make more money selling hardware, which looks great on paper, but most investors are concerned with profits as well as revenue.
You're flat-out wrong. All users suffer. Why? Because inconsistent UI promotes more inconsistent UI. If the two major remaining Office apps are inconsistent and users accept it, that tells developers that inconsistency is okay. It's the broken window idea. One broken window can destroy a whole house, and one destroyed house will destroy the street.
If you accept inconsistency, and if you defend the fact that the platform owner promotes inconsistency, you create a platform that is inconsistent, and everyone suffers.
I don't own an Apple, I should make that clear first of all.
Can you show me a program built using Apples Libraries that rips off the iTunes GUI? I am not in any way implying they don't exist, I have genuinely never heard of one.
Almost all Mac apps that work with collections of file "rip off" iTunes - although it should be noted that "rip off" is a stupid and wrong term to use. It's called consistency, not "ripping off." Apple wants Mac devs to copy their UIs. Anyway, here's one I happened upon this morning while reading other blogs:
Yep (yepthat dot com) Pretty much a copy of the iTunes interface, used to keep track of PDFs instead of MP3s. macupdate dot com has tons more, among them apps that also track MP3 files and are thus more direct "rip offs" of iTunes. (spam prevention prevented me from posting this message with actual URLs inside them, so sorry about the this dot that thing)
Thanks for the example.
Here's another example:
xtorrentp2p dot com
That argument aside, I'd say the main reason mac apps are more consistent is because Mac users like things that look nice and expect it. They won't buy something that doesn't fit in nicely with the OS the same way they wouldn't buy a peripheral that looked really ugly.
I'd be inclined to agree. It seems a snobby culture that cares about usability and aesthetics is a good thing for an operating system.
To be honest both OS's have some shockingly bad apps in th UI dept. I've seen some real shockers on OSX and some REAL shockers on Windows. Windows has more partly due to the nature of having so many people developing apps for it.
But at the end of the day, compared to, say iPhone, or much more importantly, Surface, OSX/Win are nearly identical in design and use. The faster we get rid of WIMP the better. |
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This website is the online diary of me, Des Traynor, a User Experience Researcher in Dublin, Ireland. I work with Contrast. I usually write on 5 topics: I update about 3-4 times per month. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss this good stuff. If this is your first time here, check out the archives.My official homepage provides more information about who I am, and what I research. You can contact me at destraynor [at] gmail [dot] com Quicksearch |
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