I think the little game or feel-around that one must play in order to plug a pair of headphones into their iMac is Apple’s cruel little joke on its loving customers.
Well, not really, but every time I need to plug something into that 3.5mm jack on the back of my iMac at the office, I can’t help but think about why it’s so difficult. I’ve pondered putting that port on the side, on the bottom, anything that helps access – but really, repositioning offers no ideal or substantially improved alternative.
While the same issue is present with the USB ports in the same area, they’re much more defined and can be felt out with relative ease. the issue with the 3.5mm port is that it’s so small, so challenging to accurately locate with your index finger, blindly. So I propose a simple solution (the best kind!). Recess it in a small (approx 1cm in diameter) dimple . Around the size of the tip of an average finger. This does two things: Makes the port easier to find blindly, and provides a very small targeting assist – the plug would slide in with relative ease even if aimed a little bit off.
How’s that, Steve?
A few screenshots of OS X 10.7 Lion popped up today, and the interface depicted has me pondering.
ALL images in this post are credited to macstories.net
Finder has gone the way of iTunes, totally grayscale. I get the decision to some extent, unifying everything, but this oversteps design boundaries – it’s excessively sterile. I intentionally keep all installs of OS X I control on the original OS theme (with the ‘traffic light’ window controls), because I find Graphite (which effectively grayscales those icons) borderline depressing. I think a grayscaled Finder should come with the selection of the grayscale OS theme, and otherwise they should remain colored.
Also worth noting is the new button style for the finder views. This change appears in multiple screenshots of Lion. Clearly it’s very resemblant of a touch (iOS) interface, but the connect isn’t there for me – mice, even trackpads, are not on the same level as touchscreen devices. There’s no tactile simulation, which a slideable element implies. Why are they trying to meddle with this before they’re ready to go touchscreen in any sense with OS X? Additionally, I think the UI feature makes zero sense on menus with more than two items. This is a toggle-specific interaction as far as I’m concerned – true/false, on/off, enabled/disabled. Not list/icons/details/coverflow.
Also, why the bloody crap is Coverflow still in Finder?
I’ve been using Letterbox for well over a year, perhaps two. All it effectively does is change the orientation in Apple Mail from displaying message previews above the mail list to beside it, to its right. This allows for greater vertical message list length and message preview length (and if you’re like me, you only view messages in ‘preview’ mode. In short, it makes better use of widescreen monitors. This is now unnecessary, as Apple has rethought this in Mail 5, changing the orientation and making other iPad-like interface adjustments. This, I’m excited for.
Yes, I know about Post Box and the like – to be honest, I can’t properly explain why I’ve never made the switch, though I have tried. There you have it.
I have only one thing to say about the revised TextEdit: Holy shit, TextMate supports list writing (properly)! Welcome to nearly two decades ago. I hope the OS’s global font/formatting chrome has been significantly improved as well.
Finally, one of the oddities I encountered. Quick look has always been very much a keyboard access UI for me – tap space, see if it’s what I’m looking for or scan for a piece of information in the document I was looking for, tap space again to dismiss. I don’t like that they’ve introduced a clickable button to the quick look interface here, as this is one of the last places I’d want to use a mouse. Odd.
I’ll keep this short. I’ve posted in the past about my problems with the way iTunes handles playlists and browsing while music is playing. This is one of those things that sits on the same level of annoyance for me as the way Windows 7 handles alphabetizing in its control panel (this shit is asinine).
Why on earth can’t iTunes keep in line with a user’s intended commands while both playing and browsing through a library? Why is it that, when I am in an artist view and play a song and then switch to another artist’s view just to look around, iTunes plays out the current track and then picks a new one from whatever the hell I happen to be looking at at that moment in time? This behaviour is totally unjustifiably ridiculous.
I re-tested this today to find that now, instead of continuing with tracks in the view you started the current track from, it will move on to dead silence. I’m not sure if this was changed recently or if I’m doing something differently, but if it’s the former, what a pathetic attempt at a solution to a problem when the real solution of obvious and not very complex.
Apple, iTunes is one of your biggest cash cows, but also some of your shoddiest UX work.
