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For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Friday, April 15, 2005

Twenty Years And We Are Still Using The Same GUI – Why?

MacNETv2:

I took the Apple OS X Tiger Tour on Tuesday, right after Apple announced a firm ship date for Tiger. While I was impressed with all the eye candy I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why so many people are calling this the greatest operating system of all time. It might even be true, but when you think about it it’s the same old thing, only dressed up.

What made the Apple GUI so innovative was that it introduced the first GUI that made it easy to normal people to use. (I acknowledge that Xerox was the inventor of this GUI, but it was Apple that made it real). After Apple bought this kind of interacting with the computer to the masses Microsoft soon followed with their own copy of the Mac GUI. For all the differences between Mac and Windows, from System One to OS X Tiger and from Windows 3.1 to Windows XP Pro, they are all basically unchanged.

Pull down menus, point n click, folders, icons, and trashcans, these things have been a part of the operating system of both Macs and Windows for more than 20 years. Isn’t time we moved beyond this ancient method of interfacing with a computer?

Take a look at these two images, one from the original Mac 128k and one from OS X Panther. After a generation we are still interacting with our computers in the same way we did in the beginning.

I've been harping on these issues for a long, long time. It's nice to see that someone else is starting to wonder about this stuff, finally.

A couple of comments about where we're going.

First, Windows XP includes a bunch of task-oriented stuff that isn't in other GUIs. These task-oriented features are context sensitive as well, which is fairly intelligent. For example, when you display a folder full of photos, or select a photo, the task pane changes to reflect options that only relate to photos.

Spacial UIs, like that found in Sun's Looking Glass project, will add a 3D sheen to the desktop GUI. In such a UI, items that are on the top will be morely clearly on the top, visually, then is possible with simple 2D desktops.

Neither of these advances really changes the whole WIMP interface that Apple popularized in 1984. But I do find it interesting that other companies, and not Apple, are working on next-generation UIs that do try to advance the state of the art in computer interfaces.

[ Posted at 1:54 PM | Permalink ]