What you’ve heard is true: Macintosh’s Finder is indeed
easy to use. But as Apple’s developers get more innovative, will Finder stay
the same?
[originally appeared in PC Magazine as a cover story, 9/12/89]
(Obviously out of date, but interesting in several respects.
First, it’s worth remembering how far ahead of its time the Mac OS was. So
many of the special abilities I discuss about the Mac are ubiquitous now.
Second, to see with hindsight how the entire web is the fruition of the dream
I described for the Mac’s early hypertext product, HyperCard (which was the
base of many early multimedia projects.) In 1989 I predicted it would lead
to “thousands of worthwhile programs out in the ether, free for the taking—a
digital community sharing programs that solve problems, entertain, and inform.”
(BTW, I’m not saying I made any of that happen; I don’t think I invented the
internet or anything. Just saying many of us in the multimedia community envisioned
a transformation of computing when multimedia and software merged and when
that software was easily distributed and shared. In 1989, I’m not even sure
I’d heard of DARPA, but I’d already been using email and BBS tools for years,
so it wasn’t hard to imagine.) Kinda cool: this article also was cited as
a reference in a paper at an international conference, Patrick Gerland, “Software
Development: Past, Present and Future Trends and Tools,” NIDI/IUSSP Expert
Meeting on Demographic Software and Micro-computing, Strategies for the Future,
The Hague, 29 June – 3 July 1992, www.ons.dz/unfpa/papers/nidi_pg.pdf
. (IUSSP stands for International Union for the Scientific Study of Population;
don’t know about NIDI.) My one regret about this article is that it gained
me creds in neither the Mac community – which didn’t read or respect
PC Magazine – nor the PC community – where of course it didn’t
help to be the Mac guy. Ah well. The fate of the outsider, once again.)
The Apple Macintosh operating environment contains the purest manifestation
of the GUI. Because the Mac’s interface is integrated with its hardware,
there are no obstacles to contaminate the interface. The Macintosh combines
three elements to create its intuitive package: the Finder, a file-management
program; the User Interface Toolbox, a set of developer’s routines; and
HyperCard, a complement to the existing user interface that extends
its capabilities.
Like Microsoft, Apple has its own vision of the ultimate GUI. One part of
that vision concerns the so-called human element. Most computer systems are
designed primarily for processing, developed for cost efficiency, and, almost
as an afterthought, tweaked to address ergonomic problems. Apple’s emphasis,
however, has always been on the human element in computer operation and has
resulted in computers designed–from the bottom up–for ease of
use.
VIRTUES OF AN INTERFACE
The second part of Apple’s vision encompasses the three “cardinal interface
values” that developers are mandated to strive for in a Macintosh application:
responsiveness, permissiveness, and consistency.
Responsiveness means that the user must be able to execute tasks
with the least number of steps possible. Apple’s pull-down menu system—as
contrasted with the command structure of such DOS applications as Lotus
1-2-3—is the best example of responsiveness.
Permissiveness refers to an environment that allows all reasonable
commands to work instead of forcing the user into a constricting language.
The DOS prompt, with its arcane terminology, is the classic non-permissive
interface.
Consistency is the Macintosh’s forte. When the standard elements
of a program’s interface work identically in all applications, users are rarely
confused or irritated when they switch from one app to another.
AT THE CORE
The core elements of the Macintosh’s standard graphical user interface are
the Finder and the User Interface Toolbox. The Finder is a file-management
program comparable to the MS-DOS Executive in Windows—it’s the first thing
you meet when you boot up a Mac. The Finder presents files and disks with
icons and windows; a menu bar lies across the top. Thanks largely to the Finder,
initial familiarization with the Macintosh takes, at most, half an hour.
But beware: not everything on the Mac is perfectly intuitive. For example,
you probably won’t figure out on your own that you can eject floppy disks
by throwing their icons in the trash. Even if you never learn that trick,
however, you can still select the disk and choose Eject from the menus across
the top of the screen. On a Mac, there’s more than one way to open a file—or
to perform just about any other operation.
Double-click on a data file, such as a document or spreadsheet, and the
Finder will launch the application that created the data file and then load
the file itself—a trick other GUIs have learned too. On the Mac, all of this
is done regardless of whether the originating application is visible on-screen;
the Macintosh interface maintains a running directory listing the contents
of every disk connected to the computer. And this facility extends further.
As long as you do not “trash” the disk icon, the Macintosh will remember the
contents of the diskette you’ve ejected from the system.
HIGH-IQ FILES
Filenames may be up to 32 characters long on the Macintosh, rather than the
restrictive 11-character (8 for the proper name, 3 for the extension) limit
in DOS and the current version of OS/2 Presentation Manager. And while other
environments will mark a file’s size and its creation or modification date,
the Macintosh also stores information about the application that created the
file, the file’s icon appearance, and its type (worksheet, word processing
document, database file, etc.).
The original Macintosh icons correspond to their functions quite well. The
ubiquitous trash can, file folder, and text page are all easily understood
at a glance. As newer applications in the Macintosh community have moved further
from the original MacPaint and MacWrite, the purity of the interface
has suffered a bit; many icons for third-party products depict nothing but
the company logo or some other abstract image, suggesting nothing of the files’
functions.
The other half of the Macintosh GUI is the User Interface Toolbox. This is
where developers will find the standard routines to open a new file or create
a text-entry window. As in any other complete GUI, the developer is left to
concentrate only on the different and challenging aspects of the program,
leaving all of the input/output work to the User Interface Toolbox.
The routines in the User Interface Toolbox offer a lot of power. The File
dialog box, for example, allows you to browse through all of your directories
and volumes without leaving the dialog box or the initial command. Most of
the Macintosh’s User Interface Toolbox is in ROM and is closely integrated
with the system for speed and consistency. While this means that minor changes
to the User Interface Toolbox cannot be applied to existing Macintosh ROMs
without replacing them, software patches can be applied in RAM to keep existing
machines up to date. The Macintosh’s operating system accommodates such patches
with very little disruption.
The graphics system for the Macintosh is called QuickDraw. It lies underneath
the various resource managers that handle windows and menus. Because of the
placement of the QuickDraw graphics routines in ROM, the Macintosh’s graphical
interface moves right along, even on older Macintosh PCs with 68000 processors
and only 512K or 1MB of RAM. QuickDraw contains routines that work within
a window or a region of a window, using local coordinates without the risk
of affecting anything outside the window. With the added help of the Windows
Manager, which also keeps track of overlapping windows, the Macintosh handles
window presentation with speed and efficiency.
THE SOUND OF MUSIC
When looking at a Mac, it’s important to remember the role that hardware
plays in creating a robust, friendly user environment. Sound is a good example.
From the very first 128K Mac, the system has included a four-voice synthesizer.
Both voice and music can be played through the Macintosh’s internal speaker
or through a jack to external speakers. The Mac II adds support of MIDI (Musical
Instrument Digital Interface), the industry-standard protocol for communications
among synthesizers. With a Mac, a business user can add sound to make presentations
snappier.
While the Macintosh operating environment has changed significantly over
the years, its appearance and “feel” have remained simple and predictable.
This has been one of its biggest selling points, both in corporate and personal
markets, and the focal point of Apple’s advertising campaigns. Apple’s May
announcement of System 7.0 suggests that the company will continue to respect
the consistency of the interface.
THE SAME BUT BETTER
System 7.0 is a collection of enhancements that improve the Macintosh environment
substantially without significantly altering the existing interface. At the
forefront are improvements in multitasking, remote database access, memory
handling, and text manipulation. The new InterApplication Communications Architecture
meets or exceeds OS/2’s interprocess communications, allowing applications
to exchange both data and instructions. Database improvements will allow users
to integrate remote host computer databases into the standard interface, so
that users with no knowledge of the remote system will be able to work with
the databases by using standard Macintosh techniques.
Also included in the new release will be tweaks to the Finder, including
context-sensitive help and a file-finder utility. More importantly, a new
collection of Finder features will give the user more control over the appearance
of the desktop. The Finder has also been made more extensible to accommodate
future enhancements like fax and backup. Other improvements include sound
sequencing and multimedia presentation capabilities, new communications tools,
and 32-bit QuickDraw, which opens up color displays to 16 million colors on-screen
simultaneously.
It may be a while before users see System 7.0; developer kits should be out
this fall, but at press time, Apple wasn’t saying when end-user products would
be available. Apple’s plans, however, are encouraging in that System 7.0 seems
faithful to the existing Macintosh GUI.
HyperCard, however, is less faithful to the Finder and gives cause
for some alarm as well as enthusiasm. Introduced in the fall of 1987, HyperCard
is currently slated not to replace the original interface, but to complement
it. Indeed, HyperCard has both improved and confused the Macintosh
world.
Bill Atkinson, the creator of MacPaint, developed HyperCard.
Like MacPaint, Hypercard does not follow some of Apple’s carefully
delineated guidelines. For example, in order to launch an application in HyperCard,
you click on it just once with the mouse, not twice. You have to switch to
a different mode if you want to drag things around. More importantly, on a
Mac Plus or Mac SE with a standard 9-inch screen, HyperCard (like MacPaint)
takes over the entire screen, without using any windows. While Atkinson’s
theories about GUIs may be as good as Apple’s, the problem is that they are
different.
STACKING THE DECK
HyperCard sets a new standard for what you can do with a PC and what
you should expect from it. With elements of database management, object-oriented
programming, hypertext, personal information management, paint programs, and
GUIs, HyperCard is a wonder that more than satisfies Apple’s first
two criteria: responsiveness and permissiveness.
HyperCard’s operating metaphor is an innocent-looking stack of index
cards. Each card (screen) consists of graphics, text fields, and buttons.
Clicking on a button initiates a script (or program) that may jump to another
card or that may be as complex as programs written in third-generation languages
such as C and BASIC.
HyperCard is very flexible; you can write scripts—to create, for example,
a button that jumps to other cards or fields to store information—without
writing a line of code. Later, you can touch up what was generated automatically.
Nonprogrammers may find themselves capable of creating new stacks at an astonishing
rate.
PC users can expect to see HyperCard-like capabilities soon. HyperPad
(see “GUIs Without Graphics”) is a start, but more-powerful packages are on
the way.
HACKER’S PARADISE
The dream is that HyperCard’s mass availability (it is given away
free as system software) and ease of use will result in thousands of worthwhile
programs out in the ether, free for the taking—a digital community sharing
programs that solve problems, entertain, and inform. Even if the reality falls
short of this dream, HyperCard’s future is bright.
John Scully’s nonspecific comments suggesting a closer link between HyperCard
and the Macintosh’s standard graphical user interface are both worrisome and
exciting. If the Macintosh interface changes too much, it may jeopardize the
base of consistency already established. On the other hand, it would be a
shame to lose HyperCard’s multimedia power. The challenge facing Apple
is to allow innovation without sacrificing consistency.
© 2004 Philip F. Rose
