Brennan’s Blog

An insightful opinion piece explains that while we have been laughing at Microsoft for their shortcomings this past year the offers from Apple have also been fairly lackluster. For example, releasing a new iPod with a longer battery life, larger storage and new color selections is about as innovative as Vista including an improved security model. These are the new features we should be expecting and should not find surprising.

There is also the question of how similar Vista is to MacOS X. This is by no accident but there is also nothing that Microsoft and Apple can do. They are constrained by the user interface that the common user will understand and accept. The windowing model is dominant across MacOS X, Windows and Linux (KDE/Gnome) desktops because it works and people expect it. If you want to start pointing fingers, you could suggest that Apple copied X Windows which came from Xerox PARC back in 1973. Apple did not have their visual interface until 1984. Finally in 1992 Microsoft released Windows 3.1. The "sharing of ideas" is rich in the history of these user interfaces.

And if you want to see where things are heading next you can look at Xgl, a new set of features available to the current X Windows implementation, X.org. As you watch the videos showing off Xgl and then what we see coming from Apple and Microsoft you must feel a sense of disappointment.

For years the Linux desktop has had powerful features which Apple and Microsoft could easily integrate into their desktops, but the problem is that those mainstream operating systems steer clear of what could confuse users. One feature is the desktop pager in which the user can hide/show different desktops and move applications between those desktops all with a single monitor. If the average user accidentally clicked on the pager display and moved focus to an alternate desktop they would think they just lost all of their applications. This simple reason is enough to keep Apple and Microsoft from introducing it to their users.

Another example of interfaces gone awry is the trend to skin everything in the late 90's. A popular example of skinning is the WinAmp player which features skins. Some of the skins are so exotic that you would have trouble finding the volume or play and stop buttons. Interface developers quickly learned that when you make the interface that flexible it makes the system harder to develop, test and support. Imagine walking a confused user through a problem over the phone and not knowing if the buttons are on the top, left or right of the application or even what color they are. When MacOS X was first released there were no skins. Apple gradually bent to the will of their pro users and included a secondary theme to change the colorful UI elements to passive colors, but since then Apple has resisted additional changes. Windows also took a step back from the skinning phenomenon and includes very limited interface customization in the base system, but nothing as extreme as you can still do with WinAmp. In contrast, Linux desktops still embrace extreme interface customization.

When Apple and Microsoft can find ways to introduce interface improvements which they can gradually get their users to accept they will release them. Apple released Exposé which addressed the messy desktop issue differently than X Windows. Instead multiple virtual desktops with only one being shown at a time, Apple developed a user friendly way to give users quick access to all of those applications cluttering up the desktop. This feature ranked very high on the cool scale and was seen as truly innovative. But was it?

While Apple was preparing Exposé Microsoft was rethinking their Windows UI and came up with Aero which features something quite similar to Exposé. It instead sorts the applications and displays them like a you would a deck of cards during a round of poker. Who stole the ideas? Or are these features just a logic extension of the X Windows solution?

In the end it does not matter. As users we will continue to benefit from the competition and innovation between all of these platforms. We are still not to the point we have seen in movies. Remember the highly visual and interactive display Tom Cruise used in the Minority Report? How about those interfaces on Star Trek which spanned the entire console and changed based on context? We still do not have anything much like those interfaces. And once a company does release such interfaces will we claim they stole the idea?

In the timespan between 1973 and now the desktop has changed dramatically. I cannot even imagine what it will be like in another 30 years. If I could browse my email and YouTube with the interface from the Minority Report it would be quite cool.