[kenjackson]

Actually this blog post I think is a perfect example of how "designers" in the large don't get it. The ribbon was largely maligned for Office too by the web intelligencia, but as someone who spent time in the enterprise both consulting and selling apps, the ribbon is generally loved by its users. The people who hate the ribbon are the people who use OSX. Try giving Word 2003 to anyone who has spent any time with Word 2010 and you'll be seriously reprimanded.

For example, Had they per­for­med a dee­per ana­ly­sis of the moti­va­tions and needs of the users, they would most pro­bably have ended up with a com­ple­tely dif­fe­rent solu­tion. They might have had a solu­tion that wouldn’t be held back by assump­tions and limi­ta­tions made in ear­lier ver­sions of the appli­ca­tion.

This article assumes that this is the second version of Windows ever shipped. They assume that this research hasn't taken place at all in the past. That the existing set of functionality hasn't evolved over time. For example the Win7 task bar is the result of this evolution. File managers are a very specific beast though. I get the feeling the author of the blog post doesn't know them very well.

And the author concludes comparing Finder to Explorer. I don't think I'm alone in finding Finder an inferior user experience. And frankly, I think that most users will find the ribbon to be a vast improvement. The mere addition of a more obvious "Open With" button will save me on support calls.

[SteveJS]

I believe you are right, and I think one key difference at play is Donald Norman's idea of Affordances vs designers emphasis on emotional reaction. One is about making something naturally usable, and the other is about making an emotional connection. They are completely different goals applied to products.

Coke's iconic bottle is not about affordance (though it does have good affordances) it is about signally fun, enjoyment, summer, etc. Coke has literally spent billions over decades to embed that emotional reaction in the American public.

http://www.hnl.bcm.tmc.edu/cache/The%20Pepsi-Coke%20challeng...

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_45/b41070892...

Pour pepsi in a coke bottle and it 'tastes' better ...literally your brain reacts differently when examined with an MRI when you know you are drinking Coke.

Apple's goal is to provoke the same emotional reaction with respect to their design language, and has also spent (billions?) doing so in commercials, actions and design choices over the last decade plus.

No one is immune to this. I have a Mini Cooper. I love it. But it is a direct example of favoring emotion over affordance. As a specific example: There is a bank of identical dip switches just below the radio. They look cool, and fit with Mini's design language. They however have Negative affordance. The switches all feel the same ... "Am I opening a lock? Rolling down a window? Or turning on/off Dynamic Stability Control?" I don't know ... hopefully it isn't they dynamic stability control.

And everything effects emotional connection. Mini's introduction of an SUV!?! My emotional connection to my own Mini is watered down by the company attempting to expand beyond the core idea providing that emotional connection. Is that rational? ... no. But it is real. My Mini still drives like a go kart, I haven't fallen out of love with it, but the existence of a Mini SUV does make me less likely to make excuses for its real failings.

Favoring design language over affordance is the reason for the gut reaction people have when they complain that this has poor design. It is based on an emotional reaction, not on whether it works. Whether it works is entirely besides the point.

If you design for emotional connection people look past actual usability problems. They may even make up fanciful explanations of why it is better (in the face of evidence) because they like it and want it to be better anyway. When you buy something to signal something about yourself there is an emotional need to defend it.

Obviously affordance vs design is not entirely an either or proposition. It is best to have both. Sadly emotional reactions are influenced by extremes. Sacrificing usability to provide the signal of usability can be a successful strategy. Sacrificing the signal of usability to provide usability is a much more difficult proposition.

[kaffesump]

I just had to agree with this comment - Finder might just be one of the worst parts of OSX. In my opinion the Ribbon UI may be one of the biggest innovations in UI Microsoft did during the 00's (Metro UI = 10's?). The amount of space that the Ribbon UI provides for the main window (way more rows than the old UI) and the few amounts of clicks needed to perform your actions make it crazy efficient!

[masklinn]

> In my opinion the Ribbon UI may be one of the biggest innovations in UI Microsoft did during the 00's

While I agree, I'm not sure it's really a good idea for a program as conceptually simple as the explorer. The Ribbon was designed to clarify and simplify very complex interfaces and menu hierarchy (Office's), in order to make features both more visible and more accessible.

In Explorer, it seems to become little more than a glorified toolbar with HUGE buttons.

Definitely not sold on W8's explorer, especially not since I find 7's to already be a downgrade from XP's

[steve8918]

I recently started using a Mac about 6 months ago, and I'm surprised at how terrible some of the user experiences are. The Base OS is nice, but there's a lot to be desired by many of their applications. Finder is probably my #1 biggest complaint, because finding files is so hard to do with it.

[mstroeck]

Have you heard of Spotlight? It's the button at the upper right of your screen. It indexes all your files.

If you are talking about files that belong to the UNIX underpinnings of Mac OS X: that's what locate is for, for example - try typing that into a Terminal window.

[steve8918]

I think this only works if you know which file you are looking for.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but when I start up Finder, there's no way for me to start from the root directory. So already, I'm not sure exactly where I am. Then when I start drilling down into directories, etc, there's only one of 4 views that will give me some sort of indication where I am, but not really. I have to concatenate all the directory names together in my head, as well as scroll left and right depending on how deep I am. I can't just cut and paste a location into the terminal window, and I find this really really annoying. It almost verges on useless to me.

[jdlegg]

I think the use cases you are describing are accomplished as follows:

1. Starting at the "root" directory. You can control what the finder window initially opens with on the General pane of the Finder Preferences. By default it should be your home folder (/Users/name).

2. Tracking your location. It sounds like you're not using the Path Bar. I believe it's disabled by default. Try View -> Show Path Bar. This presents your current location (in all view types) at the bottom. It also allows for navigational "jumps" to parent locations.

If you have OS X Lion you can open your Finder location in Terminal by enabling a Service in System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts. It's called "New Terminal at Folder" or "New Terminal Tab at Folder." See this Stack Overflow answer for more details: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/420456/open-terminal-here...

[mstroeck]

Wow, are you sure you're talking about the Mac OS X Finder :-) ?

-) This option makes navigation much easier, I don't know why it's not turned on by default:

http://macs.about.com/od/usingyourmac/qt/findertip1.htm

-) You can drag any file or folder into a Terminal window - simply drag and drop. You can also simply "Cmd+C" a file, go to Terminal and do "Cmd+V". The absolute path of the copied file will be inserted.

[steve8918]

Hmmmm, thanks for that tip! I'll try it out!

[mikeash]

Go->Computer will get you to the "root directory", as the Finder understands it.

[nirvana]

The default finder interface has an area on the left with your hard drives, and your common locations, like your home directory, your apps directory, your downloads directory, easily accessible.

I think this can be turned off, and I think that at some point you turned it off... that's the only thing I can think of because getting to the root of a drive just requires going to the left of the window and clicking on the drive... most of the time (with the default finder configuration.)

[bane]

I agree completely. I wrote up a long comparison of the new explorer vs. finder a few days ago that came to the same conclusion.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2937738

When I fire up my MBP I see such attention to detail, such craft put into the OS, but then I'm continuously hit with how bad many of the user interface interactions are. It makes the experience very uneven.

[nhebb]

While I generally agree with what you've written, I still think it's odd that Microsoft has never included many features in Explorer that are the main selling points for 3rd party file explorers, e.g. dual pane view, bulk rename, toolbar customization, and so forth. I understand that Microsoft may not want to undercut ISV's, but easy access to file operations should be intrinsic to an operating system.

[Mavrik]

Probably because the userbase of 3rd party file explorers is so marginal it's not worth alienating less tech-savvy users.

The common theme from OldNewThing blog is that they usually don't cater so much to power-user audience, since power-users mostly aren't happy with what MS offers them and go for 3rd party tools anyway.

[jmjerlecki]

I think the OP brings up a good point here in that Mac OS X users and Windows users are two very different types of users who both use their computers in different ways. I imagine the Mac OS X user has a higher base level of skills than the average Windows user (just based on a shear numbers game Mac OS X 10% of market, Windows 90%).

[spooneybarger]

'web intelligencia'? i think you could have made your point without a cheap us against them anti intellectualism aside.

[nhebb]

I didn't take that as an anti-intellectualism slight. People who write tech pieces on the web, be it on blogs or tech publications, are more computer savvy than the the majority of computer users. If you don't believe this, go watch the Google on-the-street video asking people what a browser is (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ).

I was one of those power users who hated the ribbon when it was introduced in Office 2007. But my wife and kids - they loved it.

[Edit - since I can't reply to thread below (why is that?)]

I sell an Excel add-in, so I have a different perspective than most power users. The ribbon is a pain to program compared to the old command bars, making me dislike it at first. I've learned to appreciate it, though, because it's a lot easier to convey the add-in's features via the ribbon than it is using 16x16 icons on a command bar.

[SteveJS]

I think I am alone in being a "power user" and loving the ribbon. I totally buy into the design philosophy of it, and I now do things with office that I couldn't or wouldn't do before.

I think there is a bit of false transference. I program therefore I'm an expert. I can honestly say that my ability at C++ or Emacs never helped me figure out how to do anything in Office. Of course, I use it rarely enough that every time might as well be the first time.

Perhaps I'm odd in that most people make deeper use of Office more often than I do?

[kenjackson]

Which Excel add-in do you sell? I've spent a fair bit of time programming Excel (VSTO), and am considering selling an add-in, but don't know how big the actual market is (especially without an app store).

[mkr-hn]

The submission itself is "us vs. them." What did you expect?

[spooneybarger]

I think web intelligentsia and putting designers in quotes is way beyond anything in the submission itself, but on these things everyone's mileage will probably vary. That aside, I find your argument to rather odd. I would extrapolate from that general idea of responding in kind that if someone is rude to you on someplace like HN, that it would be reasonable to expect rudeness in return, perhaps even that is justified.

[crenshaw]

I found neither the original article nor any comment here rude. Some are blunter than others, but I didn't find anything that I felt like anyone should be offended by. He didn't call anyone an idiot, he just said they're wrong. I think calling people wrong is reasonable in the space of web discussion/debate.