dennisg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Dennis E. Griesser) (08/24/85)
In article <1023@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> beth@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Beth Christy) writes: >I'm not exactly a novice user, and *I* was a little hesitant to put an >entire disk in the trash (what if I'd misinterpreted the doc - everything >else that goes in the trash eventually disappears *forever*, not just for >the duration of the session). Now I do it all the time, and I think it's >quite handy, thank you. But it *is* a departure from the typical meaning >of trash, and it made me a tad queasy for a while. This is precisely why Apple needs to add a few more icons to the desktop! When you get down to it, you should be able to do almost everything with icons and not have to resort to pull-down menus. Some ideas include: "Duplicate" = icon of a copier machine "Shut down" = a hand pulling the power plug "Eject" = picture of a disk popping out of a slot. A pile of shadowy (dimmed) disks located nearby. "Eject&forget" = picture of a disk popping out of a slot. No shadowy disks. "Erase disk" = picture of a disk going into a shredder.
tim@callan.UUCP (Tim Smith) (08/26/85)
> When you get down to it, you should be able to do almost everything with icons > and not have to resort to pull-down menus. Some ideas include: > "Duplicate" = icon of a copier machine > "Shut down" = a hand pulling the power plug > "Eject" = picture of a disk popping out of a slot. A pile of shadowy > (dimmed) disks located nearby. > "Eject&forget" = picture of a disk popping out of a slot. No shadowy disks. > "Erase disk" = picture of a disk going into a shredder. Also, when there exists a version of the Mac with real multitasking, you should be able to set up a pipe by stacking icons for the applications you want to pipe together, and dropping the document you want to use on the top one. -- Tim Smith ihnp4!{cithep,wlbr!callan}!tim
bhyde@inmet.UUCP (08/28/85)
The single thing that scares naive users the most is complexity.
The Mac is able to appear simple while having a lot of complexity
by packing a lot of stuff into a small space. Thus MacWrite has
the usual fifty or so commands that any formatter needs but it seems
to have many fewer. MacWrite is also a good example of how complexity
scares off a naive user, most naive users never figure out for themselves
how to create a header/footer, hide rulers, etc because the menu those
things appear in is so cluttered.
So one might suggest that there should be a mess of other icons on the
finder's desk top. I think not. Naive users think the trash can is
cute, and that's good, but if you put a lot of tools on the desk then
they are going to slip right out the front door of the store before the
salesman has gotten the chance to scare them away in his own unique manner.
Any body who reads usenet is probably what the micro-people call a "power
user." Microsoft's applications for the Mac are geared much more toward
the power user, particularly microsoft graph. But it is interesting to
me how much microsoft's spread sheet breaks new ground in being accessable
to naive users (or atleast those naive users that want a spread sheet).
ben hyde, cambridge.