In article <cja### [at] netplexaussieorg> , 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>  wrote:

>> for tasks that they took Mac OS 9 users 33 minutes and Mac OS X users 37
>> minutes to complete on average (7 and 12 users respectively).  That is a
>> "only" 12% difference, but on a full 8 hour workday is almost one hour of
>
> 7 OS 9 users and 12 OS X users, at completely different locations? 4
> minutes difference? That study doesn't show anything about the usability
> differences.

No, it just shows that you don't know how usability is tested.  And the
location does matter at all for a usability study (well, it would if the
locations where seriously different in setup, i.e. one indoors and one
outdoors during a snowstorm for example).

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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In article <cja### [at] netplexaussieorg> , 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>  wrote:

>> lost productivity!  The test involved a website used with IE (because it was
>> available on both systems) and viewing downloaded data in Excel and
>> Acrobat...
>
> Ugh...IE under OS X is a slow piece of crap.

The speed of the browser has absolutely nothing to do with this.  Nobody
measures speed differences of rendering pages in sub-second times.  It is
only relevant that the pages render in one to two seconds (more isn't
possible over intranets these days).

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

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Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> Well, you could also say Mac OS X breaks all GUI conventions intelligent
> people at Apple spend decades to refine.  You should not only look at the
> CPU time wasting effects Mac OS X brings, but also the millions of bugs and
> things it breaks.  From the useless window layering to the dock.  Nothing
> works.  Hardly better than Windos in the end.  And it needs more memory than
> Windos already <sigh>  But of course, under the current leadership at Apple
> a consistent and easy to use user interface is no longer a topic at all.
> Just look at Safari's non-standard appearance...
> 

I have to (mostly) agree with Thorsten here. Whether you like OS X's 
interface or not, it and the iApps break many of the guidelines 
originally set out by the Apple Human Interface group. While Steve Jobs 
has undeniably done many good things for Apple since his return, 
sometimes, it seems he wants to emphasize "style" over "substance" too 
much. It's true, some people just want to whine because OS X is 
different than what they've been used to, but many people have also 
raised a lot of legitimate concerns with the direction the Mac gui is 
taking.

RJay

"There is a fantasy in Redmond that Microsoft products are innovative, 
but this is based entirely on a peculiar confusion of the words 
"innovative" and "successful." Microsoft products are successful -- they 
make a lot of money -- but that doesn't make them innovative, or even 
particularly good."
-- Robert X. Cringley

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In article <3e646194@news.povray.org>,
 "Thorsten Froehlich" <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:

> No, it just shows that you don't know how usability is tested.  And the
> location does matter at all for a usability study (well, it would if the
> locations where seriously different in setup, i.e. one indoors and one
> outdoors during a snowstorm for example).

It appears you know little about setting up experiments. You need to 
eliminate as many extraneous variables as possible, geographic location 
could make a big difference, and this sample size is pretty small. This 
study could easily have shown Windows had the best interface.


> The speed of the browser has absolutely nothing to do with this.  Nobody
> measures speed differences of rendering pages in sub-second times.  It is
> only relevant that the pages render in one to two seconds (more isn't
> possible over intranets these days).

And the sub-second time it takes to access a menu does? And the 
milliseconds difference between fixed and slightly moving menus? It 
takes me far longer to find an item in a menu than to find the menu 
itself, and I spend very little time doing that.

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

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RJay's furious key-hammering produced this:
> I have to (mostly) agree with Thorsten here. Whether you like OS X's 
> interface or not, it and the iApps break many of the guidelines 
> originally set out by the Apple Human Interface group.

Personally, I find the application menus in OS X to make more sense overall.
For instance, you don't quit the file -- you quit the application.  You're not
setting the preferences for "edit", you're setting the preferences for the
application.  Et cetera, et cetera...

There are a few things that I don't like about OS X, though, mainly file
sorting and little things like that.  I like being able to sort by type and
date -- not just by name (I don't know if this was changed in Jaguar -- I only
have 10.1.5).  The dock could be a pain at times as well (I wish maximized
applications would not go under the dock).

-- 
/*^*/light_source{100*<-5,2,-5>2}#macro I(i,n)#while(strlen(i)>=n)#local A=asc(
substr(i,n,1));#local a=asc(substr(i,n+1,1));cylinder{<div(A,8)-12,mod(A,8)-4,4
><div(a,8)-12,mod(a,8)-4,4>,0.1pigment{rgb z}}#local n=n+2;#end#end I("ScUe[]"1
/*<*/)I("mkmtlttk"1)//@_$#!,:<"Thhis polysig brought to you by Ian Burgmyer :)"

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In article <3e65554b@news.povray.org>,
 "Ian J. Burgmyer" <the### [at] maccom> wrote:

> There are a few things that I don't like about OS X, though, mainly file
> sorting and little things like that.  I like being able to sort by type and
> date -- not just by name (I don't know if this was changed in Jaguar -- I only
> have 10.1.5).  The dock could be a pain at times as well (I wish maximized
> applications would not go under the dock).

You can't change the sorting method in column view AFAIK, but in icon 
view you can choose Arrange from the View menu, and in list view you can 
click the column heading of the attribute you want to sort by, and click 
again to reverse the listing. These options could be arranged better...

-- 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>
http://home.earthlink.net/~cjameshuff/
POV-Ray TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg
http://tag.povray.org/

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In article <cja### [at] netplexaussieorg> , 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>  wrote:

>> No, it just shows that you don't know how usability is tested.  And the
>> location does matter at all for a usability study (well, it would if the
>> locations where seriously different in setup, i.e. one indoors and one
>> outdoors during a snowstorm for example).
>
> It appears you know little about setting up experiments. You need to
> eliminate as many extraneous variables as possible, geographic location
> could make a big difference, and this sample size is pretty small. This
> study could easily have shown Windows had the best interface.

It has been shown, and is commonly agreed upon in literature about the
topic, that 8-10 users are sufficient for over 95% accuracy, and you reach
over 99.9% when exceeding 20 users.  You can calculate it yourself at
<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html>.  And before you now start to
dispute that finding, please note that it has been peer-reviewed and
presented on the annual HCI ACM conference a decade ago.  So please don't
argue about something you obviously don't know anything about.  Only argue
after you actually informed yourself about the topic, that really helps, and
I am sure that is what they teach you at university as well.

Alternatively, as a starting point, see if you find this book in your
university library (unlikely if you don't have a psychology department
though):  <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0125184069/>

>> The speed of the browser has absolutely nothing to do with this.  Nobody
>> measures speed differences of rendering pages in sub-second times.  It is
>> only relevant that the pages render in one to two seconds (more isn't
>> possible over intranets these days).
>
> And the sub-second time it takes to access a menu does? And the
> milliseconds difference between fixed and slightly moving menus? It
> takes me far longer to find an item in a menu than to find the menu
> itself, and I spend very little time doing that.

If you (could) look at the videos you (would) notice something strange: On
Mac OS 9, users move straight to the menu.  In Mac OS X, they move until
about 50 pixels below the menu, then stop for a second or two before they
move on.  And there was also constant confusion when switching windows
together with menus.  Users had problems figuring out which window belonged
to what kind of menu and such.  I simply cannot go into more detail or put
up the video somewhere because I do not have the rights to do so.  In fact I
would love to get somebody to look into this further, and with the OS being
the actual focus, but that isn't my decision (to pay for) either.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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In article <3e65554b@news.povray.org> , "Ian J. Burgmyer" 
<the### [at] maccom> wrote:

> There are a few things that I don't like about OS X, though, mainly file
> sorting and little things like that.

Yes, and file dragging from the navigation mess (aka Mac OS X Finder).  The
Mac OS Finder used to keep item order the same as it was in the current
sorting.  In mac OS X this is different: Here files will be in arbitrary
order (actually, I think it is their filesystem file id) when being dragged.
Thus, when dragging files they will arrive in arbitrary order in other
applications.  Very annoying...

>  I like being able to sort by type and
> date -- not just by name (I don't know if this was changed in Jaguar -- I only
> have 10.1.5).  The dock could be a pain at times as well (I wish maximized
> applications would not go under the dock).

There are a few things you can do about it with 3rd party extensions.  None
is perfect though :-(

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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Thorsten Froehlich's furious key-hammering produced this:
> In mac OS X this is different: Here files will be in arbitrary
> order (actually, I think it is their filesystem file id) when being dragged.
> Thus, when dragging files they will arrive in arbitrary order in other
> applications.  Very annoying...

You're referring to dragging files to an application, correct?  I haven't
noticed any oddities with dragging from one Finder window to another, but I
haven't tried dragging a group of files to an application yet.  I can see how
that would be annoying, though...it's like how Windows reverses the first and
last filename in the list (though at least you can get around that).

>>  I like being able to sort by type and
>> date -- not just by name (I don't know if this was changed in Jaguar -- I only
>> have 10.1.5).  The dock could be a pain at times as well (I wish maximized
>> applications would not go under the dock).
> 
> There are a few things you can do about it with 3rd party extensions.  None
> is perfect though :-(

That's a shame.  I don't really like setting the dock to auto-hide, but I think
I might have to in order to keep my sanity.  That's something I like about both
Classic Mac OS and Windows -- they both have very non-obstructive ways of seeing
what is running and changing tasks.  The dock looks nice, but it can use some
work (I really wouldn't care about it if the bottoms of windows didn't open
*under* it).

-- 
/*^*/light_source{100*<-5,2,-5>2}#macro I(i,n)#while(strlen(i)>=n)#local A=asc(
substr(i,n,1));#local a=asc(substr(i,n+1,1));cylinder{<div(A,8)-12,mod(A,8)-4,4
><div(a,8)-12,mod(a,8)-4,4>,0.1pigment{rgb z}}#local n=n+2;#end#end I("ScUe[]"1
/*<*/)I("mkmtlttk"1)//@_$#!,:<"Thhis polysig brought to you by Ian Burgmyer :)"

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Christopher James Huff's furious key-hammering produced this:
>> There are a few things that I don't like about OS X, though, mainly file
>> sorting and little things like that.  I like being able to sort by type and
>> date -- not just by name
> 
> You can't change the sorting method in column view AFAIK, but in icon 
> view you can choose Arrange from the View menu

Yes, but this only allows you to arrange by name.

> and in list view you can
> click the column heading of the attribute you want to sort by, and click 
> again to reverse the listing. These options could be arranged better...

True, but I like using the icon view -- it gives me a much better idea of what
type of file it is at first glance.  I use that all the time on my Windows
system (and even on Mac OS 9.2) when arranging files.  It's much quicker in my
experience than reading the file type on the list view.

-- 
/*^*/light_source{100*<-5,2,-5>2}#macro I(i,n)#while(strlen(i)>=n)#local A=asc(
substr(i,n,1));#local a=asc(substr(i,n+1,1));cylinder{<div(A,8)-12,mod(A,8)-4,4
><div(a,8)-12,mod(a,8)-4,4>,0.1pigment{rgb z}}#local n=n+2;#end#end I("ScUe[]"1
/*<*/)I("mkmtlttk"1)//@_$#!,:<"Thhis polysig brought to you by Ian Burgmyer :)"

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