Honest question - what Apple product first replaced the WIMP interface? (If you mean phones, even mainstream cheap feature phones weren't following WIMP long before Apple; and tablets followed on from phone UIs, not that Apple were first in tablets anyway - or do you mean something else?)
I haven't kept close track of locked-down tech I'm not going to pay extra for anyway, but . . . The "wheel" control on the IWalkman may have been the very first, but the whole "gestural" interface of the iOS is outside the box.
The stunning backwardness of user interface has been a hobby horse of mine for a while. If you went back in your time machine, and took someone from the audience of the famous Douglas Englebart demo in 1968, and sat him (probably was a him) in front of Windows 7 or OSX, he'd know exactly what it was, and what to do with it.
In the longer run, it is incredibly important that Joe user now has the concept that there can be different sorts of interfaces, that WindowsIconsMousePulldownmenus =/= interface. It's one less obstacle for the next Great Idea.
Yes true they were first with multitouch (and I assume therefore the gestures?). I don't deny that, I'm just saying it wasn't the first or only change away from WIMP - phones had already moved well away from WIMP, as well as not using the mouse. So I see it as one of many evolutions in input. (My 5800 doesn't even have multitouch, and I get on just fine - to me, touchscreen itself is the far more significant change in input devices for phones, which predated Apple; and I'd rather have a resistive touchscreen, so I don't have to smear my food over the screen when I'm eating;).)
Also note that gestures aren't a replacement for WIMP - I have multitouch gestures on the touchpad of my Windows 7 Samsung N220, even though it's a WIMP GUI still of course. It's more a part of the input device, I'd say.
Whatever one thinks of the wheel, I don't see that this can count as a move away from WIMP, because mp3 players (and audio players before that) never used such interfaces. Again this sums up my view of Apple - it's fair enough saying of a company that a particular innovation was great, or a particular specific thing was done first. But with Apple, it always has to be overblown to saying things like it completely changed everything, or one particular "first" was the most important change ever.
Let's congratulate Apple for being first with multitouch. Let's also congratulate all the other companies who were first with things like touchscreens, running apps, Internet access on phones, GPS, mapping software, built in cameras, designing the CPUs that power them, developing the network infrastructure that makes it all work etc.
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andrewducker) wrote2011-08-28 09:58 pm
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The "wheel" control on the IWalkman may have been the very first, but the whole "gestural" interface of the iOS is outside the box.
The stunning backwardness of user interface has been a hobby horse of mine for a while. If you went back in your time machine, and took someone from the audience of the famous Douglas Englebart demo in 1968, and sat him (probably was a him) in front of Windows 7 or OSX, he'd know exactly what it was, and what to do with it.
In the longer run, it is incredibly important that Joe user now has the concept that there can be different sorts of interfaces, that WindowsIconsMousePulldownmenus =/= interface. It's one less obstacle for the next Great Idea.
no subject
Also note that gestures aren't a replacement for WIMP - I have multitouch gestures on the touchpad of my Windows 7 Samsung N220, even though it's a WIMP GUI still of course. It's more a part of the input device, I'd say.
Whatever one thinks of the wheel, I don't see that this can count as a move away from WIMP, because mp3 players (and audio players before that) never used such interfaces. Again this sums up my view of Apple - it's fair enough saying of a company that a particular innovation was great, or a particular specific thing was done first. But with Apple, it always has to be overblown to saying things like it completely changed everything, or one particular "first" was the most important change ever.
Let's congratulate Apple for being first with multitouch. Let's also congratulate all the other companies who were first with things like touchscreens, running apps, Internet access on phones, GPS, mapping software, built in cameras, designing the CPUs that power them, developing the network infrastructure that makes it all work etc.