Comment by VerifiedReports

1 day ago

"Apple’s attention to detail"

Such cringe-inducing, delusional fawning. You can find counterpoints to this oft-regurgitated claim all over Apple's products, with a cornucopia of them in the rightfully-scorned Tahoe release alone.

But back to the topic at hand: "knobs" in GUIs. They suck, for the very reasons demonstrated here. Audio software in particular is replete with this skeuomorphic failure, and why? Because people who work in music or audio can't understand more-effective GUI affordances? Because they'd be lost without something that looks like the physical knobs on a mixer or stompbox? What an insulting assumption, not to mention nonsensical in modern times.

"Apple employees work really hard to make products that are deceptively simple and just feel right."

This grand declaration is based on what, exactly? In a decade as a software engineer at Apple, I saw a wide range of dedication and aptitude in UI design and implementation. This varies within teams and between teams, with no set standards for research or testing of UI effectiveness. I saw the same amateur-hour mistakes made repeatedly, despite their being pointed out incontrovertibly... and some have come back to bite (and cripple) new generations of Apple products.

Design isn't getting better, folks. It's one thing to give bad design a free pass; but to LAUD it hurts all users.

I'm no apple enthusiast, but digital knobs solve a real UI problem. They:

- display a value compactly

- show that the value is modifiable by the user

- allow changing the value to use more screen real-estate than the knob itself

An abstract slider that works like a knob is jumping a knights-move away in design space from a traditional control. The user has to understand 2 things about the widget:

1. It's user-modifiable

2. It's manipulated by clicking on the widget, then dragging away

A knob is only 1 step away from a traditional control. You get the "user-modifiable" knowledge for free, because everyone knows what a knob is already.