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Comment by relium

17 hours ago

The best book I've ever read on the topic was the classic Mac OS Human Interface Guidelines. I still recommend them even though some of the specifics are out-of-date.

https://dev.os9.ca/techpubs/mac/pdf/HIGuidelines.pdf

10 comments

relium

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vostrocity  11 hours ago

I adore Tog on Interface by Bruce Tognazzini, who led the earliest editions of Apple's HIG. He explores ideas that have been lost to time, like tailoring an interface to a user's personality.

DaanDL  15 hours ago

I wonder how much of their own guidelines they violated with MacOS Tahoe.

  • sam1714  14 hours ago

    As they should. There are fundamental differences in hardware and capability between 1992 and 2026.

    The most immediate are pull-down menus at the top of the screen. They work good on a 9 inch screen, they are awful with 27 inch displays.

    Another related change are modal dialog boxes. When you have a 9 inch screen you're fundamentally looking at one document in one app at a time. When you got 2 27's that's not true anymore.

mghackerlady  17 hours ago

It's on my list as well. I really appreciate the MacOS handles progressive disclosure, something most environments either get wrong or misunderstand (caugh caugh GNOME caugh caugh)

ETA: One thing I forgot to mention is how playful MacOS was (and to an extent still is). They recognised that the easiest way to learn something is by messing with it and seeing what happens. It also caused it to be very approachable through what I like to call 'professional unprofessionalism'. It wasn't afraid to use silly metaphors or graphics to get a point across without crossing the line into seeming out of place in a work environment or feeling infantilising