Gizmodo
There's a gem of a story—one of many—in Leander Kahney's new book, Inside Steve's Brain, about the biggest OS X mistake Apple never made: The original plan UI was to take the old crusty crap interface from Mac OS Classic and drop it on top of the core. Thankfully Steve Jobs called the entire UI team a "bunch of idiots" and they used the beautiful tech demo mockups as the basis for what you see on leopard's OS today. Close call, eh?
After buying NeXT, Apple had to figure out how to turn NeXT-step into a Macintosh operating system. At first, the job looked so big that Apple's programmers decided they should take the old interface in Mac OS 8 and try to graft it on top of the NeXT-step codebase..."We assigned one designer to OS X," he recalled. "His job was pretty boring: make the new stuff look like the old stuff."But Razlaff thought it was a shame to put an ugly facade on such an elegant system, and soon, had designers creating mockups of new interface designs...to show off advanced technologies under NeXTstep's hood.
Jobs called Razlaff into a meeting before ever seeing the prototypes, immediately called them "a bunch of idiots" and complained about the old Mac interface.
One of the things he hated most were all the different mechanisms for opening windows and folders. There were at least eight different ways...
The meeting ended with Jobs and Razlaff, now a creative at Frog Design, figuring out how to fix the UI issues, and Jobs asked for the mockups to be made into prototypes. Three weeks later Jobs dropped a compliment on the man.
This is the first evidence of three-digit intelligence at Apple I've seen yet.
And this was just the start. And over the next few weeks, Jobs and Ratzlaff's team would meet once a week where the CEO would pore over mockups and code based executions, pixel by pixel, until the UI was done.
I got through a copy of Leander's book this weekend, and to my delight it was very fact, quote and anecdote dense, not only relying on many previous interviews but lots of original reporting, as well. (Like the story above.) There are people at Portfolio complaining that Jobs didn't participate in the book, but anyone who knows anything about Jobs knows that he does not typically comment on these projects. What you'll find is some crossover with previous historical treatments by other authors, but put together in a unique way. Leander's does not dote on the history or sequence because it is organized by, well, mannerisms of Steve's Brain, dissecting how the man thinks between many anecdotes like the one above.
The book is pretty good at highlighting the evidence of his genius, chalking up the control-freakiness that he has a rep for as a strategy. (As a comparison, his Pixar is relatively open with news.) But I would have liked a little more discussion here about one or two things. Like Apple TV's lack of support for DivX, while Jobs is lauded for being open to new business models even if they threaten old ones, for example. But this is a minor point — the book covers a lot of ground and does it over a nice stretch; to about the time where the iPhone launched plus the SDK and bricking debacles.
And even though it's meant for business nerds, who is to say that we all couldn't use a little bit more evil/genius? One could use this as a guide to pretending to be Jobs, at work, at home, and in bed I mean at work. I call everyone here on staff a friggin idiot every day, and it seems to be working ok. CHEN WHERE ARE MY TPS REPORTS!? And of course, there are dozens of new interesting stories in the book like the one above. [Inside Steve's Brain]
P.S. Leander adds "please buy my book." I told him I'd just photo copy the whole thing and mail it by US Postal to whoever wants a copy and send him the bill for the stamps. That might take awhile, so if you want, pick up a copy before then.
P.P.S. BoingBoing's Rob B. did this funny treatment of the book. You'll have to see it for yourself.
Comments
The thing is, i bet if it had every single non-appearance related feature that osx has, but did look like os 8, the amount of people with it would be so much less. It's all about looking shiny and pretty.
OS8, that sure does take me back.
@TheDoomer: True, and that extra layer of gloss has often come with some laughable usability boners in OSX, not to mention the consistent incongruity of interfaces (brushed aluminum? flat? pinstriped?) up to 10.5.
Things were so much simpler in 8-bit direct colour and 640x480.
@TheDoomer:
Functional & beautiful will beat just functional every time. And why shouldn't it?
No love for OS 9? Jinkies.
Ahh yes, summers in Rangoon with my trusty OS8 MAC... Now those were the days... You can't put a price tag on that memory...
OS 9 was probably to be 8.5 at one point - later, it became 8.7 - and then got bumped up to 9. (Taking Sherlock 2 to Mac OS 8.x says it requires Mac OS 8.5).
Most of the developer previews (one had an Ars Technica review, I think) didn't have Aqua, but Platinum.
Wasn't one of the secret features of OS 8 to actively seek out and eat either puppies and/or kittens? Or was that just poorly maintained hoards of Macs that I was forced to use?
@TheDoomer:
It's funny how everybody forgets the Mach/UNIX underpinnings of OS X when they lob UI spitballs.
Somebody who can only think about the GUI is being ignorant ina big way of all the things that comes with OS X and it's Mach history.
@direktor:
Very true. In the same way that people who discount the GUI as unimportant will never understand why one OS grows while another withers.
I still don't understand some of the conventions within the UI, for example can someone explain to me how I get my applications window to always open in "Icon" form? Mine always opens in the column view... no matter what window I open... the trash opens in column view... I don't get it.
What they really need to compare is OS 8's bewildering maze of installation screens...
"Let's drop the interface for Windows 2000 onto windows 7!"
Balmer - "YOU ****ING IDIOTS"
I could see it happening over at redmond too.
At one point it was! Does no one remember Mac OS X Server 1.0 (aka. Rhapsody) ? It was what we now know as OS X 10, but the interface was a cross between Mac OS 8/9 and NeXT OPENSTEP. See here:
[en.wikipedia.org]
@Topcat: The interface incongruity only started in 10.3 with brushed metal (and then got worse in 10.4 with unified windows)
@djdare: Finder > Preferences
There should be a check under open in column view. Uncheck that.
Why you would want to though is beyond me. I cringe every time I have to go back to 9 at work because I have become so reliant on column view and spotlight.
It wasn't the appearance of the UI that made OS7/8/9 suck, it was the constant crashing and freezing. Extension conflict!
@djdare: it may not solve all inconsistencies, but View > Show View Options, or Cmd-J is what you want. You'll have to first set the currently opened directory to the setting you want (Icons, List, Colums, CoverFlow, or Cmd-1,-2,-3,and -4 respectively), then select the "Always open in X view" checkbox. This is a per-directory setting, to make it the default for all directory browsing, click the "Use as Defaults" button at the bottom of the View Options window. That should solve most of your frustration.
@Murilee Martin: Yep one of the worst things Apple did (though Microsoft was just as bad and STILL hasnt learned the lesson) was how the underlying OS handled drivers and devices.
When I first started upkeep of the Macs in my district, my number one call was driver conflict, which is the WORST job imaginable in a education setting to track down the issue, especially in a situation where the previous people in charge just let the teachers load whatever the hell they wanted.
Divide your extensions, load half a set, load the other half etc. etc. etc....
That was great and all from a marketing standpoint but OSX was absolute CRAP for UI.
It's only getting up to snuff now. The old mac OS was designed from a user standpoint. If they could have put the elegant UI on top of Mach kernel mac users would have been better off.
Things that were bad in os 7-8-9 are abhorrent in osx. Did they ever make it easy to manage drivers and library installs?
@direktor: I understand exactly what you are saying. But, you gotta admit, I'd imagine that a large percent of Mac users are in it for the looks.
I will definitely read this. I started out on classic Mac OS way back in primary school. Then I went to Windows in JHS - HS. And now I'm a full time Mac nerd. Definitely have to read his Steve-ness's smexy book and figure out how he grows the balls to yell and Jonny when designs for Apple products don't meet the "more beautiful than God" rule. Yes.
On second thought, I think I'll just skim it at my local B&N, because Steve said that people don't read...
Uh, but it did happen, it was called Mac OS X Server 1.0 and looked exactly like Mac OS Classic except it was based on NextStep...
[img215.imageshack.us]
Damnit, jmckee beat me to the mention of OSX Server 1.0 by a hair!
I actually got to play around with OSXS1 (AKA "Rhapsody") a few times back circa 2000. Having done so, I have to say that I'm in complete agreement with Jobs: the UI completely blew. It mostly looked like the Platinum OS8/OS9 themes, but the way it acted was an unholy mix of MacOS and NeXTSTEP UI behaviors, usually picking the most annoying of the two if ever there was a conflict. If Apple had tried to foist that abomination off on their userbase, they would have probably gone bankrupt by 2001.
For the curious, you can read more about "OSX Server 1.0" over at wikipedia.
I'll have to check out this book then. I read his Cult of Mac blog every now and then and his writing style is interesting enough.
I really like the cover of this book, and wonder if Steve will give it a read (if he ever has the time).
That Leander dude just gives off a Steve Jobs stalker vibe in all his writings-kinda creepy to base your career obsessing on one guy.
NeXT rocked. My school had (like) 12 labs full of them, and then they went away . . . sigh.
The Mac OS 8 interface wasn't considered ugly at the time. In fact, Apple actually did put it onto the NeXT code-base as Rhapsody.
Apple also got a lot of grief when they released the Aqua interface -- I mean a LOT of grief. Amazing what 5 years will do for you.
@TheDoomer:
I'll be careful with my response, but I think that's insulting.
To assume that a broad swath of computer users is only interested in looks or whatever is just classic computer nerd.
@jmckee:
I was going to say, I was pretty sure OS X with a OS 9 window scheme actually was released.
Didn't the first DP of OS X look like this as well?
@Falconfire: I don't know why either, but I'm not comfortable seeing my trash in column view... I just want to see icons sometimes... thank you a billion though I feel ridiculous not knowing where that was.
@Tim Faulkner: thanks man
@Falconfire:
you use os9 at work? wow
And the second too.
[www.guidebookgallery.org]
This is the first evidence of three-digit intelligence at Apple I've seen yet.
REFERRING TO HIMSELF, I PRESUME.
Why couldn't Windows have a designer like this guy?! Windows is stuck in the past because of NT and its doomed unless Windows 7 changes the playing ground (it won't).
"Inside Steve's Brain?" Sounds like a great book and all, but I'm waiting for Kahney's inevitable Microsoft-Ballmer exposé, "Underneath Steve's Sweat-Drenched Pits."
I remember when OS X first came out. There were tons of people upset about the new UI. Many people wanted an OS 9 theme for OS X and to some degree I can kind of understand. OS X had a very high overhead for the pretty graphics. Many of us didn't have graphics cards at the time to really handle OS X and early versions of OS X didn't have some of the optimizations (Core tech) that sped things up. I remember booting into OS 9 on some faster G4s and being amazed at how fast windows snapped up. That being said, OS 9 was one ugly mofo and hard to look at after eating that OS X candy.
-- The History of El Cheapo Soy Sauce
Oh, come on now, that's not fair. OS X doesn't even have UI to speak of! I'd take OS9's consistent UI any day.
I still don't understand why they took away the customizable Apple menu. And for what, the f'ing Dock?!? Give me a break.
@Murilee Martin: Ugh. Don't remind me of extension conflicts. That was a painful era.
@someToast: AHMIGAD, os x on an intel processor in 1998. why wasn't I in on this shit?
@mmeister: well, do you remember what it looked like? Horsie go poo poo, basically.
[en.wikipedia.org]
@LagunaSol: Definitely! -A light, southern french pastiche of horse laxatives, elephant psychedelics and the moral/ethical quotient of the demons from "Little Nicky". -Should be a hoot!
what was wrong with the UI on Classic? I quite liked it...
Argh! To think we could have had the finely crafted OS 8/9 interface instead of...this. I've long been of the opinion that gratuitous UI changes are to make the upgrade saleable, not usable. I'm still trying to recover from the OSX transition; in fact it took Apple some time to do so, adding back things we had in the previous UI. Sadly, this seems to have stopped.
BTW, the OS X Server 1.0 interface was not as OS 8/9 - like as was intimated. I recall being trained on it at Apple's Austin offices; it might have looked somewhat familiar, but actually using it was pure NextStep.
@yogibimbi: No transparency, no drop shadow, no linear transformations, no gradients, and pretty much no marketing eye candy. Pretty much the differences between an application that doesn't sell and one that does. Shoot just wait until the gawker programmers figure out how to use gradients across the site, it will instantly garner them more visitors because the site "looks good" even though it wont functionally be better.
I will be anxiously awaiting the second installment of this project.
"Inside Chens Pants"
@Mayor McRib: I looked through the manuscript. Nightmares have never been more vivid.
OS 8/9 had good usability. In visual terms it was at least consistent, OS X has never had that. Nor has X had some of the thoughtful functional touches 9 had. Windowshade, customizable Apple menu, the sorting triangle was persistent in all windows, and now they took away Find File in 10.4. Give me some of these 9 features back.
Buy my book. Buy my book. Buy my...
Seriously, I designed it. Buy it.