Applies only to an increasingly obscure input device. No one talks about Fitts's Law on phones, because it's fundamentally wrong. The "size" of a control assumes you have a mouse or joystick or something trying to find it. Fingers don't do that, no one worries about moving to a control.
> Discoverability
Equally true of a hamburger menu.
> I use menus all the time
I do too! Because we're dinosaurs.
> You say 'no one uses menus' Not true.
It was hyperbole that I genuinely thought was clear from the text. You know exactly what I meant. Menus are secondary devices at this point only seriously used on one platform, so it's 100% unsurprising that design paradigms for using them are changing ("decaying", I suspect you and the other dinosaurs would say) to reflect patterns used elsewhere in the industry.
> Applies only to an increasingly obscure input device. No one talks about Fitts's Law on phones
I'm not talking about fitts law on phones though, I don't think anyone is. This is about Tahoe/mac OS on Macs.
But I'd hardly call a mouse, or a trackpad 'increasingly obscure' I use the fact that I have an infinite target area with my trackpad everyday. It's one of those things that a user might not consciously notice until it's no longer there. Much like a lot of what we are seeing with Tahoe in general that people like me, you, the author of this article. We are pointing out the UI issues that are suddenly immediately apparent, and the bit that is really astounding us all is --- how on earth are Apple, supposed bastions of UI interface detail, and polish , are making such an almighty meal of all of these things that used to work but now just don't, and not even don't work -- the 'new ways' are objectively worse.
The only criticism of the top menu bar interface is that on big hi res monitors (which are relatively recent in terms of the Mac OS desktop) sometimes have the menu bar 'miles away' from the actual app that may be in a smaller window. But this is where fitts law comes in -- so the choice is shorter distance but you need to be more precise smaller target (windows) or large distance but infinite target. I prefer the latter.
It's probably in some ways almost a direct holdover from the time of 9" screens and single tasking -- apps were usually taking up most of the screen so having a menu bar at the 'top' wasn't that weird. Having multiple menus bars would have been really weird and taken a lot of space.
I mean Apple could offer an option like I used to see on gnome where you could have a global menu bar or a per app menu bar. That would be more useful than stage manager ever has been I'd bet.
> I'm not talking about fitts law on phones though, I don't think anyone is.
I was, in the comment you responded to!
I'm saying that phone-centric UI paradigms completely dominate in the modern world. And by extension, arguments like the linked article dancing on pins over minutiae of the menu bar, are missing the point. Good User Interface design in the coming decades simply is not going to use menu bars, it's not. It exists for dinosaurs like us, not the coming generation of tool users who will be directing AI or whatever and not digging through text.
interesting take. I don't buy it though. But I guess we need to wait and see.
Apple has long been rumoured to be on the path to merging IOS and mac OS (whatever that means) . MS already tried it and failed.
I for one, usually avoid using phone apps and tend to use websites (for example) instead since the phone apps usually have arbitrary limitations enforced by piss poor UI.
The most obvious and egregious example is the number of apps that don't let you open more than one view - e.g. Amazon. I can't look at 2 products in amazon app at the same time. It's just horrendous.
The next obvious one is Youtube -- The app is just terrible. Using a browser is a better experience in every way.
Applies only to an increasingly obscure input device. No one talks about Fitts's Law on phones, because it's fundamentally wrong. The "size" of a control assumes you have a mouse or joystick or something trying to find it. Fingers don't do that, no one worries about moving to a control.
> Discoverability
Equally true of a hamburger menu.
> I use menus all the time
I do too! Because we're dinosaurs.
> You say 'no one uses menus' Not true.
It was hyperbole that I genuinely thought was clear from the text. You know exactly what I meant. Menus are secondary devices at this point only seriously used on one platform, so it's 100% unsurprising that design paradigms for using them are changing ("decaying", I suspect you and the other dinosaurs would say) to reflect patterns used elsewhere in the industry.