The browser, for instance: I often find myself clicking a link to a slow website — or maybe there’s some other network hiccup — and nothing happens. Or at least that’s how it seems. There actually is a subtle indication that I’ve successfully clicked, and it comes in the form of a pinwheel or a progress dial in the loading tab — what we used to call the Throbber back in the Netscape days — that tells me that, yes, I clicked and now the page is loading. But these subtle indicators are often lost on new users, or less tech-savvy ones. And, to be quite honest, they’re often lost on me as well.

Netscape Throbber

Links are small, and with the inaccuracies that tend to accompany touchpad use, I miss them a lot. This is especially true on pages like Facebook which often load new content just before you click said link, causing your link to shift position, thus causing you to miss it through no fault of your own and in a way that you might be completely unaware of. So it’s important to know simply that you clicked. That you nailed it.

Clicking in one spot and then having to look in a completely different spot to see if I successfully clicked is not only inefficient, it’s really annoying. It totally breaks my flow and it also doesn’t make much sense except within the historical context of the Netscape-style Throbber. Why not make the progress indicator closer to the link you just clicked? Or cover the page with some sort of translucent graphic? Or use some sort of Heads Up Display?

Chrome Throbber

The Finder is guilty too. The throbber for searches performed in a Finder window is a small radial line throbber in the status bar in the lower right corner of the window. By default, in Lion, the status bar is hidden, thus the throbber, too, is hidden by default. But even when visible, it’s nowhere near the search bubble, nor is it anywhere near where the search results begin to appear. Unless you know that the throbber is there — and I certainly missed it for a long time — you’ll likely be oblivious to its existence.

Finder Throbber

But, you say, search results appear so instantaneously, there’s no need for a throbber. Well, sure, except when they don’t. Say you’re searching a network volume, for instance. This type of search is much slower since it doesn’t rely on the local Spotlight database to perform the search, so results can take some time to appear. Also, without a throbber, how do you know when Spotlight has finished searching, particularly on a large volume with lots of results? Feedback, my friends. Feedback.

This should be the rule — and maybe it already is somewhere, but if it isn’t it should be. If I click on something I should get immediate feedback that tells me simply that I successfully clicked, that I hit my target, and it should be obvioulsy apparent. Details beyond this, like what’s happening now that I’ve interacted with my computer, should also be evident. But it seems like lately we’re really falling down on the, “Hey, you clicked something,” front. And it’s been bugging me. A lot. Because in computerland, clicking on something and receiving no feedback whatsoever has always meant one thing and one thing only: it’s broken.

Browser developers, OS programmers, you want to rethink an interface? You want to make a better mousetrap? Start there. Start with feedback. It’s quite basic, but feedback is so very important to the computing experience. And while I wouldn’t say it’s completely broken, it, like everything in life, can always get better.

Long live the Throbber!

UPDATE: One reader has decided to begin recording every instance of radial throbbers he can find. Check ‘em out at Samuel Henry’s Space!

Indeed.

But the problem with the computer doing too much for me is really an implementation problem, and in the end it boils down to one main issue: communication. I don’t mind the computer doing things for me, but I need to know about it.

Case in point: automatic spelling correction. Apple has rolled iOS’s auto-spell correct into Lion, and now I find myself making all the same sorts of word choice errors in my documents that I make in my text messages. Here’s the thing, though. In the past, when I’d make a spelling error, TextEdit would put a big red squiggle under my misspelled word. Later, when revising something, I’d easily spot the mistake and correct it by hand.



Now, with automatic spell-correct, TextEdit sees my misspelled word and corrects it, so there is no red squiggle. And with no red squiggle there’s nothing to tell me, upon revision, that there might be mistakes in my document — mistakes which take the form of incorrect words rather than misspellings, but mistakes nonetheless — mistakes made by the computer.

While I generally like auto spell-correct, I think it would be much improved with some sort of notification system. Perhaps a subtle highlight, or a blue squiggle, under every word that was corrected by the system. That way, when you go to revise your document, you can see where the computer has intervened and perhaps made an unfortunate word choice.

Extend that idea to Versions and I think I’d have a lot less to complain about with the versioning system as well.

Overall, I think there are some good ideas here in Lion. But there’s definitely room for improvement.

For years now I’ve kept my Desktop organized by file type. I like this because it groups all my files in a way that I find logical and easy to visually parse. One glance at the Desktop and I can find all the PDFs, for instance, and these will be ordered alphabetically. It’s a personal preference, and it’s worked well for me for years. But it’s broken in Lion.

In Lion, sometimes items of the same type group together, but sometimes they don’t. The other day, for instance, I downloaded four PNGs to my Desktop. Three of them were grouped together, but one was just put somewhere random. Restarting the Finder caused all the items to group properly. This little trick was repeatable on both my system and on other Lion systems in my facility.

Moreover, eventually the items will group properly, and I’ll see, out of the corner of my eye, my Desktop suddenly rearrange itself for no apparent reason.

But here’s the thing: without consistency, the feature that allows you to arrange your Desktop by file type is essentially useless. If I can’t rely on it to present me with accurate information all the time, then there’s no real point in using it anymore.

So I’ve switched to manually arranging items on my Desktop. That’s right, I’ve now abandoned the method of Desktop organization I’ve used for years because Lion has broken it. But here’s the kicker: manual organization doesn’t always work either. Even manually arranged items get disordered from time to time after, say, a logout.

Another thing that happens — less annoying, for sure, but indicative of the sad state of the Lion Finder — is that when I log in there is often one item on the Desktop that’s missing an icon. Again, restarting the Finder fixes the issue. But still…

And then there’s this:

From an item on my Desktop. Jesus.

At this point, for me, the Desktop is essentially completely broken; it’s nearly unusable. I’m not sure how the folks in Cupertino even use this OS without driving themselves up a wall. And I don’t know how they can allow these basic and obvious bugs to persist.

The sad state of Lion’s Finder really shows Apple’s level of commitment to the desktop version of their once great OS. It’s just tiresome to have to be wrestling, after ten years, with the most basic piece of Mac OS software: The Finder. But that’s where we are today.

Siri’s great when it works, it just so seldom does. The most common thing I want to do with Siri is make calls to restaurants to order food. But restaurants, particularly ones in this town, tend to have odd names. Siri doesn’t work well with odd names and it usually fails when I try to use it to call, say, Kouzan. It also fails if I try to call Café Viva by reversing the words of the name and saying, “Call Viva Café.” But this sort of intelligence — the ability to parse natural language, even mistakes to some extent — is just what Siri’s billed as being great at.

I’ve pretty much given up calling restaurants with Siri. And since I don’t really make many other calls, Siri phone functionality is mostly useless to me. So what else can Siri do?

Well, Siri’s great at dictation. I mean really great. So this morning I attempted to jot down an idea for a blog post using the dictation feature. After finishing the input the note was empty. Completely blank. Siri just completely gave up the ghost. Turns out there was a network related problem, and Siri famously fails when it has any problem connecting to Apple’s network. Let’s be clear: I had connectivity three ways to Sunday; the problem was Apple-side. I think it might be good for Siri to do some network checking before taking requests, because, though it can save you quite a bit of time when it works, when it doesn’t, it’s a huge time waster. And that just adds to my steadily increasing level of gunshy-ness.

So far Siri’s pretty good about setting reminders. Hasn’t failed me there yet; I’ll keep trying to use it. But I’m pretty close to giving up. I don’t know. Maybe the giving-up threshold is simply determined by a loose calculation of how much time you’ve wasted on a new technology. Maybe once your brain realizes that this thing that’s supposed to be saving you time is instead stealing it away, maybe that’s when you stop playing guinea pig and get back to work.

Whatever the case, Siri has proven, over the longer haul, to be not particularly useful in real world use cases, at least not yet.

Don’t believe the hype. Or at least not all of it.

1. Siri is a believable and convincing enough piece of software to make people react to it as though it is a real person, with real thoughts and opinions.
2. Most people either just have no clue how technology works, or no interest in understanding it. Or both.

Sometimes, ya just gotta laugh.

1. I open a document.
2. I make some temporary or test changes — changes I don’t intend do actually keep.
3. Once I’ve seen what I need to see, I quit the application.

In the past I’d have been asked if I wanted to save the changes to the document. I would say no, because these were only temporary changes. But now these changes are saved to the document, and I’ve likely forgotten that I’ve made those changes. The next time I open the document I’m shocked to see that it looks completely wrong.

Yes, it’s true, the upside is that I need merely look through the previous versions of the document in order to find and revert to the correct one. But I still find this problematic, and there are two reasons why.

First of all, under Versions there is no good way to make temporary changes to a document. This is something I do way more than I ever realized. It’s not so much a feature of the old document saving paradigm as a side-effect of it, nevertheless it’s extremely useful. And it breaks in potentially jarring and disconcerting ways under Versions. If you’re used to making temporary changes to documents, then simply reverting by not saving the document, you may be in for a surprise one day. Let’s just hope you remember to check your versions.

Secondly, the way this all works is simply too quiet. I’ve just opened a document, made changes to that document, and closed the document. There’s nothing now to confirm that these changes have been made, and so they are committed to this new version quietly and without warning. Attempting to edit a locked document, on the other hand, is completely the opposite experience, with warnings and multiple dialogs replete with confusing text. It’s a strange juxtaposition. But frankly, if I just made a bunch of unsaved changes to a document, a little confirmation dialog at quit time might be nice.

Look, I get that this is a new paradigm, and behaviors need to be adjusted to some extent. But the way Versions works isn’t perfect, nor is it set in stone. It can and should be better.

Case in point: Locked Files.

Lion now locks files that haven’t been edited for a certain period of time. It does this in order to prevent accidental changes to documents opened in applications that support auto-save. But, unfortunately, it can cause its own problems and unforseen changes to documents.

Here’s what happens when I try to simply add an action to a locked Automator Workflow.

1. I open the file (note: it’s locked, but this is only apparent by looking at the grayed-out text in the document titlebar).
   
2. I attempt to edit the document (in this case, I added an action to my workflow).
3. I get a dialog box regarding how I want to handle the locked file. The dialog is wordy, and if I were a new user I would find it confusing and alarming.
   
4. It seems fairly obvious to me that I want to make changes to the document — that’s why I opened it. But the preferred and presumably safest choice, as indicated by the button highlight, is to Duplicate the document, so that’s what I do.
5. This produces a copy of the document — indicated by an informative animation — and yet another dialog that now asks how I want to deal with the edits I just made to what I was just told was a locked document. This dialog is even wordier and less clear. Moreover it’s unnecessary and makes no sense, because it shouldn’t have been possible to edit the locked document in the first place, and presumably you made this decision in the last dialog by choosing to work on a duplicate. Also, the button text is completely unclear: What is the difference between Older Version and Last Opened Version? What happens if I click Cancel? Why do I have the option to unlock the file from this dialog when I just made the decision to not unlock it in the last dialog? Insanely confusing!
   
6. Here, the highlighted safe choice is indicated as “Last Opened Version,” so let’s just go with that. But wait! Doing so gives me an error that says that the document could not be reverted. Now, the document I just took pains to duplicate and, thus, not edit has in fact been unlocked and edited. Moreover, I now also have a duplicate of the document with the same edits. So now I’ve got all sorts of file management to contend with.
   

Mind you, all I wanted to do here was add an action to a preexisting Automator Workflow. In the past I’d have opened that document, made the change, and saved the file. Done. Now a simple document edit has become an exercise in frustration and confusion. Mac OS X Lion has actually attempted to prevent me from editing my own file. And then, when failing to prevent me from editing my file, it has failed to clean up after itself and left everything in a state of disarray. Worse, there is now a good chance for data loss here, for a mistaken edit to occur.

And can someone tell me what the point of all this is? What’s the payoff? Why is the OS locking my files? It presumes I’m making a mistake by editing a document, implying I’m some kind of careless child who can’t be trusted with his own data. And while I get the idea of protecting the user from himself — or just from accidents — this is overkill. There is certainly a better way.

Locked Files in Lion, as it currently stands, is an abomination that’s completely contrary to the goals and ideals of the Macintosh experience — in fact, it’s contrary to the goals of the file locking system itself. It’s inelegant, pointless and potentially dangerous.

There is one bit of good news, however. You can turn it off. Yes, buried in Options section of the Time Machine preferences, of all places, is this little gem:

Here you can set the time limit for Locked Files, and you can also simply disable file locking altogether. Until Apple improves the ridiculous behavior associated with Locked Files, I think I’ll disable them. Something tells me I’ll be okay without the extra protection.

But here’s the grind: I’m not sure how you’re supposed to get the update.

My first attempt was via Software Update, but SU tells me I’m all up to date.

Next I tried the Mac App Store, where I met with what is becoming an all-too-frequently frustrating experience. Under the Purchased tab I see Final Cut Pro, and I’m given an option to Install.

But hitting Install gives me an error message telling me to use Software Update, which I already know doesn’t work.

After some option-click finagling I get App Store to allow me to attempt to install the update from the Final Cut Pro X product page, which currently lists the version as 10.0.1, the new version. But when I attempt to do so I get this message:

This is maybe the worst error message I’ve seen yet in the Mac App Store, because it shouldn’t even be possible. If I didn’t buy FCP from the Mac App Store, then where, pray tell did I buy it from? Are you accusing me of stealing it? Really? Because you should know better, shouldn’t you?

Isn’t this just the sort of licensing crap the App Store was supposed to do away with? Doesn’t the Mac App Store know exactly what I’ve bought and where? Seems to me like, once I’ve made the purchase, I should be able to reinstall FCP any time I want, and any version, even if I already have it. I don’t get why the App Store forbids re-installs.

Ultimately I was able to get the update. I did so by deleting the Final Cut Pro application from my Applications folder, then reinstalling it from the Mac App Store. Which, I say again, is just the sort of ridiculous user experience the App Store was supposed to prevent.

So far the Mac App Store user experience has been pretty terrible, particularly when installing Apple apps. This is in large part because, contrary to what they allow every other developer to do, Apple uses the App Store for large, complex application installs. Ironically, the most complex install yet, Mac OS X Lion, was their biggest success. But Xcode and now Final Cut Pro have been terrible. Just terrible.

Sloppy: Why Is The Header Not Centered?

Moreover, the App Store UI really needs and overhaul. It’s ugly, unbearably slow, cluttered and lacks features common to most browsers around today — features that would really aid the buying process, where their lack certainly hinders it. Features like tabs and bookmarks, for starters, would be really useful for comparison shopping. A shopping cart would be good for buying multiple items. Instead we’re stuck with this crap.

The Mac App Store is the single least Apple-like Apple product I’ve ever used. It’s kludgy and feels cheap. It’s just terrible. And it’s now been out for some time and is presumably mature as it’s now baked into the OS, so there’s no excuse for this. Unfortunately, for some products, it’s unavoidable, which is a real shame.

More and more I’m bothered by Apple’s tendency to force their vision on their customers. It was fine when they did so with wonderful products. but when the products suck, it becomes time to start looking for alternatives.

UPDATE:
I almost forgot! There are additional updates which bring additional inconsistencies to this update process. Compressor has also gotten an update, and this one can be had in the normal way, by simply hitting the Update button in the Updates section of the App Store (I presume the Motion update works similarly, but I don’t own it, so can’t say for sure).

But there are also CODEC updates, and these must be gotten via a webpage:

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1396

So there are actually four different updates to the FCP suite, and three different ways to obtain the various components. None of which are Software Update, so none of which make the updates apparent to anyone who isn’t reading the trades. If you didn’t read Apple news sites, I’m not sure how you’d even find out about these updates.

The Software Update mechanism is a very good way to deliver updates — and vastly superior to the Mac App Store — but it’s been completely abandoned for the Final Cut Suite updates.

I’ve argued several times now that, as great as Google’s products are, they could be made even better if Google were to begin to concentrate even just a tiny fraction of its mighty will on the issue of design. And the new Google pages are distinctly better — nicer to look at and easier to use — than ever.

Mail and Calendar are most improved, but then perhaps they were the most in need of help. Both are now lighter and more spacious; colors have been muted, borders softened and emphasis placed in all the right spots. Both are easier to look at, and easier to read or just skim. Visually parsing the new interfaces for particular nuggets of information in the sea of crap that is my calendar and email is just plain easier.

The new interfaces look really nice too, at least to my eye, and that makes me want to look at them more, makes checking mail more of a pleasure, less of a chore.

By the way, if you want to see the new Gmail interface, you’ll need to apply one of the themes built special for the purpose. Just hit the Gear icon in the upper right, go to Settings and then Themes and select either “Preview” or “Preview (Dense)”.

I’m not a designer. I don’t know precisely how design works nor how to do it. But I am and admirer of good design, and I can certainly appreciate when it makes the tools we use work better.

It’s great to see Google embrace design in the manner.

Mac OS X 10.7 — or Lion as it’s affectionately codenamed — is certainly no exception. In fact, Lion looks to be a very exciting release, both for its wealth of new features and for its refinements to Apple’s already sparkling OS.

It’s an exciting time to be an OS junkie, really. Snow Leopard was a wonderful release that brought stability and refinement to what can finally be called a mature Mac OS X. From here on out OS development seems to be less about making Mac OS X work quickly and succinctly — less about the guts of the OS —  and more about making it work well. That is, from here on out, Mac OS X developers are concentrating on making the Mac OS X experience a wonderful one. And that means even further refinement to an already polished OS, with maybe a dash of experimentation thrown in for good measure, thanks to convergence with Apple’s mobile OS.

I haven’t installed the beta, but I’ve read as much as I’ve been able to find. Here are some images and links, with just a dash of commentary from yours truly thrown in.

Mac OS X Server
One of the shockers about this release is that Mac OS X Server will be included, for free, with the standard Lion DVD. It will be a separate install, but has been discontinued as a separate, paid release. Looks like Apple’s professional server platform is dead, but I’m glad it will live on in some form, at least for the time being.

Images Via AppleInsider

Administrative Tools and Goodies
One of the great things about OS updates — particularly the latest Mac OS X updates — has been further expansion and refinement of any and all administrative tools. This is, needless to say, of particular interest to SysAdmins like us. Here are some updates that Lion brings to the table baked right into the About This Mac window.

Images Via AppleInsider

The Finder
Of course I’m always, always, always happy to see Finder improvements and refinements, and it looks like there will be plenty in Lion.

We have some new and potentially very useful Finder views, though I must admit to not being a great fan of the iOS-like buttons in the toolbar. The sidebar is also toned down (a-la iTunes) and features some new and potentially useful items.

Image Via AppleInsider

Spotlight in The Finder is now smarter and more useful.

Image Via AppleInsider

And my favorite Finder view, column view, even receives some love.

Image Via AppleInsider

And finally, the big Finder news: windows can now be resized from any edge. Just like in Windows.

Image Via TheAppleBlog

Other Improvements
There are a bunch of additional refinements to the core OS. One of my favorites is support for automatically saving documents, or Auto Save as they’re calling it.

Images Via AppleInsider

Auto Save is accessed just like Time Machine, which is just brilliant.

A signature capture utility also makes its way into Preview, allowing you to sign digital documents using that app and your built-in iSight camera.

Image Via 9to5Mac

Dock and Exposé get refinements as well.

Images Via Engadget

Even Spotlight gets better, with larger icons and inline previews.

Image Via AppleInsider

All-in-all, from what I’ve sen so far, Lion is shaping up to be a very nice release. I’m sure there will be under-the-hood improvements that will add performance gains as well. I am, as always, really looking forward to using Apple’s next OS release.