A lot of tech press is saying Microsoft’s Metro interface for Windows 8 is a bold new direction, and that it shows they are finally being like Apple. I disagree. Metro is full of living, moving data that your tire your eyes and cause you to lose focus. The simplified look might be a good start, but it’s not enough to be simple. You also have to be powerful and flexible without requiring the user to think too much to do the powerful stuff.
On a recent Talk Show, John Gruber said he doesn’t fear for the future of a post-Jobs Apple because the company itself is Apple-like. It’s a fractal design that starts from the personality of Steve Jobs and goes all the way through the corporate structure.
I remember the first time I had to open my G4 Powerbook to clean a dusty fan. As an experienced PC technician, I was terrified of breaking the sacred seal of the perfect aluminum enclosure and revealing the same old innards I was well accustomed to seeing. But when I opened the top case, which was astonishingly easy to do, I was surprised to see that the design wasn’t limited to just the outer layer but all the way through every component and assembly.
The same holds true for the software, right down to the product designs and architecture. I believe this extends into nearly every aspect of OS X, including the Unix foundation. Some might argue that a powerful, complex system like Unix was an odd choice to start with for the next generation of Mac OS. That seems true if you look at the Apple of the 80s and 90s. The new Apple, really NeXT, honors the philosophy that software should be comprised of simple, powerful, intensely sharpened and focused tools that fit well together. For example, /bin/ls is an extremely simple tool most of the time that doesn’t show you any of the dozens of options it supports unless you want to see them. That is the design philosophy of Unix, and that is the guiding philosophy of OS X development. Taking a look through /System/Library/Frameworks proves that. In a now famous video demo of NeXTSTEP, Steve said many have tried to copy just the frosting without building the whole layer cake foundation underneath and so have failed. As Steve said, “design is not the look and feel of it, but the think of it.”
Even iOS, which is a clean break from traditional expectations of how computer interfaces work, is still a traditional computer underneath in almost every meaningful way. It’s still BSD Unix, and it still benefits from many of the Unix design principles. The UI is great, and it is a big part of what gets people to buy in, but it’s still only a UI. It’s the solid foundation that keeps them as customers in the long run.
Simplicity isn’t just about removing features. It’s about rearranging those features into a logical and intuitive design.
Metro is a step in the right direction*, but for Microsoft to design a shell before actually changing the underlying operating system is putting the cart before the horse. People don’t like Windows because it’s ugly. People don’t like Windows because it’s Windows.
* I suppose. It’s certainly simpler, but I still don’t care for it. It looks like a magazine ad, or a signage display in a clothing department store. It doesn’t look like something built to help me get my work done, but rather something that will sell in retail displays.
