Jan 24th, 2008 More “Hey Apple, Don’t Make Me Think”
Derek Powazek is pointing out an oddity found when comparing the interface of Safari on a desktop to the one found on the iPhone. Basically the order of elements in the toolbar at the top of the window is completely opposite — which forces users to take an extra few milliseconds to process.
Apple has to change this on the iPhone, and soon, in order to unify the two interfaces; but my guess is that they won’t because the context of the two interfaces differs so much (e.g. desktop versus handheld), and because 4-million-plus iPhones are already floating around. I also wonder how close the benefit-to-detriment ratio is. Have users already gotten used to the refresh button being located to the right of the location bar?
No, seriously. Stop making me think!
Stranger — and of higher priority to me — is the conflicting behavior of the multi-touch trackpad on the MacBook Air and the multi-touch display on the iPhone. On the iPhone, for example, to advance, you swipe from right to left. It appears, though, it’s the opposite on the MacBook Air! Oh, boy.
I already have a hard enough time switching between the iPhone and my PowerBook equipped with a two-finger sensitive trackpad. In MobileSafari, I swipe from bottom to top to scroll down. On the PowerBook, I do the exact opposite. The first time I accidentally used the iPhone method on my PowerBook, I actually got my hopes up, thinking my trackpad had died — after all, if that were the case, I’d be forced to upgrade to a MacBook Pro, right?
And I know I’m not the only one to deal with this. [Reference link forthcoming.]
I understand this whole multi-touch thing is a new world for Apple, and I’m willing “sacrifice” myself and my time (the seconds-worth it requires) while they work these things out. However, I do hope they understand they’re training the world to a new interface right now. I wonder, if they’d been this all-over-the-map with the iPod scroll-wheel, would it be the success it is today?
Sean Sperte is Geek & Mild. His passion for technology and media, along with his interest in 
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Comments
PeterMHoward
January 24, 2008
This swiping question is really interesting, but I expect Apple know what they’re doing… Consider picking up the iPhone for the first time, the “natural” expectation when swiping is that you’re moving the screen’s contents, rather than picking a scroll direction (hence, bottom-to-top to scroll down, because your grabbing the bottom bit of the screen and moving it to the top). But on a trackpad, you’re disconnected from the contents. It’s a lot less obvious than the iPhone is (because of that disconnect), but it seems natural to “scroll”; the setup on the existing trackpads, and on the new one in the Air, is that when you swipe you’re grabbing little scrollbars, so you move your hand in the direction you want to scroll.
I’ll grant, though, that while the iPhone’s interface is intuitive, the other is learnt, really… Reminds me of joystick controls on video games — some ppl prefer to move up to look up, I prefer the opposite, and it seems entirely dependent on whether you consider you’re moving the camera (behind the eyes, thus the opposite direction) or the target/cursor (in front of the eyes), which depends on all sorts of “learnt” issues, especially what kinds of games you usually play. (I’ve seen people from all sorts of backgrounds pick games up for the first time and “expect” different things, so I don’t know what the natural response is there.)
(And the scroll wheel is a whole different problem; I’ve tried it on friends’ iPods a few times and still don’t get the hang of it, so I’m not entirely convinced it is as intuitive as people say it is ;) — my main issue is that I’ll “scroll” to an option and then want to click to select it, and I don’t want to move my thumb to click, I want the thing to know what I want to do.)
-p
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