DesignAday

The Perfect Storm: Part 2

As I said, I had checked everything out. So, I proceeded to delete everything off my old computer. I boxed it up and had it ready to ship off to Gazelle for a nice little chunk of change. My new iMac was already backed up to my TIme Machine, so I deleted the backup of my old machine to free up space. Then I made some unfortunate discoveries.

1. None of my application preferences were copied.
2. My keychain wasn’t copied.
3. iTunes said it moved my library, and some of the tracks played just fine, but over 6,000 tracks can’t be found. They are all right where they should be, but iTunes doesn’t recognize them and tries to find my old machine on the network when I try to play them.
4. While I was very careful about transferring all of my received email, I had forgotten about my sent messages. All of the email I sent from my primary email account on my home machine since about 2003 is gone.

Issues 1 and 2 are inconvenient, but not too big a deal. Every time I launch one of my apps for the first time on the new iMac, I have to enter my license key and then set up the application. All of my passwords are stored in 1Password, so losing my keychain only means that every website that I’ve told Safari to remember my credentials for has been forgotten.

Issue number 3 is more of a pain. I could point iTunes to each track individually to fix them all, but that would take forever. Since it tries to connect to a remote server each time, there is a long pause before I’m able to point it to the correct file. And while it should find all the other missing tracks in the same location, it for some reason refuses to recognize them. Luckily, I subscribed to iTunes Match, so I’m just having it redownload all of the missing tracks from iCloud. Then I’ll trash the duplicate files.

Issue number 4 is the real kicker. If I hadn’t been in such a rush to get my old machine off to Gazelle before their offer on it expired, I would have been able to recover the email messages from Time Machine. Then, of course, there was my Backblaze remote backup, from which I should have been able to restore anything. No luck. After the initial Migration Assistant transfer, the new iMac tried to back up to Backblaze identifying itself as my old machine. Soon after, I got a message from Backblaze stating that my backup was locked. Their recommended fix was to delete the existing backup, create a new backup account, transfer my license to the new account, and then back up everything from scratch. I had already started this process. So, while I typically have everything backed up in multiple places, in this particular instance, I had deleted all of my backups. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb!

So there you have it: the perfect storm. I’ll take my lesson from this, and in the future, I won’t be so confident in cutting my lifelines. I hope you, dear reader, can benefit from the warning of my mistakes.

The Perfect Storm: Part 1

I took an extra-long Christmas break from DesignAday this year. I had been quite busy leading up to the holidays, and I just decided to give myself that extra bit of time. I had planned on kicking off the new year last week with a post on the first of the year, but I found myself performing a brain transplant. That is, I was moving from my 4-year-old Mac Pro to my new, 27” iMac.

In the past, I’ve used Apple’s Migration Assistant to move to a new machine, and it has always performed very well for me. Leave the two machines alone with a conjugal ethernet connection for several hours and shazaam! I was able to pick up using the new Mac right where I left off with the retired one. One conciliatory pat, and my faithful, old mare was ready to be put out to pasture. So, when I finally received my iMac between visits to relatives, I was content to hook it up and leave it running for a few days as we trekked off to party with my extended family over New Year’s Eve.

When I returned home, I found that the transfer was done, but it was not complete. All of the applications had been copied over, but none of my settings were, nor was my email. I tried running Migration Assistant again, and while it did run for a few hours, it didn’t seem to accomplish anything. So, I began the meticulous task of manually setting up my system. After spending several evenings working on it, I was satisfied with my thoroughness. I had tested critical applications, made sure that my iTunes, iPhoto, and iMovie libraries were intact, and copied over all of my email. I was all set.

I was wrong. 

In the Details: Side Barred

One of the fundamental changes of the new iTunes is the removal of the side bar. The side bar has been one of the defining features of OS X applications. iMovie, iPhoto, Mail, and a plethora of third party applications sport a side bar that contains some type of categorization of the available content. In iTunes, the side bar presented major sections of the application, such as Music, Movies, and Podcasts. It also listed devices that content could be synched with, such as iPhones and iPads. It provided access to the iTunes Store, shared libraries on other computers, and playlists, which could be categorized by folders. New items could be added to the library by dragging them into the side bar, and items in the library could be dragged into playlists in the side bar.

Now, the side bar isn’t gone; it’s just hidden by default. You can turn it back on by selecting it in the View menu. However, I suggest giving iTunes a fair chance without it first. The revised UI does a pretty good job covering for it. The one thing that I assumed was going to be more difficult was adding tracks to playlists. Before, I was able to quickly grab a track, drag it to the side bar, and drop it into a playlist. Of course, I needn’t have worried. Dragging a track, regardless of where you are in your library, will cause a list of playlists to slide in from the right side of the screen. This gives you the convenience of the sidebar when you need it without holding the screen real estate hostage.

iCloud Tabs

In the latest updates to iOS and Mac OS, Apple introduced a new feature within Safari. There is now a button in desktop Safari’s toolbar for iCloud Tabs. Clicking on it opens a popover that lists all of the browser tabs open on every device registered with iCloud. As I type this, it lists all of the pages I have open on my iPhone.

In Mobile Safari, the feature is accessed through a folder in the Bookmarks list. There, it currently lists the Tumblr page I’m typing this into, as well as a couple other tabs I have open. It’s an extremely useful feature, more so the more devices you use on a regular basis.

In the Details: Too Simple

I’ve written about simplification many times in the past. Here’s a perfect example of simplifying an interface to a fault.

In Mac OS X Mountain Lion, iCal was subject to several changes. It’s alarms have been integrated with the new Notification Center. Previously, when an alert displayed for an iCal alarm, it included the option to set a snooze period. I might set an alarm to go off 10 minutes before a teleconference, but then set it to snooze for 5 minutes when it goes off. The new alerts, however, only provide a Snooze button. There is no way to specify the length of time, nor does it tell you how long it will snooze. I pressed the Snooze button once just to find out how long it would go. It’s a fifteen-minute snooze. That’s rather long. I doubt I’ll use it very often.

Certainly, calendar alerts have been simplified. The user doesn’t have to select a time period from a menu. It’s a binary decision: close it or snooze. But in this case, simplification is a red herring. It doesn’t save time if I puzzle over its behavior. It’s not easier to use if it isn’t useful.

The Forecast is iCloudy

I understand the benefits of storing documents in iCloud; I really do. So, I understand why Apple wants to push this behavior. However, it’s not something that’s particularly useful to me at this time. The documents that I’m creating in Pages really only need to reside on one computer. I can’t think of any reason I would need to get to them from my phone. You’ll understand, then, why I’m finding the new save behavior to be quite annoying.

Previously, the “Save As” sheet would remember that I had set it to Column View, making it really quick for me to select the desired folder. Now, when I tell Pages to save a new document, it spits out its “Save As” sheet and, rather than leaving it in its previous state, it defaults to iCloud. There is no Column View for iCloud, so that gets turned off.

The next step is to select a different location from the “Where” menu. Of course, the location I want to save it isn’t listed in that menu, so I have to select a folder that contains the eventual target. Now I can click the little arrow button that switches the sheet to Column View, allowing me to drill down to the desired folder. 

This requires several extra steps every time I save a new document. My applications should learn my behavior and reflect it, not doggedly attempt to change it.

In the Details: Share

As part of the Mountain Lion refinements and the unification of Mac OS and iOS, Safari received a new “Share” button, just to the left of the address field. It displays a menu of options, including Twitter, Message (the desktop version of iMessage), and Email this Page. Those all make sense, as they are all methods by which a webpage may be shared with other people.

I first discovered this button when I was trying to bookmark a page. There used to be a “+” button that would allow you to add a bookmark, but that was gone. I couldn’t find a bookmark button anywhere, but I noticed the Share button and clicked it. Somewhat unintuitively, the first two options in its menu are Add to Reading List and Add Bookmark. These aren’t methods of sharing at all; they are means by which to save a page to view later. To be perfectly fair, the same icon presents the same menu containing the same options in Mobile Safari, so it is now consistent across platforms. It’s easily learnable, so I don’t consider it to be problematic, and I can’t think of a better label for the button. It’s a sensible combination of similar functions under one UI control—simplification through categorization.

The Power of “What if…?”

I’ve occasionally been encountering the new features introduced in OS X Mountain Lion. Late last week, I noticed that when I hovered over the sender’s name in an email message, the light-gray outline of a star appeared. I assumed this must be a mechanism by which to mark a person as a favorite and was immediately intrigued to find out how favorites would manifest across the application. As soon as I marked one, the star became a persistent indicator beside the name, and a new category was added to my Mailboxes sidebar: VIPs. Upon expanding the VIPs category, the person whom I starred was listed. I now had instant access to every email to and from my boss, regardless of where it had been filed. Furthermore, unread messages now displayed a filled star (rather than just the outline). It’s a relatively simple addition, but it is supremely useful.

This is an excellent example of taking a concept that has proved popular in certain situations and adapting it to improve longstanding models of interaction. It illustrates the power of “What if…?”.

In Comparison: Multiple Selection, part 2

Yesterday, I began to describe the detailed behavior of multiple selection in Windows and Mac OS. We took a detailed look at shift-clicking. Let’s add in control-clicking now. On the Mac, that would be a command-click, but there are some differences in behavior, so we’ll start off with Windows.

Control-clicking selects non-contiguous items. Control-click an unselected item to add it to the selection; control-click a selected item to deselect it. That’s simple, but what happens when we combine control and shift clicking. Try the following sequence:

1. Click item 1.
2. Shift-click item 5.
3. Control-click item3.

At this point, items 1, 2, 4, and 5 are selected. What do you think would happen if you now shift-clicked item 6? Windows considers a control-click to be an anchoring click, regardless of whether it is adding to or removing from the selection. Deselecting item 3 with a control-click replaces the original anchor on item 1. So, shift-clicking item 6 results in the deselection of items 1 and 2, and the selection of items 3 through 6.

Apple’s selection logic is a bit more sophisticated. The exact same sequence of clicks (replacing control with the command key) results in a more logical selection: 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6. 3 remains deselected. As it turns out, instead of treating a deselecting command-click as an anchor, Mac OS makes the next selected item in the list the anchor. This is a smart distinction, and I’ll show you why.

Going back to Windows, do the following:

1. Click item 1.
2. Shift-click item 3.
3. Control-click item 5.
4. Shift-click item 7.

Upon the last step, items 1 through 3 are deselected, leaving you with items 5 through 7 selected. The same steps in Mac OS result in two selected ranges. In a long list of items, you can repeat this pattern as many times as you like. With every command-click, Mac OS creates a new anchor point without affecting the already selected items. The only thing that screws it up is when you double-back, shift-selecting a range back over already selected items, and then reversing again with another shift-click. Since shift-clicks aren’t anchors, they don’t hold, and any contiguous items above the anchor point will become deselected.

The net result is that Mac OS X will allow you to easily move through a list, selecting multiple groups of contiguous items. Windows, on the other hand, will only allow selection of one group of contiguous items—all additional items must be selected individually.

Continue to Part 3

In Comparison: Multiple Selection, part 1

How often do you think about the details of the basic interactions that make up the OS you use on a daily basis? Last week, I had to specify the behavior for multiple selection of list items in a browser-based application. The customer’s requirement asked for shift-clicking and control-clicking, just as you would find on the desktop. With the intent of making the behavior exactly like desktop OS behavior, I analyzed both Windows XP (which will be installed on the machines our application will be used on) and Mac OS X Lion. Unsurprisingly, there are significant differences between them. I’ll start by describing shift-clicking now, and continuing with control-clicking tomorrow.

As you likely know, shift-clicking selects contiguous items in a list. So, if you click item 1 to select it, and then shift-click item 5, items 2, 3, and 4, will be selected as well. That’s clear enough, but let’s dig a little deeper. Feel free to follow along.

What happens if you have a series of contiguous, selected items, and then shift-click to add to the selection? For example, you have selected items 1 through 3 by clicking 1 and then shift-clicking 3. Now, let’s shift-click item 5. Sure enough, item 4 is selected too, and we end up with items 1 through 5 selected. Now try this: click item 3, then shift-click item 5. Items 3, 4, and 5 are selected. Now shift-click item 1. What happened? Items 4 and 5 deselected, and items 1 and 2 selected. Item 3 remained selected, so we now have items 1 through 3.

As it turns out, the OS is setting anchors on clicks, but not on shift-clicks. In other words, it remembers that you clicked on item 3, but forgets about the shift-click on 5. I consider this behavior to be counterintuitive; I would expect items 1 and 2 to be added to the selection without losing 4 and 5. This behavior is identical in Mac OS X and Windows XP.

Tomorrow’s post will be part 2.