What you've heard is true: Macintosh's Finder is indeed easy to use. But as Apple's developers get more innovative, will Finder stay the same?

[originally appeared in PC Magazine as a cover story, 9/12/89]

(Obviously out of date, but interesting in several respects. First, it's worth remembering how far ahead of its time the Mac OS was. So many of the special abilities I discuss about the Mac are ubiquitous now. Second, to see with hindsight how the entire web is the fruition of the dream I described for the Mac's early hypertext product, HyperCard (which was the base of many early multimedia projects.) In 1989 I predicted it would lead to "thousands of worthwhile programs out in the ether, free for the taking—a digital community sharing programs that solve problems, entertain, and inform." (BTW, I'm not saying I made any of that happen; I don't think I invented the internet or anything. Just saying many of us in the multimedia community envisioned a transformation of computing when multimedia and software merged and when that software was easily distributed and shared. In 1989, I'm not even sure I'd heard of DARPA, but I'd already been using email and BBS tools for years, so it wasn't hard to imagine.) Kinda cool: this article also was cited as a reference in a paper at an international conference, Patrick Gerland, "Software Development: Past, Present and Future Trends and Tools," NIDI/IUSSP Expert Meeting on Demographic Software and Micro-computing, Strategies for the Future, The Hague, 29 June - 3 July 1992, www.ons.dz/unfpa/papers/nidi_pg.pdf . (IUSSP stands for International Union for the Scientific Study of Population; don't know about NIDI.) My one regret about this article is that it gained me creds in neither the Mac community – which didn't read or respect PC Magazine – nor the PC community – where of course it didn't help to be the Mac guy. Ah well. The fate of the outsider, once again.)

The Apple Macintosh operating environment contains the purest manifestation of the GUI. Because the Mac's interface is integrated with its hardware, there are no obstacles to contaminate the interface. The Macintosh combines three elements to create its intuitive package: the Finder, a file-management program; the User Interface Toolbox, a set of developer's routines; and HyperCard, a complement to the existing user interface that extends its capabilities.

Like Microsoft, Apple has its own vision of the ultimate GUI. One part of that vision concerns the so-called human element. Most computer systems are designed primarily for processing, developed for cost efficiency, and, almost as an afterthought, tweaked to address ergonomic problems. Apple's emphasis, however, has always been on the human element in computer operation and has resulted in computers designed–from the bottom up–for ease of use.

VIRTUES OF AN INTERFACE

The second part of Apple's vision encompasses the three "cardinal interface values" that developers are mandated to strive for in a Macintosh application: responsiveness, permissiveness, and consistency.

Responsiveness means that the user must be able to execute tasks with the least number of steps possible. Apple's pull-down menu system—as contrasted with the command structure of such DOS applications as Lotus 1-2-3—is the best example of responsiveness.

Permissiveness refers to an environment that allows all reasonable commands to work instead of forcing the user into a constricting language. The DOS prompt, with its arcane terminology, is the classic non-permissive interface.

Consistency is the Macintosh's forte. When the standard elements of a program's interface work identically in all applications, users are rarely confused or irritated when they switch from one app to another.

AT THE CORE

The core elements of the Macintosh's standard graphical user interface are the Finder and the User Interface Toolbox. The Finder is a file-management program comparable to the MS-DOS Executive in Windows—it's the first thing you meet when you boot up a Mac. The Finder presents files and disks with icons and windows; a menu bar lies across the top. Thanks largely to the Finder, initial familiarization with the Macintosh takes, at most, half an hour.

But beware: not everything on the Mac is perfectly intuitive. For example, you probably won't figure out on your own that you can eject floppy disks by throwing their icons in the trash. Even if you never learn that trick, however, you can still select the disk and choose Eject from the menus across the top of the screen. On a Mac, there's more than one way to open a file—or to perform just about any other operation.

Double-click on a data file, such as a document or spreadsheet, and the Finder will launch the application that created the data file and then load the file itself—a trick other GUIs have learned too. On the Mac, all of this is done regardless of whether the originating application is visible on-screen; the Macintosh interface maintains a running directory listing the contents of every disk connected to the computer. And this facility extends further. As long as you do not "trash" the disk icon, the Macintosh will remember the contents of the diskette you've ejected from the system.

HIGH-IQ FILES

Filenames may be up to 32 characters long on the Macintosh, rather than the restrictive 11-character (8 for the proper name, 3 for the extension) limit in DOS and the current version of OS/2 Presentation Manager. And while other environments will mark a file's size and its creation or modification date, the Macintosh also stores information about the application that created the file, the file's icon appearance, and its type (worksheet, word processing document, database file, etc.).

The original Macintosh icons correspond to their functions quite well. The ubiquitous trash can, file folder, and text page are all easily understood at a glance. As newer applications in the Macintosh community have moved further from the original MacPaint and MacWrite, the purity of the interface has suffered a bit; many icons for third-party products depict nothing but the company logo or some other abstract image, suggesting nothing of the files' functions.

The other half of the Macintosh GUI is the User Interface Toolbox. This is where developers will find the standard routines to open a new file or create a text-entry window. As in any other complete GUI, the developer is left to concentrate only on the different and challenging aspects of the program, leaving all of the input/output work to the User Interface Toolbox.

The routines in the User Interface Toolbox offer a lot of power. The File dialog box, for example, allows you to browse through all of your directories and volumes without leaving the dialog box or the initial command. Most of the Macintosh's User Interface Toolbox is in ROM and is closely integrated with the system for speed and consistency. While this means that minor changes to the User Interface Toolbox cannot be applied to existing Macintosh ROMs without replacing them, software patches can be applied in RAM to keep existing machines up to date. The Macintosh's operating system accommodates such patches with very little disruption.

The graphics system for the Macintosh is called QuickDraw. It lies underneath the various resource managers that handle windows and menus. Because of the placement of the QuickDraw graphics routines in ROM, the Macintosh's graphical interface moves right along, even on older Macintosh PCs with 68000 processors and only 512K or 1MB of RAM. QuickDraw contains routines that work within a window or a region of a window, using local coordinates without the risk of affecting anything outside the window. With the added help of the Windows Manager, which also keeps track of overlapping windows, the Macintosh handles window presentation with speed and efficiency.

THE SOUND OF MUSIC

When looking at a Mac, it's important to remember the role that hardware plays in creating a robust, friendly user environment. Sound is a good example. From the very first 128K Mac, the system has included a four-voice synthesizer. Both voice and music can be played through the Macintosh's internal speaker or through a jack to external speakers. The Mac II adds support of MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), the industry-standard protocol for communications among synthesizers. With a Mac, a business user can add sound to make presentations snappier.

While the Macintosh operating environment has changed significantly over the years, its appearance and "feel" have remained simple and predictable. This has been one of its biggest selling points, both in corporate and personal markets, and the focal point of Apple's advertising campaigns. Apple's May announcement of System 7.0 suggests that the company will continue to respect the consistency of the interface.

THE SAME BUT BETTER

System 7.0 is a collection of enhancements that improve the Macintosh environment substantially without significantly altering the existing interface. At the forefront are improvements in multitasking, remote database access, memory handling, and text manipulation. The new InterApplication Communications Architecture meets or exceeds OS/2's interprocess communications, allowing applications to exchange both data and instructions. Database improvements will allow users to integrate remote host computer databases into the standard interface, so that users with no knowledge of the remote system will be able to work with the databases by using standard Macintosh techniques.

Also included in the new release will be tweaks to the Finder, including context-sensitive help and a file-finder utility. More importantly, a new collection of Finder features will give the user more control over the appearance of the desktop. The Finder has also been made more extensible to accommodate future enhancements like fax and backup. Other improvements include sound sequencing and multimedia presentation capabilities, new communications tools, and 32-bit QuickDraw, which opens up color displays to 16 million colors on-screen simultaneously.

It may be a while before users see System 7.0; developer kits should be out this fall, but at press time, Apple wasn't saying when end-user products would be available. Apple's plans, however, are encouraging in that System 7.0 seems faithful to the existing Macintosh GUI.

HyperCard, however, is less faithful to the Finder and gives cause for some alarm as well as enthusiasm. Introduced in the fall of 1987, HyperCard is currently slated not to replace the original interface, but to complement it. Indeed, HyperCard has both improved and confused the Macintosh world.

Bill Atkinson, the creator of MacPaint, developed HyperCard. Like MacPaint, Hypercard does not follow some of Apple's carefully delineated guidelines. For example, in order to launch an application in HyperCard, you click on it just once with the mouse, not twice. You have to switch to a different mode if you want to drag things around. More importantly, on a Mac Plus or Mac SE with a standard 9-inch screen, HyperCard (like MacPaint) takes over the entire screen, without using any windows. While Atkinson's theories about GUIs may be as good as Apple's, the problem is that they are different.

STACKING THE DECK

HyperCard sets a new standard for what you can do with a PC and what you should expect from it. With elements of database management, object-oriented programming, hypertext, personal information management, paint programs, and GUIs, HyperCard is a wonder that more than satisfies Apple's first two criteria: responsiveness and permissiveness.

HyperCard's operating metaphor is an innocent-looking stack of index cards. Each card (screen) consists of graphics, text fields, and buttons. Clicking on a button initiates a script (or program) that may jump to another card or that may be as complex as programs written in third-generation languages such as C and BASIC.

HyperCard is very flexible; you can write scripts—to create, for example, a button that jumps to other cards or fields to store information—without writing a line of code. Later, you can touch up what was generated automatically. Nonprogrammers may find themselves capable of creating new stacks at an astonishing rate.

PC users can expect to see HyperCard-like capabilities soon. HyperPad (see "GUIs Without Graphics") is a start, but more-powerful packages are on the way.

HACKER'S PARADISE

The dream is that HyperCard's mass availability (it is given away free as system software) and ease of use will result in thousands of worthwhile programs out in the ether, free for the taking—a digital community sharing programs that solve problems, entertain, and inform. Even if the reality falls short of this dream, HyperCard's future is bright.

John Scully's nonspecific comments suggesting a closer link between HyperCard and the Macintosh's standard graphical user interface are both worrisome and exciting. If the Macintosh interface changes too much, it may jeopardize the base of consistency already established. On the other hand, it would be a shame to lose HyperCard's multimedia power. The challenge facing Apple is to allow innovation without sacrificing consistency.

© 2004 Philip F. Rose