waffle

I’ve made some observations in the past month or so.

In Mac OS X, I drag text selections around to the Dictionary (dropping it on the Dock tile to look it up) and elsewhere like no one’s business. I frequently use proxy icons to drag a file or its represented contents elsewhere (like – due to poor roundtrip alpha channel fidelity on some part – saving images as PNGs in Preview and dragging the proxy icon onto Photoshop to open it there, rather than copying and pasting). I even more frequently command-click the proxy icons to go to the containing folders. And, of course, for some reason, I seem to use services a lot.

None of these are possible — or to the extent that they are possible, are frequently uncommon — on Windows. In fact, many of them are broken. I tried dragging a link from Firefox to the Start menu, which spring-loaded, and onto the IE7 icon. The drag finished, but the link didn’t open. (This was on an XP computer, I haven’t had time to check on Vista yet.) What’s more, for the past year or so, I’ve sometimes been unwittingly trying to use iPhone gestures — like “pinching” — on my trackpad. I’ve also tried to use the fabulous two-finger scrolling on other trackpads. Each time, I’ve complained about it not working.

I’m going somewhere with this, I swear.

When I was younger, I was on a school trip. We stayed in a few houses in a long valley, about 200 meters away from a particularly high and steep hill (it was probably too short to be a proper mountain, but I was small). One day, I decided to climb the hill to see how far I could go. About every tenth minute or so, I’d think I was at the top, until I climbed just a bit more, and I could see even more of the mountainous hill unfold. After about two hours of this, I gave up and returned to the base.

Later that day, we rode in a cable car to the top of the hill. It was high above the hill, and the view was beautiful. About 20 meters to the side, I saw the path I had climbed, and despite my sense of effort and accomplishment, I had only gotten about a third of the way.

Like climbing a mountain, and like the linguistic Sapir-Whorf hypothesis — which stipulates that the vocabulary of a language can shape which thoughts are formed by those using it — I posit that user interfaces and usability and, in the end, software development is all about this. At any time you have a limited horizon, and you have to venture out (or up) into unexplored territory to really see the big picture.

Why don’t Windows users miss proxy icons? Why aren’t people drowning Dell’s support hotline with requests for two-finger scrolling? Why does everyone — everyone! — suddenly articulate the need for a tablet Mac, or a Newton make 2? Because by getting to higher ground in interfaces, we grow attached to new useful concepts. Like a way to easily fling around a relevant file as though you’re in the file manager. Like not having to stay in a particular corner or edge to scroll. Like being able to chord finger movements together to completely one-up precise but nervous, mouse-emulating and tensional stylus control.

If this comes off as some sort of platform support piece, please know that it’s not intended to. But know that I’m staying away from Windows as much as possible on many accords but where interface and the allowed vocabulary of such interactions are a big part, that it pleases me to hear that they will move towards supporting multi-touch, and that I’m not in the least surprised that Dell and their ilk aren’t much interested in improving their hardware in order to make this tenable.