>don't know about the macside, but anyway, that new mediaplayer looks
>awful to me. i prefer the older one, 6.4 version.
Yeah! You're right.
The same goes with Quicktime 4 - the essential part of any Macintosh.
We (the Mac users) have been very proud of Macintosh user interface.
And what does Apple? Releases Quicktime 4 which is totally against
Apple's own Human Interface Guidelines! Aargh! Steve Jobs should be
castrated because of this...
Quicktime 4 interface has _all_ the mistakes:
- Graphical appearance looks nice, but is illogical. Decorations and
interactive elements look exactly the same. You don't know what parts
of the interface are interactive and what are not (without trying).
- You don't clearly see, when the window is active and when it's not.
Usually in Mac the opacity of background window edges is about 50% of
the front window. Not in Quicktime Player.
- Bookmark system looks nice, but how in the hell you're supposed to
use it? It's _graphical_: if you make a bookmark to a sound file in
the bookmark drawer, Quicktime makes a sound clip _icon_ for it
there. Now, how you're supposed to find the correct sound file from -
let's say - 24 different sound file bookmarks? They all have the same
kind of icon!
- The interface imitates a real portable music device user
experience. That makes using the volume knot of Quicktime Player a
nightmare. Instead of just dragging a standard slider to top
position, you have to drag the QT Player volume knot several times to
turn it more than just a little. Apple has forgot, that imitating
real life interfaces has one little pitfall: You can't do some things
easily with a mouse. You can't use it as effective as you can your
thumb on your portable MP3 player volume knot.
- There is an "Info" button, but instead of giving some info about a
- let's say - MP3 file playing, it just says "No information
available". ... How microsoftish... Well, how about those little
things like "length", "file size", "bit rate", "date modified",
"location", "copyright", "ID3 information", etc ? Wouldn't _hurt_ to
know them...
............
Uuh... etc, etc... You may think that these are small details - not
worth of a rant. But because "The Apple Thing" has always been the
polished user interface, Quicktime Player just irritates me... It was
_Apple_ who fucked up the interface, not some college boy with his
freeware mp3 player proggy. I can take clumsy user interfaces even
from Microsoft (and usually I have to), but not from Apple.
The Quicktime browser plug-in is useful, though. And Quicktime really
_is_ an essential part of Mac OS. (But unlike DirectX, you can easily
get rid of any part of Quicktime anytime. Just drag those elements
you don't need out of the Control Panels folder and reboot. In my
work machine, Quicktime VR is disabled, for example.)
--
---> jab | commie
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