iTunes 6 vs Fitts’ Law: Apple’s HCI department is drunk again
A couple of weeks ago, I pointed out that Microsoft has forgotten where Apple’s menus are. I regret to inform you that now Apple has forgotten where Apple’s menus are, and more importantly, why they are where they are.
Given the relative usability of Apple and Microsoft products, it’s kind of sad to see Apple borrowing from Microsoft’s “horrible ideas of the 1990s” playbook, and yet–iTunes 6 for Windows makes several basic errors in UI design. Apparently controls with infinite heights are incredibly easy to forget about.
Since it’s apparently really easy to forget this stuff, let’s go over some basics.
Fitts’ Law: Impossible To Miss
Fitts’ Law, developed by Paul Fitts in 1954, is a mathematical formula which predicts the time required to complete an aimed and rapid movement from a resting point to a specific target. So what the hell does that mean? A couple of things:
- Larger buttons are easier for users to click on. They require less precision and therefore less time to locate with the cursor.
- Screen edges are a good location for controls. Users can slam the cursor into the side of the screen quickly, since the cursor stops at the screen edge. It’s the difference between stopping on a dime and slamming into a brick wall. But, y’know, the cursor doesn’t get totaled.
- Screen corners are a super-good location for controls. The meeting point between two screen edges has an infinite depth. Try it: put your cursor into the screen corner.
In short, make your controls big as possible, and there’s nothing bigger than infinity.
My mathematician flatmate will correct me on this. I defy him to relate orders of infinity to UI design.
Apple Loves Fitts, Does Fitts Love Apple?
Back in the day, when designing operating systems was still a new thing, Apple decided to put the application menus on the top of the screen. Their usability engineers quickly found out that this arrangement has substantial benefits.
Bruce Tognazzini (aka “Tog”), one of those engineers, elaborates:
The Apple menu bar is a lot faster than menu bars in Windows. Why? Because, since the menu bar lies on a screen edge, it has an infinite height. As a result, Mac users can just throw their mice toward the top of the screen with the assurance that it will never penetrate and disappear.
Apple liked the setup so much, they patented it, leaving Microsoft with the crappy alternative of putting the application menus inside the application window. And for the past decade or so, Microsoft’s menuing system has been substantially slower to use than Apple’s.
Microsoft has tried to compensate, as Tog describes:
Microsoft applications are beginning to offer the possibility, in full-screen mode, of a menu bar at the top of the display. Try this out in Word or Excel. It is much faster. Microsofts general cluelessness has never been so amply displayed, however, as it is in Microsoft Visual Studio, which has a menu bar at the top of the screen with a one-pixel barrier between the screentop and the menu. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Snatching Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory? Sounds Good!
So I guess now Apple is trying to play catch-up with Microsoft in the “unfortunate UI decisions with a forgotten historical context” category, because check out iTunes 6:
You don’t see it yet? Look closer:
You see that strip of three or so pixels between the highlighted menu item and the top of the window? Yeah, that’s dead space. When you have iTunes maximized, like I do most of the time (because that’s how I roll), you have to very carefully mouse over the menu item–which on iTunes is about ¾ the size of a regular menu item in Windows–and click. If you rocket up to the top, you’ll end up fishing around in a dead area of infinite depth. And that’s about as fun as it sounds.
So What The Hell, Apple?
Here’s what I want to know, then:
If Apple owns the patents to a better menuing system, and if they’ve done plenty of research with Fitts’ Law, and if ex-engineers of theirs make fun of Microsoft for making stupid mistakes like a one-pixel dead zone, then why the hell did the make they same damn mistake in one of their most popular products ever?
The worst part about this is that they had it right in iTunes 4 and 5. They introduced this mistake with iTunes 6.
November 2nd, 2005 at 7:50pm
Hey there. Interesting observation. Thankfully, I don’t have to use the Windows version of iTunes. On the Mac side, Apple’s been getting sloppy UI-wise in other ways. With iTunes 6, they introduced yet another UI style to complement aqua, brushed metal, and the newer all-in-one light grey window, sort of an ugly hybrid of the latter two. Go figure.
January 16th, 2007 at 12:41pm
Normally I wouldn’t reply to a post that was so long ago, but since iTunes 7.0.2 has the same design “feature”, it’s still relevant. The problem here is not with Apple, but with Microsoft. In building a Windows app, Apple has to follow the design APIs set forth by Microsoft. The spacer shows up on iTunes because it doesn’t have a title bar at the top, but pushes to the very edge of the window. In Windows you can resize the window from any edge, and thus you need an edge that is grabbable for that purpose. Thus, each edge of the window has to have a few spacer pixels for that to work. You normally don’t notice it because the title bar is floating above the menu, but since iTunes has no menu bar it appears as dead space.
Now I’ve heard Windows users complain about Apple’s windows only being resizable from one corner whereas Windows’ windows are resizable from all sides. I think here is a case where we can see the deficiency in such a design. Interesting post, though. I love to learn the history behind these designs because they tend to stick around. Such as the alt-(menu) in windows, which is an ancient holdover from MS-DOS so you could navigate menus without a mouse.