I use OS X. Certain apps have good usability, such as the consumer facing ones like iTunes. But, the Finder is very broken. I don't think Apple does usability testing on a lot of their software, OR the usability specialists at Apple are incompetant, OR the specialists are only able to say what is wrong but not how to fix it, OR the recommendations are ignored by management. Not sure which it is, but there are lots of problems. We are now expected to port our CodeWarrior apps to XCode. CodeWarrior is a pretty good program. XCode is not. Abysmally slow, it creates bloated applications. It is riddled with bugs that even a small amount of testing would uncover. For example, the first three days of trying to port my application to XCode were spent dealing with 'internal compiler error' messages from XCode. An internal compiler error is a pretty serious problem. In addition, source code management doesn't work, with no indication of why, so I have to keep using the command line. In addition, pop up function menus do not populate correctly to be useful for navigation. In addition, the built in reference system is for the most part not hyperlinked and does not contain references for all items.
I could go on and on. The Finder and XCode are two of my most constant frustrations but there are many other. I constantly think that if apple were to sit down with an actual user for even a few 30 minutes sessions, they would find literally thousands of serious flaws.
As it is, there are blogs and articles by well respected professionals regarding these flaws, there are bugs filed by users, and yet year after year, decade after decade Apple ignores them.
We have a long way to go before we haave usability testing. Apple is known as the king of usability, other companies are much worse we are told, and yet many of Apple's products are severely flawed and Apple has no interest in testing for usability, or even in listening to thousands of complaints from usability professionals.
Is usability dead? Does it just not matter? It seems that a big part of Apple's income comes from their having refined the UI of one device (iPod) to not be a pain in the ass. People were so thrilled to have a not-pain-in-the-ass that they have been throwing buckets of money at Apple in thanks. Can't these lessons be applied to other products as well?
I could go on and on. The Finder and XCode are two of my most constant frustrations but there are many other. I constantly think that if apple were to sit down with an actual user for even a few 30 minutes sessions, they would find literally thousands of serious flaws.
As it is, there are blogs and articles by well respected professionals regarding these flaws, there are bugs filed by users, and yet year after year, decade after decade Apple ignores them.
We have a long way to go before we haave usability testing. Apple is known as the king of usability, other companies are much worse we are told, and yet many of Apple's products are severely flawed and Apple has no interest in testing for usability, or even in listening to thousands of complaints from usability professionals.
Is usability dead? Does it just not matter? It seems that a big part of Apple's income comes from their having refined the UI of one device (iPod) to not be a pain in the ass. People were so thrilled to have a not-pain-in-the-ass that they have been throwing buckets of money at Apple in thanks. Can't these lessons be applied to other products as well?
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Re: Why no usability tesing?
Thu, December 29, 2005 - 11:10 AMThe profit margins on PCs are so low and people don't generally switch from Mac to PC or vice versa for usability reasons. I used to work at Apple and, despite many public reports on the cost of ownership for Macs being cheaper due to their ease of use, Apple was still losing the desktop battle. So it probably doesn't make economic sense to invest in usability testing to improve the user experience beyond a certain point. The same applies to Microsoft. There are many usability bugs with Office apps and Windows that have been there for over a decade.
