Just saw a video that put Apple Music and Winamp next to each other, and it made me realize why Winamp feels so much simpler and approachable than modern UIs.
Its UI doesn’t change.
You click something, and... the UI stays the same. The song starts playing, but not a single pixel moves. There’s no relayout, nothing shrinks, nothing scrolls, nothing animates. It’s stable. It feels predictable. Safe.
Compare that to Apple Music. They played one song and went through three screens with completely different layouts, elaborately morphing into one another. Of course it feels disorienting.
There’s also clear separation between UI and content. Apple Music, like many modern UIs, mixes controls with content, often in arbitrary ways, adding to the confusion. In Winamp, the UI has its own dedicated area, where you can reliably find it.
When put next to each other, it’s funny how close Apple Music and Winamp are in size. At the same time, Apple needs several screens to essentially show what Winamp can fit into one. And they still had space left for an equalizer!
Video source: youtube.com/watch?v=4rD3lHLu8Bk
Apparently B stands for “See more...”
Thanks @sumpfsuppe for the video
Buttons floating over content were a mistake
Thanks juanca for the video
Normally, when you hold down the Down or Up key on a keyboard, a webpage moves a little, then pauses briefly, and only then starts scrolling continuously. I think this is related to how key repeat works in the OS.
In Safari, however, the page scrolls continuously from the moment you hold the key down—no hiccups. Pretty cool!
Did Google just invented... lagging scrollbar?
Anyone knows why Microsoft made it impossible to draw straight arrows in Word? What’s the thinking behind this?
Thanks @iworld2rist for the video
Visible controls? Only cowards need visible controls. Real guys just edit text in a vacuum
Time is a flat circle.
Also, why clicking “up” moves selection to the right/down?
Thanks Martin for the video
The tragedy of non-English keyboards.
The Russian alphabet has more letters. So it needs more buttons. Understandable.
Apple decided to take away the comma and dot (instead of e.g., second Shift). Bad, but unfortunately, it’s been happening on physical keyboards for a long time.
But iPads have this great feature: you can slide down on a key to get extra characters!
Well, which characters did they decide to add on extra keys?
- Em dash. Okay. fancy, but usable.
- Underscore. Not sure. For programmers?
- This guy—№. I am Russian, but I don’t remember the last time I used it.
- Backtick. Freaking backtick!
All this instead of an exclamation mark and a question mark. Really, who uses those?!
I know these keyboards are designed in the US. But please, please, please, consult at least one person that speaks the language before making a decision like this. I know Americans don’t care. But for the rest of us, it’s life and death.
All modern software is rapidly losing the ability to properly apply even the simplest filters.
Search for "Open Now", Google Maps will happily show closed businesses.
Search for "Today", Facebook will happily show you events from any date except today.
Search for a text, most search systems will fail to find the exact text match...
