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diff --git a/old/published/Webmonkey/Monkey_Bites/2007/06.04.07/Fri/shipley interview.txt b/old/published/Webmonkey/Monkey_Bites/2007/06.04.07/Fri/shipley interview.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b004589 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/published/Webmonkey/Monkey_Bites/2007/06.04.07/Fri/shipley interview.txt @@ -0,0 +1,59 @@ +As part of today's articles on [Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)][1] and the upcoming WWDC, I spoke to a number of Mac developers to see what the developer community thinks of Leopard, specifically the [Core Animation features][2] which give programmers a new tool to easily create 3-D animation and interface enhancements. + +Wil Shipley of [Delicious Monster][3], Cabel Sasser of [Panic Software][4] and Austin Sarner of [MadeBySofa][5] gave far longer responses than could fit in the limited space of the article so I thought I'd post the entire interview transcripts here. + +The interview with Shipley is after the jump, Cabel Sasser's responses can be found here and Austin Sarner here. + +--------------------- + +Wil Shipley is the brains behind Delicious Library, a Mac media cataloging program, for more info check out the [Delicious Monster][3] site. + +**Wired News:** First off, do you think developers are going to embrace Core animation (given that doing so would possibly break the backwards compatibility)? I know the TextMate developers have said they plan to drop support for 10.4 in the next version to take advantage of CA, any plans for Delicious Monster? + +**Wil Shipley:** Yes, Delicious Library 2 is based entirely around Core Animation and other key Leopard technologies, so our customers are going to have to upgrade their OS if they want to upgrade our program. We had originally planned to make DL2 10.4-based, and worked for a year and a half on that version, but in August of '06 we learned more about Leopard and where it is going, and we simply couldn't say no any longer. We realized any app we released based on Tiger was going to look really pathetic when Leopard came out. + +**WN**Is core animation more than just eye candy? In other words does it provide a way to improve the user experience, whether through better UIs or speed boosts etc? + +**WS:** Absolutely... every time you give developers a chance to do better graphics with less code, you're going to see another revolution in user experience. The revolution coming with Core Animation is akin to the one that came from the original Mac in 1984 -- the Mac said "here's a relatively easy way to add graphics to your user interface" and Core Animation says, "Here's a very easy way to add composited layers and motion to your interface." + +**WN:** The Core animation changes are quite significant and open up some interface possibilities that would have previously been a lot of work... Time Machine for instance has a pretty amazing interface which, from what I understand, is made possible by the new Core animation tools. + +**WS:**I can't speculate on how Time Machine was written, but it's true that we're going to see a whole new world of user interface metaphors with Core Animation. For me, the original Cocoa was about making it really easy to me to construct an interface with sliders and textfields and buttons -- standard widgets. So we saw a whole generation of applications (for NeXTstep, and then later for Mac OS X) that had pretty decent interfaces, because they all used the same widgets and the widgets were pretty and functional. + +What we'll see with Core Animation is a move away from widgets and into direct manipulation. In Delicious Library 2, we're conveying much more information directly on our bookshelf view, instead of using textfields and the like, and similarly we're allowing the user to interact more directly with the books on the shelf, instead of just looking at them and then pressing buttons on another part of a screen to change them. + +Sure, we'll see some pure "eyecandy" applications that kind of abuse Core Animation, but we'll also see more of what are coming to be called the "Delicious Generation" of applications (not a term I coined!), where the entire application is designed from the start to be beautiful and fun while solving whatever problem it solves. + +**WN:** From the demo video available on the Apple site it would seem that the new tools enable an almost windowless environment, is that true? + +**WS:** One thing to remember about Core Animation, or any 'enabling' technology, is that any developer could do all the same effects herself, given enough time and motivation. It's not that Core Animation taps into some magic graphics processor that we didn't know about before, it just makes it extremely easy to use the existing graphics processor in the most efficient way. Which means we get to spend more time making cool interfaces because we are spending less time trying to get, like, anything to draw at all. + +**WN:** Do you think Apple plans to move away from windows as a metaphor for the workspace? + +I am very, very hesitant to speculate on future directions, because people often assume developers have some secret "red phone" where Steve calls us and says, "Hey, Wil, we're going to dump windows as a metaphor in two years, you down with that? Oh, also, did you get those iPhones I sent you?" + +In truth, we wait for the same announcements as everyone else... and I have to wait for my damn iPhone. Which, believe me, is cruelty itself. + +**WN:** As an extension of the last question, with Apple moving into more devices which run largely windowless UIs (i.e. Apple TV, iPhone) is the windowed application a thing of the past? + +I personally think that full-screen applications are becoming more important (especially for Apple) as we see more special-purpose devices -- the Apple TV is supposed to a neat way to watch your shows, the iPhone is too damn small to support windows -- but there will always be a need for windowed applications. Humans are inherently multi-tasking creatures. + +I'm old enough to remember a lot of the early experiments with graphical user interfaces, before the world standardized on the Macintosh model. It's funny to remember all the varieties of metaphors that were attempted back then (e.g. the Andrew Window System from CMU had a "tiled" interface, where windows never could overlap, but instead automatically resized themselves to perfectly fill the screen, and Microsoft Windows used to have windows inside of windows for applications), but I think they all died out for good reasons. + +**WN:** Jobs talked briefly last night at D (The recent All Things Digital conference) about the various iPhone UI limitations: no mouse, no pull-down menus and so forth. While those are constraints in the case of the iPhone do you think Apple might be looking to turn them into strengths on the desktop platform? + +**WS:** Fundamentally it hurts my arms to hold them up to the screen, and I have enough trouble keeping my screen clean as it is, so I don't think I really want a touch-screen computer. I haven't seen the iPhone up-close, but I absolutely think some of the creative solutions Apple has come up with in terms of directly manipulating items on the screen (instead of using widgets) are going to carry over and inspire the Delicious Generation of applications. + +**WN:** Is there a new UI paradigm on the horizon and if so what do you think it would look like? + +**WS:** I think the paradigm is direct manipulation -- just grab your document and "throw" it upwards to get it to scroll, for example, instead of fumbling about for the scroller. + +**WN:** Do you think users are ready to abandon the dominant metaphor of desktop UIs? + +**WS:** I don't think we'll abandon the old way as much as supplement our armory with a whole new arsenal of tools. It's an awesome time to be a Mac developer, and, by extension, a Mac user. + +[2]: http://www.wired.com/software/coolapps/news/2007/06/core_anim?currentPage=all "Kiss Boring Interfaces Goodbye With Apple's New Animated OS" +[1]: http://www.wired.com/software/coolapps/news/2007/06/leopard_preview?currentPage=all "Apple to Show Off Leopard's Claws at WWDC" +[3]: http://www.delicious-monster.com/ "Delicious Library" +[4]: http://www.panic.com/ "Panic Software" +[5]: http://www.madebysofa.com/ "MadeBySofa"
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