Apple, history & rational ignorance

[WebrangerL]

Comments on a wide ranging discussion.

Apple. Why didn't they steal the hearts and minds of the technical community?
When it was important to support the people who were actually using computers to do their jobs - embedded programmers, it was impossible to get a cross-compiler. If you were forced to use a blue box at work and needed (read wanted) a computer of your own, would you buy something that can't do what you need to do at work? This built a base of programmers hacking at ms-dos, and building their tools there, rather than on Apple. The bottom line is that people use tools that help support their lifestyles and except for media-geeks, Apple didn't cultivate the user community that could have helped them most.

Speaking of lifestyles and the concept of rational ignorance. Even when I was primarily a programmer, I was not being paid to use my computer - I was paid to make products work. If I could do that without the computer I would have been paid more (like my managers). Rationale ignorance is rationale for most users. They do not WANT to use a computer, they can't help it. As such, they only want to do what they have to do. The computer shouldn't get in the way.

And while I absolutely agree with Eric on the goal that must be set for simplicity, I temper my expectations that the tool (hammer, oscilliscope, software) should be developed to be intuitive for users with an appropriate level of domain experience. It is not necessary for the tool to be developed for anyone to use UNLESS you want everyone to use it. This implies that the first level user interface needs to be very simple while the application interface can be as complex as the user base can stand. YOU limit your own success by making the user experience more complicated than necessary (Everything should be as simple. as possible, but no simpler. - Albert Einstein).

Cheers.