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General discussion

Anybody going to South By Southwest Interactive?

Mar 2, 2006 9:23AM PST

I'll be there Monday afternoon and Tuesday March 14th. I'm moderating a panel at 10 AM on Tuesday about behind the scenes development of OSX and Vista.

It's the former head of Human User Interface for Mac and a former member of the Windows Xp and Longhorn design team.

Discussion is locked

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Never heard of it before
Mar 2, 2006 9:29AM PST

But it sure sounds like fun. Wish I could go.

-Ryan

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SXSW Interactive is in Austin, TX
Mar 2, 2006 11:44AM PST
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South by Southwest is in Austin, TX
Mar 2, 2006 11:51AM PST
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I look forward to hearing how that goes
Mar 2, 2006 10:08AM PST

It will be really interesting to hear two former employees talk about that aspect of the operating system development. Hopefully, they will be a little more open to candid speech instead of just wearing the corporate hat.

I'd be interested to know if there really were/are battles within Apple between the NeXT programmers who came aboard with the NeXT purchase and the Mac OS programmers who were there before.

I'd also like to know if the Windows OS designers ever feel hobbled in designing a seriously cool interface by legacy and design by committee. The Xbox 360 panel shows somebody at Microsoft is clearly capable of "getting it" so why can't the rest of Microsoft make something that looks and functions as cool as that? I wanna know.

-Kevin S.

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Good questions
Mar 2, 2006 11:42AM PST

I do know from our pre-conference talk that Steve Jobs was very very involved, as in weekly meetings involved with OSX, while Bill Gates just sort of popped in occasionally and rerouted the project then popped back out. I'm sure this is oversimplification, but you get the gist.

Also when I asked if they thought or even wanted OS interface design to move away from the windowing metaphor they both sighed and expressed the fervent hope that someday they could but expected it no time soon.

They both work for Frog Design now, so I imagine barring NDAs that might still be in effect, they'll be as candid as possible.

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If not windowing, what?
Mar 2, 2006 12:30PM PST

I'd be curious to know what kind of interface they would deem superior to the windowing (OSX and XP/Vista) paradigm. Is the sort-of-tab idea of the Xbox 360 something they would consider an improvement or is there an idea, that completely shifts gears, being thrown around in the world of human interface design?

-Kevin S.