Macintosh human interface guidelines

What Hacker News says

1. BugsJustFindMeJan 2026
   "Perfection" is an irrelevant concept here, but "principled" is not. The reason people favored certain older OS UIs is because they were substantially more principled in their designs, not because the executions of those principles looked a particular specific way.

   The Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines, especially the old ones, were seriously well thought out. Apple just doesn't follow them anymore, and that leads to demonstrably poor design choices. "Consistency" is still one of the three banner concepts (see https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...), and Apple just fails wildly at paying attention to itself.

   Windows 2000 and Mac OS 9.x.x were contemporary with each other, are both considered to be strong examples of principled interface execution, and they were very different from each other in both behavior and appearance. They were also notably both the last generations of iterative executions of principled designs before both companies started veering off into the wilderness.

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2. lioetersNov 2023
   Must have been something in the air in 1995. I often hear people mention:

   Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines - http://interface.free.fr/Archives/Apple_HIGuidelines.pdf

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3. kpsOct 2023
   Old MacOS was good, until they started gradually making it phonelike. The original Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines¹ was solid work. (The big flaw, as usual, forced on the professionals from above: the form-over-function one-button mouse, requiring the undiscoverable double-click — it's almost forgotten now, but originally people had to be trained to double click ‘correctly’.)

   ¹ https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.5555/573097

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4. amatechaApr 2023
   If you want to design high quality UIs, read this book (Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines)[0] and ingest the concepts it explains. Even though it's not 100% applicable to a brand new software product, it may as well be -- most of the principles are totally applicable, and if you grasp the concepts from this book you will hopefully understand how to design a clearly-understandable user interface.

   [0] https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.5555/573097 (click "PDF")

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5. linguaeAug 2021
   As someone with experience in computer systems research, I recommend the following books that weren't on the list:

   - Any of Marshall Kirk McKusick's books on the design and implementation of various BSDs; his latest book covers FreeBSD 11. These books are very well-written.

   - Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach by David Patterson and John Hennessy. This is a wonderful book on computer architecture for graduate students written by the founders of RAID storage and RISC processors, respectively. For undergrads wanting a lighter introduction, I recommend Computer Organization and Design by the same authors. The authors won the 2017 Turing Award for their contributions to computer architecture.

   - Three Easy Pieces by Remzi and Andrea Arpaci-Dusseau. This is a well-written, freely available operating systems textbook intended for undergraduates. It's also great for grad students and practitioners who need a refresher on OS topics.

   Another book that is dear to me is the 1995 version of the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines. I personally think that the classic Mac OS and the Windows Classic (introduced in Windows 95) interfaces and their respective UI guidelines for applications were the high water mark for well-designed user interfaces, and I feel that today's UI/UX designers can learn a lot from mid-1990's desktops.

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6. randcrawMar 2021
   Yep. Ask them what are the essential duties of your role. Then ask, 'But what would be really GREAT?"

   Though it's probably obvious to you, my first thought about describing to others how to deliver an ideal front end would be to "minimize impedance mismatch". Somehow you need to plant a flag in the minds of upper management that you know how to make an app "a joy to use", or totally obvious to use.

   But is that what your management really wants from the person responsible for the front end? Or is it something else, like inventing a signature visual interface to better brand the product? Or streamlining the app's infrastructure to simplify reengineering/refactoring/repair?

   If you're looking to create a manifesto that you can sell as a unifying strategy for UI, IMHO no company has valued front ends more than Apple, and Jef Raskin was one of those most dedicated to making computers 'obvious' to use. His manifesto ("The Humane Interface") has to be a good source of ideas on which to base your 'front end mantra', as would the book "Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines" by Apple.

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