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Finder co-designer not keen on current user interface
March 3, 2004 - 11:05 PST
by Dennis Sellers - Steve Capps, co-designer of the Finder and much of the Mac's graphical user interface (as well as one of the folks behind the Newton OS), doesn't find much to excite him about either the Mac or Windows user interfaces these days.
He's been designing and building user interfaces for over 25 years. Currently, he runs his own company, onedoto (pronounced "1.0"). The company was designed to develop user interfaces, software and hardware and provide services "that make communicating easier, richer and more personal."
"I'm lucky to work with a bunch of ex-Apple folks on a number of fun projects," Capps told MacMinute. "Sooner AND later you'll be able to touch some of these products."
He started working at the Xerox Corporation while still a computer science student at the Rochester Institute of Technology. In 1981, he started working for Apple on the Lisa project and he continued his work on the Macintosh, principally writing the Finder and Mac system utilities. From 1987 to 1996, he was the chief architect and Apple Fellow for the Newton, where he led the specification and development of the user interface of Newton, shepherded the team of software developers, and wrote many portions of the built-in application software. From 1996 until 2001, Capps was the user interface architect at Microsoft. His early work at Microsoft resulted in the Internet Explorer Search, History, and Favorites panes. He was also a co-founder of the MSN Explorer project. Capps is the named inventor on 53 granted patents, not counting several pending patents.
As for Apple's current hardware and software line, the industrial design, the integration between hardware and software, and the attention to details, are great "as expected," he says. On the other hand, he finds Mac OS X "pretty boring."
"I feel both the Mac and Windows are asymptotically approaching the same level of mediocrity," Capps says. "In this day of instant messaging, camera phones and ubiquitous connectivity, do we really need a word-processor view of the world (a.k.a. files and folders)? The desktop user interface is close to becoming as commonplace and as unexciting as typewriter user interfaces were 50 years ago."
Apple, at least, is nibbling at areas other than the desktop. Capps thinks that an Apple phone, camera, PVR, and universal remote would be fun to see.
"The big question is after you do version one of all the cool consumer products, what is the next act?" he says. "Apple has always been great with breakthrough products, but never has been great with follow-ons. Sony, for instance, can crank out the tenth version of a Walkman just as easily as the first version and can mix-n-match features to make a product family. If Apple can learn this 'new-and-improved model' for selling consumer products -- instead of its historical tendency to do masterpieces for version one (and no more) -- then it'll be fine for five 10, or 20 years.
When asked if he feels that Microsoft and Windows will continue to dominate the computing scene, he merely says there are a lot more interesting things to lose sleep over.
"I'm old enough to remember OS360 and its dominance – and what's OS360, you ask?" Capps says. "New operating systems will arise to support new applications. As long as desktops are 'pretty paper' producers, the existing operating systems are fine for that. A new communication-centric device/world is being created today, and its operating system is neither Windows, Mac nor Linux. I wish I were smart enough to know whether cell phones will win or digital cameras will win or even something new, but I can only hope it won't have a folder icon anywhere on it."
When he went to work at Microsoft, he heard his share of the "gone over to the dark side" jokes and comments. He says they got stale quickly and "99 percent of the time" were based on "zero first-hand knowledge."
"Ironically, one of the bigger pitches Jobs and others made to you when you interviewed at Apple was 'to make a dent in the world'," Capps says. "In 1996, the biggest dent one could imagine in computers was to try to bring holistic product thinking to Windows -- this is why I went to work there. Unfortunately, the culture there doesn't cater to product development this way, so it was too hard to make a dent at Microsoft, much less the world."
And, in a view that will shock Mac fans, he feels that Microsoft has done more to advance the desktop than Apple over the past 20 years.
"Granted they started from Windows 1.0, but still -- the Start Menu, the Taskbar, integration with the browser, intelligent assistance, the right-button context menu -- all of these are great things for the user, but Microsoft always get branded a copy cat," Capps says. "Their biggest problem is their tendency to lard on too many features instead of paying attention to details with fewer features, so the gems get lost."
Through it all, Capps still keeps in touch with friends "who have stuck it out" at Apple.
"I still harass them about iTunes and various other things, but since I don't use Macs, my comments are close to worthless," he says. "Though I wish iTunes didn't lose your query when you switch from your stuff to the store."
Actually, he does use one Mac these days: he has a Power Mac G4 with Mac OS 9 holding down a closet floor. It's also used as a stepladder to get to the attic trapdoor, Capps adds. With this in mind, it's probably no surprise that he has no desire to return to work at Apple.
"But I do miss the basketball games we played on campus," Capps says.
(This is another in our series of interviews with people influential in the development of the Mac over the past 20 years. Other stories with some of the original Mac team include:
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