Rethinking the desktop with reference to Apple s early UI guidelines
Tim Anderson Fri 12 Feb 2021 // 10:29 UTC Share
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Updated A pre-alpha project to make a new FreeBSD-based desktop operating system has adopted a minimalist design intended to appeal to Mac defectors.
FreeBSD is a Unix-like operating system first released in 1993 based on the Berkeley Software Distribution. The core of Apple s macOS, called Darwin, uses some code from FreeBSD. Despite its high quality, running FreeBSD as a desktop operating system has some challenges, mainly because it is less well supported by third-party vendors than Linux, which in turn is not as well supported as Windows.
By exploring alternative interfaces that transcend the principles behind conventional graphical interfaces, a human-computer interface emerges that is based on language, a richer representation of objects, expert users, and shared control.
At recent user interface conferences, several speakers have lamented that the human interface is stuck. We seem to have settled on the WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer) model, and there is very little real innovation in interface design anymore.
Physicists and mathematicians often stretch their imaginations by considering what the world would be like if some of their basic assumptions and principles were violated (for example, see [1]). This has led to new concepts such as non-Euclidean geometry, positrons, antimatter, and antigravity. At the least, violating basic assumptions is a useful mental exercise, but a surprising number of the resulting concepts have provided useful descriptions of the real world.