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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology
Jack Schofield

And following up Neil's comments,

And following up Neil's comments, below... Jakob Nielsen does have a point, and it is a lot more interesting than the ignorance and bigotry displayed on MacSlash would lead anyone to suspect. If you want to be only a handful years behind Jakob's thinking, read The Anti-Mac Interface,

I think Nielsen would now point to Apple abandoning OpenDoc, Cyberdog, the Newton interface and similar developments as evidence of Apple ceasing to originate in software design. Mac OS X, in contrast, is just a retooling of work done by NeXT in the 1980s, based on an operating system developed mainly in the 1970s. Mac OS X may be better than Windows XP in some ways and worse in others (in an early comparison, CNet voted 6-0 in favour of XP's interface), but it is hardly innovative. The same goes for the "digital hub" applications.

Incidentally, the idea that Nielsen doesn't know Macs and Apple is ridiculous: he has even worked for the company, as a consultant. Also, his co-founder at the Nielsen Norman Group, Don Norman, was an Apple vice-president and Apple Fellow, and the group includes Bruce Tognazzini. Tog spent 14 years at Apple (he was employee #66) and founded the Apple Human Interface Group. They are not just a bunch of guys with opinions on the Mac interface, they contributed to it.

For my interview with Nielsen on Web design and usability, see Online here.

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