Thursday
Sep102009
The Apple Lisa
Thursday, September 10, 2009 at 10:16AM 
The Graphical User Interface Gallery contains a tasty article on the development of the Apple Lisa OS. One amazing aspect to me is the iterations they went through before finalising on a simple iconic desktop. The image above is of a non-heirarchial faceted search, presented in what looks like a modern multi-coloumn view. Note though, that the modern multi-coloumn vie we have in Mac OS X for example is simply showing hierarchy, not a faceted search like the above image.
Via the Lukas Mathis' excellent Ignore the Code.
Reader Comments (6)
That UI is very similar to iTunes when select Show Browser from the View menu. My top panes list Genre, Artist, Album, and the bottom shows a normal list. It's not a perfect match, no.
Whatcha wanna bet they came to this solution without having seen the Lisa browser. A "similar purpose leads to similar design" kind of thing.
(Apologies for my typos. I am shamed.)
Of course, the "modern multi-column" view in Mac OS X is in fact inherited from NeXTSTEP, circa 1989!
http://www.macobserver.com/columns/whatsnext/screenshots/desktop1.gif
http://taftish.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/nextstep-1.jpg
@ Paul, yup definitely.
@Chris— I totally agree. :-) Same needs, maybe same solution. Although there are NeXT guys still at Apple.
Yeah, that NeXT stuff is/was amazing. I've never used one, but its polish and forethought are always seductive.
But the NeXT and Mac column views are only used to show what's in what: clicking a column changes the content of the column next to it. In this Lisa screenshot, type and category are independent, so changing type doesn't affect category. Note, though, that the Lisa can show hierarchical stuff, even in the same column set: category does affect sub-category in the screen shot.
Mmm...UI...
@ Chris Yes—that screenshot is not of anything that would work like a column view like we know it, closest thing I can think of is the alarm clock setting input scrolling interface on the iPhone, with many vertical scrollable options resulting in a unique horizontal combo.