The IC3 Blue Train - A little journal about design, marketing, sales and other matters

The follow-up to my proposal for MacBook Light

In the previous entry, I suggest the need for a simpler Macintosh that fulfils Apple's original ambition of radical ease-of-use. Here is a possible step in that direction.

My next-door neighbour and good friend is a professional music composer, organ virtuoso and avid Mac fan. Today, he gave me a crash course on GarageBand (I promised not to play my compositions on my 100-Watt speakers ;-). His Mac Pro dock (I’ve learned how the ‘table’ is called since my previous entry) seems as long as a Jumbo Jet runway and I am wondering how he find the right app icon in this endless strip?

I already have small problems finding my way through the dock of my new MacBook Pro dock that has only a few amenities (Acrobat Reader, Firefox, etc.) added to the standard Apple stuff. How do Mac beginners cope? “Better than Vista beginners” is a right answer. But, maybe, a new approach could be appropriate.

Hence the idea for a MacBook Light feature: a series of sets* that cut** the richness and complexity of today’s Mac into simpler families of functions.

Examples:

• Music & Sound (incl. iTunes, GarageBand, …)
• Photo & Movie (incl. iPhoto, iMovie, …)
• Internet & Email (Safari, Mail, iChat, Address Book, …)
• Office & Business (iWork, Mail, Address Book,…)
• Tutorials & Support

Each set contains applications supplied by Apple, a view of corresponding document folders and documentation (e.g. PDFs), tutorials, examples, etc. Maybe also Safari with bookmarks for relevant sites, e.g. Music Safari. Users can modify the sets and include additional applications (e.g. Logic Audio into Music & Sound). The same function can be accessed from different sets (e.g. Mail).

Combined with other simplification efforts, sets* would make Macintosh easier to learn and use, wouldn’t they?

NOTES:

* I deliberately avoid the word ‘mode’ that has a specific meaning in the software world – with friendly greeting to my former boss, Larry Tesler.

** I call that ‘salami tactics’: deliver luxuriant complexity in digestible slices rather than as a big sausage (image by André Karwath aka Aka, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5)