Tuesday, October 23, 2007

No verbs in the interface?

From here (but the quote is out there in other places and this looks to come originally from an NYT piece by John Markoff), a Steve Jobs quote:
There are no “verbs” in the iPhone interface, he said, alluding to the way a standard mouse or stylus system works. In those systems, users select an object, like a photo, and then separately select an action, or “verb,” to do something to it.
The thought of any interface without verbs pains me, but this sounds like a potential advance in how we control electronic devices, a "multitouch" interface. We'll see ...

3 comments:

The Ridger, FCD said...

So, there's only one thing you can do to any object? Select a picture and one and only one action occurs? (Yeah, I've paid almost no attention to the iPhone).

alienvoord said...

The things you can do are pretty limited, but on the other hand it's real easy to use. For instance, you resize a photo by moving two fingers apart. It's pretty awesome.

TootsNYC said...

So, actions, but no verbs?