I was involved in the Newton project for a time in the late 1980’s. Some extremely talented people were involved in that project, including Steve Capps, Walter Smith, Dick Lyon and Larry Yaeger (among others—there were many, and you all know who you are). One of the things that I was working on was a dynamic language for the Newton. Some friends at Carnegie-Mellon, Barak Pearlmutter and Kevin Lang, had designed and implemented a very intriguing object-oriented Scheme called Oaklisp; I thought it might serve the Newton well, because it was small, fast, and modular. My port to the Mac proved that it had great potential, but due to other pressures within Apple in the Lisp arena, it was dropped. Eventually Walter wrote NewtonScript, which was widely acclaimed and could be considered an ancestor of JavaScript.In 1994 and 1995, after finishing graduate school, I spent some time in the Advanced Technology Group, working with Tom Bonura and Jim Miller on a variety of projects, including LiveDoc. LiveDoc automatically structured documents by recognizing strings of text in various formats; different recognizers could determine that, for example, 555-1212 was a phone number and 124 Main Street was an address, and the recognizers would then provide contextual actions on those items. You can read more about LiveDoc in this article.

MacThemes: The original Finder, which recently celebrated its 20th birthday, is surprisingly similar to the Finder we have today. We still have the trashcan, the folders, the menus, the windows, and dialogue boxes. We still use a mouse to navigate the GUI, and a keyboard to type. Is this evidence of stagnation in the GUI, or proof of perfection?

It’s hard to say. I think that there are basic elements of organization that have persisted throughout history, and those will stay; but there will definitely be more advanced approaches involving automatic search and organization in the future. I just think that we haven’t had the chance to really explore these concepts fully, though we have started with the broad search domain because it is so useful on the Web. Local, personal organization is a different nut to crack.

MacThemes: And what about 3D interfaces, voice control, eye tracking, and the latest new things. Are they a glimpse into the future or passing fads?

So far I haven’t seen anything that really makes information management easier. A lot of them seem to be fads, but I won’t rule out anything. In specific domains, 3D interfaces, voice control, eye tracking, and so on are extremely useful. Voice operation when your hands are occupied (inventory control, for example) is a good example, and 3D interfaces are of course required for solid modeling. But in information management and office automation, I’m not sure how these new interfaces can be used yet.

MacThemes: The Desktop metaphor has survived for twenty years. Do you think it’ll still be around ten years later?

Probably, as long as there are desks!

MacThemes: Good point. In a recent MacThemes interview, Mike Matas, an interface consultant, expressed his opinion that the Finder should emphasize meta data based organization. You, of course, were one of the pioneers of meta data, implementing type/creator data for documents. Where does the next generation Finder need to go?

I of course believe that information organization needs to be based on metadata. My hobby project iFile is a metadata-based organization system, and other previous systems (such as BeOS) provided essential support for metadata. Type/creator was a nice beginning for one of the critical aspects of managing documents and applications, but there is much more that can be done.

I’m sure that there are efforts at Apple and elsewhere to provide a metadata-based desktop. Even Microsoft has recognized this and is planning metadata support in their new WinFS and Longhorn operating system. I’d rather not go into what I think are the best solutions in this area, however, since I’m working on that myself!

MacThemes: What exactly is iFile? What does it do, when do you plan to release, and what will it offer over the Finder?

Basically, iFile is a grand attempt at a way to organize everything based on some principles that I’ve learned over the years about how people arrange information in their lives. The first version will only be a small step toward the larger vision, but in short it will provide new ways to “connect the dots” between the various important foci in your work and professional life. This will be based on the concept of organizing via metadata. We are all accustomed to some basic metadata attached to files (e.g. file names, dates, and so on) but if you start with the idea that there should be much richer metadata, and that objects should be linked to each other through meaningful connections, you can do much more than just organize files in folders. One very basic idea is the concept of a collection of objects that may be stored in a variety of different places, but which share some common properties (e.g. all files with the word “Susie” in them).This is a very simple example, but much more interesting things can be built up from it.

There has been a lot of very sophisticated work in this area; however, little of it has made it to the desktop of the modern computer user. I have spent quite a bit of time on iFile’s internal architecture, and only a little bit of time on the user interface, so the initial version will simply give a glimpse of what is possible with iFile. Over time iFile will be a testbed for implementing many of these ideas.The public release date always seems to be slipping (it’s software—what do you expect?) but I believe that I’ll release a version this summer, if not sooner.

MacThemes: That sounds great! Maybe we’ll be able to provide a preview. But while we’re on the topic, what do you think has been the greatest innovation or improvement to the Finder over the past twenty years?

First, of course, is MultiFinder, the multitasking framework that allowed you to run more than one program at a time, which Andy Hertzfeld pioneered and Phil Goldman made real at Apple. It’s not strictly a part of the Finder, but it did make life much better for the Mac user.

I guess I’d have to say that the improvements that came with System 7 and 8 were the most substantial: Aliases, AppleScript, full color, labels, Put Away (the ability to bring files to the desktop from their folders, work with them, and then be able to automatically return them to their original location), and some multithreading. The basic features of the Finder that I like the most, like the type/creator mechanism and the spatial organization, have been consistent throughout the entire Macintosh lifetime.

MacThemes: Ok, now for some reader questions. First off, here’s one from Jasper Hauser. He asks, “What kind of features would you really like to see in the current Finder?”

That’s hard to say. I’d like to think that I’m working on some of those features myself!

MacThemes: Second, from Chris: “I’d like to ask Dr. Horn what he thinks of the Finder as a browser. People I talk to seem to think that the “spatial” interface provided by the classic Finder falls short of a modern computer user’s needs. I happen to disagree–but if it does, is OS X’s new “browser” interface the best solution? Or is that where iFile comes in? ;)”

I do think that the spatial interface has its place, and that it needs to be part of the basic foundation of an information manager. There are many ways of viewing hierarchies—I can think of at least six offhand—and the browser metaphor, which I first saw in Smalltalk-76, is a good one, especially for viewing hierarchies that don’t change much, such as class hierarchies in object-oriented programming. For viewing a file system it is less appropriate, because it makes it more difficult to move things from branch to branch in the file hierarchy.If you are interested in many-to-many organizations (e.g. not a simple hierarchy), there are other ways to help the user to navigate. An obvious example is the hypertext link.There needs to be a new, integrated solution that provides the best of all approaches: a variety of ways of viewing hierarchies, spatial organization provided by the user, and ways to navigate non-hierarchical data spaces. I think that there is a lot of work to do there.

MacThemes: From Daniel Grenell: “You developed a GUI from scratch; there was nothing like this before you pioneered it. What were your inspirations? Did you ever have GUI designer’s block? Or did everything just flow freely?”

It was a lot of hard work, so I can’t say that everything flowed freely. I think that I received the most inspiration from Smalltalk—an environment that was so flexible that it encouraged exploration. A lot of the basic ideas about how user interfaces should work clearly came from Smalltalk, and there were quite a few of us from PARC who came to Apple to bring along the necessary ideas and experience. A lot of the Macintosh GUI came from these bits and pieces. Of course, it didn’t come from thin air: a lot of people came before us and pioneered the ways of thinking that made it possible, and I learned that from the people in my group at PARC.

MacThemes: And finally, from Joe Kohlmann, “Apple seems to have divvied up the manipulation of files into separate applications. Is part of iFile’s approach to integrate multiple types of file-editing capibilities? (Example: Integrating a text editor and an image manipulation capability.)”

That’s an insightful question. There is definitely a different approach being taken with the Apple iApps, in that each different application is specialized to manage its own file types (e.g. mp3 files in iTunes, or images with iPhoto). I’d like to see what kind of advantage there might be in providing an integrated and uniform mechanism for organizing all files, including mp3’s and images. I enjoy using iPhoto and especially iTunes for their purposes. Yet at the same time, what could be possible if you could provide the iTunes-type capability for all of your files, with a classic Finder interface as the foundation? I think that there something definitely new and inspiring there, and I hope to explore that with iFile.

MacThemes: Thank you for your interview, Dr. Horn, and good luck on your future forays into user interface design with iFile. We’ll be sure to be there, covering it on the site!

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