This approach solves a common problem in apps that need to surface a lot of controls.
Problem 1: Sliders take up a lot of space.
Problem 2: Fine control of a mouse or touch-driven interface is provided by sliding, not by rotational gestures.
The idea here is to use a virtual knob to save space, while providing the fine control possible with a sliding interface. The sliding direction is generally chosen to be intuitive to the function of the knob. (Locking to horizontal or vertical also assists with fine control.)
It's a fixed size slider which uses the rotation of the indicator to tell you its position, instead of the position of a thumb in horizontal or vertical position.
If you replaced it with text or a bar that filled the area it would be the same.
It's better than a linear sliders because it takes up less space. It's better than a bar slider because you have more range to display (the length of the arc of the indicator is longer than the horizontal and vertical dimensions). This in turn makes it better for putting into tighter spaces.
I didn't read the writeup. The result was pretty gnarly. The active area on a phone left me scrolling up and down and I had to go very slow once I got purchase on the knob or it would rotate back after a quarter turn.
Having played a lot of MSFS 2020/2024 recently, I feel like I can appreciate this way more now. Since they have to make these knobs realistically and in 3D, when using them with a keyboard and mouse (or even worse a controller) it’s incredibly difficult to see and turn them. It gets even worse since you can push and pull many of these knobs (the difference being potentially catastrophic as well).
The one called garage band synth knob with 17 images is available as MF-A01 in real life. But beware there are 2 versions with same model number get the one with the set screw and brass bushing.
> After using the knobs in Garageband for a while, I noticed that they didn’t always react the way I thought they would. Most of the time the little indicator dot on the knob would follow my finger as I spun the knob around in a circle. Other times the knob wouldn’t follow my finger at all and seemed to go in random directions. I eventually figured out that I had stumbled on three different ways to turn a virtual knob.
> ...
> Apple’s attention to detail is what has propelled it to be the most valuable company on earth. Whether it’s the click of a physical button or the math behind inertial scrolling, Apple employees work really hard to make products that are deceptively simple and just feel right. The virtual knobs found in Garageband are no exception and I hope others enjoyed learning about them as much as I have.
I think these two statements are contradictory. Personally, I've noticed a pattern when people post about Apple UX that seems to go "yes this thing may be unintuitive but actually it's a sign of really good design!" that I can't quite seem to wrap my head around
Such cringe-inducing, delusional fawning. You can find counterpoints to this oft-regurgitated claim all over Apple's products, with a cornucopia of them in the rightfully-scorned Tahoe release alone.
But back to the topic at hand: "knobs" in GUIs. They suck, for the very reasons demonstrated here. Audio software in particular is replete with this skeuomorphic failure, and why? Because people who work in music or audio can't understand more-effective GUI affordances? Because they'd be lost without something that looks like the physical knobs on a mixer or stompbox? What an insulting assumption, not to mention nonsensical in modern times.
"Apple employees work really hard to make products that are deceptively simple and just feel right."
This grand declaration is based on what, exactly? In a decade as a software engineer at Apple, I saw a wide range of dedication and aptitude in UI design and implementation. This varies within teams and between teams, with no set standards for research or testing of UI effectiveness. I saw the same amateur-hour mistakes made repeatedly, despite their being pointed out incontrovertibly... and some have come back to bite (and cripple) new generations of Apple products.
Design isn't getting better, folks. It's one thing to give bad design a free pass; but to LAUD it hurts all users.
I'm amused by the contrast between Apple's attention to detail on the implementation and their failure to recognize that a virtual knob with a touchscreen or mouse is a fundamentally bad idea.
The author also makes this error, praising Apple's design prowess and denigrating its competition while failing to recognize they "didn’t always react the way I thought they would" because they're ill-suited to the medium.
Pretty interesting- on the first knob (with vertical and horizontal disabled) works great with how I thought the horizontal and vertical gestures were supposed to work - the difference being I did them on the edges instead of the center.
I found this knob to be the best experience.
Curious if others feel strongly for the centered experience.
Ironically, this post perfectly demonstrates up why these gestures should not be used together. I could not reliably make it trigger one vs. the other and which mode it selects is not something the code can detect without continued input which will lead to discontinuities in value.
It gets very glitchy if the pointer/finger is near the centre of the knob. Really that area should be disabled or "worked around" somehow. The hard part is you can't stop the user's finger/pointer from crossing through the middle, like a physical knob does by its physical construction. So there's a mismatch there.
This is not an Apple original design, this is standard fare in DAWs and VST plugins and has been since at least the early 00s. In the beginning of the article he talks about context menus as something that is not one GUI's but just standard in the industry - these knob interactions are like that for the audio industry.
It is interesting how opinionated people are. Personally, I think we just don't know enough to do a reasonable assessment. If we had some example of where a knob might be good and then try to understand whether it was good and if not, why not?
One of the issues (in my opinion) is how much control per pixel you get from a control. Certainly a knob has more control factors than a button. If nothing else you can click it and turn it. In the same size, a knob has much more control effect.
The other issue is how easily and comfortable a person can be using the control. This is complicated. If you see something on a screen that looks like something from the real world, then you have an idea of how to use it. And many of us became very comfortable with the old goofy Windows controls. But initial comfort is not necessary. Learned comfort is. If initially we don't know what it can do and how to use it, can we learn and once we do will we be comfortable?
It is not straight forward. The challenge I face is using a very small form factor - a mobile phone screen - to inter operate with complex systems and vast amounts of data.
The fact that it embodies more control factors in a small package makes it interesting.
I love how it’s handled in design software. Drag on a numeric value and it adjusts. I think it works the same in some DAWs for cases where you can display a numeric value / note / etc, but I guess in many cases knobs don’t have that and it’s some abstract percentage thing instead?
This year so much has gone to shit in Apple's OSes (Tahoe and the other version 26 ones) it's unbelievable.
Did some CxO let their brother-in-law's cousin's nephew have a go at managing all the teams? I haven't felt this kind of frustration with an operating system since jumping from the Microsoft ship during Windows 8.
Some basic UI is literally unreadable on the dumbass "glass" implementation. There are blatant rendering bugs and placeholders still in the shipped version, just look at the effing Contacts app. DRM slowdowns have crippled the Music and TV apps so much I literally cancelled my subscription and went back to piracy. I'd post example screenshots but I already wasted enough time just writing this ragecomment.
35 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 55.0 ms ] threadI understand the rationalization, but a knob is not a slider and what's the point of non-skeuomorphic skeuomorphism?
Problem 1: Sliders take up a lot of space.
Problem 2: Fine control of a mouse or touch-driven interface is provided by sliding, not by rotational gestures.
The idea here is to use a virtual knob to save space, while providing the fine control possible with a sliding interface. The sliding direction is generally chosen to be intuitive to the function of the knob. (Locking to horizontal or vertical also assists with fine control.)
If you replaced it with text or a bar that filled the area it would be the same.
It's better than a linear sliders because it takes up less space. It's better than a bar slider because you have more range to display (the length of the arc of the indicator is longer than the horizontal and vertical dimensions). This in turn makes it better for putting into tighter spaces.
Please no.
How difficult can it be to make a knob that works when turned both linearly and circularly?
Knobs are good when you can physically rotate them like for example in a car. But there we are removing knobs and adding touchscreens.
It’s was a pain to use and they later dropped it for a slider.
http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/qtime.htm
> ...
> Apple’s attention to detail is what has propelled it to be the most valuable company on earth. Whether it’s the click of a physical button or the math behind inertial scrolling, Apple employees work really hard to make products that are deceptively simple and just feel right. The virtual knobs found in Garageband are no exception and I hope others enjoyed learning about them as much as I have.
I think these two statements are contradictory. Personally, I've noticed a pattern when people post about Apple UX that seems to go "yes this thing may be unintuitive but actually it's a sign of really good design!" that I can't quite seem to wrap my head around
Such cringe-inducing, delusional fawning. You can find counterpoints to this oft-regurgitated claim all over Apple's products, with a cornucopia of them in the rightfully-scorned Tahoe release alone.
But back to the topic at hand: "knobs" in GUIs. They suck, for the very reasons demonstrated here. Audio software in particular is replete with this skeuomorphic failure, and why? Because people who work in music or audio can't understand more-effective GUI affordances? Because they'd be lost without something that looks like the physical knobs on a mixer or stompbox? What an insulting assumption, not to mention nonsensical in modern times.
"Apple employees work really hard to make products that are deceptively simple and just feel right."
This grand declaration is based on what, exactly? In a decade as a software engineer at Apple, I saw a wide range of dedication and aptitude in UI design and implementation. This varies within teams and between teams, with no set standards for research or testing of UI effectiveness. I saw the same amateur-hour mistakes made repeatedly, despite their being pointed out incontrovertibly... and some have come back to bite (and cripple) new generations of Apple products.
Design isn't getting better, folks. It's one thing to give bad design a free pass; but to LAUD it hurts all users.
The author also makes this error, praising Apple's design prowess and denigrating its competition while failing to recognize they "didn’t always react the way I thought they would" because they're ill-suited to the medium.
I found this knob to be the best experience.
Curious if others feel strongly for the centered experience.
I guess I should probably publish more of my drafts...
Thanks for reading/commenting!
i can guarantee the only reason there's 3 input types for the knobs, is because three different teams did their own thing and nobody cares.
One of the issues (in my opinion) is how much control per pixel you get from a control. Certainly a knob has more control factors than a button. If nothing else you can click it and turn it. In the same size, a knob has much more control effect.
The other issue is how easily and comfortable a person can be using the control. This is complicated. If you see something on a screen that looks like something from the real world, then you have an idea of how to use it. And many of us became very comfortable with the old goofy Windows controls. But initial comfort is not necessary. Learned comfort is. If initially we don't know what it can do and how to use it, can we learn and once we do will we be comfortable?
It is not straight forward. The challenge I face is using a very small form factor - a mobile phone screen - to inter operate with complex systems and vast amounts of data.
The fact that it embodies more control factors in a small package makes it interesting.
Did some CxO let their brother-in-law's cousin's nephew have a go at managing all the teams? I haven't felt this kind of frustration with an operating system since jumping from the Microsoft ship during Windows 8.
Some basic UI is literally unreadable on the dumbass "glass" implementation. There are blatant rendering bugs and placeholders still in the shipped version, just look at the effing Contacts app. DRM slowdowns have crippled the Music and TV apps so much I literally cancelled my subscription and went back to piracy. I'd post example screenshots but I already wasted enough time just writing this ragecomment.