> 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
I think it's more that someone may assume how something works, and it isn't exactly that, so they say it's unintuitive. But there could be multiple assumptions on how it should work on first use. Covering all of those possibilities, and integrating them into a cohesive experience that works the first time, and makes even more sense as you continue to use it and learn the other ways to interact, shows a strong attention to detail and design.
This is opposed to something that may be very intuitive for 30% of people, but the other 70% are lost, and the implementation doesn't scale.
The point of knobs is that you can fit a ton of sliders in a limited space, and that you can wildly adjust them with very little movement. Both are requirments for a lot of music software. What would the alternative be?
I think multi-zone drumpads on the recent Akai MPC Live 3 provide a good middle ground, quite similar to mapping various zones on a trackpad. The Macbook touchstrip was a cool (but maybe too cool) addition as well, similarly introduced by various DAW controllers (Push, Machine, MPC Live, others).
Others have already pointed out that a knob saves a lot of space. And I'm surprised myself how usable a knob is when controlled with a vertical trackpad scroll gesture. Probably still a frustrating control on a touch screen, though.
If you've ever used pro audio software you come to love rotary over linear sliders. They're simply more flexible and dense when you have many parameters to tweak.
Completely agree. They are very prevalent in DAWs and audio plugins, as they try to look like physical hardware. I absolutely hate interacting with them, either with touch or mouse.
I guess the one advantage they have is they don't take up as much room as a slider, maybe?
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.
"Make [a slider] bigger while the mouse button is held down, and warp the mouse so that when you let go you pick up where you left off" has been a solved problem for decades.
And with traditional toolkits (i.e. not HTML) it will even be fast.
I was able to debug and fix someone's MainStage patch last night over SMS when they sent me pictures of their screen, where all the knobs were visible.
Being able to see the full state of the thing is important. Hiding it behind interactions is just as bad as hiding it behind menus.
Sidenote, you have to do this on native because pointer lock/warp is not universally supported in web browsers.
You beat me to posting this. When this version of the QuickTime player came out, I couldn't understand how Apple of all companies could ship this obviously awkward control.
Edit: Scrolling further down on the article, I get reminded of the weird pop-out drawer at the bottom of the player. I had totally forgotten about it, and it was also a very awkward and un-ergonomic piece of UI.
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.)
Exactly. It's not about skeuomorphism, it's about saving space. Yes, it's unintuitive, and they could have made it work with a circular swipe as well, and probably should have, but it makes sense design-wise.
We don't steer automobiles with reins because new technologies work better with interfaces that match their technological properties. We've learned a lot about human computer interaction since the 1970's.
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.
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.
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.
> 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
I think it's more that someone may assume how something works, and it isn't exactly that, so they say it's unintuitive. But there could be multiple assumptions on how it should work on first use. Covering all of those possibilities, and integrating them into a cohesive experience that works the first time, and makes even more sense as you continue to use it and learn the other ways to interact, shows a strong attention to detail and design.
This is opposed to something that may be very intuitive for 30% of people, but the other 70% are lost, and the implementation doesn't scale.
The whole idea of knob is stupid both on touch screens as well as desktop. There are other good alternatives which are far more intuitive than knobs.
Knobs are good when you can physically rotate them like for example in a car. But there we are removing knobs and adding touchscreens.
The point of knobs is that you can fit a ton of sliders in a limited space, and that you can wildly adjust them with very little movement. Both are requirments for a lot of music software. What would the alternative be?
I think multi-zone drumpads on the recent Akai MPC Live 3 provide a good middle ground, quite similar to mapping various zones on a trackpad. The Macbook touchstrip was a cool (but maybe too cool) addition as well, similarly introduced by various DAW controllers (Push, Machine, MPC Live, others).
You can do this with a normal slider as well. Map a large pointer movement to a small control movement.
Others have already pointed out that a knob saves a lot of space. And I'm surprised myself how usable a knob is when controlled with a vertical trackpad scroll gesture. Probably still a frustrating control on a touch screen, though.
Designing 3D real-world interactions for 2D screens is fun. Literally fun. Rarely useful.
Yeah, the paradigms are just too different.
I prefer sliders for knobs… just much more natural with a mouse or touchscreen.
It's hard to replicate the "coolness" factor though of a true studio control board. It begs to be touched and knobs beg to be turned...
If you've ever used pro audio software you come to love rotary over linear sliders. They're simply more flexible and dense when you have many parameters to tweak.
Completely agree. They are very prevalent in DAWs and audio plugins, as they try to look like physical hardware. I absolutely hate interacting with them, either with touch or mouse.
I guess the one advantage they have is they don't take up as much room as a slider, maybe?
I tolerate knobs in DAWs/plugins... if they let you manually enter a value. So much fiddling can be skipped by dialing in a value directly.
Without manual entry, you trap users in fiddly UI hell.
Hmm, for alternatives, are you thinking of things like spinboxes? (I know them mainly from Blender)
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.
Literally every DAW has knobs everywhere: it would be impossible to use sliders everywhere in a DAW's UI, there simply isn't enough room.
"Make [a slider] bigger while the mouse button is held down, and warp the mouse so that when you let go you pick up where you left off" has been a solved problem for decades.
And with traditional toolkits (i.e. not HTML) it will even be fast.
This would be a few lines of CSS and it would be very fast
It's not all about the interaction, but also the visual representation which can be much finer and granular in small spaces with a knob.
I can make a 16x16px knob where you can see almost the entire 320° of the range.
It's also easier to see fractions, such as 1/2, 1/3 or 1/4.
Sliders, especially in 16px possess none of those.
I was able to debug and fix someone's MainStage patch last night over SMS when they sent me pictures of their screen, where all the knobs were visible.
Being able to see the full state of the thing is important. Hiding it behind interactions is just as bad as hiding it behind menus.
Sidenote, you have to do this on native because pointer lock/warp is not universally supported in web browsers.
was going to say, heaven forbid we use a little skeumorphism
Huh, the knob turns back when you attempt to turn it circularly (the most intuitive gesture).
How difficult can it be to make a knob that works when turned both linearly and circularly?
Came here to say that. They over-engineered it in a way that killed the only truly intuitive way to interact with a knob.
QuickTime use to have a wheel as a volume control.
It’s was a pain to use and they later dropped it for a slider.
http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/qtime.htm
You beat me to posting this. When this version of the QuickTime player came out, I couldn't understand how Apple of all companies could ship this obviously awkward control.
Edit: Scrolling further down on the article, I get reminded of the weird pop-out drawer at the bottom of the player. I had totally forgotten about it, and it was also a very awkward and un-ergonomic piece of UI.
Up and down virtual knobs are entirely unintuitive to me.
I understand the rationalization, but a knob is not a slider and what's the point of non-skeuomorphic skeuomorphism?
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.)
Using a knob when using a knob doesn't solve the problem is poor design...then again, skeuomorphism is usually bad design.
Here a counter that increases and decreases with mouse movement would take less space and be more intuitive.
And a much much better design because it would provide a numerical readout of the value directly at the point of interaction.
But in fairness, most design is bad because designers tend toward satisfying themselves rather than users...ok, I will stop ranting now.
A counter provides more information but takes longer to read and appreciate than a simple angular magnitude.
Exactly. It's not about skeuomorphism, it's about saving space. Yes, it's unintuitive, and they could have made it work with a circular swipe as well, and probably should have, but it makes sense design-wise.
It's a visually more compact interface element, but still allows the same simple interaction as a slider?
We don't steer automobiles with reins because new technologies work better with interfaces that match their technological properties. We've learned a lot about human computer interaction since the 1970's.
It's quite common in DAWs, it allows you to adjust knobs quite easily with a mouse.
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.
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).
Interesting. I could imagine a knob not being so bad with a controller. But maybe I’m miss-imagining or maybe they implemented it poorly.
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.
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.
Please no.
Agree. Makes sense for a mouse cursor but not touch.