The State of the Art in User Interfaces

This is a dialog that popped up just now from iTunes:

iTunes CD Lookup Results dialog

It has several noteworthy interactive features:

  1. It is not resizable.
  2. The two choices are visually identical.
  3. Copy-and-paste is disabled for the text of interest.

It also possesses a few less visible but no less interesting attributes:

  1. There is no undo once I click OK.
  2. iTunes remembers my choice1 for future insertions of the same CD.

I shall choose at random.

Moral: Current environments for interacting with computers are, putting it mildly, irretrievably broken. Our only hope lies in disruptive innovation.

  1. Fortunately, there is a method for causing iTunes to forget my choice and ask me the same question again: it is the selection Get Track Names in the Advanced menu.