UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

(This post is adapted from a rambling Twitter thread I just posted.)

I was just reading Nick Heer’s post on transparency in macOS Big Sur and it got me thinking about a related issue I recently dealt with. This is not a new and questionable UI design choice Apple foisted upon us in 2020. It’s a fundamental UI element that dates back to the original 1984 Macintosh.

The Menu Bar.

Although the Mac (and, technically, the Lisa before it) was a ripoff of the original experimental graphical user interface (GUI) developed at Xerox PARC, there is one thing about the Mac that is distinctly different from every other GUI that exists, be it any iteration of Windows, Linux GUIs like GNOME or KDE, the old Sun workstations, even the NeXT OS that Steve Jobs led the creation of after his original ouster from Apple, which formed the basis for Mac OS X and everything Apple has created in this century.

The Menu Bar.

Every other GUI puts a row of menus into the window for each app. On the Mac, the Menu Bar is affixed to the top of the screen, and changes context based on which app is in the foreground. There is a conceptual detachment between apps and their windows on the Mac that does not exist in any other modern operating system, and if you don’t fully grasp that concept, it makes the Mac considerably more confusing to use.

I was reminded of this recently when I had to provide a bit of “tech support” for my parents. My parents are in their 70s. But they’ve had Macs since I first convinced them to buy a candy-colored original iMac over 20 years ago. They’ve only had Macs, although now they do most of their “computer” activities on their iPhones or iPad. But they still use the Mac for banking, printing documents, and a few other tasks that are still a bit obscure to them on the iPad.

And even though they’ve been using Macs for over a quarter of their lives, they still don’t “get” the Menu Bar.

We were on a FaceTime call and they asked me to help them figure out a problem they were having with their Mac. They were describing a weird problem they were having with Safari, and I just could not understand what the issue was. They were describing a sidebar with all of their email in it, and that they couldn’t make it go away.

Since we were doing FaceTime on their iPad, I eventually asked them to turn the iPad so I could see their Mac screen.

I know that their email is through Gmail (because I set it up), so I was expecting to see the Gmail web interface. But what I was actually seeing was the Mac Mail app’s interface. What? How did they manage to get Safari to display that? Then I realized what the problem was.

The Menu Bar.

They had Safari open, as the foreground app, but they didn’t have any Safari windows open. They also had the Mail app open; in fact, it was the only window open on their desktop. But because Safari was the foreground app, the Menu Bar, was saying “Safari” and had the Safari menus.

Why wouldn’t they have just clicked on the Mail window which would make it the foreground app? Seems obvious, but they are nervous novices, and they’re reluctant to click anything, ever, if they’re not sure what will happen. (I know they are not alone in this.)

I told them how to quit Safari, and then how to quit Mail, and they thanked me for fixing their problem. (Did I really though?) But it left me frustrated with the Mac.

Damn it, the Menu Bar is confusing. As loyal as I am to the Mac, putting menus within an app — making it so that the window is the app — is a lot more intuitive and logical than the way the Mac does it. How can an app be open if all of its windows are closed? It doesn’t make sense. Once you conceptually understand foreground and background apps, and have some technical understanding of how the computer works, it’s easy enough to take it all for granted. But at the surface level — which is all the average non-technical user grasps — it makes no damn sense to have the Menu Bar detached from the app it affects.

If there weren’t a thousand other reasons I prefer the Mac, I would be inclined to say that this detail alone makes Windows a superior OS. But it’s not.

Remember Me
Season 4 Episode 5
Original airdate: October 20, 1990

Netflix Synopsis

Dr. Crusher’s anxiety over losing loved ones is magnified when she becomes trapped in an alternate reality.

My Brief Review

I’m not sure I’d say this is my favorite episode of the show, but it’s definitely the one that’s stuck with me most vividly. I love these Twilight Zone-type episodes, and this one is a classic.

Wesley is conducting a warp field experiment in engineering, and shortly thereafter, Dr. Crusher starts to notice a strange phenomenon: people are vanishing from onboard the Enterprise, and no one but her seems to remember them ever existing.

Eventually, it comes to this… Beverly is alone on the bridge (and, in fact, alone on the ship), when she poses the question to the computer: “What is the nature of the universe?”

Computer: “The universe is a spheroid region 704 meters in diameter.”

Eventually the ship starts to break down due to what the computer calls a “design flaw”… namely, that parts of the ship’s design now fall outside the universe. But Beverly is smart, almost as smart as her son Wesley, who gets into serious Jedi mode with The Traveler, who comes back and works his metaphysical magic.

Of course everything works out fine in the end. But it’s quite a trip along the way.

Memorable Moment

When Dr. Crusher asks the computer to display a model of the universe and she recognizes the shape as Wesley’s warp field, that’s an image that’s burned into my brain. But I think the most memorable moment is when it’s down to just her and Picard left on board, and she’s sitting next to him. She has the computer giving a continual audible readout of Picard’s life functions. For a moment she glances away from him, the computer falls silent, and… he’s gone.

Crew Rando

Uh, I mean, come on. There’s like nobody in this episode. So let’s go with Dr. Dalen Quaice, Beverly’s old (and I mean old) friend, who’s the first to disappear. He’s played by Bill Erwin, who according to IMDb is “known for” the unforgettable roles “Man on Plane,” “Man in Airport,” and “70-Year-Old Man.”

Distane Rating: 6K

IMDb score: 7.9/10

Suddenly Human
Season 4 Episode 4
Original airdate: October 13, 1990

Netflix Synopsis

On a rescue mission to a Talarian shipwreck, the Enterprise team discovers that one of the alien crew is a young human.

My Brief Review

Wow, season four is all about family, isn’t it? In this case, Picard spends a few days as a surrogate father to an angsty teenager. Fighting over loud music, even.

The boy was captured by the Talarians, a patriarchal, warrior race, and raised as one of their own. But when he comes aboard Enterprise, it’s discovered that he’s actually the son of a Starfleet commander, who had been killed in a battle with the Talarians. His grandmother is a Starfleet admiral. Which place is his home? Is his Talarian father a serial abuser? Will Captain Picard survive young Jono stabbing him while he sleeps? (Yeah, that happens.)

In the end, Jono makes his choice, but he learns a lot about being human along the way.

Memorable Moment

Jono creeping up on a sleeping Picard and thrusting a dagger into his chest is certainly memorable, but the moment from this episode I immediately remembered from years ago is him sitting in Ten-Forward with Wesley Crusher, jabbing a spoon violently into a banana split, and splattering blue (?) ice cream all over Wesley’s face. Wherein Data gets a lesson in slapstick humor.

Crew Rando

Crewman Martinez (a.k.a “backflip master”) appears here, but I think we only see the back of his head. But in a more general “rando” sense, let’s talk about Jono’s Talarian father, Captain Endar. He’s played by Sherman Howard, who has appeared in a million small roles, including a bunch of Star Trek stuff as well as tons of video game and cartoon voice work. But his most memorable moment may be as playing Roy, Elaine’s ex-boyfriend in the Seinfeld episode The Junior Mint. Yes, he’s the patient who’s being operated on when Kramer drops a Junior Mint from the viewing gallery.

Distance Rating: 4K

IMDb score: 6.5/10

Brothers
Season 4 Episode 3
Original airdate: October 6, 1990

Netflix Synopsis

After an accident aboard the Enterprise leaves one of its children in danger, Data commandeers the ship and charts a course to an unknown destination.

My Brief Summary

Full disclosure/reminder to my future self, who is the only person who might even possibly care about this: I actually watched this episode two days ago, but circumstances prevented me from taking the time to write this review until now.

I’m a big Data fan, so I always like any episode that features him prominently. The only problem is, I actually find Brent Spiner’s acting as any character other than Data to be hammy and annoying. So this one is tough for me: Brent Spiner plays three roles in this episode: Data, his creator Dr. Noonien Soong, and Data’s “evil” twin, Lore.

The side story about the kid who’s about to die is kind of a weird distraction. I mean, given that the title of the episode is Brothers, we’re probably supposed to see parallels between their story — where a boy played a prank on his younger brother, which backfired and led the younger brother to eat a poisonous plant — and Data’s encounter with Lore, but honestly it’s lost on me. Mainly because I’m not inclined to give it much thought.

It’s always fascinating to learn more about Data’s origins though, and here we get the bulk of that exposition, through a meeting with his dying creator. A meeting prompted by Dr. Soong setting off a homing chip inside Data, which leads Data to craftily take over the Enterprise, and one which inadvertently also summons Lore, through his own homing chip. (Dr. Soong believed Lore to still be sitting, unassembled, on a shelf on an abandoned planet. Oops!)

The thing about this episode that really bothers me is the simple fact that Data is able to do all of the things he’s able to do in taking over the ship — simulating Picard’s voice, embedding an insanely complex security code in his command overrides, cutting life support on the bridge, among other things. It is painfully clear from this episode that Data is far too dangerous to be allowed to remain in Starfleet, even if he wasn’t in fact malfunctioning and he never intended to cause the damage he did.

Still, it was an enjoyable episode. (Another note to my future self: I only ran 2K on this day because I really should have taken a day off entirely, but I was trying to achieve an award on my Apple Watch’s Fitness app.)

Memorable Moment

After forcing everyone else to evacuate the bridge by cutting off life support, Data locks the rest of the crew — including Captain Picard — out of all ship controls by speaking in Picard’s voice, and issuing the most rapid-fire complex vocal string of digits ever heard on TV until Bender Bending Rodríguez.

Crew Rando

Crewman Martinez shows up (again), but let’s talk about children on board the Enterprise. It still just does not make a damn bit of sense. So to that end, we have the randos Jake and Willie Potts, the brothers who make up the pointless side story in this episode.

Distance Rating: 2K

IMDb score: 7.8/10

Family
Season 4 Episode 2
Original airdate: September 29, 1990

Netflix Synopsis

The crew of the Enterprise returns to Earth for shore leave. Still recovering from his experience with the Borg, Picard meets up with his brother.

My Brief Review

This episode plays a little bit like an episode of Fantasy Island — three separate and, really, totally unrelated stories. The common thread is in the title: family.

The setting: Earth. Enterprise is under repair, and the crew gets some shore leave at home. In the main story, Picard, still suffering from his traumatic assimilation by the Borg, retreats to his family vineyard in France, where his elder brother is not exactly pleased to see him. In the second story, Worf’s human adoptive parents come on board and embarrass him. And in the third, barely developed story (which seems to exist only to pad out the runtime and underscore “family”), Dr. Crusher receives a container of possessions from her late husband Jack, including his Starfleet uniform (the style worn in the Original Series movies of the ’80s) and a holographic message he had recorded for the infant Wesley, shortly before being killed in the line of duty.

The Wes story is fine, but totally throwaway. The Worf story is humorous and… uh… well… humanizes Worf a bit. But Picard’s story is really the essence of the episode and is fairly powerful. How does one recover from a traumatic experience? Will Picard retreat to life back on Earth, hiding from the dangers in space? Or will he find a way to live with what he’s been through and persevere in space? Is his brother just a major dick, or is he trying to teach Jean-Luc a lesson? (Take a guess.)

I have one huge issue with a scientific detail in this episode. An old friend, Louis, is part of a massive project to try to — get this — raise a new subcontinent in the ocean (the project is even called “Atlantis”). It’s run into some technical issues, and could really benefit from a smart and decisive leader like Picard to get things back on track.

But here’s the problem: WATER DISPLACEMENT. This project makes absolutely no sense, because if that amount of land were raised in the middle of the ocean, it would cause a rise in sea level beyond the worst projections of 21st century climate change. The whole project doesn’t even make any sense. What’s the point? It’s purely a literary device in the show, so that the choice Picard faces is not just between staying in space or retreating home, but literally hiding at the bottom of the ocean. I get it. It’s just completely inane.

Memorable Moment

Jean-Luc and his brother Robert mud wrestling in the vineyard.

Crew Rando

OK, he’s not part of the crew, but he is Starfleet (retired)… Worf’s dad, Chief Petty Officer Sergey Rozhenko!

Distance Rating: 3K

IMDb score: 8.4/10