The familiar Apple Computer Inc Macintosh user interface is likely to change over the next few years, so much so that by 1996 the Finder could be unrecognisable to the user of today. David Nagel, the Apple staffer who took charge of the Macintosh Software Architecture Division early this year, is said to be pushing for an overhaul of the Mac graphical user interface on all the hardware on which it is planned to run: in part, he is said to believe that the interface should be modernised to incorporate new ideas developed by the company’s Advanced Technology Group, which he also continues to lead. In addition to building in QuickTime, AOCE Apple Open Collaboration Environment, AppleScript and other extensions, the update would incorporate a new Finder metaphor and an object-oriented compound-document architecture. The paper hears that these future versions of Macintosh System will provide context-sensitive views of network services and information and suggests that a context-sensitive Finder might morph itself into a newspaper interface when the user requests articles on a competitor or a real-time trading terminal when the user requests a stock report. Novell Inc seems to have embraced this vision, MacWeek says, quoting sources that say the Finder will ultimately become the interface to NetWare services, output devices and resources such as databases.
