> The fact that most users don't explicitly care is irrelevant — platform conventions are important. They teach a user how to use a new app without having to poke around.
I agree that's important. But I think it's much less important these days now that operating system developers seem happy to churn their platform's UX every couple of years too. The days when you could read the Apple Human Interface Guidelines and understand how all Mac apps would behave for the next decade are long gone, unfortunately.
For reasons I don't totally understand, the platform vendors are themselves constantly invalidating the information in users' heads, so there's simply less in there for application developers to build on anyway.
I agree that's important. But I think it's much less important these days now that operating system developers seem happy to churn their platform's UX every couple of years too. The days when you could read the Apple Human Interface Guidelines and understand how all Mac apps would behave for the next decade are long gone, unfortunately.
For reasons I don't totally understand, the platform vendors are themselves constantly invalidating the information in users' heads, so there's simply less in there for application developers to build on anyway.