One of my HCI favorite books is "TOG on Interface" by Bruce Tognazzini because it's filled with stories about why certain GUI elements work and the failures that were tried as they finally adopted working GUI concepts. TOG was instrumental in making the Mac OS UI consistent - https://amzn.to/3sKKKvA.

I have a couple of Tog's books (both are amazing) and used to read asktog for inspiration ... thanks for reminding me that I should be rereading his wisdom!

https://amzn.to/2OZSKoj

https://amzn.to/2UXXGO9

How has Bruce Tognazzini's stuff not been mentioned yet? Tog on Software and Tog on Interface are great.

https://www.amazon.com/Tog-Software-Design-Bruce-Tognazzini/... https://www.amazon.com/Tog-Interface-Bruce-Tognazzini/dp/020...

"A web-ignorant but otherwise capable iPhone was theoretically predictable half a century ago […] when it finally happened, it was something of a surprise."

That made me think of Bruce Tognazzini (TOG) in "TOG on Interface" (http://www.amazon.com/Tog-Interface-Bruce-Tognazzini/dp/0201.... From 1991, but seems unaware of the existence of the world-wide web):

"I want the United States Library of Congress on my desktop. I want the collections of every major museum in the world available to project against my wall. I want every issue of every newspaper published in the English-speaking world sitting in my laptop.

Is this really too much to ask?"

I remembered that first paragraph as ending in "in my pocket", but, apart from minor technical details (for example, wireless communication allows us to shrink the device even further then laptop size, and he isn't asking for all of Hollywood or even for all radio recordings ever made) I think that is a decent prediction of where we are heading.