I always think of movies that try to depict hacking in a “virtual” sense. Whilst pretty, it’s almost always more powerful to work at the command line.

Sidenote – Johnny Long gives some great examples of how “hacking” is depicted in movies in this shmoocon presentation – http://www.shmoocon.org/2006/videos/Long-HollywoodANDClosing.mp4

I look forward to the day when interfaces can be both visually attractive and powerful. Office 2007 is getting there (the ‘ribbon’ toolbar interface is actually quite useful).

When designing interfaces, it’s tempting to go for the ‘wow’ factor, but in the end – they need help you perform a task. If your shiny interface doesn’t help me do a task faster, then you’ve failed.