Leopards rumours

I think Apple need to seriously consider bringing consistency back to OS X. 10.1 everything was aqua basically, then brushed metal started taking hold and now my Mac looks ugly. I want transparency back dammit.
 
agreed. brushed metal never really took complete hold (the title bar never became metal, for instance) and instead of continuing or u-turning, they've introduced two more with [and since] tiger with the unified look seen on the spotlight window and Mail 2.0, and the new iTunes look of solid metal.

this is one point where i do actually like Vista: it has a consistent look, a theme throughout. it makes my mac look like linux.

that's it! i'm pissed off because my well-designed GUI is looking more and more like a beta linux, and i have no control over it...
 
I totally agree that Mac OS X Tiger feels like a beta. I want consistency. Personally I prefer the unified toolbar look of Spotlight the best, and thats how I think it should be in all apps.

Speaking of which I just threw iTunes 5 in the trash and put 4.9 back on, my GOD 4.9 looks nice compared to 5. Lets hope either 4.9 works in Leopard or they fix iTunes.

I hate how Safari has these little stupid buttons, then you go into Finder and we have our nice icons.

Lets start some rumors about Leopard being comprised fully of the unified toolbar look. Then maybe Apple might wake up and take notice of what we _really_ want.
 
Okay. I hear Mac OS X 10.5, code named "Leopard", will converge all the different themes and will use the unified look (or rather an evolution of that look) for all applications. True to its roots, there will however be _one_ application that will use a different look. ;)
 
Yes. Graphite and Blue or whatnot, VERY LAME. Since were on UI Interfaces, they could step it up alot and allow maybe not only differen UI looks, but COLORS. I would cry if they did that. Different colors, PLEASE!

AND BRING BACK MY DAMN SYSTEM SOUNDS!
 
The system sounds that currently ARE there sometimes seem to come, well, late. When the system's under load and I put something to the trash via Cmd-Backspace, I often wait a second or two before I hear it... They should make them more accurate, then. :)
 
Well, if we are talking about the feature wishlist for Leopard...

A new tab in the sharing preference window would be nice. It would show what users / machines are currently connected to your system and allows you to disconnect them. I am sure you can accomplish lots of this with the Unix command line, but thats a not very userfriendly.

I agree on the GUI inconsisty - which got worse after Apple introduced metal as finder theme in 10.3

Now we have:
Metal, unified theme, aqua

Then we also have:
itunes gradient theme (which looks a bit betaish), The pro app theme (Final Cut etc) and maybe you could count the "custom" Quicktime theme too (although I heard nobody complaining about that).

If apple plans to use borderless metal in Leopard then there is no advantage to normal Aqua . (The only advantage of metal is that you can move the the windows while grapping them on any open space)

Personally I like some aspects of borderless metal. The gradient fits much better into the Aqua environment compared to regular metal - which seems to be a relict from pre OSX days. Otherwise it is really a mixed bag.

IMHO opinion Apple should restructure the way the themes are used if they insist on keeping them:

- no more than 3 different themes otherwise consisty is out of the window
- unfied theme > system / communication apps > preference panes > applications which make a lot of use of the title bar icons (mail, finder, Safari)
- metal > production apps, iapps
- Aqua > everything else
 
at the moment, the UI is the only thing that apple is currently doing, that *doesn't* blow every other competitor out of the water. they should come back with something drastically different, and in that apple way, make everyone just go: WOW! apple, sorry for doubting you, i would have never thought of that... jesus that's good... like their industrial design. like motion. like iphoto. like everything up until tiger. tiger was fundamental changes binging the OS up to date, but people didn't see these. instead they saw the half-arsed index-searching implementation, the nearly useful, but too slow dashboard, the ugly new mail.app and the incompatibility and bugs in the early versions.

they went from having a perfect os with panther, that needed to be updated, for finacial reasons, and they came up with tiger. it didn't cut it.

leopard has to blow everything out of the water, not just update tiger.
 
I totally agree that Mac OS X Tiger feels like a beta. I want consistency. Personally I prefer the unified toolbar look of Spotlight the best, and thats how I think it should be in all apps.
Click to expand...

There's a free 3rd party app that already does this. It's called UNO and is absolutely great. I've been telling all my mac friends all about it since it came out. It basically gives every app and window in the system the unified title bar look. Can't live without it. :rolleyes: :D

My Screenshot of UNO
 
yeah, it's good, but it's buggy. it also confirms what i though anyway - i don't like unified look. it's just not... impressive at all. i'm actually a big fan of how microsoft are making Vista look (even if the registry and the underpinnings are the same as windows 95 etc...). it's looks pleasant and it's a good idea, frosting and blurring the background to make the borders, a very fluid theme that changes when you change the background, and the more windows you have open, the greyer it gets. the system theme changes dynamically. ours is rather archaic by comparison.

i want leopard to REALLY push things forward again, not just fix the problems they created with tiger and (to some extent) panther.
 
yeah, it's good, but it's buggy. it also confirms what i though anyway - i don't like unified look. it's just not... impressive at all. i'm actually a big fan of how microsoft are making Vista look (even if the registry and the underpinnings are the same as windows 95 etc...). it's looks pleasant and it's a good idea, frosting and blurring the background to make the borders, a very fluid theme that changes when you change the background, and the more windows you have open, the greyer it gets. the system theme changes dynamically. ours is rather archaic by comparison.
Click to expand...

Personally I think that Vista is in its "babyshoes phase". The Vista GUI designer make the same mistakes as the OSX GUI designer did in 10.0 and 10.1 by overusing certain effects and transparency.
And remember you need at least a directx9 capable graphics card in order to get the accelerated GUI, effects, otherwise you are stuck with a standard "2D UI" (not to mention the steep system requirements of Vista).

OSX GUI looks and works the same across a wide range of macs, even on old machines like the blue "gumdrop" imac (minus the ripple and the cube effect). Try stacking Windows (the latest effect the developers added, it seems some kind of alt+tab replacement) in Windows Vista on a Geforce MX - most likley not going to happen.

Back to Apple - A lot of things in OSX 10.4 were updated and added without the user's notice. The whole core image/video/audio thing. Sure, most developers will use these parts after a few revisions of OSX (remember a lot of users are still running OSX 10.1, 10.2, 10.3). But the technology is there to create new, usefull, amazing GUI effects.
The next thing Apple has to do, is to update even the low end machines so they can actually (use the graphic hardware to render and) use these effects. Remember, macs are usually have a much longer lifetime compared to x86 desktop systems. So older, or not capable machines still remain and most users won't update to the latest OSX version because they don't see much benefits. Thus developers won't use core image (much) in their apps because there is still the "old/lowend mac userbase".

Semms my logical thinking is messed up. I shouldn't write posts at 1:44 am.
 
Thanks Whitesaint!
I like this theme because it matches Mail.app and makes things look unified. haha. Not only this, I noticed the applications that normally have brushed metal now load faster and this is on an iMac G3. I actually want to use iCal now. I didn't use the UNO on iTunes because I like that theme.
 
Well. You either have to use ShapeShifter to apply the DLTA or use the installer which replaces Mac OS X' original resource files. I wouldn't recommend _any_ way, actually, because ShapeShifter requires the dreaded APE - which brings back "extension conflicts" to Mac OS X ;) ... The other solution, which really takes out Mac OS X' original resources and replaces them is known to create issues like endless Finder-restarting and the likes - and also has to be applied again and again after system updates.
 
i found it buggy. window titles would be garbled , like the old theme trying to squeeze through or somehing. other elements were'nt drawing properly either. i've uninstalled it. itunes, however, i've kept. it's a lot nicer being a lot lighter. still doesn't fix the stupid volume layout, or the inconsistent drag bars. shame.
 
Just as an aside, Cocoa applications (Safari, iChat, etc.) can be made Unified by opening the NIB files in Interface Builder and turning off "Has Texture" and turning on "Unified Title Bar/Tool Bar"
 
texanpenguin said:
Just as an aside, Cocoa applications (Safari, iChat, etc.) can be made Unified by opening the NIB files in Interface Builder and turning off "Has Texture" and turning on "Unified Title Bar/Tool Bar"
Click to expand...
I was trying to change the nibs in iChat like you mentioned above, but I couldn't find the right place to do so. I haven't messed around with this stuff since 10.1 or 10.2, so I don't really remember where things are. I just wanted to see what iChat would look and act like if I changed it to unified (I made a backup copy of the app). Can you point me in the right direction? Thanks.
 
Right click on iChat and choose "Show Package Contents"

Then open Contents, Resources, English.lproj and then PeopleList.nib (you'll need Interface Builder to be installed [it's a part of the Developer Tools])


When that's open, you need to click the window icon in the NIB file inspector, Cmd+Shift+I and uncheck "Has Texture", and check "Unified..."

Save and Quit.
 
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