My first look at what the new interface on the Mac would be was a year ago. I was surfing on the web on a PC. Went to Apple site and saw news about OS X and what they called "Aqua". I was amazed ! This whole thing was so nice that any computer not using it looked ridiculous on my mind. But your question is good : what is Aqua? Well, let's start with Apple's definition.
"Named after a word that means water in many languages, Aqua brings your Mac to life with color, depth, translucence and fluid motion. "
To explain the word, I think nothing more needs to be added : any latin language has kept or transformed the word Aqua for everything that's related to water. May be for english speaking people it's less abvious. But it refers to the fluidity of the elements on the screen. Like a spring of water, a window that is minimized will look like melting at the bottom of the screen and put in a small recipient on what the called The Dock. (But why in the world they called this effect "Genie" if it has to do with water. The idea is nice too: in a bottle laying on the Dock, there's a Genie waiting for you to scrub it's lamp and will then serve you - like your apps WILL serve you, your computer WILL, and not the opposite...)
But water is also the element required for life to exist. Noticed the "biological" metaphor taken by Apple since it's firsts days, and even more recently: Darwin, Carbon, Cocoa, Spontaneous Generation (which, on a Creationist point of view, means "we've created a new been, a new species"), etc. So Aqua brings live back on the OS as the iMac did in Hardware. It bring motion, color and "life". Now I have problems looking at any grey window: so ugly!
Apple also suggest: "Because while the Aqua interface is alive with motion and great to look at, it also provides important visual cues focusing your attention, suggesting next actions, and making your responses much more intuitive."
So Aqua is designed to be something anyone fell comfortable with, get used too fast enough: something simple, usefull, and great. Like water.
Of course, we could discuss of every aspect of OS X's interface that is missing from the "Classic" OS to get all the advantages of 15 years of work, and bring back all we were used to. But we can also ask ourselves if all those things are really necessary. And ansking to new users (i.e. someone who never touched any computer, or not many) what seems to miss you give us a good idea.
So here's how I use Aqua: the first day, of course, I downloaded every utilities needed for the Apple menu to show again, I put an alias of my HD on the Desktop, and everything. But it took not a lot of time to realize I didn't really need all those. I always click on the Finder's icon in the Dock to open a file (hey, it remembers where I was last time!), and even if my DH icon takes let's say 1/10 of my 15 inch screen, I double click it rarely. But I like the design on the icon!
But one think I'd like to see: Apple claims: "Minimize a playing QuickTime movie and it continues playing in the Dock." Is it not yet implemented or what?
Of course, one thing I really miss is any way to display a hierarchical menu to go faster... I'm not saying the Apple menu. You know a utility called FinderPop? It allows you to set aliases in a contextual menu that will pop up with a maintained click anywhere on the screen. So I really think Apple could design a really modern hierarchical menu... The Apple one was there since the bigginning for one reason: to run utilities before the multilple Finder (right?) So it might not have any reason to be there now. But any other hierarchical menu is required!!!
So we could call Aqua a part of the UI. It's probably not a new part of what we call UI Guidelines, because I thing that it wasn't elaborated with the same scientific thinking. Elaborating UI is really a science and has a lot to do with psychology, and is not too related with "appearance" like Aqua is. They'll probably review some point of this new UI with time... We can also consider it as all the new features brought by Cocoa apps: the ability to close a window in the back, drawers, etc. And these are really interesting and revolutioning concepts to me.
But lately, I discovered what really was Aqua and a Mac in every of it's aspects. They use to call it a computer "for the rest of us". That is true today too. We're no Unix geeks, we don't what to type commands and all the stuff. (imagine, when I first heard about Unix, I though it was simply a "status" given to any operating system reaching a level of robustness and stability and power. Never thought of it as CLI) So Apple designed this pretty interface to run along with the Unix (let's not say "above" the Unix, as windows does for DOS to my point of view) for one reason: assure that Mac users would have the easyness of the Mac with the power of a Unix. From what I read (on a really long post here about Unix and X), it seems like the Mac is in peril. We will see here some kind of a battle between two possible fate for computers: CLI and GUI (command line interface and graphical user interface...). Developpers now have to possible ways of porting or developping apps for OS X. And the battle will take place on the Mac itself. And the GUI has one weapon: Aqua.
So Aqua can be seen as life once again. Colours, pulsing buttons etc all have to do with the continuity of life: the more colored fruits will have more chances to be eaten be living organisms, and then will be able to reproduce at another place and survive.
Mac OS X and Aqua therefore can be seen like the biggest effort for what we call MAC to survive. OS 9 as a system came to an end with all it's missing features. We needed OS X. It will give a chance for MAC to survive. And I'm not talking about Apple. They could come with a new machine called Mendel, that would run a UNIX with almost any GUI, and everyone forget about what was a Mac... But the Mac is really the user experience I want to have. I want to see a smiling Icon at startup. I want to see no commands. And want something simple.
So that's what OS X made me realize. And that's what I think of Aqua. If you have comments, leave them. I think it's a really interesting question. And I can't wait to see what's going to be the result of this great experience called OS X!
Frédéric Latour <latourfl>
[edit: spelling mistakes, sorry for that!]
[Edited by latourfl on 12-22-2000 at 11:00 PM]
