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iTunes 7 Hints at Leopard UI?
- Thread starter Zwhaler
- Start date
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+ The new Play/Rewind/FastForward buttons. Very nice
+ The colour of the scroll bar.
+ The colour of a selected field to sort by (real nice blue)
- The *texture* of the scroll bar
- All the SHOUTING in the Source. Thankfully its easy to change it back to lower case
- The change from green to blue in the icon
-Two toned selection highlight in the source pane
- Those flat, pencil drawing-like icons at the bottom of the app window. Yuck
It appears Apples design in OSX UI is taking the trend of their industrial hardware. The iMac with its transparent colours was groundbreaking at the time, as was Aqua and the lickable interface. But over the years Ive et al have shifted from the lickability of the old iMac to the more subtle, clean design hues of the PowerBook, iMac G4/5, Mac Mini and iBook/MacBook. On the whole, everybody thinks the newer ethos in hardware design from Apple is nothing but a success. The MacBook Pro looks eons better than the flashy light LED aplenty affairs of competitor notebooks.
But it appears to be the reverse in the OS... people seem to prefer the Aero Glass look. I can see why in some cases. Safari for instance is dull as dishwater when you have a tab menu and bookmark menu in your toolbar. Bordering disgusting.
But to me, Apple needs to find a mid ground in this area. I see apps like Podcast Maker which have quite drab hues mixed with subtle uses of colour and gradient and it looks superb.
![ss3.jpg]()
Its definitely an interesting ara of debate. One thing that worries me is that people are generally always envious of my Mac and OSX. They are wowed by touches like the genie effect, Exposé, the Aqua interface etc. But these same people are more wowed now by Vista. I cant see Steve Jobs ever accepting defeat in a pure "gorgeous" contest (aside from UI issues) by Microsoft, but the general trend of Apple apps seems to suggest a marked return to the platinum days. Great for sentimental value, but the grey is incredibly drab.
+ The colour of the scroll bar.
+ The colour of a selected field to sort by (real nice blue)
- The *texture* of the scroll bar
- All the SHOUTING in the Source. Thankfully its easy to change it back to lower case
- The change from green to blue in the icon
-Two toned selection highlight in the source pane
- Those flat, pencil drawing-like icons at the bottom of the app window. Yuck
It appears Apples design in OSX UI is taking the trend of their industrial hardware. The iMac with its transparent colours was groundbreaking at the time, as was Aqua and the lickable interface. But over the years Ive et al have shifted from the lickability of the old iMac to the more subtle, clean design hues of the PowerBook, iMac G4/5, Mac Mini and iBook/MacBook. On the whole, everybody thinks the newer ethos in hardware design from Apple is nothing but a success. The MacBook Pro looks eons better than the flashy light LED aplenty affairs of competitor notebooks.
But it appears to be the reverse in the OS... people seem to prefer the Aero Glass look. I can see why in some cases. Safari for instance is dull as dishwater when you have a tab menu and bookmark menu in your toolbar. Bordering disgusting.
But to me, Apple needs to find a mid ground in this area. I see apps like Podcast Maker which have quite drab hues mixed with subtle uses of colour and gradient and it looks superb.
Its definitely an interesting ara of debate. One thing that worries me is that people are generally always envious of my Mac and OSX. They are wowed by touches like the genie effect, Exposé, the Aqua interface etc. But these same people are more wowed now by Vista. I cant see Steve Jobs ever accepting defeat in a pure "gorgeous" contest (aside from UI issues) by Microsoft, but the general trend of Apple apps seems to suggest a marked return to the platinum days. Great for sentimental value, but the grey is incredibly drab.
I get the feeling that this change in the UI has something to do with the forthcoming change to a resolution independent UI in Leopard. All the new UI elements and controls like the scroll bars will be easier to do using vectors than aqua currently is.
I can see the potential for Apple bringing back some options for colour hinting like the options for different coloured scrollbars in Mac OS 9.
I can see the potential for Apple bringing back some options for colour hinting like the options for different coloured scrollbars in Mac OS 9.
swingerofbirch
macrumors 68040
Aqua was great while it lasted, it was fresh, new, and young, it's still fun even today. But with the imminent release of vista, and its semi-ripoff of certain parts of aqua (like the Bubbly Blue color!) Apple has to move on and stay ahead of the game.
Personally I really like the fake 10.5 screenshot taht came out just before WWDC 06 with a picture of steve jobs kinda displayed on the background. In this screenshot it used the "Black" type theme that's seen in iPhoto in the editing panel for pictures and in other places around OS X. If you notice, Time Machine also uses a black type look.
![Leopardtime.jpg]()
Personally I really like the fake 10.5 screenshot taht came out just before WWDC 06 with a picture of steve jobs kinda displayed on the background. In this screenshot it used the "Black" type theme that's seen in iPhoto in the editing panel for pictures and in other places around OS X. If you notice, Time Machine also uses a black type look.
I am a Mac user for over fifteen years now and i think it looks reeeaaally.
UGLY!!!!
And the icon than??? Is this for the Windows XP users or so?
Design for me is very important and so makes me happy if it's good.
But... Also makes me very unhappy when it stinks!
UGLY!!!!
And the icon than??? Is this for the Windows XP users or so?
Design for me is very important and so makes me happy if it's good.
But... Also makes me very unhappy when it stinks!
stunna said:
They already do; system preferences --> appearances has two flavors (aqua and graphite) to choose from, but the problem is, the appearances offer very limited function.
I think this is finally THE version that Apple unifies the look and feel of all applications. Choosing "graphite" from the appearance menu should do more than just change scroll bar color. They now have at least four usable themes; Aqua blue (10.0 and 10.1), Brushed metal (10.2 and 10.3), Plastic white (10.4 and 10.5) and this new "Something" black that they seem to be pushing to pro apps and 10.5 ---- and IMHO they should be able to force applications to follow the chosen appearance as they do with the buttons and scroll bar.
They must not be thinking 3rd party theme developers this much, must they?
JFreak said:They already do; system preferences --> appearances has two flavors (aqua and graphite) to choose from, but the problem is, the appearances offer very limited function.
I think this is finally THE version that Apple unifies the look and feel of all applications. Choosing "graphite" from the appearance menu should do more than just change scroll bar color. They now have at least four usable themes; Aqua blue (10.0 and 10.1), Brushed metal (10.2 and 10.3), Plastic white (10.4 and 10.5) and this new "Something" black that they seem to be pushing to pro apps and 10.5 ---- and IMHO they should be able to force applications to follow the chosen appearance as they do with the buttons and scroll bar.
They must not be thinking 3rd party theme developers this much, must they?
I think they should keep aqua, white, black, gun metal etc as options, as themes for the new os, that way, everyone is happy, and nothing looks tacky and everything matches!
How much longer can it be before some sort of UI App (iUI?) is released that gives you some basic UI templates and lets you easily change things (in the same way that iWeb made it easy to get pretty nice websites up and running with little effort)?
Seriously, in 10 years time we'll all have our own customised UIs in the same way that we can easily use our own icons today. Being forced into using the same UI will be like being forced to stick with the Aqua default background or screensaver.
But that's the future.
For Leopard, i expect to see some choice on the UI. I'd like to be able to swap between "bubbly blue" and "pro, shiny black" styles, for example. I don't mind iTunes 7, but i don't want to have to change a UI that works fine for me as it is right now.
My 2 cents.
Seriously, in 10 years time we'll all have our own customised UIs in the same way that we can easily use our own icons today. Being forced into using the same UI will be like being forced to stick with the Aqua default background or screensaver.
But that's the future.
For Leopard, i expect to see some choice on the UI. I'd like to be able to swap between "bubbly blue" and "pro, shiny black" styles, for example. I don't mind iTunes 7, but i don't want to have to change a UI that works fine for me as it is right now.
My 2 cents.
Markleshark said:
Chuffin hell i see what you mean!!! its the first time ive plugged it in just now its amazing!!!
GO APPLE 
JFreak said:
Some folks have made the comparison to the pro app look but I'm not biting. I wish iT7 looked as good as the pro apps, but it has none of the polish. iT7 (primarily all of the UI buttons and controls) just looks dark, dank, muddy and unappealing - especially the scroll bars and buttons.
And the big play and forward/reverse buttons look like a work in progress that's waiting for mostly...well, progress. And lots of it. It looks like something you might expect from a vintage ten year-old app on a machine with less-than-stellar graphics capabilities. In other words, it's Windows 2000-worthy.
Well if it's vintage you want...Ladies and Gentleman and Mac fans the world over, look in amazement and awe at this exclusive sneak peak of the Quicktime 8 UI:
Killyp said:
I can only agree. I mean, this is Steve we are talking about. Id be astounded if he agreed to this being the UI for Leopard. Particularly those hideous buttons at the bottom of the Source menu (add, shuffle, repeat, browse etc).
He must know that Vista will get the wow factor pretty easily from the casual observer if things arent made to look more aesthetically pleasing. And that would represent a major about turn from OSX / XP. All I have to do is show Aqua to friends to get some of them to switch. It just wouldnt happen based on iTunes.
Roll on MacWorld. I can only wait and pray! lol.
While I wouldt say iTunes 7 is ugly (to me the differences between it and 6 are small-atleast in the looks department anyway), I really really really want Leopard to kick Vista right were it hurts-in the GUI. Where the WOW factor is. I've used Vista Pre-RC1, and it looks far better than OS X unfortunatley.Killyp said:
It could have been a lot worse. Check this out, via daringfireball:
http://daringfireball.net/misc/2006/09/60984_5.jpg
What's scary is that since this got put on the KnowledgeBase, they must have changed it late. It looks like something straight out of XP.
http://daringfireball.net/misc/2006/09/60984_5.jpg
What's scary is that since this got put on the KnowledgeBase, they must have changed it late. It looks like something straight out of XP.
Someone made mockups of the Finder and iPhoto based on the iTunes 7 GUI.
![]()
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Personally, I don't mind the new iTunes 7 look. I like the smooth grey-dark-blue look. And I think people's comparison to Luna/Winows XP is unfounded. It's not like ficher-price. It's smooth.
Anyways, I bet the reason for changing the UI will be somewhat technical. They might change Leopard's GUI to be completely vectorized, and if they do that, Aqua would be time-consumming to re-create in a vector format.
Personally, I don't mind the new iTunes 7 look. I like the smooth grey-dark-blue look. And I think people's comparison to Luna/Winows XP is unfounded. It's not like ficher-price. It's smooth.
Anyways, I bet the reason for changing the UI will be somewhat technical. They might change Leopard's GUI to be completely vectorized, and if they do that, Aqua would be time-consumming to re-create in a vector format.
shrimpdesign said:
Not really, OS X is already resolution independent without creating a totally new GUI:
http://leopardthoughts.livejournal.com/758.html
Besides, Preview in Leopard matches Mail. Why introduce a new UI for the app if you're going to replace it with iTune's look? I think the most we can hope for in Leopard is the elimination of Metal in more apps than just iChat.
Cool mockups, though.
shrimpdesign said:Someone made mockups of the Finder and iPhoto based on the iTunes 7 GUI.
![]()
![]()
Personally, I don't mind the new iTunes 7 look. I like the smooth grey-dark-blue look. And I think people's comparison to Luna/Winows XP is unfounded. It's not like ficher-price. It's smooth.
Anyways, I bet the reason for changing the UI will be somewhat technical. They might change Leopard's GUI to be completely vectorized, and if they do that, Aqua would be time-consumming to re-create in a vector format.
Interesting. It doesn't look as great as I thought it would. But I still like it, and either way I don't care if we stick with aqua or move onto the iTunes 7 interface.