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3d Interfaces for Leopard?

tutubibi said:
I hope some of those 3D things on my 2D monitor will actually improve usability. I would hate if it was mostly just eye candy :mad:
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Agreed. If you haven't seen it, check out this article: Vista's UI is a "step back". Frivolous animation just for the sake of animation is the wrong way forward. Also see Jakob Nielsen's article on Usability in the Movies where he talks about how some UI's only have their place in hollywood. 3D animation is cool but can you tolerate it day-in and day-out? (For example the touch screen is great on a portable device such as the iPhone but it probably won't work so well on the desktop.) BumpTop looks promising though...

At least the difference between Jobs and M$ is Apple (usually) knows when they're goving overboard; Microsoft imitates but never gets it right. I hope whatever Apple is planning they have firm guidelines on using animation or we're going to end up with applications that are about as usable as bad flash animations.
 
I think we're all just elated to grasp any scrap of Leopard-talk we can find.

-=|Mgkwho
 
justflie said:
I'd say the new UI is a slam dunk. Here's why: The same black (or dark gray) and white color scheme is popping up not only in Leopard builds (ie Time Machine, Quick Look, DVD player), but also in some very prominent Mac software titles (Toast Titanium, some bits of Acrobat, as well as in CS3, and on the lesser side of things, VLC in full screen mode). Unless all of these important software makers are taking a shot in the dark and all just happened to come up with very similar themes, I think this is what we will see in Leopard.
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Why would the VLC and Toast devs know about the top secret features that most Apple employees don't know about... the same features that haven't been leaked to the web. Don't take any notice of 3rd party apps, they don't have a thing to do with Apple's plans for OS X's UI.

Avatar74 said:
One word:

Multitouch
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I agree.

My guesses are multi touch (with new screens) and Front Row 2 (with some big enhancements), plus all the other stuff we know about (Core Anim, Time Machine etc). I'd say there will be more candy, but no "real" 3d in Leopard (ie. no big environment... it'll just be used for candy).

Bring on 10.5! It's going to rock.
 
Maccus Aurelius said:
I'm also hoping that these revisions, as others seem to be fearing, don't end up driving our rev A and B macbooks into obsolescence too quickly. I'd hate to hear my fans going like mad because my CPU is being worked overtime for just browsing through files with a pretty interface. So far Tiger has done none of these things, so I imagine Leopard will be pretty streamlined so that the later generation G4 powerbooks, iBooks and G4-5 Powermacs can use it just fine.
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mrrory said:
As for this thread, I find the most interesting comments to be those relating to how a significant upgrade will affect existing hardware. When I upgraded from Panther to Tiger, my G3 iBook 800Mhz, and PowerBook 1Ghz heated up dramatically, and appeared to lose a little "zip." If upgrading to Leopard similarly challenges my 2Ghz G5 iMac it would be a little frustrating that this, to some extent, would be forcing an upgrade of my hardware too. I also have a 2Ghz Core Duo iMac, and several Core 2 Duo iMacs, so it will be interesting to see how the upgrades compare. Alas, I think my PowerBook will have to remain a Tiger unless I can find some asbestos chaps!
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Actually, supposedly some of the OS updates actually ran faster than their predecessors. So it could go either way.

justflie said:
Ooooooh, I get it. I thought you meant on the NYTimes website (in safari) on the iPhone page. Now I understand. And yes, I agree, that pull down menu does look very different, much like Quick Look/Time Machines' UI's...
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Yet completely different than iTunes' drop-down list. Or, mostly completely. Mostly, the arrow is a different color in the iPhone, where as on iTunes it is not...
 

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Maccus Aurelius said:
Hopefully it's nothing too over the top, such as Vista's Aero function. It looks cool and whatnot, but after using it for a few minutes I knew I would hate to live with this. The current F9 function to lay out all open windows in a grid pattern is far more useful to me, I can see them all at the same time without having to shuffle through them like cards, and when I put the pointer over each it tells me what app I'm looking at. It's not particularly flashy, but it works oh so well for me.
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Absolutely ... I'm a very late OSX adopter, having plodded on with 9.1 on my graphite G4 since '99 on the grounds that if it ain't broke (1) ... As a result, I've harboured a certain (unsubstantiated) antipathy for OSX, characterized by "But really, what does X do that Classic doesn't, other than do it with a slightly prettier front end?"

The addition of our Mac Mini, and some meaningful hands-on time with OSX, to the household has changed that. Expose, in particular, was a feature I'd seen but never used and genuinely couldn't see the point of it.

Except that you do have to use it to understand its usefulness ... it's simple and effective and the 3D Vista version adds a 'kewl' effect but simultaneously sacrifices its fundamental functionality.

Cheers!

Jim

(1) More accurately, don't fix it unless you want to upgrade all your peripherals and spend a small fortune buying new versions of your prehistoric software that has no upgrade path.
 
This is all ********.

Secondly, it will not be out in April. Stop talking about it like it will. It won't. It'll be good, but it won't be '3D' or something crazy. :cool:
 
The problem with the Ars Technica article.

I hate to be a wet blanket on my first posting to the forum but the Ars Technica article is essentially content-free. The author goes off on a tangent about garbage collection and resolution independence and somehow comes around to conclude it means 3-D interfaces. The commenters jumped all over him, as you can see. There may be Vista-like 3-D-ish graphical candy in Leopard, but it will not be a real 3-D interface.

Like I say, sorry to be a killjoy. :(
 
Lepton said:
Think of a 3D interface. Think of an iMac whose screen had multitouch, which sat on the desk at a 30 degree angle. Think of tap, drag, pinch...

Think of a line of Apple displays with built in multitouch...
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God, I hope not! My hand gets tired enough just moving a mouse a few inches all day. I sure don't want to be dragging and pinching my expensive monitor all day.

Plus my process would have go something like this;

"touch screeen, drag file 20 inches across screen to folder. Grab screen cleaner. Spray & wipe. Tap dock. Reach 19 inches to file menu. Tap file menu. Reach 10 inches to desired file. Tap file. Grab screen cleaner. Spray & wipe. Etc. Etc. Etc..."

Touch screens for larger monitors is a bad idea. Touch screen on 3" displays, maybe not so bad. So far I have never met a touch screen that I was extremely pleased with.
 
Jim Campbell said:
Except that you do have to use it to understand its usefulness ... it's simple and effective and the 3D Vista version adds a 'kewl' effect but simultaneously sacrifices its fundamental functionality.
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That 'Kewl' effect... well, to me, Apple seems to add things "unobtrusively." Meaning that they make it not take (much) extra time to do anything. For instance, the minimize function takes very very little time to perform, as does the reverse. Also, F9 happens in under a second, actually, maybe under half a second. It may look cool if you held down shift while pressing F9, but it isn't practical.

As for 'kewl', Microsoft seems all about making things that are meant to be 'kewl'. This concept, which is the concept behind Xbox 360's design is, in my opinion, fading in popularity. Microsoft tried to use it in the Zune, and is using it in Aero.

To me, it looks like the kind of design that would be popular for teenage boys who wear extremely baggy clothes and plop down violently on the couch - a trend which is fading.
 
Highland said:
Why would the VLC and Toast devs know about the top secret features that most Apple employees don't know about... the same features that haven't been leaked to the web. Don't take any notice of 3rd party apps, they don't have a thing to do with Apple's plans for OS X's UI.
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I beg to differ. While VLC was probably a bad example, what about Adobe? They've been working closely with Apple getting CS3 ready for Leopard. I would bet my bottom dollar they have a more advanced build than what the developers have. They would also know the UI scheme. With a suite of applications as CS3 is to pros (and pro hardware sales for Apple), Adobe has more of a clue of what's going on than the rest of us, that's for damn sure.
 
DeSnousa said:
IF this is indeed true, this new interface will blow the media off Vista. I think Steve Jobs is trying really hard to make Mac OS become a dominant OS and Leopard will have to be it with the release of Vista.
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but i fail to see what is so hoho about vista. the transparencies are done perfect microsoft style - the the effect that they are hard to read and not done to frugality, but overblown. there is nothing that is needed or even that great about aero or whatever. what explorer does better than finder is that you can from save dialogues access any disk, rename, edit, copy transfer files, rename files and folders and then if you want - save a file. finder is very limited in its access to very basic osx functions.

they need to beef up not just the look of finder (though i do not mind it at all) but give it functionality and i would never have to download 3rd party apps to get it to be a friendly as windows explorer.
 
guys the new ui has been out for months and ironically it seems to be taking cues from vista. apple has already stated the iphone is running a version of OS X leopard. also itunes/ilife has always been a precursor to interface changes in OS X. i don't believe these two releases capture all of the tweaks, but some elements that are i'm very confident of:

  • brushed metal is dead.
  • non-unified windows are dead (we will have one window type now for everything but speciality applications - garage band, delicious monster)
  • jelly buttons will be used much less frequently, if at all -- think important places like "ok/cancel" dialogs, not scrollbars and play buttons
  • look for smoother/matte more unified interface widgets (buttons and scroll bars, not dashboard widgets)
  • color scheme is going to shift from the neutral grays to gray's with a purple tint (seen in iphone and pro apps)
  • animation will be important
  • more transparency and slick/glossy black elements (think a cross between the HUDs from iphoto/final cut and the overlays in the iphone gui)

i don't think it's going to be as big a change as 9 to X, more of a refinement and consistency brush painted across the whole thing. similar to what happened with system 6 to system 7... in the intervening years since mac os 1, new interface ideas were developed both by apple and third party vendors and the OS was beginning to look like a patchwork of GUI concepts. system 7 reset that, the OS 8 did again.
 
Veracon said:
To be honest I'm not too excited about this. I don't want to relearn using a computer just to use a new operating system, and I definitely don't want to learn something that's completely different from the other OS I use on a daily basis.
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I've used the Macs since day one, with the first MacPlus I bought.

What has happened is now nearly all document work is done on a smallish laptop screen as the laptops have gotten more powerful, and virtually even higher end software run on laptops just fine.

Over 20 years that has meant I, and many other Mac users, may keep 6-10 or more applications with documents open (Safari, Mail, MSWord, Excel, Acrobat, CAD, BBEdit) each with multiple windows open. It can be a mental mess to deal with. Likewise the Finder column views lead to some order, but when you get complex (30,000+ files), it can be hard to get to or find items even with Spotlight.

Viewing Solid Objects:
3D CAD systems have revolutionized the creation and visualization of objects for design & manufacturing, directly benefiting Apple in creating all its hardware, and Apple has lived that evolution. Pro Engineer, Unigraphics, SolidWorks, Ashlar and other 3D CAD have given an idea of how to allow concepts to be zoomed, rotated, and panned across a limited screen space so a user can examine an entire complex 'system' with a laptop, down to the smallest detail only a fraction of a thousandth of an inch if needed. (I use SolidWorks on a Boot Camped partition for my work)

I would not be surprised to see an ability to treat Application Arenas full of their documents and the Finder views become objects treated more like 3D CAD objects that lets a user resize (zoom), rotate into the next Appl. Arena, or Pan Sideways into a group of documents which are currently "off screen". If it is done right, I think it will be easily learned by those who have a need for complex work with many documents and applications open at once.

It is all about ease of use, recognizable objects, speed and consistency in allowing easier and faster work with less stress on the user: An Easy User Interface.

I think it is possible, and I know that the mechanical design guys at Apple (Including Ives) have lived with 3D CAD nearly their entire professional lives. Having used SolidWorks 3D CAD (& others) for 10 years, I think Jobs & Ives & crew have worked out the details of how to at least start this progression into manipulating virtual 3D views in a near intuitive way that makes computer use simpler, more logical and faster for the user.
 
I am willing to be 'pleasantly surprised' but I don't see the kind of total revolution people are expecting to come in 10.5 unless somewhere Apple have their own Xerox Parc thing going on that we don't know about. Maybe an OSX 11 perhaps...but a 10.5 ?.

Fundamentally neither OSX or Windows have made a substantial paradigm shift from the researches done over 30 years ago, indeed I believe there are still research elements and ideologies that remain untapped even today.

That's not to say OSX hasn't substantially evolved into the most refined, efficient, fun and exquisite user interface available to the modern world today.

Quite clearly it has but that said the 3D window in Vista genuinely gives expose a run for it's money but is a one trick pony. I would certainly welcome a 'new approach' if it's truly as remarkable an invention as the 'fork' in a world that has hitherto only know finger eating. Multi-touch appears to hold all that promise for me.

I'd say 'this thing' your all imagining is more likely to come from a couple of hackers in a garage somewhere and right now they're too busy playing with their PS3's to get it finished!...then Apple will buy it and if it works use it. Steve, ( and Bill) for that matter aren't going to allow a 'couple of goofy upstarts' to queer their patch the way they did!!

Of course I would LOVE for Apple to do something genuinely radical but part of me wonders if Apple is simply too huge to make such 'revolutionary' departures anymore.
 
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