Am I the only one that likes the Brushed metal look?

[bousozoku]

Brushed metal looks bad in real life, so why would I want it on my GUI? Besides, Apple can't decide on just one brushed metal. They've had maybe 4 or 5 of them.

The look of iTunes 6, Firefox, and Camino 1.0b2 seems much better and I wish Apple would settle on such a look.

 

[HiRez]

I also find that it sometimes overwhelms what is actually in the window, particularly if there are large expanses of it, which for me is bad design..

I agree with this, but I think that while a single metal window in front helps to stand out and looks pretty good, when you have a ton of metal windows all over the screen it gets clunky because the look is too heavy. The plastic look is meh...kinda boring. My favorite Apple look is what they use in the pro apps like FCP, Motion, Aperture, etc.. Darkish grey and with touches of color highlighting and translucency scattered around. Easy on the eyes, and easy to pick out the content from the interface. The Ars Technica site has a nice selectable "negative" look that is similar to this and works well.

 

[Kernow]

My favorite Apple look is what they use in the pro apps like FCP, Motion, Aperture, etc.. Darkish grey and with touches of color highlighting and translucency scattered around. Easy on the eyes, and easy to pick out the content from the interface.

Had actually forgotten about this look, even though I use Logic Pro pretty much every day

I agree, it is a good look, particularly the way menus, buttons etc have been made smaller (in Logic at least - I haven't used the others)

 

[VanNess]

Well, I certainly don't live and breath based on OS window styles, just not that big of a deal in my book, and I don't even know where the term "brushed metal" came from in the first place. As a former OS 9 user, I always thought of it more as "textured platinum."

But I do kind of like the sort of lightly embossed feel that fonts sometimes have against "brushed metal," almost like they were engraved on the window, and that's seems to be missing now with new brushless windows. Back to the old, dull, regular, one dimensional appearance.

But at least the basic gray shade works for me, much more so than the puke-inducing color schemes in Windows XP. Gray is basically a neutral color, and when the window contents are just black text on white background, it's not that important, but when the window contents are media (pictures, movies, and so on) where millions of colors are potentially at work, then a non-distracting, color-neutral window is what you want. That's when the hard greens, browns, blues, and God-knows-what colors that make up XP windows get distracting, if not nauseating. Give me brushed metal any day.

 

[yankeefan24]

I like it. My PowerBook is made of metal, so the brushed metal GUI elements match quite nicely, I think.

i do like it more on my powerbook than my imac. I think apple should a) get some new backrounds and b) make it all-application customisable.

 

[Xephian]

I love the brushed metal look. Mail is fugly IMO.

 

[Sogo]

I honesly thought that the mail's updated skin was nicer than the older one; but thats just me. In regards to the brushed metal look, it looked nice for a while but i got borded of it.

 

[capone2]

Because it is hideous. UI elements should not mimic real-life materials. It's tacky and in bad taste, and people who like it are tacky themselves. Granted, I'm not saying you are tacky and have bad tastes, but take it as you wish.

Here's to the Crazy Ones ​

very well said! i hope leopard doesn't have any!