First Impressions on Windows XP
I was browsing sites for a while using IE on my OLD Windows XP laptop (bought it from one of off-lease shops), and thought I'd give this a try. It's a Centrino 1.5 GHz with either 512 MB or 1 gig of RAM, can't recall.
It's fast, seems faster than IE on the same machine. Pages do load snappier.
I do like the native Windows look far better than the "a bit of Mac on Windows" look. I know that might have been a fond reminder for us Mac folks, but it's just plain annoying for everyone else, and it suggested that Apple merely ported a lot of their own UI code to run on Windows instead of rewriting their code to use native Windows APIs. So the "native look" probably has a lot to do with the speed increases, and will probably mean a lot fewer bugs because the Windows APIs are more mature. Plus if Apple wants to be taken seriously in the Windows world, it really does need to try to make its apps blend in instead of sticking out.
However, it is still evident to me that this is a Windows application written by people not used to writing Windows applications. Just as the Mac has a style guide for how a program should "look like a Mac application", Windows has them too, and this app is close, but not quite. Certain fonts seem just a bit too big (the address bar) and some dialogs just don't look right (the "default browser check"). But these are minor quibbles.
What else? The tabs on top is ridiculous, and I hope there's a way to turn it off. I was very disoriented by the lack of a traditional application menu and took a few seconds to figure out where everything was (but that's not just Apple, everyone in Windows-land seems to like doing this -- Windows Media Player drove me INSANE for the same reasons). I do like that pretty much all the menu settings have been condensed into two drop-downs.
I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to turn on the Top Sites browser, or Cover Flow. I searched and searched, then gave up because I had to get to work. I might be missing something obvious, but a good UI shouldn't let that happen.
Am I the only one that thinks that Apple's apparent philosophy of "Cover Flow on EVERYTHING!" is getting a bit tired? It's almost like Apple's written just one application framework (a list browser with Cover Flow) and is trying to apply it to everything imaginable: the Finder, iTunes, iPhoto, Safari, Front Row...
I will definitely continue experimenting with this on my laptop and looking forward to trying it on my Mac too!
