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Apple's Designers Clashing Over 'Tacky' Software Skeuomorphisms

less is more....

What amazing representation of a desktop the original mac was... With very few resources to spare, the design of each element needed to be equally beautiful as simple. Today computers exponentially more powerful capable of render an animated photo-realistic trash can, with chrome reflections and moire plagued details included. Unfortunately designers have yet to pay tribute to the first Mac OS. Ive please, show the way.
 
I find alternatives for the skeuomorphic apps. Simply because I don't like throwing up in my mouth when I see the calendar app first thing in the morning.
 
I happen to think the Calendar app looks great. It's that culture and design that makes me choose Apple over other companies. I hope they don't go all generic on us by creating lifeless apps.
 
I don't have a problem with skeuomorphs or providing additional skins, as long as they have a way to revert it back to the default that is just plain and functional.
 
viewfly said:
Who writes in Gothic?
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Goth.png
 
I love the skeuomorphism. Visual cues to context are important to me. I especially like the notes app with yellow paper and a playful font, compared to things like simplenote (on the iPhone) with its sterile white background and helvetica.

The notes app instantly reminds me of the yellow paper I actually use for hand-written notes, and differentiates itself visually from formal documents, just as it does on my real desktop.

And animated turning pages is so much better than instant swaps, when you're never sure you've actually turned the page, or maybe 2 pages.

And come on, how can you not appreciate the skeuomorphic dials and sliders on sound recorders and mixers?

The more cluttered my small screen gets, the more I welcome helpful visual cues to find things and establish context.

Plus, when they're done well, it makes the program look more polished, and less microsoftish.
 
gnagy said:
I don't even like torn paper on real paper calendar or notebook. They usually have perforation to make it easy to tear the pages out without creating little torn paper pieces. Some people are not competent enough to pull this off, but there are tools to help avoiding it. One could even use a knife in the real world. There's no point in going backwards and making it impossible to have a clean paper edge.
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You could use Mountain Tweaks to remove the faux leather look and the torn paper, IMHO it looks much better that way, it only cannot remove the brownish font in Calendar.
 
Crispy Duck said:
I dislike the leather header and the torn bits of paper too.

But the point I was making is Mountain Lion went a bit of the back by removing the stitching, and the page animation... although if you prefer the two-finger gesture the pesky animation crops up again. So yeah, they should offer options – a simple couple of tick boxes in the preferences...
Leather/Metal
Animations On/Off
etc...
CHOICE... give us CHOICE!
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To be honest, I wasn't even sure about the gesture :) I run my MBP docked about 80-85% of the time!

Totally on the same page with you though: ML seems to have dialed a few things back a little ... and a _simple_ toggle for a couple of styles or no styles.

Heck, I did the little resource file hack to replace some of the graphics in a couple of the bundled apps, so it's a pretty trivial change (actually lost those changes when I migrated from L to ML).


Renzatic said:
Image
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That. Was. Awesome. :D
 
samwight said:
I love the skeuomorphism. Visual cues to context are important to me. I especially like the notes app with yellow paper and a playful font, compared to things like simplenote (on the iPhone) with its sterile white background and helvetica.

The notes app instantly reminds me of the yellow paper I actually use for hand-written notes, and differentiates itself visually from formal documents, just as it does on my real desktop.

And animated turning pages is so much better than instant swaps, when you're never sure you've actually turned the page, or maybe 2 pages.

And come on, how can you not appreciate the skeuomorphic dials and sliders on sound recorders and mixers?

The more cluttered my small screen gets, the more I welcome helpful visual cues to find things and establish context.

Plus, when they're done well, it makes the program look more polished, and less microsoftish.
Click to expand...

I agree, to some degree it's positive, but finding the line is hard. The page switch animation on iCal in Lion is too slow. They should have made it 0.2 sec instead of the almost 1 sec or something, then it would have been a nice touch that doesn't get in the way. Getting things like that right is essential though. About the length of the Safari Cmd+N animation in Mountain Lion would have been fine.
 
Now a real comment.

Apple always had brush aluminum Style on their OS and.this style is kind of weird I love GarageBand cuz the interface really suts the function of the program. But if it's stop being practical and just for visual it can be wierd. If the theme of the app helps the experience cool with me but if it just turns my computer slow then there is problem then but with all that said I have MacBook white 2010-MacBook aluminum- iMac 2007-MacBook pro 2011 6gb- In OS ML no problem with the preformence in neither off them yes there are a few bugs in the iMac but nothing bad . So if you have a not so cabable hardware you should increase your ram ( cheap) Or buy ssd.
If not well your are gonna see a few hiccups with old hardware just like a 3G with 4.2.1....

5 years repairing Macs pcs and iPhones the pcs really pays off my bills so that's for breaking so much. :/
 
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The most genre defining example of skeuomorphism I've seen is the way PCs (used to) empty their trash while showing a cheesy animation of papers flying into a waste bin. The process often took a very long time. I'd much rather the computer (and the programmers) stayed focused on the task I need to do and stop wasting even a microsecond my time with fluff.

Even Apple's torn page in the calendar, by taking even a half second of attention, adds up when multiplied by the millions of times it will be seen. Developers should spend their effort making the software more responsive, better, or faster. Polish is important when it helps users, but overdone it can easily become an evil distraction. Tools should be beautiful - but not ridiculously so, unless it's the individual user who puts their own mark on them.
 
iOS Keynote "laser pointer"

Another example is the "laser pointer" in keynote for iOS.

Rather than a clean dot to precisely over the portion of the slide that is to be highlighted, the "dot" is diffracted. This mimics a handheld laser pointer diffracted on a projection screen.

While I appreciate the thoughtfulness that it took to execute this detail, I'd sure like to be able to turn it off (and change dot colors too). At times it is unnecessary and can actually detract from the presentation.

http://ipadnotebook.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/laser-pointer-effect-in-keynote.jpg
 
Zunjine said:
The software and the hardware perform two very different functions from a design perspective. In fact, they do polar opposites jobs. The hardware is designed to disappear while the software is intended to guide the user in whatever task they are currently performing. The hardware must be designed in such a way as to not impose itself on the software.
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Well, OS X was in fact designed to match the hardware. The original Aqua UI was more or less an extension of the blobby plastic Macs of the time -- the turquoise G4, the first iMac, the 'clamshell' laptop etc. The colors, the translucency, the pinstripes, it was all reflected in the UI. Then of course the hardware changed radically, while Aqua has been phased out gradually... though it lingers in spirit.

Aqua was refreshing at the time. The iPhone brought similar refreshment to a world of ugly UIs on mobile devices. But lately the pendulum has been swinging away from that style. It's been-there-done-that, no more childish glee over bevels, gloss and drop shadows. Every time that UI or website graphics get revamped these days, it's towards a cleaner and more streamlined design that looks more like print. Using the Pepsi logo as an analogy, Windows 8 corresponds to 'current design' while OS X/iOS is on 2003...

bcle-14.jpg
 
applesith said:
Is visual masturbation a bad thing?
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Not if you do it in private. Trouble is when it's something that's forced on everyone.

Maybe Forstall is stuck in the 20th Century. Seems to be the trouble with most of what Microsoft has produced in the last decade. But this dreck shouldn't be coming from Apple.

As much as I disagree with Ive's "no user serviceable parts inside" design philosophy, I must agree that skeuomorphism is, at its best, distasteful and, at worst, counterintuitive and, therefore, worse than useless.
 
screw all this. Invest your time and money in making iCloud reliable!
I WANT MY FREAKING E-MAIL BACK!!!!
 
I'm mostly fine with the look of the current OS X iCal, much better than OS X 10.4 + 10.2 iCal anyway.

Not so much with Game Centre. I guess the icon is pretty good though.
 
I'm sure this has already been said in this 12-page long thread, but these sorts of flourishes are great in small doses. Apple has simply been over-doing it.

A modern design with small bits of call-back is whimsical. A replica of something from the real world is just plain weird.
 
I love and use these apps but their overall look is terrible. iCal and Address Book should go back to looking like their pre-Lion versions. Hell, if anything, Apple should have some sort of option to allow these apps to go back to looking like their previous versions or include other skins that don't look as bad.
 
Use a hack

Just use a hack like Mountain Tweaks. That, plus Onyx, seems to fix most of my problems with ML. Most. There's a setting to change the interface for a lot of the apps that some of you find ugly. I just don't use them.
 
I love the new iCal visual. Much better than iCal of the past. Please do not change it Apple. It's not ugly or distasteful.

It has color other than grey, titanium and white. Which to me is a win.
 
Themes

Perhaps this is where themes could come into play.. You could choose the theme you'd like to see for the apps themselves (at least portions of them). Want a steampunk or ultra modern look to your phone? You decide (yeah, I know) Then you might have some more consistancy.
 
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