"Choose? You can't choose, you are already too dumb to work a Mac" Says the Apple Genius from the Olympics commercial
(fake quoted)
Also interesting to know that masturbation is an OK word to say here in MR. lol
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Apple's Designers Clashing Over 'Tacky' Software Skeuomorphisms
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"Choose? You can't choose, you are already too dumb to work a Mac" Says the Apple Genius from the Olympics commercial
(fake quoted)
Also interesting to know that masturbation is an OK word to say here in MR. lol
I hope others on this forum (not just me) have went here and provided feedback on these skeuomorphisms:
http://www.apple.com/feedback
http://www.apple.com/feedback
I haven't been totally happy with the way Apple has gone with OS X (Lion & ML) but that being said the features are still what really count not the look. Yes iCal and Address book could use some changes but to me I still like how simple and easy it is to use
I tend to agree with many that these designs tend to provide clutter and generally fragment the overall user experience.
I love animations like deleting notes on iOS or minimising a window on OSX or the wiggling icons to rearrange on iOS, but some of those other effects confuse me. Like page turning in iCal (OSX) is weird when I have the side panel open, I'd prefer innovation with their calendar app like being able to see the weeks between two months. Why do most calendar apps force me to see only 1 month at a time when I have events that straddle between months?
Contacts (OSX), I find much more difficult to use now with it's new look, and is generally visually distracting, if they want to make the app appear like a real address book then the pages should turn and I should be able to have A-Z letters on the side that I can flip to, but it's strange that it's static with the list on the left and a single selected address on the right - which just conflicts with what's it's meant to look like. And on the iPad in Portrait mode the app is a complete waste of space only taking up half the screen.
Other example include, Photo Booth which really doesn't need the red curtain to appear and I agree with the pod casting app, game centre app, find friends app, at least we don't have to look at the TV icon for youtube anymore with iOS6 and the new youtube app
With iPhoto, I don't want to download the iPad version cause of it's tacky look (played with it stores a few times) and most of the features seem gimmicky so I hope the same gimmicks aren't translated to the new iPhoto version on OSX, I want better organisation and a much faster app, and I hope they get rid of the carousal for creating books etc but I doubt they will.
All of these fake things are really putting me off, I feel like they aren't serious about experienced users and treating us like newbies or mums and dads using their first computer.
I hope to see some good software innovation with the next iTunes and their new iLife series in the future, but I'm not liking where they are heading generally with software design...
I love animations like deleting notes on iOS or minimising a window on OSX or the wiggling icons to rearrange on iOS, but some of those other effects confuse me. Like page turning in iCal (OSX) is weird when I have the side panel open, I'd prefer innovation with their calendar app like being able to see the weeks between two months. Why do most calendar apps force me to see only 1 month at a time when I have events that straddle between months?
Contacts (OSX), I find much more difficult to use now with it's new look, and is generally visually distracting, if they want to make the app appear like a real address book then the pages should turn and I should be able to have A-Z letters on the side that I can flip to, but it's strange that it's static with the list on the left and a single selected address on the right - which just conflicts with what's it's meant to look like. And on the iPad in Portrait mode the app is a complete waste of space only taking up half the screen.
Other example include, Photo Booth which really doesn't need the red curtain to appear and I agree with the pod casting app, game centre app, find friends app, at least we don't have to look at the TV icon for youtube anymore with iOS6 and the new youtube app
With iPhoto, I don't want to download the iPad version cause of it's tacky look (played with it stores a few times) and most of the features seem gimmicky so I hope the same gimmicks aren't translated to the new iPhoto version on OSX, I want better organisation and a much faster app, and I hope they get rid of the carousal for creating books etc but I doubt they will.
All of these fake things are really putting me off, I feel like they aren't serious about experienced users and treating us like newbies or mums and dads using their first computer.
I hope to see some good software innovation with the next iTunes and their new iLife series in the future, but I'm not liking where they are heading generally with software design...
Maybe, but maybe not the themes that nearly shipped with Mac OS 8. Those are best left behind.
All companies will have internal on all sorts of topics so this is no great surprise. It wouldn't be very healthy if there wasn't conflict.
This graphic (courtesy of The Verge user brownbox) illustrates the same thing quite well (albeit slightly exaggerated). Even there, while the design language is unified: two teams working on two different products have two different interpretations:
Image
That graphic is terrible and really not indicative of the platforms.
Engineery Jonathan Ivy
Why do I get the feeling that Jonathan Ive would have been pleased if everything was glow-y green letters on a black screen?
-mike
Edit: Whoops I meant "Engineery Jonathan Ive"
Why do I get the feeling that Jonathan Ive would have been pleased if everything was glow-y green letters on a black screen?
-mike
Edit: Whoops I meant "Engineery Jonathan Ive"
Last edited:
That's the problem with the whole apple revolution. Ever since the iPod came out, everyone became amateur design aficionados who think they are unique in their love of "minimalism." In fact, they now think they know design better than apple designers.
Yeah, darn that outspoken Jon Ive. Don't listen to him or the other internal Apple zealots!
Actually, it'd be interesting to see what Apple's designers would use in place of bookshelves, or stitched leather, etc.
--
Skeuomorphism has both pros and cons. On the one hand, it helps when people are new and want something familiar as a mental anchor. It can also be just plain fun.
One downside comes if the familiar object doesn't work exactly like its real counterpart, which can be confusing. For example, notebook pages that flip side to side are one thing; but on screen they often also scroll up and down, something which doesn't happen in real life books
If you emulate real life too much, you see, you lose functionality.
The other downside has already been noted: quite often the visuals are not universal either in culture or the user's age. Round phone dials, tape decks, manual TV or radio tuners, heck, even car ignition key slots have or will become items that no longer carry a meaning.
Yeah, it's funny how some things stay alive only in the virtual domain. The typical Save icon on toolbars and such is a floppy disk. By now there are computer users who have never seen (or at least never used) a floppy in real life. Give it another 10 years and hard drives will be dead, it'll be all SSD, but I'm sure the damn floppy icon will still be there in 100 years when people have no living relatives who ever saw one.
I agree. The app simply doesn't work very well. It got better with the upgrade, but isn't great. I love the design, being old(!), and believe that there was no payoff between design and functionality. Just want it to work better!
Have you tried to use Windows 8 on a desktop computer? I was unhappy when Apple came out with Lion and the obvious attempts to dumb down the system to the level of IOS on the iPhone and iPad. I would much rather they develop a separate system for IOS and leave the desktop/laptop system the same. I know it complicates things to have to develop two systems but it sure works a lot better. What Microsoft has done with Windows 8 makes Apple's attempts to make the the desktop system behave more like the iPhone/iPad looks small time.
I can appreciate the idea behind a skeuomorphic app skin, but as it stands there is a huge disconnect between many of Apple's current attempts at doing so and their hardware/reputation. It really does feel a bit tacky/cheesy and not the clean or tasteful fun we've come to know.
I remember hearing Steve saying something along the lines of Ive being able to do what he wants at Apple. I wonder if that's (still) true...
I remember hearing Steve saying something along the lines of Ive being able to do what he wants at Apple. I wonder if that's (still) true...
I've had this debate quite a few times over the years, but never knew there was a name for it
At my first job most of the folks were Ayn Rand fans so I always used this quote from the Fountainhead for these discussions. Amazing how something written in 1940's applies so well to software architecture as it does to building architecture:
"Look," said Roark. "The famous flutings on the famous columns---what are they there for? To hide the joints in wood--when columns were made of wood, only these aren't, they're marble. The triglyphs, what are they? Wood. Wooden beams, the way they had to be laid when people began to build wooden shacks. Your Greeks took marble and they made copies of their wooden structures out of it, because others had done it that way. Then your masters of the Renaissance came along and made copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. Now here we are making copies in steel and concrete of copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. Why?"
The Dean sat watching him curiously. Something puzzled him, not in the words, but in Roark's manner of saying them.
"Rules?" said Roark. "Here are my rules: what can be done with one substance must never be done with another. No two materials are alike. No two sites on earth are alike. No two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the materials determine the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea, and the idea sets ever detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man doesn't borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window and stairway to express it."
At my first job most of the folks were Ayn Rand fans so I always used this quote from the Fountainhead for these discussions. Amazing how something written in 1940's applies so well to software architecture as it does to building architecture:
"Look," said Roark. "The famous flutings on the famous columns---what are they there for? To hide the joints in wood--when columns were made of wood, only these aren't, they're marble. The triglyphs, what are they? Wood. Wooden beams, the way they had to be laid when people began to build wooden shacks. Your Greeks took marble and they made copies of their wooden structures out of it, because others had done it that way. Then your masters of the Renaissance came along and made copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. Now here we are making copies in steel and concrete of copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. Why?"
The Dean sat watching him curiously. Something puzzled him, not in the words, but in Roark's manner of saying them.
"Rules?" said Roark. "Here are my rules: what can be done with one substance must never be done with another. No two materials are alike. No two sites on earth are alike. No two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the materials determine the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea, and the idea sets ever detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man doesn't borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window and stairway to express it."
Thanks for making me feel old! The first PC I used at work was DOS based, with 10Mb hard disk. I could type about 3 minutes ahead of it.
Although I do not like the skeuomorphisms in many of the apps in iOS and OS X, as I would prefer a more consistent for all apps, I'm more concerned about the degradation in functionality in OS X and the crippled functionality in iOS.
I think Reminders is horrible. Not only did we have to wait until iOS 5 to get any kind of To-Do/Task app that syncs with Mobile Me/iCloud, but what we got was something that didn't even allow sorting and no way I can see to input due dates (unless you enter it in iCloud). Now we at least get manual sorting, but I don't see a way to sort by due date, priority, etc.
I think it's great that Apple is putting a bunch of new, whizbang features in OS X and iOS, but I really think they need to nail down basic functionality first and then go from there. And for Reminders, I can't imagine it'd take more than a few man hours to fix it up and get it into the next build.
I think Reminders is horrible. Not only did we have to wait until iOS 5 to get any kind of To-Do/Task app that syncs with Mobile Me/iCloud, but what we got was something that didn't even allow sorting and no way I can see to input due dates (unless you enter it in iCloud). Now we at least get manual sorting, but I don't see a way to sort by due date, priority, etc.
I think it's great that Apple is putting a bunch of new, whizbang features in OS X and iOS, but I really think they need to nail down basic functionality first and then go from there. And for Reminders, I can't imagine it'd take more than a few man hours to fix it up and get it into the next build.
I find the way Apple have brought the iOS look to OS X very distasteful. It may work on a mobile (but adding it to apps that aren't finished is pretty stupid), but it just looks damned ugly and unnecessary on a computer that I spend many hours at.
I like Microsoft's approach in Windows 8. Although it relies heavily on developers designing Metro apps. If devs don't do it quick enough, Windows 8 will be a pain for most users.
I like Microsoft's approach in Windows 8. Although it relies heavily on developers designing Metro apps. If devs don't do it quick enough, Windows 8 will be a pain for most users.
What is that background!?
I didn't even see that when I was setting up my Win8 preview partition. Mine is a very simple functional dark green with only few lighter veins of green. Way to pick the worst example possible.Personally I don't have an issue with Win8 at all. I've been able to all the advanced features with relative ease... almost easier then in XP or 7. And I'm running things like geographic CAD programs on it which default to the "Desktop" zone. I spend most of my time in that mode actually.
Then again I eat GUIs like its candy so I many not be the best example.
If Win8 had a slogan for Professional user it would "don't worry your tools are still there, we just put then one click deeper and in the corners, out of reach of your Grandma."
This stands in contrast with Apple's stance of just outright locking them out and making you use Terminal commands to open them back up. Honestly this long time Mac guy may jump ship in a few years depending on how the two develop going further.
Oh come on, are you serious? I welcome these "Skeuomorphisms" because they offer some freshness in the monotony of greys, off-blues and whites. Do you really want ALL the apps to look that way? How boring. This isn't 1990 anymore. These "Skeuomorphisms" are what keep me interested and enjoying the use of my mac. Yes, I'm one of those who miss the blue "water" scrollbars from before.
As an engineer (some can stop reading now) I find apps that looks like bits of torn out paper to be uninspiring and downright tacky. Mine is a world of right angles, straight lines and color for purpose not appearance. In a word: Boring.
So I tend to back off and let a bit of artistic interpretation creep into my life. It won't kill me.
So I tend to back off and let a bit of artistic interpretation creep into my life. It won't kill me.