Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iCloud Website Gets iOS 7-Inspired Makeover
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Love it!
I love how Apple is making everything go together. Now all they need to do is redesign OSX to look more like iOS 7.
Also, I don't know how many of you noticed, but the wallpaper follows your mouse. It's very subtle and I thought I was just imagining it at first, but it's real! Not that important, but just another cool tiny tweak.
I love how Apple is making everything go together. Now all they need to do is redesign OSX to look more like iOS 7.
Also, I don't know how many of you noticed, but the wallpaper follows your mouse. It's very subtle and I thought I was just imagining it at first, but it's real! Not that important, but just another cool tiny tweak.
Never thought I'd miss linen in my life, but this is just tragic. I'm glad to see that many agree. I like the overall look of iOS 7, but this looks like Microsoft trying to copy it
For those looking around Elementary/Ubuntu is looking pretty good these days.
What it lacks is what we're looking at here - Apple's ecosystem, which sadly, requires OS X.
I don't like the way OS X is heading, either - iOS is deliberately limited because the processors can't handle a full OS, and that just happens to be good for beginners, but that's no reason to dumb down OS X.
Sadly OS X was never as user friendly as the Mac OS, and I'm almost glad they took the Mac off Mac OS X, because it never came close to Mac intelligence. If you came from Windows you wouldn't know, but fiddlying text files is 1960s technology (as is unix, yes I know Elementary is Unix). Mac had a gui for everything but machine code.
It's the little things, like opening an app and putting into the background because it's going to take a while to start up, and having the ****** app stay there until I ask for it again. Only OS X could give us backgrounded apps jumping to the front on a Mac.
Or how about actually calculating folder sizes in a list view (I have a thunderbolt drive that does that, but nothing Apple ships does it).
And the disturbing trend - opening multiple Tabs in the background in Safari, and finding they don't actually load until you switch to each tab - iOS comes to OS X in the worst possible way.
Disturbing as yellow on white is (and it truly is Microsoft-level clueless), Mac owners have much more to worry about.
For those looking around Elementary/Ubuntu is looking pretty good these days.
What it lacks is what we're looking at here - Apple's ecosystem, which sadly, requires OS X.
I don't like the way OS X is heading, either - iOS is deliberately limited because the processors can't handle a full OS, and that just happens to be good for beginners, but that's no reason to dumb down OS X.
Sadly OS X was never as user friendly as the Mac OS, and I'm almost glad they took the Mac off Mac OS X, because it never came close to Mac intelligence. If you came from Windows you wouldn't know, but fiddlying text files is 1960s technology (as is unix, yes I know Elementary is Unix). Mac had a gui for everything but machine code.
It's the little things, like opening an app and putting into the background because it's going to take a while to start up, and having the ****** app stay there until I ask for it again. Only OS X could give us backgrounded apps jumping to the front on a Mac.
Or how about actually calculating folder sizes in a list view (I have a thunderbolt drive that does that, but nothing Apple ships does it).
And the disturbing trend - opening multiple Tabs in the background in Safari, and finding they don't actually load until you switch to each tab - iOS comes to OS X in the worst possible way.
Disturbing as yellow on white is (and it truly is Microsoft-level clueless), Mac owners have much more to worry about.
OK with me too. Light, breezy and fluid, a nice change! Aptly, like on a cloud, really.
I've actually always known that I'd miss it. It was my favorite design element from Lion...
Not Impressed
I actually don't really like it. It's too flat and boring. I never really liked this latest wave of oversimplified design, just seems like a cop-out lately.
I actually don't really like it. It's too flat and boring. I never really liked this latest wave of oversimplified design, just seems like a cop-out lately.
What particularly bugs me is that a Folder is no longer a thing, an analogue of a real paper folder. A Finder window has become nothing but a view. If you have a Finder window which is showing the sidebar/toolbar and open a folder in that window, that Folder's view settings get changed to be those of the window. I avoid the toolbar/sidebar views altogether for this reason, because my folders keep getting screwed around. I want each folder to remember view settings and always open in a certain size and shape. I remember where I put stuff. Mac OS used to do this, but it's hard to keep this up with OS X because it keeps turning on the stupid toolbar - every time I restart the Finder, the stupid Trash window has the toolbar back on.
My impression is that along with the arrival of OS X Apple lost the great design CONSISTENCY, and logic, which made the Mac OS so pleasant to use.
Eg. the OS X menu bar. You can click on a menu, move the mouse over to the right, to a menu-icon, which is in the menu. But the icon doesn't drop it's own menu. It does nothing. Stupid. However, click the icon, then it, and other icons will behave like menus. Except for ... is it spotlight? However, when you then move the mouse over to the actual text menus on the left, and then try to come back to the icons: the icons no longer act like menus. You have to click again. Stupid. Mac OS wasn't that daft.
Eh, I think I'm in a tiny minority on this so I should give up; too many people come from elsewhere who never got the concept of UI consistency. Shame.
Now iWork icons are flat:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7379011/Captura de pantalla 2013-09-18 a la(s) 08.56.08.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7379011/Captura de pantalla 2013-09-18 a la(s) 08.56.08.png
People actually like this? 
The calendar is far too wishy-washy, and you can't see what's happening so quickly at a glance in month view. The borderless look to supposedly remove clutter makes multi-day events far bolder relative to the reference of what day is where and the days of the week, or times in day view. Removing visual references is not removing "clutter".
Notes is just horrible looking. I feel like I'm inside a pool of sick.
Everyone gets excited about the background in the main screen? The screen you only look at for a couple of seconds! On which Firefox has no fancy background with the bubbles, and IE locked up my entire i5 work laptop (including the mouse) for a minimum of 5 secs whilst loading it!
I thought Apple loved making things look cleverly simple so they added to the ease of use and functionality, not to impair the ease of use! Similar story to making all the OS X icons grey in finder - reduces the instant recognition factor and makes you have to think harder. I thought it was supposed to be "Think different", not harder!
It's slightly dampened my excitement for iOS 7 later today if that's similarly "vagueing up" visual references as badly, when I quickly glance at things like calendar. There's a difference between minimalism and this "under-ism".
Update: It's not nearly as bad if I fullscreen the browser window, but at smaller sizes (how I usually use iCloud web interface at work) it's far from pleasant.
The calendar is far too wishy-washy, and you can't see what's happening so quickly at a glance in month view. The borderless look to supposedly remove clutter makes multi-day events far bolder relative to the reference of what day is where and the days of the week, or times in day view. Removing visual references is not removing "clutter".
Notes is just horrible looking. I feel like I'm inside a pool of sick.
Everyone gets excited about the background in the main screen? The screen you only look at for a couple of seconds! On which Firefox has no fancy background with the bubbles, and IE locked up my entire i5 work laptop (including the mouse) for a minimum of 5 secs whilst loading it!
I thought Apple loved making things look cleverly simple so they added to the ease of use and functionality, not to impair the ease of use! Similar story to making all the OS X icons grey in finder - reduces the instant recognition factor and makes you have to think harder. I thought it was supposed to be "Think different", not harder!
It's slightly dampened my excitement for iOS 7 later today if that's similarly "vagueing up" visual references as badly, when I quickly glance at things like calendar. There's a difference between minimalism and this "under-ism".
Update: It's not nearly as bad if I fullscreen the browser window, but at smaller sizes (how I usually use iCloud web interface at work) it's far from pleasant.
Last edited:
Now that the iWork apps are free on new iOS devices I wonder if they will do the same with the iWork apps for OSX. Make them free with any new Mac once the Haswell refreshed Macs come out later this year. I wouldn't be surprised if iWork and iLife were rolled up into the OS updates from next year.
People actually like this?
The calendar is far too wishy-washy, and you can't see what's happening so quickly at a glance in month view. The borderless look to supposedly remove clutter makes multi-day events far bolder relative to the reference of what day is where and the days of the week, or times in day view. Removing visual references is not removing "clutter".
Notes is just horrible looking. I feel like I'm inside a pool of sick.
Everyone gets excited about the background in the main screen? The screen you only look at for a couple of seconds! On which Firefox has no fancy background with the bubbles, and IE locked up my entire i5 work laptop (including the mouse) for a minimum of 5 secs whilst loading it!
I thought Apple loved making things look cleverly simple so they added to the ease of use and functionality, not to impair the ease of use! Similar story to making all the OS X icons grey in finder - reduces the instant recognition factor and makes you have to think harder. I thought it was supposed to be "Think different", not harder!
It's slightly dampened my excitement for iOS 7 later today if that's similarly "vagueing up" visual references as badly, when I quickly glance at things like calendar. There's a difference between minimalism and this "under-ism".
Update: It's not nearly as bad if I fullscreen the browser window, but at smaller sizes (how I usually use iCloud web interface at work) it's far from pleasant.
I like the calendar a lot, personally. It's one of the first "wow" moments I had in checking out the new GUI today. That's just me though.
Further to my previous post I've made the calendar a lot more useable and better looking by zooming the web page. With a smaller font size the elements reduce in size and everything becomes a lot clearer including all the "more..." on each day becoming proper full display of all events. I actually begin to like it then. Unfortunately this makes the text all look slightly funny due to the zoom.
I so wish iCloud had a preference for font size. iCloud seems to use fonts far larger than most other web pages, almost cartoonishly so, which makes it less usable without zooming out (which then makes it look crap).
Did they do all their testing on big hi-res 27" mac screens, when the likely time I'm gonna be using the web interface is when I'm on a PC I can't install iCloud on at work or similar, which is far more likely to be only 1680x1050, or 1600x900 (my work Lenovo laptop and display resolutions) or thereabouts?
I so wish iCloud had a preference for font size. iCloud seems to use fonts far larger than most other web pages, almost cartoonishly so, which makes it less usable without zooming out (which then makes it look crap).
Did they do all their testing on big hi-res 27" mac screens, when the likely time I'm gonna be using the web interface is when I'm on a PC I can't install iCloud on at work or similar, which is far more likely to be only 1680x1050, or 1600x900 (my work Lenovo laptop and display resolutions) or thereabouts?
Nope, I'm right there with you. Every time I look at those butt ugly icons that belong on a Fisher Price toy, I get sick to my stomach. I think Apple may have alienated a segment of their users who are a bit older who need that skeumorphism to help cement the notion of what those square things mean. The old icons were easier for ALL age groups to decipher. They could have redesigned the look without going to some frilly, pastel crap. With the power of today's hardware, we should have immersive, gorgeous UIs to look at, not flat and washed out. IOS7 inspires me to say 'butterface'... you know, she has a great body, but her face.
----------
Agreed. I feel like I have been betrayed by the woman(ios) I fell in love with back in 2007.
This is my first chance to actually work in the OS7 theme. The colors in iCal are slightly too pastel for my tastes, but I love the general aesthetic. So much less clutter. If they can keep it like this and not go full GMail (so many buttons and banners and different things going on) I'll be a happy user.
That's new to me, as well. I'm not sure how useful it is, but at least it's less obtrusive than on my 4S
Looks great, less filling
I really love the look, but I tend to like change, so maybe this isn't a huge surprise...
In the very few minutes I've had to play with the iCloud apps, I love the iCal changes the most. iCal is much easier to read for me with my many many appointments.
The only problem I've found so far is that all but my Birthday subscribed Cals are gone as of the switch. Yesterday they were there, about 20 webcal subscriptions that still show up in my iCal Mac App, are missing from iCloud.
Anyone else lose subscribed cals in iCloud?
I really love the look, but I tend to like change, so maybe this isn't a huge surprise...
In the very few minutes I've had to play with the iCloud apps, I love the iCal changes the most. iCal is much easier to read for me with my many many appointments.
The only problem I've found so far is that all but my Birthday subscribed Cals are gone as of the switch. Yesterday they were there, about 20 webcal subscriptions that still show up in my iCal Mac App, are missing from iCloud.
Anyone else lose subscribed cals in iCloud?
It is also worth noting that we are kind of in a "transitional Period". With such a huge change to iOS(at least in appearance) we can expect not everything to be in place. I have no doubt that apple will make adjustments down the road. Nothing is ever finished!
As for the future of OSX, I am not all that worried. OSX is a tool for me and with the release of Logic Pro X. Apple has proved they are still building OSX for the professional. If you think the future of OSX is grim because they might change how the icons look, you missing the point! I don't see anything wrong with making it simpler on the top end, just don't take away my advanced utilities!
As for the future of OSX, I am not all that worried. OSX is a tool for me and with the release of Logic Pro X. Apple has proved they are still building OSX for the professional. If you think the future of OSX is grim because they might change how the icons look, you missing the point! I don't see anything wrong with making it simpler on the top end, just don't take away my advanced utilities!