'Marble' Interface to be Revealed in Next Snow Leopard Seed?

[inkswamp]

I like aqua. Guess I'm stupid or something.

I like Aqua too.

I think it's the first time any single user interface was informed by one image: water. The idea of water has set the tone for almost everything, from the fluid movement of icons and windows resizing, the transparency effects, the flowing effect of windows minimizing to the Dock, the ripple effect in dashboard, the general color choices, the rounded edges, the droplet buttons in the Finder windows, the little waves in the progress bar, the naming of the Dock. Hell, even that damned spinning beach ball alludes to the ocean. To me, there's a little bit of genius in that, turns the UI into an cohesive semi-artistic expression which in turn means we're all able to relate to it a little more readily because it clicks with our subconscious and makes sense.

So even if Apple tweaks a few color schemes and changes, a lot of those Aqua-isms will still be there, lurking in the background. And I'm fine with that.

 

[Anuba]

I like Aqua too.

I think it's the first time any single user interface was informed by one image: water. The idea of water has set the tone for almost everything, from the fluid movement of icons and windows resizing, the transparency effects, the flowing effect of windows minimizing to the Dock, the ripple effect in dashboard, the general color choices, the rounded edges, the droplet buttons in the Finder windows, the little waves in the progress bar, the naming of the Dock. Hell, even that damned spinning beach ball alludes to the ocean. To me, there's a little bit of genius in that, turns the UI into an cohesive semi-artistic expression which in turn means we're all able to relate to it a little more readily because it clicks with our subconscious and makes sense.

So even if Apple tweaks a few color schemes and changes, a lot of those Aqua-isms will still be there, lurking in the background. And I'm fine with that.

They could always use ice as the starting point this time, and still stay in H20 territory.

The Aqua interface was designed to match these...

...not these.

 

[Dudeman486]

Well said inkswamp. I am definitely ready for UI changes. The scroll bars look silly, but I am a fan of the traffic lights.

 

[kdarling]

It's just like the guys over in Redmond, Vista and Win7 sport several different looks from different versions of Windows, they use several different system fonts with blatant inconsistency. And on top of that there's the WMP look, the Live look, the IE look, the Office look...

Like the iPhone's original apps. Most look the same, grey-blue and slick. But thrown in the middle are a couple with their distinctive colorful desktop widget look: the Weather and Stocks.

I suspose one could argue that a mixture keeps a UI from being too boring.

 

[BTW]

It would be nice to finally have a consistent look and feel throughout the OS and apps. I'd like to see more 3D OS features like Time Machine, the Dock, and Stacks. More glide pad gestures and even the ability to assign automator script to a custom gesture would be good.

 

[Magnum318]

Using iLeopard

Seems to me that Ileopard takes out the 3d feel of the buttons...which is totally against what they have been building up to...The buttons don't pop..its a little tougher to spot them quickly..

 

[fleshman03]

I'm pretty sure we all expect SOME change to the UI to get the average user to spend $129 this summer on a new OS. Not everyone will understand, or care about, the changes under the hood. Many users will just upgrade for one or two new features. (Enter 'Marble')

It's new, sleeker, has a new engine and now in Black!

Just no new cup holder this year...

 

[3282868]

I like Aqua too.

I think it's the first time any single user interface was informed by one image: water. The idea of water has set the tone for almost everything, from the fluid movement of icons and windows resizing, the transparency effects, the flowing effect of windows minimizing to the Dock, the ripple effect in dashboard, the general color choices, the rounded edges, the droplet buttons in the Finder windows, the little waves in the progress bar, the naming of the Dock. Hell, even that damned spinning beach ball alludes to the ocean. To me, there's a little bit of genius in that, turns the UI into an cohesive semi-artistic expression which in turn means we're all able to relate to it a little more readily because it clicks with our subconscious and makes sense.

So even if Apple tweaks a few color schemes and changes, a lot of those Aqua-isms will still be there, lurking in the background. And I'm fine with that.

As a designer, kudos for this comment. I never even realized the connection between water fluidity and Max OS X. This concept make a lot of artistic UI sense to me. I do not mind the idea of iPhone UI tweaks, I do not like the iTunes scroll bar or light text on a dark screen.

 

[Brien]

Now this would be awesome! I would love to see the iPhone scroll bars throughout the entire OS. One thing that has bothered me is the differences with iLife and the rest of the OS. It seems that they do not work together on the interfaces and just change things whenever they want to.

I recently found a program (iLeopard) that takes all of the aqua details out Leopard. I like the look a lot better than all of the blue from Tiger. The marble interface will be a welcomed feature in my opinion!

They wouldn't have that problem if they used the actual UI elements instead of using custom images. Makes theming more difficult, too, but hey, why write HIG if you aren't going to break them?

 

[mikeinternet]

As some suggested the iphone safari scroll bar would be bad ass.

first i thought it'll only work with a trackpad and gesture scrolling, then i remembered that mice have the lil ball em.

so i'm all for the scroll bar only appearing during scrolling. sure you don't get a visual of how long a folder or whatever has to go. but i don't care.

 

[iPhoneJB]

Nah... That looks like one of the Mobile Me mods that can be found around

I don't think so. I got these pictures from 2 different sources. I saw a few more pictures of the interface, and it looked FAR more refined than any of the MobileMe/iTunes 7-8 themes on the internet. It probably still has some more work to be done, but looks very good so far.

 

[FF_productions]

I still like the candy coat scroll bars..guess I'm old school. I'm always fearful of a GUI change, could be too tacky, too this, too that. (Vista)

Marble subtle look sounds good to me though, I can deal with it.

 

[stownsend3]

It would be nice to finally have a consistent look and feel throughout the OS and apps. I'd like to see more 3D OS features like Time Machine, the Dock, and Stacks. More glide pad gestures and even the ability to assign automator script to a custom gesture would be good.

You can already assign custom gestures to your multitouch trackpad, and doesn't really relate to GUI. But if you're interested, Multiclutch works great for this.

 

[Michael73]

What I love...

I love the fact that we can all have a discussion thread that goes on for pages about the UI and that's what it's about as opposed to a certain other OS where we'd all be talking about kernel panics, the dreaded blue screen of death and the general clunkiness of the UI.

I mean let's face it folks, when we have a civilized discussion about whether the bar at the top of the screen should have rounded corners or not (pre-leopard) you know you've got it good

 

[MattInOz]

Really though...

Why change something that works fine and people are used to? Not to be cliche but, don't fix what isn't broken.

I hope they at least give Aqua is still an option at least. And seriously, stop adding cover flow to everything. Sure it looks nice, but it's a horrible inefficient way to navigate through anything.

I think the answer will be that it's broken at a more fundamental level.
If they more to Vector UI then they have to redo the art work as the pixel based art doesn't translate.

It seems the new themes may have have tried to simplify the design reduce the number of vectors and processing time to generate screen images.

 

[Pants Dragon]

I also wish and hope Apple offers a button to lock the Dock items from accidentally being dragged off into a poof. I run a business on Macs and when someone uses the computer they tend to drag stuff off the Dock thinking they deleted something. This can be a disaster for big companies using Macs.

I know you can do this. That is how my University has the Macs setup. I just do not know how they do it.

It's in the parental control settings.

 

[Bodie]

Marble

I said this on another forum earlier this year. And it may have been said here. When I think Marble, I think of the Dock Shelf with it's shine and reflections. Not any Matt / Flat look on iTunes or elsewhere.

 

[bretm]

Me too.

Who really cares about the color of the scroll bar? Or if it's the same from app to app? That doesn't change the functionality or anything. I'm sure it wouldn't change my overall mac experience if they were all the same either.

If you don't care about consistency, user experience, or functionality then there's an OS out there for you that has cheaper hardware to go with it. Why are you using OSX?

This discussion at it's heart is about design. Good design is more productive in many ways. Consistency for one. To be extremely simple, every application has the exact same process to open a file. You don't have to relearn it for every application. You choose file>open. AND, the dialog for opening a file is the same as well. Guess what? The hot key is the same too. What if for every application you used there was a different hot key, a different menu location, and a differenet looking dialog box? What if some apps had a green scroll bar to choose the file, and a red one to change the drive? But in some apps it was a green bar to scroll to a drive, and a red bar to choose the app? Things would get confusing, huh?

Well, good consistent, logical, clear deisgn is something all software and hardware makers strive for. Aren't you glad we all decided the brake is on the left and the gas is on the right?

My point is that you are claiming the discussion is pointless, when in the end, it's a discussion about what makes Apple what they are. Leaders in design. Whether it be hardware or software.

 

[bretm]

As some suggested the iphone safari scroll bar would be bad ass.

first i thought it'll only work with a trackpad and gesture scrolling, then i remembered that mice have the lil ball em.

so i'm all for the scroll bar only appearing during scrolling. sure you don't get a visual of how long a folder or whatever has to go. but i don't care.

And how would one scroll without a ball or a track pad genius? Not many people like the mighty mouse.

 

[RonCarr]

And how would one scroll without a ball or a track pad genius? Not many people like the mighty mouse.

The way I could see it set up is when you get the mouse close to the side of the window the scroll bar appears. Not that complicated honestly...

 

[butterfly0fdoom]

And how would one scroll without a ball or a track pad genius? Not many people like the mighty mouse.

Just have arrows and bars appear when you move the cursor to the edge of the window, I guess.

 

[Mackan]

How about they introduce themes? Something else than just gray, gray and gray?

 

[RMo]

Aqua is dead already, 10.4 i work with only has brushed metal and grey. The reintroduction of aqua in 10.5 was cool looking but not better, glad Apple will change it back.

What do you mean? 10.4 was slightly "de-Aqua-ified" from previous versions in that there was less pinstriping and, in places, more "plastic-y" look (unified title/toolbar, etc.). In 10.5, it was essentially all replaced with a plastic-y version of the "brushed metal" appearance, similar to iTunes, with some more Aqua-y elements remaining in buttons, scroll bars, and other small areas. I don't think that was a re-introduction.

It is generally hypothesized that Marble, then, will continue this trend, and iTunes is probably going to be its model: the scrollbars will likely become more gray-ish, and maybe buttons as well. We'll see...

 

[kjs862]

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Wait, so smoothing out some corners of windows and "flattening" is considered a dramatic change to the OS? Kinda blowing things out of proportion huh?

No it is a dramatic change

 

[MattInOz]

As some suggested the iphone safari scroll bar would be bad ass.

first i thought it'll only work with a trackpad and gesture scrolling, then i remembered that mice have the lil ball em.

so i'm all for the scroll bar only appearing during scrolling. sure you don't get a visual of how long a folder or whatever has to go. but i don't care.

But what do you do when your mouse will scroll down but not up?
like the mighty mouse is prone to doing?