Snow Leopard QuickTime X Interface and Other Changes

[wrldwzrd89]

(Agreeing with MacFly123, above) the new black title bar looks cool enough, if all 10.6 windows are black. On a related note, Why is Safari 4's title bar font different than the rest of OSX? I really, really hope someone remembers to unify everything before Snow Leopard launches. Tiger's 15 different themes annoyed me.

EDIT: is it reasonable to think that maybe Apple would be deliberately trying different window styles in preparation for an aqua makeover? I thought Snow Leopard was supposed to focus on under-the-hood stuff, so probably not.

Apple's quite fond of matching Mac OS X releases to the current Mac hardware designs. This is one of the reasons the overall theme (or lack thereof) keeps changing. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see some minor UI tweaks in Snow Leopard. The new UI for QuickTime Player is a perfect example of this transformation - resembles the black border around the recent iMacs, and the LED Cinema Display, no?

 

[wheelhot]

You mean better GPU performance. Aperture's used the GPU since day 1

oh I didnt know that cause even with GPU performance, it still becomes dog slow at certain operation. To what extend it uses the GPU? Lets hope SL will make Aperture speed improve.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Apple's quite fond of matching Mac OS X releases to the current Mac hardware designs. This is one of the reasons the overall theme (or lack thereof) keeps changing. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see some minor UI tweaks in Snow Leopard. The new UI for QuickTime Player is a perfect example of this transformation - resembles the black border around the recent iMacs, and the LED Cinema Display, no?

With all the changes they keep making, it seems like it'd be a good idea if they would work on a themes manager of some kind and at least let you pick which previous incarnation of the OS X look you prefer. Not all of us are using the latest hardware "looks" and so having the OS change to match something we don't have doesn't make much sense. OS X could have a unified theme manager of some kind. It doesn't matter if the only themes come from Apple so long as some choice is available. I personally kind of preferred the early Aqua look to these steel gun grey metal look everything has now. Even Tiger's drop down menus have a nice transparency lined with blue shaded grids that made it SO much easier to read quickly. But I guess that didn't fit in with the stark grey look they seem to like so much right now.

I certainly hope the final version of Safari 4 at least has preference pane options to select which type of tab system you prefer, etc. Having to do some obscure CLI thing is far from the Mac way of doing things. But that's what it seems to come down to when you don't like the ever-changing "Steve Way".

 

[wrldwzrd89]

With all the changes they keep making, it seems like it'd be a good idea if they would work on a themes manager of some kind and at least let you pick which previous incarnation of the OS X look you prefer. Not all of us are using the latest hardware "looks" and so having the OS change to match something we don't have doesn't make much sense. OS X could have a unified theme manager of some kind. It doesn't matter if the only themes come from Apple so long as some choice is available. I personally kind of preferred the early Aqua look to these steel gun grey metal look everything has now. Even Tiger's drop down menus have a nice transparency lined with blue shaded grids that made it SO much easier to read quickly. But I guess that didn't fit in with the stark grey look they seem to like so much right now.

I certainly hope the final version of Safari 4 at least has preference pane options to select which type of tab system you prefer, etc. Having to do some obscure CLI thing is far from the Mac way of doing things. But that's what it seems to come down to when you don't like the ever-changing "Steve Way".

I couldn't agree with you more, regarding themes, though I have a suspicion Apple's going to save the theme manager support for 10.7. As for your Safari point, I say that choice is good, though I have adjusted to the new interface already and so I'm not likely to experiment with these settings.

I think I'll just have to wait and see on the minimal UI for QuickTime Player in Snow Leopard. I don't know if I like it yet.

 

[Nightkrawler]

http://h4xr.org/jtzh
stacks showing the name of the folder in the title at the top

MP3 Trimming in new quicktime

Exporting movies from new quicktime

- Application stack now by in the dock by default like documents/downloads
- Quicklook from "Open File" finder window works now
- File info window: File detail text can now be selected & copied.
- Perian still works in new Quicktime, just the prefpane isn't 64 bit and requires an restart of system preferences to open it.
- Its possible that old 2006 MBPs wont get 64 bit kernel support (64 bit apps do work) even they have a cpu that supports it (merom).

 

[kolax]

I like the Export option in QuickTime!

Wonder how good quality the exports are.. current exports are rubbish compared to VisualHub.

 

[Master Chief]

With the latest seed of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, Apple has made dramatic changes to QuickTime Player in both interface and features.

I keep looking for the "dramatic changes" but can't really find anything that I'm overexcited about - the update is nice, but that's it.

 

[NT1440]

I keep looking for the "dramatic changes" but can't really find anything that I'm overexcited about - the update is nice, but that's it.

I would say going from the fugly chrome everywhere to a minimalistic UI is quite a change.

 

[Master Chief]

I would say going from the fugly chrome everywhere to a minimalistic UI is quite a change.

Don't get me wrong here, because I like the overall changes, but there's nothing to be over overexcited about - Apple should have done some of this work earlier IMHO.

 

[MacFly123]

Apple literally wrote the book on Human Computer Interaction. I know this because I had to read it when I was getting my degrees in human factors psychology.

Unfortunately, when it came time for OS X they threw the book on the ground, burned it, and put it out with poop.

(Agreeing with MacFly123, above) the new black title bar looks cool enough, if all 10.6 windows are black. On a related note, Why is Safari 4's title bar font different than the rest of OSX? I really, really hope someone remembers to unify everything before Snow Leopard launches. Tiger's 15 different themes annoyed me.

EDIT: is it reasonable to think that maybe Apple would be deliberately trying different window styles in preparation for an aqua makeover? I thought Snow Leopard was supposed to focus on under-the-hood stuff, so probably not.

Apple's quite fond of matching Mac OS X releases to the current Mac hardware designs. This is one of the reasons the overall theme (or lack thereof) keeps changing. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see some minor UI tweaks in Snow Leopard. The new UI for QuickTime Player is a perfect example of this transformation - resembles the black border around the recent iMacs, and the LED Cinema Display, no?

I know Apple is the guru of human interface design, but that is why it is so odd to me that there are so many inconsistencies that even I see and could do better at implementing!

It seems like they are matching the new GUI elements to the hardware but moreover it seems like they are mirroring the iPhone interface onto the Mac, almost as if in preparation for the MacTablet or something, or a new fully multi-touch interface a few years down the road.

Either way Apple, if you are getting rid of Aqua, just freaking finish getting rid of it for crying out loud and make up your mind if you want Marble or black.

Apple is by far years and years ahead of Windows and their 3rd party developers in consistent UI design but still, lets take it even a step further guys!

Oh, and I think that Snow Leopard will focus on under the hood, BUT... I really think that there will be plenty of new features and UI changes and that they set us up to expect only under the hood on purpose so as to relieve themselves from the pressure of features and what happened with Leopard.

Leopard was good for me from the beginning, but it was a bit buggy. I think they have it right this time, focus on performance and stability, and then add features as a nice surprise once the rest is taken care of.

 

[kunze50]

Roll or Mouse over controls are very acceptable but should not appear over the video when in window mode. Controls that fade and reappear around the perimeter in a window and slide to be over when in full screen make sense.

 

[Coroe]

http://h4xr.org/jtzh
Exporting movies from new quicktime

Looks like there will be no new AppleTV on March 24th.

 

[MrCrowbar]

Exporting movies from new quicktime

Can I still export the old way in Quicktime Pro? I like being able to select my codec and parameters. The defaults for youTube, iTunes, etc. usually give sub-bar results compared to manual settings. Visible keyframes, no 2-pass, audio out of sync etc.

I re-encode all the videos from my small Powershot camera as Quicktime Movie, H.264, current FPS, Automatic Keyframes with Frame Reordering, Data rate restricted to 6000 kbits/sec, optimized for Download, Best quality (Multi-Pass). This looks pretty close to the Motion JPEG that the camera delivers but 4 times smaller in file size. And it's quicktime compatible, so I can replace the videos in the iPhoto library by the re-encoded ones without losing the metadata. I'd hate to see that feature go...

 

[wheelhot]

Wow, me likey the new export feature and love the folder stacks cause so far I find it annoying that I can go beyond the folder. Schweet!

 

[Sky Blue]

Looks like there will be no new AppleTV on March 24th.

A made up event has no new made up product? surprising!

 

[Virgil-TB2]

I know Apple is the guru of human interface design, but that is why it is so odd to me that there are so many inconsistencies that even I see and could do better at implementing! ...

What you are forgetting (and those you quoted also), is that UI changes all the time. The main reason Apple decided to go with Unix under the hood and their own graphics on top is they realised that the UI part of any OS is flexible and fluctuating.

They may have wrote the human user interface guidelines, but anyone familiar with their OS's can tell you they did not follow them to the letter even when they were writing them. There likely never will be a "set" appearance and many other groups of designers besides Apple have sat down and tried to codify what should or should not be in a UI with mostly the same shifting incomplete results.

Those guidelines were mostly written by a guy named Bruce Tognazzini who worked at Apple in the early days, but he's just a smart guy who knows a lot about design. It's not like his word is god or anything. He recently wrote an article about how Apple's UI's are too "flat," that they don't scale well and he's really mad at them for the direction they are going in.

Now you may agree with him or with Apple or neither, but there is no one "right way" here. IMO his latest writings read like a bunch of petulant nonsense despite the fact that he is a certified card-carrying genius. No one is right all the time.

Another "genius" pushing back against Apple UI decisions is John Gruber of Daring Fireball fame. He is leading the charge that "click-through" is somehow a horrible horrible thing and Apple should stop doing it. Again, to me, (and others of course) his argument is full of holes and total BS but being against click-through is very popular at the moment, so you will see a lot of writing around the web basically miming his ideas (which he actually borrowed from others anyway).

I guess I'm going on a bit here, but my point is that there is no "one way" with UI design and even the smartest best designers out there neither agree nor always make any sense themselves when criticising Apple's take on the same issues.

 

[cms2]

What you are forgetting (and those you quoted also), is that UI changes all the time. The main reason Apple decided to go with Unix under the hood and their own graphics on top is they realised that the UI part of any OS is flexible and fluctuating.

Absolutely. I think what I and others were arguing is that after some of Apple's past "anything goes" attitude and its resulting every-app-has-its-own-look mishaps, the fear is that Apple will change a bunch of different aspects of the UI and take it in a dozen different directions at once. If QT were black, but finder still gun-metal, and Mail transparent, and iChat in a pink window or something (obviously exaggerating) the overall look of the GUI would be ridiculous, as I felt (just my opinion) Tiger was.

I really don't care what direction Apple takes the UI, as long as it takes the whole UI there. Maybe I'm just anal, but I uninstalled Safari 4 because the font of the title bar was annoyingly out of sink with everything else in OSX.

::: CMS2 realizes that he cares too much about this stuff and blushes :::

 

[tkermit]

With all the changes they keep making, it seems like it'd be a good idea if they would work on a themes manager of some kind and at least let you pick which previous incarnation of the OS X look you prefer.

The groundwork certainly seems to have been laid, already. Don't get your hopes up, though.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

The groundwork certainly seems to have been laid, already. Don't get your hopes up, though.

That brings up a topic/question I haven't heard much about in some time, namely the long-touted but yet-to-be-seen resolution independence. I thought Leopard was supposed to bring it when it first arrived, but it hasn't surfaced. I haven't heard any rumors that it might make its appearance in Snow Leopard either, despite all the talk about internal tweaking instead of new features for it and the high odds that it will ditch PPC support (which means things like the Quad G5 will NEVER seen resolution independence). A LOT of time has passed and I'm afraid Apple has their priorities screwed up as usual. I've heard at least one rumor about Apple laying people off when in fact they are making record profits and should be hiring like mad to keep all their projects running full steam ahead. I'm guessing most of their people have been working on iPhone OS 3.0 (amazing how fast that device's OS and features have progressed in such short amounts of time while things like AppleTV just sit there collecting dust by comparison). Instead, OS projects get delayed, pet projects like AppleTV just sit there for the most part while the iPhone STILL gets all the attention and it'll only get worse if they do lay people off. Maybe they could start with their workforce in China....

I tried a program recently in OS X that uses a black/dark shiny style to its framework and it looks AWESOME. Frankly, I'd PREFER if OS X got away from that boring 'grey' look and went dark shiny black. I guess Vista already went that way to some degree so maybe they'd be afraid of copying its look for a change, but I can't help but feel black pages are easier on the eyes and just look slick. But like I said, if they'd just offer a theme manager, people could choose which look like the prefer. Just having old-school Aqua, Gun-Metal or Black options would be nice.

 

[Bye Bye Baby]

could be good. will just have to wait and see

 

[IronRoses]

Like Windows Vista... Hmm, I wonder who stole it from who? I bet Bill got it (like so many of his other ideas) from something in OS X... Yeah, maybe iPhoto. <shrug>


The New QT Player looks kinda like the current DVD Player app.



+1

Agree completely!

I also care a little what it looks like though.

I agree to, make quicktime the vlc for os x for christ sakes. Make it free too.
Support for all free to use codecs, borderless widnows and for the love of god make it more responcive will you?

Then again it doesn't bother me if Apple limit features even more in Quicktime.
I'll just keep on using VLC

 

[Stormbringer]

I agree with that. The interface looks great, but please let them support "everything" so we can get rid of VLC.

And I also agree they should be consistent in the interface: 100% black or 100% aqua or whatever, as long it's not a mix. Because this overall consistency is one of the big things what make OSX great.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

I agree with that. The interface looks great, but please let them support "everything" so we can get rid of VLC.

And I also agree they should be consistent in the interface: 100% black or 100% aqua or whatever, as long it's not a mix. Because this overall consistency is one of the big things what make OSX great.

Let me see if I have this right. You think VLC is great yet you can't wait to get rid of it? What a slap in the face of the VLC developers....

Maybe it's Quicktime that needs to go. It's outdated, supports diddly-squat that isn't Apple and makes a brand new Mac Pro feel like a Mac Plus. Actually, most of Apple's software does that. iPhoto is ungodly slow. Just watch Finder try to show previews of WMV videos with the Flip4Mac plugin for Quicktime. It's like watching paint dry and then since OS X doesn't permanently buffer the results, it resets all the time and then the paint has to dry all over again. It's a bit faster for M4V files, but hardly fast. XNView on Windows shows previews for all the files INSTANTLY and it's 3rd party software. The Linux file viewer Konqueror shows them about 5x faster, but not instantly. Windows shows most formats immediately as well. Why is Apple's software so darn slow? I hope Snow Leopard works on efficiency because too many OS X routines LACK there.

 

[Stormbringer]

Where did you get that I said VLC is great? I said that it plays "everything", and that's why I use it.

Besides of the interface and other stuff, I want the "native" Apple-products to be the best. Simply because you're done when you install OSX, and you don't have a couple of apps which actually do the same but are a bit different.

So even if VLC was the best thing in the world and the developers have done thousands of hours of research and let us download it for free, I'd still like that the Apple stuff would be better. Not because I don't appreciate the guys from VLC or any other company.

If I'd buy a Mercedes I wouldn't like to buy a TomTom because the internal navigation system is a bit less good, or extra dim lights because Mercedes' lights aren't enough. Same thing with a Mac.

Harmony and simplicity.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Where did you get that I said VLC is great? I said that it plays "everything", and that's why I use it.

I guess you were referring to Quicktime then when you said "it" looks great? Maybe you should write clearer. You said you agreed with the previous poster who was talking about VLC so how can you tell which one you were referring to without already knowing it?

Besides of the interface and other stuff, I want the "native" Apple-products to be the best.

Wanting something to be the best and getting something to be the best are two different things. It's more like wishful thinking.

Simply because you're done when you install OSX, and you don't have a couple of apps which actually do the same but are a bit different.

In other words, you don't want to install 3rd party software, but use a Mac like an "appliance" where it only does what Apple approves/sells/includes? Do you use any 3rd party software or do you just wish Apple would make games and everything else as well?

If I'd buy a Mercedes I wouldn't buy a TomTom because the internal navigation system is a bit less good, or extra dim lights because Mercedes' lights aren't enough. Same thing with a Mac.

Harmony and simplicity.

I think a better comparison would be to say you want whatever radio Mercedes includes with their car even if it's sub-standard like most car manufacturer's stereo systems are (very very few are any good and Bose is not a great brand despite their own horn-tooting). You WISH it came with a great stereo system because you don't want to install a great one yourself, but so far they just won't deliver what you're wishing for. Although, most manufacturer's in-dash GPS suck too and they're VERY VERY expesnive options on most cars ($1000-2000 for something a $200 Garmin does 3x better).

You see I just install whatever works/sounds best and be on my way. My WRX's stereo was "ok" that came with the car. It matched the interior well and it had an in-dash 6-disc CD changer. But my 3rd party replacement has Bluetooth, HD-Radio and Satellite options and a USB port that can take a $28 16GB micro-USB stick and play AAC, MP3 and WMA songs (holds just a "bit" more music than 6 CDs, even at 256kbps rates... about 5-6x more). It's also the same size and so it looks just as good, if not better than the stock radio. And I'm not buying a new car just to get a better stereo.

For the Mac, it's the same thing. I could use Safari, but it sucks in so many areas (extensions mostly) so I use Firefox. iTunes is useful so I use it. Time Machine is annoying (no choice about when and what to back up) so I use Carbon Copy Cloner. Choice is good.