“The latest development build of Mac OS X Leopard [build 9A410] finally tackles issues with consistent style that many say have plagued the Apple software for years,” Aidan Malley reports for AppleInsider.
Malley reports, “While most of the test versions of the future operating system have so far handled only the many bugs still left in its code, this week’s edition allegedly contains the first signs of obvious visual differences between itself and 2005’s Mac OS X Tiger.”
“The brushed-metal look that first appeared in earnest with Panther has almost completely faded away, according to reports. Well-known holdouts for the style, including Finder, Photo Booth, and Safari, have purportedly abandoned the metallic sheen in favor of the simpler, gradiated style that first appeared in Apple Mail 2.0 and later transferred to Leopard’s version of iChat and the more widely available iTunes 7,” Malley reports.
Full article with screenshots and links to more images here.
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I liked the brushed metal.
Me too. Brushed metal was a cool look. Just got to be a bit much when the title bars are big.
I just hated the inconstant styles and pieced together look of Mac OS X. good to hear that’s getting fixed.
To be honest, I’ve never much noticed the differences – I’m too busy using my Mac to get work done.
I think that whatever the appearance of the interface is – peopel wil both like it and hate it… it is a “just is” that will get changed and overlayed, etc… And if the inner workings are half as fab as promised – the appearance will be the last thing on most people’s minds. Unless they are pretty small minded.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” /> Then there will be squillions of letters to the editors about it.
I never liked the brushed metal look, i like the itunes and mail look the best. Thats why i use a prog called UNO , which changes it from brush metal to itunes and mail. Can’t wait for the a consistant look throughout with lepoard
I don’t know why but I have this feeling that what with the unified windows, we’ll see different colour variations. I don’t know why but it always pops into my head when I see the unified look.
Notice the “refresh” button loses it’s angled shadow? All graphics being replaced with gradients and vectors in order to bring in resolution independence. Zooming like on the iPhone. The brushed-metal graphics would blur, the new UI will stay crisp no matter now much it’s stretched.
doesn’t matter to me … gray, brushed metal – looks so similar I could really care less. Just make it run fast.
Yesssssssss! FINALLY!
This is LONG overdue. Seeing constantly, actually inconsistantly appearing window styles has always been irksome. And yes, as a designer also getting work done, I’m sensitive to such visual disparities. Lots of us are, apparently.
Anyway, I like both gradient style and brushed metal window styles… I’ve got a thing for stainless steel. My mountain bike, and kitchen counter top and plumbing fixtures are stainless. The newer gradient style is a little bland, but it probably will work better with resolution independence. Having ALL windows use the same style is STILL overdue.
MDN Magic Word: PROGRESS… exactly!
Why can’t it look more like Windows?
Ok, I was going somewhere with this, but I just upchucked in the waste paper basket. Thank God I missed the wireless keyboard.
Does no one else think total consistency will make it more difficult to distinguish between programs at a glance?
IOW, we now have a delayed, buggy OS that sports a pretty new UI.
Sounds like a certain (p)OS that was launched earlier this year…
I freakin’ hate the scroll bar on iTunes 7! I like the aqua scroll bars that Apple has used since 10.0 much better.
Hope they fix the programs that have the white jaguar horizontal stripes visible, when in the background like mail.
Jesus, that was 4 years ago. It is especially annoying on a 30-inch display.
JJ
Oh, you mean that certain OS that took five years to release the latest Service Pack for, including one year used in an desperate, emergency effort to stop rampant virus attacks? Yeah, I can already see the similarities with the Leopard delay.
Hideous. I would wait 6 months to have Apple change back to the brushed-metal look.
That was about time. Apple definetely needs to get its HIG together.
Having switched a few months ago from Windows XP, the brushed metallic interface in Tiger was a cool, new look.
Is abandoning that for…a flat gray color…really a good thing?
Is gray cool now?
While I can perhaps see that neat-freaks like to have everything consistent and the same, I prefer my windows to be clearly different because it makes them much easier to identify when there are many windows open and overlapping. I don’t really like GarageBand’s wood grain look, but it does make it easy to distinguish from iTunes, Quicktime, Adium, and my E-mail, which all look different.
Is there a best of both worlds? Yes. It would be nice if Apple would give the user a simple ability to tint each app just a bit differently, perhaps allowing them to adjust the colours; one as greyish, another greenish, another bluish, etc.
I think the real reason behind these changes are that they remind the user of Windows. When you are focussing on getting people to switch, that’s a big issue. It gives them a feeling of familiarity. To a Mac user like me it’s blasphemy, but I won’t leave because of it, so Apple wins on both sides.
The gradients will make for faster screen draws than brushed metal.
“Lots of us?” Not likely. As a designer, the slight inconsistencies have never been a problem for me or anyone on any of my design teams. Matter of fact, some variation is a plus when navigating through many windows.
I hate brushed metal. Glad it’s gone. The current iTunes look is fine by me.
I’ve noticed a gradual introduction of depressing gray and more blandness in Tiger, perhaps to appeal to the corporation types.
I fully expect the three colored window buttons to disappear soon.
I get depressed just thinking about it.
🙁
http://mytop-in.net/go/030207160042.html
.
Yeah, I’ve always thought Apple has made a mistake by not going with the glass look properly. Now we are back to flat grey. God, you could do that in Windows 3.1, but who would have? I really like the touches of black glass that you see rarely on a few Apple apps that has been copied (yet again) by Windows and apps like Toast 8.
I am still holding out for colourisation, which may be possible with this grey look, as some have already posted. But again, the problem is that idea is 15 years old. I want soemthing cool and glassy and that I don’t want to change!!!!
I too liked the brushed metal.
OMG, it was delayed just for non brushed metal look?
I like the new look at alot, it fits together really well and sort of stays out of your way better. The grey is darker and stands out against the rest of the window. It all makes the colors appear more vivid in apps and icons.
Have I mentioned Safari’s new Find? It’s beautiful. It highlights all instances of a string and colors the current focus orange, while greying out the rest of the page. No more searching for that one tiny little highlighted sting on a wordy, busy page (like MDN, for instance).
It’s coming along very nicely. =)
I liked the brushed metal for certain apps. I feel that Apple could go as far as to give users a method of easy customization where people could select the color, texture, and button setup for each app or for all. It would be nice to set up OSX to have a different color for each app so that its easier to see whats open and track things easier. I would love for Apple to buy shapeshifter and add it to OSX so people could customize the look of their machine the way the linux desktops allow.
UNO rocks! Been using it since day one. Brushed metal was cool for awhile, but it has appeared dated to me for some time now.
I love the look of Mail. Xtorrent and Acquisition too. Unified is the way to go. I can’t wait to see core animation integrated into the UI as well.
m
Thanks for the input Cuber… WTF?
WOW!!!! What amazing, revolutionary news. With this kind of news, no one has the right to be pissed about Apple’s endless delays and nearly complete abandonment of the Mac platform. Oh my gosh, brushed metal to flat gray. Now I can see why Apple can’t help but fall behind with this kind of amazing advance. Finally, a SECRET FEATURE revealed!!!! Sure was worth the wait don’t ya think?
actually, this is scary…we got the glass look with the pinstripes – the hardware matched accordingly. Then, we got brushed metal – the hardware matched accordingly(for the pro line at least).
So, if we’re getting this gray crap does that mean we get dull grey boxes to go with it?
If that’s the case, dell has been “innovating” this whole time!
If we dont like the interface look then buy shapeshifter and make your own thing and be done with it.
i use it and it works
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What we need is apples kameleon computer and then have an interface that changes with different light and you can change it as you want.
they have been working on this kameleon computer for years now when are they going to release it?
Here’s an excerpt from a comment on the AppleInsider forum:
A few sources have popped up on various message boards recently, and the speculation is that, given the switch to vector graphics and resolution independence, this new look is just set up for a proper theming engine in Leopard, allowing the user to dramatically customize the looks of their applications. Someone went so far as to say that Leopard would support dynamic theming, allowing windows they change their ‘theme’ dynamically, say to match the time of day, or to pulse red when showing an alert. He based his speculation on some prior patents granted to Apple.
Pretty interesting. I’ve been thinking of an interface that changes the lighting and shadows with outside influences like the time of day or weather or something, but don’t know if it would necessarily be useful. On the eye-candy front it would be really beautiful though.
That would be really cool– and useful in some instances.
Resolution Independent Interface = everything has to look simpler for it to work more smoothly on slow Macs. The new interface is all about it.
The “brushed metal” look never bothered me and I liked the rounded corners on the windows. More important, I liked the icons in the left-hand navigation column. These new ones are somewhat lame – like the ones in the latest iTunes. Are they trying to appeal to the windows crowd?
DLMeyer – the Voice of G.L.Horton’s Stage Page Pod cast
The WinTards are out in full farce tonight!
MDN,
Would you please pull posts where the person is just hawking for business. Today’s examples are: mac user and Cuber.
I just hope that the hue of the app windows could be chanced so that when I use Exposé I would have little more cue than 25 identical gray boxes. Then we could start fighting over more meaningful things like which color is proper for Safari (orange of course), iPhoto (yellow), iTunes (shiny black) etc.
I am a mac fanboy and I still HATE that Leopard is delayed. So why dont you hardcore mac fanboys lick my anus? There comes a time when mac fanboys need to bend over and smell the coffee i.e. stop being a fan and wake up to the shitty reality that apple really is NOT the perfect company.
xodok.infostore.org
I’m a pretty big mac fan, but there are a lot things of about Leopard that I’m not digging. First of all, the delay. That was a huge strike in my book, they are really going to have to make up for that. I swear, if iPhone and Leopard are not reasonably flawless when released, then Apple and I are going to have some serious beef.
Another thing bugging me about Leopard is this bland grey style. It just looks lame. And the scroll bars in iTunes 7, that dark blue / gray color they picked was just horrible. I will say one good thing about the new UI is that it’s far from distracting. After a few days of getting use to the new interface, your eyes avoid the gray areas and focus more on what’s going on. I’m sure I must have wasted many seconds in OS X just having my eyes drawn to the brushed metal texture for brief moments. But apple is sacrificing a lot of style for little productivity gain. I really hope their is more to it, that the gray interface they have now is just a place holder for a really well done interface.
As a Windows user the only brushed metal effect I ever see is from QuickTime. Presumably this piece of crap works a lot better on a Mac than on a PC. I’m surprised that Apple hasn’t taken account of the fact that this is one of the few Mac-type experiences Windows users have. To begin with it acts like a piece of spyware as soon as you download it – trying to hijack all your codecs by default and taking up residence in the System Tray to hog resources. (The only way to remove it from there is through system reconfiguration). I always dread when I come across a file that needs QuickTime because know it’s going to be so slooooooow, and often doesn’t respond at all. If it weren’t the fact that a large – though thankfully decreasing – number of web designers use Macs, this application would have turned belly-up years ago. Anyway, to come to the point, I for one will be glad when they replace the over-designed brushed metal effect.
Actually Wendy, Apple is just being honest and showing your windoze people what OS X is really like, i.e. it is slow compared to what you are used to. But it works better thna what you are used to. Simple and honest.
consistency is the key
Wendy, your should read roughly drafted and Apple’s Quicktime saga with Microsoft.
“If it weren’t the fact that a large – though thankfully decreasing – number of web designers use Macs . . .”
Wendy, screw you. Stupid twit.
@”Simple and honest”
“Actually Wendy, Apple is just being honest and showing your windoze people what OS X is really like, i.e. it is slow compared to what you are used to.”
Are you friggin’ kidding me? OS X SLOWER than Windows? Umm… NO.
Wendy, window. Window, Wendy. You know what to do…
If I owned an iMac I’d be less worried about changes to the GUI, more worried that I owned a computer which looked like my Mother’s 1970s bathroom mirror.
@ Wendy
Your mother must have been way ahead of her time.
I switched from a Sony Core Duo laptop with Windows XP to a 20-inch C2D iMac in February. Love the screen and tiny space this sleek machine takes up on the desktop. Also love the speed with which it works compared to Windows XP.
I recently reinstalled the operating system on the laptop after cleaning the drive of my stuff to prepare it for sale, and was stuck by how kludgey Windows XP looks compared to OS X Tiger.
I’ve used Windows all my working life, but I’d never want go back.
@Edhy: You said “Are you friggin’ kidding me? OS X SLOWER than Windows? Umm… NO.” – if you compare Windows and MacOS on the same platform, then Windows XP is far more responsive (I haven’t tried Vista) – you also rarely see the hourglass compared with the spinning beachball on MacOS. However, is it nicer to use? No. But the original poster was accurate – MacOS X is slower to use, but nicer. At a technical level, it also has by far the worst multithreading performance out of MacOS, Linux and Windows – I think ArsTechnica has a good detailed article on that. There’s a reason why Apple manages to make MacOS faster with every point release … there remain many areas for improvement!
If your mother would stop look looking into mirrors, you could stop sweeping up broken glass.
@Edhy: you must reinstall windows a lot, because that is the only way Windows can be faster then Mac. It only takes a couple months for the registry to get clogged, then their is the spyware, and then slowly but surely the OS just destroys itself (rather quickly actually if you use one of the less stable versions like 95, 2000, ME.) Slowly destroying itself… reinstall and it runs fast! Slowly destroying itself …. wtf is rtqwif.dll? …. Yeah, I’m never switching back.
@Wendy: If you look back, Quicktime was at one point a truly amazing and breakthrough technology, being the first to bring quality video onto the computer screen, and is still one of the best today. Many people in the industry have a lot of respect for Quicktime. But I can understand your complaints about how poorly it seems implemented in Windows, it is a rather big program piled on top of the Windows heap. Yes, it definitely runs smoother on the Mac. A little Windows tip for you: download VLC player for windows, it’s a lightweight open-source player that can handle Quicktime, Windows Media, and just about any other video or audio file under the sun. It’s very smooth, doesn’t have that bulky after taste.
Sorry Edhy, I misdirected that comment. I was referring to the various blokes claiming windows is faster, over looking the hours they waste dealing with malware.
I was a Wendy once.
Please note that this fool by the name of “Cuber” who keeps posting stupid links to shady software sites is not me!
Blaspheming the name, he is.
I have the misfortune of using Winblows every day at work. It is XP SP2 on a 2.4 GHz. P4 HP machine. Tiger on my 450 MHz G4 Cube is noticably faster than XP! The difference is even greater on my Powerbook. My only complaint is that Winblows web browsers render faster than any Mac web browser does. Otherwise, XP chokes all the time.
I have to say I don’t understand what the gripe is with Windows users and QuickTime…to me Real Player is much worst in every respect…
Anyway, I have never had the issues that most Windows users complain about with QuickTime, but I have seen their issues first-hand…and as such don’t discredit their claims. Luckily, I just never have had to experience them…
Apple is now kicking butt at NAB. Like I said a while back and was knocked down for, they have a new format to deal with hi-res video. Hm. Such satisfaction.
Peterson, I’ll go for that back rub now.
–r
I think we can all agree that Real Player sucks
I prefer the combed-metal interface. With Brylcreem…..
Yes I understand brushed metal eats more space on iTunes and iPhoto, but hey, it didn’t eat screen space on Safari!! (compare the 2 screenshots yourself, it’s exactly the same).
Why do they have to remove it? I personally think Safari is soo identical with brushed metal. It’s cooler than cheap gay plastic.
Anyway.. hurry up, Apple!
the metal look is so dated. no doubt about it. i think the unified look is better slightly lighter than the latest leopard builds, such as you get with UNO. i think mail is one of the best loking apps in my opinion that shows this infied look, it doesnt look bland at all.
…and yea as if windows media player isnt an absolute dog. its one of the mosy unreliable, frustrating, badly designed examples of software ive ever seen implemented, who designed it again?
Finally. It took them much longer than I thought it would…maybe they couldn’t decided which style they liked the best…
I like the brushed metal look. Is there any way to return iTunes to the brushed metal look like Safari still has?
Shapeshifter does not change iTunes.
Any suggestions?
I still cannot understand what you like about the new iTunes texture. Because, to me it just looks like plain cardboard. Are you people homeless or something? Do you live in a cardboard boxes?
I always liked the brushed metal look. Not just in iTunes, but in certain pieces I decorate my house with. I do not decorate my house with CARDBOARD BOXES.
And, I certainly don’t live in one. Do you?