The theme is still bloody Aqua, complete with crystal sausages, which is extremely disappointing. And unexpected. I had counted on seeing at least the iTunes scroll bars.

What a bummer.

Bloody hell, and the menus have been made MORE transparent! Much more. Jaguar rides again.

The menus more transparent? I'd really like to be a fly on the wall when someone was at a UI meeting making the case for why this change was needed. I can understand a difference in aesthetic tastes. Some people like crystal sausages and some don't, but both at least plausibly can do the job. But do we need to see what's behind a menu? I've never understood that.

Ah yes!

"OS X Leopard is Here! More of the Same --- Only Worse!"

Order yours now for only $599.99 and feel really screwed when we reduce to the price to $149 two weeks from now! Get in on the digital fun!

quote:

Originally posted by BN:
The menus more transparent? I'd really like to be a fly on the wall when someone was at a UI meeting making the case for why this change was needed. I can understand a difference in aesthetic tastes. Some people like crystal sausages and some don't, but both at least plausibly can do the job. But do we need to see what's behind a menu? I've never understood that.

AFAIK transparent menubar can be switched off/on. What a miracle!
Transparency for the sake of transparency is simply lousy. Non-professional. A Joke. An insult. Was so in 10.0. Is still this way and still stinks. Sure, it doesn't hurt but it's of NO USE at all. Aaaah, it hurts, i lied. My braincells are hurt by this rotten apeshit.
Well, anyway, let's wait for Leopard and see what kind of shit will hit the fan.

I would be VERY pleased when Apple finally realizes that people have VERY different tastes and needs (No, a little more than "graphite" color, look it's "PRO" now :-) ). Therefore some may prefer crystal sausages, 256x256 icons, widget hell and all-time-bullshit-fx all over the desktop. Other may prefer NO FX AT ALL, instant speedy UI (because they don't need to see windows float from here, zoom in from there, etc. etc. At least i don't want to see all this shit.)

But i have my doubts. Because Steve is still in control. Steve is always right. It's scary.

ps. Honestly, OS X is ripe for some more mature visual prefpanels. Something like Unsanity Windowshade, Transparency control (system-wide), MIGHTY Fonts prefpanel (of course) and on top a theming-prefpanel would be great. Hello, Steve? Too proud of your cheesy 1995 UI-Design?

Anyway, i'll wait til Leopard and then order a MBP. I still want this POS OS. :-) LOL!

AFAIK transparent menubar can be switched off/on. What a miracle!

Wow. That would be a start. It may have taken six years to get here, but now I feel a bit like thalo. The Maclash is just around the corner. What next, user control of fonts in the Finder? That's almost too much to wish for, like not having to stand in line for bread. This is just like trying to break up the Eastern Communist Bloc. That wall will come down, but it can take a lot of time and cost a lot of lives in the meantime. But it will happen. A lot of people have been digging tunnels under that wall with various shareware utilities. Sometimes they've been shot down when Apple changed the code in one of their "upgrades" (cheesy quotations marks intentional).

But we shall overcome, baby.

quote:

"OS X Leopard is Here! More of the Same --- Only Worse!"

Bwahahahahahahaha!

Thank god you can switch the transparent menubar off. I hate using transparency in menus and dialogs. I want those bisteringly clear, readable, and opaque.

The death of brushed metal, crystal sausages, and (most) stripes is cause for celebration. But I'll really soil myself with joy when candy fucking buttons go bye-bye. I absolutely can't stand the window widgets. I have utter contempt for them. I'd rather have nothing up there, just click on that corner of the title bar blindly and hope I hit either close, minimize, or zoom. The OS would probably disobey me just as much without any widget as it does now.

My pet peeve is FX for no REASON. At least genie-suck and magnification have reasons behind them. Transparency doesn't. There's no need for something important to be see through so we can see something less important behind it. That's just silly.

I'm hoping eventually the Finder interface will start looking more like some of Apple's high end pro apps for Movies and Photography. Darker, less nonsense. I mean, I do like lighter greys and graphites, but I'd settle for dark greys too, because they allow me to concentrate more on color work.

But holy crap I am sick to fucking death of Aqua blue. Sick to death of those horrible, horrible labels.

quote:

But we shall overcome, baby.

May i mimic smithz the pessimistic right here?

We propably have 3 choices for menubar: completely transparent, a little less transparent, semi-transparent. (In similar tradtition to dock-fx -> genie, other but NOT anything like NO EFFECT)

Well fonts, right now we already have those awesome powerful control about the fonts: 10pt - 16pt. A miracle! You still want more? Why, it's just cool. Steve delivered. <headshot=on>

I want N O F U C K I N G E F F E C T S!

Well fonts, right now we already have those awesome powerful control about the fonts: 10pt - 16pt. A miracle! You still want more? Why, it's just cool. Steve delivered.

That is like first-rate sarcasm right there.

quote:

That is like first-rate sarcasm right there.

I'm sorry but i'm drunk, at least a little.

ps. Good point, what about those fisher-price toy-prince labels? Will they change in 10.5? Maybe a few additional colors? Whooeee!

Nobody mentioned the Dock.

Look how the icons are now sitting on top of the transparency which is angled at the ends to give it a 3D converging lines affect.

smithz beer I presume.

Rico, i'm still (or again) addicted to beer but right now i'm enjoying some red wine, bordeaux.
It's semi-transparent and shining in spectacular red tones.

What will you follow that up with some Absinthe.

Here is a new feature for TextEdit:

quote:

# Print Header and Footer

Print page numbers, the date, and the document title on each page of a TextEdit document.

Markles MWP files might have some life left yet.

I hope HELL for Steve Jobs is one giant coverflow, that you just keep thumbing through, never finding salvation.

Yeah, and the Dock has REFLECTION too... ooooh, things reflect on its glasslike surface. JUST LIKE COVERFLOW reflects!

I hate to say it, but wasn't the fucking APPLICATION MENU in the legacy, just so much better, when you had to see what was running?

I still think the Dock should exist IN the menubar, where the system menu icons are now. There should be no difference between those, and docked items.

All controls at the top, baby. That's the ticket.

Text highlight color: I want black. With the text dropped out to white. Circa late 1980's. That was just so much more accurate to work with.

Oh god, that label graphic made me cringe. But that's not the half of it. When you SELECT that folder, what do you get? Your highlight color, but with a stupid purple bullet around... the disclosure triangle? Huh?

Remember when X-Men used to try to tell me that I was wrong when I said labels were the way they were because Apple programmers were lazy, and that they COULDN'T mask to complex shapes in OS X? Well, sorry guys, it's still true. That's why we have roundrect icon surrounds, and idiotic things like triangle label bullets (where the triangle isn't even CENTERED in the bullet).

In icon view, labels are even worse. The select state is ridiculous, with that stupid line around the text surround. I swear, when I select something, I can barely READ the icon label if the item is color coded with labels. And when you go to change the TEXT of some icon label, all labeling disappears. Stupid. In the old days, since your icon was tinted, you'd know you were editing the text icon label of something labeled with color.

Less was so more with legacy labels. They were great. Now? In list view they look highlighted, not labeled. I can't find a single highlight color that works now. I use stock graphite, but really nothing is pleasing.

We need dark highlight colors that ALWAYS drop the text out to white. Accurately.

Labels need to be totally scrapped.

quote:

Originally posted by RicoX:
What will you follow that up with some Absinthe.

Rico, you made me remember a few plans i had. Getting some quality absinthe (look here for our english speaking friends) from switzerland. This stuff is IMHO just awesome. Shame on you!

Thalo, i agree in every point. I think they can do everything in OS X (aka "Most advanced OS") but the UI-Designers are obviously on some strange path these YEARS.
Labels are an insult, get rid of that unholy gradients all over the place. HAVE the guts to serve stuff plain and simple. Typography must be perfect, it's the stuff WE READ. <sigh>

I hope HELL for Steve Jobs is one giant coverflow, that you just keep thumbing through, never finding salvation.

That is VERY funny.

Speaking of absinthe, they had a pretty good program on that just the other day on the History Channel. Looks like something they would drink on Star Trek. But I'd love to try it.

I was on an absinthe kick a while back. Mostly because of some psycho art chick who thought it was cool. It's actually quite tasty. You can get the same idea from DRY Ouzo. Not the sweet. It's like licorice rocket fuel, that clouds up as you add water or ice. Though in the case of Ouzo it's milky white. Absinthe is a sickly halloween green. But absinthe has wormwood extract that's supposed to make you nuts or hallucinate. In Toulouse-Lautrec's day they thought the stuff was like heroin. All it made me was regular drunk, I didn't feel addicted or notice any druggy effects. I didn't opt for the ceremonial sugar cube version. I thought it was more manly dry. But it's quite flavorful if you love licorice.

My problem with anisette or Sambuca is that it's just too damn sweet, so absinthe takes care of that. And even if you have one sugar cube with your absinthe, it's still not going to be nearly as sweet as those other syrupy, similarly flavored liqueurs.

quote:

HAVE the guts to serve stuff plain and simple. Typography must be perfect, it's the stuff WE READ.

How did I miss that? I must admit that I don't always get a chance to swallow every word. But those two sentences would be the first lines of any mission statement we wrote if we ever stormed Cupertino like they stormed the Bastille and implemented our own rules.

quote:

The menus more transparent? I'd really like to be a fly on the wall when someone was at a UI meeting making the case for why this change was needed.

Designer: "OK, now let's get rid of those stupid transparent menus."

Saint Steven: "No, we can't do that."

Designer: "Why not, O exalted one?"

Saint Steven: "Because that's just what Brad and thalo want us to do."

Designer: "So, O Most High?"

Saint Steven: "I wouldn't give 'em the satisfaction."

Designer: "Then what is your wish, Your iPodship?"

Saint Steven: "Make them MORE transparent."
.
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This message has been edited. Last edited by: Markle,