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243 Comments
- Adys, on 04/23/2008, -15/+156I wonder, I mean Mac OS X started a lot of design trends - aqua/glass particularly. Maybe Web 2.0 wouldn't have been so ridiculously glossy.
- lieutenantmudd, on 04/23/2008, -2/+82I always found Web 2.0 sites to have really flat elements. Look at some of the best looking, most popular sites, Digg, Twitter, Facebook. All are pretty and not the least bit glossy.
- friarcrazy, on 04/23/2008, -11/+80"This is the first evidence of three-digit intelligence at Apple I've seen yet." Classic Jobs.
- inactive, on 04/23/2008, -12/+64This wasn't a close call. The design problems at Apple during the years that Steve wasn't there, just goes to show you the boring nature of most programmers and coincidentally, most geeks. They just don't know how to make things look beautiful and more importantly, they don't want things beautiful. Geeks want features, even if it's badly implemented. That's why they can never understand or predict the popularity of anything Apple sells.
- Flummoxer, on 04/23/2008, -5/+39I grew up on Macs in the 90s, and I prefer the new GUI to that stupid bar in the middle of the screen.
- PainToad, on 04/23/2008, -5/+37...and thus Vista nearly looked like MacOS 8 instead of OSX.
- inactive, on 04/23/2008, -6/+33one of the simplest features i miss from classic is the old collapse feature where the window bar would stay in the same spot, not sure if any plugin does that in osx
- diggSJaustin, on 04/23/2008, -5/+31A big huge ***** who got/gets big huge results.
- dullnation, on 04/23/2008, -0/+25I hereby award you geek status.
You are now a geek in denial. - inactive, on 04/23/2008, -4/+26so that explains why linux is so ugly
- inspecality, on 04/23/2008, -12/+34I'm not going to digg any more MurphyMac stuff. still shaking my head over that stupid comment.
- Herolint, on 04/23/2008, -1/+23The only feature I miss from pre-OS X days is the ability to roll up a window, but Exposé pretty much removes the need for that anyway.
You mentioned gloss... I'm running Leopard with all default settings, other than I made my dock a darker gray color so I could see the glowing blue balls easier, and I don't see much in the way of gloss. The dock is reflective and the buttons at the top of the windows are a bit glossy, but I don't think any reasonable person could call it overly glossy, or irritating enough to need to theme it. It's a very beautiful place to work everyday, I think.
Now, lets list what makes OS X better than its predecessors...
BASH
Unix
X
Far superior APIs
64-bit (now anyway)
...
I could list more but I have to leave. - Aupajo, on 04/23/2008, -1/+21Because it's the exact same bunch of people that have Dugg the previous hundred thousand Scientology related articles. Digg's system tries to prevent people from gaming the system this way. Don't like the algorithm? Give Reddit a whirl.
- ryanhayn, on 04/23/2008, -25/+44Damn, Jobs really is an *****.
- system7, on 04/23/2008, -0/+19The people who like to pour over the minute details of a product, pixel by pixel, are usually squashed by marketing and management types. It helps quite a bit if you have such a person at the head of your company.
- schoate09, on 04/23/2008, -0/+19Anyone remember Mac OS X Server 1.0? Released in 1999, this server OS was the first migration to the OS X codebase and carried the "platinum" Mac OS 8 look and feel.
- Lutremi, on 04/23/2008, -4/+23The best usually aren't glossy, it's just the rest of them overuse stuff like shiny tables, gradients and the aqua look.
- Jambi, on 04/23/2008, -4/+22http://unsanity.com/haxies/wsx should do what you're looking for. Why this wasn't built into the UI by default, I'll never know.
- platypibri, on 04/23/2008, -2/+19If the green button just filled the screen with the window, that'd be perfect.
- MacTyler, on 04/23/2008, -5/+21Only complaint I have on OS X is that f***ing green button. I swear people try to explain it to me, but in everyday usage it NEVER does what I want it to do. Other than that I would die without Exposé.
- TheFinaleofSeem, on 04/23/2008, -1/+15I used the old IIgs UI (System 5 and 6) and every version of the Mac OS from OS 7.1 to 10.5. I have to say that I don't miss a damn thing from the days of the classic UI. I had a little transplant shock in 10.0 of course, but soon found that I loved it. The "glossy crap" generally isn't pretty simply to be pretty (like Vista), but functionally pretty, ie, the genie effect sucking the window into the dock so you can see exactly where it went. I never missed a thing you listed (and don't understand some complaints. What about the menu bar?), but OS X currently has a FAR superior UI. Jobs was smart to do what he did. Pull the stick out of the mud and move on.
- Kanidia, on 04/23/2008, -2/+16If only the Microsoft design team had an ***** that leads them.
- TheFinaleofSeem, on 04/23/2008, -2/+16Yep, but he's an ***** who knows how to get the job done right almost all the damn time. Say what you like about his personality, but he's a ***** brilliant businessman.
- solid12345, on 04/23/2008, -0/+11I had a conversation with a friend who is a web designer, myself being a graphic designer.
I complained that clients want me to program them a website as well as design it. He complained they want him to design a website as well as program it. We both agreed clients are ***** who can't recognize sometimes it is better for 2 men to do the job instead of expecting us to be a jack of all trades, specialty people! - HonoredMule, on 04/23/2008, -1/+12I see a lot more pastels than glossiness.
- inactive, on 08/28/2008, -5/+16what about that whole "being released years before vista" thing?
- alienpopcorn, on 04/23/2008, -0/+10OSX pubic beta available Sept. 13, 2000
- dullnation, on 04/23/2008, -0/+10The original os x beta DID run on hardware similar to the specs you listed there (obviously on an older g3 though)
- so1omon, on 04/23/2008, -0/+10Ummmm... How could you NOT know that OSX was NeXT-step? It's not like there's ever been any secret about it. It's the reason OSX is worth a damn.
- platypibri, on 04/23/2008, -0/+10Oh,and what, Billy Boy didn't buy DOS AFTER he sold it to IBM? You are just ignorant.
- kenobi, on 04/23/2008, -0/+10the green button is "zoom" and is defined (or can be re-defined) by each application. so if a certain application thinks the "zoom" or "maximize" button should do something other than fill the entire screen, it overrides the default behavior. ie Safari, only maximizes the vertical space...
not saying its the right or wrong thing to do, just saying how the code is laid out.. :) - TheFinaleofSeem, on 04/23/2008, -1/+11Yes, OS X is missing many features that OS 9 had...and fulfilled the need with different, better features, ie, eliminating the need for zipping a window into a bar with the Dock, Spaces, and Expose. Get your stick out of the mud already.
- platypibri, on 04/23/2008, -2/+11You didn't have enough to pull it off. Sorry. More subtle would have done it, I think.
- Mardala, on 04/23/2008, -0/+9I wouldn't call it a close call. Pre - alpha stage in anything is far from near release.
- paulb0t, on 04/23/2008, -5/+14/s?
- inkswamp, on 04/23/2008, -1/+10The Classic Mac UI was amazing in its day, but that was a different time when hard drives were measured in 100s of megabytes, most files were small enough to fit on a floppy and people weren't storing their entire lives in photos and video on their machines. I remember how outdated the old Mac UI felt back in the early 2000s and was eager to see something newer and better thought out that allowed for faster file navigation (I loved the folder navigation that Windows had and wished it had been in the Mac.) I never understood the outcry from so many Mac users when they first saw OS X's UI. I took to it immediately and never looked back. OS X's UI isn't perfect, but for the needs of current users, it's light-years ahead of the classic Mac OS.
- virtualball, on 04/23/2008, -0/+9He wasn't saying that at all. He's saying there are elements from a legacy OS that he likes as well as elements from a current OS that he likes. You, my friend, are an idiot :)
- robopuppy, on 04/23/2008, -3/+12Alright, I'm sort of confused I guess. All 5 of us Mac users that were interested in knowing about Apple's future projects know that there was a precursor to OS X based off of NeXT that was not OS X at all (and had a cooler name, Rhapsody). I assume that's what they're talking about here, because that WAS around the OS 8 days, whereas obviously OS X was developed in the OS 9 era. I think I still have several builds of it even. For developer purposes only. Of course.
- macattacks10, on 04/23/2008, -1/+9It's supposed to make it as big as it needs to be to fit all the content that's in the window on the screen and back.
- drlha, on 04/23/2008, -0/+8You're still on Jaguar?
- mrsteveman1, on 04/23/2008, -2/+10Linux is ugly because GTK sucks, horribly
- leamanc, on 04/23/2008, -0/+8I prefer the OS X GUI now, especially how it's evolved since the Panther days. After being initially wary, I've grown to love the Leopard GUI (since we can now turn off the translucent menu bar and disable the 3D Dock by putting it on the side). But in the early days of OS X, I still preferred the Classic OS UI. There was too much gloss and too many pinstripes in 10.0-10.2. That and the GUI was so horribly unresponsive.
Mac OS X Server 1.x or Rhapsody, if you can find either one of them, will give you an idea of the GUI talked about in this article. I didn't think it was half bad, especially considering the early "blind a cubist painter" style of 10.0-10.2. It had the classic Platinum look but some of the interface usability enhancements we now enjoy in OS X. - therightclique, on 04/23/2008, -7/+15yes. yes it is.
- TheFinaleofSeem, on 04/23/2008, -0/+8Doesn't really bother me. Expose and Spaces have essentially eliminated the need for it anyway. It was handy for one window, but got really ugly if you had several (or more) zipped up at the same time.
- TheFinaleofSeem, on 04/23/2008, -1/+9Um, no, idiot, the guy's job was to basically patch the OS 8 UI onto NeXTStep. There were a few demos, but it wasn't his job to implement them. Jobs called everyone in charge of the design an idiot (managers, coders, etc), then told the guy to do a redesign. Read the damn article.
- system7, on 04/23/2008, -0/+7It's not the glossy look that's the important point here (Apple has always updated the look of the OS between releases) but the fact that they decided to overhaul the UI outright, taking the best from both Classic Mac and NEXTSTEP worlds, and leaving the cruft behind. Even little stuff like reorganization of the menu bar and a standard keyboard shortcut for application preferences are important.
I'm sure there are people who miss the classic Mac UI conventions, but for me the most compelling aspects of OS X are the stuff inherited from NEXTSTEP. Although, there's an almost equal amount of important UI concepts that came from the Classic Mac side as well. - TheFinaleofSeem, on 04/23/2008, -0/+7You could run up to 10.2 on a 120mhz 604 processor with a hack. It didn't run well, but it did run. A little more RAM than 128MB and maybe a Rage 128 and it was actually somewhat usable.
- Balanced, on 04/23/2008, -0/+7I think you meant public. I hope you meant public.
- mrsteveman1, on 04/23/2008, -0/+7I think he means translucent window title bars just to be pretty, in some cases it makes things much harder to use unless you color it right.
- fangorious, on 04/23/2008, -1/+7abandoned both [NeXTSTEP and OS 9]? How much of the Cocoa API is "NS..."? What do you think the NS stands for?
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