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Mac OS X Theme Change in Newest Leopard Build

macrumors.com — An earlier article reported that Leopard Build 9A410 had been seeded to developers. The most obvious visual change in the newest build is a shift away from "Brushed Metal" which Apple uses in many applications such as Safari and Finder. Screenshots of the new theme show a simpler look.

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  • zachlutz, on 10/12/2007, -96/+6Sooo... just because it's different doesn't mean it's better. ***** Apple for changing something, "just cuz." There's no way this appearance wasn't considered when they originally chose to go with brushed metal in 10.3. It seems as with each revision, the UI is becoming more "refined." Another way of saying it is that it's becoming more like OS 9's Platinum interface with every subsequent revision. Here's to innovation, Apple!

    *** Apple, I'm holding you to a higher standard because you ARE an innovative company! DON'T pull this kind of *****! Of course you can do better! ***
    • shazbot, on 10/12/2007, -46/+6You can most likely toggle the view back to the old way. It is Mac after all.
    • msgyrd, on 10/12/2007, -5/+37On a brand new Mac with 10.4, open up Mail, Safari and iTunes. You'll notice there are 3 different 'themes'. Safari has the brushed steel look, Mail has a white/grey pinstripe, and iTunes has the sleek white look.

      A unified theme across the entire OS is a good thing, I don't know why you're complainning about this change.
    • drlha, on 10/12/2007, -9/+22shazbot: You clearly don't know much about Macs!
    • DaffyDuck, on 10/12/2007, -3/+23Personally, I like having different apps with different looks. It makes it easier to quickly identify them with multiple windows open. It also keeps things interesting. When everything looks the same, the interface is going to feel old much more quickly IMO.
    • Refrag, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Shrimpdesign, let's hope you're right!
    • rasterbator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Maybe they are unifying the theme for another reason, like a Theme Manager in System Preferences? Shhh...
  • pathetik, on 10/12/2007, -4/+35I like the round edges
    • FunkyChicken, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1What rounded edges?
    • bradleyland, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6A note in the article points out that the square corners are an artifact of the Leopard screenshot tool, as other screenshots show rounded corners.
    • dbr_onix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"A note in the article points out that the square corners are an artifact of the Leopard screenshot tool, as other screenshots show rounded corners."
      Isn't that the *exact* same problem Uno has? Not sure about other applications, but I know Uno causes the Quicktime viewer to have square corners - An "artifact of the Leopard screenshot tool" is a silly explaination..
  • RexMaxus, on 10/12/2007, -33/+6Stop me when I'm wrong, but doesn't OSX look like that now?

    Finder had a different sidebar, but I did that to mine by mistake one day (I didn't like it much)

    Everything else looked about the same as now, just darker.





    Dugg for Apple!
    /I'm a fanboy and I know it
    • asuraci, on 10/12/2007, -15/+2OSX looks like that with SmoothUno or UNO applied, but by default it's a horrid "brushed metal" look.
  • clesch, on 10/12/2007, -5/+13about time!

    anything consistent that replaces the current glossy white/brushed metal/pinstripe/grey/black-mess works for me.
    • mfearby, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6And the addition of an address bar to Finder wouldn't go astray, either. Having to add a button that drops down a hierarchical menu of a folder's location each time you want to know where it lives is a bit... cheap and nasty. You can do better, Apple
    • error792, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I might get flamed/dugg down for this, but I really like the way Vista does it.
  • adsoftheworld, on 10/12/2007, -9/+4Inconsistent is good. Helps recognition. Think about it!
    • Fatalbert06, on 10/12/2007, -10/+3This true. Wise words. Apple's slogan has long been "Think Different." not, "Think Unified."
  • mgkwho, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1Why are people judging/commenting the theme that we all [know] will change when Leopard's released? Isn't it supposed to be a super-duper top secret new feature?

    -=|Mgkwho
  • Misaiato, on 10/12/2007, -15/+2ok I may have to kick my own ass - I'm looking at these screenshots and comparing them to the MAC I'M USING TO LOOK AT THEM - and I don't see anything all that different...
  • Rice, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3Well, you know... this sorta begins to make up for the delay.

    Almost.
  • zmigliozzi, on 10/12/2007, -10/+5Gmarks is right people...

    http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19384
    • stephensoto, on 10/12/2007, -10/+1I love how your dugg up and he's dugg down.
  • mark1372, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3How much you wanna bet that the strange pattern over the image put there when the screenshots were taken are a new, traceable anti-piracy hash? Someone's gonna get in tah-RUH-BLE!
    • bgmccollum, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Apple has been watermarking screenshots of beta operating systems since 10.3
    • compaqdrew, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I just googled this to find more info on apple's watermarks but I'm not seeing anything. Can somebody back this up?
  • crazybrit, on 10/12/2007, -13/+9What about iTunes?
  • VegasM1ke, on 10/12/2007, -7/+3gotta love the windows vista ad directly under that story on a mac site
  • TiKoZ, on 10/12/2007, -9/+4*Mac users having a group hug*
  • jkirk7msa, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3Even if this was just a placeholder, it makes me moist.
  • astrosmash, on 10/12/2007, -8/+1It isn't a new theme. That's what the iLife '06 applications use.
    • astrosmash, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Actually, that's not entirely correct. Background windows appear much lighter than the foreground window, which is something the current themes don't do very well if at all.

      Other than that, it's the iLife '06 theme.
  • SultanTravi, on 10/12/2007, -27/+5It still can't compare to Aero.
    • mkameli, on 10/12/2007, -13/+7Right, right. Aero "pwns."
    • melllvar37, on 10/12/2007, -10/+1doesn't want to ;)
    • astrosmash, on 10/12/2007, -8/+15Actually, Aero has a lot of rough edges and is quite slow. It's definitely another example of Microsoft's trademark Version 1.0 quality of software.
    • Firehed, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Yes, but you can't deny that Aero does look nice. I generally prefer the more professional look that OS X sports, but I wouldn't mind an option for a splash of color across the titlebars of unified-themed apps. Of course, if Apple did that, all of the Apple-haters would come out of the woodwork and start complaining that Apple copied MS (and some rational person would point out that they both copy each other all the time). Not that they won't say it about UI consistency when Windows has been like that since... as far back as I can remember. But the command key, and it actually being useful (unlike the Windows key), more than makes up for it, especially with the general consistency in keyboard shortcuts.

      Personally, I rather like the transparent blacks and greys of Twitteriffic, Disco, and my current Adium theme (Decay 2.0/Aqualicious). But I also like how they're the exceptions. I'd become miserably depressed staring at that all day long. Otherwise, I like the seam-free appearance of brushed metal, but consistency would keep me happy.
    • SultanTravi, on 10/12/2007, -11/+8@astrosmash
      I'm on Vista and it's fine, not slow in any way, and has on rough edges. It's only slow on really old computers. The glass effect is way cooler than the make OSX look.

      Do you actually have Vista, or is this what you read on Macfanboy.com?

      Just because you're an Apple fanboy doesn't mean you can't appreciate an attractive design.
    • astrosmash, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13@sultantravi
      I'm not denying that the stock screenshots of Vista look impressive -- the screenshots of OS X 10.0 looked impressive, too -- but actually using it is another story.

      New windows don't just appear, they fade in, slowly. Click a button and it doesn't depress, it slowly fades to another color. It give the entire system an unnatural sluggish feel.

      And some things are just slow. New Explorer windows take a noticeable time to appear; switch to the desktop and hit Ctrl+N a few times in a row; it's sluggish. And if you turn Aero off you can actually see new Explorer windows construct themselves.

      Window resizing is choppy in most applications; you can see odd repainting artifacts as windows are resized. It's odd that Microsoft still hasn't figured out how to do double-buffering effectively. Resize the taskbar, and you can watch the desktop flicker as it repaints itself.

      But the biggest problem is that there's a surprisingly large amount of legacy Windows code still in the OS. For example, open up Notepad and change the font, you get the same crappy old Win95 font dialog. Vista is a mish-mash of old and new technology, much more so than I expected given the number of years Vista was delayed.

      As a long-time Windows developer who has, in the last two and a half of years, gotten used to the near pixel-perfect polish that OS X usually delivers, I was disappointed with Vista. But if all you know is Windows then I'm sure Vista would seem impressive.
  • andreascliment, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2My Mac already looks like that with UNO, but I'm glad that Apple are moving in the right direction!
  • mooseblaster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I love the way that the website comments on the fuzzy look of the screen captures...


    That's no fuzziness, that's a beta version tracking watermark embedded into Grab.
    • pintong, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Not really, it's what happens when you take screenshots of OSX via VMWare. See the "Hackintosh" image? This guy was running it on his PC.
  • FunkyWitDaSysTm, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1looks like i'll be sticking with shapeshifter... :(
    • astrosmash, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1You don't like shapeshifter?
    • DelMonte, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Sorry guys, but Shapeshifter won't work in Leopard until the authors make a complete and total rewrite. Leopard doesn't use the old Extra.rsrc file that Shapeshifter patched.
    • nayr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1funkny: that won't work in 10.5. No mach_override!
  • fastfood15, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17I'm going to say it's a downgrade. I agree the brushed metal gets old, but it's better than matte grey.
    • monosyth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i agree, it would be nice to have options for "themes"
  • DelMonte, on 10/12/2007, -2/+50Mark my words, Leopard will feature dynamic live re-coloring of windows, menus and widgets according to parameters like time of the day and/or user settings.

    For example, during the day you could have your windows and menus with a bluish tint and black text, and they would gradually fade to a white text on black theme as the evening comes.

    It's not like Apple has a fundamental philosophy that windows should be gray. The reason why they didn't implement such re-colorization feature before is that the old OS X UI framework was an archaic mess of bitmaps that was hard to maintain. The two current themes, "blue" and "graphite" each had their own sets of bitmaps, adding new color themes would've required creating new sets of bitmaps in that obsolete and messy Extra.rsrc file.

    Leopard includes an all new XML based UI framework, and all widgets and window parts are being vectorized. Implementing dynamic re-colorization of the main theme will be trivial in Leopard.

    And while Windows had the ability to have different color themes for years, Leopard will push the envelope further, with a dynamic aspect to it.

    Don't you think Apple is aware that moving to a unified theme makes every window look the same, making Exposé harder to use? Colorization could be implemented on an application basis, or even a window basis, as a user choice from a color palette. That would fix the "recognition" problem while keeping a unified theme.

    Other possible dynamic features could include a window that smoothly pulse red when it needs your attention, or changing color according to its activity, the outside temperature or the passage of time.

    You guys seriously think that Apple will present a "dull", gray-themed interface in Leopard to compete with Vista, when the vectorization of the interface at last enables easy color customization in OS X?
    • avihappy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9That sounds awesome! But, how do YOU know this?
    • salmonmoose, on 10/12/2007, -14/+2"And while Windows had the ability to have different color themes for years, Leopard will push the envelope further, with a dynamic aspect to it."

      We've already got dynamic per-window coloring in Windows through Windowblinds ;)
    • DelMonte, on 10/12/2007, -2/+27"That sounds awesome! But, how do YOU know this?"

      I just know it ;)

      But just so that Apple doesn't think I leaked some top-secret info, let's just say that Apple was recently awarded a patent for a very similar idea. US Patent number 7,184,056 "Method and apparatus for user customized shading of a graphical user interface"

      http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=20&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=apple.ASNM.&OS=AN/apple&RS=AN/apple

      While the patent was filled in 2002, it was awarded February 27, 2007. Also, OS X simply didn't have the foundations at the time to make it easy to implement. With a complete overhaul of the UI framework in Leopard, vectorization of the interface and now the unification of the UI, it's obvious to me that the time has come for Apple to implement this idea into its OS. And while many Apple patents went unused, this one fits a little too well with the current interface situation in Leopard.

      "We've already got dynamic per-window coloring in Windows through Windowblinds ;)"

      Cool for you guys, but this is a $20 third-party shareware that most people don't buy, and it deals with a bitmaped UI engine. What I'm talking about would be integrated in the OS, and would be resolution independent.

      And the truth is that you CANNOT do "per-window" coloring with Windowblinds, you can only globally set the color for a specific theme, and that will affect all windows using this theme. At best you could set different themes to different applications and set colors on a per-application basis, but that would make it very hard to manage, and it still wouldn't work at the window level.

      Also, Windowblinds only provides a slider to change the hue (among only around 256 values), not the brightness of the theme. Apple's patent includes the possibility of smoothly transitioning from a light theme to a dark theme and any other combinations.

      Another thing, I wouldn't call this theme color change dynamic, you have to open Windowblinds, click on "change skin color" then change the color. Leopard could enable things like a single window pulsing green to the beat of music or any variable that dynamically changes over time, that's what I mean by "dynamic". Per-window coloring is just one aspect of the possibilities a vectorized interface will bring.
    • caketank, on 10/12/2007, -11/+2What a goddamn nightmare.
    • cjwl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Expect someone to write a program which adjusts your color scheme based on light readings deduced from the iSight, and expect it to be the greatest thing for a week or so.
    • KMartSheriff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I LOVE your idea, so I hope you're right. If what you say is true I'll cry tears of joy.

      I've wanted a UI change since Jaguar.
  • origclubsoda, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11Dang, I like the brushed metal.
    • caketank, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Good news! If everything is using the same theme, it'll be that much easier for your Shapeshifter or whatever to replace it all with a consistent brushed metal.

      Personally, I hate brushed metal, but there's your silver lining.
  • Markpdotcom, on 10/12/2007, -12/+3Ewwwwww! Mac got ugly!

    Good job its not a final release! But we always get this kind of fan boy crap before apple release anything...
  • mobilitatis, on 10/12/2007, -10/+5Still Sucks, A Lot!
  • joe2100, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2I know this isn't the final build of the UI but they could have just left it alone until they had it looking nicer. Windows Aero is so much nicer it makes me cry.
  • lgc90, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I think this is just a temporary UI placeholder being used until the launch. Yes, I personally think it actually looks a little better, but it's not exactly a step in the direction I thought Apple had in mind...
  • arenas46, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I like how there is a Vista ad right under it........
  • SilentSpyder, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8This feels like a step back in terms of detail. Still, I guess they're going for a minamalist look. I wonder if this is an attempt to make Vista's GUI seem outdated. "Aero, like Aqua is so 5 years ago".
  • phillydrifter, on 10/12/2007, -6/+7I hope so, i ***** HATE BRUSHED METAL!
  • phillydrifter, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2They look the same.
  • digitallysick, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I just want an address bar in finder, i mean, damn come on. On top of that, it still looks the same as it always does!
    • superkendall, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Have you used column view in Finder? I prefer it to an address bar, you can always see the path in context with items around each level of the path. And if you want the path you can drag items out of finder into any app that reads plain text.
    • tvashtar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Command-Click the title or little icon in the top centre of the finder window, voila — the path. This works in most apps — not just finder; if you need the path as text just drag the little icon which is next to the window title to wherever you need the plaintext path.
  • pixelfox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Brushed metal was ugly, its a smart move away from it. I mean, finder and calculator are really the only apple apps that still use it. Good riddance.
  • 35263526, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Speaking as someone who moved from XP to Mac (or more accurately still uses XP but uses Mac as well now), I actually really like Tiger's brushed metal. It looks so damned nice compared to Lunar or Royale. Don't get me wrong, the theme in that screenshot still looks nicer than either of those, but it's not as nice as brushed metal IMO.

    I do with OS X had some themeing options. Hopefully they'll come in Leopard.
  • lolcollege, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2I love the Vista ad directly below the story.
  • cjwl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2What do the little squares in the lower left represent?
  • mozzep, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I hope they give an appearance preference pane with several different themes in it... one unified, one dark, one blue... etc. I don't think that's too much to ask.
  • digitallysick, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5i want finder tabs damn it
  • pruppert, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5iTunes store needs tabs.
  • Colesif, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5My speculation on this unified windows business is Apple is setting up for a new interface. The first thing they could do to get the code out in the open without changing the actual look it's self is to place a very similar theme (to tiger) in it's place. That way it's being tested but nothing is actually being revealed.
  • superal1394, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1not too innovative, you can do better Apple
  • gutistg, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Does anyone else hate that stupid button with an eye on it?
  • NeoRicen, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Finder still sucks balls... :(
  • Khemikl, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Hate to tell you this but those of us that work in the creative field - and that's most commercial mac users need most things to be grey because other colours foul up your retouching/colour matching... grey is a good idea.
  • 5555, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I like the shiny black look of Time Machine. I would really like it if that theme could be used for all Windows.
  • zetsurin, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Looks like Uno to me *ducks*

    You apple fanboys need to lighten up by the way (goes back to using macbook without the foaming at the mouth characteristic of an apple zealot).
  • spartan778, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1why is there a vista ad on a mac site?
    • moisie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Because the Mac site probably uses a thrid party ad provider who sells space all over. If Microsoft want to advertise to Mac sites that's their decision. The Mac site will gladly take their money knowing that the Vista ad isn't a problem since a large number of Mac users have actively moved away from Vista and it's ancestors.
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