The Ten Most Beautiful OS X Apps

Phillip Ryu writes "As someone in the Macintosh shareware business, as part of my job, I make the daily crawl through MacUpdate to look for the latest and greatest in Mac software. One thing I've been noticing recently is a renaissance of extremely polished and beautiful Mac apps, so I thought I'd share some of these finds with you guys. Without further ado, presenting the top ten most beautiful OS X apps. Hopefully you'll find some new gems in there, even I found a few surprises while compiling this list. Enjoy!"

Comments

I think you ment minimalistic...?

[Duncan3]

Only #3 and #1 have any place on that list.

There are so many more visually appealing OS X apps out there. Most of his list is just file-list style apps. A downloader? Good grief.

Re:I think you ment minimalistic...?

[nacturation]

Yes, a downloader. Even downloaders can have UIs. (Unless you use wget/curl all of the time.) All interface with the user needs to be friendly, usable and well designed. *All* of it. Even a downloader.

Of course, but this isn't "Ten OS X Apps with a User Interface", it's the "Ten Most Beautiful". And check out this screenshot:

http://www.mathgamehouse.com/images/phillryu/acqui sitionfull.jpg

Does that strike you as particularly "most beautiful" of all OS X apps out there? To me, it looks busy and uninspired... and that's supposed to be the fourth most beautiful app? More beautiful than, say, Google Earth on OS X which didn't make the list even though it's freeware as well? Screenshot:

http://saya.s145.xrea.com/archives/images/GoogleEa rth.jpg

The "extremely eye-pleasing" P2P app they mention doesn't look much different than Safari's download panel with a couple of colorful buttons thrown on top. Compare:

P2P app: http://www.mathgamehouse.com/images/phillryu/trans missionfull.jpg
Safari: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/is/diary/mac/SafariDownloadMa n.jpg

I'd say the list could perhaps qualify as top ten nice OS X application icons.

Re:I think you ment minimalistic...?

[Sippan]

The Google Earth GUI was one of the most horrible things this monitor has ever displayed, and I've had goatse as my start page.

Crap, that didn't come out right at all.

The Mac-iest Mac app ever....

[Otter]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the "right"-est MacOS app ever is, hands-down, Fetch. Every time I ever wondered "Maybe Fetch could do this...?", it always could and the first way I thought to try it always worked.

LaunchBar should have made the list.

[Capt'n Hector]

LaunchBar is Spotlight on crack. These guys managed to pack as much functionality as the finder itself into a little bar at the top of the screen. And it's fast.

Re:The List

[Volanin]

Same list, with links:

10 - Transmission
9 - Potion Factory
8 - Podcast Maker
7 - Transmit
6 - Quinn
5 - AppZapper
4 - AcQuisition
3 - CoverFlow
2 - Newsfire
1 - Delicious Library

Re:Bah.

[Trillan]

I must disagree. Firefox is easily the ugliest application ever created. And I say this even after trying dozens of skins. Not a single one of them comes close to the eloquence of the built-in "Aqua" appearance on Mac OS X.