Leopard Fake Screenshot Contest Winners Announced

Austin Sarner writes "Phill Ryu's Fake Leopard Screenshot contest which has been attracting a quite a bit of buzz has just ended and the winners have been announced! While there is a bunch of expected stuff in these screenshots, the entrants did not hold back when it came to trying out crazy stuff — and surprisingly, a good amount of them work great. Ranging from new window styles to a complete rethink of a window based work environment, these are sure to make any UI geek excited. The winners received over $1,000 each in prizes, and were obviously motivated to put out some great stuff. The judges included Wil Shipley, the creator of Delicious Library, David Watanabe, who makes NewsFire and Acquisition, as well as numerous other smaller devs."

Comments

Hmmm

[paulius_g]

Nothing to see here, move along?

That's sure the way Apple wants it until WWDC!

Slashdotted already??...

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess that's hosted on the winner of the fake server contest ...

Umm..

[William Robinson]

"Well, this guy sure likes Asian women...

Good, I stayed away from the contest. Otherwise, he would have easily guessed, that I like Canadian women.

Re:Umm..

[daeley]

that I like Canadian women.

This thread is useless without pics, you hoser. ;)

Re:Umm..

[shidoshi]

It's funny how much I'm getting ragged on by a few people out there for the amount of Asian girls in my screenshots. One of the things I wanted to show off was the playing movies in the icon support, by far the most vidoe files I have are Asian music videos, so I chose to go with those. For the rest... hey, Asian girls are cute, I had some images onhand, so that's what I used.

Coral Cache Link

[Anonymous Coward]

Coral Cache Link

Alternative

[wombatmobile]

The site is currently hosed, but it isn't the only fake leopard site out there.

Mockups = mockups

[13bPower]

I've seen a lot of these ideas before. I remember them from all the Gnome3 and KDE4 mockups floating around. These fake shots do look nice though.

Re:Mirror

[phillryu]

Hi, it's my blog that's getting owned right now. That dugg mirror does mirror the winning entry, but does not mirror the entire article with comments + the 2 other winners and 3 runners up. I'm trying to get this fixed but to see the whole thing you guys might have to wait until this cools down a bit... if that'll ever happen. DREEEAMHOOOOOSSST!!!!! ARGH!

Re:Upload an XP screen

[darkonc]

I was thinking a text-only screen (perhaps a midnight-commander type interface) -- and a mouse pointer.

Far more efficient CPU wise than those stupid high-res desktops and far easier to use remotely.

My two wishes for OSX.5

[stubear]

I don't care for fancy visual upgrades, I want two serious propblems fixed in OSX.5. First, I want Apple to have folders merge their contents when files or folders of the same name are encountered. Currently there is no easy way to syncoronize the contents of folders with the same name.

Second, Apple needs to fix their craptastic font handling lack of capabilities. In this day in age it is completely unreasonable to allow fonts to run wild and take entire systems down. Fontbook is a joke and I now see why Extensis wasn't afraid of Apple getting into the font management software business.

These two fixes would go a long way to making OSX a lot more usable for me.

Re:My two wishes for OSX.5

[tezbobobo]

Yeah dude, anyone who needs to manage their fonts beyond the ability of Apple's ability should not be using inbuilt font support on ANY platform. I might suggest Font Agent Pro. I use it all the time I'm working (newspaper designer) and it is th best out there. If suitcase have gotten their shit together, they used to be pretty good. And apparently linotypes new thing is good, but from reports not as good as FAP (free though).

Merging would be nice.

Re:My two wishes for OSX.5

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing's as good as a FAP every now and then.

Re:My two wishes for OSX.5

[linhux]

Currently there is no easy way to syncoronize the contents of folders with the same name.

There's always cp -r.

saga:~/test rasmus$ find .
.
./test1
./test1/a
./test1/a/contents-in-test1-a
./test1/a/contents-in-test1-b
./test1/a/contents-in-test1-c
./test2
./test2/a
./test2/a/contents-in-test2-a
./test2/a/contents-in-test2-b
./test2/a/contents-in-test2-c
saga:~/test rasmus$ cp -r test1/a/* test2/a/
saga:~/test rasmus$ find test2
test2
test2/a
test2/a/contents-in-test1-a
test2/a/contents-in-test1-b
test2/a/contents-in-test1-c
test2/a/contents-in-test2-a
test2/a/contents-in-test2-b
test2/a/contents-in-test2-c
saga:~/test rasmus$

Re:My two wishes for OSX.5

[MoreDruid]

regarding font management: you might want to take a look at LinoType FontExplorer.

it's free and a good contender to the Extensis software, although they still have some polishing to do.

Re:My two wishes for OSX.5

[eclectic4]

"Fontbook is a joke and I now see why Extensis wasn't afraid of Apple getting into the font management software business."

You don't understand. FontBook is not supposed to be some sort of professional font management application. Never was. Suitcase (Extensis) and FontBook are two different applications used for different things. Suitcase is meant to manage a designer/production person's 10,000 fonts, usually through auto-activation... something FontBook does not do nor pretend to. FontBook is for that pseudo designer that has a few hundred fonts on their machine and would like some easy way to turn fonts on and off as they need instead of having all 400 fonts open at once in some user font folder. It's consumer level (thank you Apple for at least something), Suitcase is Pro level and a commercial application (currently $99). You want a free pro font application, I want a Corvette.

"First, I want Apple to have folders merge their contents when files or folders of the same name are encountered. Currently there is no easy way to syncoronize the contents of folders with the same name."

I'm confused (and so would 95% of the computer using market, trust me). Do you want folder synchronization, or do you want folders to automatically merge contents when you attempt to put two folders with the same name in the same place? You need to explain how this would be done,easily, in a completely non-confusing way for all users, etc... because it just doesn't make sense.

Am I the only one...

[DwarfGoanna]

who thinks that finder looks completely unusable? IANAIDBT (I am not an interface designer by trade), but this really puts the the stupid in Keep It Simple, Stupid. You have to remember that Apple especially would probably like to keep their file browser grandma friendly. I'm sure I could find ways to put something like this to good use eventually, but my first impression was "holy fuck, thats cluttered".

Re:Am I the only one...

[DwarfGoanna]

It's a slashdot cliche. Which is sort of funny. Er... to me anyway.

Sort of like "I know this is going to get modded down, but..."

It's just that.... guh. Forget it.

I especially like the one...

[jpellino]

... with the animated smoke pouring from the phillryu server mounted on the desktop.
Oh, that's *real*?
Oops.

BEWARE OF LEOPARD

[RelliK]

(That's our display department.)

And the other pages, too...

[vistic]

That only has the first place winner... if you want to see the story as well as the other winners and runners up....

Main Page: Coral cache | Google cache
First Place: Coral cache | Google cache
Second Place: Coral cache | Google cache
Third Place: Coral cache | Google cache
Runner Up: Coral cache | Google cache
Runner Up: Coral cache | Google cache
Runner Up: Coral cache | Google cache

Re:And the other pages, too...

[1u3hr]

Coral caches are all dead, Google ONLY CACHES TEXT. The image links in Google cache point back to the original site.

Which one?

[shidoshi]

For mine (the first place winner), I was trying to show off a lot of different feature ideas, so yeah, my Finder ended up being a bit cluttered. We were limited to five screenshots, so once I factored in the Mail and Safari shots, plus Peek getting its own, I just decided to go all out with one main Finder shot. Obviously, in real-world usage, it wouldn't be so cluttered, and everything would have options for turning said features on or off.

I've seen it. It's rubbish!

[megaditto]

The problem with young people today is they utterly lack imagination.

Having x11 support 2 mouse pointers at once, one per each hand, would seem such a basic thing. I like having multiple windows, multiple desktops, multiple tasks going on, why do I bloody have to click on one at a time. And how about adding tactile feedback to Finder? I want larger files to feel heavier, I want music files to feel sticky...

Or how about a multidimentional, 3-D or 4-D dock, with focus following your eye direction. After all, MacBooks do have builtin webcams, right? I want to look at the app icon on the dock, blink on it, and get it up!

And why are we locked into using letters to represent ideas, names, and concepts? Why does a picture file have to be named "blue-duck.jpg", I want to make a 3-D blue bird image to be it's 'name', not a string of ASCII crap. And why can't we search pictures and music files like we should be able to? 'Victoria, high quality, find all the music files with voice of Jerry Springer saying 'hello', find all the pictures containing a girl with red hair?' not so bloody hard now, is it?

As a great visionary once said, the Internet is not a truck, it's a collection of pipes. So darnit, for my surfing I want to see some pipes, how they connect, and where they lead to, and what they contain. I don't want to read about Lebanon, I want my Mac to be smart enough to convert text not even into a sound, but into a 3-D VR scene re-enactment of the news!

Why do windows have to look like flat pieces of paper? Why does your computer have to show documents like a typewriter? Why does a PowerPoint have to resemble decades-old slide projector presentations? Why not make it resemble a road, you walk along the road and look at the points along the way, you see what will come next (although less clear), you walk at your own pace, or fly up and see the entire thing? Why do I have to be blindfolded and shown one piece at a time, like dumb cattle lead to a slaughterhouse?

Why not store the session on a plugged-in iPod like Sun's thin clients used to be able to do 10 years ago? Unplug it, plug into another Mac 1,000 miles away at an airport, and keep same open apps and docs restored instantly? What, macs are too pussy to do that?

Sorry for the rant, I do not have many years left to my life, I would so much like to experience an OS I can enjoy!

Re:I've seen it. It's rubbish!

[Nocterro]

I want music files to feel sticky...
Wouldn't that be porn files? [ducks]

Re:I've seen it. It's rubbish!

[Aqua OS X]

The more features you add to an OS the better it is.

That's what I've learned from this contest.

Ignore the fact that the finder, like explorer, it's a fucked up hodgepodge of mixed conventions and metaphors... just cram some more features into to it. Tired of having a desktop or dock cluttered with several windows all viewing the same god damn directory? Well now you can have those windows hidden in finder tabs! Weee!! Now you can forget about currently opened windows even faster!! RAM be damned!

Or what about viewing windows with windows in side of them!! Sure it's not a MacOS convention at all, but wouldn't it be awesome? Ohh, and make sure to put all close boxes on the right-hand side of nested windows... Mac users are accustom to seeing it on the left hand side, and you're going to want to confuse or slow them down.

---

Ughh, but seriously, those entries where full of human factors disasters.

As if OS X doesn't have a enough of them already.

Re:I've seen it. It's rubbish!

[whoop]

find all the pictures containing a girl with red hair?' not so bloody hard now, is it?

Several years ago I came upon an app on Freshmeat that had a small paint canvas where you would draw something and it would search a collection of pictures for similar images to what you drew. It was pretty good at it too. Draw a head and torso with breasts, it found upper-body shots. Scribble some red hair, it narrowed it down to redheads. So that much technology is out there, somewhere.

Re:I've seen it. It's rubbish!

[MrCopilot]

As a great visionary once said, the Internet is not a truck, it's a collection of pipes. So darnit, for my surfing I want to see some pipes, how they connect, and where they lead to, and what they contain.

How could you misquote the great Internet Sage, Ted Stevens, Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, ForShame.

No, I'm not finished. I want people to understand my position, I'm not going to take a lot of time.

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.

It's a series of tubes.

And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Thank (insert Diety here) he's there to watch over those tubes for us. One of the finest examples of Representative Government I've ever seen.

Re:I've seen it. It's rubbish!

[Chelloveck]

I want larger files to feel heavier, I want music files to feel sticky...

Hey, if music files feel sticky, what about the pr0n files?

"Gaah! What is this thing? It's all sticky and heavy as hell!" "Oh, that's just Roseanne Arnold in a thong singing the Star Spangled Banner..."

Re:I've seen it. It's rubbish!

[mgabrys_sf]

I was thinking the same thing - most blatant request for PRON implementation EVER!

"want to look at the app icon on the dock, blink on it, and get it up!"

Desktop Viagra anyone?

The first change would be...

[clickety6]

... to get rid of the non-intuitive red/yellow/green buttons and replace them with some meaningful icons !

Re:The first change would be...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I should not have to hover over an object to find out what it does.

True, the icons should always be visible and probably a bit bigger.

Objects should not be distinguished only by colour (hel-LO, heard of colour blindness?)...

I think you mean, "objects should not be distinguished only by color." They should certainly be distinguished by color. Anyone who has ever instructed remedial users using both windows and OS X knows how much more quickly people understand "click the red one" as compared to "click the X." Also, to be fair, Apple does have a screen mode for the visually impaired that lets you use icons better suited to the color blind.

That even Apple is consistently failing to meet basic usability standards is a damning indictment of how far their standards have fallen since the days, long ago, when Apple's operating systems were prized for their ease of use, not merely their fluff and eye-candy.

Apple still does a better job than pretty much every other player, but they have had more UI issues than they used to. They have also made some UI advances as well. This is probably some culture clash from the old Apple folks and the newer UNIX guys they've brought on board. It has made OS X a hybrid, neither as well designed of a UI as it used to have, nor a secure as some of the other UNIX's, but somewhere in between. (Note, this is not, in my opinion, a dichotomy. It can be both more secure and more usable.)

Re:The first change would be...

[nateziarek]

I don't think I hate the finder, but I don't love it. I actually ran across an old IBM laptop today with Windows 3.1 on it. I was floored at how fast the File manager was on that sucker. Guess I've been using the Finder too long :-) I find myself navigating the Finder through the use of Apple-SHIFT-G and tab typing if I need to go somewhere drastically different than where I am -- obviously not optimal (in fact, it sucks :-)

I also dislike OSX keyboard navigation. It seems to be more application based than it should be, meaning it works sometimes and not others. Check System Preferences under Keyboard and Mouse and then Keyboard Shortcuts...enables Full keyboard access by choosing "all Controls" (near the bottom). It doesn't help everything, but it makes it a little more bearable.

Still, of the three OSs, I'd rather use OS X. That says something, doesn't it?

Bit minimalist

[tehcyder]

All I got was a blank white page and a pointer with an hourglass over it.

Personally, I prefer a slightly richer user experience.

My favourite feature

[tehcyder]

"Cut" added to the Finder Edit Menu on the runner up entry.

I'm sold.