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Apple's Illuminous (Aqua v2) to Compete with Aero
tovarish writes "According to Apple Gazette Apple will replace Aqua with a new name (and hopefully looks) called Illuminous. Is Jobs scared of Aero?, does it make sense to go for a new UI now?, has Aqua run out of steam? The answers will probably come later next month(year)."
I've never really considered Steve Jobs to be fazed by anything really.
He knows he has a decent group of followers, ever growing in these times, and he must bless his decision to stick with providing a complete solution instead of just an OS, every day.
All in all, I don't think he should be scared of this, because it is not only about the looks of the interface. It also depends on whether operations will continue to produce the desired result fast and reliable. Mac OS has the advantage there.
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
Is Jobs scared of Aero?, does it make sense to go for a new UI now?, has Aqua run out of steam?
How old is Aqua? Perhaps they're just wanting to update it to add new features, take advantage of dual/quad/bajillion core CPUs, etc., etc. A lot has happened since Aqua debuted, and Apple has rarely been one to simply sit on a good product and not try to continue to make it better/newer.
One would imagine the object model and API would stay the same, and just the actual visualisation would change.
Is Jobs scared of Aero?
From what I can see, quite the opposite.
Apple is I believe going to launch the next version of OSX at the same time as the public starts to get its hands on Vista. Vista is just catching up with OSX in terms of interface. It will really piss on Microsoft's fire if the "Joe Public" press review the next version of OSX at the same time as Vista and conclude that OSX is better - from a PR perspective that will be a disaster for Microsoft because it will make their claims about how Vista is the greatest OS ever much weaker. (Keep in mind that Microsoft has not yet started its marketing bandwagon rolling for Vista).
I don't care whether there's one theme or a million themes. What I want is for the user to be able to pick the them rather than the application designer so that everything will use the same one instead of being forced to see fifty different ones at once like Apple does now!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I realize that for the majority of the market, apple is competing with Vista and Aeroglass, but I think that Aqua also needs to start competing with XGL and Compiz/Beryl.
The primary desktop in my house runs Linux, but I also have an iBook running Tiger. For a long time OS X was a lot prettier than either KDE or Gnome, and people were forever trying to emulate the Aqua look and feel on Linux. A lot of stuff like web browsing and stuff I used to do on my iBook, simply because the GUI was nicer to look at.
Lately though, I'd say for the last year or 18 months, I've been running XGL and Beryl (and compiz before Beryl forked off) and I would say that my desktop now running XGL and Beryl looks much nicer than my iBook running Aqua.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
... also focus on the window, they just focus on it before you click the button.
I do wish they'd have an option to duplicate the menu on multiple monitors, but other than that I like it MUCH better than every window having it's own menu.
I don't want anyone trying to implement a revolutionary new interface metaphor in my daily OS until someone demonstrates one that's actually useful in a research setting somewhere. It's easy to talk about abstracted views and bridging desktop and network applications, but what does that mean?
As for gestures and speech, OS X has had speech from day one (I don't know anyone who uses it, except one guy who turned it on then tried to give a presentation that way -- hilarious). You can have gestures too, but they don't seem to be very practical. They usually get turned off after the initial wow factor wears off as well.
The really odd thing I find about this article in general, is that I had always assumed -- and I don't think I was alone here -- that Aero was really Microsoft's response and attempt to leapfrog Aqua.
Every screenshot I've seen of Aero looks remarkably...Aqua-ish. Not in the details, but I can't help thinking that someone at Microsoft took a look at Aqua, and decided that it was probably time to overhaul Windows' interface as well; not to mention doing the same sort of graphics-card offloading that Apple did with Quartz Extreme.
I suppose claiming that Apple's "Illuminous" is a response to Microsoft's Aero, and Aero is itself at least partially response to Aqua, are not necessarily mutually exclusive. It's sort of the way of these things to respond to each other, back and forth, over and over.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Ah, I see what you're saying. I thought you meant menu changing within an application, not among them.
I've encountered the same thing. I'd posit that it can be annoying to people who aren't used to it, but it's not necessarily a huge UI failing for OS X, and many people find it useful. Personally, I like that Mac OS makes a distinction between a window and an application; it allows me to declutter my workspace a bit by closing some windows without losing the ability to use their apps, and it allows me to close an app's last window without having to, say, wait for Word to take five eons to relaunch when I decide to open another document. It's not really an instance of Mac OS misbehaving so much as Mac OS not behaving the same way that Windows does - and I don't like the idea that every UI on the planet has to behave like Windows.
I could see arguing that, if you close the last window of an app, OS X should automatically switch to the next application in the queue. I'd want to see it in practise, though, because I'm not sure whether it would really be more or less confusing to users.
Hell even the single fact that when you are presented the logon screen, the pointer is on 10,10 and not at screencenter as on Windows, KDE or Gnome is an inconvenient. A little one but just a little thing here and a little thing there does a lot.
Why does this matter, when at the text login page, you can type your username, hit tab, enter your password, hit enter, and be looking at a desktop seconds later? And actually launch programs, not have those programs cancel mouse actions (I love how Windows repeatedly cancels menus you're trying to navigate. When the entire OS revolves around a giant heirarchial menu. For fuck's sake, a program loading itself into the toolbar causes this!)
In fact, I can then hit apple-space and type "Mail", use the down arrow and enter key to select it and launch Mail.app, and read+respond to email in my inbox. Still haven't touched my (multibutton) mouse. How about that...
Please help metamoderate.