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)."

Comments

scared?

[toQDuj]

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.

Re:scared?

[double-oh three]

Honestly, why does it need to be a response? Aqua's great, but it's a few years old at this point. Is there any evidence that this isn't just a v2 with new features for Leopard? Seriously, Apple can do something without it being a response. I mean, we're not saying that Photoshop CS3 is a response to GIMP (which personally I think is a valid comparison for Aqua/Aero (no offense to GIMP, it's good for what it is, it just isn't there yet)), so why does Illuminous have to be anything other than an upgrade to a well-liked existing product?

It helps

[mwvdlee]

If you're a computer newbee, the only thing you can judge a computer on is how it looks.
So just like with the iMac craze a number of years back, updating the look and feel of an OS every now and then, is a good idea from a commercial point of view.

Re:It helps

[prodangle]

If you're a computer newbee, the only thing you can judge a computer on is how it looks. So just like with the iMac craze a number of years back, updating the look and feel of an OS every now and then, is a good idea from a commercial point of view.

Looks aren't only important for newbies. I've using computers for many years, but I prefer a user interface which feels modern and fresh, as well as one which takes advantage of the computer's graphic capabilities. Just as I feel happier working in an bright office environment in an interesting building. Aesthetics aren't important for everyone - as many sysadmins working on command lines in dingy basements will attest to - but to many others, visual aesthetics are vital for a good user experience.

New Name

[DLG]

I believe the new name is really going to be Nullity.

Or maybe Aquality.

Or Aquainess.

This could be the least content of any story I have read.

Re:New Name

[sharkey]

This could be the least content of any story I have read.

You must be new here.

Re:New Name

[Fred_A]

iQua gets my vote.

Re:New Name

[dalerb]

Maybe they'll go with ADEQUITE.

Pinstripes

[ahknight]

NO MORE PINSTRIPES!!! For the love of Steve, PLEASE kill them. And brushed metal. Dead, dead, dead.

Oh, how I hope it's true...

Re:Pinstripes

[SydBarrett]

Just make everything transparent. Windows, scrollbars, pointer, and fonts. All transparent.

Re:Pinstripes

[hullabalucination]

NO MORE PINSTRIPES!!! For the love of Steve, PLEASE kill them. And brushed metal. Dead, dead, dead.

The new look will be translucent fur.

* * * * *

You can't depend on your eyes, when your imagination is out of focus.
--Mark Twain

Re:Pinstripes

[Anonymous Coward]

And brushed metal.

Brushed Metal is nonexistent in recent Leopard seeds. Even the WWDC build hinted at this with iChat now sporting the 'unified toolbar' look. Now iCal is the same way, and certain other apps are either unified or iLife-style unified.

There aren't any massive sweeping changes -- just an evolutionary move -- the kind where you can tell from a screenshot whether someone is running Leopard, Tiger, Panther, Jaguar, or Puma. Pinstripes are still there, but for fuck's sake they're like 90% white anyway, and if you notice them you're paying too much attention.

Re:Pinstripes

[jbrader]

Huh, but then wouldn't you just be looking at the inside of the monitor?

Re:Pinstripes

[mrchaotica]

Nah, it'd look like this! : )

(Of course, a wallpaper showing the circuitry on the inside of my iMac would be really cool... I wish I could find one.)

Re:Pinstripes

[GlassHeart]

Look near the bottom of this page.

Aqua (2001-???)

[richdun]

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.

Re:Aqua (2001-???)

[Bastian]

Indeed, Aqua has been tweaked at least a little bit in every release of OS X since 10.1. As you mentioned, Quartz has gone through some major overhauls. Apple tweaking Aqua yet again is not news. It doesn't indicate a response to Aero, it just indicates that Apple is doing what Apple always does.

Re:Aqua (2001-???)

[squiggleslash]

I don't know about that, but I do know that Aqua has been undergoing a lot of "enhancements" that, over time, have detracted quite a bit from the look.

Jaguar had the first "Brushed metal" windows. This looked "ok", but still a little strange. Panther then downplayed a lot of the pin-striped look, which helped make the UI a little less distracting, but at the same time also made the look rather less attractive. Tiger has gone further, with squared off windows and the (non-brushed) metal look.

Each iteration has undermined the over-all elegance of the visuals (though in Jaguar's defense, they did make the buttons look more elegant.) That's not to say they weren't necessary, early Mac OS X was so full of stripes and other distractions that it was even more horrible to use than the poor graphics accelleration resulted in. But there's little doubt that a simple comparison of Jaguar, sans-metal, and Tiger, shows the former with a much more attractive looking (whether usable or not) UI than the latter.

This rumour doesn't surprise me really. What'll be interesting is to see whether it's a complete break with Aqua, or just an upgrade. I seriously doubt this has anything to do with Aero though: Steve Jobs is going to be concerned with the look of Mac OS X regardless of whether they have ten competitors or none.

Re:Aqua (2001-???)

[ObiWanKenblowme]

Not to pick on you specifically, but just what is it people expect the Finder to do? Is it a performance issue, or just a dislike regarding the way the interface works?

I'd also question the need for Apple to embrace a more OSS-friendly dev model. They seem to be doing just fine the way they're going now, even better than they were when they released 10.1.

Re:Aqua (2001-???)

[drinkypoo]

You weren't around in the 89-95 period then. Apple rested on it's System7 laurels as it was so far ahead for years. By about 98 even Widows had caught up. Just sayin'.

Those of us who are not complete macintosh fanboys will have noticed that this is the time at which Apple dropped from having something like 11% market share to having about 3% market share. There were two reasons. One is that Apple computers were still running on 68k processors well into the age when the intel chips were whipping Motorola's ass. The other is that System 7 was a festering piece of shit. No Apple operating system has ever been as unreliable as System 7. While Windows was going towards protected mode all the time (NT did it already; ME doesn't use real mode, which is why compatibility was hurt; Windows 98 is MOSTLY 32 bit) Apple was still using their MMU (when present, which was not always) for virtual memory, and virtual memory alone. A lack of memory protection made MacOS as unreliable as AmigaDOS, with applications stepping on each other constantly. The difference is that AmigaDOS can be rebooted in just a few seconds, even from floppies.

If you remember Mac OS 7 with nostalgia then you clearly have some sort of memory disability.

Re:Aqua (2001-???)

[eldepeche]

Personally, I hate the way it drops .DS_Store files every-fucking-where.

Re:Aqua (2001-???)

[WhiteWolf666]

Well, there are a series of serious problems with Finder.

Serious Issues:
1. No write access on remote FTP sites. That's pretty ugly. KDE/Gnome/Explorer can all do this, why not Finder? On OS X, default, to upload files to an FTP site you have to use the Terminal; and the way finder works it makes it look like a permissions issue rather than an inbuilt limitation.
2. Nasty locking on loss of network shares. This can render your laptop unusable unless you are careful to eject all network shares each and every time you suspend. Loss of network connectivity should not cripple your desktop. KDE/Gnome/Explorer get around this by using multiple instances; a particular Konqueror window might freeze, but you don't loose everything.
3. Locking issues on copying large numbers of files. This can slow Finder down to a crawl, even though everything else is perfectly responsive.
Minor Issues:
1. Copying a Folder to a directory with a Folder of the same name results in the existing contents of that Folder being overwritten, rather than the merged contents of the two Folders. This makes it annoying to move around large trees of files, if you like to "sync" things manually.
2. No Packet CD-RW support. It's _really_ nice to have re-writable CDRWs that work like large floppy disks. Makes life easier. Not essential, though. More worrying is Finder's inability to not finalize a CD; sometimes I like to have multisession disks.
3. Serious performance issues with using Spotlight in Finder Windows. I've got a Dual G5 2.7 Ghz, and a MacBook Pro. Why is Spotlight on these Finder windows so slow? Why do I have to type one character at a time, and then wait for the search? Why do I have to wait 5 seconds to backspace over my typos? It's not like I'm running the bottom of the barrel configurations here.
4. Flaky MIME type recognition. No matter how many times I try to force ALL pdfs to open on Preview, I keep finding pdfs that open on Acrobat. Acrobat takes so long to open, so I really want that to be my secondary option; but no, it doesn't work like that.

For the most part, these issues aren't that severe, and (except for the FTP issue) only affect power users like me. Most people don't know (or ceonceptualize) multisessions CDs, and most people don't use network shares that IT doesn't setup for you. Still, it's very annoying that these issues have persisted through 4 iterations of OS X, and I'd much rather see someone work these out then a new version of Aqua.

Finder is stagnating, and it really is pretty crappy compared to some of the alternatives out there. KDE's Konqueror, with KIO-Slaves is _vastly_ superior.

Re:Aqua (2001-???)

[KonoWatakushi]

Not to pick on you specifically, but just what is it people expect the Finder to do? Is it a performance issue, or just a dislike regarding the way the interface works?

I expect the Finder to allow me to quickly and efficiently manage my files, with a minimum of surprise, that is all. If you work with a lot of files, you will notice the severe deficiencies in the Finder, especially on network volumes. It can't even keep the contents of a folder straight, with items disappearing, reappearing, and resorting themselves for no apparent reason. You can't move two items from the same folder to different destinations at the same time. Folders don't remember their configuration properly or consistently. Constant hangs with the Spinning Wheel of Death. Double-clicking an item to open it causes a resort on the first click, and then you may open the wrong item. There is even a data loss bug, where you might unknowingly send something to the trash, even when nothing is selected. Really, the list goes on and on, and it is full of serious problems and inconveniences alike. Every time I report these bugs, they are closed as duplicates, and simply ignored.

I'd also question the need for Apple to embrace a more OSS-friendly dev model. They seem to be doing just fine the way they're going now, even better than they were when they released 10.1.

If they could maintain maintain a competitive *nix, this wouldn't be as much of an issue. Look how much development goes into just the Linux kernel; Apple can't even hope to compete on a technical basis, and will only fall further and further behind. This means things like scalable SMP, efficient threading, network file systems, disk drivers (NCQ anyone?), networking, and many other technical things which while not sexy have a great impact on performance. This work simply isn't getting done. Their low-level OS effort would have a much greater benefit if expended on the GUI and interface instead; these are the areas which distinguish MacOS. Microsoft can't even competing with Linux in these areas, and Apple has but a small fraction of their resources.

As it is now, there are an immense amount of bugs, not to mention very poor performance, and it is basically impossible to even contribute fixes to Apple, which is very frustrating. Apple's uncooperative attitude is simply not productive.

Re:Aqua (2001-???)

[Squozen]

I don't have the Spotlight issues you're seeing. My old 15" PowerBook and Intel iMac are both perfectly responsive when making searches - perhaps you have a corrupted index or something?

Re:Aqua (2001-???)

[hr.wien]

Dear god yes. I let my friend and his mac loose on my fileserver once and the place was absolutely littered with files afterwards. Windows' Thumbs.db is also rather annoying, but at least they only show up where there's media to be thumbnailed.

Re:Aqua (2001-???)

[git68]

Off topic but found this (haven't tested yet but intend to...)

http://www.zeroonetwenty.com/blueharvest/

Hopefully a cure for those annoying "Finder turds"!

Please

[captnitro]

Let's do away with the files/folders/desktop/dialogs metaphor and system. It's served us well, but I'd really like to see a groundbreaking way to work with my data. One with an abstracted view system that could, as an example, bridge desktop and network applications, or let me perform actions via the mouse or via speech, or gestures, etc., without having to put any more work into the controller code. ::from back of room:: X11!

Shut up already! :)

Re:Please

[ceoyoyo]

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.

Is this the new theme for iTunes 7?

[jZnat]

Since iTunes 7 doesn't follow the rest of the Tiger application themes, this might have something to do with that theme. Maybe they're going to make all the apps consistent regardless of use? Or maybe they're going to introduce even more categories to use when designing the UI for your app so that you Windows themers can't copy the OS X theme? :P

Aqua

[El Lobo]

Aqua is not a perfect UI even if some rabid mac fans would say so. The Mac Os has always had a very elegant UI and UI components. This is the strong point of the system, but the usability of it left much to be desired. MacOS is a pointer oriented system , even if you can use shortcuts for almost everything, it doesn't feel "native".

The single main menu at the top is a thing that you love or hate, but it can feel very strange to change the focus of the application to just access a menu. Yes, I'm aware of the fact that it's "easier" to just point "right" this way, but it is more complicated and "verbose" as well.

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.

Well, here went my karma again, just like always when a post doesn't screm how perfect Apple is

Re:Aqua

[ceoyoyo]

... 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.

Re:Aqua

[Bastian]

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.

Re:Aqua

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

The problem is, even though you clicked on the red circle on tool bar, it may not have closed the app you were working with. So even though all you see is your word processor, the tool bar is still from the app you meant to close.

This is wholly a matter of workflow. Windows users have this problem because on Windows closing a window is the same thing as quitting an application. The two have been tied. To me, that is a design flaw and I'll tell you why. I regularly run applications that have no Window and don't need one. They are only menus and a dock icon. On Windows, this type of application would confuse the crap out of people. Further, I often want to close all the documents in use by an application, but not quit the application. The reason for this is also simple, I don't want to wait for it to load again multitasking us good enough that having it open does not slow down other applications. I think this has also been an issue related to Windows since on Windows users have trained themselves to quit applications not in use, since the multitasking does not handle programs sitting idle in the background very well. It pisses me off when I'm on a Windows box and I close a file only to have reopen the program that just quit because I want to open another file using that same program. This is a common task that Windows application developers hack their way around by creating managing Windows that just sit around as placeholders with nothing in them, or useless features in them that only duplicate functionality of the menus.

In summary, the "correct" behavior is simply a matter of perspective, but I certainly find the Mac way a lot more useful to me than the Windows way. I prefer separate granular operations rather than tying one behavior to another unrelated task.

You'd be surprised to know how many could not grasp the fact that the red circle may not close an application and just because you can only see one window does not mean that the top tool bar is the tool bar from that particular application.

Here's my Win2K counter-anecdote. My father is computer illiterate. He only knows how to get to documents that the application lists as the most recently used ones. He only know how to quit programs by clicking the "X" button. His computer used to regularly slow down until it was unusable and he had to reboot. The reason was not spyware, but hearts. Clicking the "X" closed the game window, but did not quit the application. Windows, however, had no way to easily get to the program again (a bug prevented cmd-tabbing). So I'd stop by and he'd regularly have 10 or more copies of hearts running on his laptop. Teaching him to use the menus proved harder than finding a better hearts game.

of course, this was back when we were using system 9, but I don't see any difference with OSX

There is one difference and that is the dock. If you close a window the user will notice the program is still running pretty quickly, since the dock icon remains and is marked as running. Most novice mac users use the dock to start and stop applications. It makes a lot more logical sense, in my opinion, than tying the action to having open windows.

Running scared!

[Otter]

Is Jobs scared of Aero?, does it make sense to go for a new UI now?, has Aqua run out of steam?

Faced with the prospect of being "boring and unoriginal" compared to OLPC vaporware, Steve has decided to one-up the "View Source" button and make XCode the new interface.

Re:Running scared!

[LaminatorX]

Bah! Emacs users have been doing that for ages.

Re:Aero?

[sottitron]

I guess /. assumes you know about current technology since you are browsing its pages... Aero is a set of GUI features from Microsoft's new OS, Vista.

Illuminous

[jimmichie]

Surely you mean iLuminous.

Anyway, how about a weekly round-up of Apple rumours rather than individual stories?

Blind guess

[hcdejong]

Given that the job posting talks about nothing more than 'enhancements' to Aqua, we seem to have basically no data to go by.

Apart from that, I do think it's time for Apple to revisit Aqua. Not for a pointless 'replace it with another theme to keep up with Aero' exercise, though. The OS X UI needs a more fundamental redesign, to improve the way we interact with our data. The Finder is one app in dire need of an update.

Re:Somehow, I doubt this ....

[lisaparratt]

One would imagine the object model and API would stay the same, and just the actual visualisation would change.

Is Jobs scared of Aero?

[pubjames]

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).

Re:Allow to keep the old too

[mrchaotica]

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!

Want Finder improvements

[Midnight Thunder]

The Finder is the one thing I would like to see improvements in. For example rewriting it to be a Cocoa app and actually being smarter at noticing file changes, especially with SMB volumes. There is no f5 (refresh key on Windows), so I don't want to have to wait a minute until it notices.

One other thing I would love to see, related to AppleShare volumes: server side folder size calculation, since it would be easier to cache and reduce unecessary network traffic because the client wouldn't be interogating each and every file.

Re:Want Finder improvements

[megabulk3000]

Here's an AppleScript which acts like a "refresh" button:

try
    tell application "Finder" to update items of front window
end try

compile it, save it in one of your Scripts folders, and make the AppleScript menulet visible. You could probably also use Butler or QuickKeys or Quicksilver to assign a keyboard shortcut to it.

HTH

Re:Want Finder improvements

[shmlco]

Command-R in the Finder is "Show Original". There is no "refresh" option.

Competing with XGL

[miyako]

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.

Re:Competing with XGL

[Stormwatch]

Eye candy alone, a good interface does not make. It has to work well too. Position of elements, system-wide consistency, clarity of function: are you taking these in account?

Re:Competing with XGL

[dreamer-of-rules]

I think that OS X does have a great interface in general, but I don't want to get into an argument with you about it. I do wish that I could make any window transparent, but it's not a big-enough deal for me to actually pay for an add-on. Expose and multiple desktops help so I don't feel the lack of window shading.

However, zooming in to the desktop is very easy, built-in and intuitive in OS X. With the auto-smoothing, I think it makes for decent full screen YouTube viewing. I use it all the time to full screen whatever I'm showing to my coworkers.

Ctrl-. You can change the behavior details in the Keyboard and Mouse preferences.

Re:Competing with XGL

[Drizzt Do'Urden]

I tried to install it once to get it to stop offering it to me - I can't, because I don't have one. Why is it that Microsoft can manage not to offer me updates I can't install, but Apple can't?

In the File menu, there's an option to hide this update and forget about this update's tree

Why do we still have creator/type flags?

Functionnality. There's a default application for a file type, but applications can take ownership of a file. Usually, when you create a file with an application, you'll go back in it sooner or later. You can change this file's mapping in the Get Info dialog, as well as access other applications to open it with the right click

This menu is apparently created by the application, not by the OS, because the key shortcut to hide the application varies from program to program.

Don't blame Apple, but the application's developper. The default shortcut is Command-H, but some developpers forgot about it and used it for other functions.

As a Vista user...

[moracity]

I think Jobs has nothing to worry about. Aero is utter crap. I've been using Vista for the past week or so and the entire interface seems "incomplete" somehow. The learning curve for Vista is pretty steep. Everything is awkward and MS has actually made Windows harder to use. Just navigating the ile system is bizarre. There are more steps to get to anything. Don't even get me started on Office 2007. My wife is a pretty skilled Office user and she couldn't do anything with Word 2007. I've been looking for a setting to get the 2003 interface back, but I don't see one. You can't make this kind of drastic change to the interface of the most widely used office suite in the world. It's absurd.

There is no way we will be deploying either product to our users at the office anytime soon. It would kill the productivity of our company immediately. There are some cool IT management features in Vista, but the change in the interface negates all of them.

Re:As a Vista user...

[cmorriss]

You can't make this kind of drastic change to the interface of the most widely used office suite in the world. It's absurd.

OMFG!!! The interface changed!! You've got to feel a little for Microsoft sometimes. One of the few times they try to truly innovate and they get slammed because the interface actually changed. How can you innovate without changing interface at least some? If it's worse than the old interface, ok. But that's not even the complaint from a lot of people. They just don't like the fact that it changed. Oh well, I'm sure the billions they rake in despite this will keep them from taking it too much to heart.

Who's responding to who?

[Kadin2048]

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.

Re:Who's responding to who?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I agree, Illuminous is not an answer to Aero. It's Apple using a page out of Disney's playbook: The best way to predict the future is to create it.

Re:Who's responding to who?

[diegocgteleline.es]

No, what is really odd is that people thinks that people is "scared" of Aero. Mac OS X was released on 2000, in 2001 the interface got hardware acceleration. Vista is being released....NOW.

In other words, while MS has player catch up, Apple has had plenty of time to think on the "Next big thing". Why wouldn't they improve Aqua? They've the lead for years so if someone can do it, that's apple.

It's a interesting thing that they're doing it but saying that they're "scared" is stupid. It's microsoft who should be scared of needing to play catch up with the next Mac OS interfaces.

Re:Who's responding to who?

[fistfullast33l]

I agree. I think Microsoft is scared of Apple's dominance in the "public image" department as being cool. They may still have market share but that is mostly in the Business space. Apple is creeping up on the consumer space largely through the iPod and their recent marketing campaigns (the television commercials are really good). Aero definitely was in response to Aqua and I think the announcement today that Office won't support VBA on OS X definitely is a flag from Microsoft they're going to start to play tough. And of course, there is the Zune.

Re:Who's responding to who?

[kimvette]

In addition, Vista is a "major upgrade" which is several years late, with Microsoft's yanking features left and right, and pulling out a LOT of code changes to meet their 200th or so delayed date, while Apple has:

  - Introduced a brand-new OS
  - (as you mentioned) Accelerated their GUI
  - Refreshed the look and feel several times
  - Kept up with security patches (and no, not rushing just the DRM patches like Microsoft does)
  - Migrated to a new platform (PPC -> x86) while maintaining backwards compatibility
  - Introduced two new video NLE suites
  - Introduced an office suite
  - Introduced an IDE rivaling that of Microsoft's
  - Introduced a new method of file browsing (love it or hate it, Finder is unique and interesting)

During that same time period, while Microsoft's upgrades to office suites have consisted largely of upgrading the GUI (ooooh, new screen-estate sucking toolbars renamed to Ribbons) while yanking key selling features (VBA).

Microsoft is innovating how, exactly?

Re:Who's responding to who?

[UnxMully]

Colour me skeptical but Illuminous is hardly a word that's in common usage unlike pages, keynote, spotlight, aperture (OK, a bit closer), finder, aqua, cocoa, carbon (that's enough, Ed,...) so the the codename alone sounds a bit suspect.

Having said that, I'll be interested to see some form of consistency resulting from the white/brushed metal wars.

Re:Who's responding to who?

[Overly Critical Guy]

And if you follow Groklaw, you'd laugh at the fact that lead Windows guy Allchin wrote an email to Gates and Ballmer in 2004 explaining that if he didn't work at Microsoft, he'd be using a Mac...

Re:Who's responding to who?

[mstone]

Wow..

Quick tip: next time shove the corncob up your ass lengthwise instead of sideways.

To the extent that your reply was itself anything but a string of unsupported insults, the remaining two words ('market share') don't automatically lend themselves to the intepretation you suggest in your second round of verbal diarrhea.

As for evidence that Apple's market share is growing in consumer space, Apple's market share numbers have been growing steadily for a couple of years. Granted they're still only around 4%, which makes them anything but the powerhouse in home computing, but the rise does suggest a trend toward growing popularity somewhere. A recent study of third-party resellers said that those vendors are seeing about 20-30% conversion from Windows among Mac buyers. Apple's numbers at the Apple Store run about 50%, which makes sense since the third-party vendors tend to serve more repeat and business customers, while the Apple Store gets a higher share of walk-ins. The gist of it all is that Apple's share in consumer space does seem to be growing, based on the numbers out there. That doesn't make Apple the big dog, but any growth of a competing product is something for Microsoft to take seriously.

Now, as to my own previous post, it is in fact possible for someone to say something that doesn't fit entirely within the boundaries you expected, and still have a point. This knowledge may serve you well in the future, if and when you ever grow up.

My point was that 'market share' is only one way to look at the market, and not necessarily the best one. Market share counts units shipped, but doesn't say anything about how much money a company made shipping those units. It's easy to gain market share by dumping products into the market below cost and eating the loss.. Microsoft has been doing that for years with the Xbox, and the entire dotcom bubble was fueled on the idea that companies would, in effect, sell dollar bills for 75 cents to generate 'brand awareness', then apply that 'brand' to some profitable (but unspecified) line of business later. The first part worked just fine, but most companies didn't survive long enough to do the second.

Dell matters to Microsoft because 80% of Microsoft's OS sales come from OEM license deals, and OS sales are a big chunk of Microsoft's revenue. Dell makes its money in the $1.5-3K price range, and uses those profits to subsidize the low-priced machines that give Dell (and Microsoft) such a big 'market share'.

Right now, market evidence suggests that Apple is starting to eat Dell's lunch in the $1.5-3K price range. The loss of that comparatively small chunk of 'market share' translates to a large loss of profit, which in turn undercuts Dell's ability to keep the pipeline of low-cost entry machines on life support. If Dell can't make a decent business case to continue producing its low-end machines, the loss of that pipeline threatens a large chunk of Dell's 'market share', which in turn threatens Microsoft's 'market share'. Again, that's something for Microsoft to take seriously.

Loss of market share (or more precisely, loss of installed base) hurts Microsoft in more than just direct revenue. It also undercuts Microsoft's ability to lock customers into its OS-and-bundled-software package with proprietary formats and protocols. The more solidly Microsoft can maintain a monoculture, the easier it is for Microsoft to kill competing products simply by making its own products default to something proprietary. The more heterogenous the computing environment gets, the harder it is for Microsoft to lock out competing products that way. And if consumers are using non-proprietary formats and protocols, they have less need to stay on the Microsoft upgrade treadmill, which hits the only profitable business unit Microsoft has.

In the business license market, where Microsoft makes most of the money it doesn't make in OEM licensing, it's easy for the IT department to blow off complaints from the guy in the

Re:Aero?

[Anonymous Coward]

OS?

Enough with the technical terms, Pointdexter.
Just say its the clicky thing that lets you do stuff on the whatchamahoo.

Single menu conserves screen estate

[SuperKendall]

The thing I really like about the single menu bar is not so much that it's always in the same place (which is handy) but that you conserve a lot of screen estate when every window an app has open does not have to make room for a whole menubar.

This is especially annoying with browser windows, which you tend to have a lot of. But many applications are prone to having multiple documents open at once and it helps there as well.

Another problem it helps solve is visual menu clutter - sometimes in Windows when I have a lot of apps up, I go to select a menu item and find that I have hit the wrong menu, bringing a whole different window in focus that I did not mean to access! Under X-Windows the problem is in some ways worse, because you can access that menu without changing focus meaning you may not realize you are not accessing the right menu until it is too late.

Re:Single menu conserves screen estate

[porcupine8]

This is why I like it, as well. Not everyone has a nice 30" widescreen monitor - or even a 17". I was working on a 15" monitor using Windows at my last job, and there was just no room, especially since I often had 5-6 Word documents open as well as a couple browser windows and 1-2 excel files. The tiny bit of space a shared menubar would have saved would have been much appreciated. Even if it wouldn't have given me enough space for a whole additional window, making things a bit less cluttered would have just *felt* nicer.

DZ

[ElephanTS]

Yep, Blue Steel is just one look. Where's Magnum?

*whoosh*

[darkwhite]

Do you hear that sound, Mr. Cloricus? That is the sound of inevitability. That is the sound of a joke flying over your head.

Re:Ummm

[SEMW]

Doesn't Aero exist to compete with Aqua? No. Aero exists to compete with Luna. Microsoft's biggest threat to Vista adoption by far is users sticking with XP. The threat from Apple is negligible by comparison.

No

[iangoldby]

I think the name gives it away. "Illuminous." That's a word that people sometimes mistakenly use when they mean "luminous."

I don't think Steve Jobs would want a word that in many people's mind would have connotations of ignorance.

I can login without touching my mouse...

[SuperBanana]

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...

Re:Aero?

[alexhard]

I know we're supposed to RTFA You must be new here..

Certainly not for leopard

[Builder]

Apple have had their developer community working on Leopard for about 3 months now. It is very unlikely that they would rip the work these guys have been doing out from under them with just 2 - 4 months to the launch of the next OS.

Major developers like Adobe and Microsoft may have even been working to this platform for longer.

So if there is a new UI coming, it won't be for 10.5

Illuminati to battle Aero?

[Prototerm]

WTF, I've been wondering where those guys have been hiding all this time. I've got this mental image of guys in hooded robes fighting a bunch wearing Buck Rogers rocket packs.

Resolution Independence

[Setti45]

To quote the features introduced for Leopard -> http://developer.apple.com/leopard/overview/

Resolution Independence

The old assumption that displays are 72dpi has been rendered obsolete by advances in display technology. Macs now ship with displays that sport native resolutions of 100dpi or better. Furthermore, the number of pixels per inch will continue to increase dramatically over the next few years. This will make displays crisper and smoother, but it also means that interfaces that are pixel-based will shrink to the point of being unusable. The solution is to remove the 72dpi assumption that has been the norm. In Leopard, the system, including the Carbon and Cocoa frameworks, will be able to draw user interface elements using a scale factor. This will let the user interface maintain the same physical size while gaining resolution and crispness from high dpi displays.

The introduction of resolution independence may mean that there is work that you'll need to do in order to make your application look as good as possible. For modern Cocoa and Carbon applications, most of the work will center around raster-based resources. For older applications that use QuickDraw, more work will be required to replace QuickDraw-based calls with Quartz ones.

This is more or less on Apple's website. Version 2 is no big surprise.

Re:Aero?

[Overly Critical Guy]

Slashdot also assumes a completely unconfirmed rumor from a site with a low historical accuracy is front page news.

The last thing Apple is afraid of is the abortion of interface design that is Aero and its five different menu styles and embarrassing shut down menu--only Microsoft could spread out "turn off computer" into nine or so redundant menu options.

It's simple, really

[LKM]

Now that Microsoft has copied Aqua, it's time for Apple to make Aqua look old. Simple as that.