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.

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

[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.)

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-???)

[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.

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

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.

Illuminous

[jimmichie]

Surely you mean iLuminous.

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

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).

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

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: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.

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.

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:Aero?

[alexhard]

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

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:New Name

[sharkey]

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

You must be new here.