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Independent Human Interface Guidelines
An anonymous reader alerts us to the IndieHIG Wiki, which is an independent effort to pick up the ball that Apple has dropped on human interface guidelines (can you spell FTFF?). From the wiki: "The IndieHIG project is an initiative created out of the necessity to document the new look and feel aspects of the Mac OS X experience, outside of the supervision of Apple itself. The project is not intended to replace, but rather to supplement the somewhat dated Apple Human Interface Guidelines (HIG). There are many instances of Apple using new and experimental interface styles, spurring developers to emulate these styles in their own applications. Unfortunately, because Apple provides neither guidelines nor code for developers to work with, the implementation of these interface styles and features by third parties can be lopsided and directionless. The IndieHIG intends to change this by providing a comprehensive set of guidelines governing the use and appearance of new, undocumented interface elements so that their implementation by third party developers adheres to the unwritten standards that Apple has set."
Human Interface Guidelines have been languishing for far too long at Apple (basically since OS 9 if not a little before).
This is sorely needed for the OS X platform, and Microsoft, all of the Linux Manager projects and the web as a whole could stand to take a few notes.
If the rumors are true, new unified interface standards will be debuted with Leopard. I think we may well see major developments on that front. There's a new unified grey theme that is going to replace Metal. Resolution independence is another big item, and we know that's coming. Hopefully Leopard will be the release to fix most, if not all, of the minor UI inconsistencies found in Apple's applications, which will in turn spur developers to follow suit.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
Well, for one, users do react better to a UI that's visually appealing (but non-invasive). Although I personally think that Apple's Mail.app shown in the grandparent post violates this principle, OS X on a whole conforms to it pretty well.
As far as "amateurish UI element spacing and layouts", I refer you to this KDE Print Settins dialogue. Although the screenshot's somewhat dated (2004), I came across a similar dialogue this past week when using my University's linux cluster. Although the font configuration doesn't appear to have been borked like in the screenshot I linked to, the element spacing was the same, despite the smaller fonts (ie. huge window, small fonts).
There are a few examples of good UIs on KDE/GTK apps, but for the most part, they tend to look very sloppy. Win32 apps tend to look neutral and professional. OS X apps are a bit more flashy, but are on a similar level of "neatness".
I would doubt that it's even an issue with "open-sourceness". Adium, a (free) GAIM-based multi-platform IM client for OS X has what is easily one of the best UIs I've seen on an application regardless of license or platform.
Another complaint I have is that FOSS GUIs tend to rely a lot on toolbars and icons. Although this isn't necessarily a terrible thing in and of itself, It is more often than not the case that WAY too many icons are presented, and that the design of said icons gives very few visual cues as to the function of the button. Konqueror is a terrible offender of this crime. Although virtually every other browser on the planet gets by just fine with 4 or 5 buttons in the toolbar, Konqueror somehow feels that it's perfectly acceptable to put 17 buttons in the default toolbar.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose