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Ars File: Operating System Reviews
By John Siracusa | Published: October 28, 2007 - 11:36PM CT
There's been mention of a "new look" in most post-10.0 Mac OS X reviews, and with good reason. With each release of Mac OS X, Apple has chosen to revise the look of several aspects of the interface. Sometimes these changes were made for usability reasons, but increasingly, the motivation appeared to be, for lack of a better word, fashion.
The phrase "arbitrary graphical change" has become increasingly applicable, and the sheer number of possible looks for any given element of the OS has exploded. As of the end of Tiger's reign, most major interface elements had at least two possible looks, with windows themselves having many more than that. Worse, Apple itself has introduced many new looks that are exclusive to its own applications (e.g., the iTunes scroll bars or just about the entire Aperture interface.)
I've never been among those who rail against this proliferation of looks based solely on their number. It's okay to have multiple looks for, say, a button as long as it's still recognizable as a button. In fact, this exact sentiment was expressed in Apple's human interface guidelines long before the advent of Mac OS X.
That said, I have my own reasons for being down on the state of Mac OS X's appearance through the Tiger era. Put simply, after six years of tweaks, I'm ready for a big change.
I touched on this in the introduction, and it colors my entire view of Leopard: I'm looking for a discontinuity, a new beginning, in all aspects of the OS. This is unfair (and you'll see how unfair in a moment), but it's how I felt. I know plenty of other Mac fans also pinned their hopes on a radical appearance revision in Leopard; all the "top secret" hype certainly fanned those flames.
Just to be clear, I'm talking only about the appearance of the OS for now. I certainly wasn't expecting big changes to the interface behavior—a crazy iPhone-like multitouch reimagining, pervasive voice or handwriting recognition, and so on. But there's plenty of room for a revolution solely within the "look" half of "look and feel."
Look no further than the introduction of Aqua itself for the quintessential example. Remember what that was like?
Aqua hit like a ton of bricks, and it wasn't just because it was such a break from the past. Aqua was a comprehensive overhaul of the look of Mac OS. As it existed in Mac OS X 10.0, Aqua was a closed circle: a single, internally consistent design from top to bottom.
That's not to say that it was perfect—far from it. Some judged it too bright; the pinstripes were a bit too pronounced; translucency hindered legibility in some areas; the list went on. These flaws were slowly corrected with each subsequent revision of Mac OS X. But while these corrections improved the usability and (usually) the look of the OS, they also compromised the overall aesthetic design. What started as a (flawed) work of genius was patched and filled and tweaked by a committee of pragmatists, rendering it much improved, but considerably less inspired.
Is it fair to expect Leopard to wipe the slate clean and, further, to succeed where Aqua failed by being at once a work of art and a pragmatic match for the evolved Tiger user interface? Maybe not, but that's what was in my heart as Leopard was revealed. I wanted Steve to get up on stage and say, "Aqua's had a good run, but it's time for something new. Introducing (insert code name here)." That's why I loved the "Illuminous" rumor so much. To me, a new name meant a new beginning.
Leopard's appearance is not a new beginning, but it is still the most substantial visual change in the history of Mac OS X. This is mostly attributable to the appearance of windows. A Leopard window looks like this (mouse over for graphite).
Notice that I didn't say that this is what a "standard" Leopard window looks like, or a "metal" Leopard window, or a "unified" Leopard window. That's because there's only one kind of window in Leopard, and you're looking at it. This slate gray appearance replaces all other standard window styles. Existing applications that ask for metal or unified windows will get this appearance instead.
Custom appearances like those used by some of Apple's applications retain their unique looks. (Yes, Garage Band is still sporting wood.) But oddballs aside, this is effectively a Grand Unification of window appearance after six long years of experimentation.
I mentioned before that I've never been opposed to multiple window looks on general principles, but there was one reason (aside from my desire for radical change) that the multiplying window appearances bothered me. The big problem was that it was never clear which appearance to use in any given situation. Apple's few attempts at setting guidelines stank of retroactive justification, so developers were left to their own judgment. This led to some poor choices and some ugly applications.
And, truth be told, if there's no coherent reason for the use of a new window appearance, then why does it need to exist at all as a system-wide option for all developers? I'm not sure what to call the new One True Window Appearance in Leopard (Aqua? Slate?), but I'm glad someone at Apple finally made a choice and stuck with it.
As for the look itself, I find it kind of heavy, especially when paired with the still-bright standard window background, as seen in dialogs, especially.
It also clashes a bit with the mostly unchanged buttons, scroll bar thumbs, and other standard controls that retain their shiny blue appearance. The old "Aqua" window looks (any of them) were definitely a better fit.
Tool bars in the new windows are "unified" in that there is no dividing line between the title bar and the tool bar area. Tool bar items retain their many different looks across the bundled applications. There's a new appearance for the "selected" state of toolbar items, which has its own interesting story.
There's also been a welcome revision to the look of "capsule" toolbar buttons. Gone are the muppet-felt blue buttons introduced in Tiger's Mail application, replaced with more palatable gray equivalents.
The capsules are still a bit of an oddity, coming in little clumps as they do. The Safari-style square toolbar buttons are more common, and much nicer looking. The depressed (mouse-down) state of these buttons is particularly nice.
The inactive state of the new windows is now more clearly distinguished from the active state. Inactive windows fade to a much lighter shade of gray. The switch from dark to light gray can actually be a bit jarring when it happens to large windows.
It takes a while to get used to these changes. Long-time users used to looking for "dark windows" to pick out Safari, for example, will be flustered. Now, only the front-most window is dark, and even Safari windows are light when in the background. Still, it's a change worth acclimating to.
To even further emphasize the front-most window, its drop shadow has been greatly expanded (see screenshot above). It's large, but also quite diffuse, so it doesn't unduly obscure content below.
Aesthetic quibbles aside, the new window look is overwhelmingly a net win. It eliminates developer and user confusion, sweeps up and disposes of several ugly (in the opinion of many) looks from past versions of Mac OS X, and is, well, pretty okay looking in its own right.
Perhaps I should try to sound more positive about the new window style, because it turns out to be the highlight of the visual changes. Leopard also includes its own crop of the aforementioned "arbitrary graphical changes," and most of them are not changes for the better.
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