Windows 8 appears to adopt Mac OS X Lion's monochrome, iPad-like icons - Page 2

Now all they got to do is drop the Windows name and logo, fire Steve Bummer, and release DOS 11,

I'm curious about the graphic artists that Microsoft hired to work on the icons. You normally think of artistic types as taking some pride in their work and trying to come up with something original, maybe not completely but at least to build on the current idiom. But I get the feeling that MS's graphic artists do not care, or can't afford to care, about artistic integrity. Or perhaps it's MS who doesn't really care about those things at all and the poor illustrators are just happy to have a steady job. Albeit doing uninspired, mind-numbing mimicry.

Yep the foaming freak writers at this site are pretty dam funny. I am pretty sure this all part of the Metro look and feel you know that started with the Zune 3-5 years ago now.

Its only being pushed into everything Microsoft at this point. www.microsoft.com went metro recently, the Xbox, pic of the next office, Sky Drive, Windows Phone 7...etc...etc.

I like the way OS x looks but I like windows more than OS x and personally that kind of icons on windows just look absolutely gay to me (gay as in retardedly stupid kind of gay) I mean the crap looks like Microsoft is trying to make windows look like crap

Wow people really care about this stuff?

totally

and also ,. didn't you post something about how windows 8 is designed to be radically different from mac OS like 2 days ago ?? do you read your own articles?

As someone with a reference to grammar in his signature, perhaps you meant to say "I like"?

1) Are you seriously claiming you don't understand what I'm communicating?

2) The verb form of like is exactly what I meant to write.

The whole GUI-idea for the original Mac OS (the OS on the Lisa & 128k) came from Steve Jobs' visit to Xerox Parc. After seeing a graphical user interface in action and a mouse, he knew that this had to be adapted for the Macintosh project....

The first Mac OS icons were black & white, but with the evolution of Mac OS and eventually System 6 and System 7 in color, the icons became colorful 8-bit bitmapped icons which had a bevelled look and were very, very attractive. Compare the icons of Macintosh System 6/System 7 to the Equivalent Windows 3.11 of the time, and you will see the Mac OS and icons, and user interface on the Mac was much more attractive, as well as the use of Fonts like Chicago, Geneva, and Helvetica in the interface. Looked MUCH MUCH better than Windows in 1986-1996, even before Copland/Tempo (Mac OS 8) came out with the 3D-icon look.

Windows 95 was an attempt to brush up the Windows look and add a more 3D interface with better icons...but The Apple System 7.5 of the time still looked better. NeXT had been developing their NeXTStep/OpenSTEP with full photorealistic icons, and it was the OPENStep OS interface-look that eventually was adopted by Apple as the basis for the Mac UI under Rhapsody. Apple tweaked this and introduced a whole new look with more Mac-style icons when they introduced the Aqua interface for OS X at Macworld 2000.

You can see in my screenshots below, the Mac vs Windows look over the years, and the icons and UI...take a look at these screenshots:

Macintosh Sceenshot evolution:

http://blogof.francescomugnai.com/20...derful-images/

System 7, 8, 9, Mac OS X Appearance (WinMac emulator):

http://winmac.emuunlim.com/SSFrame.html

Mac OS X Evolution:

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/lof...hp/t26724.html

Windows Screenshot evolution:

http://techzworld.blogspot.com/2010/...y-version.html

This is the original Mac OS X "Aqua" interface I was talking about, which was introduced in 2000:

When you look at this comparison, please also look at the years. So Microsoft changed its icons from 2d to 3d TEN years after apple? Sorry, but this article is manipulative.

Also microsofts 2d black-white icons were already used at the zune style - LONG BEFORE APPLE used it now in lion. So if you see it totally neutral, apple actually copied m$ here.

And besides all that: I don't think these grey icons apple is using are good. Some programs (like iTunes) look like boring grey mice to me now. I don't like them at all!

I'm incredibly disappointed by Microsoft's efforts to produce a usable touch UI. Microsoft's mantra that "tablets are PC's" sounds great until you get a few neurons deep in your processing of the assertion. At that point, you start to think 'wait a minute, they aren't PC's... not really." And that means that any decisions Microsoft is making, based upon the assertion, are likely to be wrong.

UI is the biggest failure I see them making, and they seem content to do it over and over again.

Certainly with respect to UI, there are more dissimilarities between a tablet device and a desktop than there are similarities. A tablet form factor both constrains and affords interactional patterns in ways that are very different from a PC, and it is this fundamental point that Microsoft seems incapable of grasping.

When I look at designs like this, and the seemingly drug-induced ribbon interface showcased recently... I just come away feeling that Microsoft doesn't 'get it'. When they introduced Windows 7 with touch, they did pretty much nothing to really make touch useful as a feature. Instead they did the equivalent of allowing you to use a touch capable surface as a mouse. In fact, 4 years after Apple introduced the iPhone, internet explorer still does not expose basic touch events through its Javascript engine, something every competing platform does.

The result of all of the aforementioned is a truly mediocre experience that is flawed on such a basic level that it relegates touch as a feature to something only slightly better than a novelty as opposed to something tangibly useful. It seems like Microsoft is intent on repeating the same mistakes with Windows 8, which virtually guarantees that Windows 8 devices will be hampered from the start.

With tablets and similar devices, the user interface is critical to the ability of a user to derive value from the device, much more so than it is with a desktop OS. Microsoft's inability to recognize how these interactional modes differ and to build appropriate user interfaces that optimize those interactions is going to be a train wreck for them.

Am actually not a fan of monochrome at all. Apple started it, Google followed with + design elements, amazon is now testing a greyscale website and now MS.

What is the point of shipping 1440 by 900 on a glossy 13 inch display that can display "millions of colors", when all the icons are grey and lifeless?

You're comparing the history of MS to a Mac OS version that came out this Summer? Are you bloody serious?

As a new Apple user, I have to agree wholeheartedly with you on this. My creativity has skyrocketed since I got my 27" iMac last year. I have finally gotten over that "Windows Slump" I got sucked into so many years ago.

I would take Windows ME over OS 9. Windows 98 was my first PC, and a few years later, probably in 8th grade I went to a school that had OS9.

This was about 2001 so OS X was just barely out, but the school has not upgraded. I tell you I was saying quite a few swearwords at the G3 at the time. The hockey puck mouse was crap, the OS slow, the browser could not display websites for shit and was slow. You can tell I was pissed at the time, just thinking about that machine makes me mad (I know now a lot of these were not OS specific flaws, but rather the hardware and standards environment that existed at the time)

The only good thing I remember from my first mac encounter was the keyboard. It was a dream to type papers on.

Fast forward to high school and iMac G5 - I pooped my pants. Could not walk away from that machine. OS was way better than XP, it was fairly fast, it did video editing, audio editing. G5 is the reason I use a mac now in many ways.

Right! When Metro was first demonstrated, this site was full of nay-sayers commenting on how stupid it was to have square boxes, with white on black cut off text.

And now it turns out that stupidity was blattent copying!?

Which one is it?

PS: Have fun not streaming music from the iCloud, while the stupid Metro users can stream any song available in the entire library of available music at the touch of button

Because I have million of colours I should be using them all the time? I'm glad they are there for videos, but that's about it. For my UI I want visual data that is easier for my brain to decode. Just imagine that instead of the names of menus in the Menu Bar we had colourful icons or if each letter was a different colour. That wouldn't be useful to the user.

I even use a solid black image as my desktop background and have been using since I started using computers. I don't want an image in the background camouflaging the icons and white text on my desktop. I have no need to actively look at my desktop background.

Well, I surely don't want the visual mess of Windows 8, but I did like color in iTunes and finder. Made stuff way easier to find.

Battery life!

I can see that with the small grey on white icons. The eyes don't pick up on them quickly so color or a more dramatic monochrome would be helpful. However, what I'm seeing with Metro UI is pretty dramatic. It's like it's being designed for OLED display where you want to use more blacks to save on display power drain.

Connotes

Based on a pre-beta snap of a demo video about native ISO/VHD support the OP has concluded that Windows 8 has ripped off the Metro-style OSX Lion monochrome icons.

An example of just how heavily Windows 8 rips off OSX Lion is presented below.

Yea totally agree. When there is too much color is distracting, but if used correctly it can be very helpful.

Breaking news...

Scientists around the world are currently trying to discover how Microsoft we able to transport ideas backwards 5 years in time in order to steal the iconography from OSX Lion and (perhaps even more perplexing) with this incredibly 5 year hind-sight available to them, why they still chose the poo-brown color for the Zune.

Huh? First they spend xx millions on advertisement for Vista, hailing 'after 30 years we finally dropped the text START from the Start button' and now they add it back.

Wow. Just wow.

I just don't understand this company. Even when they always make money, no matter what they do, or don't do, why is it that they simply do not make things better. They don't make their software nicer to look at, easier to work with.

I think Steve Jobs was right in saying (at NeXT) that they have no taste. There doesn't seem to be any guidance, no vision. Surely it can't be the employees; Apple possibly hires ex-Microsoft employees for their skills.

Quite in-comprehendible to see two companies, both in the tech industry, yet worlds apart.

These forums get better and better! With funnier posts, and of course Dick's copytition yesterday.

And Bada Boom, Bada Bing. Classic already.

Geez! That picture is the epitome of a "goatse" in tech/industrial design. Made me dry-heave a little! Wonder what Jonny Ive does if someone throws (up) that picture at him?

What is incomprehensible is that people take DED at face value, do no research whatsoever and then take the trouble to post their lack of knowledge on the web.

If you had run 3.11 you would realize how wrong you are.

Windows is a very consistent family. It's consistently inconsistent.

Good job, well spotted.
+1



AI fail.

OLED screens have a McDonalds behavior...

I'm out already.

It's a bit early to be making any kind of call on this yet. I'm not even sure what the hell we are looking at!

The "Start" text doesn't actually go there as you can see it clipping the Explorer icon (first image below).

It almost appears that he is running a Windows 7 themed desktop in an RDP or VM session inside a "real" Windows 8 PC.

At the end of the day all this analysis on something that probably won't even make the final product seems kind of pointless. I've got a feeling Microsoft are using this "engineering blog" as a viral ad campaign.

I wouldn't mind if they went full metro when it came to Windows 8 UI...well not full metro, as it wouldn't be as effective on a large screen IMO but more like how I use to theme my desktop, more or less.



Being microsoft I do NOT expect them to release something substantially cool looking for a desktop environment...but I can hope.

FWIW: PIXAR FILMS during their BOX OFFICE RUNS WORLD-WIDE

Toy Story: Worldwidet $361,958,736\t

Toy Story 2: Worldwidet $485,015,179\t

Toy Story 3: Worldwidet $1,063,171,911\t

Monsters Inc: Worldwidet $525,366,597

A Bug's Life: Worldwidet $363,398,565\t

Finding Nemo: Worldwidet $867,893,978\t

The Incredibles: Worldwide: $631,442,092

Cars: Worldwidet $461,983,149

Ratatouille: Worldwidet $623,722,818

Wall-E: Worldwidet $521,311,860\t

Up: Worldwidet $731,342,744

Cars 2: Worldwidet $521,960,986*

* And counting

Subtotal Box Office* = $7,158,568,615

With over $7 Billion in Box Office sales and probably double that in Video Sales and Toy Sales no wonder Disney got a huge bargain when they bought PIXAR.

Looks like they borrowed heavily from GNOME which borrowed heavily from Apple and NeXT.

everything is borrowed at some point or the other...there are few completely new ideas.

Any hacks yet to REVERT, or alter, the lion icons back to something human beings can read without squinting, something with colour for visual cues? (Yes I hate them, and my download of lion is for the past couple of months or so still in pause and no resume is in the horizon.

Or they could just be continuing with the "Windows 7" appearance.

Arguably the flattening out has gone too far in lion. I can hardly tell which buttons are active anymore. Prime example, the back button in safari. The difference in contrast is so subtle as to be basically useless. Even Apples own HIG stated colour to be useful, right?