Latest Apple interface spotted in new Tiger builds - Page 2

Personally, I think any theme is okay, as long as Apple finally decides on ONE theme. The mixture of brushed metal and aqua UI elements even within the same application is annoying and I don't see any reason for it. It's against the most basic usability rules ("strive for consistency") and even Apple is unable to explain what the brushed metal should be used for. The UI styleguide says something like "used for an interface to a digital device" -- hey, my whole computer is a digital device, isn't it?

The look of Tiger's Mail.app is nice and would be well applicable to Safari, iCal and others. In the future, I would prefer a slower evolution of the look of OS X.

Talking about Classic Mac OS vs. Mac OS X: I think, OS X looks nicer, but from a usability point of view, Classic, especially the classic Finder, is much better. There have been comments on ArsTechnica and AskTog about this topic and I largely agree with them.

And one last point: I don't understand, why Apple makes a move towards single window apps, like Mail or iCal, iTunes and so forth. One of the biggest advantages of Mac OS over Windows is, that you can have many windows side by side and not that fullscreen mode that is so prominent in Windows. But to use this to your advantage (ie Drag&Drop) it requires that windows can be small compared to the screen size. Remeber: Not everyone has a 30" Cinema Display. I am a mobile worker and use a 12" iBook, because it is the easiest to carry. Once (Classic) Mac OS was very usable on small screen, I was happy with the 640x400 screen of my PB 145b, but with OS X, even 1024x768 is to small for some apps.

Greetings,
celandir

Did anyone else noltice that in the first screenshot (Mail 2.0, active), there are some visual anomalies in the scrollbar of the message list pane?

At about halfway down, the top scrollbar's track suddenly shifts inwards a few pixels, only to push back out again. Not to mention that above this anomaly, the scrollbar track looks active, whereas below it looks inactive.

I realize that this is a screenshot from an OS still heavily under development, but does anyone have any ideas why this may have happened? I have never seen the scrollbar do anything like this...

No more drawers!

That was fast! Apple must be reading our Apple Mac OS X Wish List.

If I may also draw your attention to other requests:

Hide Folders
When running IMAP mail system folders like .mailboxlist should be hidden and not shown in the Mailboxes draw listing.

Use This Mailbox For
Should enable user defined groupings.

HTML Status Bar
When viewing HTML emails there should be an HTML status bar so that when you mouse over a link you can see where it is going to take you before you click on it.

RSS
Implement subscription based RSS in Mail to compliment the browser based viewing in Safari

Also, where has the folder bookmark bar gone that you can see in an earlier version of Mail 2?

Cheers Daniel

There general consensus at Mac Rumors is that these are fake!

See: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthre...5&page=1&pp=25

AI: Please varify your sources! :-(

Cheers Daniel

What can I say? - Ghastly, absolutely ghastly.
It's the same interface as seen in the new main Preferences panel. Title merges into toolbar, toolbar merges into content. wrong wrong wrong.

What's wrong with the 'Pro' interface? It is absolutely excellent, and the new translucent 'flat' floating panels in Motion are excellent too. Roll that out across the entire OS, and I'll be happy.

I think the 'Pro' interface is a little too 'dark' for most (consumer) users. Though I like it too.

It's a bit silly now if Apple changes their UI to 'white', just when their hardware is all brushed (G5 workstation, displays).
Except the new iMac. Is this an omen ?

That's funny... this coming from a site that's ONLY 10.4 coverage consists of regurgitating original reports published by AI. It's quite clear that AI has sources with the latest builds - I have no reason to believe that this latest round was hoaxed.

Oh and I just checked that thread - 'general consensus' is a bit of a stretch wouldn't you say? It was one or two posters the rest of the posters have been dismissing them.

Dave

They seem real enough to me.

Personally, I like the more streamlined look, and it's not nearly as "gummy" looking as XP. I suspect this appearance is a revised Aqua that hasn't been updated in a lot of places yet. It's just not that important unless, in the case of the main Mail window, the behavior changes -- using a sidebar instead of a drawer, for example.

Don't throw a fit yet over any inconsistency in the appearance. At any rate, I think we should point out that Apple's UI for OS X is almost 4 years old now, the Classic OS was far simpler to begin with and had about 17 years of refinement under its belt, and Tiger is months away (almost a year in my estimation) from release, and they can tinker to their heart's content in the meantime. That would seem like a good idea to me anyway if you want to test out new appearances, UI behaviors, etc.

Much as I'd like it all to be true what makes me think twice are:

1. Lack of scroll bars for the content window where the content goes off the page.

2. The presence of scroll bars for the email list window where the list doesn't go off the page.

3. The rendering glitch below the scroll bar on the right hand side. Is that a give away?

4. The lack of the bookmarks bar as shown in previous versions of Mail 2.

What say you to those?

Cheers Daniel

Fake????? ....... No I think that apple is embarking on a new voyage in the UI. I doubt that this will be the first or the last UI look that we will all see over the next few months.

Personally I like is as long as you have a chioce in whether the drawer is hidden or shown.

I wish you had the ability to have themes added to the system with out the need for a APE plugin, I would be all over it.

Who knows maybe they will allow themes like the days in 9.

If i could set up my machine with a PRO looking feel I would be all over it.

zen

Ditto. I've been longing for a pro/consumer theme/look for years. It makes sense.

Looks a lot like iTunes. . .

It would be wild if Mail.app became a free download for Windows and Linux.

Bingo. I think Apple is taking the success of iTunes' UI and sharing the love. Looks like Aqua and metal are getting closer and closer all the time. Personally, while I think Apple's being opportunistic by taking their best UI ideas and making them pervasive (their UI people are involved with specific project teams, not as the overseers they were back on Tog's day), I also think Apple had an idea of where they wanted to go with the UI and planned this sort of transition from the outset. While the Finder from the DP and public beta days of OS X was a crippled lightweight, I thin kthe general idea of this kind of UI was present if rather flawed.

Dare one hope that Apple replaces the eagle in the Mail icon with something better? It just seems terribly out of place.

Swedes!

I think most Americans probably don't think twise about it. We have lots of stamps with eagles, an eagle is the symbol of the US Postal Service, etc. I guess Apple stopped short of making it a bald eagle so it wouldn't be quite so provincial.

How about the Queen of England? ;-)

On a serious note I still haven't heard anyone calm my fears (as detailed in http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...986#post682978) that this is a fake!

Cheers Daniel

Oh no! I'm late to the party, and it looks like the pictures up and vanished. Anyone have their own copies they can put up?

Both perfectly understandable in code that's still under development.


It's actually easier to imagine that as an actual rendering glitch than as an error in a mockup. For one thing, it would be more trouble to make in, say, Illustrator; for another, it's an arbitrary enough glitch that it's hard to imagine someone coming up with the idea independently; and for another a UI faker would probably be looking to minimize glitches in order to boost the appearance of authenticity.


In development builds, things come and go all the time. Maybe in this build they commented out the bookmarks code to concentrate on something else (or because it was hopelessly broken)? Maybe, after giving the idea a shot, they decided that it didn't work?

Prerelease software is wonky and unpolished, inconsistent and subject to change. If it wasn't, they'd have released it.

I know there was a lot of discussion a while back about how Aqua was designed to match CRT iMac / Yosemite era hardware, and what would happen with Apple moving away from those design cues? Well, now we see. This is the theme for the new hardware.

The way that OS X is organized, Apple should be able to tweak themes every so often and expect well-written applications to auto-update to the new look. There will always be a few exceptions, even among well-written apps, but as a general rule I'm expecting that we'll be getting used to new variations on familiar themes every few years.

it's great. not as noisy as brushed metal, but not as plain as aqua. hopefully it will resize faster than. brushed metal does. i find that aqua resizes so much faster at times.

i just hope it doesn't look too windowsy in real life. people are saying it looks windowsy but it doesnt get painful on the eyes like windows xp/longhorn blue does.

apple has the only ui that i just dont get sick of looking at after long periods of time.

Wish i could apply the Pro app's theme to all my apps. I really need a UI with smaller fonts esp in the context menus. I like the dark color but i think the widgets should be aqua blue because they seem to blend in too much with the dark background.

As far as evolution of Aqua, I've been hoping that Apple would do to it's main buttons and scrollbars as it did to the 'traffic light' buttons in the titlebar.

They maintain that luscious curves of Aqua, but are so less obtrusive as far as the rest of the page is concerned - ie: the rounderd buttons should be there, but the highest point (the middle of them) should be true with the same level as the content (ie the edges should be grooves, and the buttons shouldn't stand up from the page)

Guys, we had to edit and reconstruct the message portion of one of the mail screenshots to protect the anonymity of our source. So yes, we replaced the content portion of the screenshot and apparently forgot a scroll-bar and whatnot. The shot was meant to demonstrate the platinum theme and we didn't anticipate that it would be analyzed to such an extent. In any event, for all the doubters, I'll post a few unedited shots, with the mail, etc as soon our sources clean up their mailboxes. Sorry about this.

Kasper

I don't like the theme at all. It reminds me very much of the Windows 95/98/NT/2000 boring grey appearance, albeit a smoother gradated one.

I think they should try a "glassy" theme such as how an empty glass looks like without liquid (transparent) for an inactive app and then make the active app look like frosted glass (opaque, so you don't get confused with stuff in apps behind). How cool would this be using Core Image?

Or just have everything brushed metal and be done with it.

The one thing I do like about drawers is being able to make things a little more compact so I can click on various windows when I'm using a small screen. Application window sizes seem to keep growing as OS X evolves. System 9 was nice and compact.

Any word if this version allows you to have different signatures assigned to each mail account you have? It's always a pain to choose what e-mail address I'm using, and then the corresponding sig.

Here: unedited with the exception of clipping the timestamp and recipient in the mail header text.

Kasper

[::::::EDITED BY APPLEINSIDER::::::]

Sorry guys, Apple legal says these shots have to go.

[Images Removed]

[::::::EDITED BY APPLEINSIDER::::::]

Odd. The left vertical pane divider appears to have its 'move dot' on the horizontal divider. Really not sure I like that.

I never liked the brushed metal look and a while back installed a small freeware app called "Whiteout" to eliminate it from virtually everything (except iTunes). In fact, my windows look remarkably like the screen shots from Tiger - perhaps explaining the belief of some that the shots are fake - though there seem to be subtle differences in the title bar and the formerly metal parts have a subtle, horizontal stripe.

In any case, Whiteout works perfectly and comes with an installer/uninstaller. I remember having to reinstall Whiteout when I upgraded to Panther.

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21363

IMHO, those screenshots are quite lovely. The gradients are subtle and using shades rather than lots of blocky borders and too much highlighting and shadow make the appearance calm and clear. I like the numbers in the mailbox (er, source) view, that they don't pop out more than their icons or anything in the main pane. I also like the buttons at the bottom of the source view and the subtle but apparent highlight on the mailbox. Very clean. Apple's gotten over a lot of its look-what-we-can-do Aqua, though some transparency, properly used, was not ojectionable. Remember how people thought the Aqua UI was so distracting when it first came out, the pinstripes with too much contrast? I bet a lot of those people who found that Aqua gave them a headache will like this a lot.

That is really wired that the resize dot -- if that's what it is (what else is it?) -- is on the far left of the horizontal divider. To me, just add the dot to the lefthand pane. It needs a margin anyway, so to keep it clean, just make the margin the same light gray as the rest of the pane. I suppose highlighting mailboxes won't be as clean as it is now -- going all the way to the edge of the pane. Then again, maybe that isn't necessarily the case.

In all of this, I wonder what will happen to the slightly silly blue and graphite appearance options? It seems a little funny to have graphite, especially since it's not a color in the hardware lineup any more. Really, as much as I can understand why Apple won't give users theming ability (easily), a "pro app" appearance might not be a bad idea at this point in place of the graphite theme.

BTW, I'm looking at this on a Windows box that uses the old Win98 theme, and believe me, those screenshots are head and shoulders better than the window that they're in.

[added] is it a nice touch, a compression artifact or am I seeing things? It looks a tiny bit like the text, "Inbox," is not only bold and blue but looks as though it's slightly depressed into the background, i.e., with a small shadow and highlight?

Oh, by the way, this theme isn't new with the latest build; it's present in some of Apple's screenshots of Spotlight.

And if you think about it you should only need that one on the left to begin with... it should be able to control not only the up-down portion of the horiz. bar as well as the left right of the left side area.

Dave

Speaking of brushed metal being swept away, check out .Mac at Apple.com.

Kinda like windows XP does in its version of finder (explorer) and most of the office apps (entourage / outlook etc)...

On the finder front though, I admit I quite like some of its features like adding shortcuts to specific folders in the left pane of the finder and the whole 'smart folder' thing will be fantastic when Tiger finally emerges. But I also like the windows version because you can actually do a lot of things from the finder window left-hand pane options like playing a media file, email a file, burn it to disc etc.
-indy

What's up with Apple's Flash phobia? They always use this strange breed of Quicktime to do their animation.

I noticed this nice touch as well.

I quite agree that Apple has moved past the initial, look!!!! stage of the UI -- which, bet you anything, was at least partly Jobs-dictated, for both good and bad. They're discarding what's commonly agreed works less well, gathering from what works and looks great, and focusing in on the lush and delicious little details.

You bet. I think MS has been using panes pretty intelligently in its applications for a while now, and for far longer than Apple. (I'll refrain from mentioning some of the various odd and occasionally downright terrible features in MS's applications, but panes are often well done.) At last Apple is swallowing its pride a bit and seeing the light.


Well, OTOH, I find the Explorer bar in XP's Explorer a wasted opportunity. I'd much rather have a useful collection of locations and context-sensitive actions in my navigational system than a big wide always-visual contextual menu that's continually animating and scootching around.

BTW, you can certainly burn a disc, eject removable media, and play media file all from the OS X Finder, and very nicely too. Note the little gray notfication buttons to the right of certain items in the Sidebar.

*shrugs* Continuing to make the interface look more ugly since the 10.2 days.

Maybe because Flash is a horrid creature that needs to be put to sleep...on Macs at least.

I think you're pushing it...Apple has been using 'panes' for years now. iTunes was the best use of panes back in the days and this hasn't changed. In fact, pretty much all iApps make use of panes extensively because they're all using the 1-window interface.

The problem with Microsoft is the over-use of panes. They're everywhere...even where they don't make sense (as you mention). So it's only natural that sometimes they get it right.

Horizontal space is precious...it's super-easy to scroll down to read text but scrolling right is not fun. Sidebar panes on most computers aren't such a good idea...but Apple is changing this with widescreen monitors.

Perhaps "by far" is pushing it. iTunes is definitely where Apple first saw the glimmering of the light -- its first (IFIRC) single windowed multi-paned UI, with a central pane on the left, the playlist. That was MWSF 2001.

MS was already in the process of making a significant shift to address the Tiny Cryptic Endless Toolbars Problem (still very far from solved in most MS apps) to panes to focus on sidebars / panes in... was it Office XP? Which has started well before then, in Outlook, and Win 98 (rather clumsily). I can't keep track. Point is, it's very potentially useful UI element that I think Apple was wary of from some time because it seemed.... Microsoftian.

What's an example of MS overusing panes? I'm curious; I'm more familiar with their use of panes for trivial purposes.

Tabs For Mail

I have added the following to our Apple Mac OS X Wish List:

Tabs in Safari enables the user to open up a new viewing pane but without having to open up new application window. Tabs are about workflow. Please introduce Tabs for Mail. Eudora has something similar where your last folders are tabbed. Would be great!

Cheers Daniel