The Dock "floor" is the worst UI idea Apple has ever had

OK.

So: the translucent menu bar doesn't bother me that much, I'll wait and see if it works for me.

The reflective floor on the Dock, on the other hand, is a grotesque aberration that must be done away with.

I realize Apple gets accused of functionless "eye candy" from time to time, but in fact there is almost always at least some kind of functional or work flow motivation for things morphing, bouncing, fading or zooming.

The Dock floor has no earthly reason to be, beyond a little flash. Worse, it's a particularly clunky, poorly thought out kind of flash that just kind of sits there and says "Hey! I'm vaguely 3D! And reflective! Whatever!"

Or so it seems to me. Can anyone think of an actual reason to do this to the Dock? I was a little unnerved by the TimeMachine interface-- mainly because it also features a very poorly implemented "3D" lower plane, one that does nothing but make the text there harder to read.

But at least that can make some kind of claim to being part of a "receding in time" metaphor, arbitrary though it may be.

But this? It must stop.

Really, it's what it suggests about how Apple is thinking about its UI, these days, and what it portends.

I can't think of another instance of basic UI stuff that was so clearly nothing but decorative, and awkwardly so.

Puffs of smoke, genie effects, widget ripples, pulsing buttons, jumping icons, drop shadows, etc.-- love 'em or hate 'em, they all actually provide feedback, of some sort.

The Dock is a primary UI element in OS X, so it's not like changing the color of the Apple icon or something.

It fundamentally changes the desktop metaphor, from more or less flat with flat windows lying on top of each other, to "3D space about an inch deep".

That's a pretty big deal, if you actually care about the consistency of your interface's metaphor, and that, in theory, is one of the big selling points of the fabled Mac "ease of use".

So my concern is that Apple does not, in fact, really care about that any more. That they feel it's just fine to willy-nilly throw in "3D-ish" elements that do nothing to clarify things for the user, just because they think it looks sort of cool.

That would be a bad thing.

They unified the look of windows. There's a lot more to UI consistency than that.

On the other hand, you can see in the Leopard screen shots that Apple has also thickened the drop shadows on the top window (I think Steve even mentioned this in the keynote), so it may be that there really has been a decision to treat the desktop as "shallow 3D space".

Possibly as a precursor to abandoning the "desktop" metaphor altogether and going full 3D?

Who knows? I remain unmollified, for the time being, until someone can show me the plan.

Well, that's my point, isn't it? Apple is adding 3D cues here and there (Time Machine, Cover Flow, the Dock floor) but there's no consistency to it at all.

Time Machine thinks we have infinite 3D space, CoverFlow figures an icons width worth, and the Dock believes it to be a few inches.

Stacks, on the other hand, still likes 2D space, as does Quick Look and pretty much every other element of UI. If the desktop has depth, wouldn't it make sense to let Stacks to do a "cover flow" sort of deal?

Sorry, I can't brush off the introduction of 3D space as a functioning part of the UI as a trivial change. We need to know what the metaphor is and it needs to be consistently applied.

I've explained my concerns in some detail. If you don't share them, feel free to not participate in this thread, noob.

I'm not sure we're even getting that. If you look at the screen shot at the Leopard site, you can see that the icons are sitting higher on the desktop than currently.

Actually, even though I'm against the whole thing for UI philosophical reasons, I agree that it would look better as an edge to edge deal and that those "corners" are particularly wrong-headed.

I think it's fine that it works for you. I don't think it's fine that you feel the need to continue to post about how wrong it is to care.

If it's a waste of time to critique the UI, than what does that say about the time you're taking to critique me?

Because the use of 3D space has major, major implications for the UI metaphor, unlike, say, the pinstripes on the menu bar.

The original, "classic" Mac UI was based on some pretty strict rules regarding the behavior and placement of UI elements, collectively know as the "Human Interface Guidelines" (HIG).

By a lot of people's lights, the "friendliness" and "ease of use" of the OS derived from just that-- things looked and acted and interacted in very predictable ways, ways that were, for computers of their day, very "natural" metaphorical extensions of how we interacted with actual items on a desktop.

Certainly I'm not the first person to have misgivings about the seemingly casual relationship to any apparent hard and fast HIG in OS X.

Whether you realize it or not, a carefully considered, consistent HIG that takes into account how human beings actually think, learn and interact with the things around them makes all the difference in the world regarding the usability of a given OS.

That doesn't mean UIs should never change, or that there aren't better ways of organizing the elements of an operating system that take into account new, larger and more numerous file types, or that take advantage of the graphical horsepower of contemporary machines.

But to be truly useful over the long haul, and to contribute to an OS that is both productive and pleasurable to use, such changes must be in the service of a well though out HIG.

Color schemes or surface treatments don't matter much (within reasonable limits) , since they don't effect the all over experience any more than using a desk with a cherry top vs. using a desk with an oak top would (although, as the move to a unified window look shows, too much variation on this count can be a problem in its own right).

But a change from 2D to 3D space, no matter how apparently trivially implemented, is a massive shift in the fundamental paradigm of what the OS "means".

EDIT: If you're interested, there's a sort of semi-famous article (in mac circles, at least) over at Ars Technica by a guy named John Siracusa that touches on some of these issues. It's primarily about the finder (although "finder" as it is used in the article is a term of broader significance than the app-like thing in OS X), and even if you think he's full of shit it's well worth reading.

If you'd read and understood what I posted (yes, I understand that it was too "boring" for you, my agressively stupid and proudly ignorant friend ), then you'd realize that I'm talking about the larger implications for Apple's UI plans. Being obliged to "disable" something like a 3D shelf, while no doubt par for the course in Windows land, is a serious breach of what makes a Mac a Mac.

Not to address anyone in particular, but while I welcome the growth of the Mac market share, I have noticed that with that comes users that have never even considered the possibility of an OS that is anything more than a semi-ad hoc collection of parts.

To a certain extent Apple seems to be adding elements for them, which makes baby Jesus cry.

Hey, can we post again?

Oh, cool!

Here's an odd note: the dock shelf looks exactly, and I mean exactly like an element from Sun's Looking Glass demo page:



The idea of a "glass shelf" seems too arbitrary to me for this to be a coincidence. With all the talk of Apple adopting ZFS, perhaps there is more to the Apple-Sun relationship than we realize?

Although, admittedly, using some random element from a theoretical UI is a funny way to express it....

EDIT: You'll notice that in Sun's implementation, the shelf makes a little more sense since the entire desktop is clearly being portrayed as 3D. Still gives me a headache, though.