I personally prefer the uniform look to all my windows, I don't have issues identifying which are which, but the same frame and elements, such as scroll bars and buttons are much preferred. I do wish they introduce the iTunes style theme to all of OS X, I'd be that much closer to ultimate happiness
But each to their own, just provide the option for it
Ugh.... The minute there's a discussion about interface design, someone is bound to slap a NextStep screenshot in our face.
I think Nextstep certainly hasn't the best UI. Check the bevels, the icons inside an application that catch your eye (in your face!)... The amount of colors, the lack of anti-aliasing....
BeOS is much better with interface design (consistency, colors, minimalism, speed)
ps; check the "winamp" application... funny thing; as long as other developers refuse the UI rules of the OS, these rules mean nothing
NeXT was phenomenal even though it does get annoying hearing us gray-beards rave about how it was phenomenal. It was decades ahead of its time. The drawbacks were lack of 3rd party software and a ludicrously high price.
As for usability, that was phenomenal as well. Besides being simple to use, everything just worked. From printing to peripherals to audio, it was as robust as hell. If you could afford a NeXT, and the software you needed was available on NeXT, there was simply no comparison.
Other than the Macintosh I can't think of too many other equivalent leaps in the computing history. Most of the time progress is slow and continuous. NeXT was so far ahead of its time that it took many years for equivalents to emerge. After NeXT died, it was kind of like the computing dark ages. It took years for everyone to acheive what NeXT had acheived. It may be annoying to hear people rave about NeXT, but the raving is justified.
BeOS on the other hand (and yes I bought a machine from power computing that shipped with BeOS) was anything but usable. It was an unfinished demonstration of some rather impressive technical achievements. Actually using it? Not so great.
I personally prefer the uniform look to all my windows, I don't have issues identifying which are which, but the same frame and elements, such as scroll bars and buttons are much preferred. I do wish they introduce the iTunes style theme to all of OS X, I'd be that much closer to ultimate happiness
But each to their own, just provide the option for it
I do agree that uniformity vs distinctiveness can be a completely aesthetic choice for some users. For other though, usability concerns outweigh aesthetic preference. For them it matters.
As for "just provide the option for it". Keep in mind that the road to interface hell is paved with "just provide an option for it". There are thousands of features that significant numbers of users clamber for. Most make sense and would be great for use by those requesting the feature. However, if everyone get's their feature implemented as a user configurable option, the number of options gets out of hand. The out of the box experience gets ignored because users can just configure it to their liking. How this normally plays out is that everyone ends up with a different look and feel, and even different functionality.
Helping your mom in another state over the phone becomes nearly impossible. "Click the such-and-such button on the window that looks like such-and-such." To which she replies, "I don't have anything that looks like such-and-such".
So while valid cases can be made for new functionality such as OS-wide themes, "just make it optional" has never struck me as justification in itself for implementing a feature that not everyone would use.
Comments
But each to their own, just provide the option for it
Ugh.... The minute there's a discussion about interface design, someone is bound to slap a NextStep screenshot in our face.
I think Nextstep certainly hasn't the best UI. Check the bevels, the icons inside an application that catch your eye (in your face!)... The amount of colors, the lack of anti-aliasing....
BeOS is much better with interface design (consistency, colors, minimalism, speed)
ps; check the "winamp" application... funny thing; as long as other developers refuse the UI rules of the OS, these rules mean nothing
NeXT was phenomenal even though it does get annoying hearing us gray-beards rave about how it was phenomenal. It was decades ahead of its time. The drawbacks were lack of 3rd party software and a ludicrously high price.
As for usability, that was phenomenal as well. Besides being simple to use, everything just worked. From printing to peripherals to audio, it was as robust as hell. If you could afford a NeXT, and the software you needed was available on NeXT, there was simply no comparison.
Other than the Macintosh I can't think of too many other equivalent leaps in the computing history. Most of the time progress is slow and continuous. NeXT was so far ahead of its time that it took many years for equivalents to emerge. After NeXT died, it was kind of like the computing dark ages. It took years for everyone to acheive what NeXT had acheived. It may be annoying to hear people rave about NeXT, but the raving is justified.
BeOS on the other hand (and yes I bought a machine from power computing that shipped with BeOS) was anything but usable. It was an unfinished demonstration of some rather impressive technical achievements. Actually using it? Not so great.
I personally prefer the uniform look to all my windows, I don't have issues identifying which are which, but the same frame and elements, such as scroll bars and buttons are much preferred. I do wish they introduce the iTunes style theme to all of OS X, I'd be that much closer to ultimate happiness
But each to their own, just provide the option for it
I do agree that uniformity vs distinctiveness can be a completely aesthetic choice for some users. For other though, usability concerns outweigh aesthetic preference. For them it matters.
As for "just provide the option for it". Keep in mind that the road to interface hell is paved with "just provide an option for it". There are thousands of features that significant numbers of users clamber for. Most make sense and would be great for use by those requesting the feature. However, if everyone get's their feature implemented as a user configurable option, the number of options gets out of hand. The out of the box experience gets ignored because users can just configure it to their liking. How this normally plays out is that everyone ends up with a different look and feel, and even different functionality.
Helping your mom in another state over the phone becomes nearly impossible. "Click the such-and-such button on the window that looks like such-and-such." To which she replies, "I don't have anything that looks like such-and-such".
So while valid cases can be made for new functionality such as OS-wide themes, "just make it optional" has never struck me as justification in itself for implementing a feature that not everyone would use.