With my old eyes, I've had problems reading this AI color scheme of black on light gray, or blue or black on grey. At least, why can't it be black on white. Color on color is the pits.
This post was written on the Reply window which is black on white and easy for me to read. Then it changes when submitted.
Well said myapplelove. I couldn't agree with you more. I have no idea what is going on with Apple's design team these days, but this mono color scheme has got to go. I hate it!
They could at least give some custom options in settings. I dont care if they put it gray by defaulf if we cab changed it.
Minimalistic design doesn't mean 'let's lose color', it's about so much more.
it's about feed forward, finding your way in an app quickly. Interaction design.
Lion is more mimimalistic (good thing) and less usable on navigation (bad thing).
Taste and design might change with times but apples responsibilities is not just about creating tasteful UIs, but also usable designs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TenoBell
Taste and design change with the times. Nothing stays the same.
There is a movement in current software design that is about simplicity and minimalism. A belief that the OS and Application should be minimal and give focus to the content being presented.
"By "chrome" I don't mean Google's browser of that name, but all the pseudo-solid, pseudo-3D visual cruft that infests user interfaces in modern computing."
".......chances are your browser program is designed to look like some sort of machine. It will have been crafted to resemble aluminium or translucent plastic of varying textures, with square or round or rhomboid buttons and widgets in delicate pseudo-3D gradients, so they look solid, and animate with a shadowed depth illusion when you click them."
I think Apple knows what they are doing, I would hold off your personal opinions until the final version of Lion is on your computer. These are beta's for a reason.
point well taken.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dacloo
Minimalistic design doesn't mean 'let's lose color', it's about so much more.
it's about feed forward, finding your way in an app quickly. Interaction design.
Lion is more mimimalistic (good thing) and less usable on navigation (bad thing).
Taste and design might change with times but apples responsibilities is not just about creating tasteful UIs, but also usable designs.
very good points, I hope our people at apple are reading this
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cubert
Thank God I'm not the only one who thinks the inverted gradient used for the slider buttons in Lion are just plain wrong.
amen to that!
Oh and to the person who called me an "it", boy I am so glad my easter 40 day fast is over, and I have been purged enough to tell him to go **** himself, search himself that is.
You don't like the monochrome UI and that's fine. You are free to your opinion.
The problem is that you work so hard to position your sense of aesthetic functionality as "fact". Seeing that every OS is designed very differently there obviously is no consensus on a right way to do it.
let's not be willingly blind here, there's no consensus in pretty much anything if you think about it, there's no consensus for the glassy imacs either, does that mean a lot of who people dislike them don't have real usability problems with them and it's just aesthetics? No. Are all the people here who feel the same as I do for FUNCTIONALITY reasons, who NEED colour coding to do their work faster merely talking about aesthetics? Of course not.
The fact that it's merely aesthetics to some with better vision/decoding of vision, of course does not mean that it's a matter of functionality for many.
And then there's the neuropsyhcological research on ease of use based on text, images, and colour images, you conveniently forget, and which I am not going to look up for you, of course.
All cool stuff, but for seven bucks, doesn't this signature do the same, but with more features and options?
/
/
/
No, it doesn't let you take a picture. That's key. Otherwise you have to buy a tablet to draw the signature. Drawing with your finger on a trackpad is not going to be accurate.
It's also not clear if it works in Adobe PDF documents, which are the ones that always have the line at the bottom where they want the signature. Same goes for MS Word documents. No company sends a TextEdit document - they are all PC-centric.
There are still many companies who expect you to print out, sign, scan back in, and fax something. It's ridiculous, but anything that allows you to just sign it without printing anything out or scanning anything back in is a boon.
Are all the people here who feel the same as I do for FUNCTIONALITY reasons, who NEED colour coding to do their work faster merely talking about aesthetics? Of course not.
There are a lot of people who say a lot of things. Does Apple pay attention to what everyone says?
Quote:
The fact that it's merely aesthetics to some with better vision/decoding of vision, of course does not mean that it's a matter of functionality for many.
I can understand your point if your eyes have trouble discerning different shades of gray. I suppose what Apple is balancing out. Are the number of people who would like a monochrome UI against those who feel they cannot use it. Perhaps they will have a solution.
Quote:
And then there's the neuropsyhcological research on ease of use based on text, images, and colour images, you conveniently forget, and which I am not going to look up for you, of course.
I did not conveniently forget that because I have no knowledge of that study.
How difficult would it be to make use of "Themes" like Windows 7 does? That way you can choose various color or monochromatic UI's to your heart's content.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TenoBell
Photographers, graphic designers, film/video editors appreciate the gray UI. Various colors in the UI contaminate the color of the work you are looking at.
How difficult would it be to make use of "Themes" like Windows 7 does?
Are such statements meant to be taken literally? If so, I don?t think Apple?s UI choices are because others, such as colour, are too difficult to create. I think their choices are to simplify the design for users to avoid clutter, which can be seen as being less difficult for users.
I do understand your point and hope you get a viable solution, but I think a viable solution for any company is to not try to please everyone. Historically MS hasn?t pleased me because they tried to please everyone just as I?m sure there are many that could never be pleased by Apple for their limited UI options, single vendor model (I.e.: enterprise adoption), and higher than average prices.
This whole discussion could be solved by just assigning the colour scheme to the appearance option in System preferences. If I choose 'coloured' then I want to see red, yellow and green traffic lights, coloured side-bar items and hover colours. If I choose 'graphite' then everything may be greyed out. It's a simple solution and both sides are happy. There are valid arguments for both colour schemes, but it all comes down to personal preference. I am not a designer or photographer, so my Mac does not have to be entirely grey. Thus I would like to see some subtle coloured elements. Mac OS X still has a much better interface than Windows, so a little user preference should be left.
What I actually prefer more is a clean and consistent interface, that looks the same throughout every window or panel. I do not like the eccentric, washed out iTunes with graphite icons and I am not fond of this new Address book and iCal either. Apple should create a consistent style, with the choice of colour scheme. Fancy styles like Address book should be entirely optional.
That's all that I want for interface changes. Refinements are great, as long as they are consistent and do not change the overall look and feel of the OS, as Lion currently sadly does.
The look and feel of OS X has already dramatically changed over the years. This when it was candy colored and brushed aluminum back in 2003. Apple has done away with nearly all of these UI elements and icons.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KALLT
That's all that I want for interface changes. Refinements are great, as long as they are consistent and do not change the overall look and feel of the OS, as Lion currently sadly does.
The look and feel of OS X has already dramatically changed over the years. This when it was candy colored and brushed aluminum back in 2003. Apple has done away with nearly all of these UI elements and icons.
I?m so glad Mac OS has moved away from that but it?s till nicer than WIndows or any Linux UI I?ve seen. Even on the ones that try to mimic the Mac OS look and feel there is always something missing that makes it feel sloppy.
You don't like the monochrome UI and that's fine. You are free to your opinion.
The problem is that you work so hard to position your sense of aesthetic functionality as "fact". Seeing that every OS is designed very differently there obviously is no consensus on a right way to do it.
Nop - He's right - all the research on UI Design shows that colour helps make a significant difference in speed of use.
All monochrome takes longer to translate and distinguish between elements.
Since there is a body of research to support this - it is fact...
gotta love a man with a good argument, who's also a gentleman in his responses.
@melgross Windows is a monstrosity of indiscriminate use of color, we agree there. But as you said subtle use is very much desired AND required. If adding a few touches of colour to differentiate toolbar buttons isn't subtle then what is? I am not asking for anything more.
@tenobell, like I said I am with, and I will gladly abide with the "chrome manifesto", every time I use a windows machine it's as if I am in la la land or some fisher price fantasy and I hate it. But, there's a grand canyon of a difference between that and turning most or all toolbars and sidebars monochrome. Some of you might have better eyesight than us, but I have ended up spending more time actually reading (eg) the sidebar in itunes instead of spending a split second based on a visual cue to make a choice.
This isn't my impression (or the impression of other users such as myself) it's reality. Do you really believe that content and minimalism are affected based on a few subtle cues on a toolbar or sidebar? Has anyone complained that they find os x's toolbars distracting? Find me one person who has. I am all for change but not to a cost of functionality, and not when it goes against every research that has been done on visual perception and ease of use. I am not pulling this research out of my ass, it's there. It's also like I said verified with usage, I do take more time when there are no color cues whatsoever to hunt down buttons.
And let me ask you this, the inane choice of blueing out dock icons, is that a matter of taste and change too? Because I would think it's a matter of huge oversight. Here you have the three most used apps mail, safari, and finder all a shade of blue mostly. You have quicktime a deeper shade of blue and itunes completely different. Then what do they do? Enter itunes as blue as quicktime, then enter the app store AGAIN blue, and of course software update is blue too. Now try differentiating these on an 11" air with the icons on the side...good luck with that. And what's worse itunes is circular, as is quicktime, and is itunes... Essentially what I am saying is that apple designers might be great (they are) but they are not immune to mucking it up, as Steve said they are not infallible.
Well, that's why we are here, to point these out for our benefit, and for apple's benefit, and that's why I urge everyone to leave feedback to apple on these matters. They do read it and they do that it into account. That's why we had matte back to the macbooks, that's why the orientation/mute switch is now an option on the ipad, that's why the air got two usb ports, etc. etc. There are many examples where apple has taken in the feedback from the apple community, as they should have. Cause it's their job to create products we love, and it's ours to pinpoint to them if anything is not as we 'd like it to be IF it goes against some very real, tangible usability need.
Concepts of what proper UI design is changes regularly. The first version of OS X was a riot of color, which most commentators disliked intensely. Apple has been toning it down with every succeeding generation, moving back to the NEXT look, which was almost all monochrome, and which was praised effusively.
Is it better or worse? Yes, it is! Depends on who you talk too. For example, many people for some reason disliked the brushed metal scheme. I happened to like it more than the bland grey which followed. But then, I like texture, many others apparently, don't. The bright colors were playful, but not very professional. As Apple has moved into areas that are less dominated by the Artsy Fartsy crowd (I number myself amongst them), the colorful scheme has been going away. Whether that's a direct result or not, I don't know.
Apple licenses the technology from Adobe, so likely Adobe is happy enough with that. But I've got Acrobat Pro as part of the CS Design Premium Suite, and there are many things that Preview will never do that it does. Preview is fine for simple things, but not for anything else, and it never will be, because that not how it's positioned.
If you need Acrobat, you need it, and that's that.
There are a lot of people who say a lot of things. Does Apple pay attention to what everyone says?
And they shouldn't.
Quote:
I can understand your point if your eyes have trouble discerning different shades of gray. I suppose what Apple is balancing out. Are the number of people who would like a monochrome UI against those who feel they cannot use it. Perhaps they will have a solution.
Of course, discerning different shades of grey is less of a problem for the 20% of people, mostly male, who have some form of color blindness. This is why we're seeing more street lights relying on pictures than color, coming into being.
It isn't whether something is in color or grey that's the problem, but rather in how it's carried out. Poor selections in color are as bad, or worse. Considering all the different number of color blindnesses out there, many colors look alike to these people, but it's different color combinations. It's easier to use grey shading. But then, the shades shouldn't be too subtle either.
Not sure if MS Office file conversion/rendering is improved but I just hope some of that love comes over to pages/numbers for iOS and OSX cause currently it is quite bad.
The only hope outside MS Office itself on OSX is OpenOffice. Perhaps Apple could throw in behind that lot and give it a slick interface... not much chance there I suppose.
On iOS pickings are even slimmer if you want to make an edit
(to word/excel files)
Try NeoOffice ... it's a more mac specific version of OpenOffice. I use it and I'm very satisfied with it.
Comments
deleted
This post was written on the Reply window which is black on white and easy for me to read. Then it changes when submitted.
Talk about monochrome!
Well said myapplelove. I couldn't agree with you more. I have no idea what is going on with Apple's design team these days, but this mono color scheme has got to go. I hate it!
They could at least give some custom options in settings. I dont care if they put it gray by defaulf if we cab changed it.
EPIC fail.
Amen. Let's slap this color blind UI designer in the face with buckets of colorful paint.
it's about feed forward, finding your way in an app quickly. Interaction design.
Lion is more mimimalistic (good thing) and less usable on navigation (bad thing).
Taste and design might change with times but apples responsibilities is not just about creating tasteful UIs, but also usable designs.
Taste and design change with the times. Nothing stays the same.
There is a movement in current software design that is about simplicity and minimalism. A belief that the OS and Application should be minimal and give focus to the content being presented.
"By "chrome" I don't mean Google's browser of that name, but all the pseudo-solid, pseudo-3D visual cruft that infests user interfaces in modern computing."
".......chances are your browser program is designed to look like some sort of machine. It will have been crafted to resemble aluminium or translucent plastic of varying textures, with square or round or rhomboid buttons and widgets in delicate pseudo-3D gradients, so they look solid, and animate with a shadowed depth illusion when you click them."
AGAINST CHROME: A MANIFESTO
it's about feed forward, finding your way in an app quickly. Interaction design.
Lion is more mimimalistic (good thing) and less usable on navigation (bad thing).
I think Apple knows what they are doing, I would hold off your personal opinions until the final version of Lion is on your computer. These are beta's for a reason.
point well taken.
Minimalistic design doesn't mean 'let's lose color', it's about so much more.
it's about feed forward, finding your way in an app quickly. Interaction design.
Lion is more mimimalistic (good thing) and less usable on navigation (bad thing).
Taste and design might change with times but apples responsibilities is not just about creating tasteful UIs, but also usable designs.
very good points, I hope our people at apple are reading this
Thank God I'm not the only one who thinks the inverted gradient used for the slider buttons in Lion are just plain wrong.
amen to that!
Oh and to the person who called me an "it", boy I am so glad my easter 40 day fast is over, and I have been purged enough to tell him to go **** himself, search himself that is.
You don't like the monochrome UI and that's fine. You are free to your opinion.
The problem is that you work so hard to position your sense of aesthetic functionality as "fact". Seeing that every OS is designed very differently there obviously is no consensus on a right way to do it.
let's not be willingly blind here, there's no consensus in pretty much anything if you think about it, there's no consensus for the glassy imacs either, does that mean a lot of who people dislike them don't have real usability problems with them and it's just aesthetics? No. Are all the people here who feel the same as I do for FUNCTIONALITY reasons, who NEED colour coding to do their work faster merely talking about aesthetics? Of course not.
The fact that it's merely aesthetics to some with better vision/decoding of vision, of course does not mean that it's a matter of functionality for many.
And then there's the neuropsyhcological research on ease of use based on text, images, and colour images, you conveniently forget, and which I am not going to look up for you, of course.
All cool stuff, but for seven bucks, doesn't this signature do the same, but with more features and options?
/
/
/
No, it doesn't let you take a picture. That's key. Otherwise you have to buy a tablet to draw the signature. Drawing with your finger on a trackpad is not going to be accurate.
It's also not clear if it works in Adobe PDF documents, which are the ones that always have the line at the bottom where they want the signature. Same goes for MS Word documents. No company sends a TextEdit document - they are all PC-centric.
There are still many companies who expect you to print out, sign, scan back in, and fax something. It's ridiculous, but anything that allows you to just sign it without printing anything out or scanning anything back in is a boon.
Are all the people here who feel the same as I do for FUNCTIONALITY reasons, who NEED colour coding to do their work faster merely talking about aesthetics? Of course not.
There are a lot of people who say a lot of things. Does Apple pay attention to what everyone says?
The fact that it's merely aesthetics to some with better vision/decoding of vision, of course does not mean that it's a matter of functionality for many.
I can understand your point if your eyes have trouble discerning different shades of gray. I suppose what Apple is balancing out. Are the number of people who would like a monochrome UI against those who feel they cannot use it. Perhaps they will have a solution.
And then there's the neuropsyhcological research on ease of use based on text, images, and colour images, you conveniently forget, and which I am not going to look up for you, of course.
I did not conveniently forget that because I have no knowledge of that study.
How difficult would it be to make use of "Themes" like Windows 7 does? That way you can choose various color or monochromatic UI's to your heart's content.
Photographers, graphic designers, film/video editors appreciate the gray UI. Various colors in the UI contaminate the color of the work you are looking at.
How difficult would it be to make use of "Themes" like Windows 7 does?
Are such statements meant to be taken literally? If so, I don?t think Apple?s UI choices are because others, such as colour, are too difficult to create. I think their choices are to simplify the design for users to avoid clutter, which can be seen as being less difficult for users.
I do understand your point and hope you get a viable solution, but I think a viable solution for any company is to not try to please everyone. Historically MS hasn?t pleased me because they tried to please everyone just as I?m sure there are many that could never be pleased by Apple for their limited UI options, single vendor model (I.e.: enterprise adoption), and higher than average prices.
What I actually prefer more is a clean and consistent interface, that looks the same throughout every window or panel. I do not like the eccentric, washed out iTunes with graphite icons and I am not fond of this new Address book and iCal either. Apple should create a consistent style, with the choice of colour scheme. Fancy styles like Address book should be entirely optional.
That's all that I want for interface changes. Refinements are great, as long as they are consistent and do not change the overall look and feel of the OS, as Lion currently sadly does.
That's all that I want for interface changes. Refinements are great, as long as they are consistent and do not change the overall look and feel of the OS, as Lion currently sadly does.
The look and feel of OS X has already dramatically changed over the years. This when it was candy colored and brushed aluminum back in 2003. Apple has done away with nearly all of these UI elements and icons.
image: http://www.guidebookgallery.org/pics.../macosx103.png
image: http://www.guidebookgallery.org/pics...osx103-1-1.png
I?m so glad Mac OS has moved away from that but it?s till nicer than WIndows or any Linux UI I?ve seen. Even on the ones that try to mimic the Mac OS look and feel there is always something missing that makes it feel sloppy.
You don't like the monochrome UI and that's fine. You are free to your opinion.
The problem is that you work so hard to position your sense of aesthetic functionality as "fact". Seeing that every OS is designed very differently there obviously is no consensus on a right way to do it.
Nop - He's right - all the research on UI Design shows that colour helps make a significant difference in speed of use.
All monochrome takes longer to translate and distinguish between elements.
Since there is a body of research to support this - it is fact...
gotta love a man with a good argument, who's also a gentleman in his responses.
@melgross Windows is a monstrosity of indiscriminate use of color, we agree there. But as you said subtle use is very much desired AND required. If adding a few touches of colour to differentiate toolbar buttons isn't subtle then what is? I am not asking for anything more.
@tenobell, like I said I am with, and I will gladly abide with the "chrome manifesto", every time I use a windows machine it's as if I am in la la land or some fisher price fantasy and I hate it. But, there's a grand canyon of a difference between that and turning most or all toolbars and sidebars monochrome. Some of you might have better eyesight than us, but I have ended up spending more time actually reading (eg) the sidebar in itunes instead of spending a split second based on a visual cue to make a choice.
This isn't my impression (or the impression of other users such as myself) it's reality. Do you really believe that content and minimalism are affected based on a few subtle cues on a toolbar or sidebar? Has anyone complained that they find os x's toolbars distracting? Find me one person who has. I am all for change but not to a cost of functionality, and not when it goes against every research that has been done on visual perception and ease of use. I am not pulling this research out of my ass, it's there. It's also like I said verified with usage, I do take more time when there are no color cues whatsoever to hunt down buttons.
And let me ask you this, the inane choice of blueing out dock icons, is that a matter of taste and change too? Because I would think it's a matter of huge oversight. Here you have the three most used apps mail, safari, and finder all a shade of blue mostly. You have quicktime a deeper shade of blue and itunes completely different. Then what do they do? Enter itunes as blue as quicktime, then enter the app store AGAIN blue, and of course software update is blue too. Now try differentiating these on an 11" air with the icons on the side...good luck with that. And what's worse itunes is circular, as is quicktime, and is itunes... Essentially what I am saying is that apple designers might be great (they are) but they are not immune to mucking it up, as Steve said they are not infallible.
Well, that's why we are here, to point these out for our benefit, and for apple's benefit, and that's why I urge everyone to leave feedback to apple on these matters. They do read it and they do that it into account. That's why we had matte back to the macbooks, that's why the orientation/mute switch is now an option on the ipad, that's why the air got two usb ports, etc. etc. There are many examples where apple has taken in the feedback from the apple community, as they should have. Cause it's their job to create products we love, and it's ours to pinpoint to them if anything is not as we 'd like it to be IF it goes against some very real, tangible usability need.
Concepts of what proper UI design is changes regularly. The first version of OS X was a riot of color, which most commentators disliked intensely. Apple has been toning it down with every succeeding generation, moving back to the NEXT look, which was almost all monochrome, and which was praised effusively.
Is it better or worse? Yes, it is! Depends on who you talk too. For example, many people for some reason disliked the brushed metal scheme. I happened to like it more than the bland grey which followed. But then, I like texture, many others apparently, don't. The bright colors were playful, but not very professional. As Apple has moved into areas that are less dominated by the Artsy Fartsy crowd (I number myself amongst them), the colorful scheme has been going away. Whether that's a direct result or not, I don't know.
Apple keep chipping away at Acrobat with Preview.
Apple licenses the technology from Adobe, so likely Adobe is happy enough with that. But I've got Acrobat Pro as part of the CS Design Premium Suite, and there are many things that Preview will never do that it does. Preview is fine for simple things, but not for anything else, and it never will be, because that not how it's positioned.
If you need Acrobat, you need it, and that's that.
There are a lot of people who say a lot of things. Does Apple pay attention to what everyone says?
And they shouldn't.
I can understand your point if your eyes have trouble discerning different shades of gray. I suppose what Apple is balancing out. Are the number of people who would like a monochrome UI against those who feel they cannot use it. Perhaps they will have a solution.
Of course, discerning different shades of grey is less of a problem for the 20% of people, mostly male, who have some form of color blindness. This is why we're seeing more street lights relying on pictures than color, coming into being.
It isn't whether something is in color or grey that's the problem, but rather in how it's carried out. Poor selections in color are as bad, or worse. Considering all the different number of color blindnesses out there, many colors look alike to these people, but it's different color combinations. It's easier to use grey shading. But then, the shades shouldn't be too subtle either.
Not sure if MS Office file conversion/rendering is improved but I just hope some of that love comes over to pages/numbers for iOS and OSX cause currently it is quite bad.
The only hope outside MS Office itself on OSX is OpenOffice. Perhaps Apple could throw in behind that lot and give it a slick interface... not much chance there I suppose.
On iOS pickings are even slimmer if you want to make an edit
(to word/excel files)
Try NeoOffice ... it's a more mac specific version of OpenOffice. I use it and I'm very satisfied with it.