Martin Crane wrote:
Where I'm coming from on these two issues is user perception. OS X is
very UI centric. Take two apps that do similar things just as well as
each other - one has what appears to be the very latest look and feel
and the other has a standard (old fashioned?) look and feel. Which one
sells more copies? The one which looks sexier.
What makes you so sure?
Imagine the Finder was a boxed product in stores, and I could buy
either the 10.2-themed Finder with Aqua windows, or the 10.3/4-themed
Finder with its "new and improved" look (Aqua<->Metal switcheroo
by misappropriating the toolbar-visibility widget in the titlebar). I'd
buy the Aqua one in a heartbeat. I know there are many more on this
list who'd back me up. (I'm not implying that I know which one the
majority would choose, but I think there are lots of people who aren't
capable of judging UIs impartially.)
I think the conception that Mac OS users want all these
new-fangled styles may not be based in reality, but rather is a way for
marketing to claim extra "new features" and make an obvious
differentiator between version n of a product versus version n-1.
Don't get me wrong; I love Aqua and even metal has its place sometimes.
(That place is not in the Finder!) However, all these elaborate
application-specific themes and variations we see in the Pro apps, in
GarageBand, in iTunes, and now in Mail and other bundled applications
are starting to drive me nuts. Why is Apple avoiding its own control
set? How can they expect developers to be satisfied with the built-in
widgets if they obviously aren't? What is the advantage of re-skinning
the same buttons and windows and palettes every year?
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