Note: This is my personal opinion! I recently had to use a computer with OS X Mavericks on it (10.9 I think). I was struck by how beautiful the interface was. I'm having trouble finding a good screenshot illustrating this, but compare http://content.gcflearnfree.org/topics/243/2013_new_desktop.... http://download.softwsp.com/sites/12/2015/11/os-x-el-capitan... Everything just looks better on Mavericks. The gradients…
One of those URLs you've posted results in a banned security error in Chrome, with the strong recommendation not to visit it due to malicious activity on that site.
One thing I really dislike about 10.10 is that "maximizing" a window will - with a few exceptions - switch it to fullscreen. To maximize a window I need to press Alt while clicking the maximize-button. And there is not even an option to switch this behavior. On a small laptop screen this behaviour might be preferable, but on a FullHD display, I find it rather annoying.
I really liked the old nuanced "full size" behaviour. Unlike Windows "Maximize" it would only increase the window size just enough so that all its contents where visible. This was neat, and elegant, and really showed considered design as well as the OS taking an interest in what was "in" it's windows not just the displayable area of the screen. I thought the Ctrl-F fullscreen behaviour in Lion was perfectly fine. It was slightly dissonant with overall windowing system control but I thought that was fine - going to full-screen seems to me more of a system feature than an window manager feature (it subverts the window manager to a certain extent), but maybe I'm just getting old ...
I agree with the author that OSX has lost a lot of it's personality, but I don't agree with the notion that this is a bad thing. I don't want my OS to have much of a personality. It's a tool for getting things done. The less I see of the OS the better.
I agree that OS X should out of your way most of the time, but what about the unboxing experience? Buying or upgrading a Mac used to feel very satisfying because you were welcomed by a cool intro video (10.3 was playing even Röyksopp!):
Apple still produces videos like these, but only to show them at WWDC and on their website. New users are only greeted by grey/white screens and lots of cloud settings. :|
It’s not that important a point, but legal pads are a very US phenomena. I’m German and I have never ever seen a yellow pad like that in person. The current notes icon (with white paper) is much more in line with the note pads you would encounter in Germany. Paper people write on to take notes is typically just white. Maybe bound with a spiral on the left or top (and perforated paper to tear off), maybe glued togethe…
For me the old yellow colour implies that the notes taken within the app are for easy disposal and will be poorly organised - just like how yellow paper is used primarily for quick throw-away notes and scribbles in reality (at least here in the UK).
The Notes app is far better than that, the white it uses now implies a more permanent organised feel which better reflects the app. The texts I store within it are important to me, they're not final documents but something I'd treat better than a disposable scribble on a yellow-pad. With the app's formatting, cloud and folder abilities this seems a good fit.
I disagree. I use mac all day and the icons don't pose a problem to me either to the young people in my family.
Really frustrating for me are the changes in Spotlight launcher. It used to be instantaneous search and launch. Now it is painfully slow in all my computers.
This article doesn't make any sense. The use of metaphors worked when people didn't know what a computer was, and the only way to make its UI make sense was to mimic real-world objects. Now, this is no longer necessary. It's been 40 years. While I agree that new macOS icons aren't great (see the Game Center icon), the old ones were silly. I'm 35 and I have probably seen an actual contact book only once when I was lit…
I agree in parts with you
The Photos icon "metaphor" doesn't work for me, for example
This article doesn't make any sense. The use of metaphors worked when people didn't know what a computer was, and the only way to make its UI make sense was to mimic real-world objects. Now, this is no longer necessary. It's been 40 years. While I agree that new macOS icons aren't great (see the Game Center icon), the old ones were silly. I'm 35 and I have probably seen an actual contact book only once when I was lit…
I agree in parts with you The Photos icon "metaphor" doesn't work for me, for example
You know, Google Chrome's icon doesn't depict a webpage, but I know I can click on it and use it to browse the Web.
Great points here. The iconography is an important element of navigating a system and recent iterations of both macOS and iOS have suffered at the hands of trendy flat design.
I think the greatness of OSXs past UIs is a bit over hyped. I changed from Windows 7 to Mavericks a couple of years ago and still find 7 more intuitive. You can see at a glance which programs are running from the bar in 7 unlike OSX, I still have not figured out the Finder very well and so on. On the other hand OSX seems better engineered in many ways, more stable, faster to respond and so on.
I think the hype goes back further than that, with OS X 10.5/10.6 vs Windows Vista.
Windows 7 really narrowed the gap between Windows and OS X, and at the same time OS X 10.7 took many steps backwards (black & white sidebar icons, no Save As, terrible multi-screen experience).
OS X looks better than ever. Yeah I agree with Notepad and Photos icons looking not good but everything else is perfect. I'm typing this on an OSX right now and it just looks great. Worst part of the article by far was > OS X packaging, once very elegant and eccentric (and printed on a physical box), has become thoroughly unremarkable. This is 2016, no one uses CD's anymore. And that leopard print box design looks li…
My laptop doesn't even have a CD/DVD tray. I forget last time I've used a CD.