Uniformity vs. Individuality in Mac UI Design
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Uniformity vs. Individuality in Mac UI Design
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Re: Uniformity vs. Individuality in Mac UI Design
#2For better or worse, I think he is right. Non-uniformity has been the norm in Apple's apps for a while, Garageband, Aperture, every iTunes release, among others.
I believe the majority of third party mac developers used to be pre OS X developers, and because of that they had and incredible amount of respect for the HIG, but now, the (problematic) apps in the Mac App Store are coming from iOS developers, who didn't grow up with the guidelines. A different UI has given them an edge in the iOS App Store, and the are gonna try the same on the mac.
Re: Uniformity vs. Individuality in Mac UI Design
#3For better or worse, I think he is right. Non-uniformity has been the norm in Apple's apps for a while, Garageband, Aperture, every iTunes release, among others. I believe the majority of third party mac developers used to be pre OS X developers, and because of that they had and incredible amount of respect for the HIG, but now, the (problematic) apps in the Mac App Store are coming from iOS developers, who didn't gr…
Maybe. But if the HIG is not that important anymore, I think that should also imply that Apple should allow for other UI toolkits in its stores, such as Qt.
Re: Uniformity vs. Individuality in Mac UI Design
#4For better or worse, I think he is right. Non-uniformity has been the norm in Apple's apps for a while, Garageband, Aperture, every iTunes release, among others. I believe the majority of third party mac developers used to be pre OS X developers, and because of that they had and incredible amount of respect for the HIG, but now, the (problematic) apps in the Mac App Store are coming from iOS developers, who didn't gr…
the (problematic) apps in the Mac App Store are coming from iOS developers, who didn't grow up with the guidelines. A different UI has given them an edge in the iOS App Store, and the are gonna try the same on the mac.
So we can retire the meme that any random iOS app has a more consistent user interface than any random Android app?
Sometimes it takes seeing the apps all next to each other to realize it like http://wellplacedpixels.com/ does (which effectively documents the inconsistency in iOS apps, and this inconsistency being praised ("beautiful software")).
Re: Uniformity vs. Individuality in Mac UI Design
#5I think maybe the OS X HIG is still in place, but it is migrating to the iOS HIG. We will increasingly see more and more apps falling over to the iOS "dark side" and culminating with the release of Lion.
Personally, while I loved my iPhone and think the iOS is a great thing on a small screen I'm not a big fan of the iPad. Let me re-phrase that, I'm not a big fan of the iPad's launcher. Anyway, Lion will be a big UI step, probably in the direction of iOS and away from OS X. That kind of makes me sad and worried about the future of Mac products. On the other hand, I'm very happily a Ubuntu and Android user and maybe they will pick up the torch and grow better and better.
Re: Uniformity vs. Individuality in Mac UI Design
#6The most striking thing for me between Tweetie and Twitter for Mac (Tweetie 2), other than the dark sidebar, was the use of Helvetica instead Lucida Grande. It's subtle, but I believe it's a big step toward making an app feel like it was made for OS X instead of iOS.
Reeder for Mac, another port of an iOS app, is another good example. It uses Helvetica and it uses slide animations that make me think that the Reeder window has moved a few hundred pixels to the left.
Re: Uniformity vs. Individuality in Mac UI Design
#7For better or worse, I think he is right. Non-uniformity has been the norm in Apple's apps for a while, Garageband, Aperture, every iTunes release, among others. I believe the majority of third party mac developers used to be pre OS X developers, and because of that they had and incredible amount of respect for the HIG, but now, the (problematic) apps in the Mac App Store are coming from iOS developers, who didn't gr…
the (problematic) apps in the Mac App Store are coming from iOS developers, who didn't grow up with the guidelines. A different UI has given them an edge in the iOS App Store, and the are gonna try the same on the mac. So we can retire the meme that any random iOS app has a more consistent user interface than any random Android app? Sometimes it takes seeing the apps all next to each other to realize it like http://w…
What about games? They have inconsistent interfaces in their platforms (and across platforms) and still work well.
I think it has something to do with the input methods. When all you do is to click buttons and fill in forms, it makes sense to have a consistent interface. On the other hand, some iPad apps produce a great experience based on their inconsistent interfaces (as in http://www.algoriddim.com/djay-ipad and http://www.korg.com/ielectribe)
Re: Uniformity vs. Individuality in Mac UI Design
#8For better or worse, I think he is right. Non-uniformity has been the norm in Apple's apps for a while, Garageband, Aperture, every iTunes release, among others. I believe the majority of third party mac developers used to be pre OS X developers, and because of that they had and incredible amount of respect for the HIG, but now, the (problematic) apps in the Mac App Store are coming from iOS developers, who didn't gr…
Maybe. But if the HIG is not that important anymore, I think that should also imply that Apple should allow for other UI toolkits in its stores, such as Qt.
There's a difference between "ugly attempt at matching the standard controls" and "extending nicely into a different style of UI".
Re: Uniformity vs. Individuality in Mac UI Design
#9I must admit I'm not really surprised to see Gruber suddenly claim non-uniform application design is a good thing when everyone starts critizing Apple for 1. inconsistent UIs and 2. bad design. Also note how he completely focuses on the inconsistent UI-issue and completely ignores the part about bad design in the OSX App Store, probably hoping it will go by unnoticed.
Really though. Isn't it always this way with Gruber? If Apple or OSX does something better or different than the other platforms it's not only good, it's the standard. It's the only way(tm). End of story. Whoever disagrees be uneducated and unsophistitcated.
The second Apple strays away from that, his response is always "but this isn't important any more" or "this is a good thing, really". Really, Gruber?
I must admit I'm getting fed up with his appologyism. If there is still insight and actual content to be found in his blog-posts, he is making it very, very hard to find.
Re: Uniformity vs. Individuality in Mac UI Design
#10A big difference between iOS and OS X is that desktop applications have more than 20 years of UI research and convention behind them, while touch interfaces have less than half (maybe even less than a quarter) that. There's thus a lot more room for experimentation in touch interfaces since there isn't as large a body of best practices. Apps that try to go their own way UI-wise on OS X are more than likely going to end up subtly violating the norms of OS X application behavior that standard Cocoa apps all follow implicitly, much like Qt apps on OS X do. Indeed, Gruber's example of Twitter 2 already misbehaves in a number of head-scratching ways: among the ones I've noticed, hitting cmd-W from the tweet list hides the entire app rather than closing the tweet window, and the "compose tweet" box floats over everything even when the app is in the background. I think the tolerance for UI annoyances like these is a lot lower, and apps that try to go their own way are going to expose them a lot more than apps that stick to the tried and tested standard widgets.