What's happening to our favourite GUI?

> Is this the new look of metal?

And why the light blue background for playlists area? What's that? Aqua Light? It relates to nothing. Meaningless.

I think colour is the worst thing about the new look (I don't really care whether the metal is brushed or not). Light blue source pane, light blue and white striped listing, 'metal' control pane and 'footer', two shades of light green in the status panel, white search box and blank art panel, and grey (not metal) 'listing footer' (the bit that has the Party Shuffle and Podcast controls).

The iTunes UI people need to pick a palette and stick with it. Back before everyone had iPods and everyone (in countries that have them) used the iTMS, one of the main reasons to use iTunes (other than the great, simple, interface) was that it looked good - good in the same way that Macs look good (i.e. they're simple).

FWIW, while I think that the new look is ugly on OS X, it's hideous on XP (whether XP style or 'Windows classic' style). iTunes is Apple's strongest software link to Windows users, and it needs to look great, to encourage switching ("iTunes looks so great, imagine what a whole OS like this would be like").

=Tony.Meyer

On 13/9/2005 10:39 AM, "Tony Meyer" <ta-meyerihug.co.nz> spake thus:

> two shades of light green in the status panel

Green??? Where? Have I missed something? I assume you mean the faux-LCD
display at the top, which to me appear two-tone grey (hmm, OK, maybe
slightly greenish if I squint a bit). The two-tone effect is clearly
supposed to make the "screen" look curved or something (a bit like the new
button style in Tiger, which is done better), but to me it just looks like a
weird two-colour flat panel.

As for the rest, eh, it doesn't particularly bother me. In fact, I think I
rather like the new look...

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://public.xdi.org/=nigel.stanger

--On 9/13/05 9:58 AM -0700 Nigel Stanger wrote:

> On 13/9/2005 10:39 AM, "Tony Meyer" <ta-meyerihug.co.nz> spake thus:
>
>> two shades of light green in the status panel
>
> Green??? Where? Have I missed something? I assume you mean the faux-LCD
> display at the top, which to me appear two-tone grey (hmm, OK, maybe
> slightly greenish if I squint a bit). The two-tone effect is clearly
> supposed to make the "screen" look curved or something (a bit like the new
> button style in Tiger, which is done better), but to me it just looks
> like a weird two-colour flat panel.

What really annoys me is that it's supposed to resemble the surface
reflection highlight you'd see on a physical slightly domed glass cover
over the display area.

Now, this reflection is entirely a NEGATIVE trait of the physical
object--no one wants glare off their control panels, and the cover is for
protection of a physical display mechanism. As the on-screen display needs
no protection, it strikes me as absurd to put the fake reflectiveness on
the fake protection. Basically you're making the display a bit less
readable for no reason other than an attempt to make it look a little more
like the physical object, with respect to a trait that the makers of the
object would just as soon get rid of.

Dave

On Sep 14, 2005, at 8:36 AM, Dave Scocca wrote:

> Basically you're making the display a bit less
> readable for no reason other than an attempt to make it look a
> little more
> like the physical object, with respect to a trait that the makers
> of the
> object would just as soon get rid of.

Whereas a glare on a real glass would make the display less readable,
I would hardly say that the simulated glare on iTunes makes the
display less readable. In fact, as the display text is black, the
glare actually makes it more readable. Actually, this is done a lot
in film. A prime example is the use of lens flares in 3D animation.
Lens flares are to be avoided in photography, yet artists continually
render or composite them onto their digital images.

I can't for the life of me figure out why so many people are going
off on the iTunes interface. It works, and it looks great in my
opinion, by far better than anything I've seen on the PC or any other
platform.

As far as the new non-metal non-aqua look, I wrote a blog entry about
this a while back:
<http://dumb.blogs.com/stuff/2004/10/os_x_on_themes_.html>

Mike

On 14/09/2005, at 4:58 AM, Nigel Stanger wrote:

> On 13/9/2005 10:39 AM, "Tony Meyer" <ta-meyerihug.co.nz> spake thus:
>
>> two shades of light green in the status panel
>
> Green??? Where? Have I missed something? I assume you mean the faux-
> LCD
> display at the top, which to me appear two-tone grey (hmm, OK, maybe
> slightly greenish if I squint a bit).

Considering that it's surrounded by grey, it seems pretty green to me.

> The two-tone effect is clearly
> supposed to make the "screen" look curved or something (a bit like
> the new
> button style in Tiger, which is done better), but to me it just
> looks like a
> weird two-colour flat panel.

Until you mentioned that, I hadn't noticed the two-tone effect in the
Tiger buttons (which is probably the point). If that was the intent
with the 'LCD' display, it fails miserably. Making something look
curved isn't exactly cutting-edge graphics, so if I was the iTunes
designer and that was my intent, I'd be pretty embarrassed. I think
one of the primary reasons it sticks out is that it cuts through
three elements in the centre.

FWIW, when I wrote my original message I was looking at Windows
iTunes 5.0; it does look a bit better in Tiger. In my opinion, if
the 'empty' album art panel and the 'controls' panel (the one in
Party Shuffle and Podcasts) were the same light blue as the 'source'
panel, and the 'LCD' didn't have that two-tone effect (maybe it could
also be grey/blue), that would be much better.

=Tony.Meyer

On 16/9/2005 1:38 AM, "Tony Meyer" <ta-meyerihug.co.nz> spake thus:

> Making something look
> curved isn't exactly cutting-edge graphics, so if I was the iTunes
> designer and that was my intent, I'd be pretty embarrassed. I think
> one of the primary reasons it sticks out is that it cuts through
> three elements in the centre.

I notice that they've done the same thing with the menu bar as well, and got
it wrong in the same way. At least with the buttons it curves up a bit at
the edges, but the menu bar and the iTunes "screen" are both just a straight
line all the way across, which just looks plain weird to me. In both cases
the line cuts through the middle of things.

I suppose it could be worse --- just look at the UI redesign for each major
new version of Windows. I was looking at some screenshots of Windows Vista
and Office 12 yesterday, and it manages to be completely different again
from XP (sorry, I don't have the URL, a colleague was showing me). They've
stolen Apple's idea again, and gone with semi-transparent title bars on
windows, except that in typical Microsoft fashion they've taken it too far
and made them *too* transparent (i.e., more so than they were in earlier
versions of Aqua). And I think they might be like that all the time too, not
just when in the background. Ugh.

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://public.xdi.org/=nigel.stanger

At 08:29 AM 09/16/2005 -0700, Nigel Stanger wrote:
>in typical Microsoft fashion they've taken it too far
>and made them *too* transparent (i.e., more so than they were in earlier
>versions of Aqua). And I think they might be like that all the time too, not
>just when in the background. Ugh.

Of course, under Windows, the ability to customize things like the
appearance of title bars is built in. Whether this is good or bad is
debatable, but at least this will probably be user-adjustable, no third
party product needed.

Edward
Art Works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

I don't mind the newer look, but it annoys me since I'm just finishing a re-design of my local MUG we site in brushed metal and it is alreadfy passe!

Anyway here is an interesting article at Daring Fireball, called "iTunes 5 Announcement From the Perspective of an Anthropomorphized Brushed Metal User Interface Theme": http://daringfireball.net/2005/09/anthropomorphized



A bit of a laugh but also a kind of statement on the nature of fashion, even on computer interfaces.

Enjoy

Stephen http://www.topladder.com.au