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Apple's Illuminous (Aqua v2) to Compete with Aero
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Dec 11, 2006 10:15 AM
from the the-rumour-mill-starts-twitching dept.
from the the-rumour-mill-starts-twitching dept.
tovarish writes "According to Apple Gazette Apple will replace Aqua with a new name (and hopefully looks) called Illuminous. Is Jobs scared of Aero?, does it make sense to go for a new UI now?, has Aqua run out of steam? The answers will probably come later next month(year)."
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scared? (Score:5, Insightful)
He knows he has a decent group of followers, ever growing in these times, and he must bless his decision to stick with providing a complete solution instead of just an OS, every day.
All in all, I don't think he should be scared of this, because it is not only about the looks of the interface. It also depends on whether operations will continue to produce the desired result fast and reliable. Mac OS has the advantage there.
B.
Who's responding to who? (Score:4, Insightful)
Every screenshot I've seen of Aero looks remarkably...Aqua-ish. Not in the details, but I can't help thinking that someone at Microsoft took a look at Aqua, and decided that it was probably time to overhaul Windows' interface as well; not to mention doing the same sort of graphics-card offloading that Apple did with Quartz Extreme.
I suppose claiming that Apple's "Illuminous" is a response to Microsoft's Aero, and Aero is itself at least partially response to Aqua, are not necessarily mutually exclusive. It's sort of the way of these things to respond to each other, back and forth, over and over.
Parent
Re:Who's responding to who? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Who's responding to who? (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, while MS has player catch up, Apple has had plenty of time to think on the "Next big thing". Why wouldn't they improve Aqua? They've the lead for years so if someone can do it, that's apple.
It's a interesting thing that they're doing it but saying that they're "scared" is stupid. It's microsoft who should be scared of needing to play catch up with the next Mac OS interfaces.
Parent
Re:Who's responding to who? (Score:4, Insightful)
- Introduced a brand-new OS
- (as you mentioned) Accelerated their GUI
- Refreshed the look and feel several times
- Kept up with security patches (and no, not rushing just the DRM patches like Microsoft does)
- Migrated to a new platform (PPC -> x86) while maintaining backwards compatibility
- Introduced two new video NLE suites
- Introduced an office suite
- Introduced an IDE rivaling that of Microsoft's
- Introduced a new method of file browsing (love it or hate it, Finder is unique and interesting)
During that same time period, while Microsoft's upgrades to office suites have consisted largely of upgrading the GUI (ooooh, new screen-estate sucking toolbars renamed to Ribbons) while yanking key selling features (VBA).
Microsoft is innovating how, exactly?
Parent
It helps (Score:3, Insightful)
So just like with the iMac craze a number of years back, updating the look and feel of an OS every now and then, is a good idea from a commercial point of view.
Re:It helps (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
New Name (Score:4, Funny)
Or maybe Aquality.
Or Aquainess.
This could be the least content of any story I have read.
Re:New Name (Score:4, Funny)
This could be the least content of any story I have read.
You must be new here.
Parent
Pinstripes (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, how I hope it's true...
Re:Pinstripes (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Pinstripes (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Pinstripes (Score:5, Interesting)
Nah, it'd look like this [blogspot.com]! : )
(Of course, a wallpaper showing the circuitry on the inside of my iMac would be really cool... I wish I could find one.)
Parent
Re:Pinstripes (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Pinstripes (Score:5, Funny)
The new look will be translucent fur.
* * * * *
You can't depend on your eyes, when your imagination is out of focus.
--Mark Twain
Parent
Aqua (2001-???) (Score:5, Insightful)
Is Jobs scared of Aero?, does it make sense to go for a new UI now?, has Aqua run out of steam?
How old is Aqua? Perhaps they're just wanting to update it to add new features, take advantage of dual/quad/bajillion core CPUs, etc., etc. A lot has happened since Aqua debuted, and Apple has rarely been one to simply sit on a good product and not try to continue to make it better/newer.
Re:Aqua (2001-???) (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Aqua (2001-???) (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know about that, but I do know that Aqua has been undergoing a lot of "enhancements" that, over time, have detracted quite a bit from the look.
Jaguar had the first "Brushed metal" windows. This looked "ok", but still a little strange. Panther then downplayed a lot of the pin-striped look, which helped make the UI a little less distracting, but at the same time also made the look rather less attractive. Tiger has gone further, with squared off windows and the (non-brushed) metal look.
Each iteration has undermined the over-all elegance of the visuals (though in Jaguar's defense, they did make the buttons look more elegant.) That's not to say they weren't necessary, early Mac OS X was so full of stripes and other distractions that it was even more horrible to use than the poor graphics accelleration resulted in. But there's little doubt that a simple comparison of Jaguar, sans-metal, and Tiger, shows the former with a much more attractive looking (whether usable or not) UI than the latter.
This rumour doesn't surprise me really. What'll be interesting is to see whether it's a complete break with Aqua, or just an upgrade. I seriously doubt this has anything to do with Aero though: Steve Jobs is going to be concerned with the look of Mac OS X regardless of whether they have ten competitors or none.
Parent
Re:Aqua (2001-???) (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to pick on you specifically, but just what is it people expect the Finder to do? Is it a performance issue, or just a dislike regarding the way the interface works?
I'd also question the need for Apple to embrace a more OSS-friendly dev model. They seem to be doing just fine the way they're going now, even better than they were when they released 10.1.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Aqua (2001-???) (Score:5, Insightful)
Serious Issues:
1. No write access on remote FTP sites. That's pretty ugly. KDE/Gnome/Explorer can all do this, why not Finder? On OS X, default, to upload files to an FTP site you have to use the Terminal; and the way finder works it makes it look like a permissions issue rather than an inbuilt limitation.
2. Nasty locking on loss of network shares. This can render your laptop unusable unless you are careful to eject all network shares each and every time you suspend. Loss of network connectivity should not cripple your desktop. KDE/Gnome/Explorer get around this by using multiple instances; a particular Konqueror window might freeze, but you don't loose everything.
3. Locking issues on copying large numbers of files. This can slow Finder down to a crawl, even though everything else is perfectly responsive.
Minor Issues:
1. Copying a Folder to a directory with a Folder of the same name results in the existing contents of that Folder being overwritten, rather than the merged contents of the two Folders. This makes it annoying to move around large trees of files, if you like to "sync" things manually.
2. No Packet CD-RW support. It's _really_ nice to have re-writable CDRWs that work like large floppy disks. Makes life easier. Not essential, though. More worrying is Finder's inability to not finalize a CD; sometimes I like to have multisession disks.
3. Serious performance issues with using Spotlight in Finder Windows. I've got a Dual G5 2.7 Ghz, and a MacBook Pro. Why is Spotlight on these Finder windows so slow? Why do I have to type one character at a time, and then wait for the search? Why do I have to wait 5 seconds to backspace over my typos? It's not like I'm running the bottom of the barrel configurations here.
4. Flaky MIME type recognition. No matter how many times I try to force ALL pdfs to open on Preview, I keep finding pdfs that open on Acrobat. Acrobat takes so long to open, so I really want that to be my secondary option; but no, it doesn't work like that.
For the most part, these issues aren't that severe, and (except for the FTP issue) only affect power users like me. Most people don't know (or ceonceptualize) multisessions CDs, and most people don't use network shares that IT doesn't setup for you. Still, it's very annoying that these issues have persisted through 4 iterations of OS X, and I'd much rather see someone work these out then a new version of Aqua.
Finder is stagnating, and it really is pretty crappy compared to some of the alternatives out there. KDE's Konqueror, with KIO-Slaves is _vastly_ superior.
Parent
Re:Aqua (2001-???) (Score:4, Informative)
If they could maintain maintain a competitive *nix, this wouldn't be as much of an issue. Look how much development goes into just the Linux kernel; Apple can't even hope to compete on a technical basis, and will only fall further and further behind. This means things like scalable SMP, efficient threading, network file systems, disk drivers (NCQ anyone?), networking, and many other technical things which while not sexy have a great impact on performance. This work simply isn't getting done. Their low-level OS effort would have a much greater benefit if expended on the GUI and interface instead; these are the areas which distinguish MacOS. Microsoft can't even competing with Linux in these areas, and Apple has but a small fraction of their resources.
As it is now, there are an immense amount of bugs, not to mention very poor performance, and it is basically impossible to even contribute fixes to Apple, which is very frustrating. Apple's uncooperative attitude is simply not productive.
Parent
Re:Aqua (2001-???) (Score:4, Insightful)
Those of us who are not complete macintosh fanboys will have noticed that this is the time at which Apple dropped from having something like 11% market share to having about 3% market share. There were two reasons. One is that Apple computers were still running on 68k processors well into the age when the intel chips were whipping Motorola's ass. The other is that System 7 was a festering piece of shit. No Apple operating system has ever been as unreliable as System 7. While Windows was going towards protected mode all the time (NT did it already; ME doesn't use real mode, which is why compatibility was hurt; Windows 98 is MOSTLY 32 bit) Apple was still using their MMU (when present, which was not always) for virtual memory, and virtual memory alone. A lack of memory protection made MacOS as unreliable as AmigaDOS, with applications stepping on each other constantly. The difference is that AmigaDOS can be rebooted in just a few seconds, even from floppies.
If you remember Mac OS 7 with nostalgia then you clearly have some sort of memory disability.
Parent
Please (Score:3, Interesting)
Shut up already!
Re:Please (Score:5, Insightful)
As for gestures and speech, OS X has had speech from day one (I don't know anyone who uses it, except one guy who turned it on then tried to give a presentation that way -- hilarious). You can have gestures too, but they don't seem to be very practical. They usually get turned off after the initial wow factor wears off as well.
Parent
Is this the new theme for iTunes 7? (Score:5, Interesting)
Running scared! (Score:5, Funny)
Faced with the prospect of being "boring and unoriginal" compared to OLPC vaporware, Steve has decided to one-up the "View Source" button and make XCode the new interface.
Re:Running scared! (Score:4, Funny)
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Illuminous (Score:5, Funny)
Anyway, how about a weekly round-up of Apple rumours rather than individual stories?
Blind guess (Score:3, Interesting)
Apart from that, I do think it's time for Apple to revisit Aqua. Not for a pointless 'replace it with another theme to keep up with Aero' exercise, though. The OS X UI needs a more fundamental redesign, to improve the way we interact with our data. The Finder is one app in dire need of an update.
Is Jobs scared of Aero? (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I can see, quite the opposite.
Apple is I believe going to launch the next version of OSX at the same time as the public starts to get its hands on Vista. Vista is just catching up with OSX in terms of interface. It will really piss on Microsoft's fire if the "Joe Public" press review the next version of OSX at the same time as Vista and conclude that OSX is better - from a PR perspective that will be a disaster for Microsoft because it will make their claims about how Vista is the greatest OS ever much weaker. (Keep in mind that Microsoft has not yet started its marketing bandwagon rolling for Vista).
Want Finder improvements (Score:5, Interesting)
One other thing I would love to see, related to AppleShare volumes: server side folder size calculation, since it would be easier to cache and reduce unecessary network traffic because the client wouldn't be interogating each and every file.
Re:Want Finder improvements (Score:5, Informative)
HTH
Parent
Competing with XGL (Score:5, Insightful)
The primary desktop in my house runs Linux, but I also have an iBook running Tiger. For a long time OS X was a lot prettier than either KDE or Gnome, and people were forever trying to emulate the Aqua look and feel on Linux. A lot of stuff like web browsing and stuff I used to do on my iBook, simply because the GUI was nicer to look at.
Lately though, I'd say for the last year or 18 months, I've been running XGL and Beryl (and compiz before Beryl forked off) and I would say that my desktop now running XGL and Beryl looks much nicer than my iBook running Aqua.
Re:Competing with XGL (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
As a Vista user... (Score:3, Interesting)
There is no way we will be deploying either product to our users at the office anytime soon. It would kill the productivity of our company immediately. There are some cool IT management features in Vista, but the change in the interface negates all of them.
DZ (Score:3, Funny)
No (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think Steve Jobs would want a word that in many people's mind would have connotations of ignorance.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Aero? (Score:5, Funny)
Enough with the technical terms, Pointdexter.
Just say its the clicky thing that lets you do stuff on the whatchamahoo.
Parent
Re:Aero? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Somehow, I doubt this .... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Allow to keep the old too (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't care whether there's one theme or a million themes. What I want is for the user to be able to pick the them rather than the application designer so that everything will use the same one instead of being forced to see fifty different ones at once like Apple does now!
Parent
Single menu conserves screen estate (Score:3, Insightful)
This is especially annoying with browser windows, which you tend to have a lot of. But many applications are prone to having multiple documents open at once and it helps there as well.
Another problem it helps solve is visual menu clutter - sometimes in Windows when I
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I can login without touching my mouse... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hell even the single fact that when you are presented the logon screen, the pointer is on 10,10 and not at screencenter as on Windows, KDE or Gnome is an inconvenient. A little one but just a little thing here and a little thing there does a lot.
Why does this matter, when at the text login page, you can type your username, hit tab, enter your password, hit enter, and be looking at a desktop seconds later? And actually launch programs, not have those programs cancel mouse actions (I love how Windows repeatedly cancels menus you're trying to navigate. When the entire OS revolves around a giant heirarchial menu. For fuck's sake, a program loading itself into the toolbar causes this!)
In fact, I can then hit apple-space and type "Mail", use the down arrow and enter key to select it and launch Mail.app, and read+respond to email in my inbox. Still haven't touched my (multibutton) mouse. How about that...
Parent
Re:Aqua (Score:4, Insightful)
I do wish they'd have an option to duplicate the menu on multiple monitors, but other than that I like it MUCH better than every window having it's own menu.
Parent
Re:Aqua (Score:5, Insightful)
I've encountered the same thing. I'd posit that it can be annoying to people who aren't used to it, but it's not necessarily a huge UI failing for OS X, and many people find it useful. Personally, I like that Mac OS makes a distinction between a window and an application; it allows me to declutter my workspace a bit by closing some windows without losing the ability to use their apps, and it allows me to close an app's last window without having to, say, wait for Word to take five eons to relaunch when I decide to open another document. It's not really an instance of Mac OS misbehaving so much as Mac OS not behaving the same way that Windows does - and I don't like the idea that every UI on the planet has to behave like Windows.
I could see arguing that, if you close the last window of an app, OS X should automatically switch to the next application in the queue. I'd want to see it in practise, though, because I'm not sure whether it would really be more or less confusing to users.
Parent
*whoosh* (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)