5 Leopard GUI Gripes
The current beta build of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, released to developers at WWDC ‚’07, is not as polished as what people have come to expect of Apple’s design team – users are still left with at best several disagreeable changes, and at worst a hideous hodgepodge of HIG contradictions. I have broken down 5 onscreen blunders that detract from the user experience and make Leopard the ugliest and most uncharacteristically ‘Apple’ OS to date.
Giant Shadow
The drop shadow should be one of those subtle interface nuances that you never consciously notice, and it was, until now. Apple must think we have serious issues identifying the current window, because they took the liberty of giving us an enormous drop shadow to indicate it; it’s far too obtrusive, almost to the point of obstructing windows that it overlays.
Glowing Dock Dots
The little black triangles show the currently running applications, and again, are an unobtrusive part of the UI that blends into the background, only noticeable when you need it. The new, neon-blue ‘magic’ dots are so out of place, they’re hard to describe, almost like a mystical throwback to Aqua.
Translucent Menu Bar
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the current menu bar, so why introduce another confusing, superfluous effect? I can understand what they’re trying to do conceptually by trying to minimize the impact of the menu bar, but when another window is open, it actually ends up emphasizing the menu bar, which creates some sort of visual chasm between the top of the screen and the top of the window. Either way, it serves to make the bar harder to read, and might be confusing to the seasoned Mac user. Finally, it almost seems like it’s a half-hearted grasp at imitating Aero Glass, and it hardly needs to be said that that isn’t a good subject for imitation.
Spotlight Menu
I’m not sure what Apple was smoking when they thought that combining a translucent menu bar, black menu icons, and bright blue accents was a good design decision, but that’s what you get when you access Spotlight in Leopard. Admittedly it seems to work 3-5x faster in Leopard, but it still LOOKS atrocious.
New System Icons
Now, these might still grow on me, I haven’t decided yet, but they do seem a bit goofy right now. As you can see in this QuickLook screenshot, there is now almost a ‘grain’ to the folders, reminiscent of recycled paper. A weird change, although I do like the fact that the folders are now watermarked with an icon that indicates their contents.
The reason for the inclusion of this slew of new GUI elements in the beta was to get feedback from users (developers, in this case) before they rolled it out. So, if you don’t like the new look, let Apple know by Digging this story and bringing it to their attention
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75 Responses to “5 Leopard GUI Gripes”
Anyone knows if the window corners are ‘chopped’ (less round) like in the newer iTunes releases?
I mean, if that is the standard for all the other windows as well.
Back on topic, I like the bigger drop shadow effect, to me it gives more sense of depth.
The biggest problem I have with the menu bar on Mac OS X is that on a high resolution display the menu bar can be very far away from the active window location, and on a multi-monitor display it might even be on the other screen!
I would really like to see an application menu that worked like the old NeXT menu, in that would could use a key-combo or middle mouse button to show the whole menu (DejaMenu is a great utility that enables this functionality), this would be a great power-user feature for the OS.
P.S. The translucent menu bar is an absolutely awful GUI design idea.
I agree that the menubar shouldn’t be transparent. it looks nice if you’re starring at the desktop the entire time, but when you have many other windows, it looks completely out of place. It doesn’t necessarily integrate with Apple’s overall color scheme. For example, if I have a purple background, can you imagine how ugly that would look with Apple’s iTunes look? Thus, while Jobs mentioned that this was so that we can enjoy our wallpepers more, many will be forced to use a specific wallpaper so that it integrates well with Apple’s theme. Or of course, one could make the dock look like before with a special wallpaper.
The shadow is also excessive, but not horrible.
The glowing dots are not good for usability. They aren’t visible enough. Light colors on light colors do not contrast well.
The Spotlight menu color isn’t good, but it is not horrible.
The system icons look fine.
I hope Leopard’s look will be improved before release.
I just wish they’d concentrate on making real improvements to Tiger, such as:
–change the traffic-light control buttons to something you can find on a laptop without a geiger counter. Something like the Platinum interface in KDE would be nice: big, square buttons that are easily found with a trackpad
–can we please have the ability to resize a window in more than one corner? Is this too much to ask, boys, or are we too busy backdating stock to deal with such minutiae?
–Command-tab should actually raise the window of the open app I select, rather than merely bring its menu up. I shouldn’t have to get a 3rd party utility (e.g., Witch) for this; it should be part of the OS.
I agree in every aspect you said, but there are 6 not 5 reasons. The sixth is the Dock. I saw it and the first thing I thought was: How will look a full zoomed window without the regular rect border of the original dock? And my conclusion is: very bad. I hope we could set all these options at the settings we all want. The only thing I don’t like in OS X is that we don’t get too much Appearance settings for us to customized at our will, but I hope these delicated new things can be controlled in the preferences, otherwise they could have a very bad impact in the mayority of users. More flexibility Apple, please, we don’t like Microsoft-like imposed things.
Also,
Steve Jobs: Are you crazy!!? that transparent menu bar is an horrible, horrible idea. Even the WWDC attendants thought it was a joke when the new desktop look was devealed, you could hear their laughs, but no, he (Jobs) was serious, even I thought it was a joke, because of the big Vista-like look. If the video still in Apple’s site go and check it, I’m telling the truth, people there thought it was a joke. BAD, VERY, VERY BAD IDEA, and much more bad since Jobs has criticized Vista’s look since the very first day. NO WAY TURN THAT OFF!! And where are the rounded upper corners. I HATE THAT THING, I REALLY, REALLY HATE IT.
The biggest problem I have with the menu bar on Mac OS X is that on a high resolution display the menu bar can be very far away from the active window location, and on a multi-monitor display it might even be on the other screen!
I would really like to see an application menu that worked like the old NeXT menu, in that would could use a key-combo or middle mouse button to show the whole menu (DejaMenu is a great utility that enables this functionality), this would be a great power-user feature for the OS.
P.S. The translucent menu bar is an absolutely awful GUI design idea.
Woah, that shadow would cover my entire screen!!! (Well, not quite;)). I like the dock spots and the menu bar, although I think some windows should go behind it and jump out when they become active (It looks good in my head).
I could not agree more on the spotlight thing, if you’ve got graphite on then the highlight should be in graphite, also I would like to see the menu go all the way to the end of the screen like the Quicksilver Flashlight module (If you haven’t used that on try it, its great). I hope Apple fix other Blue/Graphite inconsistencies with Leopard as well, but I still think I’m going to Uno it when i get my copy. And I love the new System icons.
I think Apple should allow more customization, being able to change the Dock back to normal, change opacity of the Menu Bar and maybe even have their own version ShapeShifter, basically make OS X the most customizable and easy to use OS out there.
The new look is pretty ugly all round. I really hope that there’s a way to set it all back to Classic (so that my machine runs faster too) like you could on Windows XP.
I agree with everything said. Leopard GUI is an absolute mess. I find it hard to believe it was a design team that came up with the changes. I mean?!? I’m thinking more along the lines of some 15 year old with no graphic design skills on work experience with a 15 minute deadline.
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Leopard + Mac geeks…
I can feel it. It’s so very close, yet not there yet. On Friday, October 26th, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard will be in my hands, ready to be installed. While that may be a celebration in its own right, Apple is going on the safe side by hosting Le……
[...] TOP 5 Reasons Why Leopard’s UI Sucks The current beta build of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, released to developers at WWDC ‚’07, is not as polished as what people have come to expect of Apple’s design team – users are still left with at best several disagreeable changes, and at worst a hideous hodgepodge of HIG contradictions.[…] Thanks to npulido for providing this nice story on Digg (more than 1312 Diggs). [...]
Yeah, yeah… you stupid morons always find something to complain about. Go and fuck yourself, nothing will ever be good enough for you. Just like that other idiot mentioned… you can always go back to Vista, and then all your problems are gone… yeah, that’s just what you think.
Ohhh… my taskbar is semi-transparent, I will cry… in the same time there is a million of other users who are happy with changes like that one. What do you think ? You’re more important than other users, so Apple will release some update to give you back your stupid plain solid color taskbar ? Just dream on…
Good site!
I think you have a problem; poor taste. It is a shame that a pinhead as yourself has the privilege of blogging such egregious nonsense. You sir, can not grasp the concept of apple, Think Different
With all do respect, a mac fan
Windows vista ultimate hack…
Nice points……
Wait, what about Stacks? Is Stacks not the most useless piece of shit that Apple has ever come up with? What a joke. I miss being able to navigate through my folders upwards via my customized dock
I’ve been messing around with it for a long while now, and I can’t find anything that is comfortable in terms of dock customization. Talk about a step backwards in terms of UI. Dumbasses.
I agree with you. The dock dots totally suck (too difficult to take in at a glance), as does the new menu bar. :\ Hopefully they’ll change some of this stuff soon. Personally, I’d like to see an option someplace that allows you to toggle between the new UI and the older one.
And this guy:
“Yeah, yeah… you stupid morons always find something to complain about. Go and fuck yourself, nothing will ever be good enough for you. Just like that other idiot mentioned… you can always go back to Vista, and then all your problems are gone… yeah, that’s just what you think.
Ohhh… my taskbar is semi-transparent, I will cry… in the same time there is a million of other users who are happy with changes like that one. What do you think ? You’re more important than other users, so Apple will release some update to give you back your stupid plain solid color taskbar ? Just dream on…”
… is a total fucking idiot. Thanks, god, for botching the UI on that one.
Whoever wrote this complains about such little issues. if you think about it, do we really care?
Bought Leopard and had Apple deliver it to me the day it was released. I installed it, and within 3 hours had TIGER back on my MacBook Pro. Leopard is just way too annoying for me, and I see no reason to search all over the net to find fixes for the somewhat stupid things that Apple did to the OS in this release. I also did a little experiment. I wiped the hard drive, and installed WinXP Pro. The new Intel-Macs are PC CLONES. WinXP ran fine, and it ran well enough to be considered as a full time replacement to OS X. So rather than buy a new notebook from Apple again, any PC Notebook with similar specs will do. May not be able to run OS X on it (Thank You Steve ), but the direction OS X has taken leaves me to not want to run it at all, and I won’t over pay for hardware again….
I think you’re nit-picking. Those gripes are….almost silly. Leopard is great.
Hi,
Just incase anyone wants to know apple have already fixed up 4 of the graphical glitches shown above.
Fixes:
.(SHADOW)
The Giant shadow is now not so giant.
.(SPOTLIGHT)
Spotlight is now a beautiful blue.
. (MENU BAR)
you the option to have a translucent or a sold
colourd menu bar, and the overall appearance has been soften up a little bit.
.(DOCK)
The is no problem with the blue lights in the dock in the first place, but you can now download free programs that let you change the blue marker to ANYTHING, or if you want you can even change the whole dock to a entirely new one!
. (FOLDER ICONS)
The new folder icons in my opinion are awful! but you can download a program (available in freeware and software) that lets you change the default folder icons and/or any other icon on your mac.
my favorite application that lets you do this is called “candybar 3″
What the heck are you talking about people? Even jaguar is better than Vista. In addition, Leopard is working smoothly and the new dock is great in appearence. Why are you so cruel. Leopard is the best OS in the world currently. Yes every OS have some problems. We are not perfect. So engineers are not perfect too. But I am not talking about Vista. If you are complaining about leopard just use Tiger or Vista to see the difference and recognize how the new features helps you to go!
After A YEAR AND A HALF, I still find the above complaints about Leopard sooooo ridiculous. Especially now, after 18 months, almost everyone is happy with their Leopard.
Through the test of time, 18 months proved Leopard to have the best UI in any OS… so far.