Why OSX lost its stripes
Michael Tsai (author of SpamSieve) notes that as OSX has iterated, the pinstripes have faded and faded to nothingness, in See the cat? See the stripes?.
The reduction of the stripes and gratuitous transparency are, to me, among the most important changes that Apple has made to the OS. As with some of the other OS X improvements between the public beta and 10.4, celebrating this is kind of like thanking the bully for not beating you up anymore. It doesn’t really make sense, but you’re so happy that the bruises are healing.
Certainly I complained like mad about the unreadability of screens in the beta -”like they’re smeared with margarine”, I said at the time. But I think Michael’s got it just right here:
My theory is that the stripes were a gimmick to encourage carbonization by making Classic applications look ‘bad.’ Now that most people no longer use Classic, and Jonathan Ive is into solid-colored hardware, the stripes no longer serve any purpose.
Even stronger than that; I think stripes were absolutely about making Classic look different and old, and now that you don’t get Classic unless you go and hunt out a CD with it on (was it Tiger that dropped it, or Panther?), you won’t notice how much easier the Classic windows were to navigate, drag around and so on. Personally, I keep ‘falling off’ the edges of windows when I’m dragging them - which I never used to do with OS9 and earlier.
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- Indies join Euro iTunes Music Store - divide and rule vs one for all (21 July 2004; score: 46.01%)
- Vienna (not the song, the newsreader), and theories on Lost (3 October 2005; score: 22.57%)
- This space for rent! (24 November 2005; score: 20.02%)
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May 28th, 2005 at 3:53 pm
I think stripes were cool at the time. I think the next step will be to loose the texture on the scrollbar as well.
May 28th, 2005 at 7:15 pm
I liked the “stripes” much better than the current look. Aqua as it was originally conceived was much better than this brushed aluminum look which is far too mechanical and industrial for my taste. Just an opinion.
May 28th, 2005 at 11:09 pm
The metal look is terrible and really a pain to look at for any amount of time. Gimme the white background anytime.
May 28th, 2005 at 11:38 pm
Actually, the simply ability to modify the UI as the user sees fit without having to resort to 3rd party hacks would be nice to see. I must admit, some of the various ‘themes’ that some of my PC friends use can cause my eyes to bleed, but at least they have a choice.
May 29th, 2005 at 3:57 am
Gotta say, the old interface was quite a bit nicer to the user. Being able to move windows around by any edge, double-clicking the title bar to pull up the whole window, etc… was great. Expose ALMOST makes up for it, but the sidebar popping up and the ugly labels sort of make my desktop look like a trash heap.
OK, done venting.
May 29th, 2005 at 9:22 am
I guess the stripes were in for M$ and linuxes to copy, and when the stripey longhorn will finally appear, they will be gone from OS X long ago. Then, MS will have 10 years to remove their version of stripes.
May 29th, 2005 at 6:29 pm
I think Apple indeed needed a set off from nine. As is the trend in contemporary industrial design Apple dropped quite a lot of it’s coloured yellieish and liquid gimmickery as well as the wurlitzer style “scale and buttonry” type stuff. This development is clear as well in Apple’s hardware. No colour, clear lines an a more unified design throughout the product line; white is for consumers, metal for pros.
I personally would like the leds to go away from the windows. The bars and sliders are too beefy for me as opposed to nine. I hate any reference to web browsers in a window (this is what makes XP such a dog to me). For a XP user OSX is very cool though, especially the dock. In general I hope Apple will work on interface design that is as clean and ergonomic as it’s hardware. Clearly, I don’t miss the lines.
May 30th, 2005 at 1:38 am
I think it is more of a problem that GUI guidelines are no longer followed than the changing looks of OS X. Apple originally adhered to much more strict rules of the GUI and even created GUI rules for its developers. Now there seems to be variations on theme Stripes, Brushed Metall, Flat Metal, etc. Buttons and windows do not consistently behave the same throughout the whole OS experience and into the 3rd party software realm.
Apple has made great strides with regard to the look of their hardware now they should place equal importance and concentration on their interface so that when Longhorn finally does ship, the Mac will have a distinct lead in this area too.
May 30th, 2005 at 6:22 pm
remember, the stripes were a reflection of the translucent strips in the early iMac versions. at the time, it seemed to me an appropriate thing; to bring about a slow merging of the hardware and software until one could not tell where one ended and the other began. it still seems to be the Apple ideal, and one that only Apple can pull off [thanks to influence over the whole platform from software to hardware]. i don’t think it’s a bad thing, and i didn’t mind the stripes. but, they are long gone from the hardware; so they have faded from the software.
note that the ’shiny plastic’ interface elements reflect the shiny plastic of iPods, minis, etc.
- h