Newsletter Issue #675: Should We Demand More Consistent Mac and iOS Interfaces?
November 5th, 2012When Apple decided that the icons on the OS X Finder and iTunes sidebars must be gray, did you accept the decision as something that really made sense? I suppose if you’re color blind, but otherwise, it just makes it that much more difficult to identify them.
Well, at least the icons are larger in the Finder, but is it large enough? Well, I suppose you could always use one of those third-party system enhancement apps to fix things, but why should that be necessary?
The move also doesn’t make much sense from a human interface point of view. Why make something gray when you can use different colors to have them stand out and be more discoverable? Isn’t Apple supposed to be the interface champ? Shouldn’t OS X — and the iOS for that matter — be easier to use than all the rest?
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I thought we’d be asking for a more consistent UI for years? 😉
Personally I’m not a fan of skeuomorphism. I think back to Apple’s first truly horrible experiment with that with Quicktime 4 – which quickly made it to the Interface Hall of Shame http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/index.php?file=qtime.htm&mode=original
We’ve also had ‘lickable’ aqua, which I really wish they’d completely drop now from everything, and the derided brushed metal.
It’ll be interesting to see what Jonathon Ive brings to the table. I’d argue that software UI design is quite a different animal to hardware design but maybe he has that required sensitivity and practicality that makes a great UI. Otherwise please bring back Bruce Tognazzini 🙂