Linked by Thom Holwerda on Sat 25th Aug 2007 19:54 UTC, submitted by SK8T
Apple appears to be accelerating seeds of Mac OS X Leopard to developers. After only 5 days since the last seed (9A500n), Apple has issued a new version of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard to developers. The latest seed is listed at build 9A527 (client) and 9A528a (server), and reportedly list a number of less significant 'known issues' compared to prior seeds.
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Member since:
2005-07-09
Someone on MacRumors posted a screenshot of the latest build. See it here: http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/5461/picture4sp9.png
Perhaps most noticeable, the menu bar is only slightly transparent. It is far more readable and even looks better. The previous iteration was poor for usability and ugly when multiple windows were open. It suggested to users that it wasn't solid and windows could be moved under it and was difficult to read (not to mention it was superfluous and gave me nightmares of Vista). It also looked horrible if you weren't staring at the desktop background because it looked completely out of place with the window decoration and other aspects of the OS.
Another change is the window controls. The color is now deeper and this may help for those who don't see well. However, it looks a bit too saturated for me and the main problems remain. The are still very small targets that are difficult to hit and the function of each button is only clear on rollover. It is poor design to force users to move their mouse over every option just to find what they need. There is no need to make this learning curve.
The dock is now no longer transparent. This was a problem with some light backgrounds because the neon glow on a light color is difficult to see. Even now, it is not so clear. However, it was not necessary to completely disable transparency and instead, only a little could be left (or they could stop using the neon glow). Maybe they also wanted to get rid of the visual noise many have complained about (people were especially distracted by reflections). Still, problems remain. The perspective of the icons is wrong, the dock now looks wrong on the side and it suffers from most of the same problems it had from day 1 (although there are advantages to their approach as well).
Some of the criticism for Leopard's GUI (and especially Stacks) is still not addressed, but it's getting better:
http://macnewsonline.com/wp/2007/07/09/5-leopard-gui-gripes/
http://blog.turbomilk.com/archives/000164.html
http://www.thinkmac.co.uk/blog/2007/08/hint-how-to-redesign-leopard...
http://watchingapple.com/2007/06/apples-gravity-lessons-learning-fr...
Edited 2007-08-25 22:20