OSNews

Everybody knows and has seen the three ugly, top right buttons found on Windows, whichever version it may be. Apple and BeOS designers know that although the buttons work, they're unappealing. They know that the ultimate user experience is formed by locking together design and function. They've endeavoured to design smarter, slicker and more beautiful looking navigational qualities that do not detract from the function. Although the issue of aesthetics is subjective, I'm sure that many agree that the Mac OSX Aqua aesthetics beat the Windows equivalent hands down. I remember when I first used the Mac Classic interface, everything worked like charm - I knew how to click, I knew what to click. It was easy to get things done. This wasn't so with Windows95 - it took slightly longer to grasp the essentials before actually being productive, and boy it was sure ugly in comparison to the Mac's interface.

What has aesthetics got to do with GUI design? Everything. Aesthetics are what people are willing to pay for in this world - designer clothing, designer cars, designer goods, designer houses. Image is what many companies and corporations set out to create. A good-looking GUI will entice the user. It would drive some obsessed users to put up with it no matter how painfully slow the system is.

In my humble opinion, the Macintosh OSX and BeOS user interfaces are THE GUIs to learn from. Not Windows. Taking a calculated guess, Microsoft may have a team of UI designers tearing Mac OSX and BeOS apart to "borrow" some ideas from these great operating systems. Microsoft has been doing this for so long - "borrowing" open source code and ideas from others and turning them into huge profits that it's not funny anymore. I'm therefore trying to understand why UI designers or start-up OS creators strive to make their designs look more Windows oriented: it's like taking the leftovers and throwing it back into the stew pot again.

Scot Hacker's article, "Tales of a BeOS Refugee" was the best OS article I have ever read. This bit about interface design is excellent:

"...it is difficult to describe how visually beautiful OS X is. Screen shots don't do it justice. Much has been said about animated elements in OS X -- dialogs that slide into position, the "genie" effect upon window minimization, the poof of smoke that appears as you drag an item out of the Dock, etc. But the important point about these animations is that they aren't just eye candy. Each of them is a carefully designed quantum of feedback. The OS is informing you non-verbally where something has gone or what needs to be done next. These UI cues are clear enough to speak for themselves, but unobtrusive enough not to annoy power users."

1. "Hiding the Command Line Interface"
2. "Usabilty and Design Aesthetics"
3. "The Default Interface"
4. "Packaged Ability"
5. "Speed, Power, Efficiency"