Honestly, the closer Leopard gets it seems less and less likely to me that it'll have a brand new UI, or any "top secret features".

1) Vista is out, it's been finished for a few months now basically. There is no risk of Microsoft stealing any "Top Secret Features". I'm guessing there isn't really any top secret features at all and there never was.

2) A lot of apps have been getting visual tweaks and changes. Why would they bother doing that if there's just gonna be a brand new UI? It'd be wasted work and development time. (Preview, Automator, iCal, DVD Player, etc are some of the apps that changed visually).

3) It's getting way too late for developers to learn of this brand new user interface.


Personally I think IF there'll be a new user interface, it would be in 10.6 along with resolution independence - no need to make developers redo the UI in their apps twice. What does everyone else think?

i dont think that leopard is even supposed to have a new UI... or is it?

My Magic 8 Ball (yes, the 80s one) said "YES!!!" there will be a consistent UI, but it said "Ask Again" when I asked it, Will the new UI be in 10.5 or 10.6? My bet is we'll see some new skins in Leopard.

Apple has been telling Developers at WWDC the following...

Where ever possible, use standard UI elements via linking rather than incorporating into your applications.
Where you need to do custom UI elements, use Vector Images in black and white, applying all colors, effects, etc. via CoreAnimation's Procedural Rendering Engine.

Note, if your App links directly into standard UI elements, then all of the sudden it gets the System UI whatever Apple decides upon.

Sure, it could create some visual issues for some programs (think of inadvertently hard coding using a Black font over what you assume is a white window. Something changes and now all of the sudden your text is unreadable.

What Apple is saying is "Trust us, let us control the UI."
Sure, this could just be because getting resolution independance to work requires a few things like scalable vectors with gradients, shadows, glows, etc applied by a procedural render.

Point is that if Developers do what they are supposed to, then it really paves the way for a whole new skinning system if Apple does not change everything. One could simply edit the system-wide resources and get a whole new UI immediately.

Plus, I have been working on some apps that make heavy use of CoreAnimation and know that it is pretty easy to create a Vista-Style UI under Leopard if you completely ignore what Apple has to say, use your own resource files and set the procedural render properly.

I believe Apple when they say that there are some top secret features that haven't been revealed. You should know by know that Apple has a habit of keeping things a secret until they want to let it out. As for a new UI, I don't think Apple has really said anything direct. I think I could live with the current UI anyway, other than a couple needed tweaks, it works very well.

have you ever thought that maybe we don't know about it's secret features or a new UI because umm, they're secret?

hmm.

Take a good look at Time Machine and iTunes before you say Leopard won't get a new UI.

Adrian, that is pretty interesting. It seems like Apple could replace the UI in the last minute judging by that. Still I think quite a few developers use custom UI in their apps and it would ruin the look causing them to have to redo things. It's not something they should change so late.



What would be the reason for keeping things secret though? Don't you think if Apple had some snazzy new UI they'd like to show it off just before Vista releases (make it look outdated, get publicity, hurt Vista hype, etc). Personally I think there never was any "top secret features" and Steve said that just so people wouldn't be disappointed. He probably figured most people would forget he ever said that after a few months.

If there is anyone who wouldn't lie to the Apple community, it's Steve Jobs.

If Apple keeps their work quiet, there is more of an impact when it all of the sudden appears on store shelves without any other sort of warning. If you noticed, many of the features in Windows Vista are copied from OS X and other OS', but Bill Gates himself said in an interview that Apple copied features he had been planning for Vista and simply got them to market in a useable fashion sooner, which is hardly true. If Apple doesn't let out what it's been up to, Bill can't claim Apple copied him because he never had these features, so Apple will basically make him eat his words.

Jobs hasn't said anything about iLife features or iPhone integration so even those are still secret to us.

It also wouldn't be impossible for them to remove things from their builds before they appear on the ADC.

Wait, what? Bill Gates claimed that OS X stole features from Vista. Okay, so it did. All OSes steal from each other, and that's not a bad thing. But your argument is that, if Apple released Leopard with new features that Vista doesn't have, suddenly OS X won't have stolen anything from Vista?

So, uh, OS X basically creates a rift in space/time that allows it to alter the past?

Sweet, where's my {censored} copy?

Oh...is that what Time Machine is supposed to do

Wow, it's all clear to me now!

err, I worded that poorly.

I should have said that Apple is keeping these features secret so that msft can't copy more of them and release them say as umm, Vista Ultimate Extras etc..

It's not a bad thing that all OS implement similar features as it makes the learning curve between them easier. But I'd like to know what features Apple magically copied from an OS that didn't exist to the public when they released Tiger etc..

Well if you really want to know. Just like Windows, Linux, MacOS Classic, BeOS, NeXT, SkyOS, *gasp for air*, and others, pretty much all the research done by Xerox PARC in the 70s. The fact is that everyone has stolen from everyone, so there's no point in waisting time justifying the legitimacy of various features and their originality.

The builds of Leopard that you are currently receiving are months old. They are releasing them ONLY for developers to incorporate Time Machine(so its not a bust and offered with some apps, and not only supported by mac os x) other new Leopard features.

Apple is also telling developers to calm down on their UI, and let Apple 'handle' it.

Well, Apple copied the right click sometime after Windows got it...

Nevertheless, Microsoft copied lots of Mac stuff. What's shocking is that they also copied the "Unified" look, where the buttons of the applications get onto the title bar.


Personally, I do hope that Mac OS X 10.5 will get a new GUI because
1) Aqua is getting old. It was introduced in 2001, if I'm not wrong, and that is as old as Luna in Windows XP (though it beats Luna)
2) Vista is slowly catching up. I'm a great fan of macs and I would hate to see macs lagging behind.
3) Recently Apple hired a (or maybe a few) GUI designers. Goodness knows what they're up to.
4) Updated GUI in applications don't mean anything... maybe apple is up to something drastically different from the GUI theme in iTunes, etc, etc?
5) Apple GUIs is based on the exterior of their computers. Old iMacs have translucent, colorful plastics, so you get the bulbous, glasslike buttons and scrollbars in Aqua. Later, Macbook Pro, Mac Pro, and Apple Cinema monitors are made of brushed metal, thus the brushed metal GUI. Now, the iPhone is something black and shiny, so... ... ? Maybe they are going to redesign their computers too! After all, our current iMac is exactly the same as the iMac G5... And our Mac Pros as old as the Powermacs.

The problem with letting Apple "handle the UI" is that if they were to change the window style many apps would look like crap. Specifically the toolbar icons...

Take Camino as an example:


Would those icons look good on a brushed metal background? No, they wouldn't.

Unless Apple wants there to be a lot of UGLY applications in Leopard, they need to start giving developers an idea of what the UI would be at least. The whole point of developers getting builds is so they can make their apps take advantage of the new technologies and fit in with the OS - why wouldn't they do that with the UI too? That's why I think there won't be one, it's getting far too late.

whoever said brushed metal?

I believe it was an example.

ahhh, i can see cleary now, the rain is gone. <-- bad song. I would personally like the ui if ithere is a new ui, to be dark black, not dark brushed metal, but something dark

It could be that they add a new UI without touching the existing ones. Like, how they added the Brushed Metal UI to Safari and Finder, but then, they still left the rest of the applications etc untouched.

on the sneak peek page at apple.com , all the videos show the regular tiger interface ..
so is there anything that i'm not getting here ?

Hmm...

You do realize that those videos havent been touched since August, right?

Then people would probably be complaining even more about yet another different user interface/window styles.



There was speculation from some people of one of the "top secret features" being a brand new user interface.

I think the only thing we can say for sure UI wise is that Apple is slowly phasing out brushed metal. First iTunes then the iLife suite, and now Automator, iCal, iSync, iChat, DVD Player, etc are no longer brushed.

I think rollcage explained it perfectly. It will be a last minute thing for the "secret" stuff with a possibility of a new UI. The quote from Apple about the UI almost seems like a "be prepared incase this may happen." It doesn't seem definate.

The impression that I got from it and the other materials avaliable at WWDC06 seemed to be more along the lines of "Use the system-wide resources, that is what they are there for. It promotes consistency, makes your apps look more beautiful because of Resolution Independance and improves the general feel of everything."

One thing that I have been a little surprised about was that the Magnifier in 10.5 does not make use of resolution independance. I can imagine that this could be difficult to implement (well), but it could make everything look a lot more beautiful.

Getting back to what I was saying, it is overall good programming practices to use system-wide, universal libraries and resources whenever possible because it makes everything consistent and can benefit from security and performance fixes downstream.

But, as we have seen, companies like Oracle have needed to go in and implement their own frameworks for things like filesystem access and direct hardware-to-hardware communications over OS X to improve performance, and not just by a few percentage points, but by orders of magnitude. So, a lot of these textbook answers do not generally work out well in the real world because someone will always find some way of doing one thing much more efficiently than has been done in the past.

So, this could be Apple's way of subtlely saying "do this so that everything will look consistent when a new UI comes out" but it could also be "use good programming practices."

I mean, they did say that if you were not going to use the system-wide resources, then make sure that you use black-and-white (not grayscale) vector images and apply all effects and transitions with CoreAnimation to get a fully Resolution Independant UI.

an earlier post asked "why didnt apple release the new UI/features right after the launch of vista" with the support that many would hold off on buying vista and wait a few months and get the better leopard. though this is a valid point, i dont think it would lead to many converters. I think that if they wait till vista is released, then people start buying it and seeing that it isnt worth how expensive it is, or see that it isnt as great an operating system, and then leopard is released, that this would lead to more switchers...

Well, think about it this way...

According to Microsoft, most people will not be "upgrading" their computers but will simply be buying new ones.
They even have numbers to back it up saying that since the release of Vista, New computer sales have gone up 68%, however their actual boxed versions of Vista have hardly sold at all, with Microsoft accounting a majority of their sales to the "Computer Enthusiast" market.

So, by Microsoft's own admission, everyone who wants to run Vista should really just buy a new computer so you can be sure to make use of all the great things that Vista has to offer.

I do have to say though, I have only encountered one "crash" under Vista, and that was with PowerPoint when showing a presentation via a Toshiba Wireless Video Projector and Vista's Projector Settings Wizard. While not everything works on my Macbook Pro, what does work goes fairly smoothly after you get past how horribly different everything is. Sure their are glaring UI inconsistencies and glitches all over the place, and even with Red Aero Windows, you still have a blue border along the bottom and right-hand side. But in the end, that is all stuff that will be addressed when companies start coming out with their drivers and when Microsoft starts fixing these issues that have been popping up in the real world.

If you think about that, why would anyone want to spend two thousand dollars on a mac immediately after they bought a PC?

However, that certainly would lead to more homebrew macs!

Why spend $2000 when you can spend $1000 for a Macbook? Damn, sexy!

Um, to get better performance?

And anyhow, spring is just around the corner, around 1 or more months to go. Be patient and we'll see what comes.

Everyone knows that sexy beasts don't need to be great performers. Guys will get their jollies off nomatter what they can't or choose not to do.

Beauty conquers all.

Even if they cant get a new UI into the release of Leopard, can't they attach it to a minor update, like 10.5.1? I would think if they had the necessary libraries in with the release, all it would really need was to finish polishing it up then send it out. And after you install the update, Apple could even ask you if you would like to switch to Illuminous or stay with Aqua/BrushedMetal.


Adrian, are there any new frameworks, libraries, etc at all in the latest build that may be a backbone for a new UI? I cant torrent anything so I cant download it and check myself .

There is a new private framework CoreUI in leopard. and inside the framework, in ressources, a Aqua.bundle. This is a strong indication of a theme feature in Leopard.
it would be interesting to know if this framework is really loaded by the system.

A new UI is a major thing, not something they would add in a point update.

If it doesn't make it in Leopard we'll probably have to wait for 10.6

CoreUI suggests that the new UI is going to be driven by Core Animation.

Why does it suggest that?

I mean, there is already CoreAudio, CoreVideo and a few others.

CoreUI, will probably used for theme but i think even more it will be used for the resolution independence.

yea the resolution independence makes more sense cause steve j said he didnt like themes, but itd be awesome if they did include a theme manager (a la shapeshifter)

But Steve also spoke often how the PowerPC Architecture was far superior to the x86 Arthitecture, and that they had no intention of supporting alternate architectures.

We all know how that turned out.

haha yea he also said video didnt belong on an ipod

iTunes 6 and the iPhone's UI are clear indications of where Mac OS X is going to go. Right now, the build of Leopard I'm running is just glorified Tiger, in a good way. That blue spotlight-induced theme has been very refined but I can't see it change everything. The glassy black UI ala Time Machine, combined with "Quick Look" and unified aqua is what's coming.

plus the diminishing brushed metal look

As I have said before, the UI of mac os x follows the design of the hardware of apple. The plastic-like buttons and etc in Aqua resembles the classic translucent iMac, whereas the smooth white gradient of the titlebar of the window resembles the opaque white plastic of current Macs. The brushed metal was designed to resemble the Apple Cinema monitors, the Mac Pro and the Macbook Pro. Considering the iPhone now being black and glossy, and the increasingly black and glossy applications, it would not be wrong to believe that Leopard is going to feature a black and glossy UI, and that future macs (the hardware) would be black and glossy too.

Well, it's that black and white thing that Apple's been doing - black and white iPod, black and white Macbooks, etc...

Dont forget the increasing numbers of Black, Red, Blue and Orange Macbook Pros that I have been seeing at the library lately.

Sure, that is because there is an auto body place just off of campus that is doing custom computer paint jobs for $100 so a ton of people have been going for it (usually the Black 17" Macbook Pros).
They are damn sexy.

My Theory:

Perhaps Apple isn't announcing their UI like Vista did because Leopard has more substance than just a UI upgrade.

When people see OS X their initial reaction is "oo pretty," but as all designers know, function ultimately trumps form. OS X works nicely, but it also has decent security features and relatively intuitive user interface.

Microsoft, seeing the recent success of OS X, decides "Oh! OS X is doing so well because it looks pretty! Oh look you can put widgets on a dashboard! Oh look at Expose! People must be buying Macs because they look pretty!" and then proceeds to build an entire $500 operating system around a poorly-functioning, resource-hogging, non-intuitive user interface.

Flip 3D looks nice, but by the time it actually loads properly and shows all of your windows, you're ready to shoot yourself in the head. It also manages to show about 10% of each window you have open as opposed to OS X's 100% of every window open with Expose.

Aero looks nice for about 5 minutes tops. Then you realize that every window you have open has a 10 pixel border around it, which wastes space unnecessarily. The glass effect makes windows look cluttered and, quite frankly, ugly. Microsoft spent so much energy into redesigning the UI that they forgot that that's not what people want! When you go on a website, do you want to look at the well-designed website, or the clunky glass that frames the well-designed website? It wouldn't be half-bad if it didn't make my computer run at half its original speed, but hey, it's an excuse for me to buy yet another product license.

Anyway, while I do think that Leopard will have upgrades to UI and a few "top secret features," that shouldn't be the point. The point is to give the end-user a better experience with the computer than before.

agreed. simply put, os x is built on top of a smarter, better designed base, so it can have all those good looks without screwing other things up (or slowing htem down)

i dont think the ui redesign will be as drastic as some people are predicting, but ittl be there just the same (perhaps just brushed metal --> plastic?), alongside the other "top secret" features (or maybe it's something bigger... like themes. imagine, that would fit the bill for both the ui redesign, and could be labeled as a "top secret" feature)

themes: think shapeshifter + apple's designers = leopard themes / UI redesign

so check this out this is the new redesigned APPLE STUDENTS facebook group check out the UI its crazy. i can see this as a LEOPARD UI

http://hs.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2204894392

similar to some of the other stuff thats popping up in leopard these days...