iTunes 11: the convergence of iOS and OS X design

http://theindustry.cc/2012/11/30/itunes-11-the-convergence-of-ios-and-os-x-design/

by jarederondu • 14 years ago

29 52 14 years ago

theindustry.cc

purephase• 14 years ago

Funny, the one thing that is making we more and more wary of using Mac OSX in the future is the convergence of iOS.

Different strokes, I guess. It just seems odd to celebrate it.

ComputerGuru2• 14 years ago

Absolutely agreed. Snow Leopard was the last "true" desktop OS. I really don't see the need for Launchpad and co. when everything is and always has been a cmd+space away.

EDIT

In response to the heated discussion below, it's not just the launchpad that has me a little peeved about Lion and ML (I'm on ML now). Some of things that are being taken from iOS that I don't necessarily feel belong on the desktop: natural scrolling, skeuomorphication of interfaces, suggested words, "all my files", social media integration (yes, this is just me), etc.

But my biggest pet peeve is just the sheer dumbing down of things. iTunes 11 is pretty, but why put everything a click away? What was so bad about a sidebar that makes everything instantly accessible and only takes 80px? Why does the app now prefer to be run in full screen?

benbeltran• 14 years ago

Many regular users beg to differ. At least, in my experience, the people who are less familiar with computers are the ones that love the new features the most. Especially launchpad and such. Also, just curious, but what about Lion / Mountain lion disqualifies it from being a "true" desktop OS?

fumar• 14 years ago

I feel the same way about Snow Leopard. I try to ignore all the things that alter my OSX experience. Like; launchpad, the lack of "proper spaces", and saving files.

Overall, I prefer to use my old Macbook with Snow Leopard, than my new iMac. It is a sad state. Sometimes, I feel like I should not be "that" guy stuck in the past. But, I dislike the iOS-fication of OSX.

r00fus• 14 years ago

Thing is, it still is cmd+space away. Launchpad would make sense if it was easier to "configure", but I simply ignore it... my parents however, really like it.

mitchty3• 14 years ago

And you can ignore Launchpad in Lion and Mountain Lion as if it were Snow Leopard.

Honestly, I don't notice most of the changes. And full screen mode for apps is much better than expanding a window to fit the screen.

Granted all I really use is chrome/firefox/emacs/terminal but really I don't see why everyone continues to whine about the changes. They're minimal to non-existent to users like us.

w1ntermute2• 14 years ago

With Windows 8, the same thing is happening to Windows, leaving Linux as the only real "desktop" OS. Even there, you have stuff like Unity, but Linux's flexibility lets you choose not to use it. This is what my Xubuntu desktop looks like, and I don't intend to change it any time soon: http://i.imgur.com/mVAey.png

grecy• 14 years ago

I've never understood why people complain about features being added they don't use/want/need.

Don't use it.

You're like a person complaining about the addition of seat belts in cars that doesn't want to use one, or a person complaining about the addition of world time zones to your phone when you never leave your own timezone.

Don't use it.

Osmium• 14 years ago

You can ignore features like Launchpad if you don't want them; I do. You can also revert scrolling behaviour, disable word suggestions and autocorrect, disable "all my files", simply not enable social media integration. These aren't hidden preferences, they're just a second away in system preferences.

Meanwhile, by sticking to Snow Leopard, you miss out on:

* Robust full disk encryption (and the underlying filesystem improvements that allowed it to happen)

* Improved security (e.g. kernel ASLR, signed apps -- if you want them, sandboxing)

* Much improved user apps (Safari, Preview, QuickTime to name a few)

* Recovery partitions for improved disaster recovery

* Access to the App Store (edit: I'd forgotten you can get this on 10.6 too, though I couldn't speak to how many apps still support 10.6)

* For developers, there've been improvements to Objective-C, including the addition of ARC and simpler syntax

Snow Leopard is starting to look really old now, and as far as I can tell the only unavoidable difference is that Spaces acts differently. It's a big sacrifice to make just for that.

marblar2• 14 years ago

You can bring the sidebar back with Cmd-Option-S

mullingitover• 14 years ago

One stop shopping to fix a slew of OSX annoyances: https://github.com/mathiasbynens/dotfiles/blob/master/.osx?o...

yen2232• 14 years ago

> But my biggest pet peeve is just the sheer dumbing down of things. iTunes 11 is pretty, but why put everything a click away? What was so bad about a sidebar that makes everything instantly accessible and only takes 80px? Why does the app now prefer to be run in full screen?

Is "number-of-clicks" really the best metric to measure usability? I can't imagine something like this being considered a good interface, even though everything is one double-click away: http://it.sheridanc.on.ca/images/cluttered-desktop.jpg

drivebyacct2• 14 years ago

Lots of thoughts. It looks nice and simple. Too simple. I think it actually looks much sharper and more modern than iOS does these days. Hopefully the design influence runs both ways.

Also, I know everyone has their own opinion, but yikes, this looks just bad to me (from the article): http://theindustry.cc/assets/2012/11/mini.png (edit, maybe it's my high res monitor but that font is painful to look at)

pssdbt• 14 years ago

I think that's just a bad screenshot maybe... http://d.pssdbt.com/ruIf

marblar2• 14 years ago

Here's one with more pixels: http://imgur.com/vn0J0

pavlov3• 14 years ago

[...] however iTunes’ new display of Apps is horrid; every app icon has an ugly faux-perspective bevel that just doesn’t seem to work.

I don't understand what the author is referring to here. The screenshot looks just like I remember iOS app icons looking -- they've always had that canned bevel+gloss look applied to them.

Overall, the new iTunes makes me think that Apple keeps inching towards the Metro look. Gradients, colors and embossing are gradually fading out, and one day there will be nothing left except various weights of Helvetica and monochrome icons on a pure white canvas.

dwich• 14 years ago

I think the iOS icons always had a gloss, but they now have a strong bevel particularly noticeable on the bottom. I've noticed that icons with text or design elements overlapping the bevel look especially strange.

pavlov3• 14 years ago

Ah, you're right, that must be it. It's quite subtle, but certainly a noticeable change for someone who looks at iOS icons more often than I do.

The idea with that bevel is probably to make the icons look somewhat more three-dimensional when they are "stood up" on a perspective plane (like the OS X dock does with icons in its default position at the bottom). The problem of course is that the icons were not designed for this kind of pseudo-3D look, and that's not something that can be fixed by simply compositing a sharp dark shadow at the bottom edge of the icon.

roc• 14 years ago

I can't see Apple following Microsoft into a UI language that dispatches with affordance to the point that users are confused as to what's an actionable UI element and what isn't.

I agree they're going that way; to a definitely more-modern, understated look. But I think the big difference is going to be that they hold onto visual contrast precisely where Microsoft has let it go and/or confused it.

pavlov3• 14 years ago

I'm not sure. In the new iTunes, almost all on-screen elements are now actionable, but only some of them have traditional visual indicators like button outlines or pop-up menu arrows. (For example, a playlist can be renamed by clicking on the large title which looks just like a static header.)

The new iTunes UI doesn't have any mouse-hover effects either, apart from those that are part of the OS X standard window decorations. This suggests that the new UI is designed primarily for touch rather than mouse use.

mmariani• 14 years ago

I'm loving it! iTunes just disappeared, and all that's left is content, just perfect. Now using iTunes is not a burden anymore. It's snappy, and fun. I'm even rediscovering music in my library. Kudos to the guys who designed and coded the new iTunes!

I have only one wish, that these same guys take over Xcode, and pimp it out!

super_mario• 14 years ago

To me the usability has suffered quite a bit with the update. Everything is a little further away in terms of how many clicks it takes to get to it. Until you show the sidebar that is. I'm glad to see the side bar now has color. But why is it off by default? Just for the sake of change? And why is the keyboard shortcut/menu item the only way to show it (i.e. UI is not discoverable)?

And why is the iTunes icon a musical note? iTunes is more about everything else but music. It's apps/books/video/podcasts/radio/TV/device syncing/music. Something like this would be much more appropriate:

http://wakaba556.deviantart.com/art/iTunes-replacement-icon-...

nicholassmith• 14 years ago

Tradition is why it's still called iTunes and still has a music note for an icon, which is surprising given how Apple is pretty unsentimental about all of its products.

yen2232• 14 years ago

It would be nice if Apple made a music player which only plays music. It is quite confusing to tell people that to download apps for the iPhone, they need to open iTunes, instead of the more appropriately-named App Store.

radley5• 14 years ago

My take is that iTunes 11 pivots away from making playlists and focuses on the 99% of users that simply buy and listen to albums.

I'm a heavy playlist user and the changes are shockingly bad. For "normal" users there's a dozen different ways to navigate and sort by album. But for playlist users there's now only one view - a text list - and a demoted tool menu on the bottom. Even command keys (i.e. Cmd-N) have been changed. Instead of just making a new playlist it changes the entire app view and the only available action is adding full albums to a playlist.

The only part worse is that I can't restore iTunes 10 via Time Machine without restoring my entire system.

Alphasite_• 14 years ago

There are 2 opinions that i can see. If you have the sidebar enabled, you get what seems (at least superficially) to be close to the old iTunes interface, with CMD + N for new lists, etc. If you have it disabled, then you can use the column browser, which rather curiously wont work with the sidebar.

Anyway, its more than likely that I completely missed the entire point of the post. Also, downgrading doesn't need a full timemachine restore, the only bit that may be easier with time machine is restoring the old library file, but its apparently not entirely essential.

radley5• 14 years ago

I missed the difference. The two sidebars were similar enough I just used the new default playlist sidebar.

It looks like Cmd-N works differently depending on which sidebar you're using. Old sidebar it works in classic mode (thanks for pointing that out!). New sidebar it opens the newer New Playlist view.

You can't restore the iTunes app directly: you'll get an OS warning. Using "Restore to..." the Desktop will result in a corrupted app file on the desktop. Also, iTunes 11 changes the library file system a bit.

iTunes 11: the convergence of iOS and OS X design

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