This really does seem to be a big problem in the Windows world. Apple has a pretty clear design aesthetic for OS X that they carry through to a lot of the appl

This really does seem to be a big problem in the Windows world. Apple has a pretty clear design aesthetic for OS X that they carry through to a lot of the applications they write as well. That's given the developer/designer community a great base to start from. A lot of the 3rd party applications are tweaks of the general aesthetic that Apple provides to start with and they end up looking great. I don't mean to imply that the people creating OS X applications aren't talented, but Apple has sure helped them by providing a solid foundation. As a developer I can go into Xcode and put together and easily put together an interface that looks both very modern and well designed (whitespace, colors, etc). Contrast that with Windows (I do most of my coding on Windows) where the application development tools let you easily create what is pretty much a Windows 95 style application. If I want to do something more modern looking, I certainly can, but I will be on my own to basically override existing controls to come up with my own look and feel. Also, I will be creating this look and feel from scratch as Microsoft has provided no starting point. Microsoft theoretically has provided the tools to create great looking resolution independent applications with WPF, but until they start providing some examples of what the Windows aesthetic really is through their own applications, you won't see many great looking applications on Windows.