6 ms·

It's nice that more people in the FOSS community take note of macOS's design and (historically, at least) attention to detail. However, this project (judging by

It's nice that more people in the FOSS community take note of macOS's design and (historically, at least) attention to detail. However, this project (judging by the screenshots, which is how everyone is going to judge you if you claim to be inspired by Apple's work), they're already making serious (but fixable) mistakes: <https://ravynos.com/images/ravyn_0.4.0_pre_desktop.png https://ravynos.com/images/ravyn_0.4.0_pre_desktop.png> - What the actual heck is that window border around the terminal - Horizontal spacing on the fonts is too dense, the text rendering is absolutely awful - maybe it's just the font but I wouldn't suffer through reading a full paragraph - The buttons in the installer dialog look like a cheap knockoff of Windows 95 - Different colors for window background, title bar, dock, but somehow the window background and menu bar are the same - The 3 visible dock icons mix 3 different art styles, the fourth icon is an empty space?... - Where's the shadows to tell stacked windows apart? Windows did this in the late 90s <https://ravynos.com/images/firefox_global_menu.jpg https://ravynos.com/images/firefox_global_menu.jpg> - The padding of the window controls is all messed up, with different offsets on all 3 sides; no unified window/tab bar in the browser (even though Firefox under both X11 and Wayland can do it just fine); again different window frame and background colors - Bright white window borders (absolute worst aspect of the Big Sur redesign), although I'll give them credit for going a notch below #ffffff - Very poor way to show off the transparent menu bar (the choice of wallpaper + no blur), visually distracts from the contents of the menu bar itself; note that all macOS default wallpapers have a pretty uniform sky color across the top, so the transparent menu bar can be a bit less of a mess Again, this is all fixable, but the real problem is that half of these things are trivially improved by changing the font, the color, or the padding. But it's this lack of attention to detail (and the fact that despite these glaring issues they've still decided to use these screenshots) that speaks about the project's commitment to details. It's pretty cool that you've got AppImages or an ObjC compiler, but you're not allowed to use the word "finesse" and make these mistakes!

creatonez 3y ago
What should WIP software look like? There was a time when the 1998 beta for macOS, called Rhapsody, looked horrible and disjoint. There was also a time when the iPhone looked like this - https://i.imgur.com/wwH2UoF.jpg https://i.imgur.com/wwH2UoF.jpg
- steve1977 3y ago
  Rhapsody looked pretty decent IMHO… http://toastytech.com/guis/rhap.html http://toastytech.com/guis/rhap.html
  - creatonez 3y ago
    Yes, but it only devolved from Mac OS 9 by adding a bunch of unpolished NeXT GUIs, and the development necessitated the temporary removal of features and apps that were already polished.
    - steve1977 3y ago
      I‘ve never really worked with Rhapsody, so I couldn’t tell. I came to Mac OS X from NeXTSTEP and FreeBSD, the first version I actually used as a daily driver (with the odd boot to Mac OS 9 for some stuff) was the public beta in 2000 (which was Aqua already of course).
      - KerrAvon 3y ago
        Rhapsody was an unholy mix of NeXTstep implementation with a bastardized version of Apple's Platinum theme, which wasn't designed to support NeXT's UI and display technologies. Steve hated it and continued to use OpenStep on a ThinkPad.
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- Affric 3y ago
  Therein lies the raison d'etre of Apple and Mac. I thought Rhapsody looked good. 95% of it is the fonts. Apple always does well with the fonts.
- rollcat 3y ago
  You don't advertise WIP software as "built with finesse"; and even if you do, you must at the very least put said finesse into the choice of screenshots you present.
barbariangrunge 3y ago
The aspiration to be on par is cool and over time, hopefully they pull it off. But it probably comes down to them having some dedicated graphic designers and Ux designers (and an audio person would be nice too), and foss projects have historically done poorly at recruiting those people.
- rollcat 3y ago
  Agree, it's right in the FAQ: > I don't code but this looks awesome! Can I still help? > Absolutely! There will be art, documentation, testing, UX and UI work, [...]. I read this and immediately think the project sees UX as "I can't write code ell oh ell". You need to treat a UX role the same way you treat a kernel hacker role - it's a specialist whose input you must respect, or be left to deal with the consequences.
  - bigstrat2003 3y ago
    I think you're reading too much into it. Saying "if you aren't a programmer you might be able to help in various ways, including UX" isn't the same as saying "UX doesn't require any particular skills".
    - rollcat 3y ago
      True, but this is literally the only mention of the words "UX", "UI" or "design" in the FAQ/docs; meanwhile they write at length about the various technical challenges and choices. This is inconsistent with their own tagline.
- omnimus 3y ago
  Its worse than recruiting. The main issue is foss projects work poorly with designers. Even if you have good designers their powers tend to diminish. Once any disagreement comes up if you cant code, if you cant PR it… wont happen. Also design is super hard to modularize and split into small pieces. With code random anybody can come and build/fix a feature. Not possible with design. Its mostly big picture work where you need to have deep context and follow it to get desired consistency. For projects like OS gui that requires huge commitment (most likely full time). But i think copying existing well made software can make this a lot easier. Just need to be very diligent about it and not ashamed (and its a lot less creative work).
replete 3y ago
Do you think operating systems look polished early in development? Of course they didn't. Most of the work going on isn't visible in a UI. From what I gather in the discord there have been some quite large refactors going on under the hood

creatonez 3y ago

What should WIP software look like? There was a time when the 1998 beta for macOS, called Rhapsody, looked horrible and disjoint. There was also a time when the iPhone looked like this - https://i.imgur.com/wwH2UoF.jpg https://i.imgur.com/wwH2UoF.jpg

steve1977 3y ago
Rhapsody looked pretty decent IMHO… http://toastytech.com/guis/rhap.html http://toastytech.com/guis/rhap.html
- creatonez 3y ago
  Yes, but it only devolved from Mac OS 9 by adding a bunch of unpolished NeXT GUIs, and the development necessitated the temporary removal of features and apps that were already polished.
  - steve1977 3y ago
    I‘ve never really worked with Rhapsody, so I couldn’t tell. I came to Mac OS X from NeXTSTEP and FreeBSD, the first version I actually used as a daily driver (with the odd boot to Mac OS 9 for some stuff) was the public beta in 2000 (which was Aqua already of course).
    - KerrAvon 3y ago
      Rhapsody was an unholy mix of NeXTstep implementation with a bastardized version of Apple's Platinum theme, which wasn't designed to support NeXT's UI and display technologies. Steve hated it and continued to use OpenStep on a ThinkPad.
  - deleted 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
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Affric 3y ago
Therein lies the raison d'etre of Apple and Mac. I thought Rhapsody looked good. 95% of it is the fonts. Apple always does well with the fonts.
rollcat 3y ago
You don't advertise WIP software as "built with finesse"; and even if you do, you must at the very least put said finesse into the choice of screenshots you present.

barbariangrunge 3y ago

The aspiration to be on par is cool and over time, hopefully they pull it off. But it probably comes down to them having some dedicated graphic designers and Ux designers (and an audio person would be nice too), and foss projects have historically done poorly at recruiting those people.

rollcat 3y ago
Agree, it's right in the FAQ: > I don't code but this looks awesome! Can I still help? > Absolutely! There will be art, documentation, testing, UX and UI work, [...]. I read this and immediately think the project sees UX as "I can't write code ell oh ell". You need to treat a UX role the same way you treat a kernel hacker role - it's a specialist whose input you must respect, or be left to deal with the consequences.
- bigstrat2003 3y ago
  I think you're reading too much into it. Saying "if you aren't a programmer you might be able to help in various ways, including UX" isn't the same as saying "UX doesn't require any particular skills".
  - rollcat 3y ago
    True, but this is literally the only mention of the words "UX", "UI" or "design" in the FAQ/docs; meanwhile they write at length about the various technical challenges and choices. This is inconsistent with their own tagline.
omnimus 3y ago
Its worse than recruiting. The main issue is foss projects work poorly with designers. Even if you have good designers their powers tend to diminish. Once any disagreement comes up if you cant code, if you cant PR it… wont happen. Also design is super hard to modularize and split into small pieces. With code random anybody can come and build/fix a feature. Not possible with design. Its mostly big picture work where you need to have deep context and follow it to get desired consistency. For projects like OS gui that requires huge commitment (most likely full time). But i think copying existing well made software can make this a lot easier. Just need to be very diligent about it and not ashamed (and its a lot less creative work).

replete 3y ago

Do you think operating systems look polished early in development? Of course they didn't. Most of the work going on isn't visible in a UI. From what I gather in the discord there have been some quite large refactors going on under the hood