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>Apple knows what they’re doing They did, once upon a time. Look at the aesthetics of recent iterations of iCal though, and you can see that they really, reall

>Apple knows what they’re doing They did, once upon a time. Look at the aesthetics of recent iterations of iCal though, and you can see that they really, really don't anymore.

sgdesign 14y ago
Honestly, I understand not agreeing with the direction they're going in, but that doesn't mean they don't know what they're doing. Maybe we're just not the target market for all these apps?
- Steko 14y ago
  Bingo, all the piling on here is really just the chauvanism of hackerdom. Hey I don't need this texture, ergo this texture is stupid and useless. Meanwhile as the post points out, these textures and animations are important comforts, cues and guides for many users, especially newer users.
  - kybernetikos 14y ago
    do you have a citation for that? I don't really believe that fake leather makes an app more approachable or easier to use. Of course, if there are usability studies that prove me wrong, I'm happy to revise my opinion.
- codeka 14y ago
  Who is the target market, though? I'd say the vast majority of new users of OS X are people coming from Windows, not people who have never used a computer their whole life. Does the leather texture really help those people?
  - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
    Does it have to help or does it just have to be aesthetically pleasing? Obviously most people don't think it is, but that's a personal preference rather than a statement of fact. I think the linen backgrounds that are appearing in OS X and iOS are a case in point - they don't add anything practical (in theory I think they were meant to represent the bottom layer though that's been inconsistently used so it's questionable whether any real benefit is being gained) but broadly speaking I think people agree that the texture is nice and as a result people seem to be more positive about them.
jopt 14y ago
The latest iCal stepped back the ugly. I think they have an okay idea what they're doing.
batista 14y ago
Really? Because you don't like the aesthetics? Well, I for one like the new iCal. It's mostly faux-design sense (everybody is a snobish designer these days and everybody is for "minimalism") than anything really problematic with an app that has some faux-leather as its background.
- jsdalton 14y ago
  Thankfully they've fixed this in Mountain Lion, but the "page turning" effect in the Lion version of iCal was for me an example of infuriatingly poor design. Want to scoot ahead eight months? Please wait one second between each month while we execute this fancy page turning animation! It's design decisions like this, which really ramped up in Lion, that I think are fueling the present-day reaction against skeumorphism.
  - KirinDave 14y ago
    Indeed, pagination us a particularly irritating decision. We get all the penalties (non-infinite view, poor visual seek, discrete scrolling) with none of the benefits (bulk age turn, navigate by physical feature, detachability). The calendar app is a work of supreme laziness on the part of its designers, and the excuse seems to be that it is pandering to a class of user both looked down upon and considered unlikely to actually use the app.
- KirinDave 14y ago
  Everyone isn't moving towards "minimal" designs because they're a bunch of me-too-tools. They're moving towards minimalistic designs because that is the most pragmatic approach. In a world where apps have to routinely launch on 3 very different platforms; in a world where we are artificially constrained in even our minimal layout capabilities by old browsers; in a world where page size is becoming a premium again, skeuomorphism has an increasing cost. And while graphic designers love it, UX designers often find the expectations raised by the metaphor conflict with the actual implementation. A great example of this is book apps, in which the notion of "pages" and "bookmarking" is presented in a familiar visual style, but the actual experience is radically different.

>Apple knows what they’re doing They did, once upon a time. Look at the aesthetics of recent iterations of iCal though, and you can see that they really, really don't anymore.

sgdesign 14y ago

Honestly, I understand not agreeing with the direction they're going in, but that doesn't mean they don't know what they're doing. Maybe we're just not the target market for all these apps?

Steko 14y ago
Bingo, all the piling on here is really just the chauvanism of hackerdom. Hey I don't need this texture, ergo this texture is stupid and useless. Meanwhile as the post points out, these textures and animations are important comforts, cues and guides for many users, especially newer users.
- kybernetikos 14y ago
  do you have a citation for that? I don't really believe that fake leather makes an app more approachable or easier to use. Of course, if there are usability studies that prove me wrong, I'm happy to revise my opinion.
codeka 14y ago
Who is the target market, though? I'd say the vast majority of new users of OS X are people coming from Windows, not people who have never used a computer their whole life. Does the leather texture really help those people?
- Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
  Does it have to help or does it just have to be aesthetically pleasing? Obviously most people don't think it is, but that's a personal preference rather than a statement of fact. I think the linen backgrounds that are appearing in OS X and iOS are a case in point - they don't add anything practical (in theory I think they were meant to represent the bottom layer though that's been inconsistently used so it's questionable whether any real benefit is being gained) but broadly speaking I think people agree that the texture is nice and as a result people seem to be more positive about them.

jopt 14y ago

The latest iCal stepped back the ugly. I think they have an okay idea what they're doing.

batista 14y ago

Really? Because you don't like the aesthetics? Well, I for one like the new iCal. It's mostly faux-design sense (everybody is a snobish designer these days and everybody is for "minimalism") than anything really problematic with an app that has some faux-leather as its background.

jsdalton 14y ago
Thankfully they've fixed this in Mountain Lion, but the "page turning" effect in the Lion version of iCal was for me an example of infuriatingly poor design. Want to scoot ahead eight months? Please wait one second between each month while we execute this fancy page turning animation! It's design decisions like this, which really ramped up in Lion, that I think are fueling the present-day reaction against skeumorphism.
- KirinDave 14y ago
  Indeed, pagination us a particularly irritating decision. We get all the penalties (non-infinite view, poor visual seek, discrete scrolling) with none of the benefits (bulk age turn, navigate by physical feature, detachability). The calendar app is a work of supreme laziness on the part of its designers, and the excuse seems to be that it is pandering to a class of user both looked down upon and considered unlikely to actually use the app.
KirinDave 14y ago
Everyone isn't moving towards "minimal" designs because they're a bunch of me-too-tools. They're moving towards minimalistic designs because that is the most pragmatic approach. In a world where apps have to routinely launch on 3 very different platforms; in a world where we are artificially constrained in even our minimal layout capabilities by old browsers; in a world where page size is becoming a premium again, skeuomorphism has an increasing cost. And while graphic designers love it, UX designers often find the expectations raised by the metaphor conflict with the actual implementation. A great example of this is book apps, in which the notion of "pages" and "bookmarking" is presented in a familiar visual style, but the actual experience is radically different.