Apple's Aqua -
More
than meets the eye
January 15, 2000
- from Futuristic Design's Straight Face column at:
-
Apple’s
new Mac OS X user interface Aqua gets the industry back on
track.
I really like it
when one of my starry-eyed predictions for the future of the software
industry actually comes true. But, more on that later. The real news
is that Steve Jobs has finally steered Apple’s human interface team back
to the future. It’s been widely reported that Mr. Jobs has
taken a great interest in working closely with the team on the
upcoming Mac OS X, and it's new human interface called Aqua.
Well, it really worked, because Aqua will undoubtedly turn the
software industry around from a long trip into the wrong direction.
[ Note to
Software Industry ]
There are many reasons why Aqua
is important to Apple, but only one that matters to the droves of
newly transformed computer fashion victims out there - Aqua
is cool. Period. Let's
face it folks – you’ve been outsmarted by Apple, again. And please
don’t just copy what they've done in your whizzy new Web PCs and
Notebooks. It won’t work. Why? Because you are you, and Apple
is Steve. Not exactly a fair fight is it?
When Apple does it,
it’s cool. When you do it, it looks stupid. Sorry, but
that’s the truth. Apple has been given a license to innovate again
by consumers. Their needs were put first, not yours. And best of all,
Apple did it with style.
But, I digress…
More
than meets the eye
There are three
major ways Aqua hints at the future of desktop user interfaces – a
highly stylized visual appearance, lots of non-trivial animation in
the interface, and an outstanding technology platform to work from.
Highly
visual appearance
My first impression
when looking at the screenshots and movies of Mac OS X is how it
actually looks like its made out of the same stuff as an iMac or iBook
– translucent plastic. But they’ve gone beyond matching the
appearance of the host device by adding buttons and other assorted
controls that actually look like they’re filled with colored liquid.
The interface artists that worked out the graphics for this release
did a fantastic job of getting the texture of an iMac across
through software. The point here is that the user interface of modern
operating system shouldn’t be gray anymore. We’ve grown out of it.
I’ll mention the
new 128 x 128 pixel icons used in the Finder just to illustrate how
much attention is being paid to the notion of usable document previews
via icons in the Finder. Not sure I need my icons that big, but I’ll
give you the benefit of the doubt on this one.
Animated
interface
I can’t remember
how many usability studies and books I’ve read that said using
animation in the user interface was not only distracting to the user,
but truly evil. Well, once again, let’s open that one up for debate.
The Aqua interface is highly animated for some of the most frequently
used operations in the Finder. You can see examples of this on
Apple’s website via QuickTime 4 movies. Even the smallest details,
like clicking closeboxes and opening windows, have been made more
dramatic through the use of animation. And it’s non-trivial
animation at that. The “window open” motion is described by Apple
as the Genie, probably because it reminds you of a genie coming
out of a bottle on the Dock (a re-purposed UI element from
NeXTStep that serves as a launch pad).
Once again, I
can’t say that I’ve lived with this animated interaction for
months and months, but I’m already sold from the excitement
perspective. Anything to get rid of these old, gray battleships we use
today. And no, I don’t just mean Microsoft Windows. Take a look at
any modern OS. They all smell and feel old. Even Linux.
Solid
technology platform
World-class
graphics technologies lurk just beneath Aqua’s shimmering surface.
The combination of QuickTime
for video and sound, OpenGL for 3D gaming, and Quartz
for 2D graphics gives designers a solid base to build on. And that’s
the key point – Apple has exploited these core technologies in their
basic Aqua interface design. Of the three, the most interesting is
Quartz – a new graphics engine presumably descended from the
original Display Postscript engine in NeXTStep. This addition promotes
Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF) to native document status.
What it means to you is that documents displayed on the screen will be
more WYSIWYG than ever. That translates into stunning document
previews via the Finder icons, because Quartz can render into any size area
or resolution, like those 128 x 128 pixel icons. See where this is
going?
All that said, the
innovative technologies used in a modern operating system have rarely
influenced how the general user interface looked or acted.
But now they will. We were all trained to be good little
interface designers and not push the envelope in the general OS. But I
always wondered to myself – "why doesn’t anyone use all the
power of the underlying platform technologies in the user interface?"
Well, obviously the Apple design team wondered the same thing. And
they’ve acted on it before anyone else at the OS level. I’ve seen
the recently published Microsoft Research papers and the alternative
windowing environments for Linux, but no one has had the guts to
try it on their installed base before.
No pain, no gain.
Right?
Told
you so
Not that you really
care, but I figured out this was going to happen a while ago. You can
stop reading now, or listen to this short self-serving anecdote.
In March 1999, I
had an opportunity to interview at Apple for a position on the team
that was working on Aqua. I didn’t know exactly what they were doing
at the time, but I figured it had something to do with the next big
change in Apple’s Finder interface. At the time, I really wanted to
be the Manager of the Human Interface group, so I’d be in a better
position to do what Steve Jobs has now successfully done – steer the
software industry back in the right direction. A lofty goal, but I
thought I’d try anyway.
To prepare for that
interview, I wrote a short paper called “Augmenting
Mac OS X Windowing” on what I thought my prospective boss at
Apple would want from me in a typical day. It has my design approach
to the problem and four ideas on how to improve the windowing behavior
of the Mac OS. No one outside Apple has seen it before now. Turns out
that three of the four major points I brainstormed are now in integral
part of Aqua, and the other should find its way in soon.
I’ll call that a win.
Just like Aqua.
M. Pell
What
do you think?
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