Well-placed Pixels - a visual record of beautiful software
wellplacedpixels.com
wellplacedpixels.com
And almost all of them look pretty much the same, with the fake 3-D and ubiquitous faux curved gloss.
It's a look that's gotten tiresome and distracting.
I also like the selection, most of these apps do indeed look awesome. If you know a good-looking win/lin/android program then why not submit it to him?
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.
WPF looks interesting, and I like a lot of it, but * ick *, XML. What is it with Microsoft and XML? HAML's popularity should be some hint as to how much people hate HTML, XML is worse.
I fully expect this to gain more focus on Windows & Linux, and it has had a significant impact already. But other platforms are far more polluted by old, nasty looking software than OSX & iPhone, and Apple pretty much started the current trend towards better GUI design, despite there clearly being a desire in the market for it for a long time.
I'd have liked to see at least one from those categories, but it would be much more difficult. I have several applications on my Mac that could fit in that post, and I have never had one on Windows, despite having used literally several thousand Windows applications. Some design-centric, but none beautiful (a custom interface does not necessarily mean it's a good one). Sure, some have been shiny / beautiful in locations A, B, and C, but none all the way through to Z. There has always been several massive oversights that break with the small fluid goodness.
All of this is excluding games, of course. Games are generally well and "completely" designed on all platforms pretty equally (sans iPhone).
edit: oh, forgot to add. I'd be very interested in what other HN people can find out there on Win/Linux. I've seen very little, but I haven't looked for it very much.