Mac Interface Design | Hacker News Reader

Mac Interface Design

mac.appstorm.net

41 pointschaostheory22 comments

Gah... Aesthetics is not Design!. There's no such thing as "Smoking Hot Interface Design". Something can be Smoking Hot, or it can have good Interface Design, but the two properties are entirely independent.

There certainly is a correlation between the two. People who pay attention to design also tend to pay attention to appearances. And if your aesthetics are particularly bad, they may distract the user and have a negative effect on your UI.

But you can still find examples of apps that lack one or the other. I personally dislike the appearance of Spotify, but it still has a great UI. And while the iPad Notes app may look pretty cool, it lacks strong design.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html says:

"If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids.""

See http://wellplacedpixels.com for a more curated look at good, sexy UX

How the hell does one learn how to make them? I just want to be able to understand what to call all these purty UI elements so I can ask for them.

Any resources to recommend?

Beautiful graphic design is something I'd like to learn, and it is something I have not invested much effort in yet. Tutorials like those on SmashingMagazine can tell you the how but can't teach you the why. Any graphic designer/art student will tell you that learning how to draw is all about learning how to look. I'd like to be able to do design myself but realistically it is easier to become friends with good designers (yes, you pay them but it is more like working with a partner than a hired gun). In lieu of taking classes, go to art openings. I've met very few designer developer individuals.

That being said here is a list of some resources for (previous AskYCs, rest of them learning how to make icons) (which is a stepping stone to Tap Tap Tap UI).

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1487274

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1290147

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=66863

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=227406

http://web.archive.org/web/20050101092500/http://mpt.phrasew...

http://hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/principles-of-icon-design

http://flyosity.com/tutorial/crafting-subtle-realistic-user-...

http://steveweller.com/articles/tabbar-icons/

http://speckyboy.com/2009/04/28/35-tutorials-to-create-amazi...

http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/2010/05/some-good-advi...

That's exhaustive, thank you :-)

I should be able to pick enough of the UI and design lingo to communicate with designers.

If you just look at the functionality delivered by some of those apps, you're really only paying for the design. $20 for a graph? €19 for VLC?

EDIT: Massive props to Transmit and Kalaideoscope, that goes without saying, but there are some crazy pricing strategies at play in this list.

There are funnier examples - like WriteRoom (simple notepad for $25) or a To-Do list for $50.

This list is just how mac users troll themselves.

Is it just me or are the UIs of many of these apps wildly inconsistent with the surrounding ecosystem and are not keen on applying the knowledge learned from manipulating other applications in the environment? They sure look great, but I have my doubts as to how many of them are truly usable (undeniably, many are probably great).

On the Mac side, people haven't really learned the benefits of standard look and feel to the degree they have on Windows. Not to say there's no standardization, but in general, Mac apps are a chance for developers to strut their stuff and display cute widgets. MS has spent many multiples of what Apple has spent on UX design, so you get a slightly less flashy, but overall more usable, set of applications on Windows, because of the way the APIs are structured.

Where this style of UI really shines is for the iPhone. I don't think anybody still seriously thinks that Mac is preeminent on the desktop. That hasn't been true since .NET, let alone WPF. But on the iOS...Apple's dominance is clear.

"MS has spent many multiples of what Apple has spent on UX design". I actually have no clue what windows looks like these days but it certainly used to be the other way around. I did notice that UX consistency has degraded over the last few years in OSX, but I'm not sure I'd call Windows better (again, from my limited experience with corporate windows apps).

Wow, this has got to be the most brazen troll I've ever seen.

Absolutely. Plex may be pretty but it has the most confusing UI I've ever used. I've given it up in frustration twice now, just because it's so hard to add media to it (which should be a basic function in a media player, you'd think).

I think most of these apps make for great screenshots, but I'm less sure about long term, daily usability. In my (very personal, subjective) opinion I find that apps that use standard widgets make a less exciting first impression but are usually a lot more usable. The best example I can think of offhand would be Twitteriffic vs. Tweetie.

Let's see a similar list of Windows software.

I've been away from the platform for years, but WPF has been avaiable to developers for a while now so I'm curious to see what the state of Windows software is these days.

I've seen a pretty large number of similar looking "apps" on Windows. But usually in specialty software. The UIs on VSTis or a fancy schmancy Photoshop plugin for example are typically like this.

1Password is an awesome app, I swear by it, but the it's horribly over-designed. The interface screams "look at how clever I am" when what the user really wants is to not have to think about it at all.

/rant

Saw the first image and thought, "huh, Winamp 5."

they were all pretty unremarkable

Can you provide some better examples?

Well, more than twenty years ago we all had simple text editors with no extraneous UI elements. Now you have to pay the cost of good meal to get that for your Mac. I guess I could see if the old VT100 still powers up, that would surely take it to the next level, and beyond!

Actually, vim already comes with OSX. Just need to use a non-transparent background in Terminal.app and maximize it.

I used to use vi on vt52 terminals back at school to avoid the distraction of the GUI elements in Microsoft Word.

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