When people start using Roman numerals in product names, you know there’s more than a little self-importance involved. Exhibit A: the Super Bowl.
Now comes Apple Computer’s Mac OS X, which shows a certain level of hubris, too. But at least technology is more interesting than pro football. Way more interesting.
Much of what Steve Jobs showed of OS X at his Macworld keynote speech Wednesday was already known — the (finally) robust architecture, based on a Unix kernel, that will bring the Mac operating system into the late 20th Century. What got the crowd’s collective juices going, however, was the look and feel.
The code name for the updated user interface is Aqua, named because of the liquid appearance of the UI. Jobs called it “lickable.” I advise against this, but you never know what some people will do.
Very little in Aqua is totally new. The dock at the bottom of the screen, which holds applications, documents and other things while you’re not using them, is not new at all. But like other parts of the UI, such as menus that fade out rather than just disappear, it’s all highly refined in that Apple kind of way — more elegant, for sure, and probably more easy to use as well.
Other elements are less cool. The three jellybean buttons at the top-left of windows are identical except for color — traffic-light style red, green and yellow (close, maximize and minimize). People who are colorblind may not be terribly thrilled with this idea.
But there’s a liveliness to the UI that made me smile. It’s not done yet, of course, and I expect many more refinements in coming months before the OS goes on sale. On balance, I like what I see.
Here are several other reports on Mac OS X and Aqua:
Macintouch MacWeek Wes Felter