GUIs Just Want To Be Fucking Ugly?
I don’t know how many of you have picked up the latest ‘Wired’ (the magazine, not the website), but there’s an article in particular that makes me a little frustrated. It’s called ‘GUIs Just Want To Have Fun,’ the photo accompanying which is a screenshot of a horrifically put together Litestep skin for Windows. The article proceeds to mention the following: NeoPlanet, Litestep, Darkstep, Winamp, Sonique, RealJukebox, Halflife, Skinz.org, the WinAqua skin that copied MacOS X before it was even beta, etc. What they failed to mention were the following: Kaleidoscope, Macast, Audion, etc. Despite the fact that Audion is the most advanced MP3 player on the market (at least, as far as skinning goes), for any OS, allowing use of alpha channels for shadows, transparencies, etc. There were some interesting quotes, however, regarding the problems with skinning from Mac guru Jef Raskin.
Needless to say, I was pissed. So here is the e-mail I promptly wrote them, in its entirety:
Being a Macintosh user, I’ve grown accustomed to having an elegant interface at my fingertips. When I came acros ‘GUIs Just Want To Have Fun,’ I anticipated an interesting read. Before diving into the article, however, I studied the photo (a screenshot of a Litestep-‘enhanced’ Windows desktop) long and hard. What I saw was a beautifully rendered but unusable interface that would drive me crazy if I had to use it for any length of time. What I found in the article was more of the same: a complete lack of interest in usability. What I also found was an almost incomprehensible lack of attention to the MacOS.
Kaleidoscope has been a staple control panel of Mac users for years, with thousands of schemes (skins, to you Windows users) available. Despite this fact, I find that shortly after I install a Kaleidoscope scheme, I often abandon it for the traditional Platinum MacOS look. Why? The people at Apple have spent years and millions of dollars researching usability and user experience. I’m not about to abdandon their results just because some jerk in his dorm room thinks the windows should look like they’re made of rusted metal. I highly doubt it’s a fluke that one of the most popular Windows skins is a knockoff of MacOS X. You know what? We’re the ones that actually get to use the OS, not just a skin of it.
I guess if I had to use Windows, I’d want to pile as much crap on top of it as I could, too. So nevermind. I get your point.