UI Merzbild // Feb 7, 07:25 PM
I remember reading Steven Garrity’s post titled Windows XP: rough around the edges back in 2001, after XP first shipped. Reading it was like a deja vu of my reaction when I used XP for the first time. Everything looked very cool, but those rough edges just somehow scratched the eye.
Mac OS X has, of course, been setting the bar for visual quality and consistency of GUI since it shipped. But one detail in particular remains an eyesore in OS X (I’m writing this on 10.4.8). It’s the digital clock viewed in a separate window.
To view it, go to your System Preferences, click on Date & Time, and check “Window” radio button under “View in:”.
Seems like it’s been taken straight from the NextStep and pasted right into the OS X. I don’t know how long has this particular style of time display been in the operating system since I’ve used Mac OS as a primary desktop only from version 10.3 but I would be very curious to know. Time display is one of those most immediate visual traits of any operating system and it alone reminds me why some linux graphical environments suck, but that is both a can of worms and a topic for another post.
Speaking of oddities in 10.4, here’s a little play of gradations on a standard radio button control (One of the visual “bugs” I’ve found in 10.4 since it shipped). The other one that’s on my mind is the weird fade out, fade in, then fade out again transition which happens when you select multiple images in Finder, Ctrl+click and then select Slideshow.
No Photoshopping here except from putting side by side, I swear!
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