M$ takes the OS X brushed metal look on

[Tim]

http://news.com.com/2300-1012_3-5862875-2.html

when the crap you make looks butt ugly, make it look like OS X.
:)

[Child of Cupertino]

How original!

[Just Doug1]

I agree with you guys on many points, but it's a basically a freaking skin for cryin' out loud. Do you think I run the Fisher-Price XP GUI?

BTW, I not terribly impressed with any "brushed metal" look on any O/S or app.

That's best reserved for an aluminum high-rise intake manifold on a Mopar big block.

[Bogie]

http://www.geeksmedia.com/tcm/emoticons/aacb1d4b-f651-4f62-b146-f662f39b4271.jpg


That's best reserved for an aluminum high-rise intake manifold on a Mopar big block.
http://www.geeksmedia.com/tcm/emoticons/yourock.gif

[Tim]

this is true, but I find XP butt ugly in many ways beyond just the skin. You have to really mod it to get it looking decent. I think OS X looks better in may more ways than just the skins.

and btw I'm not really a fan of the aluminum thing either, I think we'll be sick of it and we'll have something new and the new windows can have it. :)

[Child of Cupertino]

I prefer the off-grey hues Apple uses in SOME Tiger environments.

http://images.apple.com/macosx/features/mail/images/mailnew20050412.jpg

And I have my OS X skinned to appear like that, versus brushed metal.

I don't like OS X Mail's big-ass buttons, however. They look too kiddle-like, and I prefer the jewelled briliance of the more traditiopnal "Aqua" glassy buttons:

http://toastytech.com/guis/osx13time.png

[chief]

I think the osx desktop looks more like a fisherprice play set. All those colours and things that pop and bounce everywhere. I do like the font, thats basically it.

[Child of Cupertino]

LOL! OS X? Looks like Fischer-Price?? That flies in the face of almost every review of the OS from PC-centric publications -- and in the face of plain evidence.

PC World Operating System of The Year award for 2004 (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,116015,pg,4,00.asp)

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,120646,00.asp

Mac OS X is everything Windows wants to be. XP's Luna is a blotchy, pedestrian, UGLY splatter of... of GREEN! You like it? You have it. :hys:

[Just Doug1]

I think we've revealed that often the stock skins of most modern O/S's are not our preference, and I concur with CoC that MS has the best renditions of Fisher-Price colours this side of Toys'R'Us.

[Just Doug1]

this is true, but I find XP butt ugly in many ways beyond just the skin. You have to really mod it to get it looking decent. I think OS X looks better in may more ways than just the skins.

and btw I'm not really a fan of the aluminum thing either, I think we'll be sick of it and we'll have something new and the new windows can have it. :)

... and it will be discarded much like you have discarded the brushed metal skin of X. :mdn:

[Tim]

true. But I guess things like the dock, the desktop icons, the way things shift around, the semitransparent menus, there are so many cool looking things in the look beyond just the skin that I like. Expose, all things out of the box look and work very cool. And I'm not running tiger yet...
Just the jerky FP way the start menu pops up on XP is enough for me. :)

You have to go through way more hoops to try and get the XP interface just to be on par with OS X out of the box.

What I meant from the thread was that M$ is stealing something that OS X users have had for a while, and will likely move on to something cooler by the time vista or whatever they're calling it now comes out.

[Just Doug1]

There were brushed metallic themes available for MS products before X was released, so "who stole from whom" is a matter of debate, IMO.

Have a good one bud.

BTW, how was the toast? I hope I didn't burn it badly.

[chief]

Hey don't get me wrong, I dont like the blue default skin of xp either. I use stylexp and make my own skins.

[Child of Cupertino]

And, likewise, you can skin OS X's interface. But, for a default? I'll take OS X's.

[Tim]

There were brushed metallic themes available for MS products before X was released, so "who stole from whom" is a matter of debate, IMO.

Have a good one bud.

BTW, how was the toast? I hope I didn't burn it badly.

I don't think it's a question of who first had a metallic interface for something. Hell I put a metallic brushed aluminum interface on a project in 1999, from a photoshop tutorial that was clearly years old.

I think it's the fact that the interface is a huge part of OS X. When you see it, generally you'd think OS X. Not because they thought of it first.

But it's the fact that M$ is looking over their shoulder on something integral to an existing OS I'm poking fun at. Why don't they do something else?
maybe they can't think of something er... different?
;)


I haven't tried the toast yet. I'll get a chance to preview it maybe next week.

[chief]

Do you have any bigger pics tim? on second thought, it doesn't realy looked brushed, just like a gradient.

[Child of Cupertino]

Yeah. Apple's early use of "metal" had a brushed look. They're slowly smoothing it out to a gradient.

[Child of Cupertino]

Attached is a screen shot of my current desktop. I use an appearance theme to skin away the brushed metal of Mac OS X, giving the title bars a light grey look. That's the current version of iTunes, with a darker non-brushed metal look Apple used that might find its way onto other Apple stock visual elements. And, the picture below shows Apple's current use of brushed metal within the Finder and some other of its apps.

http://toastytech.com/guis/osx13finder1.png