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June 27, 2003
WWDC: A Recap
Well, excuse me for slacking off and not blogging enough during WWDC. Too many things were happening, and I guess I haven't had enough time to touch our blog. So what happened? The keynote was somewhat great, and the new G5 Macs are definitely something I want now (don't we all?). Panther is pretty slick, I sorta like the new Finder window with locations in the left column, and the way they implemented labels. Of course it's a big buggy and rough around the edges, but they got half a year to brush it up, and I am certain they will. Other than sessions at WWDC that were a bit less in-depth than I'd appreciate, and troubles with Internet in both Moscone West in first 3 days of the conference and in my hotel (W San Francisco), Apple campus bash party was pretty exciting. I picked up lots of merchandise junk in the Apple Store, including a polo shirt for my son, got my right wrist badged with a little white paper saying 'WWDC 2003' (meaning I am eligible for the free booze), talked with lots of interesting people. Finally met the guys from Panic. These folks just won an Apple Design Award for Transmit, and boy, they deserved it. APE is somewhat broken under Panther and needs some fixing. I've been doing it for past few days, half an hour per day, and it looks pretty much promising - I am certain I'll be able to tune it up in next few days. The most exciting part about the process so far was compiling an APE in the middle of Apple campus, while waiting for the band to start playing. We made a picture, but my camera's batteries are worn out, so I suppose I'll update this post sometime later to include the photo, just for kicks. Overall, the future looks bright. Apple managed to pull it off again, and we sure will be helping in all the ways we can, providing quality and innovative software. Thanks to all Apple engineers, managers, and all people around who make it happen! I'm on my way to our office in Utah now.   Posted by slava at June 27, 2003 01:19 PMTrackback Pings: TrackBack URL for this entry: Listed below are links to weblogs that reference WWDC: A Recap: WWDC 2003 Keynote from Michael Tsai's Weblog Tracked on July 2, 2003 1:13 PM WWDC 2003 Keynote from Michael Tsai's Weblog Tracked on July 23, 2003 12:44 PM Related:
Comments
please tell me that metallifizer will work with the finder. i don't think i can handle the metal finder. what were they thinking anyway? Posted by: D.Gall on June 27, 2003 5:45 PMNo I haven't seen too many pictures of Slava, so forgive me if I'm totally wrong - but is this you? :) http://www.panic.com/goodies/sushi/pictures/23.jpg Posted by: Andreas Tellefsen on June 27, 2003 6:22 PMAssuming that Apple doesn't change much about the interface before release (which I have a sinking feeling they won't), have you guys considered creating a Haxie that will fix some of the more glaring inconsistencies with the Panther Finder? By this I mean its brushed metal-ness, the accompanying window borders, and any spacing issues that might arise from making the Finder Aqua instead. I understand that Panther's Finder is still Carbon, so at present it doesn't seem that Demetallifizer would work on it at all... we really can't have that. Also, how difficult do you think it would be to use the APE to create sort of a Kaleidoscope-type theme engine for OS X? I know that's awfully ambitious, but things appear to be getting less and less internally consistent in the OS rather than moreso (we now have three types of buttons all of which are supported in various applications - Aqua, plastic, and brushed metal - all of which perform the same function, to say nothing of window styles or special controls like segmented buttons and the like). Unless Apple does more interface work between now and the Fall than they've ever done between preview and release before, this will continue to be a big problem in Panther, and it seems like Unsanity is best positioned to help. Any thoughts? Posted by: Brian Ellis on June 28, 2003 3:23 AMyeah, the new brushed metal finder looks kinda weird. I'm reserving judgement until I've played around with it, but I suspect we will need to get unsanity to, uhm, sanitize the finder for us. Posted by: LKM on June 28, 2003 4:30 AMI had a chance to play around with Panther (though not being supposed to do so I'll post under this weird moniker for now ;-))), and I have to say you guys are SO right about the UI inconsistencies. This is driving me NUTS! I mean, this is an Apple OS we're talking about, and if even those guys don't manage to keep their own shit consistent, who does? What calmed me down a bit was that you still can put your favorite folders in the (top) toolbar in the new Finder. I have so many folders up there, they won't fit at the left (BTW, the icons shrink if you put many items in the left column, similar to the Dock, in the pics and demos it looked as if you could put just a few items in there due to the big icons.) What's really puzzling me is the whole design change with Panther. The pinstripes are gone and everything becomes gray. Ok, that's just reflecting the design change in the hardware department, so I could live with that. But the resulting all-gray UI is so terribly OS8-looking that I can't help but think, why did they introduce a brave design like Aqua to the unsuspecting Classic Mac OS-loving crowd, shocking and alienating those gray-supporters (to the degree that many even delayed the switch as long as possible), to just re-introduce the dull gray look just when everyone got used to the new look? It's somewhat as if Coca-Cola would change the taste of their beloved drink and... oh wait... At least Coke reacted quickly and re-introduced Classic Coke a few weeks later. Not 3 years... It's not only the *look* of the brushed metal windows, it's the UI inconsistency that's the problem, like the big borders. Didn't they brag about the borderless, screen-estate-saving Aqua windows not too long ago? And now every Finder window has a fat border wasting this precious screen space? Why has Safari the metal look anyway? Because it has something to do with media devices? No way. Because it's a Web app? Then why's Mail still Aqua? Oh well. I can only hope they either get enough pressure from their customers (us, so start complaining NOW!) to change everything back to the non-metal look, or they at least switch *everything* to metal, giving us at least UI consistency again. I really doubt they'll listen to their customers here, just look at the disturbing mass of Safari-Aquafier-like apps, and it's still metal by default. Slava, my #1 request for a Panther haxie: Something that easily removes the bloody metal look from the whole system. And my close #2 would be a LabelsX update to remove the terrible color stripes from the file names and color the icon once again, just like LabelsX is looking with Jaguar. You guys are my only hope to get a little bit more sense into this Panther mess. The under-the-hood stuff in Panther is great, but the UI is Win 95 meets Luna, it's that bad! Posted by: anon Panther user on June 28, 2003 10:33 PMAndreas: No, that is not Slava. Not at all =p Brian: Actually, you can change the metal attribute for Carbon apps, but not all Applications support the required drawing mode to turn it on (if they have it on, you can turn it off so that is not an issue). But Metallifizer just hasn't been revved to do that. That, and not all Carbon apps actually use the system metal attribute (iTunes and Quicktime draw it themselves last I heard). And yes, the future is bright indeed - I think that you all will fall in love with Panther once you get to using it =). Posted by: Rincewind on June 29, 2003 10:37 AMWhen I saw the Panther finder and those big borders, the first thought that ran through my mind was: "Can I grab and drag from there?" Answer: YES!! As far as I'm concerned, every window SHOULD be draggable from every side. I'm sitting in front of a 19 friggin inch LCD and I gotta tell you, my right arm is seriously pumped up at the end of the day from all the mousing I do. Posted by: Phinius Phoghorn on June 29, 2003 11:15 AM"He looked at that huge metal finder, then at the 1152x870 screen, and at the finder, and at his screen, and he realised that this was yet another case of 'Everyone at Apple has 21" cinema displays'." -- Alices Macintosh. Your 19" display is nice, I wish I had one, but I don't... and that Finder takes up too much damn space. Besides, doesn't going up to the top of the screen... not just the window... to get to the menu cause more gorrilla-arm effect than occasionally grabbing the title bar to move a window does. Really, what Apple needs to do is to sanitise the whole interface: you should be able to manage your own shortcuts, key combinations, contextual menus, themes, and so on... and suck the damn menu bar down under the application title bar if you want. Posted by: Peter da Silva on August 24, 2003 7:04 PMPlease help me. I'm getting a migraine from this brushed-metal, fattish bordered UI in Panther. How do I remove this? :-( Posted by: Dylan on October 26, 2003 10:12 AMKeep comments on topic. If a comment is unrelated to this post, it may be removed or moderated. |
