NeXTSTEP wasn't spartan and understated because they wanted it like that. It was spartan and understated because the original NeXT hardware was (mostly) black and white until 1994. If you ran NeXTSTEP on a colour system it actually had quite a bit of colour. Certainly as much or more than its contemporaries (windows 3.1/NT, OS/2, Solaris and Irix).
I think this current obsession minimalism is just fashion for fashion sake.
> I think this current obsession minimalism is just fashion for fashion sake.
I've always thought it was an attempt for all the administrata (the OS, the required chrome of each app, etc.) to fade into the background, and leave the only bright-and-shiny things on the screen—the stuff that immediately draws your eyes—to be your own stuff: your projects, your content, the website you're reading, etc.
And this dawned on me as I typed this: Lion's Address Book and iCal are gaudy precisely because their content isn't freeform or style-able, and doesn't present an obvious metaphor on its own. Address Book is a list of restricted Key-value store documents. iCal is a grid onto which you may manipulate sliding, wrapped boxes. Without their chrome, you'd have little context to decide what to do with them. So, in these cases, the chrome is the content—and so it is embellished, rather than inconspicuous.
Buy it or not, but in the WWDC UI session they stated that they switched to monochrome sidebar icons so that the interface would emphasize the content, be it the Mail message, photos, or album art.
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NeXTSTEP wasn't spartan and understated because they wanted it like that. It was spartan and understated because the original NeXT hardware was (mostly) black and white until 1994. If you ran NeXTSTEP on a colour system it actually had quite a bit of colour. Certainly as much or more than its contemporaries (windows 3.1/NT, OS/2, Solaris and Irix).
I think this current obsession minimalism is just fashion for fashion sake.
> I think this current obsession minimalism is just fashion for fashion sake.
I've always thought it was an attempt for all the administrata (the OS, the required chrome of each app, etc.) to fade into the background, and leave the only bright-and-shiny things on the screen—the stuff that immediately draws your eyes—to be your own stuff: your projects, your content, the website you're reading, etc.
And this dawned on me as I typed this: Lion's Address Book and iCal are gaudy precisely because their content isn't freeform or style-able, and doesn't present an obvious metaphor on its own. Address Book is a list of restricted Key-value store documents. iCal is a grid onto which you may manipulate sliding, wrapped boxes. Without their chrome, you'd have little context to decide what to do with them. So, in these cases, the chrome is the content—and so it is embellished, rather than inconspicuous.
Buy it or not, but in the WWDC UI session they stated that they switched to monochrome sidebar icons so that the interface would emphasize the content, be it the Mail message, photos, or album art.
Actually, I'll buy that. They're bringing that physical minimalism into the software. Cool.
Now they need to sort out and rationalize the switchers. alt-tab, exposé or mission control? Pick one.