> 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.
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> 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.