[rescue] Apple WWDC Summary

[Eric Josephson]

On Tue, 24 Jun 2003, Skeezics Boondoggle wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Jun 2003, Phil Stracchino wrote:
>
> Y'know, when Aqua first came out I was willing to ignore some of the
> cartoonyness and inconsistencies in it because the important stuff was
> under the hood.  But the original NeXTstep "look & feel" was perfectly
> matched to the black hardware, and now with the new G5 something like
> _that_ with a few modest and well-chosen updates would look so much
> better.  I still wish they had an NS "theme" for old diehards like me, or
> maybe a "brushed metal NeXTstep" look.  (Would that be the "full metal
> jacket" of GUI design? :-)
>

I took one look at Aqua and went right back to my HP 715 w/ NS3.3.
What they did to NeXTstep was enough of a disappointment to make me
decide not to buy at the time.

I'm regretting it now that I have free time and I'm wishing I had
a decent (and relevant) UI to write code for.  The 715 is still nice
and all, but inability to build a newer version of gcc is a bit limiting,
and though the UI and toolkits are good, the OS itself is a bit of a
pain.

> But it isn't the pinstripes that bug me so much.  I can't put my finger on
> it.  Aqua still doesn't feel as complete as NeXTstep did; for all the
> gooey lickable shiny goodness, some parts of it just don't seem to gel.
> It just a little undercooked, still.  Wish I could switch off the old
> Apple menu bar, for instance, and have my floating menus back...
>

Compared to NeXTstep, it seemed tarted up and clownish in a Maccy sort
of way.  I suppose that was to make the MacOS users feel more at home,
but it turned me off.  NeXTstep was elegant, classy, had taste.  I felt
like they wrecked that with Aqua.

That said, I'm giving in.  I want one of those new G5's.