Aqua-Soft ForumsWhat do you guys prefer, the Aqua look or the Jaguar look?
My view is this:
When OS X was first being designed, the artists went crazy and made the most eye-candy containing operating system on the planet. Everything was about the look.
Then when the first usability reports started coming in (when the Mac cultists who hated Aqua started complaining), Apple toned down Aqua, and released it again as Jaguar. (They made it faster and more stable too, but this thread is about "the look").
As far as I know the way they created Jaguar by toning down Aqua was as follows:
1. Darker blue "gel" buttons, compared to the lightblue of Aqua. (making it a more windows like "dark" operating system.)
2. Removal of shadows on the button text font.
3. Removal of shadows on text in the finderbar.
4. Making the shadows the operating system uses to shadow windows and menu's much weaker. The depth and colour of the shadows have become weaker. Again more like the windows system shadows.
I think the whole Jaguar tangent, change to the GUI elements was a step in the wrong direction. When Aqua was first introduced, it's name was chosen because the operating system itself was reminiscent of water, it flowed, there was fluid motion in the dock. The buttons were like drops of water. And the colour scheme was blue-white.
That made sense.
But what yellow and black fur has to do with Aqua is still beyond me.
Aqua was the liquidy, watery, flowing, dynamic, alive, hightech, next generation, operating system. It was touted as the most advanced operating system in the world. It was high tech.
When they toned it down and renamed it after a wild jungle theme I think they killed it.
After all what does wild-life have to do with high-tech.
I prefer the old Aqua look, it was brighter.
what's your view?
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