

Well-placed Pixels - a visual record of beautiful software - DeusExMachina
http://wellplacedpixels.com/

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Janteh
Almost all applications are either for the iPhone or for the Mac. I also
notice and appreciate the sophistication of a lot of these kind of programs. I
still enjoy Tweetie's awesome iPhone UI every day I use it.

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jamesbritt
"Almost all applications are either for the iPhone or for the Mac. "

And almost all of them look pretty much the same, with the fake 3-D and
ubiquitous faux curved gloss.

It's a look that's gotten tiresome and distracting.

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ugh
Sadly terribly Mac centric. There must be great looking Windows, Linux or
Android software out there, right? Or web apps?

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moe
I like the focus on desktop/mobile apps, there already are plenty of "pretty
website" aggregators around (see CSSRemix etc.).

I also like the selection, most of these apps do indeed look awesome. If you
know a good-looking win/lin/android program then why not submit it to him?

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ugh
I honestly don’t know any – that’s why I would like a website focusing on that
:)

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markkanof
This really does seem to be a big problem in the Windows world. Apple has a
pretty clear design aesthetic for OS X that they carry through to a lot of the
applications they write as well. That's given the developer/designer community
a great base to start from. A lot of the 3rd party applications are tweaks of
the general aesthetic that Apple provides to start with and they end up
looking great. I don't mean to imply that the people creating OS X
applications aren't talented, but Apple has sure helped them by providing a
solid foundation. As a developer I can go into Xcode and put together and
easily put together an interface that looks both very modern and well designed
(whitespace, colors, etc).

Contrast that with Windows (I do most of my coding on Windows) where the
application development tools let you easily create what is pretty much a
Windows 95 style application. If I want to do something more modern looking, I
certainly can, but I will be on my own to basically override existing controls
to come up with my own look and feel. Also, I will be creating this look and
feel from scratch as Microsoft has provided no starting point.

Microsoft theoretically has provided the tools to create great looking
resolution independent applications with WPF, but until they start providing
some examples of what the Windows aesthetic really is through their own
applications, you won't see many great looking applications on Windows.

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Groxx
That's one of the first things that surprised me when I started fiddling with
OSX programming. Interface Builder is so ridiculously easy to use, an angry
monkey could make something that's relatively HID-compliant. The guides are
accurate and informative, even the first time you encounter them, and just
chucking controls onto a panel with a little organization and letting them
fall where they snap will get you 90%+ of the way there.

WPF looks interesting, and I like a lot of it, but * ick __*, XML. What is it
with Microsoft and XML? HAML's popularity should be some hint as to how much
people hate HTML, XML is worse.

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bruceboughton
Oh dear, I will be getting a large invoice from Apple in a few days times...

