

Mac App Store UI is so hideous that it makes me want to kick a swan - mikecane
http://reverttosaved.com/2011/01/06/mac-app-store-ui-is-so-hideous-that-it-makes-me-want-to-kick-a-swan/

======
mechanical_fish
If it makes you sad because Apple is no longer devoting thousands of pixels at
the top of each window to a big "drag this window" control, you'd better brace
yourself, because the next step for many consumer applications is to have
windows that _cannot be dragged at all._

This design looks like an iPad screen to me. Did the implications of Apple's
stated mission to "make the Mac more like the iPad" not sink in? The iPad
doesn't have draggable windows. And putting big title bars on a nondraggable
window is a waste of pixels.

As for the critique of various shades of gray and nonscalable text and laggy
performance: It is _launch day_ , people. We are lucky the app works at all.
(It apparently doesn't quite work for everyone; those bugs are going to need
to be fixed first.) It is hell on earth to meet a Steve Jobs launch date, I'm
grateful to all those who made it happen, and I'd like to encourage the rest
of the peanut gallery to be patient and see if revision 1.0.1 brings some
improvements.

~~~
sudont
I highly doubt that that Apple will remove dragable windows. Their iPad-
ification of applications _is_ the full-screen mode that can be toggled.

More likely: a bar-wide drag handler that takes precedence over widget
clicking.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Sure, that is what I meant. My guess is that this app is giving us an early
vision of what apps will look like in the upcoming full-screen mode. When that
mode comes out, not long from now, the App Store will continue to look exactly
as it does now.

Why design the window twice inside of a year when designing it once will do?

Of course Apple won't take away OS support for draggable windows. That would
be silly. What will happen, though, if the new full-screen mode takes off, is
that _app developers_ will redesign their windows to be more suitable for
full-screen. And that may well involve smaller or nonexistent title bars.

~~~
sudont
That's already happened to some extent. Xcode and Final Cut both run in multi-
window yet effectively fullscreen mode, but act as IDEs for their respective
workflows. In fact, this IDE mentality could be the new big divisive topic in
the Mac world: Coda _vs_ Textmate and Safari and CSSEdit and Versions and...
Really, it's the same war as Vim vs Emacs ( _somewhat_ ), just with GUIs. Does
the application need to be full-screen and kitchen sink, or multi-window and
able to integrate with others?

I do agree, this could be a nuclear, apocalyptic scenario. But while photo,
video and code workflows can be condensed nicely into one app, traditional mac
workflows have been multi-window, multi-app in that most common tasks aren't
IDE-oriented, and constructed from many different apps running on the Mac
_platform._

But, to counter your point about app laziness: most mac developers came to the
platform to make _really good apps._ If it was about just throwing something
easy out there, they'd have run to Windows or enterprise apps already.

------
maukdaddy
No offense, but this blog is so hideous it makes me want to kick a panda.

~~~
pssdbt
Serious, looks like the top of a hot dog.

~~~
glhaynes
Reminds me of Windows 3.x's Hot Dog Stand theme.

------
jasonfried
So what. The actual problem the whole idea is solving is a revolutionary
improvement. And this is just v1.

The "interface" problem is not custom controls or back buttons. The interface
problem is installing software. That's the interface most average people
stumble on. That's where computers suck.

So yeah, some of the UI in the Mac App Store app feels a bit off, but the
stuff that matters - one click install of great apps onto your Mac - works
beautifully. That's the interface triumph.

~~~
trobertson

      >The actual problem the whole idea is solving is a revolutionary improvement.
    

Last I checked, this was a solved problem in Ubuntu. What makes it
revolutionary now that Apple's done it?

~~~
danilocampos
Most people don't use Ubuntu.

Come on, man, it's a _Linux Distro_ – how many of our moms are installing
those?

Plus there's the whole easy monetization thing for developers.

This is like saying Dropbox's functionality was a solved problem thanks to
rsync.

~~~
pizzaburger
Sure it's gaming-specific, but more prior art: <http://steampowered.com>

~~~
mishmash
It's one click and a password to buy from the Mac App Store whereas Steam
takes five clicks and no password (if you have it set to remember).

Apple's store is no revolution in my book, far from it, but at least they put
that Amazon One-click patent to good use and made the process easy.

------
runjake
A off-topic question:

This guys website looks like a nacho-colored version of Daring Fireball,
complete with a star in the logo and for the favicon. Is there some star motif
in the Mac world I'm not aware of?

~~~
pr0zac
Its like a modification of classic communist propaganda graphic design.
Orange, yellow, and black, the star, strong font styling. Kind of weird way to
design a blog.

~~~
runjake
Yes, I think you're right. As a colorblind dude, the colors work well for me,
but I wonder how they look to the color-ungimped.

~~~
roc
> _"but I wonder how they look to the color-ungimped."_

awful.

------
tewks
However, the store feels very snappy, which is a welcome change from the
iTunes Store being very slow even on a Core i7 machine.

~~~
ludwigvan
Definitely. At first, I thought 'wow, that's fast, but of course this is not
an iOS device', but then I remembered that iOS Store through iTunes was not
this fast.

------
fuzzmeister
"Instead, you must aim for and click specific blank areas between the various
navigation items. This reduces usability and also obliterates accessibility
for users who have less dexterity."

I highly doubt that, given that the standard size for the dragging bar on in
OS X is only 22 pixels tall, while the bar on the Mac App Store appears to be
about 54 pixels tall. The increased vertical size would seem to make up for
the smaller horizontal draggable area, from an accessibility standpoint.

------
siglesias
Apple's clearly trying to conserve vertical pixels given that they are moving
to wider screens. That's what they did with the new iTunes.

Secondly the navigation can be handled with swipe gestures, which is where
Lion is headed.

------
huertanix
I generally agree with your points, however, if I recall correctly, iTunes's
window controls/style changed slightly before Leopard, and when Leopard was
released, everything lost its white/pinstripe style and looked like iTunes. I
think what we're looking at it is what every window in Lion will look like.

On the issue of dragging windows, I think that Apple is a bad boy that doesn't
care about convention and wants to re-invent this. Right now, users have to
know that only a specific narrow upper border is draggable. With any blank
space replacing that tradition, users don't have to think about where they
grab a window as long as they hit something gray that isn't a button.

~~~
gnaffle
Maybe it's just me, but I automatically dragged the window by the empty space
between the icons - and it works as expected. Hopefully they have done some
testing on this to feel safe enough about the change.

------
nicksergeant
Really? That bad? I'm not so sure the swans deserve such treatment. While
there are some questionable design decisions in the UI, I'm more concerned
with the UI performance (sluggish scrolling, interactions, etc).

~~~
gnaffle
I have a 4 year old machine and no sluggish scrolling, unlike with iTunes. Is
this a common problem?

------
iuguy
Just tried it. What I don't understand is this:

To manage apps on my iphone/ipad/ipod I use iTunes. In iTunes I go to an app
store if I want to install a new app on those devices.

To access what I perceive to be essentially a form of the same store but for
Mac software, I use a dedicated application that now forms part of the
Operating System's update management. This makes no sense to me.

Does this mean that we'll start to see iphone/pod/pad management moving
towards the mac app store and a (hopefully) slimmer itunes?

~~~
benatkin
Certainly. Every time I see a major iTunes update I'm surprised they haven't
fixed it. The pimple's ready to pop.

~~~
iuguy
I hope so. I don't mind iTunes as a music player on a Mac. It's as a central
point of navel lint I have the problem.

------
pornel
I hope it's just something temporary released to meet the deadline or that the
app was designed for new Lion UI and that's just Leopardized downgraded
version.

In Mac apps adherence of HIG and use of standard Cocoa widgets is very
important, and poorly thought out/unnecessary deviations are frowned upon — at
least for 3rd party developers.

Many parts of OS X/Cocoa are very polished, so it's disheartening that Apple
releases something that's debatable between hideous or barely good enough.

------
cesarsalazar12
Other things that the App Store lacks (again):

\- A wishlist or a very simple way to mark apps that you are willing to buy in
the near future.

\- Price tags on every product. Not just the one's you haven't purchased. As I
already have the iWork suite installed, I can't read the prices of those
articles.

\- Good autocomplete. The app store universe is a finite one, not a chaotic
infinite one such as the entire web. Therefore, the autocomplete should
respond accordingly. Terms that are _actually_ app names should have some
visual cue.

\- A prominent search box. To be fair, they have the search box in the
conventional place. However, being discovery on the the priorities of the
store, search should be more visible.

\- And let's not talk about recommendations. If Amazon is a tiger in terms of
targeted recomendations, Apple's App Store is not more than a snail.

~~~
wtn
Minimum viable product.

~~~
CamperBob
Apple is a startup now?

------
ceejayoz
> People complaining about the Mac app store interface are missing the point.
> Think about the current install interface - DMG, dragging, etc.

@jasonfried [<https://twitter.com/jasonfried/status/23111721640009728>]

------
Terretta
Another change: the red X control quits, not just closes window.

iTunes did the horizontal window controls first. If you don't like these, wait
till you try Tweetie 2 aka Twitter for Mac. It makes them smaller and black.

There's more than enough blank area to drag, enough there could have been a
bit more space between the window controls and the nav back/fwd buttons.
However, it feels like this is a move towards more standard window shapes and
icon locations between the desktop and the iDevices. Everything's right where
you'd expect it to be on an iPad.

~~~
rbritton
To be fair, most single-window apps on OS X already quit when the window is
closed. This is typically the desired behavior, especially for those less
computer-savvy.

~~~
smackfu
OTOH, how can you tell if it is single-window or not?

iTunes is not, closing it leaves it running. iPhoto is, closing it shuts it
down. Both look pretty much the same.

~~~
roc
I get the feeling everything not aimed at professionals is going to begin
moving toward the single-window and full-screen experiences. Likely in a slow
march as opposed to all-at-once, but it seems inevitable to me.

Regular people never really took advantage of the MDI anyway. (Not that I
blame them, overlapping windows made a mess of everything.)

~~~
commandar
>(Not that I blame them, overlapping windows made a mess of everything.)

Yet this move is happening exactly as extremely high resolution displays that
can easily handle multiple side-by-side windows are becoming commonplace.

~~~
roc
And after multitasking research has shown how poorly most humans handle it.
And after computer use research has shown how poorly most humans handle MDI.
And after several products from several manufacturers have proven the change
to focused-single-task to be not only palatable, but even _preferable_ and
_popular_.

MDI is a great thing for a certain class of people. And I'm talking about a
trend in software for _everyone else_. Those people weren't a high-res monitor
away from becoming power-users. It was never going to happen.

------
tehjones
A note on the upper left hand 'control' buttons. Using the graphite theme
there are no colours or controls obviously visible, so i didnt even notice the
difference.

It took a comment on this blog post for me to notice that iTunes has vertical
buttons. I hope that is a fair indication how often I even look at those
buttons.

~~~
Raphael
You never minimize or close a window?

------
wccrawford
The title bar is swan-kick-worthy, but the price thing is pretty easy to read
on my system.

------
scrrr
That will not hinder its success, heh. Vanity blogpost. Look at HN, Reddit,
ebay etc. to see how much design really matters. OSX is pretty but I'd argue
it's not the neat icons that make it a success. Tsts.. Designers and their
worldview.

~~~
jokermatt999
Arguably, HN and Reddit's minimal design are part of their success/charm. They
have a minimalist style that doesn't get in the way of posting, and doesn't
needlessly change.

~~~
guywithabike
100% agreed. I'm sick of self-professed design experts slamming Reddit's
design. Reddit has one of the best designs of the sites I use regularly. It's
one of my favorites to navigate around and read. That's a lot more than can be
said about Craig Grannell's eye melting blog.

Designers need to pull their heads out of their collective arses and realize
that design is not just coordinated colors and the latest gradient button
trends.

------
tehjones
Has anyone tried the link system? A quick try gives a link that can only be
opened in another instance of the mac store, call be naive, but I was hoping
something similar to pages on apples site considering iOS links.

------
kgosser
One of the more poorly thought out and articulated articles I've read in a
long time on Hacker News. Sad, really.

------
raz0r
The icon is horrible too.

~~~
jinushaun
Looks too much like the iTunes icon in the dock. Should've gone with a
different color. In iOS, iTunes is purple and the App Store is blue.

~~~
mishmash
They both remind me of the Start menu icon in Windows 7.

~~~
raz0r
I haven't thought about that yet, but you are correct.

------
lotusleaf1987
People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones... his blog looks terrible.

