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Bad Dye Job

(daringfireball.net)
251 points mpweiher | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.195s | source
1. nunez ◴[] No.46193895[source]
So I, too, was motivated to watch Steve Jobs unveil Aqua [^0] and compare it against Alan Dye's Liquid Glass reveal [^1]. The difference is unbelievable.

Jobs might have been an asshole, but his enthusiasm for the details is incontestable. He couldn't wait to show people the Save window, in its many forms. That he cared about the small details in everything is easy to see.

Contrast that with Alan Dye's inspiration reel for Liquid Glass. He's clearly reading from a script, which is quite a downgrade but understandable given the production value of keynotes these days. However, the real problem is that this intro is all about how it looks, not how it functions.

Microsoft tried this move with Vista (and their Aero design, which mostly failed), then again with Metro (which also by and large failed). Meanwhile, the key concepts of Aqua remain timelessly in macOS 25 years later. Function over form always!

[^0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHrVGk0WwYM&t=381s

[^1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGztGfRujSE