Apple scraps iOS-like slider tabs in latest Mac OS X Lion build

I really, really liked the look of the slider. I thought it was clever and very intuitive, it was great! I hope they make it optional.

The real test is when there are only 2 buttons. Then you don't have the option of seeing 1 button as different than the others [2 or more]. If you eliminate all but 2 of the buttons on each row in the example above, the blue highlight is probably the most obvious because it's "lighted".

Looking at the ion DP2 graphic, remove all but 2 buttons. Which one is is selected? To most users this is not abvious.

Look at the iPhone "Recent" calls screen, the buttons at the top "All", "Missed", "Clear". "All" is pressed, yet looks just like "Clear" that isn't pressed, so the odd button is "Missed"…but we know it isn't pressed from experience and the way the list of recent calls changes. Remove the "Clear" button from the screen, so there are only 2 buttons, then how do you know which button is pressed "All" or "Missed", it's not obvious by just looking at the button.

Sick and tired of shiny blue (and gray) Aqua accents. I welcome the toned-down, more mature look of Lion.

I think the slider tab element in the previous Lion DP was just animation for animation's sake. It was counterintuitive to click in an already-recessed area, and the idea of sliding to just a few discrete positions isn't good. It requires more effort than a simple click.

And yes, the new scrolling paradigm feels weird at first and will take some getting used to. But what you are experiencing is the realization that the "old way," from time immemorial, was backward all along.

By putting the drag in the content instead of the scrollbar, Apple is able to minimize or eliminate the scrollbar unless and until the user explicitly clicks on the far right edge of the content. But I predict that this will be the biggest source of unrest when Lion is released to the public.

Too bad. I loved that effect.

The only reason I can think for Apple to go grey on the UI is because Windows (and everyone else) has candied up their OSes and made them look all shiny (copycatting Mac as usual). I think this more a jest at everyone else then good for the users. They'll make it all grey and dull and then laugh when Microsoft rushes to make Windows 8 or 9 as equally monochrome.

At which point they flourish a trademark violation at anyone seeking to copy their look... now that they have money and a big stick.

The problem with the slider wasn't the concept so much, but Apple's implementation of it. When used on a control that only had two options, it was not immediately clear from glancing at it which option (dark/light) was selected. To make matters worse, the use of dark (in shadow) to indicate not-selected was the reverse of how it looks in Snow Leopard (with the selected option darker), which was simply a bone-headed transition to make from one version to the next. It'd be like making a new light switch that looks like it's pointing down when it's on: people would figure it out, but it'd be an annoying and unnecessary transition.

Alright, apparently a lot of the people complaining here haven't even tried Lion. Let me make some points here to those people:

COLOR
Color is not going away. Buttons, progress bars, etc, are still blue. A few buttons are gray. The Finder sidebar icons are gray like the iTunes sidebar. That's it. The whole OS is NOT going gray.

MISSION CONTROL, EXPOSE, AND SPACES
Spaces does not exist anymore. You can look in the Lion utilities folder and Spaces.app is gone. Exposé is still there. Exposé IS Mission Control. Mission Control is actually a lot more useful than it appears on Apple's site. The only thing that bugs me so far is it doesn't show minimized windows. Hopefully that will change before release.

SLIDER-STYLE TAB BARS
The tab bars were not just "confusing" to users. They were a technical mess. For example, if there was only one item on the tab bar, like in the Accounts preference panel, the sliders would go nuts. My guess is it was simply too hard to make them work correctly, so Apple removed them and went back to the old way. I think they made the right call.

SCROLLING
This was so easy to get used to I switched to using it on Snow Leopard, too. I love it. A lot.

LAUNCHPAD
Actually a lot more useful than you might think. When you install App Store apps, they no longer fly onto your Dock. They fly to your Launchpad. An iOS-style installation progress bar appears under the Launchpad Dock icon and shows the progress of the download. When the download is finished, the Launchpad icon bounces. Using a pinch or hot corner to bring up Launchpad is a lot easier than using even a Stack in the Dock to get to your apps. Launchpad is also how you uninstall App Store apps. They have the same hold-an-icon-for-wiggle-mode feature as iOS, and you can also hold the Option key for wiggle mode. Click the X on an icon just like iOS and it will give a popover asking if you're sure. Say yes and it removes the app, exactly like on iOS. I'll personally probably never use the Applications Stack on my Dock any more, since Spotlight and Launchpad are so much faster and easier.

RESUME
When logging out or shutting down, you're given the option of using the Resume feature. You don't have to if you don't want to. It's a checkbox on the dialog that asks if you really want to logout/shutdown/whatever. It is slightly annoying when I type something into TextEdit and it comes back next time I launch the app, but it's really not that hard to close a window.

http://media.maceinsteiger.de/2011/02/reiter-animation.gif

this is a nice preview of the new animation

Seams to me the issue is less with "slide" or "depress" buttons but more with what does the color/shade indicate. With Aqua it is quite obvious that the blue means it is selected. Simple and intuitive. But with a monochrome interface what is highlighted? Black? White? It's not as obvious.

The slider style was definitely better. OS X Lion is probably the transition UI before they start implementing touchscreen controls for the desktop OS, merging Mac OS with iOS. Google was always planning that with Chrome and Android - great minds think alike.