With all the hysteria of the Macworld taking precedence last week, it appears that Apple slipped out a not-so-insignificant update to the OS X Human Interface Guidelines. After a fairly stagnant revision history in the last few years, the much-discussed 'UI Bible' (and I use the term loosely) has been updated to encompass OS X 10.5 Leopard.

It's available as an online document, and also as a 28MB PDF file (link) for your perusal as you decide on how you want your next best-selling application to look, feel and act.

[via Microsoft MacBU blogger Nadyne]

The iPhone offers many ways to send mail. Unfortunately, consistency is not the strong point here. You'd imagine Apple would have designed a single universally recognized "compose email" button and placed it more-or-less in the same place for each application. You'd be wrong. Here's a quick run-down of several extremely different ways to create a new message across several programs:

• Compose Button. The compose button, which looks like a square with a pencil through it, appears at the bottom right of many Mail screens and in the SMS Text application at the top-right of the screen. The Reply/Forward button appears just to the left of the Compose icon in Mail. Tap this to reply to a message or forward it on to another party.
• Envelope Icon. In the Notes application, the envelope icon appears on the bottom of the page, to the left of the garbage can. Tap it to email the current note.
• Use-For Icon. The use-photo-for icon appears at the bottom left of the screen. It looks like a rectangle with an arrow jumping out of it-the arrow is basically a mirror of the Reply/Forward button. Tap this and select Email Photo from the pop-up menu.
• Share. You can share YouTube video and Safari URLs by email. Tap the Share button on the Information page in YouTube and in the navigate-to-URL screen in Safari. To find this in YouTube, tap the blue reveal button located to the right of the video name. In Safari, tap on the URL bar and then look up and to the left.

So why so many ways to do what is essentially the same task? This inconsistent design speaks volumes to me about rushing the iPhone to market. It's as if the different groups simply didn't have time to communicate with each other and standardize the way they do what is truly a core task with consistent icons and naming. What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

My highschool chemistry teacher was fond of saying, 'Gentlemen, we must seek isotropy.' This was his little way of telling us that we should all be on the same page, going in the same direction if you will. The Apple Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) used to serve as a one stop shop for developers seeking the 'Mac' way of doing things with UI. Sadly, it seems that Apple has all but abandoned this noble document.

IndieHIG is a project that hopes to fill the void left by Apple. It is an independent Wiki that offers itself up as a collaborative space for Mac developers to define the way apps on OS X should behave. A noble effort, though one that I would expect Apple to be spearheading. Here's hoping that the IndieHIG ushers in a new Golden Age of UI consistency.

Gentlemen, good luck on your quest for isotropy.