Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, OS, Software, Mods, Leopard
Leopard's new menubar is hideous
I haven't watched the keynote yet, and I've been spending most of my time looking through the other new features of Mac OS X Leopard. After I found that non-transparent menubar mod for Leopard, however, I can't get over how hideous that new menubar really is. I also hate to say it, but Apple's secrecy with this UI change until now screams 'Cupertino borrowed one of Redmond's photocopiers' (the new Windows Vista, for those who haven't seen it, contains what many - including myself - consider to be a literally dizzying overabundance of transparent window borders and menus). Seriously: what is Apple thinking by turning the menubar nearly invisible, but keeping the 'just slightly' translucent aspect and white color of previous menus? I think this looks absolutely dreadful, as it doesn't even look like the menubar and the menus have anything to do with each other anymore, and I'll be damned if Apple takes the actual menus this translucent as well. In fact, if they went that over the edge, I could comfortably say that I wouldn't buy a copy of Leopard until someone developed a modification that switches the menubar and menu back from the brink of "hey look, Vista went transparent!"-ness (of course, a simple Apple-provided checkbox in System Preferences would do just fine as well).
Given Peter Maurer's mod and disinterest in this change surfacing from others, I can only hope that more voice their opinion - whether they do or don't like it - and that Apple listens if it the consensus on this menubar change turns out to be a thumbs down. After all, Leopard still is a developer-only beta, and October is still a long way away.
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