I think steve "god" jobs could not come out with very uber cool features , he also gave a rather not so exiting keynote , i think the whole thing is just a joke , none of the features are truely worth the wait , stacks is alrit , so is spaces and timespace , i like mail , but than the UI , It is so ugly and i am a die hard mac fan and cant stand the sight of a PC , but i hate to admit the new UI looks like a cheap imitation of vista , im sorry it does with all the transparent look , i was expecting much better , and was extremely dissapointed , heck i did not download the wwdc update , it aint worth it .......... personally i think i will buy it but if there are a little more nice changes , honestly the UI was one of the things i was counting on , i knew they gonna come up with neat features like stacks and spaces and quicklook and coverflow , but i hate the new UI , Preach with me if u agree

im with you!

Making a transparent finder bar doesn't make it an imitation of vista. Especially considering that vista is largely inspired of OSX.

Of course Leopard isn't copying Vista! No, not at all....

It's not just about the ugly Menu-Bar. I couldn't believe how ugly all these ugly, dark windows in Leopard are. I like iTunes 7 Look. But most apps in Leopard look dull and boring, some really really ugly.

I hope someone at Apple will look at Leopard with some distance and understand it's severe ugliness.

At first, I liked the new shadows of app-windows. But in use they are not more prominent at all. They make it even harder to distinguish between underlying titlebars.
The dark grey of the active window has a smooth gradient over the shadow to the dull grey of the inactive windows titlebar, what makes it even harder to distinguish between foreground and background window.

Stacks: They are beautiful. But obviously nobody at Apple ever opened a stack in fan-view on top of other windows. It's visually crap.

The new active app-lights in the dock are crap. It's significantly harder to see, which apps are running.

And overall: Leopards window-look is dull and ugly.

But: the rounded-corners and backgrounds of windows are not yet resolution independent. Most buttons are. So there is hope, that this might be a placeholder.

Although I never like to bash beta oses, Leopard is a thorough disappointment to me at this moment. Sticking to Tiger if it stays like this.

Yes. This is the first time in OS X-history for me (and as a real Mac-Fanboy ) that I seriously consider using something like shapeshifter.

Or better: Make my own themes.

they are not allowing shapeshifter in leopard. the UI isn't as bad when you are actually using it

I used it for 2 weeks now fulltime.

I thought it wouldn't be that ugly when i just saw the screenshots on Apples Website.
But in use, it's really ugly.

And Apple does't show real-world screens on their website. You can't imagine the visual clutter of a stackfan in front of an open safari-window if you don't use it.

Or the ugliness of several finder-windows open in one space.

i like it now that i am using it

You have Alc861/660 on you system, don't you? Soundless....

About Leo...
Well, the best thing to do is to wait an see. Apple is known to listen to users suggestions. And a lot of work is being done before the RCs start to show up.

alc660. i hope they listen to us, the UI isn't too bad, it just needs improvements

Colonel: I honestly can't see ANY similarity in the two pics you posted.. they both show a horizontal bar.. one is nearly opaque and dark black/blue, one is pale grey and nearly transparent.. one has flow effects, the other has an understated grey spotlight window.. the only similarity PERHAPS is the use of the colour blue, but blue has been the colour of choice for highlighting things in OS X since forever.

The only new transparency in Leopard is the menu bar. That is it. Nothing else is transparent that wasn't transparent before.

I've been using Leopard for a while now, and I think the UI changes are great. The only thing that does irk me is the reflections of windows in the dock. I have my dock shunted over to the bottom right hand corner, so I always get these glimpses of the 3 diagonal lines in the bottom right hand corner of windows for resizing showing up on my dock.

I actually like the new UI. Once they tone down the shadows it will be fine, at the minute they are slightly apocolyptic.

Yes, the shadows are WAY too large.

Windows hit it right with their UI in visual appeal but Apple completely missed it. It looks like complete garbage.

hey i hate "Microsoft" , and i think i should rephrase myself , the new UI reminds me of Vista , and what i am trying to say is about 60% of the beauty , glow , and the charm in OSX seems missing , i am sticking to tiger till they come up with a better , more exiting UI , or atleast support shapeshifter ..... i like the dock its neat , still needs work but its neat....... i really dont dig transparencies , and considering microsoft already tried that , i was expecting something different , it is different but kinda the same ..... i just want them to put a better effort , if the keynote was a live bob dylan performance , it seemed that he wrote that opening song 5 minutes back , it was incomplete , not convincing , and not half as exiting as last years WWDC , now in devil wears prada style ..... THATS ALL .!!!

Leopard... I can't say the new UI is ugly but I definetly think it could look much better, that I hope it will until release date in October. It does have some ugly parts, the transparent bar or the windows shadows, but I prefer the unified look in windows now than what we had in Tiger. I wonder why you nug about the new color sceme since you've been using it in iTunes and iLife for sometime now. I hate both dock and transparent bar. Hopefully they will re consider at least for those two.

But.. theres only one new transparency effect in Leopard, and its nothing like any of the transparency effects in Vista. Well, its similar in that its a bar, that you can see through, but its nowhere near as opaque as the Vista task bar, its white instead of black, it doesn't but a massive blur on whatever's behind it.. really it looks very very different.

And I reiterate: It's the ONLY new transparency!

I don't hate the transparent menu-bar. I just think they put it together very quickly before the keynote and it needs some serious work.

You can't even use a lot of the preinstalled wallpapers, because the background behind menu-items would become to messy. Didn't Steve say it would adapt to whatever picture you choose?
And the black apple is ugly. But I do think, they can make the transparent menubar a beautiful thing.

Just my two cents: yes, I agree. When I saw Vista I thought if MS pulled that off imagine what Apple will do.

1) Unified look. Good thing for sure. I just hoped they would make the brushed silver the default look throughout the UI. It really was different than any OS out there.

2) I wonder: was "Illuminous" codename an Apple one, or was it thought-up by fanboys? 'Cause if it WERE from apple, what's so illuminating about it? I don't see any lighting except for the active applications' pointer. Which doesn't excuse the choise of name.

3) The new dock is a polished dock taken from Sun's Project Looking Glass. It's actually the same with a new skin. And I hate that icons cast two shadows. One at the bottom and one going towards the desktop. For some reason it makes me wonder what laws of Physics they forgot. Two light sources... Well if there are two light sources then they both need to have the same intensity in order for both shadows to be visible. Which doesn't apply to all the icons. Oh well, you get my point.

4) The only thing that keeps me from screaming at Apple is that WWDC is as the name implies "DEVELOPERS' Conference". Not CONSUMER. We all focused to the things shown on Day 1. No-one really knows what core technologies were showcased to developers the following days. And they HAD to be revo/evolutionary. If that were a consumers' conference,k then I'd be worried.

There you go...

Out and over from Greece. Cheers!

Nobody mentioned that the new menu bar also fills to the corners of the screens and doesn't have that little rounded bit.

I like that a lot, and I really like the new menu bar, the transparency is reactive to your wallpapers so it's just fun to play with.

I'm also very excited for the dark unified look. I've been using the 'UNO shade' theme for a long time and now it's official.

I also really like the stacks, makes navigating my hdd more appealing. and the new finder is nice too.

now the dock is a different story, I'm very happy with my 'cleardock' enhanced, umm, clear dock right now.

I ran leopard for a couple of weeks, but I couldn't use parallels with it, and I need it for work.. so I switched back. I really don't like the look of the dock.. its ugly. I don't need to see my applications reflect in it. It makes it more noticeable. The dock now is nice, because it doesn't catch your eye.. and I don't want it to. The little blue dots suck, I couldn't tell what programs were open half the time. The shadows were over board.. I like the clear top menu.. that was cool. But over all I wasn't that impressed. Stacks is ok.. I'll probably never use it. Spaces bogs down my computer too much.. and again I'll never use it, unless they make it so you can have a different screen resolution in different windows.. then I'd run XP in one and OS X in the other. The new finder is stupid... I'll never look at anything in the cover flow mode. But I must say that the quick look is REALLY cool. I used that all the time to check on pdf files quickly.

Otherwise I can live with out the rest of it. Once again, too much hype. Apple and Microsoft products are just going to continue to get closer and closer together. What else can we really use in a OS?

That just made my day. Seriously.

dude , it can be one or many new transparency effects , if they are putting it in the god damn menubar thats where half of the time my pointer rests , and considering i dont dig transparency , it is the only place i would not want it ....and even if i grew into liking transparencies , the menubar is just the tiger menubar with transparencies , and it aint done properly, now yall gonna say its beta , but they took goddamn 6 months to come up with this freaking {censored} , its NOT WORTH THE WAIT ...COME UP WITH A UI LIKE YOU CAME UP WITH FOR IPHONE SOME THANG BEAUITFUL .... ..... also when i saw the desktop .... the only thang saving the beauty of a mac was the dock (which needs some work too) , and i like the dock , i like it asin its better and a step above the old one ..... creatively atleast .... THATS ALL

You are sooo right.


But I hope, now, that the iPhone is finally on sale, the UI-designteam goes back to Leopard and put some serious enhancements in the next builds.
I don't know, if anyone noticed, but even almost all Icons in 9a466 are the smaller 128 px Icons which look horable in views like Coverflow with big images or the new search-results with a slider, that allows much bigger views of Icons. The new composed PDF-Icons look great, almost finder-windowfilling on a MBP. Also the new folders. But everything else get's blurry. I hope they have time to add all high res icons.

true , the iphone is out . so dig in those secretive expertise and give me somethang good..

the transparent menu is very nice for me....if you put an abstract wallpaper is a very nice eye candy!!!!! i like it a lot and it doesn't bother me the menus are ok for me...very visivle

The transparent menubar doesn't draw your focus away from whatever you're working on, like it did in Tiger.

What do you mean, like it did in Tiger?

I found that in Tiger, the menubar actually "popped out" and drew focus away from the window you're in. Maybe it was just me...

i found in the time i used leopard i was looking at the top at the big gap

Dude, I don't see what you want to prove here. I don't see any similarities between your two screenshots.And I don't understand why everbody is saying that the Leopard UI is a copy of Vista.
Get the facts.
- Vista is full of flashy colors: flashy green, flashy red, flashy blue, gloss black.
- Leopard have almost no colors: everything is gray now.
So the Leopard UI sucks, but not the same way as Vista, sorry.... taken from the Apple dock.
And for having used it, the Sun dock is just a joke. Not that it's not finished yet, but it's ugly and hasn't changed since it was introduced.

You should scream. It was a WWDC yes, but Steve only shows End User features...
If it really was a conference for developpers, he should have talked about the new multithreaded kernel, the new Cocoa API, and not iChat, Stack, the new Mail, Time machine etc ...

Might be just you. :-P

I finally got around to trying Leopard and can't say I am overly impressed with the current GUI changes as implemented in this beta.

Prior to switching to OS X I was a long time Linux user. Beryl was a big thing for many people with all these fancy and cool looking effects. Wiggly windows, rotating cubes etc. I used about 4 effects from Beryl and always maintained that effects need to be chosen to complement functionality and effects without purpose are just gimmicks/eye candy. I always thought Apple seem to this better than ANY other OS at doing this, but Leopard seems to buck that trend.

• Transparent Menubar - Do no like this at all.
  I know Apple is trying to make the Windows draw more focus, but we still use the menubar. At the very least this needs to be a user option has on some backgrounds it is terrible.

• Window Drop Shadow - Too big.
  Again I know they are trying to distinguish the window that has focus, but I find it a bit distracting. Also, lots of time I do work between two windows, comparing, drag and dropping, etc and this doesn't help.

• 3D Dock - Although it looks cool, I don't see how this improves functionality.
  Additionally, many people use the dock on the left or the right and this 3D look doesn't work as well there. Again this should be a user option.

• Dock indictors - Don't like the glowing blue running indicator used with 3D icons.
  The old black triangle was quicker to check the status with the corresponding icon. With leopard, due to the space between glowing blue and the icon needed for the reflection, although minor, I find it takes longer to pick up.

• Time Machine - Like.

• Finder Functionality - Like. (Includes coverflow)

• Finder Look - Hate.
  I can't stand the darker look to finder windows. (OK in iTunes, but not here)
  I prefer the brushed metal and hope this is a user option. I'ts great going for a uniform/consitent look, but the user should have some control over that.

• Spaces - Long time coming.
  It usefulness might not be appreciated by average users, but for those that have used it on other platforms or with addons know how useful it can be and are glad its included.

• Stacks - So So.
  Why the curved layout? To show off that OS X can do angled text and angled graphics smoothly?
  I find that most of my "important" directories have many files so when using stacks I get the grid layout. Well looking at 100 small icons of similar type files isn't much help for me.
  Maybe with a directory of phtotos this might be useful still, but for anything else unless the directory only holds a few items I don't get want so great.
  (Have always been able to click folders in the dockand get a scrollable list of everything. Just add bigger preview icons to that and would be more useful for me.

• Quicklook - I like.

Of course Leopard will have many improvements beyond any GUI changes, I just worried that flash is taking over for substance in regards to the GUI.
Things may change before final release but I hope at least they give us the option to not use it if they stay with this. (Although I doubt it.)

I see a big market for wallpapers with thin white strips up top once Leopard ships.

its spelled "thing".. not "thang".. thing my good man.. thing.

common !!! really ... thang dont cut it ........ fine its thing .... for all the dictionary readers , who use spell check........... i am sorry for my innapropriate slang language .
I am awfully sorry .....
I think ... i am growing into leopard ....my final verdict is , if they put in more work in the UI , and if they give us a few other secretive good features (300) , than i will still buy it ..... i am sincerely devoted to mac ....... AND I PLEDGE MY UNDYING DEVOTION TO YOU "Mr Steve Keynote Jobs" ,
Thanks For all the Comments
Its appreciated
Yours Insanely
Madhur

P.S - Thanks for correcting me vertigo . guess what ? i am putting a spell check on every word you write ... just messing with ya ......

Even if it's ugly, I will buy it anyway. If fact you will be obliged to if you want to use all the new release iWork/iLife/iTunes and all independant softwares.

At least, with all improvements to the network stack/kernel, Leopard will be faster, that's a good point.

Guys I think you expect too much from an X release. Its not Mac OS XI, instead its Mac OS X. Yes I don't like everything, maybe I like some things more the way it looks in Tiger, but maybe its because I use Tiger for 2 years now and got used to it. Give Leopard some time and wait until we see the final release in October. Many of those things that we talk about might change. Apple said its a feature full release, not a UI perfection. Really I don't remember anybody complaining so much when we moved from Panther to Tiger... maybe too many "Windows" philosophy users are jumping in to this platform?

You are maybe not aware, that Apple decided to change their numbering-system with os 10. The steps between the os-versions are not smaller than in the 90ies. If they sticked to their older scheme, we would be at Mac OS 15 with Leopard.

I think, Mac OS 11 will be no bigger step in any way, than 10.3 to 10.4 or 10.4 to 10.5.

they might decide to go over the top because they are changing from the 10.s to the 11s i never really thought of it, but i realise you are right, i feel like i am less distracted in 10.5

I find it far more distracting. The menu was a solid white bar in Tiger, now I find myself looking at a thin slice taken off the top of Jennifer Garner's head the whole time!

The new window color is far too dark. Many, many apps now look stupid. And the aqua buttons, which I infinitely prefer to the grey ones, contrast far too much. They've taken it too far. I always wanted to lick OS X before, it looked so lush and watery. Now it's just dull and dirty looking.

Big thumbs up to unified interface.

Big thumbs down to dark dirty looking windows.

the new interface is windows like, i like the aqua interface. When i installed os x on my imac for the first time, i was so surprised (therefore i used os 9 and xp) that i've been starring for ours at the screen. The leopard UI is super ugly and the most ugly thing is the finder, that itunes look is nice, but not for a finder. There are to many rectangles in the finder, not just a clear look like in tiger. the new finder is almost confusing. And with the ugly grey bars, it's like a nice version of windows 95. I was waiting for a Illuminous interface, which is very, very nice (dark colors are much better for the eyes) and userfriendly. The new UI is a ugly pimped version of Tiger

the only beef i have is with the new menubar. It is way too transparent. Whenever you have a busy wallpaper in the background, the menu items are unreadable. The menubar transparency needs to be more subtle.

i think its funny that apple used to really push all of their colored machines, all the diffrent fruit colors, now what do we have, every thing is pretty much all sliver, including the OS i really question apples line of thinking sometimes, i agree too that the transparent menu bar is far worse than the white one, at first it thought it would be cool, but as soon as i had a background rotated to that was black and white at the top, it couldnt tell what the headings were.

i also agree that the stupid blue active light is a pain in the butt

and my dock magnifies choppily, but yes its a beta