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Opinions on Leopard Folder icons


borisbadenov
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Am I the only one out here that thinks that Apple, well known for style, design, great looks, etc, has taken a back seat with their new folders? To me, it looks like they raided the abandoned files from KDE 2 and recycled them. They are ugly, flat, monocolour. They look like {censored}. How did they ever make it to a beta build?

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Yes. You are the only one. The new folder icons are sexy and professional all at once. They do not get in the way and are hallmarks of good UI design.And I couldn't find anything remotely like those folders from any of the KDE 2 screenshots I found. It seems however that they did a little ripping off themselves - from OS 8:kde2final_2.jpg

 

In fact KDE 2 looks like a hodgepodge of OS 8, BeOs and Windows 95, a fact they readily admit:

 

Some people say KDE is too much of a Windows clone. This is not particularly true, as other screenshots have shown: KDE attempts to take the best parts of various existing desktops such as MacOS, CDE, BeOS, NeXt and indeed, also Windows.

 

Not really a good example at all.

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I only picked KDE 2 because I wanted something "old fashioned" Honestly, I cannot remember how those folders looked but they have to look better than Leopard.

 

Leopard folder icon just look flat, monotone, dull, boring, insipid, no deatil and whereas just about evrerything else in Leopard, drom the new Aero....oops, Aqua look with new drop shadows, semi-transparent menu bars (wait, are we talking about Vista??) ooops. the dock, the trash can, etc, so much of Leopards GUI gives the 3D illusion but for these damn fugly folder icons

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I like the current ones. At least with Tiger foilder icons, they have depth, an illusion of depth, 3D, sublte colour gradations. It looks like someone took time, skill and devotion to make these icons.

 

With Leo, just looked like thewy were slapped about in a few minutes flat and with all the care and attention three minutes can give.

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Am I the only one out here that thinks that Apple, well known for style, design, great looks, etc, has taken a back seat with their new folders? To me, it looks like they raided the abandoned files from KDE 2 and recycled them. They are ugly, flat, monocolour. They look like {censored}. How did they ever make it to a beta build?

 

Actually, I think I know what you are referring to, its KDE 4 Dolphin File Manager not version 2. KDE presented the new icon set for version 4 around May 2007, so you will see some resemblances there. But I think its only coincidental or someone probably on the KDE team is a private Leopard beta tester since they are actually porting KDE to multiple platforms such as OS X and Windows. In such a case, they probably got a glimpse of the new folder icon set and decided to adapt it to provide consistency and ease of use for users transitioning from multiple platforms.

 

As for rip off as someone noted, looks like KDE folks have been doing that a lot. The Trash can is a clear copy from the Classic Mac OS. As for the new folders, take a look at the attached screenshot and look at the blue Home folder under Places in addition to the hierarchical tree.

 

kde4dolphinlk6.th.jpg

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I love the new folders in leopard. The tiger ones were Okay, but they were too loud and I'm not a fan of the pinstripes design. The leopard folders are quiet and they blend in with the rest of the UI better, they just don't stand out as much as the tiger icons did, and thats a +1 in my book.

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Actually, I think I know what you are referring to, its KDE 4 Dolphin File Manager not version 2. KDE presented the new icon set for version 4 around May 2007, so you will see some resemblances there. But I think its only coincidental or someone probably on the KDE team is a private Leopard beta tester since they are actually porting KDE to multiple platforms such as OS X and Windows. In such a case, they probably got a glimpse of the new folder icon set and decided to adapt it to provide consistency and ease of use for users transitioning from multiple platforms.

 

As for rip off as someone noted, looks like KDE folks have been doing that a lot. The Trash can is a clear copy from the Classic Mac OS. As for the new folders, take a look at the attached screenshot and look at the blue Home folder under Places in addition to the hierarchical tree.

 

kde4dolphinlk6.th.jpg

Those are clearly not even remotely alike. Besides, there's plenty of similar folders around - both to the KDE ones and the Leopard ones.

 

In Leopard, the folders are a derivation of the Pro Apps folders (as seen in the Pro Apps file browsers), which is again a throwback to System 7 folders and so on back to the original Mac folders from 1984.

 

There is someone ripping people off here, it's just not Apple :)

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I'm also a fan of the Leo folders, if you view them large in Finder you can even see specks of paper etc like a real folder.

 

The Tiger folders are looking way too tired now, they're the one icon I don't like.

 

Waht do you mean with "you can even see specks of paper etc like a real folder"?

 

Is this a feature of last Leopard build only?

 

Have you a screenshot?

 

Thanks.

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Those are clearly not even remotely alike. Besides, there's plenty of similar folders around - both to the KDE ones and the Leopard ones.

 

In Leopard, the folders are a derivation of the Pro Apps folders (as seen in the Pro Apps file browsers), which is again a throwback to System 7 folders and so on back to the original Mac folders from 1984.

 

There is someone ripping people off here, it's just not Apple :thumbsup_anim:

 

There are similarities, I am sorry you are too blind to see that. The ones in the Explorer shell do not of course look like Leopards folders. But the folders in addition to that red one under Places do. The difference with Leopard is, they are more photo realistic and the water marks on common location folders such as Applications, Pictures and Documents are less pronounced.

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There are similarities, I am sorry you are too blind to see that. The ones in the Explorer shell do not of course look like Leopards folders. But the folders in addition to that red one under Places do. The difference with Leopard is, they are more photo realistic and the water marks on common location folders such as Applications, Pictures and Documents are less pronounced.
Have you ever seen a System 7 or earlier folder?

 

mac_system_7.gif

 

Any folder icon looking like that is a rip off of Apple's original folder icon. So the similarities aren't because Apple got "inspired" by anyone but themselves.

 

In fact the folder icon originated on the Lisa:

 

10-Lisa1.jpg

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Have you ever seen a System 7 or earlier folder?

 

mac_system_7.gif

 

Any folder icon looking like that is a rip off of Apple's original folder icon. So the similarities aren't because Apple got "inspired" by anyone but themselves.

 

In fact the folder icon originated on the Lisa:

 

10-Lisa1.jpg

 

Your knowledge of operating systems and their history is sorely lacking. The folder concept, GUI, point and click and many other concepts you see in the Mac OS, Windows, UNIX, Linux and many generations of operating systems were "inspired" by what folks like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates saw in early prototypes at the XEROX Parc Palo Alto Research and Development Center. So your idea that Apple inspired themselves shows your lack of maturity when it comes to doing the research to make an educated comment.

 

Again, KDE 4 share some similarities that are based on those in the Macintosh which Apple has improved over the years and I will leave it at that. Not because they popularized the GUI mean they invented it.

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Your knowledge of operating systems and their history is sorely lacking. The folder concept, GUI, point and click and many other concepts you see in the Mac OS, Windows, UNIX, Linux and many generations of operating systems were "inspired" by what folks like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates saw in early prototypes at the XEROX Parc Palo Alto Research and Development Center. So your idea that Apple inspired themselves shows your lack of maturity when it comes to doing the research to make an educated comment.

 

Yep, the general GUI layout (including folders) goes back to the XEROX Star (from all of the screenshots I can find of early GUIs, this was the first one with folders, all earlier ones simply had text based file managers).

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Your knowledge of operating systems and their history is sorely lacking. The folder concept, GUI, point and click and many other concepts you see in the Mac OS, Windows, UNIX, Linux and many generations of operating systems were "inspired" by what folks like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates saw in early prototypes at the XEROX Parc Palo Alto Research and Development Center. So your idea that Apple inspired themselves shows your lack of maturity when it comes to doing the research to make an educated comment.
No one is denying that Apple where inspired by their brief trip to the XEROX, (as well as help from some of the engineers that jumped ship because the XEROX Alto project went nowhere). What few neglect to mention though, is that the work at Palo Alto was based on research by Jef Raskin from 1967, the father of the GUI and Apple Employee #31. In fact, the trip to Palo Alto was on the insistence of him with the intention of bringing his own concept into further development by Apple.

 

So yes, a lot of the concepts we use today were present in the early Alto, but lots of them weren't (overlapping windows was deemed "confusing" for end users by XEROX, opting for a tiled approach instead, no pull-down menus which were developed for the LISA etc.). So while XEROX certainly deserve some credit for developing some of the initial concepts, without Jef Raskin, Bill Atkinson and Apple it is very likely that the GUI would never had won out as the primary interface for interacting with computers.

 

The constant parroting of "Apple stole from XEROX" is ignoring so many factors of user interface evolution and the fact that Apple did indeed ignite the modern computing revolution.

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