Many Mac fanatics become very disgruntled when Apple introduces a new custom look for a certain app or suite of apps. They argue that there should be consistency throughout every Mac OS X interface. Down to the little details such as colors and font sizes, these people won't stop at any cost to argue their point. Some go as far as to make modifications for apps (here's Aqua in iTunes 7, which looks just awful).

Are they right or are they wrong? Well, they're both.

User interface design consistency is important, in a miniscule way. You do want to make things intuitive and easy to use, and the best way to do that is by copying existing layouts and techniques (as described in the Aqua Human Interface Guidelines). Many developers do this (though some don't, and it shows). The best way is to have consistency where consistency is needed. Alert dialogs and print windows are very good examples of this. The "two column" view seen in iLife apps is another great example. Most new Mac users can quickly figure out how to use these apps after simply using one (usually iTunes). Some smaller examples are the close/minimize/expand widgets on every window and the menubar. These consistency decisions are important.

So why are they wrong? Because, in reality, designs can vary. They do not need to be the same. In fact, being unique and different is a really good thing. It makes an application easily distinguishable from others. A good example is GarageBand - by using it's "Amp" graphical interface, you can quickly identify that the app is related to music and that it's very different from other applications. The very first iTunes was another great example. Instead of being bland and boring, it used the "jukebox" metaphor to help distinguish it from other system apps.

iTunes 1.0 had a great jukebox look

GarageBand's style is cool and amp-like

What does it matter if a button is a different color or different font? Sure, it might not look as good (there's a really good chance of this, but that's why we have designers) but to new users it's not a big deal. If it looks like a button, they'll push it.

This is why iTunes, for example, has all of those weird new looking controls. The scroll bars are different colored - so what? They are still extremely similar to the Mac OS X scroll bars. It is definitely not a "sign of things to come" as some people predict, just like the GarageBand GUI was not a sign of things to come, and just like the Aperture GUI was not a sign of things to come. If future apps do have similar looking controls and elements, it is not because Apple had planned this out, it is because they made a later decision to make them look similar. The (at one time very scary) Mail in Tiger look has been adopted widely across Mac OS X. If Apple had planned this out, many apps would have had a similar style in the first release of Tiger.

Inconsistency seems to work well for third party developers as well. Take Delicious Library, an app that may not have been nearly as popular without its amazing "shelf" look. (at one point, the entire app was going to have a wood style, which might not have looked too bad).

Delicious Library, with wooden background

I am not sure this goes for anyone else, but I would probably get bored if every app looked the same and had no innovative graphical decisions. I might even get confused if interfaces do not work the way I think they should. So in a way, inconsistency is consistent, and that's a good thing.

The popular podcast MacBreak has done a very nice demo of Wallet's main features in this new video cast. Click here to watch.

A tip for next time: to AutoFill, one has to click the AutoFill button. :)

iTunes 7 came out today, along with new iPods, new iPod nanos, new iPod shuffles, the iTunes Movie Store, and even a sneak peak at the next big Apple thing: iTV. But iTunes 7 alone is a great update, here are some of the amazing new features that I think are the coolest:

Cover Flow

This is one feature that has simply belonged in iTunes since the start. Based off of the third party app that was released a while ago, Cover Flow is a great addition to iTunes. It allows you to always see your album art front and center, and browse your entire library by album art, just like flipping through a CD collection. Very slick and very smooth, this is easily the best feature in iTunes 7.

iPod Management


Now when you click on your iPod in the source list, all of the settings that used to be in the Preferences window of iTunes have been moved to this new view. It allows you to change all your settings right from the iTunes window, easily and quickly. You can see how much space you have left, what type of media is taking up the most space, etc.

Album Art Retriever

With one (okay, maybe two or three) clicks in iTunes 7, you can now get album art for all of your music in your library. This means that all of those completely legal songs you've imported into iTunes from CDs (cough) can finally look as good as purchased music from the iTunes Store. Third party utilities have done this before, but since Apple broke downloading art from the iTunes Store, everyone has sort of been left in the dark with crummy quality artwork from Amazon. Now we can all pretty up our libraries.

There have not been a lot of dramatically exciting new apps this year, so thanks to Apple for breaking the ice. I think the new GUI elements look pretty good overall, though I have a few complaints which I'll keep to myself. Apple has once again proven that graphical consistency is not that important in user interfaces.