Ryan Cushley

Many have long wished for Apple to draw a line under the familiar Aqua visuals in OS X. But, yet again, those hopes have been thwarted by the evolutionary, rather than revolutionary approach Apple has taken to interface design. Indeed, it may appear to those already familiar with Lion somewhat imprudent to devote a whole section of the Lion review to interface changes, but the changes are there, and by Apple standards, they are considerable.

Most noticeably on first launching an application, the traffic light close, minimise and fit buttons are significantly smaller than in Snow Leopard. While having no impact on usability, as they appear to have the same active area, despite being smaller, it is an aesthetically pleasing move. Staying with the menu bar area, Apple has yet again changed the background, with the gradient almost invisible to the eye.  Furthermore, buttons have also taken on a slightly new feel, looking just slightly less ‘realistic’. This is most notable in iTunes 10.5, but can be seen throughout Lion.

Another change is the inclusion of a full screen button in the corner of many of the first-party applications to invoke the new full screen feature. The introduction looks arbitrary, ugly and an afterthought. At a quick glance it looks like a rendering problem, as such a pronounced and jagged button sits uncomfortably around the curved edge of a window. Although functionally sound, it would be nice to see Apple switch this out for an implementation with a more natural feel.

Radio buttons, selection boxes and sliders all inherit the aforementioned rubber-like and unrealistic look of application buttons. The change is a subtle but welcome one, with the new buttons looking more modern, with squared edges. These rubberised edges are also present throughout Finder, with sidebar buttons similar to the grayscale icons debuted in iTunes 10 last year.

Mouse and Trackpad options both retain, but expand on the tacky demonstration videos and incongruent interface already present in Snow Leopard. Clicking into one of these settings panes is like switching over to some grim skinned driver manager such as ATI Control Centre on Windows XP. The whole experience is incongruent with the rest of the operating system, and, to be frank, downright ugly.

No review of the visual changes in Lion would be complete without mentioning the infantile skinning of iCal and Address Book. Two standard productivity applications given Web 2.0 treatment. As a user who uses both of these applications professionally, it is difficult to overstate my displeasure. While I am hesitant to suggest that they are ugly, they are certainly verging on the more unpleasant side of mediocre. The trend of applying a UI as if the software product were a physical object on a desk must be stopped. Not only is it unpleasant looking, it is distracting – particularly a new page turning effect when switching between months and years in iCal which is nothing short of irritating.

Several new desktop backgrounds are available in Lion, and no new screensavers. The desktop backgrounds – particularly the default one of a blue coloured galaxy and another of a wild elephant – are excellent. Additionally, Mission Control inherits its background from iOS – the grey stitching look, as does Safari when the user scrolls off the edge of the page. Dashboard, being reinvented as a Space, has a strange look, almost metallic bubble wrap. Nothing is wrong with this implementation, but Dashboard performed better as a simple overlay, rather than a Space unto itself.

Scrollbars are also gone, replaced with an identical implementation from iOS. A black, translucent bar that appears only when scrolling is invoked. It must be noted that this has both a positive feature and a negative. It allows a marginally (pun noted) larger amount of screen space, however, scrolling must be invoked to see where on a list, document or website the screen is currently viewing. I found this to be of little consequence, but those who work often with long documents may find this of slight irritation. The removal of the scrollbar is also causing minor UI problems with third-party applications at present, most clearly Microsoft Office 2011. It does not cause any usability problems, however, and will likely be fixed via a small update.

This is by no means a comprehensive view of the visual changes in Lion. Most of the changes are so small as to be inconsequential, or on occasion, go completely unnoticed. Aside from the application of the iPad skins of iCal and Address Book to Lion, most of the changes are very welcome, and further refine an already very mature visual experience. It would be a shame to see any further greyscaling of the interface, but what has been done so far is good without sacrificing usability. Apple are obviously very keen to translate some of the success of iOS into Mac owners, and unifying the UI is a good move for that. While many self-identifying ‘power-users’ have been quick to criticise Lion for its iOS influences, in months of experience with 10.7 I have yet to encounter any that negatively affect workflow.

In-Depth OS X Lion Review Part 1: Introduction
In-Depth OS X Lion Review Part 2: Installation
In-Depth OS X Lion Review Part 3: New Visual Changes
In-Depth OS X Lion Review Part 4: Launchpad and Mission Control
In-Depth OS X Lion Review Part 5: Full Screen and Mail
In-Depth OS X Lion Review Part 6: Auto-Save, Versions and Resume
In-Depth OS X Lion Review Part 7: Multi-Touch and AirDrop
In-Depth OS X Lion Review Part 8: Conclusion