The Mac community is aghast at some of the cosmetic changes in iTunes 5. Apple in general seems to be encouraging its own developers to do whatever feels good. The resulting interfaces are sometimes pretty slick, and sometimes gruesome.
I’m in the “brushed metal sucks” camp. So at home, I use Sagefire’s Iridium theme. Here’s a screen grab of iTunes 5, Mail and Finder, after the theme is applied:
It’s not for everybody, doesn’t even out all the usability quirks, doesn’t mask absolutely everything (see the white in menu bar volume control, for example), and it only runs on OS X 10.4. But when the alternative is brushed metal finder, I can deal with these minor inconveniences.
Tags: 3 Comments
I’m sort of diggin’ the new look. Call me crazy … as a user. The folks who are screaming are mostly developers who are wishing Apple would make up their mind and let one of the new styles bake all the way through to interface builder.
I like the look of Mail and iTunes. I just don’t like metal finder. :)
Thanks for the mention Bob!
Iridium is now version 1.6.3 and I think you might be happy with some of the stuff that I have tweaked recently.
:) steven