My favorite line is, “Have you even read the HIG?” It’s very relevant because I suspect that many of the so-called “experts” that spout off on it have barely even made an attempt to.

First you get a “new metal” busy wondow (with an ALL metal look - unlike other apps which have a metal title bar only). Next an open file dialog in “classic Aqua”, finally a weird GarageBand “plastic and wood” window! It is horrid, if you’re doing other things you can end up looking at the “open dialog” wondering ‘what app is that for?’ because it doesn’t look like GarageBand.

And don’t even get me started on Finder’s “switch state windows”!

As for the “floating black glass pallette” it only makes sense when the app is normally run “full screen”, and why they aren’t “white glass” I can’t imagine (that would look more like normal Aqua stuff).

Perhaps Leopard will be better.

One of my pet peeves is when people have dialogs with a default button defined, but no cancel. I’ve recently written to the 1Passwd developers about this as it’s inconsistent and makes it hard to issue a dismissal, whereas most dialogs, such as the “Shut Down” dialog in OS X have a default button that you activate by pressing enter, and a cancel button that is activated by pressing the space bar or escape.

It may be boring, but it’s the little inconsistencies that can add up to ruin a user experience.

And how much is Apple violating at the moment? One paragraph or so about the color of the windows? What’s the problem?

Absolutely. That’s exactly the point that motivated me to write this article in the first place.

Moving the mouse without pressing the mouse button moves the cursor, or pointer.

If you didn’t know that, how are you ever going to even start XCode?

And how much is Apple violating at the moment? One paragraph or so about the color of the windows? What’s the problem?

As long as the widget set is consistent in function, and placement, differing looks for differing apps are a good thing imho.

quick, make it consistent.

Oops! Thanks, I needed that.

HUD windows - those should slowly replace regular Utility panels

Possibly. Though I think if they start popping up everywhere, we could be in for a bit of a disaster, really. Thinking of Photoshop with HUD windows littered all over the place would be reason enough (for me, anyway) to use alternatives whenever possible.

HUD often works well, but the level of consistency just isn’t there. I think if we see a complete replacement of Aqua, it’s likely that these (or some other type) of panels replace the existing ones.

I do encourage people to use Aqua in their apps

Absolutely. If every app had a custom UI, then there wouldn’t be any point in having this thing called “Aqua” anyway. Using the classes provided by Apple means that they can easily change the look of the entire system by changing their core frameworks. So if they decide to go for “Azua” or something (ok, bad example), the Aqua apps would just fit the new look without any effort.

The phrase “The HIG is dead” started with John Gruber’s talk at C4, but I think he didn’t really mean it in the way you say everyone mentions it.

I agree, and that’s why a few things needed to be cleared up. The vibe we currently get from quick scans or Google searches indicates a complete redundancy of the Apple HIG, when that’s far from the case.

One big point I remember from reading the HIG is that you should try to conform to standards when you can, but you can deviate when that is not possible or practical.

And that big point seems to me to be exactly what most people are doing. So there really shouldn’t be that big a fuss.

pointless departure from standards just makes software harder and more frustrating to learn and use.

I can relate to that. It is so frustrating sometimes when unexpected surprises pop up. You’d expect Ctrl-S to save, and Ctrl-Z to undo, and so it should remain.