Leopard beta 9a410 shots flood the net: new UI theme

A little bummed about Apple's lack of consumer announcements earlier today? Well, at very least there's a swarm of screenshots of the latest leaked beta version (9a410) of Apple's latecomer OS. Nothing too crazy that you probably haven't already seen if you follow the OS X betas, but a few of the interesting new bits include the Finder QuickView, a new Bluetooth device manager, and perhaps most notably, everything is finally skin-unified and looks like iTunes 7 (as might have been expected when that version of iTunes launched). Plenty of shots to roll with if you're not the type too busy staring at Vista's purdy new Aero.

Read - Hackint0sh shots and bugs
Read - Think Secret gallery

[LordFarkward @ Apr 16th 2007 2:43AM]

not once have i thought that i'd ever 'defend' engadget... but... like... dude, like, WOW... u're so awesome that u have read and can link to something that was reported before engadget (4 friggin' days, man)

seriously though, i don't think engadget has ever beamed themselves with pride for the fact that they're always "first!" like those friggin' annoying "first!" comment posters, or like sammy being first in every-consumer-electronic-goods-possible. this is just a gadget 'news' site where they try *very hard* to say something funny or sarcastic about, and that's just pretty much it...

if u're really all for being "first!", go somewhere else. i think the fact that u're bashing someone for something that isn't even relevant is really ticking me off... but ya, wotever, it's unlikely u'll take me serious anyways. have a good life anyways.

[PeteC @ Apr 16th 2007 8:33AM]

Hey Neptune,

"Humour" called and it wants you to please stop using sarcasm, apparently your use of sarcasm is giving humour a bad name.

Seriously, I'm sure you aren't going to take this as an insult as I wasn't here before the thread had any comments, back when it was cool. I don't have time to scour Digg every day, Engadget does a lot of that for me so if it's a few days after the real geeks got their grubby mits all over it, I think I'll deal, it still saved me a lot of time.

[David @ Apr 16th 2007 1:47AM]

I like it.. Looks clean.

[Rohan @ Apr 16th 2007 2:11AM]

hmm
it looks like someone used uno for this just because it looks so hideously ugly
if this is for real then apple is crazy

[Jean-Michel Decombe @ Apr 16th 2007 2:27AM]

What's wrong with simple, readable, and functional? I hope they can shoot the Finder in the head to put it out of its misery, though, and replace it with something that works.

[Michael La Framboise @ Apr 16th 2007 2:31AM]

Remember people, leopard is still a good half a year away, so this ass ugly theme will definitely be gone. :)

[Sang @ Apr 16th 2007 2:36AM]

This is not a new UI theme, it's UNO it even says so in the forums linked with the images. WHy in the world someone would do something as assinine as use UNO in screenshots is beyond me.

[t-bone @ Apr 16th 2007 2:39AM]

Nothing says "reader appreciation" like linking to a site that requires registration to view the images! Those screenshots are so bland. Some of the transparency is a bit interesting, but that's it.

[Jesse @ Apr 16th 2007 3:10AM]

YAWN!

Who is the boring grey box now? This is about as exciting as a service pack. And it looks like they ripped a few things off Vista and Office. Email formatting looks a lot like the Ribbon from Office.

[michael @ Apr 16th 2007 3:24AM]

I hate to say this, but this kind of looks bland. I mean this kind of look would be ok, during the early 2000's, but it's already 2007. Can't it look better than that? Sure, it's clean, but there's a big difference between clean and bland, and wild and exciting. I would even have to say that Vista's Aero looks better than this. This is not making me want to buy Leopard at all.

[mike @ Apr 16th 2007 3:31AM]

What's wrong with simple, readable, and functional? I hope they can shoot the Finder in the head to put it out of its misery, though, and replace it with something that works.

--

You realize that, since Spotlight, the Finder has been getting way less mileage, right?

It basically needs to be a place where you can organize your files and folders, but, it's a moot point since Spotlight is where you go to find stuff.

[mike @ Apr 16th 2007 3:31AM]

Email formatting looks a lot like the Ribbon from Office
--

Brilliant. You wanna know where templates came from? They came from Pages, genius.

Yeah, MS with a 20 year head start copied the smelly hippies at Cupertino for their latest brilliant idea in the newest version of Office.

[Anonymous @ Apr 16th 2007 3:59AM]

Itunes looks so friggin out of place on a windows PC, it's pretty hilarious. I definitely don't like it compared to Vista, and if the new OSX is going to look like Itunes all over, then I'll be even less tempted to buy a mac book and run Parallels than I am now (Need a new laptop for school in the fall, school gives deep discounts on mac books, but...I've seen alot of batteries bloating and raping the casing, so I dunno)

And good for Engadget, being a few days late with this one. I hate blogs such as Kotaku where noone ever sleeps, and new news is coming in 24/7 (which makes the site hard to navigate; Blink an eye and 2 more pages of news have been added, ugg) keep up the good work.

[Bart @ Apr 16th 2007 4:35AM]

@Micheal: Looks better than Vista??? I think Vista is absolutely wrong, UI wise. The transparency for example is totally not usefull. Looks very cool in the beginning, but when the novelty wears of, it is actually very distracting. You constantly see stuff you are not interested in. Apple is about leaving everything out that is not necessary, and the new UI is following that direction nicely.

http://www.gadgetfriends.com

[Bazza @ Apr 16th 2007 5:02AM]

thats personal opinion, not fact. many others can work and not notice anything going on, and opacity can be easily adjusted.

[treetrunk @ Apr 16th 2007 6:41AM]

@Bart:

Firstly as has been noted you can turn off the transparency if you really don't like it. Secondly, I completely disagree that it's distracting and that you "constantly see stuff you are not interested in". What you can see through a window is blurred out to the point that it's unreadable, and when you maximise a window it becomes opaque so you can really concentrate on it alone.

Personally I find the opposite problem- the inherent transparency in how Macs handle windows within programs is distracting. Take photoshop for example- on the PC when you load it you get a big grey box and all your images and toolbars and everything sit within this box. On the mac, there's no background and they're all seperate entities stuck on top of the desktop and any finder windows etc., which is simply distracting and messy.

[aaron @ Apr 16th 2007 8:50AM]

@PeteC,

Well said!

[brendan Sheehan jnr @ Apr 16th 2007 9:25AM]

Personally I prefer the lighter theme.

[brendan Sheehan jnr @ Apr 16th 2007 9:26AM]

Forgot to add the link to that lighter theme: http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/mail.html

[Argot @ Apr 16th 2007 10:15AM]

God damn that looks ugly!

[dukeoconnor @ Apr 16th 2007 12:19PM]

Well, it's interesting to see that with Vista's arrival the debate has changed from "who needs eyecandy" to "mine looks better than yours," with several talking points for both sides already in place. I guess the eyecandy argument will now go the way of the old command line vs. gui debate, or who needs a mouse debate. I mean, it appears that humans have generally preferred the aesthetically pleasing to the ugly since the beginning of tool making.

[Dan @ Apr 16th 2007 5:13PM]

In my opinion, the Apple OSX UI looks like shit(Both the original and whatever this article linked to)

[aliceof74 @ Apr 16th 2007 8:10PM]

Oooo lets all drool geeks stevie leaked his new OS, Thats Late! Oooo Im sorry bow down geeks bow down God oh I mean Stevie is leaking somthing for munday also bow down geeks. Not me give me a real mans PC give me a dell any day. bow down geeks. stevie farted oh imean he said sumptin.

[Best Buy shopper, Apple closet user. @ Apr 16th 2007 10:08PM]

Wusstastic.