Office 12 interface revealed - OS X UI designers weep
Honestly, I'm trying to get past that old "they're ripping Apple off!" complaint, but then stuff like this shows up and just gets my blood boiling again.
You're looking at the recently unveiled interface of Microsoft's forthcoming Office 12. (Warning: the site's been Slashdot'ed so it'll be sluggish, if you get in at all) Yes, that window's title bar looks incriminatingly like brushed metal, and yes: the selected "Write" button and all those other options and settings (bold, italic, underline, justification, etc) look amazingly Aqua-ish. In a way this shouldn't be surprising, as you could stack this up alongside their other recent offenses, such as IE 7's blatant "long-lost-brother" resemblance to Safari RSS.
In my opinion: sad. I don't want to blab on or start pointing fingers at burned out Microsoft UI engineers, but feel free to weigh in if you agree (or not) that this is close to a UI crime against an adolescent UI industry.
