You might be right that it's taking it a bit too far, but I think it's at least debatable.
I'm going to side with both of you on this one. I think it's fairly safe to say that many of the pioneers of the look were influenced by Apple, and Apple in turn influenced by said pioneers.
Even before two-point-ugh, the Apple look influenced designers. It wasn't long after Aqua debuted that the "shiny lozenge button" look spread rapidly. (In the case of some web apps I deal with at work, it mutated horribly to encompass the "shiny lozenge with aliased Comic Sans MS text" look.)
The "horizon line" of Tiger's menu bar is everywhere you look these days. I'm 97.2% sure the first time I saw the "wet floor" look was on Apple's website. In a strange, retro-esq way, the matte gradient look of the *cough cough ahem* "unified" toolbar is now the de facto trendy look, albeit in various colours.
Here's hoping that Leopard brings some coherence back to OS X. If it's released and the Finder is still a combination of metal and beach balls, I'll be worried about what Apple's core focus is.
by colin — Mar 24
I'm going to side with both of you on this one. I think it's fairly safe to say that many of the pioneers of the look were influenced by Apple, and Apple in turn influenced by said pioneers.
Even before two-point-ugh, the Apple look influenced designers. It wasn't long after Aqua debuted that the "shiny lozenge button" look spread rapidly. (In the case of some web apps I deal with at work, it mutated horribly to encompass the "shiny lozenge with aliased Comic Sans MS text" look.)
The "horizon line" of Tiger's menu bar is everywhere you look these days. I'm 97.2% sure the first time I saw the "wet floor" look was on Apple's website. In a strange, retro-esq way, the matte gradient look of the *cough cough ahem* "unified" toolbar is now the de facto trendy look, albeit in various colours.
Here's hoping that Leopard brings some coherence back to OS X. If it's released and the Finder is still a combination of metal and beach balls, I'll be worried about what Apple's core focus is.