Hacker News Reader

Comment by blackhaz | Hacker News Reader

What is an OS finesse?

It appears like they’ve aped some of MacOS design language, but it’s clear they’re engineers, not designers. There’s enough “uncanny valley” between this OS and actual modern Apple UI design that it comes off a bit like all those versions of KDE that tried to look and act exactly like Windows XP and always felt a bit “off.” Their screenshots page is a Frankenstein mess of poor font quality and Apple themes mixed together dating back to OS X.1

I think it’s better when a team actually has designers working for them and comes up with their own real UI standards, (see Pop!_OS). IMO Apple’s UI design isn’t particularly good so it’s not like some holy grail we should copy and paste to Linux.

> IMO Apple’s UI design isn’t particularly good so it’s not like some holy grail we should copy and paste to Linux.

It may not be perfect, but it’s pretty darn good - as especially visible when comparing to this effort presented here. There’s a lot of detail and polish in MacOS interface design and UX people don’t realise until it’s missing.

And that’s exactly what I would call „finesse“

> IMO Apple’s UI design isn’t particularly good so it’s not like some holy grail we should copy and paste to FreeBSD.

Fixed that for you…

Apple’s UI design certainly has flaws. I really don’t understand why they changed the way the System Settings in Ventura/Sonoma(?) now looks like and behaves more like iOS, as an example.

However, as someone who has used GUIs from SunView/Irix Desktop/DECwindows to iPadOS/MacOS, via Windows 2.0/3.0/95/NT/etc. I am of the opinion that Apple is still the most consistent and easy to learn GUI. Even my 80-year old mother manages quite well with her Mac and iPhone.

To me that is kind of the key strength and why Apple has such a good UI story. Its not necessarily that they perfected the UI. There are certainly parts I dislike. But, its consistent. I have to use Windows 11 at work. It is amazing how some windows have been brought up to date with the new design language of Windows 11, but I open up the Windows Event viewer and still has like the Windows 7 design language.

My interpretation would be that it's about the same level of polish ux/ui-wise as macOS. As with OP, unfortunately I don't see it either - the screenshots show some resemblance with macOS but without any of the finesse.

It's not completed yet. The features are listed under the section "project goals" and the download button has a note calling it a developer preview image.

In my experience with some Linux distros goals alone don't necessarily work out, but the approach with trying to be compatible with actual Mac OS apps is already more notable than an Ubuntu reskin.

It will never be completed. GNUstep has been failing at that for decades already.

In the case of macOS, for me it’s for example things like automation via AppleScript, a coherent UI for native apps, the „polish“ of the interface if that makes any sense

Reply on news.ycombinator.com