This one makes me laugh. Shifting elements around a few pixels on focus isn’t a terrible idea; I’ve designed it, and it looks great in flat comps. It can give an element more dimensionality if it looks like it’s physically pressed in, for example. However, when it comes to implementing it, it just ends up looking broken, like this:
See? The Amazon icon on the unselected tab comes dangerously close to the edge of the tab. The label, also, doesn’t get shifted down. It looks like a mistake, it feels like a mistake. It is a mistake. (One, I’ll point out, I didn’t make.) It’s too subtle, and users won’t get it (I’ve seen them not get it); I can’t believe Apple missed this one. Oh, wait, yeah I can. Once again, lack of user testing produces inferior results.
On the other hand, I will hand it to them for reversing their position on the position and behavior of the tabs. Still, the icon thing? Fail.
Why no love for multiple/nested remote connections? I really don’t get this one. If you’re using Apple Remote Desktop (or Screen Sharing in Leopard), you can’t remote into a machine that’s running a remote desktop client.
That’s unfortunate, and something Microsoft’ Terminal Services does with no fuss. In fact, it’s specifically designed for it. Connect to a gateway machine (in a DMZ, say), then on to whatever box(es) you need. On the whole, TS is really great, actually; something that’s really pretty damn complicated to get right, that they do excellently. The biggest pisser? ARD costs $400. Maybe they expect administrators to do everything at the command line? Sure, you can, but a slick GUI makes mundane tasks faster and easier. The lack of these tools is, IMO, a huge impediment to OS X making a dent in business/enterprise environments. It’s too bad; I’d love to see something like Microsoft’s System Center Essentials (full disclosure: I worked on it) for Macs.
So. If you’re going to sell a service that’s based on, you know, being good with words online, maybe avoid an obvious redundancy?
Teasing with features that don’t work sucks. In this case, Safari offers to mail a link to the page. Nice, right? Well, no such luck when I actually tried to use it:
Huh. OK. Well, I do use Mail.app; maybe it’s not set as the default mail application or something? Well, nope, that’s not it:
So, really, WTF? How on earth is this complicated? If adding <a href="mailto:what@evs"> to a web page can trigger whatever the default mail client to open and compose a message (and always work; when’s the last time you had that one fail?), then what’s the deal with two applications— both that Apple wrote— not talking to each other. This shouldn’t be a bug. I shouldn’t have to try to figure out what the problem is. Fail!
The drag-to-install is a pretty standard paradigm in OS X, as is using a custom background image to spiffy up one’s disk image folder in Finder. This example from Adium combines instruction with cuteness in a particularly stylish and memorable way. The duck(?) throwing up his wings is adorable-tastic.
