MacOS and trends of popularity

General The tavern
1

No mean to offence anyone or anything, I am just wondering how can it be that EVERYONE tries to duplicate OSX look and feel to fvwm?
I find myself missing my functions and looks from fvwm when using osx. Should I see a doctor? :stuck_out_tongue:

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– Thomas Adam
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2

No you shouldn’t, it just appears that a lot of people like the OS X look, I did too, but not to the point of wanting to emulate it, it was just refreshingly different but by now it’s become just another default look to me.

PS: If people want to discuss this further I’ll split it out in a different discussion in The tavern

3

Well, you might, but he probably wouldn’t know what you were on about. :slight_smile: The explosion of MacOS themes is not unlike that of MWM emulations that the early (circa '93 onwards) '90s saw. It’s worth remembering that people will usually go with what’s popular at the time [1]. What then tends to happen is people will then stick with the trend du jour, leaving the once “popular” style back in the minority, as is the case with MWM today.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see the explosion of MacOS themes to be “old” within the next few months…

– Thomas Adam

[1] Yeah, MWM really was popular once. :slight_smile:

4

It’s funny though, to see that for example Gnome and KDE bears a clear resemlance of OS X and Windows.

It’s funny, too, that whenever a new window manager pops up, among the first themes made for it are themes made to look like either Windows or OS X.

I remember seeing a documentary or something about Microsoft “usability labs” where they pulled people from the street to use a computer with Windows OS, and monitoring how people started using it.
[size=75]Either they didn’t use the data collected from these tests, or then the testers were used to use MS windows, but lied about it :wink: [/size]

I also remember reading some paper about usability in window managers in general (sorry; no link), where the Windows OS got some qritique (among other things) about window button locations. According to the paper, they should be located so, that when one maximizes the window you could just move the cursor to the top corner and click. But on Windows OS there is a something like 5 pixel gap between the corner and the close button.

One of the most crucial things I expect to find in an wm, is the ability to map a key combination of alt+q to close a window. I was happy to see that in OS X.

Bottom line here would be, (I’m overly analyzing today :smiley:) that people tend to go (in addition to what’s popular, like Thomas said) with what they’re familiar to. I guess when one comes familiar to something, they can start investigating how they can improve it to better suit their needs.
That’s when a wall rises with windows, and pretty much with mac, and gnome, and kde too. At least in my opinion.

This leads me to a question; in movies and tv-series we often see futuristic window managers running in a computer. Does anyone know if these are actually themes for existing window manager or, for example, just flash movies?

5

Uh-huh. It is familiarity, but with that is the implied likeness for that interface as well. I am very familiar with the Windows theme, but I wouldn’t use it, given the choice. :slight_smile:

It was actually this very reason that got me looking into alternative OSes. I realised that if there were OSes like some of the films depict, then I’d like to try them, and why shouldn’t I? OK, so the WMs and DEs don’t fit the picture for the ones seem on films, but that’s OK with me. :slight_smile:

The ones you see on films are all fictional – and, ironically enough, probably all inspired from MacOS and/or Windows. :slight_smile:

– Thomas Adam.