Comment by Naracion
4 years ago
Ex graphic designer here, but don't (and never have) used Mac. I highly respect this project and initiative, and the following is more a commentary on my own reaction than your product.
I read the title--finesse of MacOS. I open the link, and the first thing I see at the top is the circular raven logo vertically misaligned with the header on mobile.
That made me think, okay let's try desktop version instead, so I switched to desktop render (still on mobile browser) -- this time the logo is vertically aligned but the padding / margin on top and bottom are lower than on the left.
This is of course nitpicking in the larger scheme of things--I haven't tried the OS, but the screenshots look great and definitely look like MacOS. However, with the title setting up expectations and the first impression being of a misaligned logo made me (unfairly) dismiss the project since I felt you were trying to claim a level of finesse that might not be there.
I don't use Linux, so I'll never really use this product, but it's interesting to me--why do people / projects/teams (in general--not just this product) try to emulate the "finesse" of Apple products? To me, it sets up unrealistic expectations from that product, and I might dismiss an otherwise excellent solution if it doesn't live up to that comparison.
I'm not sure that caring about the design of a desktop environment and website are equivalent - if nothing else, they're different skills to implement. And in any event, it's an early-stage project; that their goals aren't realized yet is hardly surprising.
> but the screenshots look great and definitely look like MacOS
Some do, but many look quite janky -- for example, check out the grey menu bar with Windows-98-style underlined shortcut keys in this one: https://ravynos.com/images/airyx_0.3.0pre_about.png
Perhaps I'm missing something, but this doesn't seem particularly visually different than the "aqua skins" that have been available on *nix for years.
https://github.com/ravynsoft/website/pull/28
> why do people / projects/teams (in general--not just this product) try to emulate the "finesse" of Apple products
Because people like them. Why do all sedans look kind of alike? Why are there dozens knock-off chairs that emulate the Aeron? Some people, myself included, really like the look and feel of macOS, but may want to run *nix instead. Enough of those people got together and made an OS.
Moacos is a posix compatible Unix.
Sedans mostly look alike because of safety regulations. There’s only one basic shape that can meet all the regs and is plausible to manufacture.
> I don't use Linux, so I'll never really use this product
Isn't it FreeBSD?
Yeah it’s a common misconception.
This is closer to macOS than it is to Linux.
From a product marketing standpoint, they could have picked a better name. My brain keeps going "Rav-yin" instead of "Raven".
I know why these kinds of pseudo words are chosen for products, they're unique and easy to search. But there are better ways to do this IMO. FreeBSD is a prime example of a great product name.
I noticed the logo misalignment but the rest of the website was pretty good so I figured it was a one-off issue (rather than representative of a trend).
Was there other issues that bothered you?
I didn't notice the misaligned logo until you pointed it out (but I'm a guy who prefers 'ugly things that work ' rather than 'unusable junk that looks good')
What I did notice though was th first screenshot with the red, yellow, green buttons of osx window titles.
I think this is a really bad design, and I don't understand how people can like this.
Sure, nice round "buttons", but very unclear what their purpose is.
I think this is something of a red line through Mac/iOS: The preference of unclear user interface that "looks good" instead of a clear interface that communicates with the user.
I've used Mac for years, and still don't know what the yellow button does.
I like the idea of this new OS, but please make better design choices that Apple :-)
> I've used Mac for years, and still don't know what the yellow button does.
Minimize. That’s what the yellow button does. It’s as simple as clicking it once.
Kind of unrelated to the actual discussion but I just realised that I never minimize things on mac. I know what the yellow bubble does, never once clicked it, neither used the shortcut whatever it is.
Is this common? I used it on windows but for years now, I have a ton of windows on top of each other or I just cmd+w my way out of one.
Maybe this is the idiomatic way and I’m not an outlier though. Is it?
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or, mousing over it and seeing the little minimize line.
I’d propose going all the way back to NEXTSTEP and taking that as inspiration. It’s similar enough to OS X that it would feel familiar to Mac users, but without the 20 years of being "function follows form"ed to death.
In terms of an interface designed for clarity, I think the epitome was Windows 95.
But that involved portable thousands of hours interviewing and videotaping regular people trying to use Windows and then addressing issues found.
> I think this is a really bad design, and I don't understand how people can like this.
What do you think would be better? Can you give an example?
Widgets that indicates purpose.
It can be tricky to make everything self explanatory, but at least if you use icons or text rather than just colour you give the brain something to help you recognize.
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To be fair, I remember the apple website rendering pretty badly on mobile device for a long time, at some point it actually made me feel like this company had really low UI standards. (I think it was the versions between 2007 and 2017 and didn't used their products at that time)