Forums | MacLife

It's not so much that I think having the apps hidden until brought up by a gesture is necessary, I just think it would be a nice interface tweak.  I suppose if I think about it for very long, I can guess that Apple probably won't do this as it would add one extra step to launch something, and if anything they want to reduce number of steps.  I personally would prefer it I think, but seeing it in action may not work well.

My idea of course is just a first step though, and I'm sure designers out there can think of a better way.  I just want to see something new.  I want to see the user interface mature and evolve going forward.

For anyone still interested in this thread...

While my first choice is still to see a new Apple designed UI for the iPhone (possibly similar to what I describe above), I realize that this might take Apple awhile to design and evolve the OS into. In the mean time I have found a good first step that would satisfy my need for something new.

In researching ideas to customize my iPhone, just found some interesting mock-up photos of possible background screens for the home screen. Instead of the boring basic black background, these themes are tiger and leopard inspired home screens. I think this would be really cool. I also found some jailbreaking tips for changing this and using custom themes. Now, I'm not interested at all in jailbreaking. But I do want something new. So, I think Apple should design some new themes built into the OS, that people can use. Also these could be easily made and shared so we can customize as we see fit. Here are some links...

Tiger:
http://www.i-marco.nl/weblog/archive...ful_ipod__ipho

Leopard: for this next link, you need to scroll down about halfway down the page
http://www.everythingicafe.com/forum...een-22602.html


Both of these look really cool.
Apple, if you are listening, Themes are what people want

Well this sucks.  I'm not sure why the links don't work.  I tested them at home in Safari before posting them, and they worked just fine.  Trying to either click them in IE here at work or cut and paste them into firefox is similarly not working.

Well the first link should have taken you to a mock up of an iPhone home screen with all the same application icons and positions, but instead of a black background screen, it has the blue screen from tiger or panther.  The blue is just a very welcome change and gives depth and a more 3D mac-like look.

The second link is a similar mock-up but with the default leopard screen (time machine look), and then a glossy 3D dock.

There is a program for jailbroken iPhones called SummerBoard, and if you google it you can find many themes people can use if they are willing to jailbreak.  I think Apple could expand on this and make some default themes and also encourage users to make and share their own themes with each other.  I'll try to find some links that actually work and post them later.