Mac OS X from a Software Architect's view

I'm now a Mac user. And I really like it.

As a Software Architect I would like to shout out to everyone who hasn't done it yet: If you design software and especially user interfaces, get familiar with the Mac OS for at least a day. You will throw away all the old concepts you had.

Here's what I learned so far:

• Windows users tend to need to customize everything. Well, only Linux-users really can. And Mac users don't want to. They like it the way it is. Somewhere I read "why do you want to change everything if it is just working fine?" So what do Preferences dialogs look like on a Mac: as empty as possible and just the settings you really need to take care of.

• Dialogs on a Mac do not have OK, Cancel or Apply buttons. Instead the settings are applied real time. Undo capability is not available, so your application should take care of via a menu entry or something. A Live Preview feature like in Office 2007 is becoming very popular and reduces unnecessary clicks enormously. Message Boxes should not have Yes/No. buttons. Nobody likes reading message box texts, so make the buttons say something like "Don't save" or "Replace destination file". Vista will do a much better job here.
  

• Add 3D, fading, glossy, reflection effects where you can. This is the big thing about the Mac. You have seen Front Row. You know the magnify effects of the Dock. You have seen Steve Jobs presentations created with Keynote. That all just looks amazing. Copy it!

Conclusion: I have been testing Vista Beta 2 and Mac OS X in the last two weeks. The Wooow effect on the Mac was much higher.