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Macs with Music

The Life and Death of Aqua in Apple Software and Mac OS X

- 2007.08.23

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I mourn the death of Aqua. It's become fairly obvious that the life of Mac OS X will continue without it - Aqua is slowly dwindling out of Apple's programs and OS X.

Birth

Aqua was born when iMovie 2 came out. This was still in the Platinum era of Mac OS 8 and 9. The next trace of Aqua showed up with iMovie's music-playing brother, iTunes. This was in the late days of OS 9, and it was becoming fairly obvious this was going to be the user interface of Mac OS X.


The Aqua-striped menu bar as seen in the OS X Public Beta.

Then Steve Jobs made it official at Macworld 2000. With its pinstripes and smooth curves, Aqua complemented the iMacs, Power Macs, and iBooks of the time. And as Mac OS X evolved, Aqua evolved with it.

Life

In Jaguar (Mac OS X 10.2), the changes were subtle, flattening out some of the icons and removing some of the pinstripes.


A Finder window in the OS X Public Beta - very obvious stripes.

In Panther (OS X 10.3), the changes grew much more noticeable. The new changes added the brushed metal look of the then-new Safari to complement the PowerBook G4 and Power Mac G5. There were new icons across the whole system, transparency was much toned down, and the Finder was totally redesigned.


Even the Dock has had strong Aqua stripes, as in this image from the OS X Public Beta.

Not much was added to Tiger (OS X 10.4) from Panther beyond a new, toned down Apple icon.

Death

Aqua got put on life support when iTunes 7 came out. iTunes sports a new look with rubbery scroll bars and a plain metal look. All of Apple's new applications, including iLife and iWork, have begun sporting it.


iTunes 7 shows Apple's new, as yet unnamed user interface. Expect it to be everywhere in Leopard.

The iPhone doesn't have single trace of Aqua in it! And all of the Leopard betas for the few last months use the currently unnamed systemwide look of iTunes.

I will miss Aqua and will enjoy using it on Tiger on my iMac G4/700 MHz, which is apparently going to be unsupported under Leopard, which "requires" an 800 MHz G4 or better (another rant).

Good-bye, Aqua, I hope to see you in another life. LEM

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