Mountain Lion without skeuomorphism

Posted by Shtekeris on September 14, 2012 10:09 am 209

Hello!

I'll try to keep it simple. I do not like skeuomorphism at all. It kinda makes sense and works on iOS, because you actually hold the device and touch with your fingers, but whyyyyy on the Mac... hate it. So I had nothing to do and took scissors and brush and pulled the damn leather off my Mac running Mountain Lion. I shared this for a friendly discussion about skeuomorphism and how does it improve anything?

Let's call this an experiment about how the ML would look without skeuomorphism crap.

So here's what I ended up with (everything works and no leather to be found anywhere):

Calendar

This one is well documented mod and you can find tools for this on the internet. I only had to desaturate some buttons.

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via www.bildites.lv

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via www.bildites.lv

Contacts

This mod can also be found on the internet. However, I went a bit further and removed pages on sides and in the middle. It's just so, so, so clean now.

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via www.bildites.lv

Notes

After installing those 2 previous mods I was just stunned how clean everything instantly looks and fired up Pixelmator and kept on going. Basically, I desaturated most of the things, removed leather effect on the toolbar, and put one colored background. Default font was changed to Helvetica. Now

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via www.bildites.lv

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via www.bildites.lv

Now notes actually looks like a decent text editor... for... you know, taking notes. Instead of that yellow, markerfelt craziness.

Mission control

Took the scissors and cut off the linen.. or whatever that was. Color is actually taken from the old texture, so it is still as nice... but clean.

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via www.bildites.lv

Notifications

The same background as the new Mission Control. Again, looking clean and professional.

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via www.bildites.lv

Launchpad

Even folders had that damn linen. Not anymore. Changed folders symbol to something brighter, so it does not pop out as much. At first glance you probably didn't even notice folders. When opened it has the same background as Mission control.

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via www.bildites.lv

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via www.bildites.lv

And here are some shots to prove that Mac instantly looks cleaner, brighter and professional. It suits the hardware so well.

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Conclusion

That is now my OS X Mountain Lion. It runs, everything works, I only changed textures. Done with some tweaks from the net and editing,changing some textures myself. If you like it, I may share it, but at the moment I'm too lazy to do that (: What I encourage you to do, though - is to go crazy and mod it yourself. It's real easy.

But, anyways, instantly the OS X felt so clean again. Pure, professional. I was simply stunned of how clean, bright, refreshing it looks again. Just wow! A consistent UI. And I will never ever go back to that leather/linen crap and will never understand why Apple is doing that. Why?

Which begs the question - why do you like skeuomorphism?

Thank you!