Earlier today, John Gruber tweeted:
Ive and his team completely remake Mac OS X next year, right?
When I saw that scroll by in Tweetbot, I realized something. Look at these two pieces of art, both from Apple’s website:
Before the WWDC keynote, based solely on this art — which was hanging as banners in Moscone’s lobby — it wouldn’t have been crazy to think that OS X was getting a new coat of paint, just like its mobile brother was rumored to receive.
iOS 7 is defined by thin text and lots of white space, and the OS X Mavericks artwork closely matches that aesthetic.
However, Mavericks doesn’t bring a sweeping UI overhaul to OS X. While iBooks, Maps and a handful of other new features are being added with this release, the big changes coming to OS X this fall are under the hood.
While OS X’s interface has changed drastically over the years, it’s slowed since 10.5 stripped the brushed metal away. However, I don’t believe it’s as stagnant as iOS had become. Yes, OS X Mavericks removes leather and some of the other silly things brought over from iOS, but the core look is still modern and clean, and more importantly, works really well with a mouse or trackpad. While Apple might “completely remake” OS X in the future, I don’t really see the need at this point.