[moonmonkey]

Who actually thinks Snow Leopard will get a new look for final release?
I would love this to happen but think its very unlikely.

It seems like with every major OS release there are rumours of a secret theme which will only be shown very late in the game, the idea seems very cool but it never seems to happen.

The only major aesthetic changes I can remember were System 7, OS 8, and then OSX (which had previously introduced Aqua in DP3) and possibly the metal bits in Panther, none of these theme changes were left to the last minute and were present in all but the earliest builds.

So please sharpen your voting fingers:

[moep]

[x] It won’t look like Leopard but it won’t get a completely new look either.

[moonmonkey]

So you think they will revert to an old theme?
That seems even more unlikely.

[Maflynn]

I don't think it will have a whole new theme or look, just a modification of the existing one.

[Salty]

I'm guessing a move to a more iTunes/Mail like look.

[seanc]

I assumed you wanted the title to be "Snow Leopard - New Theme Happening?" rather than "Now Leopard - New Theme Happening?" and changed it.

[moep]

Originally Posted by moonmonkey 

So you think they will revert to an old theme?
That seems even more unlikely.

emphasis on completely

I believe small parts will receive a slight overhaul, but not enough to changes to call it a completely new look.

[Salty]

I'm hoping for pink bunnies...

[MartiNZ]

I'm thinking after they did well making the GUI pretty consistent across apps in Leopard, they will go off the rails again and start with several different looks in Snow Leopard.

So far QuickTime seems to only run now with the minimal black title bar - which is nice because it cuts down on the window size and you can get a bigger viewing for less screen real estate. I don't see anything else moving to that black title bar look, and I don't think I would encourage it.

And Safari 4 presents us with another new paradigm which, no matter how hard I try, I completely fail to like.

New efforts from screenshots such as new preferences in Preview just make it more like other applications, and certainly still look very Aqua; in fact a bit old-school Aqua, rather than the quite confused Mail.app GUI.

In summary, no I don't think there will be a new theme; just more tweaks not necessarily in the right direction.

[Judge_Fire]

Some of it depends on whether they have made any significant progress on resolution independence in 10.6. The new building blocks for UIs would be based on contemporary needs AND all UIs would need to be updated, providing a good break for unifying things.

TextEdit has been the poster child in 10.5, but I haven't checked the latest 10.6 builds on whether any other Apple apps have got it to work. The documentation hasn't gotten updated in a long time, it seems.