See, I was going to originally title this "Apple's Secret Theme Tool!!", in an effort to clutch your e-eyeballs dramatically. (I've gotta get this here vortal to be more sticky!) Unfortunately, a public patent filing isn't exactly "secret". And this is all about one of the most interesting Apple patent filings I've seen lately.

Well, interesting to me, anyway. My job has been heavily user interface design-tastic these days, and I'm also personally (and perhaps unhealthily) obsessed with the concept of resolution independence. So when Macsimum News posts a story about a Apple patent regarding a resolution independent user interface, my nerd-senses start tingling faster than an morning shower with Dr. Bronners. (Except without the crazy-ass text.)

First, if you're super curious, download patent filing itself, courtesy USPTO. I've made it into a nice PDF for you:

Apple Themes Patent.pdf (2 MB)

Resawhosa Indewhatnow?

Time for a quick lesson in total deep nerd town. Oh, sweet resolution independence: you're almost upon us, and you go something like this: the pixel density of LCD displays is getting higher, while the physical screen sizes are largely the same. That means that, in the future, you'll probably have a good old 23" Cinema Display on your desk, but it'll pack a whole lot more pixels than it does today.

Now, if you were to use today's Mac OS X on that display, everything would be really tiny, because a button can only be drawn at one, fixed size. More pixels, with fixed (72 DPI) controls, equals tiny town, i.e. Aqua Villechaize.

A long term solution is needed, one that all OS developers are looking at: a user interface that can scale at will. A resolution independent interface, even. Have an Apple High-DPI MegaCinema Display? No problem. Just scale the user interface to twice its regular size. Every single button, title bar, piece of text and scroll widget draws itself at a new size. The result is silky smooth — beautiful buttons, beautifully clickable, and beautifully high-resolution. That's the idea, anyway. It just needs to, you know, be programmed.

If you were to do this today in Mac OS X 10.4, the user interface would look pixelated (and you can do this using Quartz Debug) — graphics are just doubled to twice their size. That's because the Mac OS X UI is still rooted in Mac OS 8 days, defined by a series of resource files (!) and bitmaps. There's just no space in the crusty old format for "bigger sizes", let alone "flexible sizes".

Apple's Fascinating Plan

Now, if you were to ask me how to solve this problem, I would have said: "just create a bunch of graphics for each of the different DPI settings! Done!". So you have your 72 DPI button, and your 288 DPI button, etc. Multiple copies of everything. (In fact, this is largely what developers will have to do, in many areas.) And this is why I'm not an Apple rocket doctor.

Here's the deal with this patent: Apple's approach seems is far more interesting, and ultimately more amazing. In essence, they're creating a user interface that's completely programmatically defined. I.e., not an exported series of graphic resources, but a series of instructions that define how the graphics should be drawn, from the ground up, just like you might create a graphic in Photoshop, all the way from "Create New Document" to "Add Drop Shadow". That means that talented Apple artists can sit down with a special internal tool — not Illustrator, not Photoshop — and craft the user interface of their dreams. And when it's time to scale it, meanmo! It just, theoretically, works, because each element is made of a series of layered, defined steps. New, higher resolution versions are instantly rendered based on the original (XML?) specification. Essentially, Apple has invented a scaleable hybrid vector/bitmap user interface that is created and edited by their own full-featured graphics tool. Phew! This is, as far as I know, a total first in the industry.

And did I mention this patent names Mark Zimmer as its inventor? You know, the guy who freakin' created Painter? Yow.

The Theme Tool

Far more interesting to me than the words in the patent were the pictures in the patent. Of course, we all know by now that Steve Jobs isn't too keen on allowing Mac OS X to switch themes, for a lot of reasons I can understand.

That makes these pictures all the more interesting — these crappy screenshots of Apple's internal theme creation tool, presumably being used right now to create the next great UI. Put simply, this may be the first and last time you'll ever see this thing.

Check it out — full-featured is an understatement. (Download the .pdf for more.)


So, this is some intense technology.

And if I were a betting man, I'd say we're going to see the fruits of this labor very, very shortly. It looks like Apple now has the tools to create a user interface for the future — all that's left is to see what the future actually looks like.

Bonus Macworld Note

If you're going to be at Macworld Expo on Tuesday at 4:30, stop by booth #408 in the South Hall, as famous Macintosh bundtcake — sorry, pundit — John Gruber of Daring Fireball has invited yours truly to do some kind of thing. It's at the Macworld Magazine booth. Are we talking? Debating? Jello wrestling? Probably talking. Come say hello!

Happy New Year, dudes and dude-ladies. A few followup Blog Bits™ and pieces to clear out of the brain.

Buggy Saints Row

For those of you who enjoyed my questionable buggy musical tour de force — or is that tour de farce! (hilarious) — I thought I'd pass along the songs in MP3 format, for your portable musical game bug comedy pleasure.

Here they are: Where's My Car.mp3, Stuck Again.mp3, What Is This Place.mp3, and Lost In The World (Bonus Track).mp3.

Or, if you prefer, all in one archive: Buggy Saints Row - The Musical.zip (6.3 MB).

Buggy Saints Lawrence

Last night I had the opportunity to be a guest on David Lawrence's The David Lawrence Show. We talked about two things: Buggy Saints Row and Panic's very own Transmit! "Whoah", you're saying. How do a corny musical and the world's most totally radical FTP client (full disclosure for journalistic clarity: TRANSMIT R GRATE) possibly relate to each other? You might be surprised by the results!

Turns out that David was deeply involved in Saints Row. He was heavily responsible for the game script, was responsible for all of the in-game radio matieral, and even performed many of the voices (including Stefan!). And, as it doubly turns out, David used Transmit to send, via SFTP, over 11,000 (!) individual audio assets over to Volition, Saints Row's developer. He uses Transmit's "Save As Droplet..." feature to create a series of cute little Favorites droplets that live in his dock, so that he simply drags his various files into his dock and they go where they need to go. How cool is that? It's the circle of life!

Listen to David talking about it (277 KB). Or, if you're curious and crazy, you can download the whole segment for a mere $0.25. Hearing my voice on the radio is even worse than over the Internet!

Wii + PS3 = FIGHT

Have you noticed? PS3's are basically everywhere right now. Here's photographic proof: both Best Buy and GameStop were advertising ample supplies of 60GB PS3's. Les tells me he visited Circuit City, and, after inquiring about the Wii, had them steer him rapidly towards a stack of unsold PS3's. Hooray bottoming eBay market?

Wii's impossible to find, PS3's easy to find: can this last? Is it all about the high PS3 price? Is it Wii buzz? Is it kids and Christmas? What will happen when both consoles are in ample supply and there's no major holiday around the corner? This will be interesting to watch. Here's my 6-month prediction: the X360 will be #2, the Wii #3, the PS3 #4, and of course, the PS2 will remain a mind-bogglingly, incomprehensibly, time-to-make-the-dumb-nuts #1.

Subway Sign

My favorite of all applied Subway Sign Pranks submissions, of which there was one, came from someone very near and dear to me: my dad. Dad is awesome! His "Dr. Who Stew" sign may have slipped down a little due to poor Cabel measuring, but the joke is still fantastic, thanks to a liberal sprinkling of Daleks. And you know — loosens tie — it's pretty ironic too, because every time I eat at Subway, I feel like they've EXTERMINATE-d the taste! WING WANG KA-ZING POW!!

Wii Help Cat In Depth

"Dan C" of Lost Garden uses my Help Cat video as a launching point for an extremely interesting and very deep interaction design analysis. Check it out: it's dense, but insightful, especially for us UI nerds.

My New Years Resolution?

Two words. Learn Forth.