Adobe Guru Moves to Microsoft to Help Improve Windows

Whenever an OS X vs. Windows argument arises, a common theme is design and aesthetics. It’s no secret, Microsoft is not the king of amazing user interfaces, although what’s been pushed out has at least been usable (some would argue about the Office 2007 ribbons, however). Microsoft is looking to change this plague they’ve suffered with a new hire, Mark Hamburg from Adobe.

Mark was a programming guru for Adobe Lightroom, which happens to be a fantastic looking – and intuitive – application. The problem, though, is that its UI is far different from Photoshop, so changes like that aren’t going to be practical for Windows. If simple ribbons added to Office burdened some people, overhauling an entire OS would make them switch to OS X or Linux!

Still, Apple fanboys love to shout at Windows fans for their ugly and counter-intuitive OS, so hopefully this move will help Microsoft push out a great looking and well designed product, instead of the same product with see-thru glass.

Designing a user interface for a product with as limited a range of abilities as Lightroom is a very different task than a user interface for an entire operating system, though. But even if Windows doesn’t directly copy Lightroom, for example, by changing its look to suit the task at hand, I for one would welcome a version of Windows with elegance, personality, and power.

Source: Underexposed Blog