OS X doesn't suffer from the File Menu/Close Button proximity problem either since the menu bar isn't attached to the window. That proximity alone should be a disqualifier for this new layout.
Might be a little bit off topic, but the detached menu bar gradually pisses me off as screen gets bigger. It's really a long-distance travel for the mouse to click the menu on a 1920x1200 screen. Now Apple is rolling out 27' iMac with an even bigger screen ...
The situation gets even worse when I use multiple monitors as menu bar only shows on one of them.
I don't use menus often, either. I guess this design really forces app developers to carefully choose buttons and other widgets on the UI to avoid menu as much as possible.
But on the occasions when menu is required, the experience sucks big on my dual-monitor setting. And there is no keyboard shortcut to ease the pain.
Yeah I know that trick ... but it's not quite the same as ALT+(underlined character of the menu item) thing on other systems. For fast typists, it's pretty awkward to hit the first and then use arrow keys to move around. I wanna go directly to "File" menu by hitting SUPER+F, for example :|
As a long time Mac OS X user I recall the general feeling was that the Mac OS X window controls where a big step back from Mac OS 9. Most felt that they put all 3 controls on the same side (rather than put the dangerous close button on the opposite side) for purely aesthetic reasons i.e. so they could use the traffic light metaphor. Which is a bit cheesy when you think about it.
> People with experience with Windows know how easy it is to hit the wrong control and accidentally close down the whole application when setting it aside was the goal. Apple has actually provided some pretty decent spacing in these controls, in addition to enlarging their size. I wouldn't expect the kind of error rates from this that people have been predicting, although the original scheme of having "dangerous" on one side of the title bar and "benign" on the other made a lot more sense.
I think the key complaint at the time was:
> The button sequence is also a problem, in that it clashes badly with both the current layout and with Windows. This will also be a problem.
The proximity of toolbars in OSX can be a problem in relation to the window controls. In Safari for example the back button is extremely close to the close button in the top left of the window. Unless we want to waste a ton of screen space on isolating window controls I'm not sure there are any better options out there. You can't assume the top right of the window will be devoid of other UI controls so it's not totally safe either. Somewhere in the past I remember reading about the idea of making UI controls "sticky" by slowing or snapping the cursor to a control when you got near it along with using some haptic feedback built into the mouse. I think these are both better ideas than trying to shuffle around pixels to solve the problem. No matter where you put it there will always be a chance of a miscommunication between your eyes and clicking finger.
Someone mentioned multiple monitors/high resolution -- personally I think none of the major desktop operating systems have scaled to handle multiple monitors or high resolution displays very well. We're still stuck with this idea everything useful has to be on the edges of the screen.
The situation gets even worse when I use multiple monitors as menu bar only shows on one of them.