Not a fan of the tricksy Address Book UI but I thought I was saved by discovering that you could switch into classic view if you enable the debug menu.
There are screen grabs online showing it when Lion was in Beta. Apple in the wisdom seem to have killed it as it is now not there.
Is there any way to get this working now?
I'm with you Simon.
Why did they remove the option? We know it was there!!!
If anything they should have just moved it from the Debug menu into Preferences!
I'm baffled as to way Apple is taking these gigantic backward steps in usability with some of their apps… ??? I really don't like having to take all these extra steps to view info that was once right there in plain sight. (The same goes for iCal since Leopard, but even more so now in LION.)
What purpose was there to change it? Just to make it look like a real book for Grandma? If I wanted a real paper address book I wouldn't be using a modern computer OS!!!
There is one way to take away the leather thingy, this is the link below
I did it for my ical, it looks so much better now.
Cal
Thanks for the link.
I will be doing that for sure, but will also be looking for an Address Book replacement that will still sync with MobileMe/iCloud if they don't add the ability to change back to classic view.
I found an option to 100% replace the now worthless iCal with here: http://www.busymac.com/
Agree 100% - as a Mac user since 1989, I'm stunned at the incredible step backwards Address Book and iCal took with Lion.
Designing software to look like real world hardware objects was a terrible idea in the 1990s when Sony and IBM tried it and failed (anyone remember the Sony MagicLink PDA with Magic Cap UI? The IBM realphone UI that had all of the drawbacks of a physical phone with none of the benefits of a graphical UI?).
Ironically the new UI of both Address Book and Calendar comes out just as the following Steve Jobs quote from 2006 is getting a lot of press thanks to this Wall Street Journal article.
“Look at the design of a lot of consumer products — they’re really complicated surfaces. We tried to make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don’t put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through.” [MSNBC and Newsweek interview, Oct. 14, 2006]
The best way to provide to Apple is through their feedback site:
I'm baffled as to way Apple is taking these gigantic backward steps in usability with some of their apps
The goal is to simplify the Mac OS. To make it more like ....... Facebook?
How do I restore classic view address book
