A good UI makes all the difference

Phill Ryu has put together a list of the ten most beautiful mac applications over at his blog. His conclusion is telling: “Developers, listen up. UI matters, a lot more now than it did in OS 9, or does in Windows, and I’m not talking about just slapping in some nice toolbar icons and calling it a day, customers can respond amazingly well to what many programmers will write off as extraneous eye candy.” Go check out his number one pick, Delicious Monster, as a case in point. It has one of the coolest UIs I’ve ever seen and had one of the most successful shareware launches in history, ringing up over $250,000 in sales its first month out the gate. The point is, a good UI can make all the difference, and not just on the desktop.