When I evaluate an interface it is done as objectively as possible. Aqua is immature and poorly implemented. It's a mass confusion of paradigms and throws out all the basic information regarding human-computer interaction Apple researched in the 80's.

Poor hardware acceleration? Lay that down to a poor interface application to begin with. There are low-level fundamental problems with the way things are done in Aqua. I can open up a huge can of worms and put it all out there, but I won't. This isn't really the place for it. There are a number of methodologies in place that preclude acceleration. Some of these are carried over from when they were working on Copland. If Aqua is not dealt with on a low level it will not get substantially faster than it is right now - sure, since they're working with 3D textures for the desktop, faster hardware will improve the speed, but it will always feel (be) slower than necessary.

If you don't think the UI is poorly implemented, then I don't know what to say. Perhaps you haven't used it long enough. Plenty of people I talked to at Macworld were now using X exclusively or about to switch. I didn't hear one person tell me they actually liked Aqua. Most hoped it would change over time. Some people have gone back to 9 and will not run X until Aqua is gone or able to be replaced. Just look at the number of long-time Mac supporters and evangelists that have criticized Aqua for starters. I have thought about writing a paper detailing its weaknesses from a design standpoint, but I don't think I can be bothered. I'll file a few internal Apple bug reports in hopes they get to some of them soon, but writing a detailed piece just gets to be a bigger and bigger project the more I use X.

At a low level (not talking about low-level Aqua) the OS itself is pretty good. Great foundation. I'd say it was released at least 24 months too early however. And I still maintain, that aside, it's still at least 5 years behind the current Windows (XP) UI. Aqua seems like it was designed by a large number of people who were never in communication with each other. The user is treated as a third-class citizen. Everything is about the interface. You work around it, it does not work for you. And it's a very big chore to work around Aqua.

That said though, we're obviously going full-speed ahead with Mac OS X software support for all our releases. There's no future for the classic OS.

Bruno